We all know that in many sports the score of the game can be tied while one team is completely dominating the other. In what sports do you feel that the score is almost always an accurate representation of what actually happened? And what sports do you feel that the scores are often a terrible representation of what actually happened? Feel free to give examples.
-
-
I don’t think any sport you can really gauge
Soccer?Comment -
Basketball
You either make shots or you don't.
Each game has 75 possessions, so the "fluke" plays- like what the Eagles in NFL are winning on week by week, either balance out or have mitigating effect either way.Comment -
I was going to say that Golf is probably the best representation of what actually happened and Football is the worst(although even football is usually right but definitely not always) but I would like to hear some arguments for other sports as well.Comment -
Soccer sometimes you can have a 0-0 game but one team will dominate possession shots on goal and the other team just parks the bus and plays for a tie you see alot of teams try to do that against the big clubs barca psg real doesn't usually work but sometimes you will see a 0-0 draw where one team dominated but could not scoreComment -
hockey....nhl.....very difficult to cap....goalies play an imbalanced important role.
plenty of shots but it's a low scoring game.
to add to the complexity...no skater is on the ice for more than 1/3 of the game time...best players have a limited impact.
penalties can flip a game around completely.Comment -
No sports scores actually represent what happened. Your thinking is incorrect. What happened is not important.
Most people think of the results of a sports game as something like a book whose ending is played out during the game.
Instead, imagine a sports game as series of equations with a 1000 random variables, creating an infinite number of paths that result in millions of possible results. Would you put much stock in one of the millions of random results, without considering the other paths the game could have taken?
Consider a small example:
Stef Curry shoots 20 three point shots a game, with a stdev of 5. He shoots 40% with a standard dev of 8. In one game, he shoots 25 at 50%, putting up 39 points destroying the opposition. Bettors will say to themselves "Shit, I should have known before the game that Stef was going to be hot". But, its random. Similarly, imagine he shoots the 20 at 30%, putting up only 21 points. He had a bad night, but its random. Neither of these individual results mean anything in themselves. Knowing that does not help you in the future, unless for some reason, his underlying true 3P% has changed. Which you cannot determine from one game.
In summary, much of the results of sports games is random. Seek to maximize your signal against the noise. Don't waste time trying to interpret individual games.Comment -
real good, Waterstpub87
You made me think of it, I'm terrible at Totals, while stronger on Moneylines/Spreads.
I come at it from the complete other side, following the sport and game situations.
It would be a powerful thing to join the two methods without bias.Comment -
best sbr post since i don't know when Waterstpub87Comment -
Great post and I agree with it except I don't agree with what I put in bold and here's why. Let's say there are 2 handicappers both betting on only NHL games and let's assume that for both of them their overall average juice is -108. They've both bet on 200 plays at 1 unit per bet and both bettors have won 100 games and lost 100 games. Here's the difference, handicapper A has won a lot of bets by large margins and lost a lot of close ones. His overall Action score is +40(for those that don't know what an action score is just think of it like this, if he predicted Over 5.5 and the final score was 6 to 4 he has an action score of +4.5. With the same prediction if the final score was 1-0 he would have an action score of -4.5.)Now, lets say handicapper B has an overall Action score of -40. Based on the data we have so far both handicappers have won 50% of their plays but one handicapper is likely much better than the other handicapper because of what actually happened in the games. I realize 200 is a pretty small sample size but based on what actually happened in the games Handicapper A is far better than Handicapper B.Originally posted by Waterstpub87
Also, I think some sports DO represent what actually happened in the games... at least they are MUCH closer to it than other sports are.Comment -
Assessing handicappers over many games is different. I would consider beating the close to be the most important. Actions points more important than W/L. Without 1000's of games, not enough of a sample to tell. 200 not enough.Originally posted by JohnGalt2341Comment -
disagree completely on multiple levels
1. fumbles are mostly random
2. you asked about teams...then said golf is your best example which is not a teamComment -
Fumbles are mostly random... I agree.. how is this disagreeing with me? I said Football scores are one of the least reliable indicators of what actually happened compared to other sports. That being said... the scores in football USUALLY indicate who actually played better... but definitely not always.Originally posted by RudyRuetigger
2. Sorry about the Teams comment... I mean any sports.. any.. MMA, Tennis, and Nascar(and others) as well. I just said teams because the majority of sports have teams.Comment
