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week 5 relative strength lines, discussion

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Posted: #1
STD 9-4, +4.8 units.

Five games this week.....nice!  I am not predicting what Vegas' lines will be, but using what my line is, and comparing them to what the computers of Sin City are making 'em at.

We are obviously still in the first six weeks of the season, where dogs have ruled throughout the history of my database.

Wednesday

Ottawa -3.5   Montreal  52

Home favorites with a worse record than their present opponent have been 12-18 ATS first six weeks of the season.  I like teams that can score on the road, as I have observed through the years that good offense/bad defensive teams are preferable to bad offense/good defense for a road team especially.  One could look at the records of the great quarterbacks, Brees, Manning, Brady, Farve, Montana, etc of the NFL, almost without exception they have very good road records ATS.  So, we come to the Als.....can we trust them to trade points on the road with the Redblacks?  Can Durrant and company actually get their stuff together?  Can he not throw the ball to the wrong team under duress?   

Mister Linemaker probably isn't going to lure me into wanting to take the Als unless we get an absurd line of >=7.

Thursday

Hamilton +7.5  Edmonton  58

Well, Vegas is going to have to figure out how to ward off an avalanche of money on the Eskimos in this one.  This line will be high as Hamilton has looked terrible in all facets of the game.  They have no experience in the defensive secondary and Mister Riley and company are going to be throwing the ball all over the lot in this one. The Eskimos might score over 58 themselves.

The default play in the CFL is UNDER, but there will be points-aplenty in this one.  Home non-divisional dogs with a worse record than their opponents have been 10-5 ATS first six weeks of the season.  It's your move, Vegas.

Friday

BC -4.5  Bombers  55

This one will be interesting....a poster here, or maybe a television analyst said that Matt Nichols is 11-4 as a starter for the Bombers.  All of the western divisional games should be hotly contested....they all have quarterbacks that can play and good defenses, except for the Sasquatches.   BC off of 3 straight away wins....I'm interested in the Bombers,....I like that their defense that stood up well against the Argos' schemes and bent a lot but didn't break.

Saturday

Calgary -12.5  Green Riders 52

The Riders have improved this year, and are a quarterback away from being respectable, very much similar to the Bombers last year, when they gave the reigns to Matt Nichols who turned the fortunes of that franchise around.  The coaching staff at some point is going to have to give someone else the ball to play quarterback for them, and until they do and we find out that he can play, it will difficult to play ON the Riders on the road in division games, because with their present  quarterback  commonly giving the opposition at least 6 free points every game, or  killing drives when things have looked promising, it difficult to put hard earned on the Riders.

Here's a stat for you.  Away divisional dogs getting greater than 7 points with a worse record than their present opponent have been 35-24 ATS (1.55) and 30-29 OVER (.30).

And, teams off a bye as away dogs have been 5-2 ATS (1-0 as away dog >7) and 2-5 OVER....Sasquatches.

Makes one get off the Stamps as a play for me, for sure.  This one has the makings of an UNDER.

Monday

Toronto -3  Redblacks 56

Toronto has been terrible at home for quite a few years, but they have a Grey Cup winning coach on the sideline now, and it shows. They look great on offense and special teams and they are my pick to win the division.  They didn't finish their drives against the Bombers and got jobbed by the refs  last game, and dropped touchdown passes a few times, so they lost a game they could have/should have won.  They had a very good situation ON them last game, and when teams don't perform like expected the previous game, they often over-perform their next game. Plus Ottawa will be playing a third game in a very short period of time, and they will have come off a game with the physical Alouettes.  If the Redblacks are off a win, I'll definitely look to fade them here.  

Lines will be out in the next 24 hours, and then the process of making picks begins again.  

Love it!
 
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Posted: #2
Here's another query for you.....teams that haven't won a game yet in weeks 5 and onwards have been 10-1 ATS (+8.68), 9-2 straight up (+8.91) and 8-2-1 O/U (+4.82) at home.  Tiger Cats, Redblacks

7-0 ATS in division games and 6-1 straight  up.  Redblacks

tA(W)=0 and H and week>4
 
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Posted: #3
And because I have nothing better to do.  I looked up research on how the best NFL quarterbacks have done ATS.

