Articles

Explainer articles on SharpModels' rating models and season simulators.

EPL

EPL Round 5 2026: SharpModels vs Market

Ten Premier League matches, SharpModels against the market, with recent form and head to head behind every gap.

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NFL

NFL Week 2 2026: SharpModels vs Market

Every Week 2 game, model against market, with each side's Week 1 result and rating move behind the gap. The second entry in a season long watching brief.

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EPL

EPL Round 4 2026: SharpModels vs Market

Nine English Premier League matches, SharpModels against the market, with recent form and head to head behind every gap.

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NFL

NFL Week 1 2026: SharpModels vs Market

Sixteen Week 1 games, SharpModels against the market, game by game. The first entry in a season long watching brief.

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Methodology

When a Backtested Trading Model Met Real Money

A 2015 reinforcement learning thesis traded Betfair markets with real money, and made only 15% of what its backtest predicted. Here's the gap, and why it still matters.

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NFL

2026 AFC East Preview

Buffalo and New England are in lockstep with the market. Miami isn't, and the reasons why are all real.

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NFL

2026 AFC North Preview

Joe Burrow's healthy return moves Cincinnati 13 points against our own model. Here's every AFC North team's real offseason story.

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NFL

2026 AFC South Preview

Houston's model-market gap is the widest in the division with no clear negative news to explain it. Indianapolis and Tennessee tell a different story.

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NFL

2026 AFC West Preview

Denver carries the largest model-vs-market gap of any AFC division. Kansas City's is explained by one sentence: Patrick Mahomes is healthy again.

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NFL

2026 NFC East Preview

Philadelphia and Dallas post two of the most dramatic, opposite gaps in this whole project: a +29 and a -21 in the same division.

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NFL

2026 NFC North Preview

Minnesota's quarterback competition is still unresolved in camp. Chicago's market price is betting hard on year two of Ben Johnson.

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NFL

2026 NFC South Preview

Tampa Bay and Atlanta are both managing real bad news. New Orleans and Carolina are riding real good news. The NFC South splits clean in half.

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NFL

2026 NFC West Preview

Reigning Super Bowl champion Seattle vs. all-in challenger Los Angeles: the cleanest model-vs-market story in the whole league.

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NFL

2026 NFL Strength of Schedule: Full Preseason Breakdown by Division

A one-off, point-in-time breakdown of every team's 2026 schedule difficulty, conference by conference and division by division.

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Methodology

How Strength of Schedule Works

Why we give every team a flat, average rating to isolate how hard their remaining games really are.

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Methodology

How the MLB Season Simulator Works

The same season-simulation approach as the NFL model, adapted for a 162-game schedule and MLB's own playoff format.

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Methodology

How the NFL Season Simulator Works

Why we simulate the season thousands of times, and why team ratings evolve as it unfolds.

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Coding

Building a Clean NFL Elo Rating Model From Results

The fundamental problem every sports model has to solve: how do you actually measure team strength?

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Coding

Adding Home Advantage to NFL Elo Ratings

Extending the baseline Elo model to account for the real, measurable edge of playing at home.

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Coding

Adding Margin of Victory to NFL Elo Ratings

Why a 3-point win and a 30-point win shouldn't move a team's rating by the same amount.

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Coding

Adding Seasonal Carryover to NFL Elo Ratings

How much of a team's rating should reset between seasons, and how much should carry over?

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Coding

Evaluating NFL Elo Win Probabilities

Putting the finished model to the test: how well do its win probabilities actually hold up against real results?

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Coding

Interpreting NFL Elo Rating Differences

What a 50-point or 150-point gap between two teams' ratings actually means in practice.

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Coding

Visualising NFL Elo Ratings Through Time

Turning a season of rating updates into a chart that shows how every team's form has actually moved.

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Coding

Turning NFL Elo Ratings Into Win Probabilities

How a rating gap between two teams becomes a single-game win probability.

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Coding

Build an NFL Elo Forecasting Model From Scratch

Start from scratch: the simplest possible rating system, built and tested from real results.

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Coding

Getting Started With SharpModels Code

An introduction to the codebase behind SharpModels' ratings and forecasts.

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