NFL Week 8 Results

All my picks 5 wins 8 losses
My home overdogs 1-3
My home underdogs 0-3
My road underdogs 2-1
My road overdogs 2-1
Spread a factor 0-2
Lady G’s best bets 1-3
Readers’ choice (New York Giants -9.5 over MIAMI) 0-1

For the season so far:
All my picks 57-52-7 52%
My home fave picks 16-18-2 47%
My home dog picks 12-10 55%
My road dog picks 19-16-4 54%
My road fave picks 10-8-1 55%
Spread a factor 10-8-7 54%
Lady G’s best bets 11-18-2 39%
Readers’ choice 1-5-2 25%

A tough week for Lady Godiva at 5-8 or a 38.5% winning percentage. I achieved my absolute minimum target of keeping my weekly winning percentage ahead of my bra size, but that’s not as big a comfort for me as for current Godiva toy boy Archibald.

3rd consecutive week that favourites came out ahead. That’s unusual. Just as 3 swallows don’t make a spring, 3 weeks of fortune favouring overdogs do not overthrow the long-term historical trend backed by decades of data indicating that underdogs are generally the best bet.

I’m certainly hoping there aren’t any more 5 wins or less weeks waiting for me now that I’ve racked up 2 in the first half of the season. But, as a realistic student of Bayesian probability, I won’t be surprised if I have to swallow one or two more hard lessons in humility before the year is out. But, the laws of probability also tell me that there should be at least one more week of 10+ wins for Lady Godiva over the second half of the season.

For the year, my record is dead even with plain-vanilla strategies of all-underdogs or all-road-teams. No evidence yet of either value added or value subtracted by Lady Godiva in 2007. On to the second half we go sticking with the value selection approach that has paid off for me over for the past several years of playing a weekly office pool.