Favorites & Underdogs

So if you've read my posts, you know that my basic premise is that in the LONG RUN (I mean hundreds of games), everyone's rank in their winning % will be generally representative of where their skill/talent ranks.

You'd need hundreds of games for everyone to play with and against everyone else many times for it to be highly reliable.  Even so, the data is also corrupted by certain guys who only want to play with their friends and defer games they could play when the team is bad.  The theory is that to compare everyone, you'd have to be playing randomly all the time.  But, that being said, there is a LOT of mixture and randomness and you can tell by looking at the results that IN GENERAL the guys you think are better tend to be at the top of the charts and visa versa.  This is even more true on the stats I did two years ago that you can look up in the old posts because I had tons more data.

Now then, 50% winning percentage is (of course) average.  But just how good is someone who wins 60% of the time in the long run or 70%?

Here's some proof.  Since there are 4 guys on a team, if you add up there historic win %, then a perfectly average team would be 200% (4 X 50%).  So, if you had three average guys and one guy who wins 60% of the time, your team would total 210%.  If you have all 4 of your guys with 60% winning %, then your team would total 240%.

So, how often does a team that adds to 240% beat a team that adds to 200%?   Here's the chart... this data is a compilation of last time I did the blog and the current stats...

So, in other words, if one team adds up to 40% more than the other team, they win 87% of the time.

Here's an example...  BK wins 54% of the time.  Four BKs would sum to 216%.  I win 43% of the time.  Four Zachs add to 172%.  So four BKs are 44% greater than four Zachs. The chart says that a favorite of 44% wins 87% of the time.  In other words, in this case, the Zachs are always likely to lose.

The record for the highest sum of win % ever (in other words, the best statistical team) just happened on Monday.  Anthony, Kenny, Marc & Mike added up to 284%.  Needless to say, they won their games.

The biggest upset of the last month (statistically speaking) was Angie, Erik, Josh & Marvena (190%) beating Anthony, Dave, Heath & Ray (242%) so the diff was 52%.  If you look at the chart, 52% underdogs only win 13% of the time.

In total, using this method where I add the four winning % together, in all the games I recorded two years ago and now since I restarted, the favorites win 69% of the time.