Betzig Sports

NBA Picks 2012-13: -$160 11/15 Boston @ Brooklyn -4.5 Will Rondo questionable, I'm not sure if Boston will show up against a superior Brooklyn team. Brooklyn -4.5 (1 unit) +$100 11/14 Detroit @ Philadelphia -8 I think tonight will be the night the Pistons finally win. Detroit +8 (1 unit) +$100 11/12 Oklahoma City @ Detroit +7 The Pistons have only covered +7 once this year in seven tries, against a bad Sacramento team. Oklahoma City -7 (1.5 units) -$165 11/11 Miami @ Memphis +2 One of the few times you'll see me take the overrated Heat all year. Even if Wade and LeBron won't be 100%, I like them here. Miami -2 (1 unit) -$110 Atlanta @ Los Angeles Clippers -6 The Clippers are more than 3 points better than a depleted Atlanta squad. Los Angeles Clippers -6 (1 unit) +$100 11/10 Minor hiatus, but I'm returning. San Antonio @ Portland +3 I'll put 1 unit on the impressive Blazers. Portland +3 (1 unit) Push +-$0 Dallas @ Charlotte +6.5 The Mavs ar...

Well, since I'm going to be doing NBA picks, I figured I'd roll out a season preview. I'm kind of picking everything up as I go along, this is going to be my first year follow the NBA as closely as I do the NFL/College Football. In a few days, I might do a post talking about how awfully my MLB season preview I made in April was. Here goes. Eastern Conference (regular season): 1. Miami Heat 2. New York Knicks 3. Chicago Bulls 4. Indiana Pacers 5. Boston Celtics 6. Brooklyn Nets 7. Cleveland Cavaliers 8. Atlanta Hawks 9. Philadelphia 76ers 10. Washington Wizards 11. Milwaukee Bucks 12. Detroit Pistons 13. Orlando Magic 14. Toronto Raptors 15. Charlotte Bobcats The Heat are, obviously, the odds on favorite to win the East. I think it's pretty close to a sure thing that they have the best regular season record in the East, but winning the East in the playoffs is another deal entirely. You never know if they're going to run into a roadblock like the P...

4:00 and later picks will be up by 2:00 Blegh. I guess you balance out your good weeks with your bad ones. Depending on how Monday night goes tonight, I might be in the red on the year. One thing I took note of was how well my over/under picks did. I may pit more units on those this week, depends how I feel. Game 1: Kansas City @ San Diego -7.5 Both of these team are coming off losses to some of the NFL's worst teams. Kansas City went down to a pretty bad Oakland team, while the Chargers fell to the hapless Browns. I'm going small on the visitor, as I think San Diego will win by less than a touchdown. Unit Change: I'm bumping this up to 2. The Chargers should not be favored by more than a TD against anybody. Kansas City +7.5 (2 units) -$220 Under 44.5 (0 units) +$0 Game 2: Denver @ Cincinnati +5 I'm really not sure what to think of this game. On one hand, Denver is absolutely on fire right now. On the other hand, Cincy is is a home dog coming off a bye, alwa...

Hey guys, my computer has churned out a new set of rankings through this past weekend's games. Things of note: 1) Notre Dame climbs up to #2 after their schlacking of now #5 Oklahoma. 2) Kansas State takes a big rise to #6 after their beatdown of Texas Tech. 3) Florida remains a hair ahead of Georgia after that crazy game in Jacksonville 4) I feel pretty confident in these power ratings. Now that I have a way to figure out what the spread should be for games, it seems to be within 3 points of the Vegas spread about 70-80% of the time (just testing out the marquee games of the week). However, it seems to be broken for games with huge lines (for example, it said Oregon should've been a 13 point favorite against Colorado). I'll have to find a fix for that. 5) My flight out of Baltimore back home to Detroit was fine, so I have escaped the wrath of the Frankenstorm. Yeah! Here's my computer's top 25. 1 Alabama 2 Notre Dame 3 Florida 4 Georgia 5 Oklahoma 6 Kans...