I found this article.....

https://www.bettingtalk.com/greatest-nfl-quarterbacks-to-bet/

Surprisingly who would have thought the Peyton's younger brother would be third all-time in winning percentage?  I went back and calculated how the quarterbacks below performed in different situations, in the regular season.  In the article it mentions that Joe Montana was 22-10 ATS as an underdog during his playing days.

          QB               HF          HD        AF           AD

Tom Brady           51-35       9-2       37-27      19-11

Brett Farve          67-55       10-7     33-35       38-34

P. Manning          58-54        3-2      50-31       18-13

Drew Brees         48-42       16-7     26-23       38-27

E. Manning          37-41       9-8      20-12        29-25
 
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Posted: #4
Those qbs  covered 57.6% of the time on the road and 59.1% of the time as dogs.

For elite quarterbacks in the CFL, I am sure the cover percentages are higher because there is a higher overall underdog covering percentage in the CFL compared to the NFL.
 
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Posted: #5
nice work Indigo.

Bold said Nichols was 11-4 SU



I am looking at these teams this week.

RedBlacks (Wednesday)     


 
Hamilton pass for now.
Hamilton is 0-3ATS in first half and 2nd half bets this year 0-6ATS overall.




Bombers, good teams getting points in the CFL is a money maker.




Riders, depends on the line.  Fade Calgary take the Riders is my blue print.  

Argo's again on my indicated play list.  I hate the fact that they have failed as home favorites in their recent past.  On the other hand they are doing a better job getting a team together.  As you said Trestman is a nice CFL coach.  I believe I am going to have to resist takeing a bonus line in this one.  3 games in a short period will inflate a line. 
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Posted: #6
You been fading calgary for the last 3 years
 
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Posted: #7
Quote Originally Posted by fab14:

You been fading calgary for the last 3 years

How would you know everytime they lose you are no where to be found?  

Indigo I changed my mind on RedBlacks (Wednesday)     

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Posted: #8
Stampeders are 24-20 ATS over the last 3 years, which equates to winning 2 or 3 units....send me a photo of the tropical island you bought with your Calgary bets.
 
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Posted: #9
LInes are out...some interesting lines to put it mildly.  They been bet into already with lowered limits so I'll put down what the line would be at normal juice.  My line in brackets.

1)  Ottawa          -4        (-3.5) Montreal   50.5 (52)

2)  Hamilton      +3        (+7)   Edmonton 54.5 (58)

3)  BC                -8      (-4.5)  Winnipeg   56.5 (55)

4)  Calgary       -11.5 (-11.5)  Sask           57.5 (52) 

5)  Toronto         -1.5   (-3)     Ottawa       54    (56)

Hamilton +3, 54.5 is either a trap line or just a terrible, blown call by the bookmaker, both the side and the total..  The bookmaker is usually not so dumb, so we'll take pause and let some wheels spin,,,,,,hopefully the gears don't get stuck and we let the linemaker play with our heads.  Perhaps the linesmaker wants to attract a ton of Eskimo money...that line will move north as the week goes on.....it's tempting me to take the Eskimos, which I hadn't considered before.

BC line is waaay up there as well.  Though the Lions have swept three road games, watching them, they haven't activated the "Wow factor" in me.....they've looked ok, but that's a lot of points to be giving to a quality team like the Bombers.

Back in the next 24 hours with some plays.


 
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Posted: #10
Play:

1)  Winnipeg +7.5

This one might end up at 7 or lower....in my estimation Winnipeg, Calgary, BC and Edmonton are all within 2 points of each other in relative strength this year.  If the bookmaker is gonna give us a touchdown and more in games between these teams, well then, I'm going for it.  LInemaker might have been swayed by the BC performance in Hamilton and thought public would be enamoured with the Lions....Hamilton is going to make a lot of teams look great this year.  Bomber win versus the Argos more impressive in my opinion.

Bombers fall into an  52-28 ATS away dog  divisional angle, that is 19-8 first six weeks of the season.  This angle has been 7-0 before week 10 if the line is greater than 6.  

Wally blows a gasket in this one.
 
