Category Archives: Tips, Tactics & Tools

Online Sportsbooks for U.S.-Based NASCAR Bettors

1 Reply

This week I decided to put my money where my mouth is and lay a bet on my pick to win this week’s race at Fontana. I started to sign up for an account at Intertops when I discovered Intertops no longer accepts U.S. players. I was pretty bummed because Intertops has consistently offered much better NASCAR odds than any other online sportsbook I’ve checked this season and last season. Beautiful, soft, beatable lines. Oh well.

So, what online sportsbooks do accept U.S. players and offer NASCAR bets? I spent an hour this morning researching, and to the best of my knowledge, these are it. Continue reading →

NASCARpredict’s 2012 Track Predictability Report

1 Reply

As I’ve sifted through the results of my 2012 NASCAR handicapping efforts, I found it interesting to compare my results track-by-track. I figure knowing which tracks I’m best at, and worst at, can only help when it comes time to make fantasy NASCAR and/or NASCAR betting decisions.

So, first here’s a list of each race last year plus the standard deviation between my picks and the actual race results for each: Continue reading →

NASCAR Odds: What’s Profitable?

1 Reply

I began handicapping NASCAR Sprint Cup races to improve my results in fantasy NASCAR, but over time I grew interested in betting NASCAR as well. As I learned more about sports betting and line shopped each race, I started to get a feel for the odds the sportsbooks considered break-even, but I didn’t have any hard evidence my hunch was correct.

After last season, I realized I had accumulated several years of published race picks I could use to at least identify my odds of picking a race winner and a top three finisher. Over the past couple weeks, I set out to do just that. Continue reading →

NASCAR Handicapping: How Much Are Practice & Qualifying Worth?

Leave a reply

I’ve been working on several projects this offseason to evaluate my NASCAR handicapping process and results, and hopefully to improve the process. I’ve long wondered how much I should weight the prelim data (i.e., the practice and qualifying speed chart numbers) each week relative to the pre-prelim data, and I decided to find out. Continue reading →

Article Recommendation: The AccuPredict Method

Leave a reply

A screenshot from the article.

This off-season I finally got around to reading The AccuPredict Method, an article by Cliff DeJong over on NASCAR Fantasy Racing Cheat Sheet. Wow, I sure wish I’d read it earlier.

DeJong is a research scientist who says he’s been crunching numbers his entire life. He’s also a NASCAR fan, and he’s brought his mathematics and statistics skills to bear in the NASCAR handicapping game. The result: AccuPredict, an algorithm that uses traditional and loop data statistics to predict NASCAR driver finish positions. Continue reading →

Debunking the Momentum Myth

3 Replies

This post first went up back in March 2010. I’m re-posting it during this off week because it’s assertions remain valid. Hopefully it’ll stir up some discussion! —Jed Henson
______________________________________________________

“Kevin Harvick has run well for the past three weeks, and that gives him momentum going into this weekend. Put him on your roster.”

I see recommendations like this in lots of fantasy NASCAR blogs, forums, and articles written by experts. Dan Beaver, a columnist for Yahoo! Sports Fantasy Auto Racing, seems especially smitten with momentum. Pretty much every race preview he writes for Yahoo!’s fantasy players contains recommendations based on driver momentum.

So, what’s this all about? Is there some sort of mysterious force at work that prolongs lucky streaks? Do drivers on a hot streak gain some sort of mental advantage over their competitors? Does success on one type of track beget success on another?

The Luck Factor
Let’s start with a simple game that does not have any human input. Say you flip a coin and it comes up heads five times in a row. On the sixth flip, does momentum make it more likely to come up heads again? Or less likely? Neither, of course. The odds are 50-50 every single time you flip the coin no matter what happened on the previous flips. In a pure, luck-based game with zero human input, momentum does not exist. Continue reading →

NASCAR on Twitter

1 Reply

This screenshot shows a portion of the article.

I recently stumbled across an online article that features a big list of clickable links to the Twitter accounts of a lot of NASCAR drivers and teams, and the Twitter accounts of bloggers/media, sponsors, NASCAR, racetracks, and various wives/girlfriends/family. If you’re into NASCAR and Twitter, it’s a good collection to visit just for fun. For fantasy NASCAR players and handicappers, I think there’s some value in checking driver accounts if you’re on the fence when evaluating a driver for a certain race.

For example, it was unclear how many laps Denny Hamlin would run at Phoenix this spring due to his recent knee surgery, or how effective he’d be in the car. Hamlin posted a few updates on Twitter suggesting his knee was bothering him a great deal, and that info was fairly valuable to fantasy NASCAR players debating whether to start him and handicappers debating whether to bet him.

The article appears on the site The Final Lap, and is titled 2010 NASCAR Twitter Guide Directory.

Blog Recommendation: IFantasyRace.com

1 Reply

Here's a screenshot of part of today's post on IFantasyRace.com.

I just learned of a blog called IFantasyRace.com. Run by Ryan Rantz, the blog features Rantz’ own race previews and other prediction-related articles for NASCAR fantasy players, and each week he also compiles links to a bunch of race preview-type articles written by folks around the Internet (including yours truly). If you’re in the mood to do a lot of race-preview reading, check it out.

Here’s the link to the link-compilation he posted today: Fantasy NASCAR from Around the Net: Texas.

Yahoo! Fantasy Tips & a Yahoo! Fantasy Tool

2 Replies

Over in the archive at FantasyNascarPreview.com, there’s a pretty good strategy article for Yahoo! Fantasy players. Titled “Yahoo! Fantasy NASCAR Strategy,” it first explains how the Yahoo! game works, then goes into some tips and strategy. I agree with most of the author’s points, and his section on Group B strategy is really good.

I do have a couple of quibbles, though. First, while I agree that we should look for situations in which we can save a big gun’s starts for his top tracks (e.g., Jimmie Johnson on 1.5 milers), I think we should temper our start-saving aggressiveness early in a season. At this point in the 2010 season, for example, the series has run on only one short-flat track (Martinsville), and it’s not quite clear yet that the big guns and duds from last year on short-flat tracks will also be big guns and duds on those tracks this year. I’d hate to aggressively save 2010 short-flat starts for a 2009 short-flat master only to discover later this year he’s no longer a short-flat master. Continue reading →