Originally Posted by
crimson23
Hi everyone - longtime reader, first time poster. Has anyone ever done a systematic comparison of KenPom's win percentages against Vegas moneylines? I am not talking about KenPom's projected point spreads. Instead, I'm referring to when KenPom projects a particular team has an X% chance of winning, if anyone has systematically compared that win percentage to the implied win percentage of Vegas MLs. E.g., on 11/23, KenPom gave Loyola Marymount a 69% chance of beating Idaho St. That translates to a "breakeven" ML of -222.58. Vegas had a ML of -130 for Loyola, or an equivalent win percentage of 56.52%. This is a theoretical "edge" of 69% - 56.52% = 12.48%. I've spent the last few days pulling all of KP's projections into a spreadsheet and comparing them to Vegas MLs, and most of them are fairly close, but there are a few games each day that have had double digit differences in a team's projected/implied win percentage. Sample size is obviously too low at this stage to see if this theoretical edge is actual +EV, but I thought I'd ask if anyone has done any research into this. I'm not looking to debate the underlying assumption of whether KP is better at calculating win percentages than Vegas -- I'm not blind to the reasons why he wouldn't be. But for now, just asking to see if anyone has looked at this angle, and maybe see if we could compare notes. Or, even better, whether there's an easy way to test this hypothesis against past data. Thx!