Photo: Dale Zanine, USA TODAY Sports
Atlanta Hawks +5 @ Chicago Bulls
United Center, Chicago, Illinois
March 3, 2019, 12:30 PM PST
Friday, we debuted a system built around fading bad teams at home after a win. The underlying rationale being that excitement among public bettors is likely to attend such unlikely victories, increasing expectations for struggling teams that probably just got lucky, while, in actuality, performance is likely to revert back to the teams' below average norm just ahead. Per the graphic below, the strategy has been profitable since 2005.
In-sample, the system has performed perfectly so far, as both bets suggested for March 1 cashed in, as did yesterday's follow-on play The strategy remains active still, as a signal, this time in favor of the Hawks cover, has been triggered for Sunday. In fact, the current indication is the inverse of one of Friday's selections.
One of the first recommendations from this set of criteria was to bet the Bulls to cover at Atlanta on March 1, given that the Hawks bested Minnesota a couple of days earlier. While this game required four overtime sessions to arbitrate, Chicago did ultimately prevail, both SU and ATS. Since today's action will represent Chicago's next contest since collecting the win Friday, and in light of the Bulls' 29% straight-up win rate, this system says flip-flop and back the Hawks cover on the road.
We reiterate below an observation from yesterday's commentary:
...[S]ince 2005 the worse the record of the home team off the win, the greater the profits that have accrued to fading this position.
The Bulls win rate improved to almost 29% on Friday's win, suggesting a reasonably high probability, per this system, that they will miss the cover today.
Happy betting!!