What is TNC Casino?
TLDR: Odds are calculated by running 50,000 simulations of each team's lineup and seeing how often each team wins.
Getting Projections and Lineup Data
Scraping Projections
I pull player projections from five different sources which I will not name because my wife is not yet bar-certified. I then combine them with the league data I get from Sleeper.
I then calculate "expected lineups" for each team, factoring in injuries, bye weeks, and start/sit decisions. This process isn't perfect especially because all of the backend data you see on this site is ran and updated whenever I feel like.
Step 2: Building in Variance
Of course I'm not gonna just average the projections and call it a day. I use 2 inputs to determine a players point-scoring distribution:
- Projection disagreement: The variance between projections from different sources. A wide spread between projections increases our variance estimate.
- Historical positional variance: A super quick historical analysis gave me some sigma values to bake in for each position.
Step 2: Monte Carlo Simulations
Once we have the values for each player, we can use Monte Carlo simulations to run 50,000 simus of each team's lineup and see how many points they score.
Simulations are done with a log-normal distribution so there is a heavy right-skew
These 50,000 simulations turn into the odds you see on the betting board. If amir812 was the highest scorer in 6,800 of the simulations, then he has a 13.6% of being the highest scorer, which converts to betting odds of +637
The Lock: You can place, modify, or cancel bets anytime before The Lock, which happens right after Thursday Night Football kicks off. Once locked, all bets stay in place and settle after Monday Night Football ends.