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The Stanley Cup Finals are now set, and will see the Dallas Stars play the Tampa Bay Lightning. As in all play-off games in the NHL, Under is where to start looking for value, but in the Stanley Cup Finals this is even more true with 63% of games going Under in the last ten seasons.  In a low scoring sport, we can't assume we will get 1.952 but Unders is a good place to start. In the past three seasons, this hasn't been a profitable strategy with every Game 1 going Over but with no crowd or home advantage, this season's playoffs have seen Unders win 56.5% of the time.  I mentioned earlier in the week that there were three qualifiers for the NFL Small Road Dog System, but the line moved on the Chicago Bears game so 'officially' it wasn't a winner. We did have a winner on Thursday though, so 'officially' we are back up to 2-1 with possibly another four selections tomorrow. Still no draws in the Premier League this season with plenty of goals reducing the p...

Teams arriving at a Game 7 after losing a 3-1 series lead have a losing record and in this series, four games have been Under so far with two Pushes. Two of the easier wins last night in the NBA as the Denver Nuggets won comfortably, not needing the 7.5 points they were getting, and the Under also an easy win (by 14.5 points) for the ninth consecutive time in a Game 7. Hopefully some of you took note of the observation in my last post . This win was the second time the Nuggets have come from 1-3 down in a series to win, following their First Round comeback against the Utah Jazz.  The Conference Finals started in the East last night with an overtime win for the Miami Heat as 'dogs versus the Boston Celtics, while in the West the Nuggets will play the Los Angeles Lakers. MLB announced a unique play-off format yesterday, with all Division Series, Championship Series and World Series games scheduled for a neutral venue in either Texas or Southern California, and importantly with no res...

Yet another Game 7 in the NBA Play-offs this week, after the Denver Nuggets overcame a 19 point deficit to beat the Los Angeles Clippers by 13 points on Sunday.  Teams arriving at a Game 7 after losing a 3-1 series lead have a losing record and in this series, four games have been Under so far with two Pushes.  The NFL is back, and the Small Road Dogs System had three selections in Week One, namely the Chicago Bears, Tampa Bay Buccaneers and the Green Bay Packers and I'll take the 2-1 outcome any day of the week.  Although none of the opening eight matches ended as a Draw, with the 2020-21 EPL season underway, a timely reminder that backing the Draw in close matches is generally profitable in this league. As  David Sumpter wrote back in 2016  or so: It turns out that when two well-matched teams meet (i.e. the probability of a home win is only slightly bigger than the probability of away win) then draws are under-priced. When matches are skewed so there is a stro...

We have another Game 7 in the NBA  tonight, in the Boston Celtics v Toronto Raptors series, where five of the six games so far have gone Under, with the exception being the double-overtime Game 6 where the 51 extra-time points took the total comfortably over. With the Toronto Raptors getting 2.5 points, this is only the third time in database history (since 2002) that the Home team has not been favourites, although this season all games are being played on a neutral court so it's not a huge surprise. Both of those previous games went Under. Baseball continues to be an outlier of a season, with hot favourites unprofitable for the first time since 2014: With some perspective, the results this season don't look so terrible with some nice profits in the bank from previous seasons, but it's tough to keep backing during a downturn, especially when the schedules and rules have been changed so dramatically. Backing weaker favourites this season would have been profitable, but typic...

The NFL season is here, and as with most other sports at the moment, it will be one with no fans at some stadiums, but fans at others, and thus a season with no precedent. At least some Home Field Advantage (HFA) has long been held to come from the thousands of screaming fans in the stands who intentionally make more noise when the visiting team is driving and hard for them to hear play calls. This season, some teams will have fans from the start, e.g. Miami Dolphins. Others hope to have fans as the season unfolds, e.g. the New Orleans Saints and Green Bay Packers, while others, e.g. the New York Giants have ruled out fans completely, at least for the time being. Last week, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell told reporters on a conference call that there will be no advantage for teams with fans in the stands. How can this be? Here's how - on the same call, it was announced that: "For teams with no fans in the stands, we�ve created audio that will be played in all stadiums" ...

After the two NBA Game 7s this week, here are some more details about how the Totals in a long series tend to play out. First of all, some history. Since 2014, NBA play-off series are all Best-of-Seven, played in a 2-2-1-1-1 format, with the highest seed (better team based on regular season) having Home advantage in Games 1, 2, 5 and 7, although sometimes Game 5 and often Game 7 are not required, Prior to 2014, the series were played in a 2-3-2 format, and the format has been tinkered with on several occasions, which means we have to be careful when comparing data across seasons, especially in Games 5 and 6. The format was changed in 2003, when the First Round became a Best-of Seven series, reducing the chances of a higher seed being eliminated, (i n 2007, the Golden State Warriors became the first team to defeat a number one seen in a best-of-7 First Round series),  but also increasing the probability of a team sitting around for a few days waiting for their opponent who may be pl...