As a study in futility, I've been watching how well someone would do chasing line moves (kind of like chasing steam but not exactly).
Data Set
College Basketball ATS
Comparing opening line to closing line from BMR odds.
3 weeks of data (Dec 7 -27) 644 games.
The table below summarizes the data for various line moves. For example, if the closing line moved more than 1.5 points from open to close and you bet on that team at the closing spread to cover (following the steam), the win % is 50% with 72 wins and 72 losses.
This is a very limited data set but its interesting that chasing the line moves yields very poor results. It's as though you are late to the show in making a play. You could say that this is an indicator to consider the opposite play if the line moved a significant amount (i.e. > 2 points).
I've not shown the specific data but, when picking the opposite play of the line move, as might be expected, narrowing those plays down to the Home/Favs improves the results another 5-10%.
Just something to ponder.
Comments or questions are appreciated.
Data Set
College Basketball ATSComparing opening line to closing line from BMR odds.3 weeks of data (Dec 7 -27) 644 games.The table below summarizes the data for various line moves. For example, if the closing line moved more than 1.5 points from open to close and you bet on that team at the closing spread to cover (following the steam), the win % is 50% with 72 wins and 72 losses.
| Line move from Open > than pts shown below | Win% | W | L |
| 0.5 | 49.2% | 179 | 185 |
| 1.0 | 50.2% | 126 | 125 |
| 1.5 | 50.0% | 72 | 72 |
| 2.0 | 43.4% | 33 | 43 |
| 2.5 | 40.5% | 17 | 25 |
| 3.0 | 39.1% | 9 | 14 |
| 3.5 | 36.4% | 4 | 7 |
This is a very limited data set but its interesting that chasing the line moves yields very poor results. It's as though you are late to the show in making a play. You could say that this is an indicator to consider the opposite play if the line moved a significant amount (i.e. > 2 points).
I've not shown the specific data but, when picking the opposite play of the line move, as might be expected, narrowing those plays down to the Home/Favs improves the results another 5-10%.
Just something to ponder.
Comments or questions are appreciated.
