South Africa. The Left Goes Completely Mask Off, The Schism On The Right And More

Taking a little break from the modeling today. I actually busted it out for the first Car/Fla game and went 2-0 with Reinhart and Stankoven under SOG bets but I didn't get around to posting them. I'm on the fence with this model, I think if I do want to continue modeling I do need to step up my base knowledge. I kind of stopped learning about math and data and programming once I got my models going and I never even considered using anything other than poisson. I just ordered a new book by Andrew Mack from a recommendation in the comments and on X that I think will help me progress. I have a few new sports betting books waiting to be read once I finish my alien books so I will probably have another book review coming up. I will have a post about aliens soon too. If you don't know anything about it, prepare to have your mind completely fucking blown. I'm not kidding, it is easily the craziest shit I have ever read. I'm just finishing John Mack's main book and then I think I'll get into it.

But today I want to get into something else. I suppose this is politics adjacent, but it's more than that. The situation in South Africa and the fact that America took in 60 White refugees has exposed the American left for their utter, naked, impossible to deny anymore hatred of White people. I know it sounds hyperbolic but don't know how else to say it. How else can you possibly explain their reaction to, again, 60 people fleeing actual, open racial violence wanting to come here as refugees? The same people who protest in the streets with gigantic signs saying 'Refugees Welcome' and who have made immigration and 'refugees seeking asylum' as their entire ethos, wildly and belligerently opposing 60 White people applying for asylum? Again, sixty people. Not 6 million, not 60,000, not even 600. Not even 60 families! 60 people. Like, barely more than the number of active players for a single NFL team. We're talking half of one plane load of people!

Let's look at the facts first.

If you're completely unaware of the situation, I wouldn't blame you. The mainstream news hasn't touched this story with a ten foot pole until the South African refugees were granted asylum and their president made the trip to the White House and 'GoT AmBuShEd!' But basically, South Africa has been falling apart for a while now. I first started seeing things in the middle of the pandemic if I remember correctly, 2020, 2021ish. I'm not going to do a whole in-depth piece on the history of South Africa, but the very broad strokes are that they used to operate under Apartheid rules, which were race based laws that were unfavorable to the black population. It was in place from 1948 to about 1993. Ever since it ended, South Africa has drifted into the same sort of collectivist, racially segregated civilization as it was before, only with the roles flipped. Did you know that there are more race based laws on their books now than there ever was during Apartheid? The only difference is now the blacks are in charge and the laws are meant to hurt the whites. It's the main reason Elon Musk lives in America. His companies would never have been possible in South Africa. He still can't get Starlink up in SA because it doesn't have a black owner. The fact that Elon Musk is literally from South Africa doesn't seem to matter. 

I've read some really good in depth pieces on SA and Rhodesia (modern day Zimbabwe) so instead of trying to rehash what I've read, I can just link them. Why Rhodesia Matters is a good one. This is another good one. That whole "substack spider web" is a good resource. The view from a thousand feet up is that basically, the blacks in SA are out for revenge on the whites, specifically the farmers, or 'Boers' as they're called. On X there are countless, and I do mean countless, horrific pictures and videos and stories of entire white farmer families being brutally murdered (and worse) by black South Africans. There's a couple of videos going around with literal stadiums full of black South Africans at political rallies singing along and chanting 'Kill The Boer'. 'Kill The Boer, Kill The Farmer' is actually, somehow, considered 'protected speech' and 'part of their tradition' by the South African Supreme Court, which, apparently, is a thing.

There was a terrifying video I saw recently where a white family was attacked by a group of blacks and escaped to a police station. The attackers followed them to the police station, INTO the police station, and attacked them there! For a while, too. They were trying to get their phones which had evidence of the attack. No one stopped them and you can actually see black policemen just kind of standing around, watching. Can you imagine the terror? Nowhere to go. There have also been pictures and reports of some of the farm murderers having radio signal jammers on them so the family can't call anyone during the attack. The jammers are like $15k and military grade. It's hard to possibly explain how a disgruntled ex farm hand would get his hands on something like that. So the violence is somewhat state/military sponsored, if not outright encouraged. Black leaders have called for the expropriation (fancy word for theft) of white famers lands to give to black people, without compensation. Search "south africa" or "south african farm murders" on X if you're a sick fuck and you want to see for yourself what's going. We're talking entire families massacred, including their dogs, mothers and 5 year old daughters being raped in front of everyone. It's about more than robbery and wanting land back and even more than murder. There's a particular, terrifying malice and burning white hot hatred at the center of it. So you can understand why some of these white farmers with families might want to escape. 

The stats for South Africa are horrific too, of course. As of 2023, it had a higher per capita crime rate than Somalia. It has 80 murders a day, a farm murder a week, a rape every four minutes, and two riots a day. There are 3 welfare dependents for every net taxpayer. And by the way, the numbers are all reported mostly by the South African government, who we just have to take at their word. So they're almost certainly a lot worse in reality.

[Sources: (https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/crime-rate-by-country)

(https://www.theamericantribune.news/p/a-boers-view-of-the-crisis-in-south)

This is a good X account from someone who lives in Pretoria who is basically documenting the collapse of South Africa in real time: https://x.com/k9_reaper ]

Here is a terrifying excerpt from the article I just linked to:

"TAT: And while we’re on the security situation, what can you tell us about the infamous farm attacks? Are the thugs really using signal jammers?

K9: Ok, so farm attacks in South Africa are extremely brutal events. You’ve got people who are breaking into farms, farmhouses, etc. And they’re not just taking stuff. They’re staying for hours and hours once they’ve brutally tortured these individuals.

