Going through old issues of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter and posting highlights in my own words. For anyone interested, I highly recommend signing up for the actual site at f4wonline and checking out the full archives. PREVIOUSLY:
WWE hit the reset button again with a new storyline assigning general managers to each brand, and it featured the shocking debut of Eric Bischoff. The new storyline will have Bischoff as the heel GM of Raw, while Stephanie McMahon will be the babyface GM of Smackdown, while Vince McMahon will take more of a backseat role and reduce his TV presence. Of course, just 5 weeks ago, Vince panicked and blew up the existing "feuding GMs" storyline between himself and Ric Flair, so now we're re-starting it with new people I guess. It feels like a last-ditch effort to save the brand extension, which has been an utter flop since day one, with no effort to differentiate the shows and only resulting in diluting the talent and falling ratings.
Bischoff and McMahon struck a secret deal about 10 days prior to his debut. Bischoff had talks with WWE last year about coming in during the original Invasion angle, except they only wanted him to do a one-off match with Vince for the PPV (which Vince would obviously have won), but Bischoff turned down that offer. But this time, they agreed to a more long-term deal. Bischoff didn't know he was going to debut on Raw until just a day or two prior, when Vince called him and told him to be there. The whole thing was kept secret and almost no one other than Vince himself knew about it. This is believed to be a unique contract, in which it's a short-term deal with the option to renew it for longer-term if the angle gets over. His only role is as a television character, it's strictly a performance contract. Bischoff is not going to be a part of management or creative.
When Bischoff walked across the screen in the backstage segment, almost everyone in the company was just as shocked as the viewers at home. Bischoff's debut saw him come out and hug Vince, which Dave thinks about is the dumbest possible way to introduce him. Sure, the Invasion angle is over but WCW's corpse isn't completely cold yet. It's only been a year or so. There is probably still plenty of money to be made in Bischoff as an outsider trying to destroy Vince McMahon and the WWE. But as always, that would involve Vince allowing himself or WWE to look vulnerable against an "outsider" and his utter refusal to do that is a big part of what tanked the Invasion. But that's par for the course. Bischoff cut a promo, giving the fake "WWE version" of the Monday Night Wars history (Dave points out multiple inaccuracies that WWE still clings on today, such as claiming they stole Hulk Hogan from WWF. Of course, Hulk had been in NJPW and hadn't worked for WWF for nearly a year at the time WCW signed him. Things like that.). Dave thinks it became one of those promos full of old stuff or inside references where so much of it is about things that the average fan doesn't know or care about. Dave thinks most of this audience in 2002 isn't familiar with Alundra Blayze, they don't know Raw used to be taped instead of live, and they don't care about 83-week TV ratings streaks (Dave also notes that Bischoff said 84 on this show, which is incorrect). And once again, it became one of those promos talking about how much WWE sucks lately, which is something you don't want to keep pointing out to the fans who are still watching because you just make them feel dumb for supporting something that even the people producing it knows sucks. Shit like that is partly what drove off WCW fans. Bischoff also gloated about almost putting WWE out of business, and to the many guys in the locker room who remember that vividly, it wasn't a joke or a storyline. Those are guys who really were fighting for their job against a guy who really was trying to put them out of business. Bischoff has tremendous heat from the locker room, with a lot of people who worked for him in WCW or who resent him from the WWE side....they don't want Bischoff there.
This angle was going to take place regardless, but it's thought that the injury to Kevin Nash may have moved things up a couple of weeks because Vince once again panicked when his plans went down in flames. Nash had surgery last week. Because of the location of the tear, it's not quite as serious as the tear Triple H suffered last year. But Nash is also 10 years older. However, he has vowed to return, noting he doesn't want his career to end like that. With his age and his track record of injuries (this is his 22nd surgery, dating back to his collegiate basketball days), Dave isn't sure how much Nash will be able to offer if/when he returns next year. Also, while nobody wanted Nash to get hurt, the mood in the locker room was said to be much happier this week without him around, as the whole Nash/X-Pac/Shawn/Triple H group isn't very well liked these days (the more things change...)
Speaking of X-Pac, a weird situation with him this week led to him being suspended by WWE. The day of the Raw when Nash tore his quad, X-Pac missed his flight to the show. Why? Well, he was hospitalized earlier that day in Minneapolis. Again, you ask, why? No idea. Sounds like X-Pac sure would like to know also. He called WWE saying he was in the emergency room and had no idea how he got there. He left the ER and made new travel arrangements and he got to Raw 90 minutes before the show started. And then he went out there that night and worked his match (and Dave says looked more impressive than he had in a long time). However, after the match, he still couldn't explain to WWE officials how or why he was in the hospital earlier that day and so they were naturally suspicious. As a result, X-Pac has been suspended and removed from all upcoming bookings until they get a medical report on what the deal is. Dave says X-Pac has been acting out of control for weeks now and it's been well-documented (threatening to quit if match finishes weren't changed week after week). The feeling backstage was that as long as Nash was around to go to bat for him, he was basically protected, but no longer. With Hall fired, Nash out for probably a year, X-Pac suspended, and Hogan a babyface, the feeling within the company is that the NWO angle is dead. Shawn Michaels is still expected to appear at upcoming house shows and Raws in some new role, since much of the advertising for those shows was based around him appearing, but this is probably the end of the road for the NWO. (This kinda flew under the radar, but yeah, X-Pac never wrestled another match in WWE. The match where Nash tore his quad remains to this day the last time X-Pac ever worked a match in a WWE ring. He gets released soon after this and we all know in retrospect that he was dealing with some drug issues throughout this time).
Dave provides some details on Vince Russo's first (and only) creative meeting when he was briefly rehired by WWE last month. Russo apparently proposed a Raw vs. Smackdown feud that would eventually lead to reviving one of them as WCW and reigniting the WCW vs. WWE war. This time, they would have Eric Bischoff leading the WCW side, while Russo suggested Mick Foley as the leader of the WWE side. It was pretty much made clear to Russo during the meeting that if they were to do a Raw vs. Smackdown angle, it would be Stephanie in charge of the WWE side, not Foley, and sure enough, that's what is expected to happen (but without the whole WCW-revival part). Russo's idea was pretty much a combination of the 2001 Invasion angle and the 2000 WCW Bischoff/Russo angle. Dave notes that Russo wanted to essentially start from scratch again, strip everyone of their belts the way they did in 2000, and bring in Bret Hart and Goldberg to be involved as well.
A big recap of UFC's debut show in England, which featured rising star Frank Mir getting beat in what should have been an upset, but word is Mir didn't take the fight seriously and barely trained. As a result, he got murked in the first round. Also, while in England, some people in Tito Ortiz's camp got into a big drunken bar brawl with fellow fighter Lee Murray. Chuck Liddell was somewhere involved too. Anyway, long story short, some people tell the story that Murray knocked Ortiz out. Ortiz denies it (to this day, this is a famous MMA story and both men tell different versions, so depending on who you believe I guess).
TNA's 4th show ended with a strong angle that actually got them some national publicity. It involved Tennessee Titans players Frank Miller and Zach Piller hopping the rail and attacking Jeff Jarrett and some other wrestlers, resulting in a big brawl to end the show. So how much of it was real or shoot? Well, Russo is involved, so who knows. The official story is that Jarrett and Piller were supposed to shove each other from across the rail, but that's it. From NFL sources, Dave has actually heard the same thing. It was supposed to stop at a shoving confrontation, and then Malice would come pull Jarrett away. That was the story as Russo allegedly wrote it. But reportedly, Piller had been drinking and he ended up hopping the rail and straight up overpowered Jarrett like it was nothing and took him down. Whether this was a shoot or a work is still unknown, but it ended up getting them coverage on SportsCenter and Dave says it's possible it was a work that only a few people were in on. If it was a work, nobody else was in on it. Ron Harris, who works backstage, almost rushed to the ring to save Jarrett and Malice (who wasn't supposed to touch the football players) got involved and broke it up quickly. After the show, the players were backstage laughing and joking with Jarrett and Miller has been openly telling people it was all planned and they were told to make it look as real as possible, but it's still unknown if jumping the rail and tackling Jarrett was part of the plan or not. Several other Titans players were at ringside with them and saw it unfold, but mostly didn't get involved. So now after the publicity, TNA is trying to see if they can make a match out of this. Either way, it's starting to feel like an elaborate work that none of the rest of the roster was clued in on, which is exactly the kind of shit Russo used to do constantly in WCW that soured morale among the locker room, and for this to happen on Russo's first night in, with an angle he wrote, sure feels a little familiar.
Puerto Rico's IWA had its most successful show in company history, drawing more than 11,000 fans (without a single WWE name on the card) to see the payoff of an angle with Savio Vega fighting for control of the company. WHO SAID SAVIO AIN'T A DRAW?!
On the other side of things, WWC has postponed its anniversary show from August to September in order to give themselves more time to build up big angles and storylines. Seems like something they probably should have been planning earlier? IWA has become the dominant promotion in Puerto Rico and WWC felt they didn't have the build-up necessary to do a big-money show right now. Especially after this IWA show did such big business, anything less would be an embarrassment.
Bischoff's debut on Raw was a pretty big hit. How big, you ask? During Bischoff's in-ring promo after his debut, Raw added nearly 1.1 million new viewers from the previous segment. Meaning that as soon as Bischoff walked across the screen backstage, tons of wrestling fans started calling their friends telling them, "Holy shit, Eric Bischoff is on Raw, turn it on!" The bad news is that as soon as Bischoff's promo was over, a lot of them tuned right back out, leading to a huge drop-off for the rest of the show. On the flip side, this week's Smackdown, featuring the heavily-hyped return of The Rock ended up being the 7th lowest rated episode of the show in history (4th if you don't count holidays). Rock's not a draw, bet he won't even be in the business in a couple more years.
Kenta Kobashi is finally back in the ring, wrestling undercard prelim tag matches for NOAH. Even though he's in tags and doing limited in-ring work, his knees are said to be already killing him and one of them totally locked up on him after one of his recent matches. But he still hasn't missed any dates.
