Full disclosure is that I have actually never made a bet on a game in the NRL, and in fact, I am not an avid gambler at all. Additionally, (although the majority of my family are mad keen), I don’t really follow the NRL, and rarely watch any regular season NRL games. Also, regarding other forms of sports-betting, I may have put some money in the work sweepstake for a Melbourne cup (horse racing event) or two, but generally avoid all forms of gambling (and not because of any moralistic issues, I just know that the odds of winning when uninformed gambling are very low). So actually staking on the outcome of games this year will essentially be my first foray into sports gambling.
However, I wouldn’t say I (now) don’t know anything about sports gambling or NRL. In fact, over the past six months, in order to train machine learning algorithm/s to be able to predict the outcome of games I have done an absolute inordinate amount of research in my ‘spare’ time (much to my wife’s disgust). It has been quite a learning curve; before my research my research I had no idea about historic NRL match statistics, sports betting terms or staking strategies and would say that now I could probably hold a conversation with an avid sports better.
What I did know very well before my research into sports gambling (and why I am here now), is how to extract transform and standardise disparate data, and how to create predictive models using machine learning algorithms. My foray into impending sports gambling all started because I have a formal postgraduate education in data science (although I am employed as geoscientist and not a data scientist), and when I attempt to explain to family and friends exactly what is data science, I ultimately give up and say:
‘I basically use mathematical computer models to predict stuff’
Which as you can guess, ultimately lead to the question from my ‘mad keen’ sporting friends and family:
‘can you predict outcomes of games in the NRL?’
And more importantly:
‘can we make money???’
And as you can see, I said:
‘I don’t see why not…..with some effort….’
And here I am now, I am about to put my own money where my mouth is. I am going to stake money on the games which my predictive modelling algorithm tells me to, track my progress, and see if I can actually make a profit for the 2016 NRL season!!