Jai-Alai Players Own Their Statistics
Jai-Alai Players Own Their Statistics
Posted on by Steve
Earlier in the current Dania meet a Chalk Talk poster (alq) brought up that payoffs were higher this meet than seen in the past and that poster was asking for supporting evidence. I took a look at the data and yes, they were at the time, and that led me to take a deeper dive into the statistics in general.
First, let me say, I am only the presenter of statistics. A Jai-Alai player owns their statistics. I don’t own them nor do I create them. Statistics are statistics, however they are facts. I can’t and won’t make assumptions as to why they are what they are, who the heck knows, perhaps only God and/or that Jai-Alai player knows. I can only present the factual statistics and they are what they are. However, in my deep dive of statistics I have looked at them in a way I haven’t before and often with some very simplistic approaches. Decide for yourself how to use them if you do at all, but I’m not a “bad guy” here and don’t make me out to be one. I’m only presenting the factual stats, and in a way you have never seen before I’m sure as you won’t find this stuff in any Jai-Alai program.
The first info I’m going to present here is doubles player ITM records by day of the week for doubles games only, hmm, that could be interesting, particularly if you find yourself betting and losing certain days of the week. Perhaps you will find your reason why here, or maybe not, but if so, you might consider an adjustment to your bet structure for certain days? This is not a team assessment for doubles, but an assessment of individual doubles player stats only. This analysis should certainly show which players are most consistent one would think. Be cognizant of the fact that Wednesdays and Saturdays include both the matinee and evening sessions, so those days represent a higher percentage of the doubles games played.
Here are a few interesting things to note from the above Day of Week ITM Chart for Doubles:
Urrutia, one of the strongest players on the roster and heavily bet, starts out the week slow with much lower than his average performance on Wed & Thurs – are you getting beat up badly on those days betting on him? I wouldn’t be surprised, the stats don’t lie.
Atain has an incredible 0.704 Doubles ITM on Thursdays and a very respectable 0.600 on Friday nights, however, he has a major dropoff for Saturday, interesting stuff.
Toucoullet has a very low 0.188 ITM on Friday nights, he’s already one who is probably on your radar with low performance, but Friday’s are the lowest.
Consistency (in alphabetical order), these 7-doubles players are most consistent throughout the week: Bixente, Cabanillas, Jagoba, Laborde, Oyhenard, Txanika, Zugaitz
These are just a few things that I noticed from scanning the Day of Week Chart, I’m sure you can find more.
When I had done my deep dive into the Dania Jai-Alai doubles game data, I was thinking about how players benefit from the low posts, pp 123, whereas the hardest posts to win from are pp 567. Then a light bulb went off, I have the data, look at the data! Certainly players perform better from posts 123 than 567 and the data will support that, even from looking at the Dania players from 2018 thru 2021. These days with random post draw, in effect since the late 80’s strike ended, all players get to play in all post positions. Now in the “olden days” as many of you probably remember post-strike, the best players were almost always found in the 567 posts.
I performed the low post-hard post analysis and the data was as expected, except for one outlier from the current meet. I even went as far to look at data from the previous Dania meets from 2018 forward for comparison. So in the next charts you will see everything doubles summarized by player, with ITM’s from pp 123 versus ITM’s from pp 567 and a ratio of the ITM 567 / ITM 123, which in all cases was well below 1.00 and I mean well below 1.00 (average is 0.60), except in one case. Again, I don’t own the stats, the Jai-Alai players own their stats, I am simply the presenter. Don’t shoot the messenger!
I could have looked at singles records, but that data is more straight-forward and those games are much easier to handicap, so I took on the tough assignment, doubles games. Hopefully this will help you with your Dania handicapping! Good Luck!!
Dania meet concludes on Sunday, February 25th.
Magic City Pelota meet starts on Sunday, February 11th.
Magic City Battle Court matches start on Friday, February 2nd. The amazing Lopez plays BC now!
Be sure to support all versions of Jai-Alai in the USA!
1/26/2024