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Posted: #11
Hi Indigo999. Been reading your posts for a couple years now. I'm a huge CFL fan/ bettor. I really enjoy your write ups. I look forward to more of them.
 
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Posted: #12
Thanks shooter....nice to hear from you....hope you're making bank this year.
 
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Posted: #13
Agree on the Bombers Indigo. That line is massive and I feel as though last week's win got their season kick started. Lions playing great football but the combinations the Bombers have look good.. 
 
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Posted: #14
For those sports bettors that are readers, I highly recommend Michael Konik's book:  The Smart Money, How the World's Best Sports Bettors Beat the Bookies Out of Millions....I got mine off of Amazon, which details the  real-life story (with the names changed) of Billy Walters and how he operated a betting ring to bet and win millions of dollars.  You'll notice in the news recently that he recently was convicted of insider trading and was sentenced to prison.

Michael Konik is a writer who connects with Walters when wanting to write about sports gambling and gamblers.  Walters take a liking to him and becomes a "runner" for Walters, which means he was placing bets with Walter's money.  Billy Walters, like most winners in sports betting, was not welcome to place the amount of money that he wanted to, to make the kind of money he wanted with sportsbook management.  His strategy was to hire people who would act like they knew nothing of betting to place his wagers for him.  Called "whales" in Las Vegas casinos, people with a lot of money who think they know what they're doing who are actually ignorant are highly desired by Las Vegas casinos,....they are given the best rooms, often for free, they  are assigned hosts to make sure they are happy and taken care of, with the idea that they will be contributing to the casino's bottom line.

Konik becomes a (fake) whale and then goes through the facade of acting like an arrogant, know-it-all imbecile to the sports betting managers, who ultimately will decide to accept his wagers, or not.  If I remember correctly, this went on for around 3 years, where he successfully cons the sportsbook personnel and he makes his boss Walters, a truck load of cash.

Towards the end of his relationship with Walters, he contacts a high school acquaintance who has an doctorate mathematical degree from Harvard to research whether using advanced statistics can be used to predict the outcome of sporting events, to obviously make money from what they discover.  This is child's play for a computer nerd/math guy and he sets out to plug in data into a computer program.  It takes him close to a year to correlate  data that is significant to make predictions reliable and profitable.  In the ongoing conversations that Konik and the Math Guy have, one thing stood out that made all the difference for Konik.....Math Guy said that results were becoming more and more adverse to wild swings in the market, that the standard deviation of results were becoming narrower.  It struck Konik in a flash of insight, that THIS information would mean that teasers would possibly become an advantage to them.  So, instead of assuming, they ran their data and found this to be true based on past results.  Toward the end of his run with Walters, Konik became his own bettor with his own stake and was hitting a higher percentage of bets than Walters, with smaller stakes.  After doing this for a year, he chucked it all in and gave the betting life away.

Teasers, for those who don't knowm are when the book gives us 6 extra points (for a two team teaser) on two different games, whether they be totals or side bets.  Both bets MUST win for you to have a winning wager...teaser rules vary according to the sportsbook used, but the best ones a tie on either leg of the teaser mean the bet is voided.  If either leg loses, you lose your wager.

Teasers had never been on my radar until I read this book.  For those of you with advanced math ability, feel free to chime in, but if we are going to use data and historical information as a basis of making plays as I do, the minimum success rate for a two team teaser for each leg of our teaser will have to be at least 72%, because if we multiply .72 x .72, it gives us around a 51% success rate...that is assuming that our bookmaker is not robbing us and charging us juice on a two team teaser...we expect to be  laying 100 to win 100....otherwise our math will be different and our expected success rate will have to be higher for each leg.

An example of this kind of thinking will be in the Calgary/Saskatchewan game.

An away divisional dog with a worse record than their opponent has been 81-59 ATS (57.9%) and 62-80 O/U 43.7% in the history of my CFL database. 

So, we should only be interested in taking the dog and the UNDER based on data and we should only want to see at least a 72% success rate for a teaser to be viable.  

So?  Would it be a good idea to tease these two?

We find that teasing the Riders and getting 6 more points to the away dog has given a 69% success rate....98-44 ATS.

