RE: 2017-18 NBA Elo Ratings Season Analysis: The 60's
I have to warn you, don't go down the rabbit hole :)
Do look at the data, explore it,.... but don't expect it to give you a profitable strategy. Maybe that's my bitterness talking, having wasted years trying to beat up the data into giving me the secret to the profits :-)
After all that effort the most profitable strategy (for me) was:
- calculate the true odds
- find the games where the true and the bookmaker's odds differ significantly
- take a closer look at such games
- listen to the good ol' gut feeling
- place the bets
The good ol' gut feeling outperforms scores of math and stats PhDs :) I know, I've read most of their papers on betting. The ones close to breaking even can't shut up about it :)
Since you're enjoying it and having fun with it, here's the simplest way to test if your strategy works consistently and it is not just a short lived anomaly:
Get the data for the last five seasons. Use the first four seasons as the training data and then see if the strategy you've created works as well for the fifth season. If it does work, you're onto something.