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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...

With the Denver Nuggets tying up their playoff series against the Utah Jazz last night, we have our first Game 7 of the 2019-20 NBA season. With data going back to 2002, the Home team wins 74% of these games, and covers 57% of the time, but with Home and Away merely an administrative technicality in the play-offs this season, we can probably ignore this statistic. For the record, Denver are the "Home" team tomorrow.  In 'normal' playoff games, Home teams win 64.4% of games, but this season that percentage is down to 55%. In the First Round of playoffs, the numbers are 65% and 56.4%. The percentage declines from the early rounds to the finals as does the difference between the teams. When looking at covering the spread, First Round games see the Home team cover 51% of the time, which is not too exciting, but the Totals markets in Game 7s show a tendency for the Overs to be 'over'-valued with Unders the result more than 60% of the time.   Some of you may know th...