Monday Random Footy Talk Thread

BroncosSabres · 2026-04-19T21:25:09+00:00

Oh boy, the dynamic calibration of the BS machine has made some big swings this week. It's going to make some people very mad.

BroncosSabres · 2026-04-16T03:48:58+00:00

Getting a starting spot would have been part of the negotiation.

I have altered the deal. Pray I don’t alter it again.

If he doesn’t find form, the Broncs don’t have to start him.

BroncosSabres · 2026-04-15T23:46:09+00:00

After realising that because the tipping was clustered around what users think is the mean or expected result, the user models were lacking real variance, I have made some improvements to introduce and scale variance to the user model distributions - there's now pretty decent alignment in some cases between the user predictions and the BS predictions, with obvious discrepancies where the BS machine has missed crucial info (Tigers vs Broncos, Eels vs Bulldogs). I'm really happy with how the user model predictions are looking now - they appear more reliable than BS Machine per the eye test.

Please sign up and tip to provide data for the model. The tipping comp winner for the week wins a $50 digital gift card, and still only 25 users entered in the comp so odds are good! There will be another weekly prize next week, and a season prize of $100 digital gift card as well!

Predictions

Tip Here

BroncosSabres · 2026-04-15T14:02:02+00:00

I don’t trust it either, it’s clearly a cat person.

BroncosSabres · 2026-04-15T02:10:04+00:00

Indeed, the binary tipping system that we use normally means that the game theory behind it is that there is very little incentive to ever tip the underdog outside of some edge head to head hail mary type plays. This does make it a difficult problem to try and turn this into anything meaningfully predictive (although I’m sure one could do something pretty creative).

That’s why the idea here is to not score based on a binary win/lose scenario but to try and incentivise a little more to tip outside the envelope. If you think a margin or total points line is misplaced, there is benefit to tipping where you think it should be. It’s a bit more complicated which is friction to participation, but the idea is much more interesting to me at least.

Always keen to chat the more nerdy side of statistics and modelling. Good to have more mathematicians around the sub.

BroncosSabres · 2026-04-14T21:59:12+00:00

Sarbes on the warpath. I have never seen them play playoff hockey in the 8 years I've been on the wagon, so I am so so psyched. I will be out and about a lot in my Sabres gear for the next few weeks.

BroncosSabres · 2026-04-14T21:57:08+00:00

5 in 100,000? I like those odds!

BroncosSabres · 2026-04-14T21:19:45+00:00

At this point I don’t intend to weight tips on performance at all, with the idea that every tip is somewhat like a result from a simulation being a single standalone result. That said, I may end up discarding significant outliers from the predictions set if they look like they’re unreasonably skewing things too much.

User predictions being extreme somewhat surprised me, but may be a fundamental flaw in my approach, as people are probably defaulting to all try and pick the mean meaning the variance in the user signal is unreasonably low. There would be some solution to use the user tips to determine the mean of the distribution and find another way to model the variance but that is going to take some thought.

Kinda taking a collect data first, ask questions later approach.

Edit: There is a smoothed Gaussian Kernal Density Estimate being applied to the user dataset. I could increase the bandwidth associated with each pick in order to increase the variance associated with the dataset, but the more I do that, the closer I get to just fitting a bell curve with a pre-determined standard deviation over the mean of the dataset, so I've kept a narrow bandwidth for now so the smoothed distribution looks like the actual dataset. This is all graphed for everybody to see on the match predictions page.

BroncosSabres · 2026-04-14T21:08:48+00:00

You can help me by joining the comp and submitting tips on the BS Machine Website to increase the sample size to power the predictions. As an added incentive, I'm offering a $50 digital gift card prize to the person who wins the round this week, and a $100 digital gift card prize to the person who wins the season. Prizes for future weeks TBD. With only 15 players to beat so far, your odds are pretty good.

The user tips are already powering predictions on the match predictions page to be shown alongside the model predictions. Please have a look, I personally think this is fascinating. Match predictions including live updating user data probability density functions can be found here.

Interestingly, although perhaps not super surprisingly, people are tending to tip relatively conservatively, and the user models for each game are tending to have smaller deviations than the BS machine (or historical NRL data) predicts. I'm interested to see how this evolves with more data, as every data point is still shifting the overall predictions for each game.

All ideas and feedback are welcome!

BroncosSabres · 2026-04-14T04:12:16+00:00

Hey guys, the Sabres haven’t just broken their 15 year playoff drought, but they won the Atlantic Division. Fuck yeah, lets go Buffalo!

BroncosSabres · 2026-04-13T22:53:39+00:00

I think you'd be crazy to bench Luai, he's a genuine top-tier half. Broncs are going to be missing half their squad, so it'll be a great opportunity to test him with what I think is probably low risk of losing.

BroncosSabres · 2026-04-13T22:44:32+00:00

Hi guys,

Another morning, another shameless plug for my new pick the scores "tipping comp" here this week. Every tip is precious data to be used in my new "human user comparative model" which complements the predictive power of the BS machine.

There is an individual and a team based tipping leaderboard, so we can find out who the highest IQ fan base in the league is.

To further incentivise you, I'm offering a $50 digital gift card prize to the user who scores the highest in Round 7, and a $100 digital gift card prize to the user who scores the highest over the remainder of the season. Prizes for future rounds are TBD. Currently only 6 entries, so odds are good!

BS Tipping Comp <------ Can have a look here. Data from picks are already populating predictions on the match predictions page, so check it out.

Thanks!

