Using Vegas line and TR rankings as an indicator of expectation level.

[Old guy]

There has been both concern and dislike of my posting about the Vegas line and TR rankings as an indicator of what the  street/Vegas expects from SLU. I am personally excited about this because it is a way to deal with sports as a lot of people deal with the market for short term trading. You all know my posts do not exactly fit the way many of the experts in the board look at things, and frankly I do not care. This method uses different inputs, readily available to everyone, to establish the street/Vegas expectations for us. I wonder is there is any interest in this board about this line of thinking, therefore I am opening up this topic trying to see if anyone is interested to continue this discussion.

The Wiz just referred to exactly what I am doing by commenting about the "worthiness" level test used by the NCAA to issue invitations to the Dance. Another method of using these concepts is to bet, something which I do not do and cannot comment upon with any level of knowledge.

So, if you are interested in testing this linkage between sports rankings and betting and market trading using sentiment let me know. I am offering this method of keeping this subject away from those that dislike it strongly. My other aim is to enjoy the development of this method from an intellectual point of view.

[TheA_Bomb]

What's the early line on the next game?

 

Which way do you see it moving?

 

If you were to parlay it with a few other games who'd you pick?

 

Maybe a stone cold lead pipe lock of the week recommendation would be awesome. 

[Old guy]

I get the Vegas line when they release which is not yet. By the prior way they have rated us and the line has been set. I assume (not certain until they release) that Boise St. (43) will be favored over us, probably (my estimate 3 or 4 stars) and that the line will go in favor of Boise St. by around 10 to 20 pts. The line will depend upon how Boise State performs against CS Bakersfield (254) tomorrow. The line for that game is 18.4 in favor of Boise State with 5 stars of confidence on Boise winning. If Boise blows CS  Bakersfield out of the way by say 40 pts or so, Boise will have a high line in their favor against SLU and 4 to 5 stars. If they beat the line by a little bit, or go below the line against CS Bakersfield, they will have a line against SLU I'd say around 10 pts with 2-3 stars of  confidence.

The higher the line against SLU the more room you have to make money, even if SLU loses. I would take a very high line against SLU as an over expectation in performance for Boise State and under expectation in performance for SLU, but first let's see how well Boise does against CS Bakersfield tomorrow.

This is just my estimate of what will happen over the next few days before our game against Boise. What I wrote above is just an approximation.  It is just my guess from my point of view and methods. Remember, I am not in the business of providing betting advice, but if I was and could provide what you call a stone cold lead pipe lock of the week recommendation you can be assured you would be paying for what it is worth, and taking the risk for deciding how to bet with it.

 

[Old guy]

Now for the methodology. I have said that sentiment is used extensively in the market to guide short term trading, or relatively short term trading. For those of you that do not know much about the trading interval, the shorter the interval the more volatile the market is, and the more rapidly changing indicator you can use to trade it. The interval currently goes from the milisecond (and this becomes shorter all the time). No one in this board can aspire to trade this interval, it requires specialized equipment and all the trading is 100% done by computers.

The sentiment users use time intervals from intraday to several days or even weeks. Intraday you buy in the early morning and sell whenever you think it is time, this repeats over and over during the day. Swing trading is longer from buying in the  morning to selling before close to buying in the morning and selling after a few days. Sentiment can be used for this type of trading, and stretching the interval to weeks is possible.

Now, compare this to  sports, any particular team play games with a few days interval between games. The interval allows the teams to prepare for the next game and to rest. It also allows the street/Vegas to make up its mind as to who they favor. I am not including into this thinking any kind of incompetence from any party, or injuries, or corruption and bad games. I am talking about two games officiated in acceptable fashion with two teams trying their best to win.

There are two things you can look at during this interval in games, team rankings and the Vegas line.

1. I do not pay for access to the early Vegas line so I do not use it. For those who have access the movement up and down of the Vegas line prior to the game may be very informative.

2. Following the ranking system from a single source (the rankings must be comparable as they go up and down). You can get an idea whether this particular source is over estimating or under estimating the probable performance of the teams involved. This requires to examine prior games for both sides and see what happened after each game to the teams involved. Different ranking systems will move with internal consistency, different systems are not comparable to one another. Sagarin is and remains Sagarin, TR is and remains TR.

Think about what you see and make up your mind as to which player is being over estimated by both Vegas and the ranking system and who is under estimated.

Remember the market action with news coming out and the sentiment of the street rapidly overwhelming everything. The market may be going straight up and then the Fed makes some kind of statement and it drops like a stone, and quickly too. The opposite happens as well. A lot of these moves have nothing to do with reality and indeed are balanced, at least to some degree, in the opposite way the very next day. The market is fascinating that way. When traders find an error somewhere, or something they think is an error, they can play it. It is their money, they decide whether to take the risk or not. Can the same way of thinking apply to sports? I think so. The issue here is to find broad and internally consistent measurements that can be studied and determine if they are based upon reality or not.

Is there reality in sports? I honestly doubt it, there are too many variables involved. However, professional organizations make money out of sports, they must and do have their own methods. The same can be said about the Vegas line. So, how can we try to determine when they are wrong? This is what I am trying to do.

[TheA_Bomb]

Texas has laws against online betting so I can't use the DFS or the new MGM sites.

 

10-20 BSU line over SLU was high before their loss to CSU-B.  I was thinking 7.  Now maybe only 3.  Teams can stumble early like BSU just did. 