We find that teasing the UNDER which adds 6 points to the total would have given us a 99-43 success rate....69.7%.

Teasing those two would be a losing strategy because if multiply the two success rates together.......   .69 x .697 =.48

We win 48% of the time, which means we lose 52% of the time...... a long-term losing strategy.  

Betting this way is like pot odds in poker, we look, not at the immediate result, but over 100 or 1000 bets, would we make money?....OR NOT?  In this particular scenario unless we find some more data that brings the success percentage up, it is a sucker's play.

However, playing the away underdog (the Riders) or the UNDER has shown in the past that those would be viable,  plays with a good success rate for individual wagers.
 
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Posted: #15
Ottawa has tie one game and lost the rest of them by 4 points or less. Like most teams they can only be beaten down so many time them that it? Looking at Ottawa M/L for starter. infor on here has been great thanks.
 
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Posted: #16
2)  Ottawa -5

Only my second play of the year backing a favorite......Ottawa as I mentioned in an earlier post, qualifies in a 10-1 zero winning percentage query after week 4 (as does Hamilton),....when the query is for divisional games only it moves to 7-0 winning by 14.57 points/game and covering by 12 points/game.

Based on present form the line should be about a pik, but the situation trumps present form.....and look who the Redblacks have been playing...the Stamps twice, the Eskimos and the improved Argos....the Als in my opinion are not in those teams' class.

I'm putting my money on the Redblacks.

Good fortune.
 
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Posted: #17
Indigo... if Ottawa covers tomorrow can't possibly be made a fave in TO Monday could they? I'm thinking of jumping on Argos now. This is a quirky week so trying to determine how to maximize strategy. Thoughts?
 
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Posted: #18
Hi Shooter,....I usually am not good at predicting line movements, though this year, the line is moving towards the line I estimated it to be.  Since this is the first year I've been estimating lines before the linesmaker, puts his out, I don't know if the lines I'm making are superior to the linesmaker, or it is just random luck.

I think that the true estimation of strengths between the two teams, Argos/Redblacks game should be -3, so my belief is that one is getting a good deal by taking the Argos now.

Plus I have not factored in the scheduling of the Redblacks with three games in a short sequence of time.  Plus when teams have a fortunate or upset victory in a championship game  the previous year, they tend to become unlucky the next year.....lots of things favoring the Argos.

Teams that are winless and away dogs on the road after week 4 have been 1-4 ATS. and  if the Redblacks were to lose, that line will definitely go up north of 3.  Vegas is underestimating the Argos this year, and we'll roll with them as long as they continue to do so. 
 
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Posted: #19
Ottawa averaging 30 points against and lost a couple more defenders for this game.The line should be a pick fr a reason and Montreal is just getting better each game imo.

Good luck
 
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Posted: #20
Good pick on Ottawa indigo, just in Adarius Bowman and Tyrell Sutton are two stars unlikely to play this week, while the REDBLACKS are juggling their defence on a short week.
 
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Posted: #21
Some pushes feel like wins Indigo. This must feel like one of them haha.
 
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Posted: #22
Quote Originally Posted by shooter19:

Some pushes feel like wins Indigo. This must feel like one of them haha.

Ottawa should of covered the spread a long time ago but they showed by they are what their record indicates and let Montreal hang around all the way to the end. I'm just mad b/c I didn't wait to get the game at -4.5 today as opposed to -5 when I took it on Monday.

I guess the computer that says to take the winless team to cover was wrong this time lol!
 
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Posted: #23
Redblacks -5   Tie

When you have a turnover edge of 4 and don't crush your opposition, there is something wrong.....Ottawa was lucky not to lose the game.
 
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Posted: #24
Not to mention that lousy unecessary roughness call that had Ottawa on the 1 yard line. And the blown fumble call where Otttawa would have scooped and scored but had to settle for 3 cuz the zebras quick whistle.
 
 
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Posted: #25
No play in the Edmonton/Hamilton game....personally I like Edmonton and the OVER, but I will pass based on the query below.

A non-divisional east team with a worse record playing at home off a home loss  with a total over 50 has been:

18-11-2  ATS
8-23 O/U

Favors Hamilton, favors UNDER
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