NHL Betting Scheme Update

Keep riding those Flyers' overs, even with Giroux out

We're more than 1/3 of the way into the NHL season, and it's time to give an update on the NHL Over/Under betting scheme featuring teams in the top and bottom 5 in goals scored/goals against. To review, if two teams in the top 5 in goal scoring, bottom 5 in goals against, or one of each, are playing against each other, the bet is an Over. If you flip these (bottom 5 in goal scoring, top 5 in goals against, or one of each), then the bet is an Under. If you've followed this over the year to date, your numbers are looking like this:

Overs:

Wins - 18
Losses - 11
Pushes - 1

Net: +5.27 units (i.e. if you're betting $50 per game, you'd be up ~$261)

Unders:


Wins - 6
Losses - 7
Pushes - 3

Net: -1.55 units (i.e. down $76 betting $50 per game)

As you can see, your ROI is very good betting overs with the system. Hopefully that can keep up. It may turn the other way as the season draws on, as the books get more and more familiar with the high goal-scoring teams. I'm very interested to see how this turns out over a whole year. As a note, I'm generally just taking lines whenever I see them/look at the book (seeing as I'm not actually betting these at the moment). A good bettor will shop around for the best line or anticipate a line move, and would probably have a better bottom line.

Generally, overs are a "sucker bet", with the public leaning towards them in most situations. However, with the current state of the NHL, most bettors (sharps and public alike) are tending to keep to the unders. Generally, this gives you a better price betting the overs. That means this system has a pretty good chance of staying profitable for the rest of year. And if you're actually betting real money following the system, you're welcome.

NHL Betting Scheme #1 USA GOGO

With the NHL season in full swing, the most logical thing to do was to... try to figure out a way to beat the oddsmakers. Obviously. After doing a little (and I mean a little) brainstorming, the plan was to look at the top 5 and bottom 5 teams in Goals Per Game and Goals Against Average with the idea that if two teams in the top five in goals per game met up, the result would be an over. Looking at last year’s results, and using the standard O/U line of 5.5, it was found that roughly 17 of the 23 games between 2 of these 5 teams went over, a huge advantage. Obviously there is some bias to this, as the teams’ final GPG average was skewed by these individual games.

So, using the same idea and stretching the previous year’s (09-10) top 5 into the 10-11 season yielded less fruitful results. Of the 30 games between these teams, only 13 of them went over. However, the caveat to this is that the Penguins were one of the top 5 from 09-10. Pittsburgh was decimated by injuries last year so many of the games involving them tended to stay under. Maybe a healthy Pittsburgh team shifts the advantage back to the over side.

HE'S BAAAAAACK!!

With both of these things in mind, my idea is to check the games every night , looking at the current season (‘11-12) running GPG and GAA totals. If teams from the top/bottom 5 are meeting in a given night, that game will be an over bet or and under bet respectively. So, last night the Stars and Kings met, they had allowed the 3rd and 4th least goals per game (3rd and 4th in GAA). This meant this game should be bet as an under (the line was 5). The Kings ended up winning 5-3, so 0-1 for the year on Unders.

I also wanted to look at combinations, i.e. when a team was top 5 in GPG playing against a team that was bottom 5 in GAA, or vice versa. Last night, Philly (4th in GPG) played against Winnipeg (3rd worst GAA). This game would be an example of an over bet (the line was 5.5). The game BARELY went over... okay not really -- the final was 9-8. So 1-0 for the year on Overs.I plan on continuing to map this over the course of the year and see how the system fares.