[podonne]

Attached is a graphic from a particular NHL system that I am looking at right now. Starting with a zero balance, each point represents the balance at the end of each day regardless of how many bets were made. The results are +239 units on 1,064 bets over the last 5 NHL seasons and up until last week of this one. odds used are from Pinnacle. This was not found with random data mining, so I do not expect it to be an artifact of overfitting.

I cannot figure out whether this is a system that would be worth betting. While clearly outstanding in 2006 and 2007, it was unprofitable in 2008, and only slightly profitable in 2009 and 2010, and only very slightly profitable so far this year. If I plotted a curve of its results per year, it is on the downward slope.

It also requires quite a few bets to be made, sometimes >10 bets a day at certain points in a season, so bankroll issues would abound (though it doesn't appear to have particularly wild swings on a per-day basis.

Looking for thoughts on how to evaluate a system like this. Do you care more about the betting over the last two years, or does the 2006 and 2007 season seem like it might repeat at one point? Would you look for subsets of this data that show a higher return per unit bet, even if it means making less total money in the long run? I think everyone's looked at a chart like this at some point and wondered the same thing.

p.s. not a troll, not a tout, not selling this, check my other posts, I'm just a guy trying to make some money at sports until unemployment lets up...

[Waterstpub87]

If that system is +ev, though volatile, and normal betting is - ev, and also volatile, why not?

[podonne]

If that system is +ev, though volatile, and normal betting is - ev, and also volatile, why not?

Well, its not trending in the right way on an annual basis.

2006: +75
2007: +80
2008: +3
2009: +45
2010: +30

A linear trend would predict

2011: +9.1
2012: -3.4

Making 200 bets a season, if I was only up 9 units that doesn't seem like a good investment of time\energy.

[shari91]

podonne - I can't PM you but feel free to take a look at the thread "No systems allowed in the Think Tank" at the top of that forum if you want more of an explanation of why this one was moved.

[Cicima6709]

If you could describe the system in a bit more detail...it would help figure out if this is something that could work long term, or not...

[jer_33]

Clearly, whatever your are isolating is trending down - and unless you figure it to turn around I don't see why it would be considered a good investment.

I'm always careful with data from 2005-2007, the seasons after the lockout, it was a time of major change for the league both rules-wise and player-wise.

[podonne]

podonne - I can't PM you but feel free to take a look at the thread "No systems allowed in the Think Tank" at the top of that forum if you want more of an explanation of why this one was moved.

Hi Shari,

Curious, why can't you PM me?

I'm not sure why my thread needed to be moved. My point was not to advocate for any "system" (I purposefully didn't describe the method itself it in any way specifically to avoid runing afoul of the rules about posting systems, other than to outline the results). For all anyone knows, its just a gibberish data set to illustrate what a system looks like that is trending to be less positive over time. I'm more interested in generalized approaches to evaluating the results of systems, not this sytem. We talk about measuring the statistical significance of hypothetical data sets all the time, I thought this would be an interesting real-life example.

The comment below is actually quite useful for general handicapping, to avoid drawing conclusions from data sets that rely heavily for positive results on the 2006-2007 NHL seasons.

Thanks,
podonne