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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...

If the 2019-20 NBA season wasn't already strange enough, three game 5 matches were last night postponed after players refused to play in protest at the latest police shooting of a 29 year old black man. Seven times. In the back. The victim, Jacob Blake, survived, but is paralysed from the waist down. The postponements were triggered by the Milwaukee Bucks (from Wisconsin where the shooting occurred) who refused to come out of the locker room for their game against the Orlando Magic. To their credit, the Magic said they would not accept a walkover, and the league quickly postponed all three games scheduled, the other two being the Oklahoma City Thunder v Houston Rockets and the Portland Trail Blazers v Los Angeles Lakers games. Both Los Angeles teams (Lakers and Clippers) have now "voted" to stop the season, but other teams are not aligned, so how this will play out remains to be seen. Voted is in quotes because some reports consider this to have been a "poll" ra...

The regular season is anticipated to begin on July 23-24. MLB has submitted a proposed 60-game schedule to the MLBPA to review. It has not yet been finalized. I still have my doubts that the MLB season will take place, with the schedule still not confirmed, the clock ticking, players test positive for COVID-19 and at least two star players opting to skip the season for health (coronavirus) reasons. The message at the top of this post has been unchanged for over a week now, and t he Los Angeles Dodgers' star pitcher David Price and Atlanta Braves' Felix Hernandez announced yesterday that they would sit out. It must be nice to be able to forgo an $11.9m salary for 60 games! Maybe I'm overthinking this, but if more players test positive (for COVID-19, not PEDs as has been the traditional meaning) and / or more leading players choose not to play, the season may well not happen. I hope I'm wrong. The NBA is moving forward with its plans to resume play as I mentioned in this ...