NJPW announced that Kensuke Sasaki will face Pancrase star Minoru Suzuki at the Tokyo Dome in October. This match was actually planned for the big Tokyo Dome show back in May, but negotiations fell apart because Pancrase didn't like the idea of Suzuki doing a worked pro-wrestling match. Suzuki started his career in NJPW back in 1988 and was being groomed to be a big star for the company, but he quit and joined UWF because he preferred to work shoot-style matches. In 1993, he and a few other guys all started Pancrase, which he's been doing ever since. These days, Suzuki's days of fighting for them at a top level are over and he usually only competes against nobodies or in catch wrestling (grappling and submission only, no striking). Anyway, for those curious, this didn't happen. Not sure why yet, I haven't gotten that far, but Suzuki doesn't return to NJPW until 2003.
Goldberg is said to be leaning very much against going to WWE anytime soon and is instead eyeing his options of working big shows in Japan. He's contemplating an offer to make an appearance at Toryumon's show in Tokyo in September, but only an appearance. He doesn't plan to wrestle until later in the year (don't think the Toryumon appearance happens, but he does end up working a few matches in Japan here soon).
Bret Hart is still hoping to make his scheduled appearance for Jacques Rougeau's upcoming indie show in Montreal. If you recall, Rougeau's big show there last year drew over 11,000 fans and he's got himself another big stadium to fill this year and Bret was expected to be the biggest draw. Whether he'll be healthy enough to make the show, following his recent stroke, remains to be seen but he's determined to try. As of this week, Hart is able to lift his left arm over his head. Just a week ago, he couldn't move it at all. His grip strength is also coming back and he's able to walk short distances. His vocal cords were also damaged but have started strengthening again and he's able to talk again (though he can't cut a wrestling promo yet, Dave says, so he might not be doing much other than coming out and waving to the crowd if he does make it). He's still having some vision problems also, but not too bad all things considered.
Dave says that "no matter what you may hear," a lot of people involved in TNA behind the scenes are very unhappy about Vince Russo being brought in. He also says that a lot of people associate Russo and Ed Ferrara together, but they actually had a major falling out awhile back and hadn't been on speaking terms until now. When it became clear Russo was coming back, Ferrara reached out to Russo and the two sides made up. He goes on record saying for sure that neither Mike Tenay or Bill Behrens are happy about Russo's arrival, among others, but says everyone is being professional.
Notes from TNA Weekly PPV: Crowd of about 1,500, only about half paid. Dave says it was easily the best of the 4 shows they've had so far. About 85% of it was written and booked by Jerry Jarrett and the original writing team before Russo was hired, but Russo did make some changes. Dave says some people are beginning to get tired of Don West on commentary already and he definitely brings a ton of enthusiasm (but nothing else, Dave adds) to the table. During the Ken Shamrock vs. Omori match, the crowd was distracted by one of the cage dancers near the entrance who was apparently showing her ass to the crowd. Former WCW wrestler Crowbar (real name Chris Ford) worked a tag match under the name Tempest and Dave notes that when Ford worked a try-out match for WWE awhile back, he also signed over the name Crowbar to them when he did (guessing Dave is mistaken about this. He never used the name Crowbar in TNA, but he's been using it everywhere else ever since for the last 18 years). Brian Christopher is now going by his real name, Brian Lawler, and cut a promo on Jerry Lawler about being a bad father. It got a lot of heat but now they've made fans want to see a match that they can't deliver. K-Krush faced NASCAR driver Hermie Sadler and got DQ'd. Dave says Krush was absolutely awesome here, actually carrying Sadler to a watchable match. Sadler was awful of course, but the Gayda/Stratus match from Raw was light years worse, so hey, who cares? TNA tried to bring in Hermie's more famous older brother Elliott Sadler, but that fell through because Elliott has some type of affiliation with WWE, though Dave isn't sure what (I did the research and apparently Elliott drove a Summerslam-themed car during a race around this time, so I assume that's it).
More notes from TNA Weekly PPV, since this recap is huge and big, unbroken paragraphs suck: Mark and Jay Brisco worked a brief match until Malice ran in and destroyed everyone (Dave says this was a Russo addition to the show. Dave also says the Briscos will be great some day and notes that on this show, the announcers lied and said both of them are 18, when in fact, Mark Brisco is still 17 and therefore not even allowed to wrestle in many commission states). Former porn star and ECW valet Jasmine St. Claire debuted and gave Jeremy Borash a lap dance, took off her underwear, and was about to strip nude until a big angle stopped it. And yes, in case it wasn't obvious, this was another Russo addition. AJ Styles and Jerry Lynn are the tag team champions and ended up in a big brawl backstage. If you've been paying attention to the show the last 2 weeks, you would have recognized that they were doing a slow build with these two partners having friction, but Russo convinced Jarrett to hurry up and pull the trigger on the split, so here we are. Dave thinks this had no impact at all because it felt completely rushed, the story hadn't progressed far enough yet for these two to already be coming to blows. Another interview with the Dupps saying "shit" repeatedly was, yes, another Russo addition. Try not to cut yourself on all this edginess. Shamrock vs. NOAH star Takao Omori ended in a no contest because of politics. Shamrock was supposed to win clean, but then NOAH decided they didn't want Omori to do a job, so this is what we got. Dave thinks TNA should have said screw them then and just not used Omori because it's not like TNA's fanbase knows who the fuck he is anyway. Omori was said to have been spaced out all day beforehand and looked bad in the match. Crowd didn't care and they pumped in a ton of fake crowd noise for it. Jeff Jarrett ran in and took everyone out with chair shots, including "NWA rep" Harley Race, who ate a brutal unprotected chair shot to the head from Jeff and Dave thinks that's not good for anyone's brain, especially a guy pushing 60. Race was there basically to help Omori since Harley's small promotion in St. Louis has a relationship with NOAH. And finally, the 6-man X-Division #1 contenders match was excellent. Dave thinks WWE really missed the boat on Jerry Lynn and K-Krush. He admits Lynn probably couldn't have ever been a top guy in WWE or anything, but he makes everybody he wrestles look like a million bucks and guys like that are priceless to have on your roster. They also pumped a bunch of crowd noise in for this match, and at one point, the fake crowd noise loop stopped and there was a moment where it went from a loud roaring crowd to dead silence in a blink. Also, a fight in the stands distracted the crowd near the end. But great match otherwise. Show ended with the Titans players angle.
In other news, The Shane Twins have been working as the masked penis wrestlers The Johnsons in TNA but the penis aspect of it has been played down to almost nothing. Upcoming plans were for the team to unmask and revert back to the Shane Twins, but when Russo came aboard, that plan got scrapped and they will remain The Johnsons for now. Because dammit, Russo will get to make penis jokes on TV or he's going to die trying.
Many of the key names in TNA (Shamrock, AJ Styles, Jerry Lynn, Mike Tenay, among others) have now signed 1-year contracts. Scott Hall was rumored to have also signed a 1-year deal, but Hall is telling people it's not true and he's only committed for 4 more dates. Low-Ki is signed through the end of the year.
At the recent K-1 vs. PRIDE show, there was a huge upset when PRIDE fighter Quinton Jackson knocked out Cyril Abidi, one of the top kickboxers in the world. The "plan" was for Abidi to win and then go on to a bigger money match with Don Frye, but that's what happens when you try to plan things around a shoot.
And I'm sorry, I know this ain't an MMA recap, but this is too good: at the UFC press conference for the UK show this week, Dana White showed up with a bag filled with $250,000 in cash and challenged UK boxing promoter Frank Warren to put up any fighter in his stable and White would find a UFC fighter of the same weight to fight him, winner takes all the money. If you recall, Warren made some statements a few weeks back calling UFC fighters unskilled steroid freaks and claiming that his boxers could beat any of them in a real fight. So Dana showed up with a whole bag of cash, doing Dana things.
Notes from Raw: Vince came out to the NWO music and said that's the last time we'll ever hear it and that the NWO is dead, so as expected, that's it for that gimmick. Tommy Dreamer is back to his old ECW gimmick and is already 1000x more over than the jobber-eating-gross-stuff gimmick WWE gave him. There was a Coach/Booker T segment backstage which is when Eric Bischoff walked through the shot, leaving everybody with their mouths hanging open, and then his promo. Another hype video for Rey Mysterio debuting on Smackdown next week. Former WCW wrestler and recent developmental guy Johnny The Bull made his Raw debut winning the hardcore title, and Dave is baffled how he got the call up because he's one of the worst guys they have in developmental and is nowhere near ready. But it's all about how he looks. Undertaker & Lesnar beat RVD & Flair in the main event and afterward, Lesnar turned on Undertaker in a good angle, though Dave doesn't have high hopes for the inevitable match.
Notes from Smackdown: it was a pretty bad show and for a pretty surprising reason. It was all built around Rock and he was awful. Rather than trying to sell a PPV, he came off like he was trying too hard to be a funny, "cool" guy and became a parody of himself. Dave is a huge Rock fan and thinks it was painful. He did a big in-ring promo segment with rapper Busta Rhymes that was just an elaborate plug for his new Halloween: Resurrection movie ("coming out in July?" Dave asks incredulously and, right, wtf?). Even Rock using Angle's own ankle lock against him at the end of the show looked hilariously fake and Dave has no interest in the Rock/Angle match at Vengeance after this show. Edge & Hogan defending the tag titles was a super heated match and Dave can't understand it. The live crowds are still nuclear hot for Hogan, but it's not translating at all into TV ratings or ticket sales. But man, the people who do buy tickets sure do love him. They seem to be slow-burning a Randy Orton heel turn. The Nidia segment at the buffet was great and Dave thinks they may have stumbled across a pretty great gimmick with her.
