So, in a desperate attempt to help me with my handicapping page, I quickly went back to my old try to beat Vegas days, and built the Lunatic simulator.<\/p>\n
So, it is what you might think it is.\u00a0 I quickly overfit models to predict what a team’s FG percentage, TPG percentage, FT percentage, turnover rate, FT rate, TPG \/ FG ratio, offensive rebounding rate, and estimated number of possessions based on playing their opponent (and vice versa).<\/p>\n
Then, I throw those predictions into a simulator that uses random numbers and the predictions to simulate 1000 games between the two teams.<\/p>\n
Currently, I am running it through the first round of the tournament to determine if I should use it for my “sane” picks (we all know that I will pick Purdue in my insane picks).\u00a0 Also, waiting to see what happens in the last play-in game.<\/p>\n
The reason I never got comfortable using the simulator in the past is I never was able to figure out how to adjust for a team that plays against weaker teams.\u00a0 The tool tends to like smaller conferences more than I would like – for example, it says that Arizona State only has a 41% chance of beating Nevada – and my experience with the Mountain West is to not trust them in the tournament.\u00a0 If the Sun Devils blow out Nevada, I might have to reconsider, but so far, it is doing well.\u00a0 It would have missed on Mississippi State (who was a 52% favorite, but would have been correct when accounting for the spread (since it said take Pitt and the 2.5 points).\u00a0 It was also right on everything else so far.<\/p>\n
Seems like I could do something fun like take the underdog if it has a 45% chance or better of winning.\u00a0 Then again, it is also taking a while – guess it takes a while for the computer to simulate 1000 games….<\/p>\n
If it doesn’t finish, or looks too chalky, I will stick with what I have already put in.\u00a0 I figured if I was going to play with creating a model, I should at least have a backup already in place for when the model doesn’t look good at 1:30 in the morning.<\/p>\n
Editor note: Arizona State has jumped out to an 11-3 lead.\u00a0 Maybe I should stick to just using it for judging the over\/unders.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
So, in a desperate attempt to help me with my handicapping page, I quickly went back to my old try to beat Vegas days, and built the Lunatic simulator. So, it is what you might think it is.\u00a0 I quickly overfit models to predict what a team’s FG percentage, TPG percentage, FT percentage, turnover rate, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2465","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2023-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2465","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2465"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2465\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2466,"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2465\/revisions\/2466"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2465"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2465"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2465"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}