If Week 3 was the Upside Down, Week 4 was clearly the Right Side Up. Week 3 began with the Rams and 49ers combining for 80 points and the 49ers backdoor-ing the 2.5-point spread with minutes to play. Week 4 ended with a most improbable, at least from a betting point of view, combination of events. Not only did the Chiefs score a defensive touchdown on the Washington Stanford-band play at the end of the game; they also chose to kneel for the two-point conversion. So the Chiefs both covered the spread while still hitting the under by a half-point, giving the crowd the trifecta for the game. As an added bonus, that bizarre sequence of events led to an On-the-Money prediction for the Cynthia Frelund experience (see below). Overall, the crowd performed extremely well this week, pretty much evening out the struggles from Week 3.
Have you ever had a bet come through in some crazy, last-second fashion? Let us know in the comments!
And speaking of On the Money, we had our first On the Money prediction of the year by one of our users! G.A. correctly predicted a 35-14 win for the Packers over the Bears, and lo, it came to pass. Congratulations G.A.!
A Word on Crazy Endings and the Crowd
I could easily argue that there is no way the crowd could have predicted the ending of the Chiefs game, and the crowd was certainly fortunate to have the ending meet all three of its prediction.
So now is a good time to reinforce the theory that the crowd isn’t predicting any specific event. The crowd wisdom is seen in the long game, and the crazy endings that prove the crowd correct are generally offset by the crazy endings that go against the crowd. So while the crowd was proven correct across the winner, spread, and total thanks to the crazy ending of the Monday Night Football game, they were also let down by the similarly crazy ending of the Week 3 Thursday Night game.
It might be an interesting experiment to poll the crowd when games are close in order to discover if they can predict a crazy ending over time. We’ll add it to the backlog!
CPR Week 4 Summary
- Straight-up: 10-6
- Against the Spread: 12-4
- Over/Under: 10-6
CPR 2017 Overall
- Straight-up: 38-25, 60% (same as Week 3)
- Against the Spread: 28-35, 40% (+6% from Week 3)
- Over/Under: 36-27, 57% (+1% from Week 3)
We had 8 predictors this week, including 3 new friends to the crowd. Welcome! Thank you to those who participated for the first time and to those who continue to help out.
The Cynthia Frelund Experience
As we mentioned above, the Twitter followers for Cynthia Frelund (@cfrelund) this week provided their score predictions for the Monday Night Game and were right on the money. They predicted the final score exactly right. They have been close on a couple of occasions so far this season, so it’s great to see the crowd come through in such spectacular fashion so early in the season.
Crowd-wisest Prediction of the Week
The crowd was feeling it this week, and there were 6 trifecta games (up from the previous high of 4) this week.
Vikings-Lions and Eagles-Chargers were both interesting because the crowd picked the underdog to win outright, but probably the best prediction this week was 49ers-Cardinals because of how close the predicted spread and total were to the actual results.
| PREDICTION | CROWD | ACTUAL |
|---|---|---|
| Winner | Cardinals | Cardinals |
| Spread | Cardinals -3 (spread was -7.5) | Cardinals -4 |
| Over/Under | 39 (under 43.5) | 33 |
Crowd-foolishest Prediction of the Week
There were two 0-fer games in Week 4, and the bagel crown goes to the Bills-Falcons. The crowd predicted the Falcons to cover the 8-point spread, and the lost outright.
| PREDICTION | CROWD | ACTUAL |
|---|---|---|
| Winner | Falcons | Bills |
| Spread | Falcons -10 (spread was -8) | Bills by 6 |
| Over/Under | 49 (over 48.5) | 40 |
It seems that the crowd may not have fully bought into the Bills yet this season, as the crowd did not predict a Bills win either in Week 3 or Week 4, so it will be worth watching to see if the crowd corrects (or overcorrects) in Week 5.
Top Performers This Week
There were a lot of good performances this week, including E.A. who was second in the straight-up leaderboard and first against the spread!
Straight-up
- C.A. (12)
- B.C. (10)
- P.C. (10)
- E.A. (new participant) (10)
Against the Spread
- E.A. (11)
- B.C. (11)
- G.A. (10)
Over/Under
- G.A. (10)
- M.R. (10)
- C.A. (9)
- G.A. (6)
Thanks for all the predictions! Keep up the good work!
-Chris
Blog - Stakehouse Sports 