College Football Bowl Pool Math Question

Im in a pool here in my neighborhood with 160 entries. I am 8-2 in picking games thru the 1st 10 games and I just got to thinking...

Is there a way to figure a bell curve type number of what the possible score will be to win this thing? I understand it wont be exact, but just curious what the odds or probabilites would show the curve to look like.

I understand it wont be 100% accurate and that someone COULD go 35-0, but...what SHOULD happen based on the math?

Quote: mwalz9

Im in a pool here in my neighborhood with 160 entries. I am 8-2 in picking games thru the 1st 10 games and I just got to thinking...

Is there a way to figure a bell curve type number of what the possible score will be to win this thing? I understand it wont be exact, but just curious what the odds or probabilites would show the curve to look like.

I understand it wont be 100% accurate and that someone COULD go 35-0, but...what SHOULD happen based on the math?

Is this straight up or against the spread?

If it is straight up, and it wouldn't really be a bell curve this way, but what I would do is convert the MoneyLine from a trusted source of Lines to convert the desired result(s) into a probability based on the formula from this website:

http://www.bettingexpert.com/blog/how-to-convert-odds

I would then add up the total percentages of the probabilities of a win for the team picked and then divide by 35 in order to get the Mean. At that point, I would take 35 and multiply it by the mean (expressed as a decimal) to achieve an expected number of games won.

You could basically do this for every single entry of the 160 (though it would be time-consuming) and simply see who is expected to win the most games based off of that. I suppose if all of the Picks are known you could do that now for the rest of their Picks and then simply divide that result by the number of games remaining to get the mean percentage and then multiply said percentage (expressed as a decimal) by the number of games left to get an expectation of how many more games they should win, then add the number of games actually won.

I'll go ahead and do this for the rest of the games remaining until 12/31, because Pinnacle doesn't have any Moneylines after 12/31 at this point, and we're going to look at someone who picked all of the favorites straight up:

We're going to use Pinnacle as our source:

http://www.pinnaclesports.com/League/Football/NCAA/1/Lines.aspx

And they express Moneylines as a decimal, so we'll use that formula.

UL Monroe 1/1.364 = .733

Virginia Tech 1/1.8 = .556

Texas Tech 1/1.227 = .815

Air Force 1/1.667 = .600

Arizona State 1/1.182 = .846

West Virginia 1/1.581 = .633

Oregon State 1/1.625 = .615

TCU 1/1.741 = .574

Vanderbilt 1/1.357 = .737

***Pinnacle doesn't have USC/GT, so we'll use JustBet.cx ---Georgia Tech 350/450 = .778

Iowa State 1/1.885 = .531

LSU 1/1.526 = .655

MEAN: .67275

Games: 12 * .67275 = 8.073 Games Picked Correctly

"Games: 12 * .67275 = 8.073 Games Picked Correctly"

I don't think that you figured in that the number from the sportsbook contains the vig when calculating this number. Also, he mentioned 160 entries in the contest.

I would guess that the winner will have close to 80%.

Quote: DRich

"Games: 12 * .67275 = 8.073 Games Picked Correctly"

I don't think that you figured in that the number from the sportsbook contains the vig when calculating this number. Also, he mentioned 160 entries in the contest.

I would guess that the winner will have close to 80%.

1.) That's true about the vig. I went through and did a few of them adding in the other team and it usually ends up being 102.5% or something right around that. I suppose since it is always an overage you could simply determine how much of that remaining 2.5% got misappropriated to each team and then subtract that from each team.

2.) I agree with the 160 entries, I suggested that you would have to do it for each person individually.

3.) I also agree that the winner would do much better than essentially 2/3, especially with so many entries, that's just how many the person was expected to win in my case.

So 28-7 is the mark I should strive to be at to at least be excited enough to check and see if I won?

Quote: mwalz9

So 28-7 is the mark I should strive to be at to at least be excited enough to check and see if I won?

The first problem here is that my percentage was a bit high, but not too much. You could probably just subtract .0125 and then use the new number and be close, but again, it really just comes down to who you picked.

If you want to, give me your Picks for the remainder of the season as well as how many games you have already picked correctly, and I'll tell you what I think your expectation for wins is. I might end up having to use a worse moneyline than Pinnacle if they still have nothing after 12/31/2012.

It's pretty apparent that the winner is going to have his results differ from his expectation in a favorable manner, but I've always found it fun to keep a running total of how many games I should win.

" If you want to, give me your Picks for the remainder of the season as well as how many games you have already picked correctly, and I'll tell you what I think your expectation for wins is. "

And whichever pick Mission agrees with, go the opposite way. Mr. Random is already kicking his ass in NBA picks.

Quote: Buzzard

And whichever pick Mission agrees with, go the opposite way. Mr. Random is already kicking his ass in NBA picks.

LOL

In my defense, my NFL Picks this year weren't bad. Besides, my NBA Picks have a long time to recover, the regular season is played from October 1st until September 30th of the following year, right?

Rumor has it that while most kids in his neighborhood had a dog as a pet, Mission was followed everywhere by an albatross.