Handicapping

Handicapping is used in scoring many games and competitive sports, including go, shogi, chess, croquet, golf, bowling, polo, basketball, and track and field events.

The term is applied to the practice of predicting the result of a competition, such as for purposes of betting against the point spread.

The term handicap derives from hand-in-cap, referring to a system wherein players placed bets or money into the cap of a neutral arbiter to reach an agreement as to the relative values of items sought to be traded.

The handicapper's goal in assigning handicap weights is to enable all the horses to finish together (in a dead heat).

[4] In addition to the Daily Racing Form, other data sources include Brisnet, Equibase, The Ragozin Sheets, and Thoro-Graph.

If a team starts with the advantage, as long as they finish above the points different covered in the handicap, then your selection will win.

[6] With a basketball handicap, you will be backing a team to start with a points advantage or deficit to make up in the match.

[6] Handicapping in the sport of golf enables players and teams of varying abilities to compete against one another.

The ATP, WTA, Challenger, and ITF events have plenty of matches which can be one-sided, which results in short odds being offered with various betting sites.

Handicap betting in tennis often means that you are wagering funds on a player to start a certain number of games ahead or behind in the match.

One bet is called a "middle", which when a player finds two books that offer different point spreads for the same event.

On the other hand, if the total falls outside the range of the "middle" the bettor only loses a small percentage of a bet (the "juice" or "vig" taken by the house).

[9] Billy Walters, and other unknown members of the Computer Group, developed a system for handicapping games and beating Las Vegas sportsbooks.

ESPN wrote an article on Haralabos Voulgaris naming him as the one of the premier NBA handicappers in the world.

Advanced statistics such as DVOA, Win Shares and Points per Possession are talked about in mainstream media.

Brian Burke, author of The Fifth Down blog featured in The New York Times, wrote a formula using advanced statistical techniques that has shown consistency correctly predicting NFL winners.

It is a formula for maximizing profits and minimizing losses based on payout odds and win probability of the underlying asset.

The Kelly criterion is often used to determine units in sports betting which some handicappers assign to weight each prediction.