footballsmart

Good move. I don't know about you, but I think the entire year has been an outlier and harder than usual to predict. One rough way to assess that is the Super contest consensus top 5 picks which has gotten better lately but still way below .500. In other words, very few are getting it right this year. Maybe next year it's the opposite.

U are totally right Doc. I tend not to worry about idiot posts. I'm a serious capping researcher with what I believe could be a very successful prediction machine ... So I need some forum to post and record picks. Along the way I expect to bump into the lowest and highest of humanity. The bottom line: I am doing this right and it will take time ... So I am not concerned with riff raff who either think there is a quick profit ... or those with no clue about proper statistics and probability. Now let's GO PACK!!

Around .500 so far .. but too small a sample size to either prove its value or not.

Nothing is easy in picking teams against a spread. The default for any game is a 50% chance. When the system shows, as in this case, about a 63% chance of success, we jump on it. But that also means that 37% of the time ... almost half ... we are dead wrong. So to be a good capper I believe you have to fail a ton ... but over time come out a little on top. And that's still hard to do. It's never a 95% chance. In a perfect set up according to my system, chances of success are around 74 to 78 percent but that is very rare. And sports is so fickle. The packers could still lose this game by 30 or win it by 10 ... and I still say it's one of the best picks of the week given that line at Lambeau and about 9 other factors that make it attractive m.. but a great pick like this can still easily be wrong.

Abe Lincoln (like the image by the way) ... I'm not into gambling. I'm into contests and establishing if this system works over a statistically large enough sample. Not betting 10k does not make a person a coward. It makes a brave and sensible person lik e Abe Lincoln save their hard earned money :-))

Both my system and me concur this week on Packers. It's the systems 1st or 2nd best pick of the week. Good question by the way. My opinion is not as shrewd as the system. But 9 points for Pack at home? Jeeeeez.

Just an expression. Of course no money is free. But in choosing amongst 16 ATS...options...this is clearly one of the best.

We'll see who is the stooge :-))

We'll see who is the stooge :-))

And giving them 10.5 points against the up and down chiefs makes it a great pick this weekend. Kenyan Drake is running like a rabbit. Players need to earn their jobs. There is no pressure. Cutler will bounce back from that horror show in Buffalo. If KC..wins, they win by 2 to 8 points ... but not by 11. That is ludicrous. Miami is good, but they tend to choke in pressure. With no pressure at all, they might win outright.

You don't give the Green Bay Packers 9 points at Lambeau and not expect them to cover every time. I don't care if this Vikings team today is like the 1985 Bears playing against the 2017 Browns. Green Bay easily covers today and shows the folly of that line. The team and tradition, the history and that hallowed ground ... most revered stadium in the NFL ... makes picking the Packers +9 the best bet of week 16. Even my system supports it!!

We'll see. 5.5 is a lot of points in a heated rivalry. Saints might win by 4 or 5 ... and my pick wins. Falcons are a good bunch too.

Here are the 5 picks this week. Thoughts?

Packers +9

Jets +6.5

Falcons +5.5

Dolphins +10.5

Giants +3.5

System record after 200 games is now 96-97-7. Let's see if this week pulls it back above .500 or if it slips more. The bottom line is that we know very little about this after only 200 trials as that .500 record could be artificially low or high based on statistical Chance. In another 300 games, whether it's above .500 or  below should be a good hint if this machine is any good. We just don't know yet. And one more thing, in the past 9 weeks, the favorites have been on a,very unusual run. It will eventually correct and my ystem seems to favor dogs ... so part of whats been going on is probably due to random or strange/rare outcomes. Lets see if the dogs start barking again these final 2 weeks.

I'm not sure if it bets against the public so much as just doing what it does with all the input regardless of what Joe average public handicapper does. It certainly does not include a public perception factor in the formula. The public is pretty dumb. And even the best tv media experts on NFL have horrific pick records against the spread. In fact there is a media bias against being correct, but it's not big enough to fade to allow better handicapping. 

I would hope so! I studied over 30 years of games (8000+) and created the metrics based on extensive research. And I easily got 54% to 55% success ATS in an unbiased professional statisticasl approach which avoided many flawed approaces and supposedly mimicked what future bets would look like. Those percentages are what I expect. Even 53% would not be bad. I have not seen that same level of success yet in my actual future predictions as I'm obviously barely hanging in there above 50%. However...that is still totally within the normal score range if I have a machine that produces 53 to 55%. The 50% after 200 games, if that is true, should probably be corrected somewhat over the next 200 games where if I hit 58%, for example, then over 400 it would be at 54% and about what I expect. The more games I predict, the closer this sample success rate will approximate the true value ... or population rate. Now if I get another 50% success over the next 200 games to be sitting at 50% after 400, then I will start seriously doubting the power of this system. Even a 53% process would most likely not be at 50% over 400 trials ... and would at least reach 52-55% over the second set of 200 games. After 1000 games we'll know for sure what we have within a very small margin of error, less than 1 percentage point for sure. In sum, 200 games is nothing, but 400 starts to gain pretty good statistical power ... so if this system is what the research showed it to be, I wouldn't bet against it in the next 200 game stretch. It might have a little natural correction or Bounceback and hit 60%!! Time will tell all!

Sorry ... I copied and pasted and it did not show up. Here goes:

Bears +5.5

Dolphins +3.5

Texans +10.5

Jets +15.5

Cardinals +4