Bias Deep Dive - Recency
Recently we did extremely well in Tuesday's Itzulia stage - mainly because we felt the 4.00 head to head (H2H) odds for Aberasturi beating Hayter were far too long. We hadn't seen H2H above 3.00 for a long time and felt the betting houses might have been jumping the gun on assuming that Hayter's recent win in stage 1 would reflect future form in the following stages.
It wasn't just them. A number of our cycling Discord's were lighting up that Hayter had found his form the year, that "What we have here folks...is the next REMCO" and that Hayter was going to win the Giro next.
Don't get us wrong. We've been caught up in excitement about certain riders after major wins at times (yes, we were definitely caught up in the Jay Vine hype after his Tour Down Under win...it helps we made a bundle off of that). But we were able to holistically take a step back yesterday and see the larger picture. Hayter had won the stage yes. But not in epic fashion, and not by that much. There was also a number of other Ineos riders who could be the team's main general classification (GC) contender in the following days.
We knew the odds were too good to pass up, so took a direct line on the H2H and then another with a parlay that we were successful on.
But it brings up the larger issue of recency bias. The bias affects all our decisions in life - but we should be especially cautious of it when it comes to selecting our rider picks
Recency bias is a cognitive bias where people make conclusions based on recent or short-term outcomes, neglecting the rational aspects of the situation and what happened in the past.
Our brain relies on heuristics to process the vast amount of information we're deluged with daily. We need to continue to rely on heuristics, and we promote a number of heuristics given the number of variables in play when it comes to cycling races and the short time frame we have to select a bet (and...like...life).
But before you click "Place Bet" we recommend just double checking if the reason you're selecting the rider is because they're really good for the stage or how much is hype.
Recent form is a predictor of future performance. But it's just one variable. And an easy and quick method to find good value picks is if the betting house has bought too much into the recent form compared to the race you're laying down on.
This is super useful in the early days of stage races when team's true GC contenders haven't yet become apparent or when a rider's true form isn't yet known (even we can ride half decent for one day).
