This means that Kansas City is favored to win the game by 10 points according to the sportsbooks.”įor a bettor, Dmochowski added, the optimal decision in this scenario is to bet on Philadelphia (+10), even though they have lost the last three games by an average margin of 15 points. They are playing again, and the point spread has been posted as “Kansas City -10”. Kansas City has won each of those games by margins of 3, 7, and 35 points. To illustrate one of the findings, he presents a hypothetical example: “assume that Kansas City has played Philadelphia three times previously. “I approach this from a statistical point-of-view, but also provide some intuitive results with sample data from the NFL that can be digested by those without a background in math.” Importantly, this is not the same as the average outcome,” said Dmochowski, whose expertise includes machine learning, signal processing and brain-computer interfaces. “The central finding of the work is that the objective in sports betting is to estimate the median outcome. His original finding appears in the journal PLOS One. In a study entitled “ A statistical theory of optimal decision-making in sports betting,” Jacek Dmochowski, Associate Professor in the Grove School of Engineering at The City College of New York, provides the answer. It’s a dilemma that many a regular bettor probably faces often - deciding when to place a sports bet.
