WiseStats db Situation: Seattle Seahawks VS Chicago Bears
For subscribers to the WiseStats db daily email, you’ve received a sneak peek at how WiseStats db can help you make more intelligent betting decisions.
So far, we’ve looked at the two games happening today in the NFL’s divisional round: first the Ravens and Steelers, and then the Packers and Falcons. While we wait to see the outcome of both of those games today, we’ll turn our attention to the first divisional round game happening tomorrow when the Seattle Seahawks march into Soldier Field to take on the Chicago Bears.
Here is a very convincing situation that favors the Bears in the game:
When Chicago has played as a home favorite after a loss to an NFC North opponent, their record is 11-1, a 91.7% win rate.
Let’s break this one down to see what makes this situation “in play”:
- Chicago is playing at home tomorrow, and is heavily favored to win the game. In fact, they are around -500 at most sportsbooks (how to read odds)
- They lost their last game on January 2 to the Green Bay Packers, a fellow team from the NFC North division
All of the conditions of this situation are in play going into tomorrow’s game against the Seahawks. If historical outcomes are any indication of future performance – and we think they are – then Chicago is well positioned to dispatch of the Seahawks tomorrow!
Enjoy today’s games, and look out for tomorrow morning’s daily email when we look at a situation for the highly anticipated Jets/Patriots game using WiseStats db.
- WiseStats db
WiseStats db Situation: Green Bay Packers VS Atlanta Falcons
Yesterday, we sent our inaugural WiseStats db Situation to you where we looked at Saturday’s upcoming NFL matchup between the Baltimore Ravens and the Pittsburgh Steelers.
We follow that up today with a look at Saturday’s second NFL playoff game when the Green Bay Packers travel to Atlanta to take on the NFC champion Falcons. Using WiseStats db, you are able to look at different “situations” for this game to see how each team has performed under different game conditions. By looking at how each team has done using historical statistics, you can make better informed decisions about which team to bet on for this Saturday’s game.
Here’s a situation suggesting that the Atlanta Falcons will prevail on Saturday:
When Atlanta has played at home after a game against an NFC opponent in the last 5 years, their record is 10-3, a 76.9% win rate.
If you were to place the same bet on Atlanta – whether it’s $1, $10, or $100 – every single time they entered a game in this situation, you would be betting very profitably! Using past outcomes to predict future performance is one of the best ways to ensure that you are betting successfully.
With WiseStats db, you will be able to find countless situations to follow and profit from.
In March 2011, WiseStats db will launch with the start of the 2011 MLB season. Make sure you have subscribed to the WiseStats db email list to stay informed about the upcoming launch!
We will return with our next installment when we look at this Sunday’s game between the Seattle Seahawks and the Chicago Bears.
- WiseStats db
WiseStats db Situation: Baltimore Ravens VS Pittsburgh Steelers
The NFL’s wildcard weekend brought us a few surprises to say the least, and set the stage for 4 intriguing matchups for this coming weekend’s divisional round!
Beginning today, we will take a look at one divisional round matchup using statistics from WiseStats db, a new tool that allows you to “ask” about different game situations. Looking at a team’s historical performance in a given situation is one of the best predictors of future outcomes, giving you a major advantage as you try to predict the game winner.
We’ll kick things off by looking at the first divisional matchup this weekend when the Baltimore Ravens meet the rival Steelers in an AFC North battle in Pittsburgh. We enter this game with a situation that is “in play” for this game, which favors the Pittsburgh Steelers:
When Pittsburgh plays as a 3.5 to 6.5-point favorite after a divisional game that went over the total, their record is 8-2, an 80% win rate.
Let’s break this down:
- Pittsburgh is currently favored to win this game by 3.5 points according to most sportsbooks, so this falls within the 3.5-6.5 point spread part of this situation (what is a point spread?)
- The Steelers’ last game was against the Cleveland Browns, meaning that their last game was a “divisional game” (both teams are in the AFC North division)
- In Pittsburgh’s previous game against the Browns, the total was set at 38. The final score was 41-9 for Pittsburgh, meaning that there were 50 points scored in the game. That game was said to go “over the total”, so this part of the situation is also in play. (what is “the total”?)
Every time the Pittsburgh Steelers have played a game in this situation, they have won 80% of the time. If you placed a bet for the same amount on Pittsburgh every time they played a game in this situation, you would be turning a big profit!
To make your own situations like this, be sure to remember the name WiseStats db, a new tool that allows you to look at historical stats to make more intelligent bets on the games you love to watch.
Our next situation is for Saturday’s matchup when the Green Bay Packers travel to Atlanta to meet the NFC Conference champion Falcons.
Good luck!
- WiseStats db
Introducing WiseStats db!
After keeping a relatively low profile as we finished up 2010, the WiseStats team is ready to unveil some new features that we’ve been working on over the past several months.
As we indicated in our last “State of the Union” post, we recognized the need to take some time to reconnect with users and rework parts of WiseStats as we continue to build on our vision of what we think the ultimate sports wager app should be.
One of the most requested pieces of functionality we get is to allow users the ability to query our database for specific situations and run those situations against our historical data to see how often they have been in play and what historical ROIs they’ve yielded.
