Recency bias
What does "recency bias" mean in sports betting?
The habit of giving the latest games or results more weight than they deserve when you predict what happens next.
Recent games are the easiest to remember, so they feel more important than they are. Psychologists treat recency bias as a version of the availability heuristic, which Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman described in 1973: people judge how likely something is by how easily examples come to mind.
For bettors, it shows up as overrating whoever just looked great and writing off whoever just looked bad. The line has usually already moved on last week's result. The question is whether the new price is wrong, not whether the last game was loud.
Example
A receiver had 140 yards last week. Over his last 10 games he averages 65 yards, which is 650 total. Take out the big game and the other 9 averaged about 56.7 yards. One game lifted his 10-game average by about 8.3 yards. If you price him off last week alone, you're betting on 1 game and ignoring 9.
Related terms
Player prop
A player prop is a bet on an individual player's stat line, such as passing yards, points, rebounds, strikeouts or shots on goal, rather than on the game result.
Line movement
Line movement is when a sportsbook changes a spread, total, prop or price after it opens, usually because of news or the money coming in.
Gambler's fallacy
The mistaken belief that a random streak has to even out soon, so a result is 'due' after it hasn't happened for a while.
Hot hand fallacy
The belief that a player or team on a streak is more likely to keep it going than the numbers support.
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