Now, the torture can be anything from pouring boiling water over them to literally putting their babies in stoves, burning them with hot irons, shoving broken glass bottles up female anatomy, dragging alive individuals behind vehicles, hanging them, burning them. It’s really, whatever you can imagine as the worst torture method possible; that’s what these individuals are doing.

And one of the favorites, unfortunately, is to attack the farmhouse, break-in, and it tends to always involve rape, unfortunately. So they will rape the daughter, no matter how old she is. Whether she is five years old, ten years old, twenty, etc. And they’ll rape the mother, all the other females. And they do it in front of the males, every single time. The male family members will obviously be tied up, usually shot in the leg, then they’ll proceed to rape the other family members in front of them. Now usually, when they do the rape thing, it usually involves someone dying. And it’s usually the male member of the household because they tend to shoot them when they leave.

Farm attacks seem to be a very racially driven thing in South Africa…at the end of the day, the attacks are mostly blacks attacking whites because that’s just how it is. And somehow, that’s just not apparent enough for people to accept. And, obviously, there’s the brutality behind it when it comes to blacks attacking whites with regard to farm attacks. There’s definitely a racial element to it.

Signal jammers are being used for everything from everything from hijackings, cash-in transfer heists, home invasions, and farm attacks as well. So the signal jammer, depending on the model, works at blocking all incoming and outgoing signals from everything from cell phones to radios to even some security cameras in a range of 25 to 100 meters. The sole goal of a signal jammer is to ensure that your target can’t call for help. The reason they use them for farm attacks is that a lot of farmers are out of the community safety initiative and they rely on radios to be able to call for help to one another, to come and assist.

You’re probably thinking of that famous picture of that guy with the signal jammer backpack during a farm attack. It was like a black-and-white photo, and he had that proper military signal jammer. That wasn’t just anything you could get from Alibaba, or even from Mozambique and just driving it over the border or something. That was a proper military use jammer pack in use with the SADF. You’ll see a lot of military and ex-active duty military personnel in these farm attacks, and they often just take what they need from the military before they go out on the attacks.

In essence, the farm attacks are the most brutal thing anyone can imagine. They make those attacks going on in Israel and Gaza look like a walk in the park. And the use of the signal jammer packs is real. It is happening on a daily basis. Both to the citizens of the Republic of South Africa and to people they want to assassinate.

So yeah, South Africa is an exceptionally dangerous place and it’s never going to change. In fact, it’s only going to get worse, no matter how much we try to stop it. But all we can do is keep trying. There’s nothing more we can do."

Is that not one of the most disturbing, depressing things you've ever read in your entire fucking life?

So imagine you're a member of the American left currently. You've defended and supported literally tens of millions of immigrants coming to the US since Biden took over, with a lot of them claiming refugee status. And not just supported and defended, but basically made it the backbone of your entire platform. Anyone and everyone can claim asylum, even if they pass over a dozen safe countries on their way here, even if they regularly vacation to the place they're supposedly fleeing from. Even if it's just like six young men who are, by their own and the lefts own admission, fleeing their home country because of fear of violence, but are ok with leaving family behind. All of that is not only ok, but it is a duty for us as Americans to take them in. Now imagine, after this sea of immigration for four plus years, tens of millions of people from all over the globe; Sudan, Honduras, China, Pakistan, India, Africa, Venezuela, Mexico...you name it. Signing up for benefits at a higher rate than American citizens, being given preferential treatment in housing and hiring, while a good chunk of them openly detest America and a loud minority of them actually call for the destruction of America while enrolled at some of the most (formerly) prestigious and expensive colleges in the world. Imagine you hear about 60 people from South Africa, mostly families, all workers, who want to come here as refugees to escape a brewing genocide where children are literally being put into ovens. Small groups of them, again, sixty in total, with their little kids in tow, waving American flags. How would your position NOT be "yes the refugee system is a vitally important program to help people flee violence, and anyone fleeing violence should be swiftly taken in by America." That would give the whole program more legitimacy and their own position more legitimacy. But they just can't. The reaction to these people has been insane. Unhinged. Look for yourself on social media and on the mainstream news. Watch Tim Kaine and Marco Rubio go at it the other day. 

They are quite literally 'well actually-ing' a genocide!

https://x.com/NewsHour/status/1925271647872807169

Here's a tweet from PBS stating that White farmers have been murdered in South Africa. But those murders account for less than 1% of more than 27,000 annual murders nationwide.

Experts said the deaths do not amount to genocide, and President Donald Trump misleads about land confiscation. (via

@PolitiFact

) https://to.pbs.org/4msUep6

However, there are about 44k White farmers in SA, or about .07% of the population. So if they make up 1% of murders, that's an over representation of over 1300%!

So the question is obvious. Why? Why the open hatred of these people? Why the petulant, panicked, breathless debate about if it's technically a genocide or not? Quibbling over murder/population numbers like it's an SAT question. Did you ever hear something like that with regards to asylum seekers before? No one denies that America has the room for these 60 people and no one even denies that they'll be a net positive for us. No one even denies that they're being targeted for violence! It's just 'WE DON'T WANT THEM' screeched loudly.

 I guess the left is saying that the administration is giving these people preferential treatment over, say, Venezuelans, but again, it's 60 people! They're here already! I don't even expect the left to actually believe themselves when they say something like 'yes the refugee system is vital, they and everyone else should be welcome.' But they can't even bring themselves to lie! 

