Bruce, I answered a similar question elsewhere. Forgive the copy and paste but I just woke up and saw this. Will be up for work in a little over two hours so this will have to do for now.
The thing I will speak to directly is the "high single game win percentage" thing. This particular three game chase was not designed with "high percentage single games" in mind. But rather a high percentage hit rate in any three game series. There is a vast difference. Heck you will see me taking the side of some pretty crumby teams. But they hit. The dogs in the study were 21-20, including winning dogs of +185, +190, +250, and +255. Several more in the +150 category like Balty tonight. The team in the one three game chase that lost was favored in all three games, -124, -125, -165.
That leads to the runline answer I'm about to cut and paste to save time. There is some irrelevant stuff here. Please forgive.
You saw what I did with the two game runline chase Andrew. Inconclusive results. I expected better.
But as often happens when I do isolations on paper my eyes catch other patterns, which is how I got to this 3 game chase thingy.
Now I can't speak for the biggest fav runline thing you referred to but I can tell you that of the 45 chases I had in my three series chase study period, 28 of 44 wins to end the chase were by favorites. Those 28 were 21-7 to the runline. Sounds like the runline should be the way to go until you think a bit. I can't tell you if continuing the chase for those 7 losers would have eventuated in chase wins or not. Maybe I can figure it out at some point but my guess is that the number of chases lost would grow to the point that there would be a severe cut in the profits garnered in the 44-1 ML chase record. So in eliminating game night agita you would actually be extending your risk in this scenario rather than reducing it by using the runline. Comprende?
Back to bed.
