An update on my 2006 NFL record, and a free bet tracking spreadsheet

And a somewhat significant update at that:

I was doing some data analysis on my record for public NFL picks as posted here (and in a couple other places) and noticed some things didn't add up.

I keep a detailed set of electronic records for all my bets. However, I did not previously track my "public picks" as separate, i just extrapolated them separately and tracked them here.

Somewhere, I think in Week Seven, I had apparently mis-reported some public results and then I carried that mistake forward all the way to today.

So I did two things: I went back through each week of posted picks and gathered all the data on my picks. Then I made a stripped down version of my personal recordkeeping system and built it in excel, and used it to track my public record.

So without further ado, here are the changes to my record:

Game of the Week results were off +.05 units

Tease of the Week record was off, showed three losses when I have two.

Tease of the Week results were off -1.0 units

Year to Date combined record was off significantly: listed as -0.34 when the total was +5.68

here is the updated record in the new format I'll be reporting:

2006 YTD - Season Record Summary:

Game of the Week: 5 - 4 - 3 : +5.70 UNITS
non GotW picks: 14 - 23 - 1 : -(10.62) UNITS
All Straight Picks: 19 - 27 - 4 : (4.92) UNITS
Tease of the Week: 6 - 2 - 0 : +10.60 UNITS
All Public NFL Picks: 25 - 29 - 4 +5.68 TOTAL UNITS

If you want to back-test this publicly available data for yourself, you can search my site via Google or you can hit the Sports Betting Forum on twoplustwo.com, hit the forum Search button, look for posts in the last year by username:performify with the subject "Pigskin Picks" (make sure to put Pigskin Picks in quotes) and you can verify the entered amounts yourself if you care to do so.

...But that's not all. Since I took the time to pull together the spreadsheet, i thought I'd go ahead and make it public. For those interested, here is the spreadsheet with my public season data: Performify's 2006 NFL public picks to date.

And since I decided it was worth making a stripped down version of my recordkeeping system and building it in excel, and since I've fielded several requests in the past to share a spreadsheet or a tool for tracking bets. So here it is: a blank version of my NFL bet tracking spreadsheet .

This doesn't have all my features and analysis I use in my own record keeping, but if you're new to handicapping or find you're not keeping the best records, this might be a helpful start.

Here are some tips for its use:

you might find comparing the blank to my version with data (linked above) to be helpful.

If you look at my version with data, you'll notice that the columns for "who" (team picked) "sprd" (spread) and "vig" (price paid) are meant to be hidden for normal use. You enter the data in those fields each week, and then once you're done hide the fields so that the report at the bottom looks nice

Notice some of the fields have comments. In my version of excel, those are designated by small red triangles in the upper right of the fields with comments. mouse over those cells for my notes, which are meant to help explain abbreviations and etc.

to the far right of the spreadsheet, you'll notice abbreviations for each NFL team. If you use those abbreviations exactly when recording your picks in the "who" column, this area will break out the number of times you've chosen one of those teams and your record (in terms of units won/lost) on those picks of that team. This currently doesn't work for Teasers, just for the straight picks section. If you find this section helpful/interesting you can thank Lori for the impetus. If you don't, blame me.

This is obviously built for my format of publicly posted NFL picks: a Game of the Week, up to five other straight picks, and a single tease of the week. It shouldn't be hard for you to customize it to your own needs, other sports, etc. All the forumulas should be absolute references where they need to be, so when you move things around (adding, deleting rows) you should be able to fill in or strip out and have everything still work. If someone wants to make a generic version not for my specific format and send it back to me, i'll host it as well. If I have some time in the upcoming weeks I'll try to do it myself.

If you have any questions, post them here rather than PM me, to share the Q&A with the forum.