• 2012 FP Upset Special Challenge: The Wrapup

    by
    edave
    Published on 01-25-2013 11:21 AM
    8 Comments Comments
    Most of us went on runs of a couple weeks or more but one of us went way above the others. Raven, our eventual winner, wandered around for a while doing not much of anything. After the 12th week, he finally got his 4th win with the Redskins putting him three back in the standings. In week 14 he won with the Rams (putting him 4 back of brauneyz) and never lost again. 7 weeks in a row. The next closest was 4 weeks in a row, done by many (even me). Astounding.

    Some other data trends.

    "No Upsets" is a bad bet during the regular season. It's there to entice you. Many are tempted. Know this, it hasn't worked for two regular seasons in a row. The closest we got was week 4, when the Monday night game featured the Bears (+3.5) @ Cowboys; the Bears won 34-18. That game was also single biggest winner of the season, with 18 people having made that pick.

    The most wins in a given week was 25 in week 3 (we had 9 upset winners including this one: 49ers @ Vikings (+6.5)).

    The least wins earned was 4 and happened four times: weeks 5, 10, 11 and 18. In the first three cases we flirted with "No Upsets" until someone knocked off an established team that none of us were voting against. Week 18 was Wild Card weekend, which wound up going according to Vegas plan and also gave us the first points of the season for "No Upsets".

    I've never bet on a football game in my life but I enjoyed this game and the opportunity to learn more about the mechanics behind setting and revising the lines. While we used OddsShark for this game, I'd recommend VegasInsider to anyone who asked me at this point. They're more biased toward the Vegas sports books, do a great job tracking line changes per house and still cover the offshore books if that's your thing.

    Full standings

    The complete 2012 season.

    One last piece of advice before I finish. If you lose early, don't quit. I got my first win in week 6. Second in week 10. I finished with 8. It's never too late to get started rolling.

    Thanks for reading and playing. Have a great Superbowl and a wonderful off season.

    Comments 8 Comments
    1. wxwax's Avatar
      7 weeks in a row? Wow.

      Vegas, baby!
      Reply
    1. xmenehune's Avatar
      edave,

      Thanks for all your hard work

      Reply
    1. Rich Gapinski's Avatar
      Dave:

      Your contributions are greatly appreciated. Excellent job. I just wish there was a few more weeks of football left.
      Reply
    1. brauneyz's Avatar
      Thanks Dave. Great work all season on this game.

      I guess this makes me the Atlanta Falcons of Upset Specialers. Just couldn't quite get it done.
      Reply
    1. Trumpetbdw's Avatar
      Thanks for stepping up to the plate edave. You did a great job keeping this organized this year.

      Unfortunately, if Brauney was the Falcons of this thing, I was this year's version of the Steelers. I folded down the stretch worse than Peyton Manning in an outdoor playoff game

      Sorry. Couldn't resist...
      Reply
    1. Pruitt's Avatar
      Great pool idea - thanks for running it Dave.
      Reply
    1. edave's Avatar
      Thanks for the kind words folks, but the hard work of doing the job week to week wasn't where you might think it was.

      I spent more time looking for artwork after the first couple weeks than any single other activity and eventually gave up after pleading for some ideas and help. I can slap a new week title onto a football, mask the result and shrink things in about 3 minutes so that's what I wound up doing. The best stuff I did was in weeks 9 and 10, but that took forever.

      Once the spread sheet was setup it was more or less self operating. I just needed to feed it data. I did create a tool to extract data from various odds houses and aggregation sites. Translating Oakland into Raiders makes my head hurt, as does putting the parenthesis in the right spot and adding the BBCode mark up. Python didn't care. It just spit out the stuff needed for the story and to feed into the spreadsheet.

      Making a pick on Tuesday evening is a little tricky sometimes and often by Thursday morning I wanted a mulligan but that's the gig.


      Quote Originally Posted by brauneyz View Post
      I guess this makes me the Atlanta Falcons of Upset Specialers. Just couldn't quite get it done.
      We'll see. If Raven's Ravens keep it rolling you'll be more like 49ers.

      Quote Originally Posted by Pruitt View Post
      Great pool idea - thanks for running it Dave.
      We all need to thank Turk.
      Reply
    1. xmenehune's Avatar
      Quote Originally Posted by edave View Post
      Thanks for the kind words folks, but the hard work of doing the job week to week wasn't where you might think it was.

      I spent more time looking for artwork after the first couple weeks than any single other activity and eventually gave up after pleading for some ideas and help. I can slap a new week title onto a football, mask the result and shrink things in about 3 minutes so that's what I wound up doing. The best stuff I did was in weeks 9 and 10, but that took forever.

      Once the spread sheet was setup it was more or less self operating. I just needed to feed it data. I did create a tool to extract data from various odds houses and aggregation sites. Translating Oakland into Raiders makes my head hurt, as does putting the parenthesis in the right spot and adding the BBCode mark up. Python didn't care. It just spit out the stuff needed for the story and to feed into the spreadsheet.

      Making a pick on Tuesday evening is a little tricky sometimes and often by Thursday morning I wanted a mulligan but that's the gig.




      We'll see. If Raven's Ravens keep it rolling you'll be more like 49ers.



      We all need to thank Turk.
      you're worried about appearing creative (artwork) to us? lol

      I do maintain my own spreadsheets, so I do know there is the time factor, it just may not seem like much when you love what you do, the effort is ?effortless?

      even the e-mail reminders are highly thoughtful. I'm not an everyday FP user, but I try to view at least once a week during the season.

      thanks again, I suspect we all appreciate everything you've done
      Reply