You’ve asked, and we’ll deliver! This March we’re going to open up our historical data and make a very simple & intuitive way to access it. We’re calling this project “WiseStats db“. You can have a look at a video explaining it further by heading over to db.wisestats.com.
With WiseStats db you’ll be able to:
- Find the most profitable betting situations for your favorite team!
- Save situations to easily track their ongoing performance!
- Receive alerts when your most valuable situations are in play for upcoming games!
- Use the collective wisdom of the community to find the most profitable opportunities!
To give you a broader idea of where we’re taking this feature, here’s an example: If you wanted to know how the NY Yankees did as a home favorite after a home game since 2008, you could query WiseStats db. It would tell you that in that situation, the Yankees are 34-12 (73.9%). If you bet the same $10 on every Yankees game in this situation, you would have yielded a profit of $141, and have an ROI of 18.2%.
Head over to db.wisestats.com to check out our sneak preview. Please sign up to find out more about the product as we get closer to a release. We’ll also be looking for beta testers and early feedback.
Oh, and we’re also starting a regular email and accompanying blog post as we ramp up WiseStats db where we’ll share situations that are in play and their significance. That way, you can get an idea of the power this system will give your picks when we launch it.
So check back often to start getting regular situations right here on this blog!
WiseStats: State of the Union
It’s 4:30 in the afternoon on a mid-October Monday.
Game 3 of the ALCS kicks off in a half-hour with Cliff Lee and the Texas Rangers entering the new Yankee Stadium against Andy Pettitte and the defending World Series champs. The Rangers have never made it to the ALCS in team history, the polar opposite of the Yankees that have appeared in 8 of the last 15. It is a Cinderella story waiting to happen.
An hour from now, week 6 of the NFL will wrap up with Monday Night Football featuring a divisional tilt with the Tennessee Titans in Jacksonville to take on the Jaguars. It’s a matchup that features two middle-of-the-road quarterbacks that have all the potential to become league standouts, and two fantasy football stud running backs in Chris Johnson and Maurice Jones-Drew.
Earlier today, the NCAA released the season’s first BCS standings of the year, always the leading indicator of the teams that will appear in the National Championship game. In fact, since they started with BCS rankings, 20 of the 24 teams to play in the title game were in the top five in the initial standings. Needless to say, today is an important day for NCAA Football fans.
On top of that? 5 NHL games tonight, and 5 NBA pre-season games.
Yep. It’s October, the finest month of the year for sports in North America. It’s also the busiest (by far), and the torrid pace kept by these leagues in October is matched only by the pace being kept by the folks behind WiseStats.
But after a “soft launch” of WiseStats this past summer, we hit the pause button in September and sent out a survey to all the folks that signed up to try it out. We knew that we were off to a decent start with WiseStats, but had a long way to go to make it the “killer app” we envisioned. Here is some generalized feedback we received:
- People really like the Odds Ticker feature to compare odds and the Matchup Stats feature for game previews.
- We haven’t done a great job explaining how to track your bets, so much so that some didn’t even know you could track your picks with WiseStats.
- Having a bankroll management system that tracks your sportsbook balances was not important to most of the survey respondents.
- Overall, WiseStats met or exceeded almost every survey respondent’s expectations.
We have a vision for WiseStats that is far from being realized, and we have every intention of seeing that vision through. But right now, it’s clear we need to work closer with WiseStats users to deliver them the stats and information they need, while not wasting our resources building things they don’t need.
For the time being, we have decided to take a step back from rapid development on WiseStats. What does this mean? Well, the short answer is that you will not see new features every Monday like we were pumping out over the summer. WiseStats, as you see it today, will remain as-is for the duration of the fall season.
If you have a WiseStats account, we encourage you to continue using it!
If you are thinking about signing up for a WiseStats account, we welcome you with open arms! (we should also mention that WiseStats will remain free for the time being.)
We’ll be listening to our users carefully before resuming further development on WiseStats, so as a user, you have a HUGE say in what happens next. All ideas, suggestions, feedback, criticisms, etc will be heard and acknowledged, so help us shape WiseStats to be what you want it to be.
As the old saying goes, “Rome wasn’t built in a day”. Thanks to everybody that has tried out WiseStats so far and shared their thoughts – keep the feedback coning. We’re excited to get back to work building out WiseStats after a little more careful planning.
Until then, there is football to watch! (and baseball… and hockey… and basketball).
- Jesse
What Is A Push?
Every time you make a sports pick, your outcome is most often measured as a winner or a loser. You pick right? You’re a winner. You pick wrong? You’re a loser. Pretty simple logic.
So what is a push? Continue reading
Are You Ready For Some Football?!
