I’ll come out and admit it to you now: I am a Raiders fan. I have been one since about 1991. And before you respond, remember that Raiders fans suffered through decade-long stretches: post-2003 Super Bowl through 2016 and from Bo Jackson until Jon Gruden and Rich Gannon. We have experienced plenty of pain over the last 25 years. There are teams that have experienced more, but not many.
So the result of the Thursday night game is obviously mixed for me. On the one hand, I was very sad that our crowd, who had predicted the Chiefs to win by a margin of 6.75 points, had the correct straight-up and ATS result ripped from their grasp on the very last play of the game. It was a mirror image of the Chiefs-Washington game in which the Chiefs covered on a meaningless touchdown to end the game. On the other hand, that ending was among the most remarkable of any game I can remember, and if you like the NFL for the football (as opposed to extracurricular reasons), I’m sure you enjoyed it as well.
In any case, I wanted to point out one reason why crowd size is important that came out of the Thursday night result. As it turns out, the 47 Over/Under line that we had at the beginning of the week dropped a half point before the game, so the crowd still got the over/under line correct. Still, take a look at how a late set of predictions affected the aggregate total.
With just a few predictions, the crowd went from comfortably above the Over/Under total to right on top of it. While the crowd was still correct, it goes to show how having a large, diversified crowd will protect the prediction from late movements. So please tell your friends to join us!
And of course, one other note is that this game was an outlier in a few ways. The Raiders scored far more than they had in the previous 3 weeks, and the total in the game will likely be one of the highest in Week 7. The WotC is most effective in predicting the majority of games as opposed to predicting outliers, so going 1 of 3 is not surprising in a game like this.
The Game 1 CPR – 1 for 3
Correct: Over/Under; Incorrect: Straight-up, Against the Spread
The Chiefs giveth, and the Chiefs taketh away. As I mentioned, two weeks ago the Chiefs improbably covered the spread on the last play of the game. On Thursday, with no time left on the clock, the crowd had the straight-up, spread, and over/under results correct. But then the Chiefs committed two penalties on consecutive downs, giving the Raiders 2 extra chances to win. On the final attempt, the Raiders succeeded, and the over/under was the only result that came through.
The Cynthia Frelund Experience
Cynthia Frelund’s crowd (@cfrelund) was also 1 of 3 for the night, getting the Over/Under correct in the end. One interesting note is that all of the predictions that had KC scoring 28 or more, only 1 out of 25 (@MarvinSimeon) predicted the Raiders to win, and Mr. Simeon had the margin at just 1. So not only was it an outlier in terms of the straight up result, it had the final margin exactly right. That is some wizardry, and it goes to show that the larger the crowd, the more likely you’ll have that fringe better represented.
-Chris
Blog - Stakehouse Sports 