The System Explained and FAQ

There are constantly people asking questions that have been asked and answered a million times already so I figured I would use this page to explain how the system works and try to answer some of the questions that are frequently asked:

The system's premise is that Vegas "knows" more than Kenpom's pure stats. So wherever there is a big enough difference between Kenpom's "line" and the initial opening line of a game (99% of the time its BetOnline) the play is to side with Vegas. For example, if team A is favored to win on Kenpom by 1 and the Vegas line opens with team A as 3.5 pt favorites, the system says to side with Vegas knowing something (either about team A or team B) that goes beyond the stats used by Kenpom. Conversely, if team A is favored by 5 by Vegas opening lines and Kenpom has team A winning by only 2, the play would be on team B. The theory again being that Vegas knows something beyond the stats of the two teams. Here are the current play differentials being used by the system:

Vegas opening line of:

0-4 requires a difference of 2.5 pts
4.5-8 requires a difference of 3 pts
8.5-12 requires a difference of 3.5 pts
12.5-15.5 requires a difference of 4 pts
16+ requires a difference of 5 pts

When deciding on what level to use, always use the Vegas line. For example, if Kenpom has a team -5 and the Vegas opening line is -2.5 the level this would fall into is the 0-4 level.

Opening Lines


Currently we are using opening lines from BetOnline as they are usually the earliest posted lines. There are different place to obtain the opening lines but we have moved to using Maddux Sports because of ease of pulling the opening lines for analysis. The Covers line moves page is too tedious at times and sometimes unreliable. Vegas Insider is even more tedious than Covers. Use the link on the right side of the screen to take you to the lines at Maddux Sports. Then go over to the BetOnline column and click on the line for whatever game you are looking at. This will open a new window which will show the line history and what time the line opened. Note that the times listed are Pacific time. Lines at Maddux are generally posted around 2pm Eastern the day before a game. While this offers an advantage at doing some analysis for the next day's games, it is best to wait for Kenpom to update as sometimes there are changes in his scoring. He generally updates his data an hour after the last game of the night ends. Many of us have developed Excel spreadsheets to help sift through the cards each day. This is a good idea especially for days when the card is very large.

What are those letters after plays?


There has been some analysis done to determine which plays win more often than others. As a result, we have begun to track and filter by this criteria. The 3 letters after a play denote 3 different things. The first letter denotes if the play team is home or road (H or R). The second letter denotes whether Kenpom has them as a favorite or dog (F or D). The third letter denotes any line movement in relation to Kenpom (A or T). A is away from Kenpom. T is toward Kenpom. If this is N it means that there is no line movement in either direction. In this situation, I count this as a toward movement when using the Kelly method.

What is KP?


KP= Kenpom. Ken Pomeroy runs a website (kenpom.com) that provides statisitical analysis of college basketball teams. He ranks them based on criteria that he values and then also predicts scores for games. As I mentioned earlier, his predictions can change as new stats and games are played so it is best to check on the day of a game for updated scores.

As more questions come to mind or arise I will update this page. I hope this was informative. If there are still questions just leave a comment and I will do my best to answer.