It was July 12 when we posted that NFL Odds were live on WiseStats. That was almost 2 months ago, and for that entire 2 months, the WiseStats Odds Ticker has been taunting us. Every time I opened up the Odds Ticker, boom: Week 1 odds. For 2 months. Talk about a tease. Continue reading
Categories (Guest Column)
Pat Archibald is a veteran of the handicapping battles and is a writer whose articles have appeared in several publications. He can be contacted at patarchibald@hotmail.com
I’ve been at this game a long time. Back when you had to meet Jake at the bar on Tuesday night to pay up or stumbling in on Thursday with a jubilant smile to collect. Back when the perfect Saturday morning was the trip to the corner newsstand to load up with the ink on paper traditions. Mike, behind the counter, knew what I was after and what I was up to. Then over to that perfect restaurant for an old fashioned readathon. It had to be just so however. A booth was necessary with wide tables and languid service. Pitcher of ice water, carafe of coffee left on the table kind of a place. Where the eggs and bacon are not heated up in a microwave but hand-built with real potatoes and the butter is fresh and melting on the stack of rye. The kind of place that is not so busy that you had to eat and run and where Hilda seemed to know just when to swing by to see how that acid reflux was doing. Papers strewn about and the pen is circling and doing some calculations that you couldn’t seem to master in Grade 11. It is the kind of place that lets you snorfle your way along at your pace, lingering long enough to be able leave and slide to the neighborhood joint for a beer at a time that is just past degeneracy and into relaxed. It’s a fine line.
Certainly the computer has changed forevermore the art of handicapping. Now everyone can open up some page and find a system that seems lock solid. The cyber media gives us access to huge piles of information and opinions. And that is just fine. It’s clean and an equal opportunity for the most part. Heck, the info may even be accurate. It is a solitary, anonymous game that we play with net – searching, posting, finding, reading, downloading, printing, and betting. But over all these years and styles, bettors still fall into three main categories:
1. The Bonehead: Boneheads can be fun, especially to other Boneheads and bookies. They boast about their wins. They bet in front of folks. They love to be seen as the risk taker with an edge. Boneheads bet drunk with no plan and love women in bent straw cowboy hats and inviting tattoos. They base all bets on the last game played. They are impulsive, get-rich-quick rounders. Boneheads lose and whine. I was a Bonehead as were all long time bettors. Graduates of Bonehead College belong to Bonehead Anonymous. “Hi, I’m Pat, and I was a Bonehead.” T-shirts are available.
2. The Gambler: If we get past the Bonehead stage and are still betting we start to recognize that we are Gamblers. They are much more precise and humble in their selections. They may even have a method to their process. This is the stage where recognition occurs that some bets are solid and somewhat more reliable than others. But being Gamblers they are not exactly sure how to differentiate between the two. Gamblers often bet only because there is a game on. Try as they might, Gamblers are poor at tracking their bets and understanding their strengths and weaknesses. This crew is living on quicksand topped with thin ice.
3. The Handicapper: Simple as it may sound the Handicapper is the Gambler who knows exactly who they bet and why and have the data to review it. They bet to earn some money, not just for the thrill of it. They keep copious records of their own wagers. Handicappers begin to see which systems are successful, whether they are best at betting the underdog, favorite, moneyline or the totals. A log of all their plays is kept with a rationale behind them. But this is very difficult to do. Discipline is a daunting trait. It is tedious and time consuming. Suffice to say it is easier to be a Bonehead than a Handicapper. More expensive too.
Many have very noble pursuits in life. God bless them. I’d love to solve the world eco problems. I really would. But while I’m working on that I’d like to become a better capper. To that end, I’m excited to use the new WiseStats system offered by Bet Smart Media. Finally I will to be able to log all my bets simply and allow this dense world of computer mayhem to finally be of real assistance to me. I’m looking forward to the development of this system to where I can hone my selections down to the greatest chance of success. Like holding pocket aces, I’m all in.
Now, I’m gonna do some messy handicapping at Hilda’s. Going to grab my favorite newspapers and take the laptop to the booth and get down and dirty. Call it the new old tradition.
Pat Archibald
What Are American Odds?
As Jesse mentioned in the last WiseStats blog post, we’ve just launched the fundamentals section of our website. Fundamentals provides the solid foundation you need to navigate the WiseStats application, odds websites, and sportsbooks. We will be blogging about the fundamentals a couple times a week over the next few weeks to explain how the articles relate to functionality in your WiseStats account.
Understanding Odds With Confidence is the first section of the fundamentals series. We decided to kick off that section with an overview of how to read American Odds.
WiseStats defaults to American Odds when you first sign up. When logged into WiseStats, you can toggle between viewing WiseStats odds in American or Decimal format. To do this, you click on “My Account” and select either from the pick list, under settings. Where American Odds are most prominent on WiseStats is within the Odds Ticker tab.
WiseStats’ Odds Ticker shows you, at a glance, what the American Odds odds are for all your favourite sportsbooks all in one screen. The plus and minus sign show you which team is the underdog and which is the favourite. If you click on the odds, you can log a pick in as little as two clicks. You can track unlimited picks across all the leagues we support this way.
If you’re new to odds, please take some time to check out our Understanding Odds With Confidence articles in the new Fundamentals section of our site. As always, we’d love feedback on what you think of this content.
August 16th WiseStats Update: Odds Fundamentals, NCAA Football Odds, + Some Tweaks
Lots happening this week with WiseStats! Let’s get right down to it, and as always, clicking the thumbnail images will open them full-screen in a new window. Continue reading
