Beating the market betting on NHL hockey games
Abstract
This article describes a method for predicting the outcome of National Hockey League (NHL) games. We combine a model for goal scoring and yielding, and one for penalty commission, in a Markov-type computation and a simulation model that produce predicted probabilities of victory for each team. Where these differ substantially from the market probabilities, we make “bets” according to a simple strategy. Our return on investment is both positive and statistically significant.
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Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
Buttrey (2016) finds that their methods were able to produce a positive return on investment in the NHL betting market.
“They find that their methods were able to produce a positive return on investment.”
From Big ideas in sports analytics and statistical tools for their investigation (2023) · cites this paper as Buttrey (2016)
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Lopez, M. J., Matthews, G. J., & Baumer, B. S. (2018) · The Annals of Applied Statistics · doi:10.1214/18-aoas1165 · Cited by 52 · see citing works
Big ideas in sports analytics and statistical tools for their investigation
Baumer, B. S., Matthews, G. J., & Nguyen, Q. (2023) · WIREs Computational Statistics · doi:10.1002/wics.1612 · Cited by 44 · see citing works
- Authors
- Buttrey, S. E.
- Affiliations
- Naval Postgraduate School (US)
- Corresponding author
- Buttrey, Samuel E.
- Venue
- Journal of Quantitative Analysis in Sports
- Publisher
- Walter de Gruyter GmbH
- Published
- 2016-02-17
- Volume
- 12
- Issue
- 2
- Pages
- 87-98
- ISSN
- 1559-0410 (ISSN-L)
- 2194-6388
- OpenAlex
- W2400302550
- Cited by
- 4
- References
- 0
- Citations by year
- 2023: 1 · 2021: 1 · 2018: 1 · 2017: 1
- FWCI
- 1.30
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Journal of Quantitative Analysis in Sports (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Economics, Econometrics and Finance › Economics and Econometrics › Sports Analytics and Performance
- Social Sciences › Decision Sciences › Management Science and Operations Research › Forecasting Techniques and Applications
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Orthopedics and Sports Medicine › Sports Performance and Training
- Keywords
- sports betting, match outcome prediction, Markov model, computer simulation, arbitrage, return on investment
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Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
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