The only sensible conclusion that I can come to is that these people, by and large, simply hate white people, and they aren't even hiding it anymore. What other reason could there be? Imagine an entire stadium filled with white Australians. A hundred thousand of them signing 'Kill The Brown Farmer.' Imagine that the white Aussies were attacking brown farm owners, massacring their family, dragging them behind their cars to death, raping their 5 year old daughters in front of them. Imagine a political party in Australia whose slogan is 'Kill The Brown Farmer.' Now imagine 60 of those brown farm owners wanted to flee and come to America as refugees. Do you think that people on the left would oppose them coming here? Do you think they'd take pictures of them at the airport and find one fat guy and say that they can't possibly be fleeing from anything? Do you think they'd go to the airport to greet them with a sign disparaging them? Or do you think they'd be protesting in the street, gluing their hands to highways in support of them? So what's the difference? Only one I can see is the fact that these people are white. I know it's somewhat 'uncouth' to say something like that, but why, exactly? Also, I just truly do not give a shit what I'm allowed to say or think anymore, at all. And a lot of people agree with me. Which brings me to my next point. The growing schism on the right.

There has been a pretty big crack forming in the online right ecosystem. This is a little inside baseball (and bordering on too-online, I will admit) so maybe it isn't common knowledge, but the big split is basically between the sort of establishment, Ben Shapiro, Babylon Bee 'cucked' right (as some might say), and the Jared Taylor, Nick Fuentes, kind-of-Matt Walsh-now-somehow, more collectivist 'woke' right (again, as some might say). A lot of it has to do with Israel and Jews in general, but I think it's even bigger than that. The Ben Shapiro side is clinging to the 'we're all the same, we should strive for a colorblind society' mantra (and Israel is as important as America, for some reason). They're more libertarian leaning, I guess, but they're still far from libertarians. The Jared Taylor side claims that humans are tribalistic no matter what and the entire world is race conscious and advocates for their racial group and whites are being left behind, doomed to dwindle away to nothing some day. By not being concerned with our race, at least as much as other groups are, they would say that we're in a fight but we've decided to tie an arm behind our backs.

And I cannot deny where I stand, nor do I want to, and it ain't on the cucked side. Libertarianism, individualism, free markets, democracy, these are all great, precious, delicate things. Hallmarks of a successful civilization. But I'm beginning to think they aren't like these blank slate variables that can have anyone or anything plugged into them and work seamlessly. Different people are different and they value and want different things. I'm not even saying one way is better, either. I know which way I think is better for me, but I can only speak for myself. Libertarianism assumes everyone in a society to be a rational actor, rational acting to make himself and his surroundings better, always with the long term in view. But is that really the case? 

Nothing encapsulates my current thinking about libertarianism better or more succinctly than this meme:

This entire blog was an excuse to post that. Just kidding, but I do love it.

I know I'm veering all over the place here but I guess I've had this post churning around for a while. I've considered myself a libertarian for almost two decades but I am fully out now. It's perfect on paper and in theory but so is communism, technically. It just assumes too much about people and leaves you open to attack. There's also this new idea floating around that I see more and more about how Democracy always eventually ends with groups of people voting for more and more resources for themselves. As they get more things and grow, their vote share gets bigger and bigger, so politicians are incentivized to acquiesce to them. A feedback loop begins and before you know it, one group dominates society and decides they're entitled to whatever another group has and war breaks out and it all collapses on itself. Kind of what's happening in South Africa right now. 

I think the driving force behind the 'collectivist right' is that it's either we're a colorblind meritocracy or we're not. We're fine either way but you gotta pick one. We're done playing by the rules and pretending race isn't real while everyone else acts like they're stars in a Spike Lee movie. Would you condemn a Japanese man for wanting Japan to stay Japanese? Would you scream 'racist' at a Black man who wanted to live in a Black community? Does Israel have the obligation, to the world, to be multicultural? Does a Muslim nation have the moral duty to accept non-Muslims who openly despise Islam, mock it and openly call for the destruction of it? So why do White nations and people have different rules?

Look, I know you probably didn't come here to read stuff like this. This is a little bit much, I'll admit, and I will probably have a part two to this. Sometimes I get kind of stream of consciousness-y and, again, this is a completely free blog. Not even any ads on the godamn sides. This is and will always remain a blog mostly about advantage gambling. But what I see feels so absurdly unjust to me, so blatantly hypocritical, that it feels wrong not to at least address it somehow. Not that making a blog post is really 'doing something' but everyone has a role. It just feels like we've all gotten too comfortable, too docile, too eager to go along to get along. Eager to believe insidious lies about ourselves, lies that we knew were lies. We've let strangers take something from us that we barely knew we had. 

But I think that's just about over now, actually. You can kind of feel it, a little tiny bit. What kind of world do we want for our kids and their kids? Did we stop thinking about that? Or did I just start? Anything worth having will have to be defended at some point. That's what the word 'worth' means. Everyone is a 'blood and soil nationalist' for their own people. Everyone. It's time we stop pretending we don't know that.

Results And More

 This is beginning to feel like a humiliation ritual.

Matt Roy o2.5 -115 L

Jakob Chychrun o2.5 +120 L

Rasmus Sandin o2.5 +130 L

Dylan Samberg u1.5 +110 W

Neal Pionk u1.5 -125 L

57 plays, -7.46 units total. The Capitals guys all got plenty of ice time and exactly 2 blocks, and Sandin was on the ice for 29 attempts against, but another disappointing night in the books. Somehow, the one night I get in on good looking over Block bets on the Capitals, the Hurricanes have their second lowest shot attempt night in the series, down from their average by a good margin. I had them getting about 70 attempts at the net and looking at it now, they've averaged 73 for the series including last nights game. And last night they get 58. 

