Sports betting picks are as old as sports betting itself. As long as there have been punters, they have been trying to find an edge through information and statistical analysis. Even a slight edge can make a bet profitable, and the punters are just trying to tip the scales to be 50.1% in their favor. Picks can be for single games, for parlays, for a number of different sports or all for just NFL games. It really depends on what the punter is looking for when it comes to picks.
When choosing which picks to look for, there are really 2 main types of picks. There are computer picks and human picks. So what are the differences between computer picks and human picks, and which ones should you use?
Computer Picks
Computer picks are what they are in the name. They are sports picks generated by a computer. Here’s how they work. A person, or team of people will initially build an algorithm that they will upload to a computer. They will then program the computer to pull in as much data as it can. This date will typically be historical data related to how teams have performed in the past. The data will often consist of both “old” historical data going back a year or so, as well as “fresh” historical data, taking into account the very latest behavior and trends for each team. Once this data is in the system, it can be analyzed and applied against the algorithm(s) that were initially uploaded. This is what generates the picks. By assigning weighting to certain behaviors and variables, the computer database can make certain picks, and then presents these in a useable way for the punter.
Human Picks
Human picks relay on a very similar process to computer picks. A person will analyze historical data, put them against their own understanding and equations, and make a pick based on that. The main difference between the two is the amount of data that can be analyzed and the speed with which it can be done. A computer can clearly analyze a significant amount of data more than a human can, and can do so at speeds many times that of a person. But, a human pick still has that level of experience that perhaps a computer might not have. Something whereby a person, doing this for so long, knows something such as one of the main players might be going through a messy divorce, which would affect his performance. These, one off instances of data, are very difficult to program for.
So which is better? Depends who you ask, but over a long enough season, it will become apparent if you follow both, which one is better.
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