An Introduction

Welcome.

(If you haven’t yet checked out the “About” page—please start there.)

Let me take you back 6-7 years ago. I was the newest member of a casual NFL pick ‘em league where players pick the winner of each game and assign confidence points—the higher confidence, the more points assigned. The most points accumulated over the entire season wins. 

I thought this was Kevin Durant, Easy Money. Ok yea, there were about 40 or so other players in the league that season, but come on; I’d been watching NFL since I was young and I’m an engineer so I felt like I’d corner the market right out of the gate. Boy was I wrong! My ego was writing checks my body couldn’t cash. The only thing I got that first season was a big slice of humble pie! I didn’t even sniff the top of the leaderboard. In fact, I distinctly remember how shocked I was that my seemingly obvious picks not only failed to come through, but the leaders often had the other side of the games! It was like they had the answers to the test. I was flat out incredulous. If I wanted to be relevant and competitive, something about my approach needed to change…

The desire to figure out how the best were doing it and to improve my own performance is what seeded my passion that’s led to back-to-back league championships, multiple on-the-podium finishes, and sprouted a new way of thinking that has truly transformed how I approach problems in every arena whether it’s at work or in my free time. 

Because sports are relatable and the sports betting marketplace is an expanding industry, this is the context in which I’ve chosen to explore the benefit of deploying algorithms to improve decision-making performance. 

I’ve long been drawn to the excitement of picking winners. From taking turns choosing NFL teams with my dad on Sunday mornings to the exhilaration of watching March Madness buzzer-beaters and even cheering for the 50-1 long shot to take the Kentucky Derby, it’s my preferred source of entertainment. With the popularity of sports betting rising as more and more state jurisdictions offer it, major sports broadcast networks are following the trend. FOX, CBS, ESPN, NBC all have sports betting resources as part of their content offerings. The rest of the country seems to agree—fantasy sports, pick ‘em leagues, and good old-fashioned betting are part of the fabric of the modern sports fan.

While this blog doesn’t intend to be a de facto sports betting blog, I will often reference betting concepts and terminology throughout my posts. My early posts will explain the process I used to create a handicapping model, offer a basic decision-making framework for uncertain markets, and bring you along with me through the agony and ecstasy of improving the model. While the later posts focus more on being a practitioner of developing algorithms and advice on how to use them.

I hope this proves a valuable resource for you as you start your own algorithm journey. Thanks for following along!