This page will be used for my "other sports picks". I.e., I don't have a baseball picks page I'm currently using. Since I want to make a futures bet on the world series winner, I'm using this space to do so. Let's say I like some futures for the NBA/NHL season. I'll post them here as well. Other sports picks: 10/24 Giants to win the World Series +155 (3 units) +$465 NBA Futures picks: Every sensible bone in my body is telling me not to make futures bets, but I'm going to anyways. We'll see how they do. 10/29 Oklahoma City Thunder to win NBA championship +450 (2 units) -$200 Chicago Bulls to win Eastern Conference +750 (1 unit) -$100 Indiana Pacers to win Eastern Conference +1400 (.5 units) -$50 Los Angeles Clippers to win Western Conference +1100 (.5 units) -$50 New York Knicks to win Atlantic Division +350 (1 unit) +$350 Los Angeles Clippers to win Pacific Division +300 (.5 units) +$150 Cleveland Cavaliers to win Central Division +5000...

Updated Sunday 11 AM Eastern (O/U picks, unit changes, teaser/ ML underdog) Wow! That was most definitely a good week. I'll take +$1105 any time. The call that lost me Tampa/New Orleans was a little shady, but I'm not exactly in a mood to complain right now. My gut was telling me to lower the Rams pick to 2 units, but whatever. Before we begin, I'd like to make a brief note about my teaser last week. After games started I did some research and discovered that teasing a team from +6 to +12 is actually a very bad idea. It worked out last week, but I likely won't be doing it again.   Game 1: Tampa Bay @ Minnesota -5.5 We start off, of course, with Thursday Night Football. These Thursday nighters have been my arch nemesis all year, I think I'm like 2-5 picking them. However, I can take advantage of my "terrible triangle" theory here. Not only does the public not understand how absolutely awful Tampa Bay is, they're coming off an emotional loss where t...

Well, another week as gone by, and my power ratings are updated through week 8. You can see them  here . I'm going to give my computer's top 25 teams and the ratings for the top 10 in this post. 1. Alabama 146.41 2. Florida 135.18 3. Oklahoma 134.52 4. Notre Dame 109.69 5. Georgia 101.68 6. Oregon 100.21 7. South Carolina 98.39 8. USC 94.55 9. Florida State 92.2 10. Kansas State 88.84 11. LSU 12. Clemson 13. Texas 14. Texas Tech 15. Rutgers 16. Oregon State 17. Ohio State 18. Michigan 19. Texas A&M 20. Oklahoma State 21. Mississippi State 22. Stanford 23. Penn State 24. Nebraska 25. Boise State

Last update: Saturday 11:40 PM (lines updated, unit changes, added O/U picks to all games) OK, to start off, I'd like to say that I've been doing NFL picks all year. As I mentioned in my previous post, I was doing very well before the last few weeks (especially week 6). Week 2 was really my miracle week, as I went 13-3. Before I get into my picks, I'd like to discuss a few things: 1) I never actually make picks with real money. Because a) it's illegal in Michigan and b) I don't want to risk my money. I'm fine to make picks all day with fake money, but I don't want to risk actual cash. 2) I have a strange unit system compared to what most people use. I do all my games on a unit scale of 4 to 20 units, with all my picks for a week averaging out to 11 units. I've placed approximately 850 units this year and I'm +1.94 units on the year (with the vig) which means I'm pretty much dead even. I'm still going to make picks with my buddies like tha...

I haven't posted in a while, so here's a quick update on what I plan to use this for: 1) NFL picks. I've been doing them throughout the season with some friends, and I did quite well the first few weeks. However, weeks 4-6 have not been so kind, and I'm down to just a hair above dead even on the season 2) College Football Power Ratings. I've been updating my power ratings every week (which you can find in read-only format  here , go to the sheet entitled "ratings".) I have a new college football tool called the "spread maker" which, using my ratings, determines what I believe the spread should be for the game. Note this is in the extreme alpha stages, I just made it last week and I'm still calibrating it, 3) College Football Opinion Poll. I've been doing this for the last few weeks ( here ). It's not at all related to my power ratings. 4) And the big one, once NBA season starts, daily/weekly NBA picks. This will be my first year do...