Midnight Zen
Full day today at the Sloan Conference. I’ll have lots coming in the next week or two. For now you can catch twitter links here. Truehoop has a writeup on all panels basketball here.
Completely unrelated, it seems as though the European Poker Tour was recently robbed of over a million euros during a live taping. Video Below. Maybe they got their idea from the World Series of Dice?
| Chappelle’s Show | ||||
| The World Series of Dice | ||||
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NBA Picks – Mar 06
Went 6-4-1 yesterday. That’s brings us to 24-14-1 on the week, or right around 63%. Let’s go
Golden State (+10.5) @ Charlotte
Atlanta (+1.5) @ Miami
New Jersey (+8) @ New York
Houston (-3.5) @ Minnesota
Dallas (-1) @ Chicago
San Antonio (-1.5) @ Memphis
Cleveland (-3.5) @ Miliwaukee
Los Angeles Clippers (+13.5) @ Utah
Indiana (+12.5) @ Phoenix
NBA Picks – Mar 05
Went 1-2 yesterday. That’s brings us to 18-10 on the week, or 64%. Looks like eleven games on tap tonight. Heeeeeeeeeeeeeeere we go
Milwaukee (-4) @ Washington
Los Angeles Lakers (-3.5) @ Charlotte
Detroit (+12) @ Cleveland
New York (+8) @ Toronto
Boston (-6) @ Philadelphia
Golden State (+13) @ Atlanta
Orlando (-10) @ New Jersey
Sacramento (+8.5) @ Dallas
Indiana (+10) @ Denver
New Orleans (+8) @ San Antonio
Oklahoma City (-4.5) @ Los Angeles Clippers
NBA Picks – Mar 04
I went 8-4 yesterday. My mark for the week is now 17-8, I am at exactly 68% for the week. On to the picks.
Memphis (+5.5) @ Chicago
Los Angeles Lakers (-5.5) @ Miami
Utah (+1.5) @ Phoenix
Dorkapalooza 2010
I’ll be there on Saturday at the event also known as the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference. I’m unlikely to liveblog as that will be too distracting but we may have to bust out the old Twitter feed. Any requests?
NBA Picks – Mar 03
Went 3-1 yesterday. I am currently at 69% for the week. Lots of games tonight. Let’s see what happens. Side note, Van Tran as of 11pm last night was up a grand on the week so far.
Golden State (+15) @ Orlando
Philapdelphia (+8.5) @ Atlanta
Cleveland (-9.5) @ New Jersey
Charlotte (+4.5) @ Boston
Detroit (+3.5) @ New York
Washington (+10) @ Milwaukee
Memphis (+2) @ New Orleans
Minnesota (+14) @ Dallas
Sacramento (+7.5) @ Houston
Oklahoma City (+7.5) @ Denver
Indiana (+8.5) @ Portland
Phoenix (-3.5) @ Los Angeles Clippers
NBA Picks – Mar 02
Went 6-3 yesterday. I currently sit at 66% for the week. Let’s keep this train rolling, may have time to add some college games…and apparently i will ’cause I just looked and there’s only two pro games. Here we go
Sacramento (+10.5) @ Oklahoma City
Indiana (+12) @ Los Angeles Lakers
EDIT : TWO ADDITIONAL GAMES, WERE NOT ON PINNACLESPORTS THIS MORNING
Boston (-4.5) @ Detroit
Golden State (+10.5) @ Miami
I just looked at college lines and I am clueless. I’ll try to do some work on this as conference champ week gets going soon.
NBA Picks – Mar 01
A few days, weeks, whatever ago I made a post saying I was going to start picking games and keeping track of them. But a few roadblocks have managed to stop this from happening. So I am going to do something different and for the next week I am simply going to force myself to make picks against the spread in the NBA. These should not be considered knowledge based picks, I am simply forcing myself to pick every game to see if I have a clue as to what’s going on. Here we go
Dallas (+3) @ Charlotte
Orlando (-4) @ Philadelphia
New York (+11) @ Cleveland
San Antonio (-2.5) @ New Orleans
Atlanta (+1) @ Chicago
Portland (-1) @ Memphis
Toronto (+6) @ Houston
Denver (+2.5) @ Phoenix
Utah (-6.5) @ Los Angeles Clippers
This is me simply dragging myself towards taking the first step on making daily picks. We’ll see how things went with these tomorrow when I post tomorrow’s picks.
NBA Line
There is a chnace I read the line wrong last night but I am pretty sure the opening line on Cavs/Celtics was Celts -1. The latest line is Cavs -2.5, meaning the line has moved 3.5 points in twelve hours. Let’s see what happens.
Olympic Links
All Olympics, all the time.
First, a fascinating look at scalping tickets at the winter games.
Olympic ticketing has its set process. Organizers generally sell seats as far ahead of the Games as they can, slowly releasing batches for the premier events first — in order to maximize cash flow in the years leading up to the festival. Pools of seats are then made available to citizens of the host nation, and anything that’s left goes to general sale nine to 12 months before the Opening Ceremony. So the Games are usually either “sold out” or “95 percent booked.” It only takes one visit to the Olympics to know that this type of news is all useless misnomer that should be completely ignored.
Why Scandanavian countries aren’t any good at figure skating.
A majority of Canada’s hockey players are left handed. I don’t know hockey well enough to say, but maybe there’s a strategic advantage in being left handed, like in baseball, creating a self selection bias toward those players.
Roughly 60 percent of the Easton hockey sticks sold in Canada are for left-handed shots, Mountain said. In the United States, he said, about 60 percent of sticks sold are for right-handed shots. Figures over the years from other manufacturers have put the ratio discrepancy between the two countries as high as 70 to 30.
The difference even trickles over into golf, where the swing is not unlike that of a slap shot. According to the Professional Golfers Association, 7 percent of Canadian golfers play left-handed, which is proportionally more than any other nationality. The reason is probably that Canadians pick up a hockey stick first and are therefore imprinted by the time they take up golf. Especially if they are from Quebec, where hockey players are even more left-handed than players in the rest of Canada.
Oddly, British Columbia — sometimes said to be the most American-like of the Canadian provinces — skews the other way. “The rest of the country goes 2 to 1 in favor of left sticks, but it’s reversed in B.C.,” said Marc Poirier, a customer service representative who handles Canadian orders for Warrior Sticks.
Europeans also tend to be left-handed shooters. The International Ice Hockey Federation does not keep figures by European nationality, the communications director Szymon Szemberg said. But, he said, lefty shooters have predominated. “For long spells, the great Soviet teams of the ’80s never had a player who shot right,” Szemberg said.
Boston.com has a kickass photo blog for the Olympics so far.
As if curling wasn’t cool enough, the US curling team has it’s own condom.
Lastly, what’s better than a women’s hockey brawl in an Olympic qualifier? Don’t miss the score.
