Yesterday, I started participating in a point spread betting competition with a few project collaborators for fun. Trying to be methodical, I wanted to get as much information as possible about each matchup and about the games themselves instead of relying on my “gut feeling.”
From my earlier analysis, I knew that 75% of the games ended in point margins greater than 5 points. But that analysis was based on the regular season games data. I wanted to know if the finding was also applicable to the playoffs seasons as well.
It turns out, the point margin distributions didn’t vary much at all between regular season games and playoffs games. In fact, the quantiles for the distributions were exactly the same for regular season games and for playoffs games.
The orange line represents the 25% quantile mark, which indicates that games ended within the 5 points difference 25% of the times. (Put it differently, games ended with point margins of 6 points or more 75% of the times.)
The yellow line represents the 50% quantile mark, which indicates that games ended within the 9 points difference 50% of the times. (Put it differently, games ended with point margins of 10 points or more 50% of the times.)
The green line represents the 75% quantile mark, which indicates that games ended within the 15 points difference 75% of the times. (Put it differently, games ended with point margins of 16 points or more 25% of the times.)
And finally, the blue dotted line represents the 90% quantile mark, which indicates that games ended within the 22 points difference 90% of the times. (Put it differently, games ended with point margins of 23 points or more 10% of the times.)
| 25% Quantile Points Margin | 50% Quantile Points Margin | 75% Quantile Points Margin | 90% Quantile Points Margin |
|---|---|---|---|
| 5 | 9 | 15 | 22 |
This is something that you might want to think about the next time you see that favorites are handicapped by just a few points.
