Benny Bueno gave his picks for the first round of the Dania Partido Tournament which starts Thursday night, January 5 at the Dania fronton after the 9th pari-mutuel singles game. Anyone can hear the complete discussion on the tourney picks scoop by going to Dania’s YouTube Channel for the Sunday, January 1st games for the between games banter between Benny and announcer Dave LaMont. Note that Benny claims he’s really bad at picking winners and has given up on making predictions, however, here’s the summary of Benny’s first round partido picks and why.
Match 1, Thursday January 5, #1 Zulaika-Manci vs #8 Etcheberry-Portet
Benny’s Pick: Zulaika-Manci
Why: Zulaika is positive, optimistic and has kill-shots, when Jai-Alai takes the next step that Zulaika will be part of the solution
Match 2: Friday January 6, #4 Iturbide-Oyhenard vs #5 Aaron-Laborde
Benny’s Pick: Iturbide-Oyhenard
Why: Iturbide is very positive , good on the court and aggressive, Benny doesn’t see Aaron as an aggressive kill-shot guy, players from Aaron’s home town are “volley players”
Match 3: Thursday January 12, #3 Laduche-Atain II vs #6 Benetrix-Urbieta
Benny’s Pick: Laduche-Atain II
Why: Laduche is the hottest of the 4-players and Attain II is a perfect partido partner, says that Benetrix is a bit outmatched by Laduche
Match 4: Friday January 13, #2 Bixente-Bailo vs #7 Urrutia-Mandiola
Benny’s Pick: Bixente-Bailo
Why: Bailo gives it everything he has, also notes that Bixente is a quiet guy off and on the court (guessing this means he won’t let his emotions get the best of him)
SayHiLi Team Assessments
Here are the team records by post position for the (8) partido tourney teams from the start of the meet (Dec 1) through January 1.
Now, here’s the money chart, showing the Post-Position Adjusted (PPA) Weighted Factor for each of the doubles teams. This special SayHiLi Player/Team assessment tool evaluated the limited team statistical data for how teams should have done based on the posts they had compared to how they actually performed from those posts and also has a weighting for WPS close to the 5-3-1, but not exactly, however it’s an optimized weighting. You need a special SayHiLi security clearance for any more info on the SayHiLi PPA method is achieved, and those are harder to get than government security clearances….haha.
So, based on the above actual team data Team PPA Factors (last column), here are the SayHiLi predictions:
Match 1: Seed 1 vs 8, Zulaika-Manci the clear advantage 24.2 to 11.6
Match 2: Seed 4 vs 5, Iturbide-Oyenhard the clear advantage 23.1 to 15.4
Match 3: Seed 3 vs 6, Laduche-Atain II the clear advantage 13.8 to 3.4
Match 4: Seed 2 vs 7, Bixente-Bailo the clear advantage 25.9 to 13.7
Note these selections are the top-seeded selections in each match as were Benny Bueno’s picks for these four first-round partido matches. Note however, with only 1-month of team data available, there are some issues here with limited data of only 6-13 team pairings. Low data can result in flawed team assessments and one would wonder about the Benetrix-Urbieta team rating of 3.4, which appears suspect.
There is another SayHiLi team evaluation technique which allows the use of more data. This involves the Individual Doubles PPA Weighted Method for the Front Court and Back Court player and to average their individual assessments to get an Estimated Team Rating (ETR). SayHiLi will perform this evaluation (2) different ways, for ALL performances of doubles data and for just the Last 12-performances of doubles data.
Using only the last 12-performances of data for the team estimated assessment makes the Benetriz-Urbieta team a slight favorite over Laduche-Atain II so this could be a very interesting matchup. This is mostly due to the much improved play by Benetrix in the last 12-performances compared to his season average. Some notes of interest on Benetrix are two-fold. Benny mentioned in his between-game sessions on Dania’s YouTube Channel that Benetrix wanted really badly to play at Dania but the slots were filled. Johan was scheduled to play and backed-out from playing the Dania Invitational as he wanted to play a tourney in Guernica. Only minutes later from hanging up with the call from Johan, Benetrix called Benny to ask once more about openings and thus secured his position on the roster. Also, the improved play by Benetrix in the second half of the meet is probably most likely due to breaking his cesta very early in the meet. Benny has given more details on the Benetrix cesta story on the YouTube banter with the announcers. Be sure you don’t miss out on the entertaining YouTube scoop from Benny twice a week (Fridays and Sundays)!
So in conclusion, the FINAL SELECTIONS by SayHiLI’s Steve M are the top-seeded teams for Matches 1, 2 and 4, however Steve is taking the Benetrix-Urbieta team in Match 3 on Thursday, January 12.
Be sure to support both short-court and long-court Jai-Alai options in the USA to help keep this great sport alive and have a Happy New Year! Be sure to catch Magic City’s Battle Court Draft which is slated for Monday, January 9th (check jaialaiworld.com for latest Battle Court updates along with SayHiLi.com).
Steve M.