Saturday 30 January 2010

Cream On Top

Once again, today saw a few gems for the Elo ratings, particularly in the higher leagues, but overall nothing spectacular. The draw predictions in the Premier League are hitting at an overall 38% right now, including the draws at Birmingham City and Hull City today. Everton did win by the 1 goal predicted at Wigan Athletic, with Liverpool and Chelsea both winning, but missing their expected margin by 1 goal. Disappointingly, West Ham could do no better than draw at home to Blackburn Rovers.


In the Championship 4 of the 11 games were spot on, 4 were winners but not by the expected margin, and the other three were off by 1 or more. Predicted draws in this division are hitting at 31%.

League One saw 4 spot on from 11, with 1 other winner.

League Two was pretty much a disaster with no spot-on winners, and only 2 winners overall, and the Conference was an unmitigated disaster with four away wins out of four and not one prediction even close.

In Scotland, the Premier League saw the Big Firm matches finish exactly as predicted, with Hibernian also a winner, and in the handful of other games north of the border, two were spot on, and one other was a winner.

Football Elite’s Recommended Bets today saw their first losing pick in 19 games, with Fulham going down at home to Aston Villa. I had this as a draw myself, so we were both wrong! As Matt said in his notes: “Villa could be on their day and get something, but at 2.75 you have to side with Fulham in my opinion”. Agreed that this was the value bet here, despite the result.

His other picks were Napoli who drew 0-0 at 1.92 v Genoa and Deportivo La Coruna who lost 1-3 v Real Madrid where even the ‘safe’ play of laying Real Madrid didn’t help me.

His Short-List selections saw a nice win at 4.0 for Borussia Moenchengladbach at home to Werder Bremen 4-3, and Hull City failing to beat Wolverhampton Wanderers – Drew 2-2.

One more recommended bet tomorrow, and two short-list selections. Overall slightly down including commission, with the Short-List selections faring better than the Recommended Bets.

I had a comment from an anonymous Curly about why a tipster might be reluctant to tip at odds-on, and he suggested that in part it could be because tipping at odds-on is something anyone can do, and that the moment one tips an odds-on loser everyone is critical. It would be interesting to hear Matt’s thoughts on this.

My own view is that within the category of odds-on, there is a huge range of probabilities. Odds-on simply means an implied probability of 50%+, it by no means necessarily means ‘almost certainty’ as some people seem to think. A fairly priced 1.7 shot will lose 7 times in 17 so there should be no shame in tipping one of these. Of course if you are tipping 1.1s regularly and hitting losers 7 times in 17, that would be deserving of criticism.

There is another football tipping service out there called AH Betting who according to the Betting For A Living blog “are now 27/61 for January at odds-on”. That would be cause for concern.

On a completely unrelated topic, I was out for a ‘lose-some-weight-you-fat-bastard’ run / walk this afternoon, and had the misfortune to cross paths with a young girl, about 5 or so, enjoying the fresh air with her mother and sister. Why she wasn't indoors playing video games I don't know. Kids today!

Anyway, as I approached, I saw the girl point to me and then heard her say very clearly “That man looks like Granddad” followed even more bizarrely by a certain level of agreement from the girl’s mother. All very puzzling. Either there was an old man somewhere behind me, or her Granddad must be an incredibly young looking and amazing athlete.

3 comments:

Rob The Builder. said...

There are certain parts of Britain where most blokes become Grandads at around the age of 34.

Matt (FE) said...

Hi Cassini,

The reason I dont bet below 2.0 is simply that I just cant make a decent profit doing so!

Year on year I would look at my end of season stats and it would be the bigger priced selections that did the majority of the work. The shorter bets would either be showing a tiny ROI or even a loss some seasons.

I was loathe to make the change for a long while as as you say in theory value should exist at any price but i couldnt keep ignoring what the stats were telling me.

I wish I had a clever explanation as to why I dont seem to be able to make a profit at that odds range but I dont. Just doesnt work with my style of betting I guess. There are quite a few of the more respected football tipsters that feel the same.

Maybe the market is too efficient at that end of the market?

Anonymous said...

Personally, I have no objections to betting under 2.0 if I think there is value to be had.

I simply feel that most people think an odds-on selection should win and therefore perhaps these tipsters don't select them because of the potential for unfair criticism.

As for AH betting and their shockingly poor run of results. It is hard to comment without knowing their average odds-on price. But just imagine it was 1.9 then they should have 32 out of 61 winners. Now 27 isn't that far away from 32. If you compare this to an average price of 5.0 if a result service here had a strike rate of 17/100 then people might be more inclined to think they're just going through a bad patch and they'll turn it around.

Anyway, if tipsters aren't making selections sub evens then that simply leaves more value opportunities for others.

Curly