Use Trends?…Why The Trend Is NOT Your Friend...

by: Pointspread Pros

I feel that that most NFL trend systems are nothing more than a bunch of “coincidences” with a fancy wrapper around them. Scour the web and you will see countless posts claiming (12 – 0) “trends” this and (16-3) “trends” that. And the all to eager bettor believing in the magic bullet that is going to bail them out.

In my opinion, anyone believing in these “schemes” really do deserve to lose. Lets take a look at an example of what you may be fed from some unscrupulous handicapping “service”. “When Miami is off a win of between 3-7 points, and are home with the temperature above 90 they are (15-0) when they are favored by 3 or less in the next game.” Wow!… Lets bet the mortgage it has never lost!… And what you will probably see is that next week this system is now (15-1) and you are homeless!… But anyone who didn’t bet this trend will see it pop up again a few weeks later at an astonishing (15-1) and some poor sucker will make the same mistake! Eventually, over time you will see the majority of the “trends” that once looked amazing, will gravitate right back to the Mendoza line of 50%.

Personally, I feel Trend Handicapping is the lazy mans handicapping service. Afterall, why actually crunch current years data, of the real live teams when I have a “trend” going back to 1950 that is (10-5!)…I am still amazed at how many people buy in to “trends”.

Maybe I am biased, because my service (Pointspread Pro’s) is purely statistical, with sophisticated computer algorithms that do all the hard work for us. But it just irritates me to see people losing their hard earned paychecks on these things.

Trends are nothing more than RANDOM events that happen in a pattern. Here is an example:

If you toss a coin 100 times, I bet you we could come up with various “trends” that are nothing more then random events. In other words, you would see patterns like 5 consecutive heads or tails showing up even though it is exactly a 50/50 chance.

Why?, because if you look hard enough at any sets of circumstances you can find “trends”. And what a lot of handicapping services will do, is what is called “backfit their trends” until they get a so called “winning situation”.

For example: Lets say we take a situation like “A team after a Monday night game is 51-49 ATS the next week”. Sounds okay to me.

So the handicapping service says “Well, nobody is going to like that “trend” so lets look at some other variables. Ahh, when the team WON after a Monday night they are (58-42). And if they WON AND next week they are HOME (60 – 40). And if they WON AND next week they are HOME and they are facing a team with a losing record they are (10-0!)….Eureeka!… Got my “trend” to sell to the sheep!

Get the point here?… In other words, with enough backfitting of different variables you can turn ANYTHING into a “sure thing”.

In my humble opinion, there are a lot of so called handicapping services using this bull on you and I hope this may open your eyes to why trends are basically random events over a particular time period.

But if you are still not convinced, and are going to buy into the trends then at least follow these rules:

1. The trend should be relevant to the teams actually playing and not involve teams playing 20 years ago!

2. The number of scenarios in the trend are 500 or more!… None of these (12-1) situations! There is no statistical relevance in small sample sizes.

3. Make sure that the trend makes some sort of logical sense and is not being backfitted by a bunch of variables. For example a logical trend may be “Teams off a bye are 300 – 200 ATS”. Maybe teams are more rested, or coaches have more time to prepare. Makes logical sense. But if you see “Teams off a bye, when playing another team with a losing record in the month of October….” RUN FOR THE HILLS!

Winning in the NFL takes a lot of hard work and hours of dedication. So if you want a service that actually puts the time in each week, crunches the numbers to figure out which team has value to put your hard earned money, come give us a try.

If trends really worked, then none of us would have to work for a living, and nobody would have to put in any effort into handicapping. We would just blindly follow.

Instead, I would recommend trying out our service, where all our picks come from data mining the important pieces of information, measuring teams potentials versus opponents and quantifying game results. We then formulate the best advice we can for you each week. All our programs do the hard work for you, we have put thousands of hours into developing these analytics so you don’t have too!

We have made our members money each year since 1998, and are off to another great start in 2007!. Come give us a try, you won’t regret it.

Best of luck!

James McGuiness – Pointspread Pro’s

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