Monday, February 28, 2022

2021/22 NHL Week 18 Betting Report

Welcome to my Week 18 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 17 Betting Report.

My Weekly Profit: -$1,404
My Season Profit: $16,299

As the global economy enters a period of volatility in the face of war, so too has my betting portfolio fallen on dark days. This was my worst week of the entire season. The February trend of increasingly successful road teams came to an abrupt end in the final week of the month, and road moneyline was where I really got hammered. As I pointed out last week, the trend only became a trend because a few teams got hot on road trips at the same time. That report did not come with a recommendation to start laying heavy money on visitors, pointing out the teams that had been driving the trend.

The road teams that did the most damage to me personally in the past 7 days, Toronto losing to Montreal, Washington losing to Philadelphia, Minnesota losing to Ottawa, Vegas losing to Arizona, and to a lesser extent, Colorado losing against Boston. The trend of the previous weeks did make me more confident selecting road teams, but it was 4 really bad beats that drove me this deep into the red. If you deleted those games from the sample, I’d be here bragging about yet another week of profit.

Minnesota and Florida going a combined 0-6 really hurt me, as those were 2 teams I’ve been laying a lot of money on this season. At least with the Panthers, the -$750 I lost betting them to win was partially offset by banking $521 on their overs. Whereas the -$750 I burned betting the Wild to win was offset by picking Calgary to beat them on Saturday, along with the over. Flames won 7-3. Meanwhile, Carolina and Vancouver went 6 for 6, which helped me to mitigate some of the damage caused by those other teams.

While the trend of increasing road success may have come to end, the goal scoring bonanza continued to roll. Full disclosure; I would have been crushed far worse this week had it not been for over/under wagers. After the All-Star break, I introduced a new algorithm for over/under selections and shared with you exactly how it is calculated. If you were playing along at home, you also have had a strong run success. From Saturday to Saturday, it picked the correct over/under in 66% of games. I was up more than $2,000 on over/under bets for the week before going 1 for 8 on Sunday, bringing me back down to Earth.

The goal scoring bonanza and over bets had been driving my metaphorical bus down the yellow brick road, then ran into a ditch on Sunday. I still finished the week up $927 on over/under betting, but mostly due to unders. Though if you bet $100 on the under in every game, you lost -$380. On Thursday night I made the mistake of Tweeting about the success of Columbus overs this season, which was directly responsible for their next 2 games going under. Their overs had hit in 10 of their last 11 games, until I Tweeted about the trend, causing it to reverse course…Yup, it was entirely my fault…


 

My Week 18 Results

*Note* “Market Return” is based on betting exactly $100 on every outcome.

 

I’ve had 2 different over/under algorithms in use for a little more than 100 games, one has a short memory (5 games), the other looks back 10 games. The short-term memory focuses on average goals, with the other counting percentage of times each team went over the total. The two algorithms have agreed on the same outcome in 77% of games, which proved to be the winning bet 54% of the time. Where this gets interesting is when the two algorithms disagree. In those cases, the new short-term memory algorithm picked the correct outcome 74% of the time.

This doesn’t mean that you should start using both algorithms and bet extra when they disagree. Neither formula is a secret. I’ve outlined in previous betting reports exactly how you can compute these on your own. The newer version with the shorter memory is prevailing when they disagree entirely because of overs; meaning, this discrepancy is entirely because of the scoring boom. The longer memory was remembering a brief period of lower scoring games in late January, and had defense tightened up this past week, it would have been more accurate.

It's also worth mentioning, I bet $0 on favorites -1.5 goals this week. As underdogs have been resurging, I've been scared away from favorites on the puckline.

 

My Team of the Week: Seattle Kraken, +$1,110

The Seattle Kraken earned my best betting team of the week honors by playing 4 games and winning none. Betting the Kraken to lose banked me $745, with the remainder of my profit coming from over/under wagers. On Sunday they played a struggling San Jose team and my money was on the victorious Sharks. The game itself was revenue neutral, with the gains from the win being exactly equal to what I lost on the over. Had that score been 4-2 instead of 3-1, I would have won $1,484 on Seattle games with $738 of that coming from over/under.

That takes me to my second-best team of the week, the San Jose Sharks. It’s just a coincidence that my two best teams of the week played on Sunday, as both occupied the top 2 seeds before the puck dropped. A majority of my gains for the Sharks came from over/under picks, but that could have been much more had the over hit on Sunday. The Sharks had lost 8 of their previous 10 games, and usually I’m great at profiting from nosedives, but not this time. It was my O/U algorithm that cracked San Jose.

 

My Worst Team of the Week: Washington Capitals, -$870

The Washington Capitals entered the week on a streak of 5 consecutive road games, and logged back-to-back losses as visitors. The one that cost me the most was their defeat at the hands of the lowly Philadelphia Flyers on Saturday. I burned $500 on the Caps moneyline and another $200 on the over (which my algorithm hasn’t been missing much on lately). That one game alone propelled Washington to last place in my weekly team-by-team results.

My second worst team of the week was the Pittsburgh Penguins at -$762, who had to grind it out slowly over the course of 3 games. The Pens got blown out on home ice 6-1 by the inferior New Jersey Devils when I bet them to win. The next game my money was on the New York Rangers, and that’s when Tristan Jarry responded by pitching a shutout on Saturday. They played in Columbus the next night on a back-to-back, and I bet the Blue Jackets, who had been previously hot. Pittsburgh squeaked out a 3-2 victory by scoring the go-ahead goal with 2 minutes left.

 

My 3 Best Bets of Week 18:                                 Best Market Bets of Week 18:
 
1) Seattle to lose ML: +$745                                  1) Florida to lose ML+PL: +$891
2) Under: +$611                                                      2) Minnesota to lose ML+PL: +$733
3) Carolina to win ML: +$577                                3) Seattle to lose ML+PL: +$690
 
My 3 Worst Bets of Week 18:                              Worst Market Bets of Week 18:
 
1) Road moneyline: -$2,091                                   1) Minnesota to win ML+PL: -$700
2) Minnesota to win ML: -$750                             2) Road moneyline: -$688
3) Florida to win ML: -$750                                  3) Road favorites -1.5 goals: -$673
 
 

My Best Teams To Bet On In Week 18: (over/under not included)

 

1) Carolina Hurricanes, (+$577)

2) Vancouver Canucks, (+$455)

3) San Jose Sharks, (+$331)

 

My Worst Teams To Bet On In Week 18: (over/under not included)

 

1) Florida Panthers, (-$750)

2) Minnesota Wild, (-$750)

3) Washington Capitals, (-$750)

4) Vegas Golden Knights, (-$750)

 

My Best Teams To Bet Against In Week 18: (over/under not included)

 

1) Seattle Kraken, (+$750)

2) Buffalo Sabres, (+$400)

3) Winnipeg Jets, (+$344)

 

My Worst Teams To Bet Against In Week 18: (over/under not included)

 

1) Montreal Canadiens, (-$600)

2) Nashville Predators, (-$600)

3) Boston Bruins, (-$600)

 

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. Each week my new power rankings will be based on all the games in the season, not just what happened this week.




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