EvanZ wrote:What he is trying to say (correct me if I'm wrong) is that Vegas has a lot less variation in their opinion/estimation of teams than actual game results have. If you believe that Vegas is difficult to beat (which I do), then estimating power ratings based on Vegas lines is about as good as you're going to get, and generally better (less noisy) than using game results, especially early in the season. I've done the same type of ratings myself in the past. There's just not that much day-to-day movement on Vegas ratings, so it's a nice system for regressing (i.e. you sample sizes can be much smaller).