If I was full time, this would barely be a blip. 57 plays would be a couple of days and you can easily run bad for weeks and even months sometimes, even when you're crushing soft stuff like hockey props. So, again, I actually do think I'm making +EV bets here. But I'm really not confident about it at all and I definitely would not recommend anyone tail me, if anyone even is. 

Looking at my overall numbers, including this week, I'll have 7 weeks of betting on Blocks and will be up roughly 5 units. 5 weeks betting on SOG and will be down right around 4.5 units. So it's probably something like 150ish plays between SOG and Blocks with a tiny profit, if anything. I don't think I'm quite ready to throw in the towel just yet but I'm close. 

By the way, I should mention this, but in case you haven't figured it out by now, I am absolutely no math whiz. I didn't come to sports betting/modeling because I had knowledge about statistics or math or big data programming and wanted to apply it. It was the other way around. I only learned anything about this kind of stuff because I was modeling. I only learned what I needed to make whatever model I was making at the time, so I don't have the base of knowledge that I think is required these days to really make a go at modeling anything, even props. I had to change my college major because I couldn't pass a trigonometry class! I did much better on the English portion of the SATS than the math section and it's always been that way for me. I'm better at math than the average person, mostly due to the fact that the average person is abysmal at anything even resembling math above an 8th grade level. I'm good with percentages, I think I'm good at 'logic' and I know how to ask things and figure stuff out, and I'm not afraid to try things. But the very base knowledge that really good modelers have is something I lack. Someone in the comments very nicely asked if I thought about using a 'negative binomial distribution' instead of poisson and honestly, he might as well been speaking Chinese. (By the way, if you're reading this, I will get the DM's fixed on the X account tonight, I promise. I can only log into that account on my home computer and haven't been able to get on this week). Basically, every single thing I know or have ever known about statistics or anything related to statistics, I have learned in a sports betting book or forum post. I wish I understood this shit better. I wish they made it more real and applicable in school. It was always so dry and abstract and meaningless to me, honestly. "Calculate the shaded region under the curved line" YAWN. Why not "come up with a fair number for Team X expected shots on goal vs Team Y." That would be fun and people would actually pay attention!

But I digress. I'm probably sounding a little whiney here. I could have and should have learned this stuff way better at some point. I probably still could now. But the will just is not quite there like it used to be (but it is still there, a little more than I thought). 

It's always been a love/hate relationship with my models and with statistics in general. I often get mad at myself for not taking school and learning in general more seriously when I was younger. It was just all so fucking boring.

Anyway, that's about it. BTC has had a big month, up about 20% and near its' all time high. ETH and alt-coins in general have shown a little bit of life lately. The BTC/ETH ratio is now at about .025 after bouncing off of .018. BTC dominance is still way up though. I've found a better way of looking at BTC dominance by the way, which is to exclude stablecoins. With stablecoins taken out, BTC dominance is at 67%. That's pretty remarkable when you think about it. All this time later, all the tens of millions of alt-coins (actually probably hundreds of millions that have come and gone), all of the Ethereum and Doge and Solana of it all, the NFT's, Bitcoin is still almost 70% of the entire crypto market cap. No CEO, no company, no marketing, no 'dev team', nothing. Just a white paper uploaded to an obscure cryptography forum by a nameless person. That's it. That's how you know it has real value. You would never have even heard of it if it didn't. 

That's all for today. Check back this weekend for a post or some more picks if I feel like losing some money. Bye!

BTC price: $104k

BTC dominance (including stablecoins and without): 62% / 67%

BTC market cap: $2.07 T (boy we really smashed that one trillion market cap, didn't we?)

Total crypto market cap: $3.32 T

Total cryptos on coin market cap: 15.5 M

xBlocks Picks For Tonight

I was looking at my overall numbers the other day and realized that my xBlocks model was up a good amount, more than I remembered. The sample size is only a few weeks but well over 100 plays. I'm thinking this model has a better chance of winning over the SOG model, mostly due to the fact that I have never even heard of anyone betting on NHL Blocks, so I think this market is probably super soft. Definitely softer than SOG. I only stopped using it because I sort of wandered into my xSOG model and got really into that. 

So we're going to shake things up a bit here and go with xBlocks for at least tonight and see how we do.

Here are the picks, all NHL Blocks from Draft Kings, one unit unless otherwise stated.

Matt Roy o2.5 -115

Jakob Chychrun o2.5 +120

Rasmus Sandin o2.5 +130

Dylan Samberg u1.5 +110

Neal Pionk u1.5 -125

Lots of Washington overs as Carolina has been absolutely peppering them with shots and shot attempts all series. They also led the league in CF for the regular season, and the second place team had more than 300 less attempts. I expect Washington to sell out big time to block shots tonight, too. The three Washington overs I see big edges on. Normally I'd make these 1.5 or 2 unit plays but I'm a little gun shy right now so we'll keep em all 1 unit.

And the two unders for the Wnpg players are decent edges but not huge. Dallas was average regular season for shot attempts but is way at the bottom during the playoffs. 

I feel good about this slate. We'll see how it goes but I do intend on getting to 100 plays here, one way or another. Check back tomorrow for results and be on the lookout for a real post soon. Lots of stuff in the news I would like to touch on. Bye for now!

Results And A Look At The xSOG Model

 Firstly, the results from 5/9:

Max Pacioretty u1.5 -105 W

Bobby Mcmann o1.5 +110 L

M Tkachuk u2.5 +115 W

Sam Bennet o2.5 -142 L 

Forsling o1.5 -182 (1.5 units) L

-3 units with the big Forsling bet. Sizing goes against us yet again. Puts us -4.16 units after 52 plays. 

