Exploiting the Numbers: Purdue

The Prediction Tracker (http://www.thepredictiontracker.com/) has been updated for the Purdue opener. For those of you that have not visited their site, it is a great source for detecting and exploiting any variances between the current line on a game and the consensus median line compiled by dozens of computer models. Early in the season, said variances are often only indicators of imperfect modeling or unknown information. Later in the season, variances can be big buzzing neon signs that it is time to send a wad of cash down to Vegas with your uncle Terry. As you can imagine, these variances are better exploited across a sizable pool of games than with one big push of your chips to the center of the table. My Dad has done pretty well at squeezing $1 singles and $3 parlays out of his buddy Bruno using this method as his guide over the last three years. Of course, my final bit of advice as always is: don’t take advice from me. Knowing all this, let’s take a look at Purdue.


The opening line is Irish by 10 and the money has been coming in on the Irish, resulting in a bet up spread of 11 as of the publication of this post. The median prediction by all computer models has the Irish winning by 9.83 points with one of the smaller standard deviations of any of the opening games, meaning most everyone agrees within a very tight range that the Irish will win, but without covering the spread. Well, fine, we’ll take that over losing and covering, right? One point of interest is the contrarian high vote of the poll – the Moore Power Ratings has the Irish winning (and covering) by 12. Looking back at last year’s results over the course of an entire season, Moore was a top 10 predictor against the spread, averaging about 52% correct. That should solidify any indecision you may have to the point of redirecting your discretionary spending to a malted beverage before the game, and reinforce the fact that even if you are the best of the best, you can only ever hope to have the slightest of edges against the house.  And by the "house", we're not talking about the house Rock built, we're talking about the one that was built with all the money they took from you last time you were down there.

Nevertheless, we will update this analysis before the big weekend arrives.