The crew got a little backstage pep talk before Raw this week, mostly given by the agents (John Laurinaitis, Arn Anderson, and Fit Finlay) as well as Triple H. In particular, Triple H talked about there being too many people in the locker room who think they deserve a push ahead of the newer guys because they've been there longer. He said too many guys are sitting back waiting for someone to give them a push rather than breaking out from the pack and earning the push. He said he got over on his own when management was trying to hold him down after the MSG curtain call incident. Said too many guys are being lazy, playing cards and playing video games backstage rather than watching the matches and learning. He said just because you've had a few good matches on TV doesn't mean you know how to work or deserve a push, and also said everyone needs to work harder at house shows because attendance is down and it was guys like him who worked hard to re-build the company the last time business was down. Needless to say, for a locker room full of people who feel like they bust their asses only to get their legs cut off and hit a glass ceiling (often at the hands of the same guy giving the speech), this went over just about as well as you'd expect with the rest of the locker room. Not that anything Triple H said is wrong. Dave agrees with most of it. But considering who the messenger was, it was not well-received.
Lots of backstage talk about last week's Bradshaw/Trish Stratus vs. Chris Nowinski/Jackie Gayda match, which was among the worst matches anyone has seen in years. Fit Finlay is the usual trainer and agent for the women and usually goes over their matches and spots with them, but in this case, Sgt. Slaughter put together this match. Gayda missed a few spots early in the match and seemed to panic and it all fell apart from there. Backstage, she was fully aware of how bad it was and was said to be extremely upset. There's been talk of sending her down to OVW for more training, but she'll probably still be on TV because she's fresh off winning Tough Enough.
Steve Austin hasn't had any contact with anyone in WWE except for Jack Lanza, who was the agent Austin often worked with for his matches. All that's known now is Austin told Lanza he's still training hard and Lanza felt like he's getting antsy sitting at home and may be ready to return already (I think he's got bigger problems at home). But Austin and Vince still have not spoken and there's still a lot of bad feelings there.
In light of recent events, Dave digs up the transcript from an old Prodigy online chat from 1996, in which Eric Bischoff was asked if he would ever work for Vince McMahon. His response: "I would rather chew off my fingers."
Writer Brian Gewertz reportedly has some heat over Raw's declining ratings. The problem is, no matter who it is (Gewertz, Heyman, Russo, or even Stephanie), the final approval for everything you see on television comes down to Vince McMahon. He deserves the credit when it's good and the blame when it's bad, end of story. It's a common occurrence for Vince to rip up a script and tell the writers to come up with something new, so any bad segment that makes it to TV is on him, and resulting in lots of last minute changes. Some people are even blaming Gewertz for Kevin Nash's recent injury because Gewertz wrote the match into the script the day of the show, so Nash wasn't even aware he was going to be wrestling until a couple hours before they went on the air and I guess he didn't have time to properly stretch and get ready, and ended up tearing his quad 10 seconds in. Same thing with Cena's debut, that was a day-of decision, and luckily Cena was already on the road with the crew working dark matches, so he was available. But again, Dave says you can't blame Gewertz for either of those things because, once again, it's Vince who is constantly changing his mind and forcing last minute rewrites and whatnot every week. How is Gewertz or any other writer supposed to build long-term stories under those conditions? (Man, this sure feels familiar)
Latest on DDP, he and wife Kimberly are planning on moving from Atlanta to Los Angeles to try their hand at acting careers. They've both saved a lot of money from their years in wrestling and can afford to take a chance on this kind of thing I guess. (DDP has done a handful of acting roles, mostly in the mid-00s, but obviously nothing of note. And Kimberly Page did a few movies, including a starring role with DDP in a movie called The Scam Artist that I can't find anywhere, and of course, her most famous role as "chick who's tit fell out" in The 40 Year Old Virgin).
Randy Orton suffered a concussion in a house show match with Batista. Orton was trying to sell a clothesline by flying in the air and taking a big flat back bump, but hit his head on the mat coming down and was knocked unconscious. He should be back in a week or so though, because it's not like concussions are serious injuries or anything. EMT's helped him out of the ring and he walked to the back under his own power but he was knocked clean the fuck out for a bit there.
This week's episode of WWE Confidential featured Big Show and Bradshaw playing a game of HORSE with the winner "getting a shot to sexually harass Linda Miles." So obviously they're out of ideas for this show. (Yeah JBL is on some full-blown Jerry Lawler shit with Miles here).
John Cena is still finishing up in OVW and working the upcoming big Six Flags show in Louisville. Despite being a big babyface on TV, he's still a heel in OVW and is playing a gimmick where his main roster success is going to his head.
The New York Daily News ran a story on the "Sex, Lies & Headlocks" book that is coming out soon about Vince McMahon and noted several revelations in the book, such as Vince being paranoid about his office being bugged in 1993 prior to the steroid trial and how he wouldn't sit or talk near windows because he thought the FBI was listening in. It also talked about how Vince gave a job interview to Matt Lauer to host the WBF Bodystars show but didn't think Lauer had the right look, among other things. When asked for comment, WWE responded "No one in WWE has any interest in reading it. No one cares to." Dave says that's 2002 carny talk for, "Can you get us an advance copy?"
NEXT WEDNESDAY:Raw appears to turn a corner (lol no), WWE making major cutbacks and severing developmental ties, TNA also making major budget cuts, WWE Vengeance fallout, and more...
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Week 2 in the National Football League was as wild as it gets. The Cowboys provided one of the greatest comebacks in history, and the injury bug hit the San Francisco 49ers. 2021 Super Bowl LV Odds
San Francisco 49ers lose Nick Bosa and Solomon Thomas - The 49ers beat the New York Jets 31-13 in Week 2, but it came with a huge cost. The Niners two starting defensive-ends, Nick Bosa and Solomon Thomas, suffered ACL injuries. Both are out from 6 to 8 weeks. Quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo is questionable in Week 3 due to a knee injury. Running back Raheem Mostert is listed as doubtful due to an MCL sprain. The 49ers play the New York Giants in Week 3. There’s a good likelihood the Niners sit both players even if either is ready to go. San Francisco is 1-1. Their next division game is in Week 6. That’s the battle coach Kyle Shanahan should circle for Mostert’s return. Garoppolo should be ready by Week 4. When it comes to Bosa and Thomas, other defenders must step it up. The 49ers have a good defense, but they lost Richard Sherman in the first week. The Giants, Philadelphia Eagles, and Miami Dolphins are there next three opponents. But, after that, the Niners play the Rams, New England Patriots, Seattle Seahawks, Green Bay Packers, and New Orleans Saints all in a row. Things could get tough for the SF defense unless a couple of players step it up. Cowboys provide amazing comeback against Falcons - At halftime of Sunday’s win against the Atlanta Falcons, the Dallas Cowboys were down 29-10. Not only did the Cowboys come back and win, but they came back to win 40-39. The Boys got an onside kick, unheard of in today’s NFL, and then converted a field goal. What’s interesting about the onside kick is that instead of pouncing on the football, Falcon players waited for it to go out of bounds. That makes absolutely no sense and is the reason the Cowboys were able to notch their first win of the season. Atlanta’s defense is the worst in the NFL. Coach Dan Quinn is on the hot seat because of it. Boneheaded plays like the one that led to the loss at home won’t help Quinn’s case to keep his job. Ravens and Chiefs on collision course in NFL Week 3 - There were other Week 2 highlights. The Las Vegas Raiders opened Allegiant Stadium with a solid 31-24 win over the New Orleans Saints while the Seattle Seahawks and Russell Wilson beat Cam Newton and the New England Patriots 35-30. Also, both the Ravens and Chiefs won their respective games. The Baltimore Ravens beat the Houston Texans 33-16 while the KC Chiefs required overtime to beat the Chargers 23-20. Los Angeles quarterback Justin Herbert played exceptionally well. Coach Anthony Lynn said Herbert would remain the backup if Tyrod Taylor were healthy enough to play in Week 3. We’ll see how long Lynn sticks with that plan. Next Monday night, the Chiefs and Ravens battle. Baltimore looks like the team to beat in the AFC. They were the team to beat last season as well. It will be interesting to see how the Ravens’ defense handles Patrick Mahomes.
