Train How You Fight

Military Maxim

A core tenant of DecodedSports.com is that you should "Train how you fight". This maxim is taken from the US Military and underscores the belief that if the way you prepare for something does not resemble the nature of said something, then you actually did not prepare at all.

You can hit baseballs in the toughest batting cage all day and put down the best sprint times on a track, but it's much different when the time comes to actually take a pitch from an MLB pitcher and round the bases with 50,000 fans watching.

Players that train on an actual baseball field, under stressful situations, will always have a leg up.

Decoded Training

We mirror this by showing you previews of historical matchups as they appeared the minute before the game commenced. This allows you to:

1. Analyze the data
2. Determine your confidence (e.g. wager)
3. Make prediction about the outcome (e.g. winner)
4. Immediately see if you were right or wrong
5. Update your understanding of the data
6. Rinse - Repeat

This process is identical to how artificial intelligence and machine learning models learn new data! Learn about Supervised Learning here.

This allows you to rewind the clock and play armchair general to relive the big games.

Even more important, it allows you to hone your understanding of sports through reps and sets in an unparalleled manner at scale that cannot be reproduced in any other way.

Don't Cheat Yourself!

Training isn't valuable if you take shortcuts or allow certain elements into the training that would not be present in the real world (or conversely leave out elements that will be present in the real world).

Don't cheat yourself by skipping that 10th rep when it gets tough!

When simulating historical matches, we take meticulous care to ensure no future information is leaked into the training data to make sure you can't cheat yourself! This is because sports have many inherent cognitive biases built in, i.e. if you are viewing an NFL matchup between the Cowboys and Buccaneers, you might be biased to pick the Cowboys by default because you know they are among the best historically performing NFL teams and the Buccaneers are the worst.

To mitigate this bias, we anonymize all historical data before showing it to you. "Buccaneers @ Cowboys" would simply be shown as "Away vs. Home". We'll still show you their win/loss form leading up to the game, but we'll also anonymize that to not show true dates or other team names.

How it Works

• We show you 10 matchups sequentially.
• For each, we will show you:
  • The probability of winning for each team
  • The historical average sportsbook odds at the moment the game started (this includes sportsbook vig)
• You will make pick either the home or away team as the predicted winner
• You will set your wager amount
• After you submit your pick, we will reveal the actual teams and adjust your notional bank account based on the outcome.

The probability of winning for each team may not exactly match the historical sportsbook odds. That is because we use our Elo model to determine these probabilities while sportsbooks have a different algorithm and are market driven. Use these differences to inform your choices.

Are We Done Training, Coach??

Maybe? You tell me?

Beating the baseline is not good enough by itself. "Dealer always wins" means you have to beat the baseline + the house edge. This house edge is also known as the juice or vig, which typically is ~4%. Beat the baseline by 4% consistently and maybe you have an edge.

Nooooow Are We Done Training??

You are never truly done training!

Edge isn't everything. Predictions are only half of the equation. Your confidence (i.e. how much you wager) is the other half.

You could have an incredible edge and beat the baseline 99 out of 100 times on 50/50 matchups, but if you wager $1 on 99 of of those matches and $200 on the one you lost, well you will end up with -$101 in losses.

Calculating confidence is a whole other art and science that deserves its own blog post later, stay tuned.

Go Get 'em Champ!

From our home page or the menu below, you can launch into our training module. Be sure to make three picks for each match and click the "Next" button until you reach the end of the 10 matches.