Sports Betting Power Ratings 101
Added on Jun 03, 2010 by Jack Thurman in
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Later this week, we’ll post our inaugural baseball power ratings. These ratings will be updated weekly and are intended to be a helpful tool in your baseball betting selections. In preparation for this, we wanted to take the opportunity to go over some basics about what power ratings are and how they’re useful to the sports betting enthusiast.
When making the transition from a recreational or casual bettor into a more serious approach to sports handicapping, its necessary to start using a systematic approach to evaluate the daily matchups. Power ratings are the most fundamental element of most serious handicapping methodologies, and are used in some form by bookmakers in setting the line as well as most successful professional sports bettors. At their most basic, power ratings are a qualitative ranking of teams in a particular sport from top to bottom. In pointspread based sports they’re formulated to reflect the ‘true line’ on a game. We’ll talk about this in greater detail when football season approaches, but the general idea is to use the power ratings to calculate ‘your’ line on every game and compare these numbers to the actual pointspread.
Power ratings are also useful in moneyline based sports, though obviously the pointspread component is involved. In a moneyline based sport there’s more of a need for ‘intuition’ on the part of the bettor, but they’re still a very helpful tool. One simple technique for using power ratings in baseball or hockey is to look for situations where a higher ranked pointspread team is an underdog against a lower ranked opponent. In a future installment, we’ll talk about evaluating moneylines to determine whether or not a play is a good betting value.
While power ratings are an important tool in the handicapper’s arsenal, its not a good idea to rely on them exclusively. Obviously, there’s a lot more involved in handicapping a specific matchup than the intrinsic strengths and weaknesses of the teams involved. Stylistic matchups, scheduling situations, motivation, etc. are all important factors to consider. In baseball, for example, much depends on the starting pitcher. A team like Colorado may not be a strong play in most situations, but when Ubaldo Jimenez is on the mound its a different situation entirely.
Perhaps the most effective way to use power ratings is as a tool to quickly and methodically work through a long card of games. In college basketball season, for example, its almost impossible to evaluate every game on the board in depth when a busy Saturday may have well over 100 contests on the board. Power ratings enable the bettor to eliminate games where there’s not much line value, and to isolate situations where a more in-depth analysis can reveal a strong wagering opportunity.
We’ll talk about our specific methodology for each individual sport as we get to them, and we’ll start with baseball coming later this week.
