Zoltar is my NFL football prediction computer program. It uses reinforcement learning and a neural network. Here are Zoltar’s predictions for week #22 (Super Bowl LVII) of the 2022 season.

Zoltar:      chiefs  by    3  dog =     eagles    Vegas:      eagles  by  2.0

Zoltar theoretically suggests betting when the Vegas line is “significantly” different from Zoltar’s prediction. For this season I’ve been using a threshold of 4 points difference but in some previous seasons I used 3 points.

For Super Bowl LVII (week #22) Zoltar thinks the Kansas City Chiefs are 3 points better than the Philadelphia Eagles. Las Vegas thinks the Eagles are 2.0 points better than the Chiefs. Therefore, the difference of opinion is 5 points and so Zoltar suggests a wager on the Chiefs.

A bet on the Chiefs will pay off if the Chiefs win by any score, or if the Eagles win by less than 2.0 points (i.e., 1 point). If the Eagles win by exactly 2 points, the bet is a push.

Theoretically, if you must bet $110 to win $100 (typical in Vegas) then you’ll make money if you predict at 53% accuracy or better. But realistically, you need to predict at 60% accuracy or better.

In week #21, against the Vegas point spread, Zoltar went 0-0 using 4.0 points as the advice threshold because Zoltar’s two predictions (49ers at Eagles, and Bengals at Chiefs) both agreed closely with Vegas predictions.

For the season, against the spread, Zoltar is 57-31 (~64% accuracy).

Just for fun, I track how well Zoltar does when just trying to predict just which team will win a game. This isn’t useful except for parlay betting. In week #21, just predicting the winning team, Zoltar went 2-0. Vegas also went 2-0 at just predicting the winning team.

My prediction system is named after the Zoltar fortune teller machine you can find in arcades. Arcade Zoltar is named after the Zoltar machine that was featured in the 1988 movie “Big” where the machine was magical and granted a boy’s wish to become an adult. The movie Zoltar was named after a 1960s era fortune teller machine named Zoltan.