First off, the bets from 5/7: I'm definitely done betting Mcmann overs. There's just something going on that I'm not capturing in the model. The winners were both legit but Bennet only had 2 attempts and was pretty invisible for what I saw from the game. I still think Forsling is a good bet and he had 4 attempts, 2 scoring chances and 28 minutes on the ice, but no PP time. He had an even quieter game last night too, which I didn't get to, with 1 shot on 2 attempts. So I don't know. I made him something like -220 to go over 1.5 shots, and that was good enough for me to make it a 1.5 unit play, so that kind of shows how thin the edges are, perceived or real.

Now for the bigger picture, I do have to admit that I'm running out of steam with these a little bit. I'll probably still get to 100 plays and gun to my head, I do think this model is profitable. But it's starting to not be fun anymore. I keep thinking about the model and ways to improve it, then I realize each bet I'm making is worth something like $3 in expectation, at best, and I start to question the whole thing. I don't think it's quite the best use of my time as possible, but then again, can I really throw in the towel and admit that I can't beat Shots On Goal props? So I'm torn, as you can see. 

I'm going to get under the hood here and discuss the model. It occurred to me that it's ridiculous to treat it as some big secret. It's a shots on goal model that I made in a few hours and doesn't even have any track record of success yet. So it's not like I'm giving up some big edge. Maybe, worst case, there's someone out there reading this like me 15 years ago who might get some kernel of information that might help them with their own model. And if that is the case, good for you. I'm happy to help.

Anyway, the model is, like I said, pretty simple. The main stat I'm looking for is Shots per minute. So what I do is (using the current season and counting playoff games as two games) get each teams Shots Allowed (SA) per minute at even strength and Short Handed (SH), and their average time on ice per game for even strength, power play, and short handed. I do the same thing for the entire league to get league averages. I then normalize the teams for each other, meaning I do something like Team X shots against per minute at even strength divided by the average team SA per minute at even strength, multiplied by the opponent average SA per minute at even strength. So if a team gives up less shots per minute than the average team, you would expect their opponent to get less shots per minute than average, and vice versa. I do the same thing for short handed. So now I have each teams expected shots against per minute at even strength and short handed, normalized for each other. This part of the model feels solid to me.

Next we have to get time on ice. I'm looking for expected time on ice for each team at even strength, PP and SH, against each other. This is tricky. In my old model, I made it a function of penalties drawn and taken, which you then have to turn into PP time. You have to consider penalties taken at the same time, too. For this model, I just used PP and SH time per game. So if a team spends a lot more time than average on the PP, the model will assume its opponent will spend more time than average short handed. This is the part of the model I'm always thinking about. It doesn't feel exactly right but it does seem good enough, to me anyway. If a team spends more time than average on the penalty kill, it would stand to reason that whoever they're playing will spend more time than average on the power play.

Anyway, once I have each teams expected time on ice in each situation, I go player by player, running their stats into the model. I get each players shots per minute at even strength and on the PP and run that against the opponent, so I have each players expected shots per minute against the opponent. Then I run that against their expected time on ice at even strength and PP, then just add those two numbers up. To get their expected PP time, I use their PP share, or what percentage of a teams power play the player was on the ice for during the season. I throw in shots per game while on the penalty kill for guys that kill penalties, but that number is always tiny. I give a little 3% bump to the home team and a 3% penalty to the away team, and I've now got a number for his total expected shots. You put that number in a poisson calculator up against the bet that's being offered, and it'll show you if you have an edge or not. If the game is a heavy favorite against a big dog, I'll generally stay away from over bets on the favorite and under bets on the dog, just because of scoring effects. But since I'm not even betting every day, I generally just stay away from games that have big favorites/dogs. 

So that's really it. The idea behind it, in a very general sense, is that we're looking for teams that give up a lot or a little shots per minute compared to the average team. By doing it per minute and breaking down special teams, we can potentially find teams that, say, take a lot of penalties and are playing a team with a guy that gets a lot of shots on the power play. Or vice versa. Say you're pricing a player who gets a big chunk of his shots on the PP. If he's playing a team that spends a loss less time SH than average and/or gives up a lot less shots per minute while SH, you would expect said player to have a lower shot total than if he was playing an average team.

Some improvements could obviously be made. I could use Shot Attempts instead of Shots, and turn those back into Shots. That's what I did in my old model but it was so clunky and with over 90 games now, corsi and shots are pretty much the same thing anyway. I think the most glaring problem with the model though is the way I come up with expected time on ice for PP and SH. I have read everything possible, thought about it for way longer than I care to admit, and I just can't come up with a better, feasible way. I guess the best way would be to get that teams expected lineup, each players expected time on ice, and each players expected penalty taken and drawn and normalize for each other. But that's way too much work and I'm kind of doing that already in a round about way. Maybe I'm not taking into enough consideration the fact that players moved teams mid season, but I really don't think so. I could weight the games better, making the more recent ones count more than old ones. I'm doing that a little bit in a mickey mouse way counting playoff games as two games, but that could definitely be improved.

Writing it all out and thinking about it as much as I do, I still refuse to believe this model is -EV. Remember, we're talking about player props here. If I was trying to model full games, the way I do stuff would never fly. But props are typically some of the softest bets you'll find at a sports book. But the edges I'm betting on are small. If my model says something should be -120 but I can get it at -110, I'm betting it. That's a tiny edge. When I was doing this full time and really crushing, I remember I used to get stuff that 'should' be something like -250 and be able to bet it at even odds. Like, stuff like that all the time. But now with a perceived edge that small, even if everything is correct, I'm at the mercy of the variance gods. And hockey is a super high variance sport in general. So I guess I would say that my model is anywhere between slightly -EV and slightly +EV, which really isn't a great feeling. Now that I'm thinking about it though, if I do continue, I'll probably do a lot less plays. Maybe just a few a night, only the very best ones. If I hadn't called that 8-1 night half units, we'd be about break even. A couple shot attempts turn into shots or vice versa and I'd be solidly in the green, thinking about what a genius I am.  