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Thank you for making this the longest Mailbag we’ve posted. Most of you wanted to vent, so I ran your comments first and the ones that required answers come afterward. Most of you have given up on the season after the 0-2 start that should be 0-3. I’m guessing you gave up on them after the 0-3 start in 2018. Titans fans gave up last season when they started 2-4. Ravens fans wanted John Harbaugh fired with a 4-5 record in 2018. And don’t forget the Colts’ 1-5 start in 2018 and 10-6 finish, including a victory over the Texans at NRG Stadium? I predicted in August the Texans would start 0-3, so I’m not surprised. Now, if they start 0-4, it’s time to hit the panic button. Oh, I almost forgot, stunningly, a few of you want Bill O’Brien fired. Imagine that. Please check out the Chronicle’s two television shows this season: “Texas Sports Nation” airs at around 11:30 p.m. Sundays on KPRC (Channel 2) after NBC's football game. “Texas Sports Nation: In Depth” runs twice a month on AT&T SportsNet Southwest, which also reruns it at different times. The staff is putting a lot of time and effort into the shows, and we hope you like the content. As always, thank you for contributing to the Mailbag, reading our stories in the Chronicle's print editions and online at Texas Sports Nation, where we also have multiple weekly podcasts. As you do every week, please send your comments and questions to [email protected]. Note: questions have been edited for clarity and/or brevity. Q: Same BS again this year. There have been many changes, millions of dollars spent, lots of new coaches and plenty more excuses to come. Bill O’Brien is the one constant. He is not a great coach, not even a good coach and still a worse GM. By the time McNair realizes we will be auditioning the next quarterback to lead them nowhere. The excuses are so old. — David P. Q: Your grade of the HC/GM should be an F. It’s hard to write this during the fourth quarter of this game where I knew, as well as you, the Texans wouldn’t win. But going for it on 4th down in the first half again on our side of the field is flat out stupid. I would have been OK with it in the 4th quarter on Baltimore’s side of the field because we were down by two scores and a field goal wasn’t going to help. If the guards can’t run block or pass block any better than this then I have to call out the GM. Does Bill understand that the rest of the NFL coaches know the offensive line cannot block long enough for a deep route to hurt them. It appears he has built a quick-strike offense fantasy built around deep pass routes that does not reflect the offensive line’s ability to block. Use Cobb and the TEs more and run the clock because our defense is not built to be on the field for long stretches and we surely haven’t scared the opponent defensively. Please do not say we played Baltimore better this time then last time. We lost and until the coaching/drafting/trading gets better, the Texans will always be full of noise and nothing else. — Glenn P. Q: It's amazing that the Texans still keep getting national television slots. And every time they do Bill O'Brien uses it to showcase really stupid coaching decisions. That David Johnson trade looks bad now, with no one to block for him, and no one to pass protect for Deshaun. And Hopkins is enjoying great success with a dynamic QB and 2-0 record. The more things change, the more things stay the same. The Texans are again proving to not be ready for the start of the season. Those poor guys are bad at everything, poor offensive line play, no pass rush, poor tackling, and boy do they get outcoached. Teams take on the personality of their coach. And OB is never prepared and extremely unpredictable. That offense looks the same to me and so does the sad sack defense. Poor Deshaun deserves better than running for his life game after game. — Ronald J. Q: I just want to say that I'm sorry you had to sit through the entire Ravens-Texans game. At least I could switch to the U.S. Open golf tournament. I'm not going to rag on anybody this morning. Just some thoughts that seem to me to be reasonable concerning Deshaun Watson. I was prompted on this subject by Brian Smith's first paragraph of his column. To paraphrase, one of these days he is going to shout, “REALLY?” when another questionable 4th down call comes in. There are just a few gifted QBs that have an innate gunslinger quality about them. Watson, Jackson, Mahomes, Favre, and Russell Wilson, to name a few. I think Watson is being mismanaged. The GM/HC is trying to make a square peg fit in a round hole. He is by nature a gunslinger. He is unconventional and they are trying to make him conventional. Turn him loose! Let him use the play called as a suggestion. See what happens when he is allowed to be who he is. My observation is he’s not a pocket QB. I see nothing in Kelly's play-calling that differs from O'Brien. Tim Kelly is an O'Brien clone. He studied and was groomed by O'Brien. What did we expect? I know, it's early. They were expected to lose this game. I just wish they would have gone out on their shields and not pouting on the bench. I know eventually O'Brien will be let go. My recommendation for replacement is Ravens DC Wink Martindale. Have you ever seen a more ravenous defense! You just wonder why we can’t be like that. They do trade film don't they? Weaver should study them until his eyes bleed. — Joe K. Q: Hopkins is making Kyler Murray an MVP candidate. All Texans fans wish OB would go away. I worry about your sanity if you can't get over the Hopkins trade. Normally when you have fourth-and-1 at your 34, you punt. Why wouldn't you punt? Because your defense is arguably the worst in the NFL. Odds are they’ll be even worse if they are tired. It's one thing to know it another to announce it to the Ravens. Perhaps OB forgot, it's an emotional game. How do you think the Ravens felt then? OB’s got one of the most gifted QBs the NFL has ever seen at eluding a pass rush. What does a pump fake do? It gets DL to raise their hands and DBs to make a move. This is why the Texans are so damn frustrating. Yes, they stink on defense, and yes, they can barely block on most plays, but they still have the magician, DW4. What makes him so elusive? Body movements — subtle and not so subtle just like Air Jordan. It happens so quickly for these phenomenal athletes. It’s more instinct than thought. If you know anyone who has any influence with OB, pay them to whisper the words "pump fake." I bet you DW4 can sell a pump fake better than most. — Juan B. Q: I was hoping the Texans would not start the season 0-2. The Ravens again beat the Texans. The Texans were outcoached and outplayed. The Ravens organization is clearly at a higher level than the Texans. The Texans' defense again was not effective against the run. The offensive line was not consistent with pass blocking or picking up the blitz. Then there was the fourth-and-1 at their 34. The coaching staff is hired to give you the best chance to win. This was not the best call, ever, on your side of the field against the Ravens defense. The play that was called had no chance of succeeding. This has become an alarming pattern for this team every year. Can we win in Pittsburgh? Not with this play-calling, poor defense and sporadic offense. I’m hopeful for a Texans win, but I see this year being very long and disappointing. — Darryl K. More Texans Coverage JOHN MCCLAIN BY JOHN MCCLAIN, STAFF WRITER McClain: Big Ben has thwarted Texans like clockwork JOHN MCCLAIN JOHN MCCLAIN McClain: Texans' Watson, new receivers still adjusting to each... JOHN MCCLAIN JOHN MCCLAIN John McClain's takeaways: Less is more for J.J. Watt TEXAS SPORTS NATION AARON WILSON Texans, Reliant, Touchdown Club give $25,000 to HS football... TEXAS SPORTS NATION: TV & PODCASTS JOHN MCCLAIN, AARON WILSON Podcast: How can Texans win in Pittsburgh? JOHN MCCLAIN BY JOHN MCCLAIN, STAFF WRITER McClain: Texans lacking that opening drive JEROME SOLOMON BY JEROME SOLOMON, STAFF WRITER Solomon: Bill O'Brien lucky to have the only supporter he needs TEXAS SPORTS NATION: TV & PODCASTS JOHN MCCLAIN, AARON WILSON Podcast: Why the Texans sit at 0-2 Q: The Texans looked a little more competitive but did not show anything to convince me they can beat the Steelers so I'm seeing an 0-3 hole. Hope springs eternal which is essential for Texans fans. This looks like my year to adopt the Cardinals as my team. I lived in Phoenix for 50 years so it's not a random choice. With DeAndre Hopkins playing like he's a Cardinals veteran alongside the ever-reliable Larry Fitzgerald, I'm sure they're a fun team to watch and a nightmare to defend against. I'd like to become convinced that Bill O'Brien knows what he's doing, but the mountain of evidence to the contrary just keeps growing. — Greg G. Q: If Houston played KC and Baltimore nine more times each, they would lose all nine to both teams. They're probably not in the top five in the AFC! These are the teams they must compete with just to reach a Super Bowl. Houston is not even in the conversation to win it all. This sucks again for loyal Houston fans begging for a winner. O'Brien is the problem, not the solution. I fear we have many years before being able to make and succeed in the playoffs. I see easily an 8-8 team this year. — Rhett D. Q: I listen to Sports Radio 610 and read the comments from everyone and its all the same old thing — it’s O’Brien’s fault. When do all these high-priced prima donnas start hearing the comments about them? O’Brien got rid of Clowney because he wanted too much money, the same reason that he’s with his third team in three years. He got rid of Hopkins because he had three years left on the contract he signed. When is enough enough? These guys talk about helping people, then buy more cars or more jewelry or go to the strip clubs and make it rain. When do the owners that took the chance and spent their money to buy these teams say enough is enough and lock the doors and say no more, let’s get real on all these demands and I own the team and it’s my way or the highway? They don’t need the players — the players need them. — Tommy P. Q: Football 101: You can't expect to win by trading away your best players. — Tim H. Q: Bring DeAndre Hopkins back home. Please get rid of BOB, he's ruining the teams. Get rid of everyone in organization staff and the medical staff as well. — Billy W. Q: I have lived in Houston and followed sports and Houston is just not a winning town. Look at the poor play in this year’s first two games. You gave them an F. I give them a big F-minus. Okay, you don't win every game, but you should be at the top. We had a few times where we did get to the top but not near enough. Now the best was the Luv Ya Blue days with Bum Phillips. The owner did not like Bum getting all the credit so off went Bum, down went the Oilers. Sports is just way out of control. Look at the pay they get, the best heart surgeon does not come anywhere near. Now the real problem is kneeling when our beautiful flag is presented and the national anthem is played. Protest is no problem as when done in a positive and proper manner. These kneelers have a nationwide audience. What a disgrace for this great country. Remember, these guys are able to kneel because of the veterans. Just find another place and method to protest. I look at the headstones of our military with KIA (Killed in Action) and look what they gave for little pay. This protesting by kneeling has to stop. I and many others no longer watch or purchase commodities from the advertisers. This virus will also hurt. . I stand for the veterans. — James M. The Houston Chronicle’s Brian T. Smith discusses Texans coach Bill O’Brien’s curious decisions In their loss to the Ravens and whether anything has changed with the franchise. Video: Houston Chronicle Q: It all goes back to coaching and a head coach is only as good as the personnel around him. Frank Broyles passed that on to me a long time ago. And looks like he might have known what he was talking about. — Jim D. Q: I couldn’t agree more with you on the grade you gave the Texans against the Ravens. It’s probably not too late or too early to get rid of O’Brien as we all figured they would start out slow. That being said even if they go 10-6, they’re nowhere near the quality of the Ravens or the Chiefs. They have way too many holes on defense and even though they’ve got some big-name wide receivers, they are not on the same page. And the defense is absolutely horrible. Why have Kyler Murray and DeAndre Hopkins been able to get on the same page so quickly while the Texans are struggling? I looked at their schedule and based on how they’ve played even though it’s been only two weeks I figure them to be no better than 8-8. That being said, I think O’Brien should be fired. I don’t know who should replace him. It looks like trading Hopkins is a catastrophic mistake and trading Clowney he has also been a catastrophic mistake. Not resigning Reader is a catastrophic mistake. — Glen K. A: Glen, why was trading Clowney a catastrophic mistake? He didn’t do much in his one season with Seattle and had fewer sacks than Jacob Martin. He’s still getting in shape with the Titans. Would you have given him a $100 million