Sports Reaserch

[Benny]

I here a lot about that one should reaserch your sport before betting. I'm going to reasearch this years NBL season, but i don't know what reasearch to do. Can someone advise.

benny

[karla909]

Like to respond to your query Benny but you are requesting info that would take a book to fill. I would respond to your query if you would like to answer these questions.


How much time do you have a week to this project?

Are you good at either Excel or Access?

Can you find the last few years NBL results plus the betting? - Without the betting, stats are pretty meaningless. If Sydney bets Perth by 25 points that may sound impressive. However if Sydney are 30 point favourites then it isn't.

Do you have a specific goal (othe than make money) for this. ie bet on wins, point spreads, totals etc.

How much sports betting experience do you have?

Let us know and I'll get back to you

karla

[Benny]

I have the results recorded on paper, but I have very little knowledge of acess or excel. How do i record the ruslts in excel.


benny

[Mr J]

"How do i record the ruslts in excel."

Excel is pretty easy to use and to setup databases. To record everything, you either have to type it all in by hand, or if you are lucky you can rip it off a website that is in a table format (like the rugby league results at stats.rleague.

Building up databases is pretty time consuming, but once it's done it's alot easier to mess around trying to create systems (maybe you just want to handicap?).

As far as research to do, look for trends. Try to get 5 years of data, and at least 3. Find a trend (eg home underdogs) and see how they performed over 1 year. Then test this trend over 2 or more different seasons. If the results then meet a certain rarity then they could or should be profitable, depending on how good the results were.

You can use this formula to test how good a test/record is:

=BINOMDIST(W,T,P,FALSE)

Just copy and paste into an excel sheet.
W= number of wins
T= total number of bets
P= probally of winning if you are guessing (eg a linebet =0.5)

So if I was betting against the line and won 50 out of 75, it would go:

=BINOMDIST(50,75,0.5,FALSE)

1 in 100 (1%) is nothing.
1 in 1000 (0.1%) means the trend might be profitable
1 in 10000 (0.01%) means the trend is almost certainly profitable.

Datamining for trends is the easiest way to profit off sports (in terms of creating 'pick').

It is VERY important that when you find a trend, you DON'T use that data in the test. Eg if I search for a trend of season 2, I only test on other seasons (eg 1 and 3 if you have 3 seasons). If you include the search data in the test it will be biased. In short, when you test a hypothesis, you can't include the data that was used to form that hypothesis. Very important.

As far as trends to look for, things like home faves/dogs and away faves/dogs. You might also look at performances when a team has had to travel alot.

[Benny]

What sort of headings do i use? I'm going to be betting on the unders/overs.

i came up the following.

Brisbane Bullets Games Played Games Won Under/Over Odds

benny

[Benny]

I'm going to switch to the afl as I have the last 5 years results. I'm looking to bet the margin - under 391/2 over 391/2 points.

benny

[Chuck]

Mr J - How do you use stats.rleague's info in excel. I can import it and all that but don't know how i can use it. Do you think you could be of some help?

thanks in advance

Chuck