People mostly bet on whales but remember some of those lesser known match ups can make you $$$.  

[Old guy]

 A bomb, you are the one that has the experience in sports betting, not me. I assume that after the loss by Boise St. the line will be low. Most certainly the TR ranking level for Boise St. went down to 62 which is below our ranking of 60 and the TR current stats display for Boise St. and SLU shows we are fairly closely matched in the stats. I will write here when I get the Vegas line from TR.

I am applying market methods to this sports thing and I find it very interesting but you have to understand that this is just a beginning in using this methods. The street/jVegas expectation may remain higher than reality because that is what expectations are. People believe what they want to believe, not reality, and the Vegas line just reflects these beliefs. We will see how realistic the line is when I get it.

[Old guy]

About the Boise St. game tomorrow. TR started by providing a confidence level of 2 stars in favor of Boise winning this game. This is interesting because they usually provide their confidence level on who is going to win a few days before the game, and this is the day before the game. I think TR had some issues coming up with someone to favor to win this game, and finally decided upon Boise. I assume this was done primarily because this is a home game for Boise. I have no access to the early results of the Vegas line, but the early Vegas line may also be favoring Boise and TR does not want to go against it. So it is profiling like Boise will be favored with a low to medium advantage in the Vegas line.

The stats say the teams are basically even, but this is a home game for Boise. I think the expectations starting to show as probably incorrect for this game, but the level of over and under expectations  do not appear to be large. I will have to see the final Vegas line to know how much over expectation on the side of Boise they are placing. As I said before, people believe whatever they want to believe, reality is something else.

[Old guy]

Finally the Vegas line is here, +5 in favor of Boise St, 2 stars of confidence. This is interesting because we know of 3 reputable sources dealing with this game. The Wiz puts us as winning by one point, despite this being a home game for Boise St. Sagarin, according to someone's post gives a 4 point advantage for home games, so in this system Boise St. is favored to win by 2 pts. The Vegas line favors Boise St by 5 pts, I think this is due at least partially to the home advantage, but primarily due to the fact that the street/Vegas (a sentiment pool for the betting public) prefers Boise to SLU. Keep this in mind, the two stars of confidence from TR means that their prediction is not solid and has a fair margin of error in it. Overall, we have the Wiz going for SLU despite the away factor. Sagarin thinking SLU could win but using his fudge factor for the away game which gives it to Boise. And TR following the Vegas line but not too sure of their evaluation which includes the away factor. The margin of error is significant in all  3 evaluations in my opinion, I think the away factor is receiving perhaps too much weight here. PLUS, there is another factor that should perhaps increase the probability of a Boise win, they lost their last game, at home, against a much inferior team.

There is a range of 6 pts between the Wiz's prediction and the Vegas line. Personally I think SLU is being under estimated by all evaluations. I think we may win by a greater margin. I think the away factor is over considered by TR, and Sagaring fudge factor is fixed and will not reflect reality in most games. The fact that Boise lost the last game may be important here but largely ignored by the evals so far. I think we are good enough to defeat Boise for the second time in a row in their own turf (ie. they will not do well against our defense). So there, you have a sentiment analysis for the game. Think it over and test your thoughts, I would suggest not to go very high betting since this method is at an early stage at this time. I hope you understand what I am doing or trying to do. Good luck ABomb. Let me know what you did.

By the way market traders trying a new set of methods or strategies may go with "paper trading" for some time before they go in for real. The paper trading is just to get familiarized with the use of the new methods.

[Old guy]

This is several days after the Boise game. SLU won by 6. Prior to the game I wrote that Wiz, Sagarin and the Vegas Line were all underestimating SLU in my opinion and that I thought we could win by more. As it turned out the final Vegas line went down to 3 in favor of Boise. We beat all the estimates, the final Vegas line was beaten by +9 for SLU.

Before the game I talked about the away effect, and also about the fact that Boise had just lost a game and would be looking to this game to make up the loss. There were two factors that I did not consider before the game. One was our ability to make FTs, which is very high this year and probably won the game. The other factor I did not consider was altitude and the fact that some of our players may be affected by it. Adding the altitude factor to the mix, even without any specific way to weigh its effect (because different players may be affected and others not affected by it at the relatively low altitude of Boise) makes our win even more remarkable, and the tendency to under estimate SLU by the ranking organizations and odds makers more pronounced. Again, this is extremely similar to the way sentiment works in the market.

Very nice win.

[Old guy]

Moving forward into the UAB game next Saturday. SLU has played 7-1 so far but one game is not D1 and did not get a Vegas line so we will not take this into consideration. Counting only D1 games in the OOC, we are at 6-1. UAB has played (D1 games only) 5-2 so far. I wanted to determine how closely associated was the Vegas line to the actual result obtained by UAB and SLU in the games they already have played. There are always outlier results in any set of games under consideration so the largest result over or under the Vegas line will be eliminated from this calculation. The remaining 6 results (over or under) for each one of the teams were averaged with the following results: UAB had an average gap (up or down) from the Vegas line over 6 games of +1.28 pts. SLU had an average gap (up or down) from the Vegas line over 6 games os 4.1 pts.

From my point of view, these results mean that the Vegas line for this season (2021-2022) tends to under estimate SLU's game performance, while UAB's game performance is much closer to the Vegas line.