contract? Nobody else has. As for D.J. Reader, good against the run, but over the last nine games last season, including the playoffs, they allowed like 166 yards a game rushing. And they still can’t stop the run. Q: Any idea why the Texans elected not to have crowd noise pumped into the stadium? Also, what the hell was Bill O’Brien thinking going forward on fourth and 1 on his own side of the field? — Jimmy B. A: They had crowd noise, Jimmy, but they didn’t have the volume turned up. As for the fourth and 1, the Ravens blitzed and nobody picked it up and the pass was incomplete. Sometimes you’re the bug. Sometimes you’re the windshield. OB was the bug. Q: I am a Texans fan and will watch and try to be positive, but nothing helps. Why doesn't offensive line push these teams back? Why is our QB constantly trying to throw 30 yards? Why is our center always standing after a play, typically backward and not forward? — Stephen G. A: The offensive line is off to a bad start against damn good defenses, Stephen. Watson is running for his life and trying to find receivers down the field, and he’s still thrown a lot of short passes. Q: Your article said Bill O'Brien called the fourth-down tragedy. Later in the article it said Tim Kelly is calling the plays. It looks like an OB call to me. Is O'Brien still calling the plays and Kelly is just a puppet or what? I was ready to turn the game off right after that call. I knew how the rest of the game would go. More of the same with stupid offensive calls. Both KC and Baltimore have active, varied offenses. Coach puts Watson in a position where the offense can't even operate. He continues to try to jam up the middle with his running plays. Isn't there some creativity somewhere? — Chuck W. A: Chuck, O’Brien made the decision to go for it, and Kelly called the play. Q: No takeaways about the coaching? I know you graded them F in your report card. Just curious if you had a more profound opinion? Remember OB’s the GM as well. No opinion on any of his trades so far? I know it’s early but I don’t see progress but then again that’s why as fans we look to you for insight. — Francisco M. A: Francisco, I wrote a column that included OB. I try not to duplicate things in my On the Texans column with my takeaways. Plus, I have to pay attention to what our columnists, Brian T. Smith and Jerome Solomon, are writing. Brian wrote about the fourth-and-1 call and quoted O’Brien. I wrote about it but didn’t quote Bill because we’re not supposed to duplicate quotes if we can avoid it. After a game, we try to cover every single angle in the Chronicle's print editions and on our sports website, Texas Sports Nation. As for OB’s trades, I’ve written about them often. Q: Now that we are two games in, who is the best quarterback in the AFC South? I know I have heard a lot of hype suggesting Deshaun Watson is the best, but if you go with wins, he is not the best. If you prefer using stats, he is buried behind such stellar talents as Gardner Minshew, Baker Mayfield and Justin Herbert. He is so far below Ryan Tannehill, Deshaun would need a telescope to see up that far. So is it the QB, the O-line coach or the BOB that is the problem with Deshaun? What irked me the most about the coverage of the team is trying to blame the defense. The defense was not good against KC but they held the Ravens to 16 points through three quarters. The lone touchdown was set up by the first of three turnovers by the offense in the first quarter. When you go for fourth and 1 in your territory, you need to make it. Three offensive turnovers in the first half is awful. The defense did let down in the fourth quarter but you could see it coming with their body language. You could tell they knew what we all knew. This offense is awful and they were never coming back. It is going to be a long year. I hope Deshaun survives it. — Tim M. A: Tim, they didn’t commit three turnovers in the first quarter. As for who’s the best QB in the AFC South, if you ask GMs and coaches around the NFL, I imagine everyone will tell you it’s Watson. You’re already written him off after two games against the best teams in the NFL. Q: I had a chance to hear your national radio interview on the Sirius NFL station Sunday morning. I thought you were really informative and brutally objective and really gave the rest of the country a sense of how many of us feel here locally. My questions are: How do you prepare for these things? My sense is that you stay immersed in your subject matter and then almost speak a verbal article in the Chronicle. And when did you start feeling comfortable doing these things. Finally, thank you so much for speaking in complete sentences. — Ray M. A: Thank you for listening, Ray, and taking the time to write. I do so many talk shows, podcasts, Zooms and a weekly television show and write six days a week for the Chronicle — every day but Saturday — and it just comes out when I open my big mouth. I love what I do, and I’m blessed to be doing it for a 45th year at the Chronicle. I try not to turn down anyone who calls me for a radio appearance, Zoom, podcast, etc. if I can work them in. I try to accommodate everyone on a weekly basis. Q: I'm curious as to why Bill O'Brien never provides specific details on what the team needs to work on after a bad game. It's always, “We need to do better" types of comments. I don't know why he will not provide specific details to the media and fans. Why is he always so vague? — Dan W. A: Dan, he addressed the bad run defense, Keke Coutee’s fumble, lack of consistency, etc., after the Baltimore loss. He does say they need to play and coach better. He’ll never single out players for criticism, and they appreciate it even if the fans don’t. Q: I know it’s a long season, but how much longer are the McNairs going to tolerate Billy O’s slow starts and faith-based personnel decisions. For the better part of seven years we have been hearing Billy say, “We have to start faster.” And the last few years, Billy has let go of or traded the best players on the team — Duane Brown, Brandon Brooks, Ben Jones, Glover Quin, JD Clowney, D-Hopkins, D.J. Reader. How do other teams figure out how to pay all these guys but Billy can’t? I know it’s not all Billy’s fault, but after the past few years, shouldn’t the McNairs realize Billy’s a below-average coach, at best? — Louis L. A: Geez, Louis, you’re so off base on some of your comments. Rick Smith traded Brown and let Quin go in free agency to sign Ed Reed. Brooks, Jones and Reader left in free agency. Would you have paid all of them what they wanted? Would you have paid Clowney $100 million? Teams have to make financial decisions on the salary cap. They can’t pay every player what he asks for. Nobody does. Q: I am amazed what Jacksonville has done the first two games. Jay Gruden has Minshew playing rather well and his offense looks to be pretty good. Is it possible that Cal's football team is imploding and the brain trust he has in place doesn't know that it is happening? I kind of got excited when the KILT 610 talking heads were saying things about all the speed at WR, and having two RBs who can catch the ball as well as run. And the fact that there were three new coordinators, bringing in new ideas and things should be different and much better. Looks like the OC is simply a clone of the previous one. Not sure about the DC. I still see opposing WRs and TEs running free like last year, and as you have pointed out many times, the run defense has disappeared. But Anthony Weaver is not missing gap assignments and trying to arm tackle ball carriers. Several of the players have gotten paid, but Cal is not getting his money's worth so far. When you predicted an 0-3 start, I figured you probably were correct and I thought those losses would be 2- or 3-point affairs, much like 2018. What I am seeing this season reminds a whole lot of 2005. Seemingly good players and coaches, but terrible execution and suspect game plans. From what you have said and written, Cal will not be making any changes unless the wheels completely fall off. Right now, I think his organization might be riding on the rims, but the wheels are still turning. Albeit slowly. Before the Baltimore game started, I watched the last 20 minutes of Arlington and Atlanta. Can you imagine Cal's team ever doing what Jerry's team did in that game? I feel bad that you have to endure another season covering Cal's team. I would truly love to see you cover a championship team before you retire. — Dennis W. A: Dennis, if they finish 2-14 like they did in 2005, I expect OB will be fired as Dom Capers was. But I don’t see them finishing 2-14. Q: I'm holding off any opinion on Kahale Warring at this point thanks to Bennie Joppru, a second-round pick in 2003 who never played a game after going on IR three years in a row. He seems to have played in one game in his fourth year and wound up in Seattle getting into five games and was never heard of again. Saved on laundry bill never having to wash his uniform. It's so easy and fun to be mean when you are a fan. — Larry V. A: Larry, unfortunately, when I see Warring going on IR for a second consecutive season, I think of Joppru, too. Unfortunately. Maybe he’ll figure it out and make something out of himself because he’s got talent but hasn’t learned how to use it. Sign up for the Daily Playbook newsletter Texas sports are back! Get the latest scores, news and analysis. Enter your email By subscribing, you agree to our Terms of use and acknowledge that your information will be used as described in our Privacy Policy. Photo of John McClain John McClain Follow John on: mcclain_on_nfl John McClain, a Waco native who graduated from Baylor in 1975, is in his 45th year at the Houston Chronicle and his 44th covering the National Football League, including the Oilers and Texans. He worked for the Waco Tribune Herald from 1973-76, when he accepted a job with the Chronicle. to cover the original Houston Aeros of the World Hockey Association. McClain has a plaque in the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio as the 2006 winner of the Dick McCann Memorial Award presented annually by the Pro Football Writers of America to a writer for his long and distinguished coverage of the NFL. He is past president of the Pro Football Writers of America. In 2019, he was voted into the Texas Sports Hall of Fame’s second class of media inductees. He's a member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame Selection Committee, the Pro Football Hall of Fame Seniors Committee and the Texas Sports Hall of Fame Selection Committee. In 2015, he was named as a Gridiron Legend in Texas, becoming the third member of the media behind Dave Campbell and Mickey Herskowitz. In 2019, he was voted into the Texas Sports Hall of Fame's second class of media honorees. McClain can be heard six times a week on the Texans' flagship station Sports Radio 610 in Houston. He also does weekly sports talk shows in Nashville, Knoxville, Waco, Austin and San Antonio. McClain also has appeared in eight movies: The Rookie, The Longest Yard, Spring Breakers, Secretariat, Invincible, Cook County, The Game Plan and Make It Rain.
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Prediction markets wont work. I'm not just saying this. Serious research has been done on the subject to say the exact same thing. Because of the know-it-all attitude I run into with many computer scientist, which I hate😁. I take extra caution to make sure I don't do the same. I come to say why prediction markets wont work after doing a massive amount of thinking with evidence to back it up. Perhaps it'll be analogical to ripping the band-aid off. Modifying expectations for investors, and forcing the producers of such a market to make solid game theoretical modifications to such markets to provide massive value over time. I'm not saying they won't work 100%, they'll slightly work. I am saying they won't be as high impact as we think they will be. For them to reach high impact, they need to make a lot of little changes to reach major objectives. I'll be referring to Duncan Watt's book, Everything Is Obvious: \Once You Know the Answer*. He's a physicist turned sociologist, turned computer scientist. His book got me deeply into systems theory and complexity in relation to the socio-economic realm years ago. So much that I'm now focusing and staking my entire career on it, even though so far the socio-econo-physics, complexity and analytics industry hasn't yielded any productive results for the world since its inception (besides a compromise of privacy to sell things). We still haven't solved market crashes, inequality, wars between countries, global warming and massive global debt. We've provided little value so far. My goal is to at some point change that over time; to prove our worth as an industry and provide value to people using the blockchain as a medium. The book is an easy read, and has references to why prediction markets wont work. Inside of the book he talks about common sense, and how it fails us for large scale problems. We're going to only focus on the prediction side in this piece. If I get a reasonable response for this (not necessarily a good one), I'll write more about complexity economics, social complexity and systems theory.
