Welcome to my Week 20 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 19 Betting Report.
My Season Profit: $19,846
Sunday marked the official end of the 3rd quarter of the NHL season (my 3rd quarter report will be published in the next 7-10 days). The theme of the last few weeks carried over into week 20; I would have lost a substantial amount of money if not for my algorithm recommending overs. The scoring boom continued, and it kept me substantially above zero all by itself. I won $2,517 betting overs and lost -$840 betting everything else (I exactly broke even on my under bets). Overs have been a large majority of my total profit nearly every week for more than a month. This trend has been sustaining for a while, and it doesn’t seem like Draft Kings is compensating the lines properly. More on that below.
My own worst category this week was road favorites moneyline, a bet that produced large negative returns market-wide. But this was a terrible week to bet on all road teams in general, most especially road favorites -1.5 goals. Only two of them won, and one I happened to bet on (thanks Florida vs Buffalo). On the other hand, if you bet every home favorite -1.5 goals, you had a decent week. I have mostly been avoiding favorites -1.5 goals the last few weeks, as the category has been producing diminishing returns in the 2nd half.
In other news; I’ve been tracking “line movement” for 222 games, measuring the rate of return for both the opening and closing line (or at least very near the official open and close) with most of the lines being recorded from Draft Kings. When a line “moves towards” a favorite (meaning their implied probability of victory increases), the rate of return on the closing line is less than zero ($0.96 per $1 wagered). However, when the line moves towards the underdog, the rate of return on the closing line is 12%.
What does this mean? First of all, it’s worth pointing
out that underdogs produced a good rate of return in general over this sample,
so had I been tracking line movement back in January when favorites were
killing it, the results would be different. But for the post-All-Star break
sample, if you went to Draft Kings 1-3 hours before puck drop and bet $100 on
every underdog who had a lower payout than the opening line, you made $1,163. I
will continue monitoring to see if this holds as more games are added to the
sample. This may just be a residual effect of underdogs in general becoming
more profitable.
Arizona Coyotes 5, Toronto Maple Leafs 4 ✅💰 #NHLBetting https://t.co/NvRlGfZ2lV
— Hockey Economist (@Hockeconomics) March 11, 2022
My Week 20 Results
*Note* “Market Return” is based on betting exactly $100 on every outcome.
My performance betting overs since the All-Star break has been so remarkable that I’ve been running diagnostic tests on my spreadsheet to make sure there aren’t any errors, like it’s too good to be true. I started using a new algorithm during All-Star weekend, and it’s been crushing overs (see chart below). Let’s be clear, I’m not claiming that I’m a genius. These outstanding rates of return might be entirely unreplicable under normal circumstances. The formula is wickedly simple. Average the goals from both team’s last 5 games. Is that higher or lower than the betting total? That ain’t rocket science. I always start simple and see what works. Simple is currently crushing it.
Here’s the rub, I don’t think the market has been behaving as normal. There has definitely been a significant increase in empty net goals, for a variety of reasons. Most of my over/under lines are recorded from Draft Kings around 30 hours before puck drop. The totals have seemed suspiciously low to me for a few weeks now as the higher goal pace has been sustaining. I’m not tracking the closing lines for over/under, and they might be inching up on game day as the action comes in. It’s possible that my outstanding success is the result of betting opening lines at Draft Kings almost exclusively.
I’ve been using Draft Kings because they release a
complete set of lines earlier than most books. They could be using their own complex
algorithm that says goals per game should be decreasing at this point of the
season. If the trend this season is contrary to how the market has performed in
the past, that could explain the insufficient reaction. I’m not monitoring the
line offerings from other sportsbooks, so others may indeed by compensating
accordingly. My 3 best over/under bets this week: 1) Toronto over, 2) Islanders
over, 3) Chicago over.
My Team of the Week: Buffalo Sabres, +$954
This was also a good week for me betting on or against the Buffalo Sabres. At this point I neither love them or hate them, I’m just betting line value. I employ 3 different algorithms to predict what a line should be (each based on different inputs), and when they unanimously agree the line is off, it tends to be good to bet on the disparity. That’s basically how I’ve been playing them for the last month, and it’s paying off (they were actually my #1 team across all categories in the 3rd quarter). Most of my winnings came from Buffalo’s 6-1 loss against Florida, but I also bet them +1.5 goals at home versus Toronto and Vegas, they won both games.
The Islanders were my second-best team of the week, with
a large majority of those winnings coming from overs. The Isles have been a
strong under team for most of the season, but have been delivering overs for
the last 3 weeks. My two most lucrative Islander games this week were their
loss to Colorado, and their victory against Anaheim (who were on a
back-to-back).
My Worst Team of the Week: Los Angeles Kings, -$1,368
The LA Kings have been in sole possession of last place in my Gambling Power Rankings since Dec 12 and have built up a massive lead over the next worst team. My uncanny ability to pick the incorrect outcome of LA games has been astonishing. I should really be posting all my LA picks before the games just so you can bet against them. I’ve been aware of this problem all season, and still have not been able to correct my errors of judgement. Though my selections this week were entirely defensible. The Kings lost to San Jose twice then beat Boston and Florida. Beating good teams and losing to bad teams has been a big part of the problem.
My 2nd worst team of the week was the
Nashville Predators, who have been another enigma of mine these past 2 seasons.
The Preds had a good week, beating Dallas, Anaheim, and Minnesota, all when I
bet their opponent, and lost to St. Louis the one time that I bet them to win.
The Predators have been nose-diving down my Power Rankings, and it has mostly
to do with being able to beat good teams, but vulnerable against bad teams (not unlike LA).
It’s hard to figure out the right angle.
2) Toronto over: +$717 2) Home moneyline: +$967
3) Islanders over: +$660 3) Vegas to lose ML+PL: +$921
2) Los Angeles to lose: -$750 2) Road favorites -1.5 goals: -$1,395
3) Winnipeg to lose: -$750 3) Road moneyline: -$998
My Best Teams To Bet On In Week 20: (over/under not
included)
1) Florida Panthers, (+$488)
2) Washington Capitals, (+$391)
3) Pittsburgh Penguins, (+$279)
My Worst Teams To Bet On In Week
20: (over/under not included)
1) Tampa Bay Lightning, (-$600)
2) Vegas Golden Knights, (-$500)
3) Los Angeles Kings, (-$500)
My Best Teams To Bet Against In Week
20: (over/under not included)
1) Buffalo Sabres, (+$417)
2) Calgary Flames, (+$413)
3) Vegas Golden Knights, (+$417)
My Worst Teams To Bet Against In Week
20: (over/under not included)
1) Los Angeles Kings, (-$750)
2) Winnipeg Jets, (-$750)
3) Nashville Predators, (-$0)
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.
No comments:
Post a Comment