This is a project to develop a sports betting strategy and develop a ShinyApp to track and input sports bets, create dashboard of basic performance statistics, and find any potential insights in differnt analysts' projections. Currently I am just using FiveThirtyEight's NHL, NBA, NFL, and Club Soccer rankings to place bets, however would like to incorperate more analysts and compare performances.
Background: Started by Nate Silver, his motivation for FiveThirtyEight was to "analyze quantitative aspects of the political game to enlighten a broader audience." After much sucecss in predicting 49/50 states voting outcomes in 2008, he continues to presidential elections. Working as a baseball analyst before starting FiveThirtyEight, he has expanded his sports prediting scope to including: MLB, NBA, NFL, Global and Club Soccer (football), NHL, and many other sports tournaments suchs as March Madness. Below you will find my methedology for betting with FiveThirtyEight's predictions, specifically NBL, NFL, NHL, and slowly incorporating Club Soccer. The underlying assumptions being made for betting is that FiveThirtyEight is correct and accurate and that DraftKings is biased towards moneymaking behavior and gives spreads, chances of winnings, odds, etc. to help push betting more --Volume or amount.
Looking at the NBA predictions page, I navigate to "Games". Looking at FiveThirtyEight's projections, I look at the day I want to bet on and then compare their predictions to what DraftKings offers. Then betting goes as follows:
If FiveThirtyEight's point spread is larger than the favorite on DraftKings, I bet on the favorite. If it is lower, then I bet on the underdog. If they are equal (i.e. PK --pick), then I bet on who FiveThirtyEight predicts who will win. The logic behind this is that if FiveThirtyEight gives a larger spread, then there is a great chance I will win the bet because I'll have a couple extra points to play with. Similarly, if the spread is less than what DraftKings posts, then the underdog has a greater chance of covering the spread.
FiveThirtyEight, in addtion to giving a point spread, give a percent chance of winning. DraftKings also does this ~24 hours before the posted game time.