Reasons Why Prediction Markets Won't Work
1. Predicting Large Complex Systems Is Extremely Difficult In chapter 7, between pages 161 and 171, Duncan Watts talks heavily about us making predictions on complex adaptive systems. Generally, the more complex and large the systems are, the more difficult it is to predict the events that follow. This is especially the case when you, and all others have a massive degree of information asymmetry. Duncan Watts stated the following about complex systems:
In complex systems, however, which comprise most of our social and economic life, the best we can hope for is to reliably estimate the probabilities with which certain kinds of events will occur. Second, common sense also demands that we ignore the many uninteresting, unimportant predictions that we could be making all the time, and focus on those outcomes that actually matter. In reality ... black swan events that we most wish we could have predicted are not really events at all, but rather shorthand descriptions—“the French Revolution,” “the Internet,” “Hurricane Katrina,” “the global financial crisis”—of what are in reality whole swaths of history. Predicting black swans is therefore doubly hopeless, because until history has played out it’s impossible even to know what the relevant terms are.
He doesn't mean that everything in existence is unpredictable. He does say later that there's a fine line between predictable elements and unpredictable ones. He followed with a statement:
To oversimplify somewhat, there are two kinds of events that arise in complex social systems—events that conform to some stable historical pattern, and events that do not ... Every year, for example, each of us may or may not be unlucky enough to catch the flu ... because seasonal influenza trends are relatively consistent from year to year, drug companies can do a reasonable job of anticipating how many flu shots they will need to ship to a given part of the world in a given month ... consumers with identical financial backgrounds may vary widely in their likelihood of defaulting on a credit card, depending on what is going on in their lives ... credit card companies can do a surprisingly good job of predicting aggregate default rates by paying attention to a range of socioeconomic, demographic, and behavioral variables. And Internetcompanies are increasingly taking advantage of the mountains of Web-browsing data generated by their users to predict the probability that a given user will click on a given search result.
Prediction markets don't distinguish what's reasonably predictable or what's not. The larger and more abstract the event, the more likely it is we won't be able to interpret a solid prediction of what's real or not. 2. Prediction Markets Provide Little Gain Compared to Statistical Studies The prospect of prediction markets are very nice. Inside of that same chapter, Watts put some focus on prediction markets. Starting with the introduction of the idea.
One increasingly popular method is to use what is called a prediction market—meaning a market in which buyers and sellers can trade specially designed securities whose prices correspond to the predicted probability that a specific outcome will take place. - p 164
Continuing with understanding why our sentiment of prediction markets is so high. I too get excited about the idea of them, and he stated the potential scenarios of how they would interact:
The potential of prediction markets to tap into collective wisdom has generated a tremendous amount of excitement among professional economists and policy makers alike. Imagine, for example, that a market had been set up to predict the possibility of a catastrophic failure in deep-water oil drilling in the Gulf prior to the BP disaster in April 2010. Possibly insiders like BP engineers could have participated in the market, effectively making public what they knew about the risks their firms were taking. Possibly then regulators would have had a more accurate assessment of those risks and been more inclined to crack down on the oil industry before a disaster took place. Possibly the disaster could have been averted.
However, he and many others have done studies in prediction markets to test if this can accurately happen. Watts tested for the accuracy of markets compared to statistical mechanics:
little attention has been paid to evaluating the relative performance of different methods, so nobody really knows for sure. To try to settle the matter, my colleagues at Yahoo! Research and I conducted a systematic comparison of several different prediction methods, where the predictions in question were the outcomes of NFL football games. To begin with, for each of the fourteen to sixteen games taking place each weekend over the course of the 2008 season, we conducted a poll in which we asked respondents to state the probability that the home team would win as well as their confidence in their prediction. We also collected similar data from the website Probability Sports, an online contest where participants can win cash prizes by predicting the outcomes of sporting events. Next, we compared the performance of these two polls with the Vegas sports betting market—one of the oldest and most popular betting markets in the world—as well as with another prediction market, TradeSports. And finally, we compared the prediction of both the markets and the polls against two simple statistical probability that home teams win—which they do 58 percent of the time—while the second model also factored in the recent win-loss records of the two teams in question. In this way, we set up a six-way comparison between different prediction methods—two statistical models, two markets, and two polls.
The results:
Given how different these methods were, what we found was surprising:All of them performed about the same.To be fair,the two prediction markets performed a little better than the other methods*, which is consistent with the theoretical argument above. But the very best performing method—the Las Vegas Market—was only about 3 percentage points more accurate than the worst-performing method, which was the model that always predicted the home team would win with 58 percent probability.*
He's a reasonable scientist. When he crafted a result, he tested it to see if he was wrong using other data-sets. We generally call it falsification. It's the process of testing a hypothesis for inaccuracies. Doing this in the social realm is very hard, yet also requires the same amount of rigor. He followed it with another set of studies. The first talked to the prediction market researchers:
When we first told some prediction market researchers about this result, their reaction was that it must reflect some special feature of football ... Football games, in other words, have a lot of randomness built into them—arguably, in fact, that’s what makes them exciting. In order to be persuaded, our colleagues insisted, we would have to find the same result in some other domain for which the signal-to-noise ratio might be considerably higher than it is in the specific case of football.
So they tested for baseball. This was their results for that.
We compared the predictions of the Las Vegas sports betting markets over nearly twenty thousand Major League baseball games played from 1999 to 2006 with a simple statistical model based again on home-team advantage and the recent win-loss records of the two teams. This time,the difference between the two was even smaller—in fact, the performance of the market and the model were indistinguishable. In spite of all the statistics and analysis, in other words, and in spite of the absence of meaningful salary caps in baseball and the resulting concentration of superstar players on teams like the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox, the outcomes of baseball games are even closer to random events than football games. - p170
3. Some People Want to See The World Burn This is the final reason. In the Dark Knight, Alfred had a power speech directly to Bruce Wayne. He made the statement "some people just want to watch the world burn". This is a problem generally faced with every game theoretical problem. It faces characters like the Joker in the Batman, Hisoka in Hunter X Hunter. The characters that just destroy for the fun of it. Duncan Watts actually explored the concept. He states the following:
... it exposed a potential vulnerability of the theory, which assumes that rational traders will not deliberately lose money. The problem is that if the goal of a participant is instead to manipulate perceptions of people outside the market (like the media) and if the amounts involved are relatively small (tens of thousands of dollars, say, compared with the tens of millions of dollars spent on TV advertising), then they may not care about losing money, in which case it’s no longer clear what signal the market is sending.
Prediction markets forget about the idea of reflexivity, and the desire just to destroy stuff. Ultimately there's no protections against this. Even if they were to find enough active participants, you would have to worry about somebody with $1-2 million dollars just to influence somebody's perceptions on small, yet significant ideas, it could wreck havoc on people using such markets to plan. Especially if those plans are leveraged. It's a problem of opportunity cost. Generally, if I earn more for destroying your system from another, even if I earn indirectly, I'll just do it because why not? It's essentially the same problem behind market manipulation. People would be fine destroying the market if they get some indirect benefit from it. George Soros did it when he broke the Bank of England, some unknown figures did it when they tanked the market below $6000. It's easy. There's no defense mechanism against it in international markets, where anybody with a computer can tap in and blow things up. I recall seeing a recent article by somebody on this subreddit. He was putting together a solution to reduce the uncooperative games people may want to play and convert them into cooperative games using staking as a means to limit options. It works to an extent, but it runs the problem of destructive tendencies and opportunity cost. It also requires identity, which I doubt people will subscribe to if they don't have to. That's it So that concludes why I reason prediction markets wont work. It's mostly an analysis. I infer, that just because you can't use them in one way, doesn't mean you can use them in others. I would say that it's unreasonable to believe that's the case. The predictions are just too big in range and not heavily well defined. Again, if I get feedback to this I'll post on other topics like . Sources and Bits of Information:
To be precise, we had different amounts of data for each of the methods—for example, our own polls were conducted over only the 2008–2009 season, whereas we had nearly thirty years of Vegas data, and TradeSports predictions ended in November 2008, when it was shut down—so we couldn’t compare all six methods over any given time interval. Nevertheless, for any given interval, we were always able to compare multiple methods. See Goel, Reeves, et al. (2010) for details.
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Good boy rating: 7/10 Charity link Starting out with my Raiders most hated rivals, the Broncos most good boy is Von Miller, a 6-time Pro-Bowl OLB. The biggest knock to his good boy-ness came in 2013, when he was suspended for violating the league's rules on drugs. He apologised and has done a lot to help restore his character. Von is a big supporter of our troops, and has a foundation to help kids get glasses.
Kansas City Chiefs Good boy: Eric Berry
Good boy rating: 11/10 Charity link If this were a test to see what player would be the toughest boy, Eric Berry would win. After playing 5 seasons in the NFL, Eric Berry was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma, but was back on the football field a year later. Berry has suffered several injuries throughout his playing career, including a torn ACL in 2011, a high ankle sprain in 2014, and a ruptured Achilles this past season. As a Raiders fan, I find it very hard to root against him. He is exceedingly inspirational, and an overall great person. Eric runs The Eric Berry Foundation, which provides beneficial opportunities and a safe environment for children to participate in team sports and leadership development programs in order to encourage strength of body, mind and spirit. Eric also travels with mobile medical clinics, even going to Ugandan villages in 2013 and 2014.