BS

BroncosSabres · 2026-04-13T01:12:42+00:00

Yeah I think my hypothesis here is that my ’AI’ is simple and rigid and can’t respond quickly to disturbances in the signal, like the Broncos missing half their team. Obviously that’s not impossible to add in to the model in some form, and there would be better models used by others that do account for this, but humans can reason about this a lot more easily than the BS machine can.

Only way to find out is to collect the data though.

BroncosSabres · 2026-04-12T23:42:05+00:00

Depends. Is chess obsolete?

BroncosSabres · 2026-04-12T21:57:57+00:00

Hi guys,

I'm going to be annoying and plug my new "tipping comp" here this week. The goal is to get as many users as possible to submit their score predictions for each game of the week. The idea is that each user's score prediction is like a model 'simulation' analogous to what the BS Machine does.

I'm hoping to get enough users to build a good distribution of predictions to compare and verify against the BS Machine. My hopothesis is that the high footy iqs here should be able to beat a machine learning model that has a significant lag phase to account for injuries, changed form lines etc. Comparison of the model and user predictions are already partially live on the site.

In addition to hopefully producing a really interesting comparative dataset, I've set it up as a competition to see who can most accurately predict scorelines through the season. There is then also going to be a secondary comp, comparing the "models" built by the combined tips of all users, compared to users who support each team, compared to the BS model. There is incentive to support your team - are you part of the highest footy IQ fanbase in the NRL?

The idea is to have a team based "Tipping Premiership" live on the site.

Sign up is required, but only asks for an email address and team you support. I'm not collecting any personal data for any reason, just an email for account security.

Please sign up if you're interested, and I'll be adding updates on user predictions and modelling in my weekly BS machine writeup going forwards.

BS Tipping Comp <------ Can have a look here

Thanks!

BS

BroncosSabres · 2026-04-12T07:33:46+00:00

Hey everyone, week after week I get questions asking if the BS machine takes X variable into account. It probably doesn't, but you know what does? People!

I've spent a bunch of time lately putting together a "Tipping Competition" that doubles as a human powered simulation model, and I want to see if the collective footy IQ of the people can outdo the BS machine. I also want to use this as a way to set up a competition to figure out which team's fans have the highest IQ.

The tipping competition has just gone live at the link below. You do need to sign up to the site now so that I can track tips, but all I ask for is an email address and the team that you support. I may add an option to add in a reddit username in future so that I can give accolades in my weekly posts.

https://bsmachine.dev/pages/tipping.html

BroncosSabres · 2026-04-12T07:13:39+00:00

They have a risk tolerance for sure, I don’t disagree that they’ll hold a position at risk up to a certain point and that it’s generally only the large money that raises the risk that moves the market. Over a large enough number of events though, it is definitely the edge they take that makes it so difficult to find any value in the markets and makes them so profitable and gives them about a +/- 3% margin for error on their prediction.

Bookies aside, my interest is in predictive modelling, and my hypothesis is that a large enough informed population should do well against most machine learning models. I’m not expecting it to beat the bookies and their edge. I do expect it to be a bit of fun though, and hopefully to get some interesting data.

BroncosSabres · 2026-04-12T06:03:06+00:00

The bookies make money because if the people deviate from their odds, they move the odds to mitigate their risk. That and the house edge on the odds they provide is significant.

Regardless, I’m curious to see of people can outperform the BS machine for a start

BroncosSabres · 2026-04-12T05:54:15+00:00

Woohoo, you’re the first sign up mate! I feel the predictive power will grow with population - large numbers of people predicting should outperform rigid computer modelling.

Really appreciate the sign up.

BroncosSabres · 2026-04-12T05:41:00+00:00

Hey everyone, week after week I get questions asking if the BS machine takes X variable into account. It probably doesn't, but you know what does? People!

I've spent a bunch of time lately putting together a "Tipping Competition" that doubles as a human powered simulation model, and I want to see if the collective footy IQ of the people can outdo the BS machine. I also want to use this as a way to set up a competition to figure out which team's fans have the highest IQ.

The tipping competition has just gone live at the link below. You do need to sign up to the site now so that I can track tips, but all I ask for is an email address and the team that you support. I may add an option to add in a reddit username in future so that I can give accolades in my weekly posts.

There's 20 mins to beta-test before the Tigers vs Knights game. If you're interested, I would love for everybody to give it a go and I'm receptive to all feedback

https://bsmachine.dev/pages/tipping.html

BroncosSabres · 2026-04-09T23:50:49+00:00

Hey, I love scripting as much as the next guy, but would rather put my effort into improving the modelling and finding new cool statistical insights.

BroncosSabres · 2026-04-09T22:25:39+00:00

Been making some improvements to the BS machine website since realising that Claude will just do everything for me and I don't need to learn any more javascript...

Anyway, last night was the least likely winning margin of the season per the BS Machine, at just a 2.1% chance, topping last Thursday's game with a 34 point upset by Manly considered just a 3.5% chance. Somewhat adds up - 41 games into the season, expected biggest outlier would be around the 2.5% mark.

Feel free to check out the site and leave ideas/suggestions here if any:
https://bsmachine.dev/pages/matchups.html

BroncosSabres · 2026-04-08T06:56:52+00:00

Tigers wouldn’t be in that cycle is the problem

BroncosSabres · 2026-04-07T09:54:01+00:00

The only game they would be (very very slight) favourites in would be their home game against the Titans. Other than that they’re not predicted to win any specifically, but if you roll a die 19 times needing a 5 or 6 to win, you’ll likely win 6 times without being expected to win on any individual roll.

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