Not surprisingly, some of the most frequently-asked-questions we get are regarding the methodology that PickLogic uses to determine whether there's going to be a pick or not on any given day.

Also not surprisingly, we can't give away the farm and tell you exactly how we do it. In an earlier post, we alluded to the fact that the methodology for basketball and baseball picks are quite different (you'll note that in baseball, the myraid of statistics used to determine the pick often results in "stronger team over weaker team", whereas there's not really an outlet for that when picking the totals in basketball).

But there's a "no pick" for Monday, which means that we've had just one selection in the last 5 days. Sometimes we have 5 selections in 5 days...why the difference?

Well, the bottom line is that we NEVER "force" a pick. There's either a strong pick, or there isn't. We don't look at it emotionally, we don't look at a game and decide "can the Lakers and the Blazers really go under tonight? Kobe's shooting the ball so well!", and we don't say "we've lost 4 in a row, are we really sure that this pick is a winner?". The PickLogic system just flat out works, and while it might occasionally receive a cosmetic improvement, we never fool with the guts of it. If there's a pick, we make it, and if there's not, we don't.

All that said...we're sure you're not surprised to hear that there are many games (often, a few each day) that ALMOST make their way as PickLogic picks. Some of them would have qualified, were it not for an even stronger pick already made for that day. We've been tracking the results of these "almost" picks for quite awhile now, and have found that they win more than they lose (around 59%, actually -- even better than our normal selections!). However, despite the solid winning percentage, we've also seen some 6-, 7- and even 8-game losing streaks in those picks...which actually justifies sticking with the current selection methodology.

We're often asked if we'd sell those picks...59% is a pretty solid win-loss record. We'll see what the future brings, but for now, we're not selling them.

But the impetus for this post is that there were actually three "almost" picks for Monday's games, so we figured we'd post them here and start a dialog about them:

-- Houston at Minnesota, OVER 188.5
-- New Orleans at Utah, UNDER 202.5
-- Charlotte at Phoenix, UNDER 213.5

Again, none of these picks quite qualified to be the PickLogic selection, but they all have their merits. Let's see what happens, but we can give you a pretty solid prediction, based on our experience: they won't go 3-0, and they won't go 0-3.

Take that for what it's worth, and feel free to comment below.

Labels: Frequency, methodology, Picks