Los Angeles Chargers Good boy: Philip Rivers
Good boy rating: 9/10 Charity link Rivers is known for being a fantastic leader and great trash talker. A 7 year boy fighting two different types of cancer in LA wanted nothing other than to meet Philip, so Philip got in a car, drove two hours each way just to meet him, and watched a Ravens-Chargers game with him. Rivers said, "there was a kid that could be dying any day, and he wants to meet me of all people. This 7-year-old could make any wish and he wants to hang out with me. Man, you don't turn that one down." Philip’s charity is Rivers of Hope, a free 24 hour crisis line.
Oakland Raiders Good boy: Derek Carr
Good boy rating: 10/10 Charity link Now for my favorite Good boy. This one was tough because I had to come up with a fair and unbiased rating for him. Derek is a fantastic man that is not shy to stand up for what he believes in. He is very involved in his faith, and works closely with Valley Children’s to help sick children. After signing his $125mil contract, the biggest contract in NFL history at the time, Derek was very excited to talk about all the positive ways he will spend his money, saying, “The exciting thing for me money-wise, honestly, is this money is going to help a lot of people. I’m very thankful to have it, that it’s in our hands because it’s going to help people. Not only in this country, but in a lot of countries around the world. That’s what’s exciting to me.”
Houston Texans Good boy: JJ Watt
Good boy rating: 37,000,000/10 Charity link Everyone knew this one was coming. The Walter Payton Man of the Year winner this season, JJ Watt made headlines after raising $37,000,000 for Hurricane Harvey relief. He not only raised that substantial amount, but he also did as much as he could by going out and giving the men and women of Houston food and water. Although it took a detour to help after a disaster hit home, JJ’s foundation, “mission is to provide after-school opportunities for middle-school aged children in the community to become involved in athletics, so that they may learn the character traits of accountability, teamwork, leadership, work ethic, and perseverance, while in a safe and supervised environment with their peers.”
Indianapolis Colts Good boy: Darius Butler
Good boy rating: 7/10 Charity link This player is probably one one of lesser known good boys, but it is not undeserved. Darius’ foundation strives to help feed the hungry and inspire kids in rough communities. His father served 11 years in the Army, so Darius knew the importance of life and the cruel, uncaring void that we call a universe.
Sacksonville Jaguars Good boy: Blake Bortles
Good boy rating: 7/10 Charity link Blake Bortles is anything but trash. A mid-tier starter on the field, Blake gets a lot of hate thrown his way. He has become a fan favorite after upsetting several teams who called him and his team garbage. Off the field, he is a fan favorite for his goofy, awkward interview with Barstool, and his fantastic charity which supports first responders in the Jacksonville area, and helps people with intellectual and developmental disabilites persue full and indepent lives.
Tennessee Titans Good boy: Delanie Walker
Good boy rating: 10/10 Charity link Everything I hear about Delanie is positive. He has broken out the past 4 years, getting over 800 yards 4 seasons in a row as Marcus Mariota’s go-to receiver, and he has taken advantage of his success on the field and used to to spread awareness and help those less fortunate than himself. You may remember him offering to let bullying victim Keaton Jones come to a Titans game. His foundation stands to provide inner city and low-income children with educational opportunites and resources to reach their full potential.
Baltimore Ravens Good boy: Joe Flacco
Good boy rating: 6/10 Charity link Joe Flacco is elite in the hearts of Ravens fans everywhere. He has fully embraced Maryland and the Baltimore area, spending a lot of time working for the community. While he doesn’t have his own foundation, Joe has worked with several other charities, most notably The Red Devils of Maryland, a breast cancer foundation. He has also worked with several of other Raven’s players foundations, including Ray Rice, Ben Grubbs, Derrick Mason, and Ed Reed.
Cincinnati Bengals Good boy: Andy Dalton
Good boy rating: 8/10 Charity link Andy is a fellow Texan and ginger, so I will always support him and his fire crotch. Andy’s foundation became famous after he put the Bills in the playoffs and fans donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to it. The foundation, run by his wife, does several things for Cincinnati and Texan communities, including bring technology, educational resources, and entertainment devices to schools and hospitals, a daycare for parents of sick kids so they can go and have a date night, a all-expense-paid trip to a theme park for sick kids, a fund for medical equipment that goes to the families of sick children, and trips to children hospitals from Santa and his Elves.
Cleveland Browns Good boy: Joe Thomas
Good boy rating: 10/10 Charity link Joe Thomas is known for being a dedicated player, sticking with a franchise that shoots itself in the foot repeatedly. He is a fan favorite for being a super cool dude. He doesn’t have his own foundation, but is a huge advocate of Shoes and Clothes for Kids, which gives shoes and clothes to kids. One thing is for sure, Joe Thomas isn’t as terrible as his franchise is.
Pittsburgh Steelers Good boy: Alejandro Villanueva
Good boy rating: 11/10 Charity Alejandro, a former Army Ranger, is a massive supporter of the military. After bring national attention to himself after accidentally standing away from his team, his jersey sales spiked, and he donated all of the money he got from them to the USO and other military non-profits.
Buffalo Bills Good boy: Andy Dalton
Good boy rating: 12/10 Charity link Andy is a fellow Texan and ginger, so I will always support him and his fire crotch. Andy’s foundation became famous after he put the Bills in the playoffs and fans donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to it. The foundation, run by his wife, does several things for Cincinnati and Texan communities, including bring technology, educational resources, and entertainment devices to schools and hospitals, a daycare for parents of sick kids so they can go and have a date night, a all-expense-paid trip to a theme park for sick kids, a fund for medical equipment that goes to the families of sick children, and trips to children hospitals from Santa and his Elves.
Miami Dolphins Good boy: Kenny Stills
Good boy rating: 4/10 Charity link I honestly had no idea to pick for the Dolphins. Jarvis Landry, Ryan Tannehill, and Cameron Wake don’t seem to have favorite charities, and Jay Cutler’s foundation is shut down, or at least doesn’t have a website or anything. Most of the charity work I found under Jay Cutler is from years ago. Kenny was their Walter Payton Man of the Year nominee and is active in the stand against social injustice.
New England Patriots Good boy: Nate Solder
Good boy rating: 6.9/10 Charity link Nate protected Jimmy G’s beautiful face for a couple games. He also did some charity work or something with kids or something, but he protected Jimmy G’s face. But in all seriousness, Nate is a great guy. He works with the Patriots foundation to help build playground for kids.
New York Jets Good boy: Quincy Enunwa
Good boy rating: 7/10 Charity link A lot of people may have forgotten about Quincy, but I haven’t. He’s a great slot receiver, a real gym rat. He won United Way of NYC’s Hometown Hero award, and works with NYC PAL to help kids play sports.
Dallas Cowboys Good boy: Jason Witten
Good boy rating: 11/10 Charity link Jason is a stand up dude on and off the field. I always thought he ran real weird though. That doesn’t matter though, he’s a cool dude. His foundation helps with NFL Play 60, and helps put positive influences in battered women’s shelters all over Texas. I implore you to go to his charity link and read about all the things his foundation does. It’s fantastic and I’m not surprised because Jason is just so great.
New York Giants Good boy: Eli Manning
Good Bote rating: 10/10 Charity link Eli is a massive dork and is totally self aware of that. He’s such a great guy too. He is responsible for the Pats losing 2 SBs, and works closely with several charities and organizations. The one I linked to is one for children with cancer, and him and his wife will match all donations to it. Eli is a really good boy.
Philidelphia Eagles Good boy: Carson Wentz
Good boy rating: 17/10 Charity link Carson was so close to locking up the MVP trophy before he tore his ACL. After reading about his foundation, I had to up his Good boy rating. One of his foundations 3 objectives is to support the development of individuals by providing service dogs to help increase their quality of life. I got a service dog several years ago and he saved my life. I am so happy to hear Carson is trying to help more people get service dogs.
Washington Redskins Good boy: Kirk Cousins
Good boy rating: 10/10 Charity link Kirk loves Julie very much. He is knowns for complementing players for hitting him and apologizing to his O-Line after sacks for holding onto the ball for to long. Whoever lands him in free agency is very lucky to get him and Julie. He and the Redskins donated several dollars to The Elaine Shuster Foundation, which brings money to education in Maryland.
Chicago Bears Good boy: Sam Acho
Good boy rating: 13/10 Charity link As a massive Longhorns fan, I’ve always loved Acho. He is well known for his trips to Nigeria to help those less fortunate. He, and his brother, are fantastic and what he does for people cannot be understated.
Detroit Lions Good boy: Matthew Stafford
Good boy rating: 10/10 Charity link Stafford is seriously underrated and I like him a lot. Everything I just read on him said that he does a lot of charity work but it isn’t publicized very often. I found a cool story where he won an auction for Lions tickets, parting with $15,000, then gave the tickets to a sick child. What a good boy.
Green Bay Packers Good boy: Aaron Rodgers
Good boy rating: 7/10 Charity Aaron Rodgers is possibly the most talented QB to ever play the game of football. He’s also the star of some state farm commercials that has a very good boy in it. He doesn’t good work off the field too, he donated $38k to Salvation Army.
Minnesota Vikings Good boy: Teddy Bridgewater
Good boy rating: 10/10 Charity link His purpose will not be denied.
Atlanta Falcons Good boy: Julio Jones
Good boy rating: 7/10 Charity link Julio would be a very good boy. He would be very good at catch. He, along with his Falcon teammates visit Children Miracle Network Hospitals to cheer sick kids up. He is also a big fan of Campbell’s Soup.
Carolina Panthers Good boy: Cam Newton
Good boy rating: 10/10 Charity link Cam is known for his confidence on and off the field, so I think he would be a hard boy to settle down and train, but I bet he would be a good boy once he is trained. He works at his foundation to enhance the lives of youth by addressing their educational, physical, and social needs.
