The math(s) and probability of betting lines.

This is the person who plays USAC on WOTB.

For those who are interested in how probabilities are constructed by the betting markets lets look at Saturdays game vs Rotherham.

The current odds are

Home Win -380 (79.2%)
Away Win +1100 (8.3%)
Draw +500 (16.7%)

The first thing you will notice if you add up the percentages is its 104.2% !
This is how bookies make money, whatever the result.
This is the vig or hold%
Its pretty easy to calculate the true odds based on 100/104.2 = 0.9597

Giving us

Home Win -380 (76%) (2.28)
Away Win +1100 (7.97%) (0.078)
Draw +500 (16.03%) (0)

So if we played the game one million times (God Forbid)
we would average roughly 2.36 points per game.
Clearly way above our seasonal average of 1.53 PPG

When we play Leicester away the prediction will clearly be way below the seasonal average of 1.53 PPG

There is a high correlation between what happened in the 36 games previously and the next 10 games.
If we use the base 1.53 PPG we get to 70-71 points which probably wont be enough for the playoffs.
(that's why the betting markets don't like our playoff chances)

The best way is to calculate each game remaining and its degree of difficulty with travel/rest.
Also add in fudge factors such as injuries and suspensions which do change day to day.
You get a much better picture of the probabilities of each game.

Posted By: usacanary, Mar 8, 17:43:35