Yesterday I was coding up a weighted version of Hockey and ended up “improving” some code that effects the 50/50 version too. I tested it by rerunning yesterdays NHL odds (without pushing the results to the live site) and, lo and behold, the numbers where wrong. The program that automatically runs each night still uses the unbroken older code, but the xml data file that stores all the season’s numbers still has the bad results from my testing. I made a copy before my testing but forgot to revert back to it. I blame it on the World Series. :)
 
So, for today only, the NHL yesterday’s change and big games numbers are off. The current odds in, today’s big games, and what if numbers are correct.
 
If all goes well I’ll have the weighted version complete for tomorrow, although we still need a few more weeks under our belt for it to be more accurate than the 50/50 version.

Here is a first draft of an auto generated daily summary I’ve been working on. My goal is to show the biggest movers across the whole site.
 

Sites that have sent 1,000+ folks my way:
Thank you

Major League Soccer playoff seeding works a bit differently than other sports, and for now I’ve just shoehorned the numbers into my existing infrastructure. Here is how to read:

• 1 = chance of winning Supporters’ Shield
• 1 + 2 = chance of getting 1st seed in conference
• 3 + 4 = chance of getting 2nd seed in conference
• 5 + 6 = chance of getting 3rd seed in conference

The first number in each pair means the team was better than the team with that seed from the other conference, which is meaningless for playoff seeding but that’s where it comes from.

• 7 = chance of getting 1st wildcard
• 8 = chance of getting 2nd wildcard
• 9 – 14 = did not make playoffs, ordered by points

I break ties using the same rules the MLS uses, except that I skip the “League Fair Play table” tiebreaker.

Russ pointed out today that I was showing the D-Backs finishing 2nd 180 times out of 25 million, which is impossible. It’s fixed now. I was not initializing a variable and that could cause the top 3 seeds (in this case the 2nd and 3rd seed) to be mis-ordered once in a blue moon. The bug did not effect a team’s total odds in or any other sports besides baseball.
Thank you Russ.
 
I also fixed a bug in how the MLB “What If” sections where being grouped the last few days.

Folks over at The Original Winger pointed out a mistake in my MLS tables. I correctly send 8 teams to the playoffs, but I send the top 2 teams from each conference and 4 wildcards. Actually the top 3 teams go (and 2 wildcards). Dohhh. I’m sorry I’ve misled you all season.

I think this will be good news for the teams fighting for 3rd in the West and bad new for the bottom East teams. It should take a couple hours to change the code and rerun the current standings, and then a few more hours to rerun the previous weeks (to fix the historical graph data).

I’ll update this post when it’s fixed.

Update: Everything is fixed.
Here are the correct odds with 5 weeks left. The Change columns shows how the odds changed after the fix.

Thank you Sean and a some of the folks on BigSoccer for pointing out the weirdness in the MLS change since last week numbers. It’s fixed. Last week I corrected a bad score from earlier in the season and did not do a complete enough job recomputing all the weeks between the score and now. The current chances where correct but last weeks still used the bad score, so the deltas where all off.
 
I added “games in hand” and a horizontal cut off line to the MLS and USL standings, and a “chance in playoffs” column to the What If section.
 
The weighted MLB version now uses Pythagopat and log5 instead of just log5, more on that later.

 
The Moto Racing tab now covers the MotoGP and Superbike international road racing series.
 
MotoGP races custom bikes, you can’t buy them from the local dealer:
   MotoGP 800cc 4 cylinder 4-stroke engines (mostly), age 18+.
   MotoGP 250cc 2 cylinder 2-stroke, age 16+.
   MotoGP 125cc 1 cylinder 2-stroke, age 15-28.
 
Superbike races modified versions of normal street bikes (so they are all 4-stroke):
   Superbike 1000cc 4 cylinder or 1200cc 2 cylinder.
   Supersport 600cc 4 cylinder or 750cc 2 cylinder.
   Superstock 1000cc 4 cylinder or 1200cc 2 cylinder.

I just realized that the “big games” sections had stopped showing today’s big games. It’s fixed, I don’t know how long it has been broken. I also fixed some bad results I had for MLS and USL (thanks roxrok).
 
I’m working on adding MotoGP. Thanks Corey for cluing me in with “this MotoGP is wildly popular”.

Major League Soccer (MLS): I don’t yet show separate pages for the 2 divisions, but the “odds in” logic takes the divisions into account.
 
United Soccer Leagues (USL) First Division: Jarrett at Triangle Soccer Fanatics was instrumental in making this happen. Go RailHawks.
 
“Weighted” MLB algorithm: Currently it simply uses Bill James’ log5 method.
 
Indy Racing League: New season
 
Logos: Five hundred logos from Chris Creamer’s wonderful SportsLogos.Net. Clicking on a logo takes you to Chris’s page for that logo’s history, a walk down memory lane.
 
And, at the top of each page, Google site search and translation flags: The flags are a mixture of Trevor Creech’s use of Google Translate and IconDrawer’s images.