[BlackAndBlue]

Machiavelli,

I've been playing interactives for the past couple of years on and off by using my gut.
I'm a small winner over that time. Reading yours posts got me thinking about
doing some data analysis and computing hisorical win percentages based on
inning, starting line, and current score differential (I'm starting with baseball
simply because the innings seem to be easier than time in a FB game).

As a first shot I ignored the line and just looked at the value of average teams
at different points. Now I'm trying to look at incorporating the line into the
calculation and have run into some difficulty and am looking for some advise.

What I've done is tabulate win% by half inning, money line and current score
differential. My goal was to do some regression on these figures to be able
to account for the "skill difference" between the two teams (using the line as
a proxy for skill difference). The problem I've run into is that as the data gets
that scattered (eg there are only a handful of games where a -150 home favorite
was down by one run at the end of the bottom of the third).

This scattered data is leading me to believe that any regression will be unreliable
at best. Any suggestions? Am I essentially on the right track?