Develop your own Sports Ratings System

So, you'd like to come up with some ratings to help
with your betting?

Yes. I see ratings all over the place, and I've often
used these to help with my selections. Thing is I'd
like to know how to make my own ratings.

And why is that?

Well, truth be told, I'm not really sure how good some
of these ratings systems that I use are.
And I'm not sure how to best use someone else's
ratings - I mean, you can get a feel for them, but
what exactly do the ratings mean - what are they
measuring?

It's like there's a big secret and no one is going to
tell.

Yes - I admit that I don't use anyone else's ratings
for similar reasons. I just use my own. If you'd like
to come up with your own ratings system, then I think
you've come to the right place!

Great. Is this going to be difficult though?

Not especially. It will help if you can remember a bit
of school-type Maths to follow some of the theory. But
you can even skip some of that as we'll be using the
computer to do all the calculations, using some
spreadsheets and some simple functions.

Good. So we're going to take things right from the
start?

Yes. We'll look at how you can use your knowledge and
experience of a particular sport to come up with a
ratings system - and how to test your system out too,
to see if it's any good.

I'm going to have to go soon - but I really want to
give this a try.
Anything I can do between now and next time to get
ready for this project?

Definitely. I don't know what sport you're going to
look at, but whatever it is you need to come up with
some ideas of how you're going to measure performance
- a performance metric.

Ah - performance metrics. Now what are they all about?

Well, to come up with the ratings we'll want to
compare the performances of teams or individuals in
some way. For instance, with football we might just
measure performance by how many goals one team beat
another one by. But there any number of alternatives
here - some much better than that...

Go on...what metrics do you use?

Not a chance! That part will remain a secret!
But I will say that whatever you choose should be
something that you feel is a direct measurement of one
team or player's superiority over another.
For instance, in football, there are some who say that
'shots on goal' is a good stat to use as a performance
metric.
Horse racing, perhaps the distance one horse beats
another by.
Snooker, perhaps biggest break in a match.
The possibilities are endless, and that part of the
process is all up to you.

Yes, I'm getting a few ideas now that I'd like to try.

Here's one for Tennis - how about measuring
performance by how many Aces a player gets against
another?

Well, I'm no Tennis expert - but something like that
might well be worth a look.

Some advice though - however you choose to measure
performance, you're going to have to have a lot of
past data to work with. You're also going to need
bookmakers odds for previous data if you want to test
it out later. About 5-10 years worth of data would be
a good start.

Yes - I see that. I don't just want a good ratings
system - at the end of the day I want to know if it's
better than the bookmakers.

Right, what's next….

To be continued next issue.

Read other installments:

 Part Two| Part Three