[kanjinfo]

>>>long post warning<<<

So this is my first season playing the NHL lines and I am still up and down (not bombing, but there’s definitely room to improve).

My routine mainly consists of running through the sbr matchup reports and some other stats based sites. I pay particular attn to the GF/GA, PP%, goalie stats, season record (and quality of opponents), last game played (back to back games), injuries, and matchup histories as well as any other datum that the reports highlight. Other than that, I have my own sense of which teams are performing well and not so well.

I haven’t found a consistent source to check for starters and I don’t track player stats day-to-day (I monitor each game though, so I have a sense of whose producing and other trends, like games lost to penalties)

ANYWAY,
I’ve been analyzing my own picks since the start of the season, trying to improve my informal system, and I came across so interesting trends that may seem painfully obvious..

Of my sample picks for 40+ games thus far:

*77% of losses come when I pick the visitor
*Odds of winning = 47%
*Odds of losing = 53%
*Odds ratio for win/loss by home/visitor picks = 3.5
*OR for win/loss by fav/dog picks = 4.0
*So far (since a couple days ago) the proportion of visitor picks has been 64%

*Of dogs/lost, all were visitors
*Of dogs/won, 2 were V, 1 was H

*Of favs/won, 40% were visitors, 60% were home teams (this stat has changed.. more home wins as of today).
*favs/lost were x2 as likely to be visiting than at home
*visitors/won only lost at home 1/3 of the time (may be messed because my sample is biased)
*homers/lost also lost on the road half of the time

MY THOUGHTS:
Don’t pick dog when they are visiting
Favs win at home more than on the road
Most favs that lost were visitors
Pick favs that play at home (when value is there)
Homers win approx. x2 as often as visitors (sample bias?)

Note: these are just comments on the trends. I haven’t committed to a general system like this. Each match should be analysed on individual merits and factors.

So far, CAR, OTT, and PHL are the strongest road warriors (I have 6 combined wins with no road losses in my book—again obv sample/selection bias) and only 1 combined home loss (CAR/OTT)

YOUR THOUGHTS?
I know this is a long post, but if you don’t have anything better to do, your thoughts on other considerations that may help improve my predictive power would be cool.. I didn’t talk about spread and O-U picks.. but any insight on those would be appreciated as well.

cheers

[cobra_king]

The first thing you have to realize is that your sample size is incredibly small to formulate any true ideas or trends. 40+ games has a huge margin of error when trying to define what works and what doesn't. The one area where i believe your sample is erroroneous is in the idea of not playing road dogs. In fact the opposite is true as this is where most of the value lies in hockey. I would recommend you read the post made my "kissthecup" in the Underdog tracking thread, (believe it is post 21) where he has data from last year stating how much value there is in road dogs. The other problem with avoiding road dogs is that you put yourself in the vulnerable position of playing home favorites too often,which will result in laying far too much chalk consistently to win long term. I'm not saying you can't ever play them, as in your post you stated "when value is there", which in the end is the key to all sports betting. But if you find your card is filled up with home chalk consistently, you unfortunately will end up on the wrong side of the ledger at the end of the day.
Anyway, just my thoughts, hope this helps and good luck to you.

[m3vr6]

if you're playing the fav. you should play the 60min lines 'cause if when if goes into OT anything can happened. play outright win if you know the goalie u playing is good in shootouts.. like brodeur or turco..

[m3vr6]

also later into the season play against team that plays back to back.. travelling takes a lot of a team.. like when they go on the west coast swing.. first they play edmonton, then calgary and then vancouver. play the 3rd leg for them to lose against van. by the time they get there the canucks will have fresh legs and this will show up esp in third period. and if they are on a losing streak going into their west coast swing play against them on all three games.. you'll come up on top most of the time. it's not easy to win back to back games on the road in the NHL!

[xxx]

dont break your head with systems, they will break you or break even at the end of the year. Don't waste much of your bankroll the first 6 to 8 weeks. Put more after that till the last couple of weeks of the season where you should reduce your wagering amount. Also bet low during Christmas holidays and near the all-star break. Funny things happen. You don't have to bet every game on the board every day, you will go broke. Be disciplined, situations will arise itself. the most important are injuries to players. One of the reasons Atlanta lost 6 games in a row is because Hossa has a groin injury and is not 100% to play.

[kissthecup]

As said above, your sample size is still far too small to be statistically significant. The trends we're seeing right now will not continue. An easy example is the performance of home teams so far...NHL teams historically show a modest home-ice advantage, winning about 55% of home games. But through Oct. 10th, home teams had won a ridiculous, unsustainable 70% of all games. The percentage has since begun returning to normal, and is now just below 60%. I suspect that's why most of your away bets lost, and why any "system" you create based on the first few weeks of this season would end in disaster. Like xxx, I would strongly suggest not placing any bets, or very few, during the opening weeks of the season without an exceptional reason (like Atlanta's injury situation). And I would NEVER try to create an analytical handicapping model with less than 1000 cases (and probably several thousand to be very confident).

Also, remember that good analysis does not always equal profit. Your analysis can be spot on, but if it mirrors the analysis used by those setting the lines, you'll slowly go broke to the juice. You can know next to nothing about hockey and still make money if you understand value, but if you don't understand value, no matter how much hockey you know, you're going to go broke.

[figjam]

Hockey handicapping just like football, baseball or basketball hanidcapping is a different animal. Thats why some excellent football cappers aren't as successful playing pucks and vice versa. The thing that is encouraging is that your taking this hockey handicapping seriouos and doing your homework and analysis. Its not possible to teach and speak about all the priniciples and winning strategies of hockey in one email but I here is some feedback on your analysis.

Road Dog

This is where the money is made in hockey. Books will always favour the home team so youll always eat a lot of chalk if you play home favs. We all know that over the long run, regardless of what sport you bet on, the top cappers in the world are the ones who play winning dogs. Contrary to your analysis, I find that road teams in hockey upset the home team more often than in football or basketball (im not sure about baseball as I dont follow it at all). So over the long run, those who succeed in making money are the ones who can pick out and cash in on the road dogs. That doesn't mean you shouldn't play favs...but you need to take the amount of chalk into consideration. Personally i avoid playing chalk lines above -150 as you would need to win over 66% of your games to return a profit.

Starting goalies.

There are websites out there that post the starting goalies that you can use as reference...ie hockeyinformer.com or goaliepost.com...but the real serious hockey cappers always read the local newspaper to get the latest news and notes on the team and their feeling and emotion going into the game.

[kanjinfo]

thanks guys, i appreciate the feedback.

ya i agree that my sample is way to small.. i think this wkend i will gather the data from the rest of the games so far this season and compare them to last year's.. hopefully there will be some interesting correlations.

my intentions arent to find a 'system' rather than a collection of factors that are influential enough to games that they require consideration when making picks.

generally speaking, i think ive been more interested predicting winners (I think maybe because there is so much data for nhl and other team sports) instead of playing dogs for value, as i should. it's strange, my main book is for mma and ive been very successful picking value dogs, but the analytical process is way more qualitative than quantitative.

on another note, would anyone know where i could find an excel spreadsheet of last season or even this season so far so i can dump it into spss/sas?