Welcome to my Week 2 NHL Betting Report, featuring my Gambling Power Rankings, results by category, my best bets, and my best/worst teams to bet on or against. It should be noted that I’m not betting with real money. These are all fictional wagers in a spreadsheet. If you’re betting with real money, you should not be betting on every game, only the games you like the most. Whereas I’m betting on every game, every over/under, because it provides a complete dataset for macroeconomic analysis. Click here to see my Week 1 Betting Report.
Home teams were the big winners in the opening week, but that started to shift when the Coyotes and Habs returned to their respective cities for homestands (Montreal did hammer Detroit on Saturday). Suddenly road favorites -1.5 goals flipped from the worst category to the best category. My “big short” of the Arizona Coyotes has been my primary moneymaker. A majority of my bets are exactly $100. That’s my minimum wagered per game, with my maximum being $1,000. I’ve been laying max bets $500 ML + $500 PL on each Coyotes game (though only $100 on Buffalo -1.5 because it was Buffalo). Rarely do I bet my entire wager on the puckline -1.5 goals, though it would have been profitable to do so against Arizona. As I’m writing this, Florida is -330 on the moneyline against the Coyotes on Monday, so I’ll lay $1,000 -1.5 goals because the Panthers might be the best team in the league.
Sometimes market shifts in home-visitor splits are a function of multiple good teams or multiple bad teams going on the road for any given stretch. On Thursday I made over $3,000 betting on road teams to beat Arizona, Montreal, and New Jersey (without their top 2 goalies). Variation in schedule can often be responsible for shifting trends, as you seldom have an equal number of good and bad teams on the road at any given moment. Sometimes the road trippers are 60% good, and then you get a market shift. That’s one of the perils of observing a market trend, and reporting on it. The good road teams go home eventually. The schedule does appear to be more randomly distributed this season.
My rookie venture into over-under betting was a
success over the first 7 days with 2/3 of my stake on the overs. 7 days in, I
was converting at a 64% success rate on over/unders (which I Tweeted) and of
course that was the moment the results began to shift. By Thursday the unders
were on a 13-3-2 run. The games were tightening up. My response was to start laying
more on the unders, and the overs went 11-6 over the weekend. I still managed a
modest over/under profit for the week, but I haven’t developed a clear strategy
going forward. I’m an amateur on this category, so there will surely be growing
pains. By Sunday, I had picked the correct outcome in 57% of all over/unders on
the entire season.
My Week 2 Results
*Note* “Market Return” is based on betting exactly $100 on every outcome.
In my week 1 betting report, I was pumping the tires of home teams and home underdogs as profitable ventures. That was until some really bad teams travelled home to play some games. For as much as I had been extoling their virtues, my bets quickly shifted. I laid big bets on STL, Edm, and NYI to beat the Coyotes, along with max bets on Boston over Buffalo, Washington over New Jersey, and Carolina over Montreal. That’s why it was a terrible week for home underdogs.
Granted, it wasn’t just the home underdogs that took a
hit, it was also the home favorites and home moneyline in general. My
hypothesis last week was that players were extra jacked about playing in front
of their home fans, although that already seems to be waning. 74% of my money
wagered in week 2 was on visitors (including road underdogs over home underdogs), but
that was not part of a grand strategy, but rather a cumulative reflection of individual
match-ups. I just liked the road teams better.
My Team of the Week: Arizona Coyotes, +$2,969
There is a decent chance that the Arizona Coyotes are going to be my team of the week every week, except perhaps when they barely play. I’m off to my best start gambling in 3 years, and 64% of my profit is coming from Arizona games. Coyotes to lose has been a cash cow. I have found the line offerings on Arizona opponents to be suspiciously generous. I’m not sure why the sportsbooks have been slow to adapt to this severe ineptitude, but they should be nerfing the lines in the near future.
In the past I have observed that the offered payouts on heavy favorites tend to shrink over the course of the season, and I’m not precisely certain why. I don’t believe it’s because the best teams get better or the worst teams get worse, but rather is a reflection public betting habits. Either the sportsbooks want to get you into the habit of making bets on or against specific teams early in the schedule, then they nerf the lines and make more profit. Or perhaps people just naturally gravitate more to heavy favorites as the season progresses, and the line nerfing is reactionary.
Heading into this campaign, I was expecting the
Buffalo Sabres to challenge for worst team, but they started 3-0 and cost me
some money in the process. But the Coyotes have delivered. The Sabres can still
get there, and are a slam dunk to lose to really good teams, but they’ve had
enough success early to raise a red flag in their own weight class.
My Worst Team of the Week: Vancouver Canucks, -$700
The Canucks played 3 games this week, won 2 of them,
and I bet the wrong outcome in all three. That dropped them from 12 to 30 in my
betting Power Rankings. Specifically, it was their loss to the Sabres at the
start of the week that cost me most of this money, then they responded with back-to-back
wins when my confidence had been shaken and I invested in their opponents. Had
you just bet $100 on the Canucks to win all three games, you would be up $101.
My problem was whiffing on the Sabres game and then overreacting on the next 2
games.
My 3 Best Bets of Week
2: Best Market Bets of Week 2:
2) Coyotes to lose ML+PL: +$2,795 2) Road Moneyline: +$854
My 3 Worst Bets of Week
2: Worst Market Bets of Week 2:
2) Calgary Flames to lose: -$500 2) Home Favorites -1.5 goals: -$765
3) Vancouver Canucks to win: -$500 3) Home Underdogs +1.5 goals: -$724
My Best Teams To Bet On
In Week 2: (over/under not included)
1) Carolina Hurricanes, (+$1,467)
2) Washington Capitals, (+$1,035)
3) St. Louis Blues, (+$996)
My Worst Teams To Bet
On In Week 2: (over/under not included)
1) Vancouver Canucks, (-$500)
2) Toronto Maple Leafs, (-$450)
3) Detroit Red Wings, (-$288)
My Best Teams To Bet
Against In Week 2: (over/under not included)
1) Arizona Coyotes, (+$2,795)
2) Montreal Canadiens, (+$1,350)
3) New Jersey Devils, (+$1,256)
My Worst Teams To Bet
Against In Week 2: (over/under not included)
1) Calgary Flames, (-$500)
2) Winnipeg Jets, (-$350)
3) San Jose Sharks, (-$300)
Team By Team Power
Rankings
These power rankings are based on the sum of all my bets per team, including
where the money was won or lost. It’s still a small sample size, but each week
my new power rankings will be based on all the games in the season, not just
what happened this week.
No comments:
Post a Comment