Anyway, this is where I'm at. I get deep into it all and then snap out of it, like why am I even giving this so much time and mental energy?? Modeling is really a hobby for me at this point so I don't know. But who am I if I can't beat stuff like this? Just a guy who bets wong teasers and off market straights and team totals? Is that so bad? I mean I have family now for christ sakes. This shit shouldn't even be on my radar! Or should it?! You see?? The anguish?! AND FOR WHAT. I don't know. Maybe I'll get some plays up later but probably not. 

Picks for 5/9/25

 Could only get to one game tonight. Let's dive in.

All SOG, one unit.

Max Pacioretty u1.5 -105

Bobby Mcmann o1.5 +110

M Tkachuk u2.5 +115

Sam Bennet o2.5 -142

Forsling o1.5 -182 (1.5 units)

Nothing major here really except for the Forsling bet. I almost want to make it 2 units but -182 is too steep. It's a little hard to figure out the intangible stuff here. On the one hand, Florida is at home so that gives them a bump. On the other hand, they're pretty big favorites so scoring effects will probably see them with a low shot total in the 3rd period. I don't love the Mcmann bet and his ice time has decreased the past 3 games, but the model shows a really big edge and he's still getting plenty of ice time and attempts at the net, and is still on PP2. We'll see how tonight goes and if we want to keep betting him going forward. And I still see a big edge on the Bennet bet. Not sure why the market hasn't adjusted. 

Check back tomorrow for results!

Results from 5/7/25, Crypto And More

Not a great night, bad sizing as usual.

Bobby Mcmann o1.5 -125 L

Sam Bennet o2.5 -148 (1.5 units) L

Carter Verhaege o2.5 -135 L

Brad Marchand u1.5 +110 L

Gustav Forsling o1.5 -142 W

A Lundell o1.5 -130 (half unit) W

Kyle Connor o2.5 -182 W

3-4, -3.32 units. -1.16 units total after 47 plays. We probably 'should' have won that Bennet bet with 6 corsis/shot attempts (I don't want the word corsi to disappear, replaced by the gay sounding 'shot attempts'. I love that it's named after a goalie coach who only started tracking it for his goalies. Not even in the NHL I'm pretty sure. But it is awkward to call shot attempts 'corsis', I will admit). With 6 attempts we should win that bet a little more than half the time. Same with the Verhaege bet with his 6 attempts and 5 scoring chances. We should definitely win at least one of those with Bennet bet being a 3 unit swing.

Marchand was a miss. I couldn't watch it but it looks like he had a really good game. He's probably my all time favorite hockey player. Came out of absolutely nowhere, grinded the 3rd line and PK, was back and forth between the Providence Bruins and the NHL team. Then he just caught fire and turned into one of the best players of his era. Has played in some of the biggest hockey games on the planet in his career, NHL and otherwise. Even if you take all the 'rat' and pest/instigator stuff out, which probably adds something to a team, he was an elite player with elite hands. When I was really betting hockey props, I remember he had the highest shooting percentage in the entire league for a few years. Actually looking at it now, he had 20.28%, 19.78, 18.68%, and 17.26% for his high water marks for shooting percentage in mostly full seasons. That's almost 3 times better than average. (Hockey analytics is all about possession and getting attempts at the net, and the newer stuff is tracking breakouts and entires and shot location, along with 'shot passes' which is cool. The newer stuff seems to be trying to better figure out the stuff that happens in between shot attempts, which is good. That seems to be the next evolution; quantifying how teams break out and attack and regroup and play in the neutral zone. But no one has really been able to dissect shot quality just yet. At least not publicly that I've seen, anyway. Two different shooters with the pucks on their stick in the offensive zone at the same exact spot on the ice are going to differ in their outcome, probably wildly, but most analytics largely treat them as the same.) Anyway, back to Marchand. He's so shifty, all hips and hands, and is an elite penalty killer which, by the way, doesn't show up in his stats whatsoever, unless you specifically look for it. It actually hurts his overall 'noob level analytics' stats quite a bit (All Situations CF%, FF%, GF%, etc). He's a winner and shows up in a lot of ways that help a team but don't necessarily show up on the stat sheet. He's great at maintaining possession, always had elite CF% numbers, even currently. Of course, it doesn't hurt playing with Patrice Bergeron for 90% of your career, but maybe Bergeron was as good as he was partly because of Marchand? You don't really know. He's also one of those players that always plays well above his 'expected' stats which I always find interesting. In 17 seasons, his actual Goals For% has been a good bit higher than his expected Goals For% in all but 4 seasons. That's pretty remarkable. Pure talent.

Anyway, the winners were all legit winners with lots of Ice time and Attempts. The Mcmann bet was bad though I think. I need to look into him more, sometimes I get these 3rd line guys that look good in the model but don't really feel right. Probably an ice time thing. This is where following the leagues closer helps which I am getting a little bit better at.

ANYWAY, I've decided I'll probably get to 100 plays and then make a decision. If I'm down after 100 plays, there's a pretty good chance the model is bad. Not definite by any means, but this is all more for fun than anything else, I guess, so I don't need to keep doing it. But if I'm up a good amount, I'll probably keep it going all playoffs. I'm betting really small but if/as I gain confidence, that will change. 