New Orleans Saints Good boy: Drew Brees
Good boy rating: 14/10 Charity link I lived in the NOLA area when Hurricane Katrina hit, and what Drew has done for the people of that area is immaculate. He does his best to make the community better and inspire every person he meets. He would be a very awesome boy.
Tampa Bay Buccaners Good boy: Gearld McCoy
Good boy rating: 7/10 Charity link Gerald grew up hungry and lost his mom at only 19 to an unexpected Brain Aneurysm. He had a rough road to get here, but that doesn’t matter, Brian, he’s here. He spends time with kids at free football clinics, teaching them how to be great men like himself.
Arizona Cardinals Good boy: Larry Fitzgerald
Good boy rating: 13/10 Charity link Larry is well known for being a fantastic person. He lost his mother when he was young and only used that as motivation. He continues to help with breast cancer research to this day, and has played at an elite level for an extremely long time.
Los Angeles Rams Good boy: Aaron Donald
Good boy rating: 7/10 Charity link The winner of Defensive of Player of the Year in 2017, Donald is the best DT around. Wade Phillips even said he should have won MVP. A couple years back, Donald won a Madden charity tournament, giving $51k to the Make-A-Wish Foundation.
Good boy rating: 16/10 Charity link Russell is the definition of a class act. He has donated millions on top of millions to various charities and hosts golf tournaments. He even gave the Patriots a Superbowl. He is a favorite of mine and if it wasn’t for Carson Wentz being such a dog lover, and JJ Watt saving a city, he would be the most good boy in the league.
A NHL Betting Strategy by Professor MJ: The Streak Breaker Play (based on 9 years of data)
Hello savvy sports investors, today I’m going to unveil an interesting hockey betting strategy that I call “The NHL Streak Breaker Play”. It basically answers the intuitive question I asked myself a while ago:
Considering the public’s tendency to overreact to recent results, should we bet on teams which are currently on a losing streak facing a team riding a winning streak (in the NHL)?
Let’s see if we can profit from this proposal! 1. Basic Exploration First of all, you should note that the results presented in this article come from a dataset containing information about all NHL games from the nine (9) seasons covering the 2007/2008 to 2015/2016 period. Let’s kick off this study with a very simple analysis: we are betting $1 on each team coming off at least one loss playing against a team coming off at least one win. Here are the results:
Record = 2533-2767 (win percentage = 47.8%)
Profit = -$202.16 (ROI = Return On Investment = -3.8%)
To put these numbers in perspective, how much money would we have won or lost from using the opposite strategy (i.e. betting on teams coming off at least one win facing a team coming off at least one loss)? The answer is: -$181.43 (-3.4%). As you can see, the initial suggested strategy is not doing any better than the opposite plan. We are not off to a good start, but please hang on because the sun is about to shine! From now on, I will use odds with “reduced juice”. In my dataset, when two teams were evenly matched the juice was 20 cents (for example -110 versus -110 in American format, which is the equivalent of 1.91 lines in decimal format). That is not representative of the reality as you can obtain much better odds simply by playing with sportsbooks like Pinnacle or 5Dimes. Also, if you have an account with multiple bookies you can get even better odds by shopping for the best line. Consequently, I have adjusted odds in my dataset so that we are now getting -105 lines (1.95 in decimal format) when both teams are equally likely to win the match. With reduced juice, the profit numbers above become -$100.95 (-1.9%) when betting the team on a losing streak versus -$89.98 (-1.7%) when betting the team on a winning streak. 2. Length of the Winning and Losing Streaks All right, let’s now refine our analysis to see if we can find a winning strategy. But first I’d like to introduce a little bit of notation to simplify the writing for the remainder of this report:
w = number of games from the winning streak
l = number of games from the losing streak
Teams W = teams coming off at least one win
Teams L = teams coming off at least one loss
Let’s study the performance of the suggested strategy both as a function of “w” and “l”. Ideally, we’d like to see our winnings increase as these two variables go up. In plain English, are we making more money when backing a team on a big losing streak facing a team on a big winning streak? Let’s start by focusing exclusively on the performance of the suggested strategy as a function of “w”, the number of consecutive wins by the team we are betting against, also called “fading”:
WINNING STREAK (from team we are fading)
Profit Teams L
# Games
1
-$131.29
2664
2
$23.73
1277
3
-$11.69
679
4
$27.00
345
5
-$8.93
150
6
-$3.84
82
7+
$4.07
103
TOTAL
-$100.95
5300
As you can see, most of the damage is done when fading teams on a 1-game winning streak. If we remove those cases and only bet when Team W is coming off at least 2 wins, we are earning +$30.34 which yields a +0.6% ROI. Such a return on investment is very small, but at least we are not losing anymore! We’re talking about a VERY SIMPLE strategy here: bet teams coming off at least one loss facing a team coming off at least two straight wins. That’s it! Let’s turn our attention to the performance of the suggested strategy as a function of “l”, the number of consecutive losses by the team we are backing:
LOSING STREAK (from team we are backing)
Profit Teams L
# Games
1
-$113.88
2574
2
$26.79
1359
3
$25.51
706
4
-$12.20
347
5
-$7.14
153
6
-$7.41
77
7+
-$12.62
84
TOTAL
-$100.95
5300
We observe a similar pattern to the one we saw earlier, where the vast majority of the losses occur in the first row. If you remove the cases where we backed teams coming off a single loss, the profit becomes positive: +$12.93 (ROI = +0.2%). Again, the benefit is small but at least we are not throwing money out the window anymore! The natural question that might have popped into your head at this point is the following: what happens if we remove all cases of w = 1 and l = 1 simultaneously? In other words, what is the performance of the strategy consisting of betting teams coming off at least 2 straight losses when playing against a club riding a winning streak of at least 2 matches? The answer: 662 bets won, 708 bets lost (a 48.3% success rate on a total of 1370 games) with a +$51.97 profit for a +3.8% ROI. Things are getting more interesting, right? 3. The Road/Home Split I have read an article online claiming that betting all visiting teams over the last 10 years led to a ROI of -0.7%, as opposed to -3.1% when betting all home teams. I figured I would check if our strategy leads to better returns when backing road versus home teams. Let me reveal the general conclusion right away: the road/home split does not affect the results at all. Let’s start by showing the performance of the initial idea which recommended backing any team coming off a loss when facing a team coming off a win:
When the backed team was on the road: Profit = -$41.28 (-1.5%)
When the backed team was at home: Profit = -$59.67 (-2.3%)
Notice how the sum is -$41.28 – $59.67 = -$100.95, which is the same figure we showed earlier. As you can see, the results were equally bad in both cases. How about the road/home split of our latest recommended strategy, which claims you should back teams who have lost at least 2 games in a row versus a team riding a winning streak of at least 2 games? Here are the results:
When the backed team was on the road: Profit = +$29.50 (+4.5%)
When the backed team was at home: Profit = +$22.47 (+3.2%)
Again, no statistical difference between the two situations so this factor seems irrelevant for the sake of our investigation. 4. The Odds Split Is the suggested betting strategy performing better for a certain set of odds? That question came to my mind after realizing we may be winning less, or even losing money, on teams where the odds were pretty high. Not because the system does not work, but simply because the vigorish (the casino’s commission) is bigger in these instances. Let’s see the results, still based on the strategy which consists of betting any team on a losing streak of 2+ games facing a team coming off at least 2 consecutive wins:
Decimal odds
# Games
Profit
1.67 or less
163
$2.01
(1.67 - 1.77]
134
$6.32
(1.77 - 1.84]
79
-$10.04
(1.84 - 1.92]
76
$8.73
(1.92 - 1.97]
42
$10.66
(1.97 - 2.06]
99
$4.32
(2.06 - 2.16]
99
-$22.67
(2.16 - 2.255]
98
-$13.91
(2.255 - 2.36]
97
-$4.48
(2.36 - 2.46]
82
$17.47
(2.46 - 2.59]
76
$2.40
(2.59 - 2.71]
70
$17.05
(2.71 - 2.79]
54
-$1.60
(2.79 - 2.89]
44
$7.35
(2.89 - 2.99]
23
$12.55
(2.99 - 3.11]
41
$1.53
(3.11 - 3.26]
47
$7.20
(3.26 - 3.56]
26
$11.78
Above 3.56
20
-$4.70
TOTAL
1370
$51.97
It looks like my initial fear of losing money on teams where the odds were high was wrong. We are earning a profit in 5 of the 6 highest odds categories. Only the last grouping led to negative results. However, the losses were fairly small so I leave it up to you to decide if you wish to avoid cases where you are backing a team with odds above 3.56 in decimal format (+256 in American format). We notice that the strategy yields negative results for decimal odds of 2.36 or less (+136 or less in American format). Here is the actual breakdown:
Decimal odds of 2.36 or less: -$19.06 on 887 games (ROI = -2.1%)
Decimal odds over 2.36: +$71.03 on 483 games (ROI = +14.7%)
There is a striking difference among the two splits, and it appears like the recommended strategy works best when backing an underdog (which cannot be too small of an underdog). 5. Final Word Here is a summary of the betting strategy called “The NHL Streak Breaker Play”.
Bet all NHL teams coming off at least two straight losses when facing an opponent coming off at least two consecutive wins, but only if the decimal odds are 2.37 or above (+137 in American format). The estimated ROI (Return On Investment) on such bets is +14.7%.
I would like to end this analysis by putting the results in perspective. You may wonder how much one can expect to earn during one full NHL season by following this strategy. The truth is you won’t get super rich because there aren’t that many games meeting the three required criteria for betting. We made 71.03 units over 9 seasons, which amounts to around 8 units per year. If you are a $100 bettor, you can thus expect to make an $800 profit during one NHL season. Nothing to get overly excited about, but a smart gambler needs to find several such angles in order to become a truly successful sports investor. If you enjoyed this sports betting strategy-based article and would like to kept up-to-date on my future work including more betting strategies about the NHL-NBA-NFL to come in the near future, you can either signup to my mailing list (bottom of the page) or join my Facebook group. Thanks for reading this report and don’t hesitate to contact me for comments/questions! Professor MJ
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