Benchmarking NFL Oddsmakers

Sorry - no BOBB in the comparison. Brian Burke is a sports writer / blogger for the NY Times Fifth Down and expert on NFL statistics, however he has not endorsed the BOBB (Based on Brian Burke) model and I don't feel right including it in the benchmarking (I don't even know if Brian consider sports betting morally acceptable).

For NFLPickles.com, Happy's Picks, S&P 500, a fixed bankroll system was used to keep the picks on the same footing (in other words the comparison only takes into account the accuracy of the picks but not the system for bankroll management). This is a bit of a disservice to Pickles, since he includes bankroll management considerations. See his site for more details. Here is the bankroll system for the comparison:

Each system starts with $4000 on the Wednesday before week 1. Each week 50% of bank will be wagered. Wager will be distributed in the weighted average on the betworthy events and amounts advocated by the site owner (for Pickles & Happy). Coin toss is based on putting 5% of bank on 10 random events with probability of 50%. Note that winning weeks are possible, but with 10% juice we would expect coin toss to go broke in the long run. S&P 500 is based on the closing cost each Monday.