In other news, Bitcoin is ripping a little bit which, honestly, always makes me nervous. My biggest fear for bitcoin right now is a massive, sudden move up, the O Mega candle people like to talk about. I have plenty of invested in it but it never feels like enough. I want another couple years to keep stacking and then let it hit $500K. Of course, I know this makes me sound way too optimistic about it, and I probably am, but I am more convinced than ever that bitcoin is at the very least the new gold. Ark Investment is this Investment group you may have heard about. Their CEO is Cathie Woods, she's been at it pretty publicly for a long time, always on all kinds of shows and stuff (and was a babe when she was younger. Look it up). She/they are super into Bitcoin and the blockchain and released a pretty interesting paper a few weeks ago analyzing where they think the future of Bitcoin will go. You can find it here. The money shot though is that their price predictions for 2030 are $300k, $710K, and $1.5 million per bitcoin for bear, base, and bull cases. I read the whole thing, it seems pretty solid. $150k feels like the next big number to claim and like I said in an old post, once we solidly break out of the lower regression band in Ben Cowen's model, we don't stop going up until we hit the red, way over extended band. (I'll probably revisit that prediction in a future post. I like to look back on old predictions and with 5 years here now, we have a good amount of perspective.) We'll see if this cycle is different with the massive institutional money in it now, though. 'Diminishing returns' is a thing Ben Cowen always mentions. The highs will probably get less extreme, but so will the lows. 

BTC dominance continues to be the story this cycle as alt-coins continue their bleed against The King. The BTC/ETH ratio is at .0202 and that's with a good amount of recent recovery. It got as low as .0179 recently, which is about the same level as the last big low in late 2019. So we may get a bounce here. Keep an eye on ETH and related alt coins in the next few weeks. For me, besides my little ChainLink alt-coin side piece, I'm focused mostly on Bitcoin. I'll probably always have some ETH and a little LTC and of course my LINK, but what are you even really buying when you buy an ETH 'token'? With no max supply, proof stake instead of proof of work, and a CEO who won't live forever, it doesn't exactly feel right to try to amass a big chunk of it. I know you need ETH and certain coins to do things on the blockchain, but other than that, why would you want a pile of ETH vs a pile of BTC? Bitcoin is not going anywhere. I think it'll always be the 'gold' of the cryptoverse, at the very least. So why not keep it mostly all in BTC and buy the other stuff when you need it? I don't know, I'm not an alt coin guy at all so I'm probably not seeing part of it. But I have been thinking a lot about alt-coins in general and why anyone would really want a bunch of any of them over bitcoin. I think the best answer to that is to hope to sell for profit, which is just kicking the can down the road. You have to have an actual, real use case somewhere. I think the market is thinking about the same thing which you can see from the valuations against BTC. I wouldn't be surprised to see a mini alt coin cycle again this cycle, but I think the big, zoomed out picture for the next decade is largely going to be money flowing from alt coins into BTC, not the other way around.

Another related story for this cycle has been the absence of retail. Retail never really came back after 2020, judging from new subscribers and twitter followers to a bunch of youtube and twitter guys/exchanges that Ben Cowen tracks. You can feel it too. You don't hear much about crypto anymore in casual life. When/if they do come back, you'll definitely see more money go into alts, but even if that does happen, you know it'll be short lived. So just buy Bitcoin and store it yourself. That's what I'm doing anyway, none of this is financial advice (I love how everyone says that by the way).

That's about it for now. I'll probably have some picks up later today but no promises. Thanks to anyone reading and especially leaving a comment, it's nice to know I'm not just shouting into the void here. The stats show there's plenty of people coming but you can never really trust that. You don't know what's real and what isn't. 

Picks For Tonight

Lets get right to it.

All SOG props from DK, one unit unless otherwise stated.

Bobby Mcmann o1.5 -125

Sam Bennet o2.5 -148 (1.5 units)

Carter Verhaege o2.5 -135

Brad Marchand u1.5 +110

Gustav Forsling o1.5 -142

A Lundell o1.5 -130 (half unit)

Kyle Connor o2.5 -182

Hopefully we can keep our momentum going after last nights 8-1 run. Good luck us and check back tomorrow!

Results!

BINK. Let us compile first:

S Gostibehere o1.5 +120 (full unit) W

Brent Burns o1.5 -110 L

T Hall o1.5 -130 W

L Stankoven o1.5 -175 W

Jackson Blake u1.5 +135 W

Seth Jarvis o2.5 +115 (full unit) W

S Aho o2.5 +110 W

D Strome u1.5 +105 W

Tom Wilson u1.5 +126 W

SGP .25 units L

Now that's more like it! 8-2, +4.94 units for the night. As usual, bet sizing kicking me in the ass. These really shouldn't have been half units. The first few guys I priced I only saw small/no edges so I said to make them half units. I got back on my computer later and did most of the Carolina guys and most of those were fairly big edges. But obviously we'll count them as half units, besides the two that were full.

Puts us at +2.16 units so far after 40 plays.

This is a lot more what betting these used to feel like. Good mix of overs/unders so I know there isn't a glaring model bias. The game went into OT but I'm pretty sure every single over was already a winner before OT started. Covering two unders with OT is nice, too. Even the only loss, the Brent Burns over, really 'should' have been a win with him getting plenty of PP time and having 5 corsis. With 5 attempts, he really should cover 2 shots well over 75% of the time.

