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Sportsbooks in Costa Rica are currently busy handling the NBA playoffs, but these are not the only places where number crunching and statistical probability models are being developed.

At the University of California, Merced, students of applied mathematics are working on advanced algorithms and stochastic models to predict outcomes of NBA games. According to a recent article by Lorena Anderson of UC Merced, an undergraduate student from Costa Rica is currently involved in a special research project that simulates each NBA playoff game between 10,000 and 100,000 times before a prediction is posted to online social network Twitter.

Thus far, Sebastian Rodriguez from Costa Rica, Li-Hsuan Huang from Southern California and Professor Harish Bhat have predicted post-season NBA games with 80 percent accuracy. The computer simulation used for this purpose takes less than 15 minutes to execute.

Professor Bhat explains that the algorithm his team is working with, which is explained in his paper “Learning Stochastic Models for Basketball Substitutions from Play-by-Play Data,” performs some level of machine learning. For example, Ms. Anderson explains that the model has learned:

when and how to make player substitutions during game simulations, including the various lineups the coaches tend to use throughout games. It models for the average plus/minus rate of each unit, and by putting both elements together, simulates separate game trajectories for each home and visiting team. Whichever has the higher final score wins.

Statistical odds are one of the most important aspects of the sports betting industry in Costa Rica. According to IDSca.com, a leading provider of Pay-Per-Head (PPH) services and sportsbook technology in Costa Rica, few bettors place their wagers blindly and without checking the odds.

At a time when All-Star players Chris Paul and Blake Griffin of the Los Angeles Clippers are not expected to recover from their injuries anytime soon, only a few die-hard fans would bet on the Clips making it to the Finals. Odds are used to predict the outcome of games as well as to figure out the betting lines and payouts.

The work of odds makers and sports betting handicappers has some similarity to the dynamic stochastic models being developed at UC Merced; however, advanced algorithms that can simulate the entire NBA season 10,000 times in an hour may change the way sportsbooks in Costa Rica do business.