Category: Best Bets

Week 12 Best Bet Report

I’ve been continuing to try to figure out how to identify best bets more consistently. As I had mentioned in previous weeks, when it comes to the spread, there is a bit of nuance to be used. The outer edges of the spread spectrum when the game is either a coin flip (a spread of 0 to 1) or features a heavy favorite (greater than 8), a delta between the crowd prediction and the spread can be as high as 4 or 5 points without it feeling like a best bet. Alternatively, if a spread is between 3 and 9 points, a delta of 4 or 5 points seems like a pretty good indication of value. So for now, we’ll keep a focus on the best bets when it’s pretty clear that the crowd sees value while we try to sort out the outliers.

In Week 12, there were two games that feature big deltas: Jaguars-Cardinals and Texans-Ravens. The crowd picked Arizona, a 6-point underdog, to win the game outright and had a spread delta of 6.2. The crowd picked the Ravens to win by 1.1 (Texans cover the 7.5) for a spread delta of 6.4. The crowd spreads for all of the other games were relatively close to the Vegas lines. So for the games with the big deltas, the crowd went 2-0.

When it comes to the total, identifying a best bet using the delta is much more straightforward. Since most spreads are between 41 and 46 (based on quartiles), we can more easily use the delta between the crowd total and the odds to identify value.

In Week 12, there were 5 games in which the total predicted by the crowd and the Vegas total differed by at least 10%, and the crowd went 4-0-1.

GAME	VEGAS	PREDICTION	ACTUAL
Bills at Chiefs	47	41.63	26
Saints at Rams	54	48	46
Jaguars at Cardinals	37	43.11	51
Panthers at Jets	39.5	45.88	62
Texans at Ravens	39	43.78	39

Summary

Week 12 Best Bets: 6-0-1

This was a pretty incredible result that I wish I had posted before the games. Of course, I’m pretty sure that if I had I would have jinxed the whole week.

Other Best Bets

RP-Excel – 5-4

In Week 12, RP-Excel hit all 3 over/under best bets and went 2-4 against the spread for a fine 5-4 performance.

Vegas Insider – 3-2

The Westgate Super Contest consensus got back on track in Week 12, missing on the Jaguars and Saints while correctly picking the Panthers, Titans, and Rams. How can the SuperContest have picked both the Saints and the Rams? The consensus is based on the most popular picks, so both sides of a game could be popular. Of course, that probably means you should avoid playing the line.

Are there any other sites you follow for best bets? Add them in the comments or send them to us at hi@crowdsourcedscores.com. Thanks!

-Chris

Best Bets

Week 10 Best Bet Report

The crowd had a rough week of best bets in Week 10, though we are still looking at different ways of identifying the best bets. I called out 4 leans directly on Sunday morning, and they all came up empty:

PREDICTION	ACTUAL
Jets win by 2 over Bucs (spread: Jets +1)	Bucs win by 5
Packers-Bears Total: 34.4 (under 37.5)	Total: 39
Saints-Bills Total: 39.9 (under 47.5)	Total: 57
Giants-49ers Total: 35.8 (under 41.5)	Total: 52

I left out a couple by mistake in our feed, so that was a little annoying. The crowd picked the Patriots to win by 10.3 (the spread was Patriots -7), and the crowd also predicted a pretty comfortable win for the Vikings with a 5.5-point margin (the spread was Vikings -1). Also, the crowd predicted a big 15-point win for the Seahawks (the spread was Seahawks by 6) that ended up pushing thanks to the screendoor cover.

Summary

Week 10 Best Bets: 2-4-1

We had a couple of solid weeks in a row, so it may have been expected that we would come down to earth at some point.

Other Best Bets

RP-Excel – 3-5

In Week 10, RP-Excel had a better week this week but was still under 50% for the week.

Vegas Insider – 1-4

The Westgate Super Contest consensus fell back again, missing on Buffalo +3, Jacksonville -3.5, Washington +1, and the Jets -2.5. The Rams -12 was their only correct prediction.

Are there any other sites you follow for best bets? Add them in the comments or send them to us at hi@crowdsourcedscores.com. Thanks!

-Chris

Best Bets

Week 9 Best Bet Report

We’re still trying to solidify our methodology around identifying best bets. A couple of games stood out this week in that regard:

LAR -4 at NYG – Crowd predicted LAR -7.8
DET -2.5 at GB – Crowd predicted DET -5.27

In both of those cases the crowd wisdom said that the spread was half of what it should be. And in both cases, they came through in fine style. So we’ll keep an eye on when the crowd diverges from the Vegas lines going forward and see if we can identify a trend. I did a quick scan back through the season and the crowd is about .500 when the predicted spread is around double or half of the Vegas line. Though it was trended upward the last several weeks.

