Week 14, Game 1 – The Good Beat

The crowds missed all 3 picks in the Thursday night game between the Saints and Falcons, but in a way, it was a result that shows how the crowd wisdom can provide value by showing where there is no value.

The crowd predictions, while wrong, pretty much said stay away from this game. The original spread favored the Saints by 2.5, and the total hovered around 52 all week. By Thursday, the spread moved to the Falcons, favoring them also by 2.5. Meanwhile, the crowd’s prediction for the game consistently predicted a close game both with respect to the spread and the over/under.

I heard one of the guys on the Sports Gambling Podcast this week say that, as you get better at betting, you don’t necessarily pick the winners better; you get better at picking games to stay away from.

And that is what the crowd indicated on Thursday. The gap between the crowd prediction for both the spread and the over/under never veered more than a point or two, so the smart move was to wait for better value on Sunday. So even though the crowd came up empty, the silver lining is that it was right that the game was going to be a coin flip, and yea, verily it came to pass.

The Game 1 CPR – 0 for 3.

Incorrect: Straight-up; Over/Under; Against the Spread

The one disheartening aspect is that this is the second Thursday night game in a row in which the crowd missed all three categories. As I mentioned last week, the crowd usually misses all three in one or two games a week, so while I shouldn’t panic, it is always a little harder to take when it’s on a primetime game.

The Cynthia Frelund Experience

Cynthia Frelund’s crowd (@cfrelund) also missed across the board, but as I mentioned above, they predicted a razor-thin margin. While the Falcons ended up as the favorite, the gap was small enough with both the spread and the total that the crowd indicated that the wise move was to look elsewhere for value.

-Chris