What is the method sportsbook employ to calculate odds/lines for NBA, NFL, MLB etc?
403923
I don't think it's so much a method of calculation as it is a follow the leader thing.  SI did an article a year or two ago in which they talked about the guy who sets the line for one of Vegas' big sportsbooks.  He researched the teams, etc,, but ultimately sort of set it by feel.  An interesting note: his concern was to put the line where the money would flow evenly to each side rather than to actually predict the game's outcome.  After he set his, other sportsbooks followed his lead and came out with similar/identical numbers.  Then, of course, they move it according to which way the action is going so that their odds of losing money are reduced.
21000
Powdered lime.  \n\nIf you're talking about pointspreads and not hashmarks, they're not necessarily what the book thinks the final point differential will be.  They're an educated guess by the oddsmakers as to what line will result in an equal amount of money being bet on each team (since the bookie get's his 10 percent of the losing bets, wherein the profit lies).  The lines move one way or another during the week when there's a disparity in betting on one team or another in an attempt to equalize.  Too many people bet on the Saints being favored by 3, and the line will move to 4, 5 or 6 to get people to bet the other way
936064
Just pick Baltimore.\nThe Steelers are the worst Super Bowl defenders ever.\nTongue in cheek...\n\nMy initial guess would be no, you cant do this, since each team does not play every other team, and even if they did, they wouldn't play them the same number of times, and even if they did that too, the sample space would still be too small-you would need dozens of games between any two teams.\nThe best analysis would be within the same division, but again, since they dont play the same teams out of division you'd have to use only the data in intradivision games and apply the results similarly.\nI would also assume that the regression variables would be wildly non-linear, so you're going to have a beast of an equation when you're done.\nAgain, these are all just guesses by inspection, and they may be way off, but then again if it were in any way feasible I assume it would have already been done.\nNice try.
542214
Lottery Math will give you the odds.  See below.
314971
I'd definetly have links to the main websites for every sport (nfl.com, nba.com, mlb.com, MLS, NHL, atp.com, pgatour.com). Then have updated scores for current games (at least major events going on). fantasy would be awesome if you could do it!
239909
Yahoo\nCBS Sportsline\nESPN...
119069
How DO you cheat in fantasy sports?\nIs there sum kinda cheat or sumthin?
17123
You can try nfl.com. That shows the rules and standings and stats for every team.
879941
http://stats.footymad.net/teams/player_roll_call.asp?divno=5&code=gr\n\nTook some searching but this should help! or this one -\nhttp://stats.footymad.net/teams/player_roll_call.asp?divno=5&code=gr&asid=02
894091
None. Two odds make an even
749621
if you go to Yahoo and then go to Football and then Europe and then select table and the league (for example Spain) you can get the tables of stats of best attack, best defence, best away record, best home record, top scorer, i don think you can get the info on the corners and stuff, unless you go and choose a specific match and look at the full match cast.
868788
if you buy the nba stattracker, then yes, it will be avail for all your leagues under the same ID that made the purchase....\nit won't work for nhl, mlb or nfl...each stattracker is its own application, you can't use it in different sports or under different ID's....\nbuy it in nba, get it for nba...buy it under one id, get it for that one id...but it will be avail for all teams under that id in that one sport....\n-nny
1142957
http://www.mlb.com/rules
657009
http://www.beckett.com/default.osi
679495
Prior to Billy Bean, estimates were made by experts with a lot of experience. Now, many methods can produce results that are similar to his. The best method would be a combination of experience and statistics. This is the heart of professional handicapper in any sport. In fact, it makes up the core skills of a arbitrageur in financial markets as well.\n\nAn example of a simple method is linear regression. For exmple, go to yahoo sports and get the statistics of each baseball player on a team. For each game, create a matrix such that each row is the vector of that player's stats (prior to the game) concatenated with a vector of the pitchers stats.\n\nFor example, the first column could be number of games, then at bats, then runs, homers, .... The second part of that row  would be the pitchers stats. The next row would be the next player with the same pitcher and so on. \n\nThere are many ways to construct this matrix. You could do Principal Components Analysis afterwords, you could include variance and covariance, you could include some weighted sum of relief pitchers, you could do different sets for AL or NL, the possibilities are endless. \n\nNext create a vector (called the  response vector) that for each row has the points scored. You'll have to devise a statistic that is some combination of runs and rbi. For simplicity, you could just sum the two. \n\nThis is the player based method. The team based method would construct the matrix as a weighted sum of the entire team's stats as oppossed to each player. Then the response vector would simply be the points the entire teamed score. If you want to be really thorough about it, do both and compare the difference.\n\nOnce you have the matrix and the response vector, you simply perform linear regression to obtain set of weights. If the matrix is 'A' and the points are 'b', then solve for 'x' in the equation in \n\n            Ax = b\n\nMatlab does this pretty well or you could use Mathematria. If you like free stuff, check out a copy of numerical recipies from the school library. There are actually some Perl modules that do this. Some calculators do this as well. Be careful about a method that uses Grahhm-Schmidt or Gaussian Elimination. For very large data sets like the one you should have, you'll have impossible memory requirements, the program will be really slow and you will have bad round off errors.\n\nWhen you have the weights, which is simply a vector, for any game that you want to handicap, you simply construct the vector or set of vectors (in the 'by player' case) that represent the game and then multiply the matrix representation of the game by the weights to obtain the estimate for the score. \n\nSometimes you may want to know the varianc of this estimate, because you believe your model may inaccurate for a particular game, or the estimate seems way off. So if the variance of this estimate is too high, you want to 'blend' it with a prior estimate which is simply the average total score of all games. A simple way to estimate error is to use the residuals of the regression estimate. You can also compute the the square of the score. Then the variance is the expectcted square of the score minus the square of the expected score.\n\nIn general, with enough data and enough stats (if you use some method to control for the curse of dimensionality), you can actually get really close to what bookies do, just using  Yahoo data.
580904
I think this is a site where you can match up any team from any era against whoever you want.  The database will produce a boxscore for your game and all the appropriate stats.  Pretty cool actually, but I got bored of it after half an hour or so.  Matched up the 73 Washington Capitals with the 78 Canadiens and got a 23-1 result for the Habs.
1143091
The most common type of sports bet is a wager on the outcome of a single game or contest in which there is usually a favourite and an underdog.\nOne well-known example of a favourite and an underdog scenario was when Goliath met David in battle.\nIn that encounter, Goliath was the overwhelming favourite to win the battle and David was the decided underdog. The odds in that battle we think would have been reflected like this:\n\nGoliath @ 1/10 and David @ 7/1\n\nGoliath in this instance was the odds-on favourite.\nWhen you back an odds-on favourite, the amount you wager exceeds the amount you win. If you win, you'll receive both your winnings and also get back your original stake.\nDavid as the underdog was odds-against.\nWhen you back the underdog, the amount of money you receive should your selection win is greater than your stake (all winning bets return the stake with the winnings).\nUsing the above odds as a guide, to win 1 unit on Goliath, you would need to wager 10 units.\nIf Goliath won the battle and your money was on the giant, you would have received a total of 11 units back (the 10 units you wagered plus the 1 unit you won).\nTo back the underdog David, you would have wagered 1 unit to win 6 units. The winning bet would have gotten you 7 units back in total (the 1 unit you bet plus the 6 units profit you won).