EPL Results: The Thrill and the Agony

By El Chupa

Well, Burnley crushed Sunderland. We aren't afraid to admit that we got that one wrong. But El Chupa won his Parlay of Arsenal and Aston Villa, Liverpool won, and he has put his money on hated Man U in tomorrow's Manchester Derby as well. Two things: it's early in the season and the numbers will shift as the data comes in. We're about 1/8 th of the way through the season and Dr. Bumba and El Chupa have concluded we probably need to get to somewhere between 10 and 15 games before the Luchametric becomes a bit more stable. Second, we've decide that any game where the two teams are separated by .5 of a standard deviation or less is to close to call. If one STDEV or higher separates the two teams, we're fairly confident that it marks a significant separation. Accordingly, El Chupa looks for Parlays involving games between teams separated by 1.0 STDEVs or higher, especially when the favored team is at home. He also looks for games where the higher ranked team is going into a venue where the bookmakers are giving too much credit to the home team. Of course, Sunderland was one such instance. But we maintain that once we get enough data in, upsets like the one today at Turf Moor will be fewer in number.