CFL 2 pt. and 1 pt issue

CFL 2 pt. and 1 pt issue I found an article on the [url]www.cfl.ca[/url] website written by a fellow named Jim Mullin. He's sick of watching CFL teams give up safety touches and kick the ball way. My own feeling is that safeties had gone up in games over the years. He didn't have a lot of data and I couldn't find the data by looking up safeties and such but he had examples of 2 teams which isn't bad since that is 25% of the league. 1. BC gave up 4 safeties last year and forced 4 safeties. In 2009 that number was 3 and 2. 2. Edmonton last year gave up 14 safeties. That is the CFL record for a year he says. And they only had 7 the year before and 6 before that. And he didn't mention their forced safeties. Without the data but armed with observation and this article I'm going to say that the safety touch must be occurring almost every game already. Is this playing out with the other teams? It must be to some extent or he wouldn't be bothering to write the article. He's writing it for reasons related to boring football,etc but as a bettor we need to know these trends. npc shared his data going back to 2001 but and that is limited data anyway but I have to conjecture that in the current game in 2011 the 2 and 1 are worth even more in the CFL than that 20 cents from his data. I'm really thinking that 2 is worth 8 cents and the 1 is worth 6 cents again which gets my move closer to 30 cents and more when a game moves from +2 to -1.5. Like I wrote in a previous post I really think the single point is coming up less now as teams realize it is not optimal to concede it in many circumstances or to score it if you have the chance to score it. However, it will still be scored when it is optimal to be scored. For instance I saw Winnipeg last week add a single point to a 7 point lead in the 4th quarter vs. Hamilton. This makes sense obviously. But this very single makes the 1 or 2 pt game come up again as a more likely result since Hamilton if they scored a TD would go for 2 pts presumably and if they missed it would be a 2 pt game. It is the combination of the safety touch, optimally scored single points, late FG's that reduce game spreads below 3 that are still proper strategies for a team to employ that keep alive 1 or 2 pt games. And of course once a game is 1 or 2 a FG the other way just makes it 1 or 2 the other way. Heck, I don't have any plays for anyone this week at this so this is what I have to offer you. Beware what you're betting blowing through numbers like 1 or 2 both ways in the CFL.

Without knowing the in's and outs of the CFL year to year, but respecting the scoring differences. I'd say that even a seemingly large change in strategy would have pretty minimal impact on the value of numbers. Just my opinion, I do appreciate the work on the CFL yall do.

I don't want to rub the board the wrong way but I feel I need to be. When you do this for a living, even small differences are significant. What the 2 or 1 is worth is critical in deciding for me what bets to make and how to structure them. To the point that if I do in incorrectly or make a bad estimate, I will just assume that I'll cost myself money. Now I cost myself money on lots of bets but I don't want any bad estimates if I can help it. And I don't want to cost myself any more money than I need to. I used to think the 2 was worth 8 cents and the 1 was worth 6 cents. That is before I saw all of these safety touches the past few years. I reviewed the article on the CFL website and I'm satisfied my observations are true. With more safety touches, there are just more chances of games landing around 2 and 1. The single points also play a role in this, multiple safeties in a game, it is a whole catch all of moving parts but I'm pretty sure just the fact there are more safeties increases the probability that a game will land 1 or 2 regardless of point spread. And games that are lined 1 or 2 will have even that much more of a chance of landing at 1 or 2 presuming they also have more safety touches being scored. npc was kind enough to share a value from his data and indicated it goes back to 2001. There are all kinds of questions regarding data. (1) The increase in safeties is the last few years. npc and other's databases go back to 2001 or 1990. Well, whatever their push frequency is it doesn't tell me enough about what is going on right now with our bets. (2) Those insane 3 minute clock rules when the heck did they come out? I'll hypothesize there are more late FG cutting deficits to 3 or under than you would otherwise see without those rules. Those rules didn't exist in some year. If your data incorporates those changes, adjustments need to be made---or at least I think they do. (3) Just a comment on push frequencies. I have read a few methodologies. What do you do? Take all the games lined at 1 or 2 and see how many times they fell 1 or 2? Then there is that Stanford Wong method I saw where he's grouping games. What is missing in this is if I don't have any games lined at 1 or 2 or very few of them you'll really have a data problem. I don't expect anyone to share their methodology. What I find important to understand is regardless of point spread the game might come 1 or 2. And they come 1 or 2 alot. Including the Calgary game tonight where they scored 66 points. Did it effect the point spread outcome? No. But I do notice the closing line is Calgary +3 and I see the Greek opened Calgary +1. If BC kicked a FG and wins it mattered. I bet Winnipeg tonight +1. They won by 6. If the Argos got a winning TD, they win by 1. And I push my bet. And that matters of course since the closing line was Winnipeg -1. One of these games it will matter and will effect the result of your bet. Euler's number in the CFL is 1 and 2.