gpb@msdc.UUCP (George P. Burdell) (11/20/85)
Greetings !!
Some friends of mine and I have developed some computer programs to
predict sporting events based on a team's "power rating." To those
of you who also read net.sport.football, you probably are already familiar
with George. That is what we call our group of programs. The name
comes from the mythical Georgia Tech student, George P. Burdell (also
we couldn't think of an appropriate cute name for it).
Here's how George works. The power ratings of the two teams are compared
and the difference between them (plus any home court advantage) is used as the
point spread. After the game is played, adjustments to the power ratings
are made based on how close the predicted spread is to the actual spread. If
the difference between the spreads falls between 0 and 4 points, no adjustment
is made; 5-9 points: you increase the 'winning' teams power rating by one
point and decrease the 'losing' team's power rating by one point; 10-14: two
points; 15-19: three points; 20-24: four points; and 25-up: five points.
This process is identical to and borrowed from the Game Plan family of
publications.
Now to the details of the pre-season. We will be predicting the games
of teams in 13 conferences and 5 independents. The conferences are the
ACC, Atlantic 10, Big East, Big 10, Big 8, Metro, Pac 10, PCAA, SEC,
Sun Belt, SWC, Southern, and the WAC. The five independents are Notre Dame,
DePaul, Dayton, marquette, and Miami (Fla). We will be keeping track
of 122 teams. The reason we picked some conferences and not others is
based on the availability and timeliness of getting the scores for those
games those 122 teams play in our area. Last year we ran George for 166
teams and had a rough time at it. That is why some games will not be
predicted while others will be and why some teams are not included in our
Top Twenty (or so) listings.
About the power ratings. We are using the method of predictions from
Game Plan, but we are not using their power ratings...exactly. We purchased
all of the pre-season basketball yearbooks and gleamed over what they had
to say. The publications we used were Game Plan, Street & Smith's, The
Sporting News, Dick Vitale's, Sport, Inside Sports, Sports Illustrated,
and the pre-season AP poll. First, we picked our top 20 or so and assigned
power ratings to those teams. Then we transposed those teams on to their
conferences and figured out the remaining power ratings. We then use that
as the starting point for predict some 2300 games over the season. A
herculian task if I do say so myself (which I just did).
Anyway, what we will do in the coming weeks is post George's Top Twenty
(or so) and analyze the previous and upcoming week's games. We hope to
post once a week but we do have jobs and might not get to it on some
occasions. We won't post all of the predictions like we do in football.
However, we might post a couple of key games predictions coming up in the
week. We will also post how George is doing on his predictions in two
ways. We will print his percentages based on predictions correct, wrong,
and correct but with the wrong spread (i.e. lose to the spread). We will
also post his spread differential based on the method of how we update
the power ratings: 0-4, 5-9, 10-14, 15-19, 20-24, and 25-up.
Because we won't post the predictions every week, we are offering another
service. To those who are interested in it, you may subscribe to "George
predicts by NetMail." That's right. Just because you can't read the
predictions in news does not mean you can't read them. Just send mail
to George at the address below and we will include you on our mailing list.
Now, let us introduce you to the people who wrote George and who are
responsible for his upkeep. My name is Mannie Lowe and I do most of the
postings. The other keeper of George is Win Strickland. He helps in entering
the scores and fine-tune the programs. He will also some of the postings.
The other person responsible for George is Jeff Dunnahoo who is not on the
net. We started George based on his idea and he worked on the pre-season
power ratings with us.
That's about it as far as the intro to George goes. Our next posting
will be George's pre-season Top Twenty (or so) and some analysis of the
first week of hoop action. Once again, if you are interested in receiving
George's game predictions by mail, please respond to George at the address
below his signature. Also included are Mannie's and Win's net addresses
in case you want to talk to us directly (although George's mail is aliased
to us also). Please feel free to post your opinions about George or what
he says to the net. Thank you for your comments and support.
George P. Burdell Mannie Lowe -> msdc!mannie
George's Basketball Picks
Atlanta, George Win Strickland -> gatech!win
{gatech,ihnp4,mcnc,akgua}!msdc!gpb