So if you bet $1,000 on each game... do u make more on:
1) 24-2
2) 20-0
3) 26-0
According to your liking... #1 is the answer--Joe the plumber would tell you otherwise >:| Would you also take 24-2 over 24-0?
Situational Systems are created after the fact. You may have a system that is 24-2 or 26-0, but nobody bet all those games. I do know that the more parameters a situational system has the less likely it is to hit. Here is the proof. Marc Lawrence overtightens his systems like a wrench so he can sell them as 100% plays for marketing purposes. Yet, I've never seen so many 100% systems lose in my life. In my opinion, there needs to be logic and not piles of parameters. Otherwise, you are more likely to predict what already happen rather than what will happen. Here is an article I found on Dr. Bob's website who has a Ph.D. in statistics. He explains how situational systems work.
"Does Technical Analysis Work? Technical analysis has come under scrutiny by fundamental handicappers and some sports bettors due to the fact that anybody searching a database randomly for patterns will find situations that have produced very good results. However, the key is to look for situations that make sense. I don't use trends such as "so and so is 13-2 in week number 7" (does a team actually know that week 7 is their week and gain confidence from it?) or “bet on home dogs from +2 to +4 if such and such" (the more narrow the pointspread range is the more likely it is a random occurrence and not a true indicator of a real pattern). So how can I be sure that technical analysis works? I have done research on the predictability of both team trends and situational angles and both have proven to work to forecast the future, although most team trends no longer have the sample size to be significant given that I only use team trends that are compiled under the current coach. The record of situational trends that apply to all teams is much better as far as forecasting the future. At the beginning of each year, I make a list of the situational angles that I think are meaningful (they are all easily statistically significant). At the end of the year, I tally the results of these angles. In the last 8 years of doing this, I have found that the situational angles that I use (remember, if you're angles don't make sense they are not going to hold up as well) have won at a profitable rate of 56%, but the situations with a higher statistical significance (i.e. a higher t-value) have proven to be even more predictive.
Many handicappers tend to back-fit past data by adding more and more factors (parameters) to a situation until they have a very high percentage angle (but also a much smaller sample size). However, my research has shown that a situation's predictability is sacrificed with each parameter added to derive that situation. For instance, a situation with a record of 50-20 (71%) that is derived using 10 factors isn't as predictive as the 57.4% home underdog situation that I presented above, which has just 4 parameters (this game home, this game dog, won last game, dog last game) and a much larger sample size. It's easy to find a very high-percentage situation if you use an unlimited number of parameters to get to that situation, but all that will result in is a situation that explains what has happened rather than something that helps predict what will happen. My research, and the theories of statistics, shows that the more predictive angles have fewer factors and a larger sample size, rather than a smaller sample situation with a high winning percentage that was derived by using too many parameters. Further research I did in the Summer of 2004 enabled me to accurately assess a situation's future performance based on the win percentage, sample size, number of parameters and more recent performance (i.e. record of the angle over the past 3 seasons). That research led to a more realistic use of situational analysis than I've employed in the past. For instance,
I can now tell you that a situation with a record of 140-60-5 ATS that uses 6 parameters has a 56.8% chance of winning the next time it applies if the line is fair. Having a realistic expectation of a situation's value has helped my overall analysis immensely the last 2 seasons and I will continue to devote time each summer to update the research on the predictability of my situational analysis.
Remember, just because a situation is 70% over 200 games in the past does not mean that it will win 70% of the time in the future. A 140-60 situational trend is simply a sample of 200 games selected from a population consisting of all NFL games. Since the NFL is constantly changing (although the league as a whole doesn't change nearly as quickly as most individual teams do), the results of the same situation in the future will not fully reflect the past. Also, by definition, a statistically significant trend has a 5% chance of being caused by no more than chance variation, and the record of those trends can be expected to be 50% as a whole, bringing down the overall percentage of all significant trends. There is also going to be a certain level of back-fitting involved in finding a situation, which also lowers the future percentage of the situation. Of course, the better the record, the greater number of games in the sample, and the fewer parameters there are in an angle the more likely that the situation is real and not just random."
The Doctor uses other factors as well to make picks and so do I. Situational systems is only 1 of 9 things I look at. I have no idea what the Doctor does. I only know that we both use situational systems as a guide. Basically, most picks have systems in it, but some systems are not picks. Furthermore, I NEVER pay for picks and usually bet early in the week for line value before I ever see anybody's picks.