A note on autocorrelation

One of the benefits of writing these Elo explanations up is my readers can hopefully find any errors. My boy @ericrodawig was asking if the 1550 vs 1450 matchup should result in 1550 having a higher rating afterwards. My reply was no because the way Elo ratings are supposed to work is a rating only […]

Posted on: 22 April 2016 | 1:03 pm

Elo Ratings Part 2 – Margin of Victory Adjustments

In Elo Ratings Part 1 I provided a basic background on Elo ratings, the advantages and disadvantages of them and some python code to create a basic rating system. In part 2 I’ll go through the disadvantages I mentioned in part 1 and how they can be adjusted for. 1) They don’t account for matchups. […]

Posted on: 21 April 2016 | 9:35 pm

Elo Ratings Part 1

With the college basketball season ending and NFL season not starting up for another four months I’ve been spending some time working on a Tennis model which as led me to reading a lot about Elo Ratings. Pronounced Elo – after Arpad Elo not E-L-O. There’s quite a bit of info out there, but not […]

Posted on: 20 April 2016 | 7:01 pm

Sports Betting Math

I was planning on writing up a big post outlining every single formula you need to know for sports betting, but instead I made an open source website SportsBettingCalcs.com that does all the work for you. The javascript and little bit of python should be simple enough to follow and wikipedia and khan academy can […]

Posted on: 2 October 2015 | 3:02 am

How to win at sports betting

So I’ve been reading quite a lot about sports betting lately and I’ve learned a ton which I thought I’d share here. Before I get in to how to win at betting I think it’s important to examine a few other things first. Is sports betting illegal? Maybe. It depends where you live. A couple […]

Posted on: 26 March 2015 | 12:52 am

March Madness Betting

I took a look at Nate Silver’s March Madness Predictions and compared them with some online sports betting lines to see which were the best ROI bets according to his model. Below are the results. You can read a bit about how his model is created here: http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/march-madness-predictions-2015-methodology/ I’m certainly not advocating anyone bet on […]

Posted on: 17 March 2015 | 7:56 pm

Re Solving Heads Up Limit Hold’em

In case you haven’t heard by now heads up limit hold’em has been solved. You can read the original scientific paper here https://webdocs.cs.ualberta.ca/~bowling/papers/15science.pdf You can query the GTO bot named Cepheus’ strategy here http://poker.srv.ualberta.ca/strategy But it’s slow and not really displayed in an easy to understand way for humans emulate. It’s not easy to figure […]

Posted on: 26 February 2015 | 2:33 am

55 days til WSOP & Pokersnowie

So it’s only fifty five days until the WSOP and I’m getting excited just thinking about it. Last year I went in quite rusty not having really played a hand of poker in eleven months and was hoping to just play good enough to get lucky and bink something. I made money and it was […]

Posted on: 2 April 2014 | 5:25 am

2014 New Years Resolutions

1. Manage my time better. This is my main goal and all other goals are really a subset of this goal. 2. Wake up and go to bed at regular times. I’ve been self employed for over six years now and waking up early and regularly is something I’ve struggled with as long as I […]

Posted on: 5 January 2014 | 11:19 pm

Yeah! Made it on TV!

For a whole three seconds or so. 10:26-10:29. Totally worth the $10k. Pretty sure I’m famous now. http://youtu.be/Mjt-VZNShrY?t=10m25s

Posted on: 10 August 2013 | 2:56 am