Week 14 CPR: Bet Avoision

The primetime games in Week 14 indicated a trend that I thought was worth digging into a bit more. On both Thursday and Monday, the crowd predicted that the final total was very close to the over/under set by Vegas. When the crowd prediction is close to the line, that’s a signal to stay away from betting.

The crowd overall performed well with respect to the over/under, getting 10 of 16 correct. I reviewed it a little more closely, and of the predictions, the crowd diverged by over 10% from the line in 6 games, and the crowd went 5-1. Looking back over the season, the crowd has gone 44-32 in such games for an accuracy percentage of 58% which is just fine.

As I mentioned two weeks ago, the value in the Over/Under is a bit easier to spot than with respect to the spread, and it’s encouraging to see that the crowd can see such value over the course of the season.

Another On-the-Money from M.R.!

User M.R. predicted the Vikings-Panthers score on the nose, 31-24. This was no small feat given how stingy the Minnesota defense had been over the last few weeks. An interesting side note to this though was that the crowd seemed to be feeling a regression for both defenses as there were 3 predictions of a total of 55 or more. In any case, congratulations M.R.!

CPR Week 14 Summary

• Straight-up: 7-9 (44%)
• Against the Spread: 7-9 (44%)
• Over/Under: 10-6 (62.5%)

Overall

• Straight-up: 133-75 (64%, -2%)
• Against the Spread: 100-108 (48%, +0%)
• Over/Under: 104-104 (50%, +1%)

10 predictors in Week 14, up 2 from Week 13. Thanks so much to the folks who returned, and thank you to those who keep returning. We cannot tell you how much we appreciate your support. Please tell your friends!

The Cynthia Frelund Experience

@cfrelund‘s crowd missed the mark along with ours on Monday. They predicted a pretty sizeable win by the Patriots, so they, along with all but a small percentage of predictors, were shocked by the Dolphins not only covering but winning outright. The one bright spot was that the crowd said stay away from the total, and that was wise as the Patriots were an inch away from flipping the total from under to over. It ended up being a push, but who needs the stress if the crowd tells you not to worry about it?

The WotC GotW

Followers of the blog will know that I love it when the crowd threads the needle by predicting the underdog to cover a smallish spread while still losing the game as in the Ravens-Steelers game. However, the game this week that the crowd really predicted well was the Eagles-Rams. Not only did the crowd predict the Eagles, who were originally underdogs, to win outright, but the came very close to predicting the final spread. A touchdown during the lateral drill as time expired moved the spread from 2 to 8. Additionally, they had a lot of confidence in the over, and that came through as well.

The Wabby of the Week

I think the selection of the Patriots-Dolphins game as the Wearing-a-Barrel game on Monday is a pretty easy one. The Patriots had been holding their opponents, albeit not a great set of teams, to very low totals for quite a while, including 16, 8, 17, and 3 in the last four weeks. Meanwhile, they have scored at least 23 points per game during that stretch. So if you had given me the Patriots AND 6.5 points, you’d have my house and all my clothes today.

Week 14 Top Performers

User M.R. placed either first or second in every category this week. Nice work M.R.! We had 10 total predictors this week, so thanks to everyone who continued to help us out!