You never want to over react to any single day, good or bad, so we'll just keep on keeping on. But I am really encouraged so far, I love my new model and I feel like I'm nailing the TOI for each guy/player. I used to fly through these, trying to get down on as many bets as possible. This time around, I'm doing a lot more research, spending more time on each game/bet. It feels dumb now to say this, but I never really considered how different playoffs are to regular season games when it comes to expected shots and PP ice time. Now that I know, I'm way more happy to fire on close over bets and pass on close under bets. 

Anyway, hopefully you guys were able to get down on these. I have no idea if anyone is even tailing me. I can see the stats and there's plenty of people coming here, but I have no clue how many people are tailing me. Leave a comment if you are!

Check back later today, 90% chance I'll have more bets up for tonights games. Talk soon, bye!

Picks Tonight

Some more Shots On Goal picks for tonight. Hopefully we can get a little momentum going. I could only get to one game tonight and only saw mostly small edges, to be honest, so these plays are going to be half units unless otherwise stated.

S Gostibehere o1.5 +120 (full unit)

Brent Burns o1.5 -110

T Hall o1.5 -130

L Stankoven o1.5 -175

Jackson Blake u1.5 +135

Seth Jarvis o2.5 +115 (full unit)

S Aho o2.5 +110

D Strome u1.5 +105

Tom Wilson u1.5 +126

Quarter unit SGP with 33% odds boost: Car -1.5, A Svechnikov 1+ point, Last Goal: Carolina, Over 5.5 full game. +698, .25 units to win 1.75.

If Carolina is up by 1 or more late and score an empty net goal, that's covering the -1.5 and Car Last Goal. The over and Svech getting a point are correlated with each other and the Car -1.5 bet. I have no idea if it's +EV but it's tiny, fun, looks fishy, and with the odds boost it can't possible be terrible. 

I feel pretty good about these. I like lots of shots from the point by Carolina obviously, and if it goes into OT I'm feeling great.

Again, if picks aren't your thing, don't worry. This won't become a regular thing, and if it ever did I would start a new blog or something else. But it won't. If they are your thing, feel free to leave a message on here or on X  @poogsBLOG

Check back tomorrow for results!

Results From Last Night, Picks Incoming

Finally breaking the bad streak here with a really good night. Let's compile first: 

A Matthews: u3.5 -110 L

M Knies: u1.5 +130 L 

Marner: u1.5 +120 L

Max Pacioretty: u1.5 +115 W

Bobby McMann: o1.5 -130 (half unit) W

Sam Reinhart: u2.5 +115 W

Carter Verhaeghe: o2.5 -130 W

Sam Bennet: o2.5 -130 (1.5 units) W

Marchand: u1.5 +120 W

6-3 for plus 3.4 units for the night. Puts us at -2.78 units so far after 31 plays.

I'll probably have some picks for tonight later on so check back this afternoon. We WILL end the playoffs in the green. 

Results And More Picks For Tonight

 DISASTER last night, on paper at least. Let's compile first:

Jimmy Snuggerud o1.5 -130 L

Cole Perfetti u1.5 +145 L

Morgan Barron u1.5 -162 L

Alex Iafallo u1.5 -154 W

Neal Pionk u1.5 +110 L

N Ehlers u2.5 -120 L

1-5 for the night for -5.12 units. Yuck! Puts us at -6.18 units total after 25 plays so far. It looks bad and in the last few years, here is where I'd normally slam my keyboard and swear off props forever, for the 10th time. However, I actually kind of nailed these picks last night. The Jets tied it up with less than 2 seconds left in regulation which sent the game into (double) OT. Had OT not happened, I would have had a really good night. And it actually gets even better (or worse) than that. The Jets were pretty heavily favored last night, yet were trailing 3-1 almost the entire second half of the game. If you know anything about hockey analytics, you definitely know about 'scoring effects.' Scoring effects refers to the effect in hockey where when a team is trailing late in games, especially by more than 1 goal, they'll take a lot more chances and generate more shots and shot attempts. These shots are generally lower quality with shooting percentages somewhere around 50% worse than when the game is tied or close in the first two periods. Basically, the trailing team is in desperation mode so they activate their defenseman and throw everything and anything at the net (the opposite is true for the winning team. They will typically get a lot less attempts but they will be much higher quality. Think of odd man rushes as the now attacking opposition defenseman get trapped in the offensive zone). 

So, the Jets were trailing by 2 goals late, which they 'shouldn't' have been, which increased their shot volume by a substantial amount, and I STILL would have come away solidly in the green had it not been for OT. (A thought I had this morning; I may make a small bet on the YES for will there be overtime on slates where I have tons of Unders. OT really does stick a fork in prop unders. I'll have to look around to see if I can get a decent number. Something I'll think about).

Believe it or not, I am actually encouraged so far with this new model and we still don't have near the amount of plays to overcome variance yet, plus I've only been doing one game per night so big swings are expected. I'm going to stick with it for the rest of the playoffs, barring something insane going on. If you're following along with me, stay the course. The process is solid and I envision green days ahead.

For tonight we have Toronto at Florida, Game 1 of the second round.

The following are all Shots on Goal from DK, to win or risking one unit unless otherwise stated:

A Matthews: u3.5 -110

M Knies: u1.5 +130

Marner: u1.5 +120

Max Pacioretty: u1.5 +115

Bobby McMann: o1.5 -130 (half unit)

Sam Reinhart: u2.5 +115

Carter Verhaeghe: o2.5 -130

Sam Bennet: o2.5 -130 (1.5 units)

Marchand: u1.5 +120

Lots of Toronto unders, couple Panthers overs. Hopefully we turn it around tonight. Check back tomorrow for results and I have a real post cooking too so keep an eye out. Bye for now!