On the total side, the biggest delta was on the Cardinals-49ers game with a predicted total of 31.7 compared to the Vegas line of 39, and that came through as well.

Summary

Week 9 Best Bets: 3-0

We’re certainly excited about a solid week, but of course we’re tempering it knowing that 100% accuracy is probably not sustainable. 🙂

Other Best Bets

RP-Excel – 2-4

In Week 9, RP Excel was correct on the Eagles -7.5 and the Cardinals -2 but missed his other 4 picks for another 2-4 week.

Vegas Insider – 3-2

The Westgate Super Contest consensus is back on track, picking the Colts -13, the Rams -3.5, and the Cowboys +1. The consensus missed on the Broncos +8.5 and the Falcons +2.

Are there any other sites you follow for best bets? Add them in the comments or send them to us at hi@crowdsourcedscores.com. Thanks!

-Chris

Tags 2017, bestbets, wisdom

Best Bets

Week 8 Best Bet Report

There were not too many games in which the crowd diverged significantly from the odds in Week 8.

The biggest deltas between the lines and the crowd predictions were:

Bears-Saints total: 40.2 predicted vs. 45.5
Bucs-Panthers total: 41.5 predicted vs. 46
Cowboys-Washington total: 51.5 predicted vs. 46
Colts-Bengals spread: Colts +4 predicted vs. Colts +11
Colts-Bengals total:40 predicted vs. 44

Summary

Week 8 Best Bets: 4-1

Previous weeks featured predictions that had a pretty significant delta between the crowd and the Vegas line. The biggest delta this week was between the crowd’s predicted margin of victory for the Bengals (4) and the Vegas line (11). There were only four other predictions that differed by more than 4 points.

Other Best Bets

Again, we’re not tooting our horns too much here, as we’re sure that there will be weeks in which these folks pick much better than our crowd. We just want to include these folks for perspective.

RP-Excel – 2-4

This gentleman is really sharp and provides his picks every week to the sportsbook subreddit. He’s been performing quite well through the season.

In Week 8, he was correct on the Eagles -12 and the Panthers-Bucs under 45 but missed his other 4 picks.

Vegas Insider – 2-3

It was a (slightly) better week at the Vegas Super Contest. The top 5 consensus picks went 2-3, getting Seattle -5.5, Saints -9, and Chargers +7 wrong while hitting on Carolina +2 and Atlanta +4.5.

Are there any other sites you follow for best bets? Add them in the comments or send them to us at hi@crowdsourcedscores.com. Thanks!

-Chris

Tags 2017, bestbets, wisdom

Best Bets

Week 7 Best Bet Report

Win: Cowboys-49ers

We’re starting a new weekly feature: the Best Best Report. We’ll highlight the lines that the crowd diverged from most and examine the results.

Week 7 struck me as a bit unusual because there was not one game in which the crowd diverged significantly from the Total, while there were 5 spreads that’s as a gap of 6 or more. In previous weeks, the most common best bet was on the Over/Under.

Summary

Week 7 Best Bets: 3-2

Win: Cowboys-49ers

Loss: Panthers-Bears

The most surprising best bet result was Bears over Panthers. Not only did Chicago cover, they won going away. Of course, they scored two defensive touchdowns when the Panthers were deep in Bears territory, but a loss is a loss. The lowest predicted spread was 3, and no one in the crowd predicted the Bears to win.

The Titans were a near-hit, but their offense just didn’t show up, and they missed the cover by 3.

On the positive side, the Jets, Saints, and Cowboys all covered quite nicely. The crowd projected a big win for Dallas, and they delivered. After Week 6, I started to wonder whether we should avoid large spreads altogether, but this week the crowd said that the big spread wasn’t big enough and was proven right.

Other Best Bets

To paraphrase from The Wire, “Don’t take credit when best bets go your way unless you also want to take the blame when they don’t.” I mention that because I scout some other sites that provide best bets and wanted to mention them as a reference point for whether 3-2 is good or not. I’ll make sure to highlight their success if they outperform us.

RP-Excel – 1-5

This gentleman is really sharp and provides his picks every week to the sportsbook subreddit. He’s been performing quite well through the season.

In Week 7 however, he struggled, getting only Dallas right of his 5 Best Bets.

Vegas Insider – 0-5

Over at Vegas Insider, things went as bad as they could have. All 5 consensus picks failed to cover in the Super Contest (a contest hosted by Hilton Hotels in which competitors pick 5 games per week). The missed consensus picks are a reminder that the binary pick (cover/won’t cover) doesn’t reflect the value of wisdom of the crowd in the same way that we think Crowdsourced Scores does.

Are there any other sites you follow for best bets? Add them in the comments or send them to us at hi@crowdsourcedscores.com. Thanks!

-Chris

Tags 2017, bestbets, wisdom