Leaderboard

You'll notice that I put up an abortive little leaderboard. Working out what to put up there reminded me that I haven't been super specific so far in what my personal metrics are for what constitutes "better than Vegas".

Turns out there's a couple ways to think about this, and here are the two I'm tracking currently:

No. 1 -- Directional method: the Shelby Line as a directional indicator of which side to place a bet. For example. If Vegas sets the GNB@SDG line at +5.5 and I set it at +8, that means a Shelby pick would favor taking GNB if Vegas is only giving 5.5 points. So when Green Bay beats the spread (with 7 points) then I claim a victory.

No. 2 -- Proximity method: the Shelby Line as a superior game score predictor than the Vegas Line. So in the example above, since the Vegas line is 1.5 points off the final score and the Shelby Line is only 1 point off, I again claim a victory.

The Directional method tells you how well I'd do if I went to Vegas to bet, and you can track my progress against these guys who are the pros.

The Proximity method is me kinda being falsely superior to Vegas. I'm fully aware that those bookmaker guys are playing to their audience and are shading their lines once the oddsmakers give them a "pure" line, i.e. a predicted game score. The bookmakers use the oddsmaker information to place their lines -- and move the lines -- based where the money is coming in. Books make money on fees, so they want high volume evenly divided by the line. My proximity numbers are more like what an oddsmaker would produce, although as we start ramping up B3TZ I'll be acting a bit more like a bookmaker..

More on how this will turn into a B3TZ game later.