The ship has sailed......

I think in a way, I'm a little bit glad that things have gone dramatically off the rails from Christmas as it means that there are no delusions of grandeur with me anymore when it comes to the football. At Christmas, I thought I could walk on water when it came to football betting considering how well I was doing and now I feel like I'm being washed up on the shore, cast adrift after being thrown off the ship called 'Profit'.

There are lots of ways to look at what has happened since Christmas. It has been truly awful and I can't quite explain how something that could work so well for 4 months live this season, as well as two full season's worth of backtesting could dramatically turn into the best draw system I've ever seen. If backing the draws, the systems have made a profit 308pts since Jan 1st 2011. This is from 1,552 games and an ROI of 19.85% has been achieved.

It's hard to understand why something like this can occur and I'm at a loss to explain it. In the preceding 41 months to Jan-11, there had only been 7 months where the draw % for the systems had been above 30%. If backing the draw in these games, you would have lost over 2,000pts from 13,000 games. It hardly looked like a way to make money based on past results.

In the 4 months this year, the draw % has been above 30% every month and is sitting at 34.6% after the weekend for 2011 as a whole.

Clearly, there are lots of ways to look at this. Do you ignore 41 month's past results and assume that the ratings have an inherent flaw in them and that going forward, it will become impossible to make a profit due to the draw?

Do you use the draw in your bets somewhere and play Asian Handicaps to get the draw on your side? Draw No Bet and Double Chance betting have done very well this season and have been fairly steady although at Christmas time, I wasn't even tracking DC or DNB this season as the returns were so far behind the traditional H/A betting returns!

I think it would be fairly easy to decide I've had enough of this and move onto something else but I'm not sure that's the right answer either. After all, I might have just developed the best draw system by accident the world has ever seen...... :(

I've discussed this a lot on the blog since Christmas as it was initially raised by a very intelligent chap called Chris in the TFA forum about the fact that he would prefer to cover the draw in some games to smooth his P&L. 4 months on, a lot of research and work by me, a few months of live results of tracking DNB/DC and I have to admit that I agree with him completely now. I think unless you have lived and breathed a run like I've been on, it's easy to say that covering the draw when you have an edge is just a way to reduce your margin and in the long-run, backing the teams to win is the way to maximise profits. However, experiencing this run, I know I need the draw on my side for my own sanity, if nothing else!

It's a similar situation I found with horseracing and win only v each-way betting. I would often play each-way on the majority of my bets and people would point out that a slightly better return could be achieved by win only. However, in the long-run, I found my returns from EW betting were fairly similar to win only and in terms of helping my mental state, it helped enormously to get a positive return from some bets that were pipped on the line.

Anyway, I think I'm coming to the same conclusion here with the football betting. If you can achieve a high level of return by covering the draw or backing the draw as well as your selection, why wouldn't you do it? So what if it isn't a 15% return with lots of ups and downs. I'd rather have a 10% return that is fairly flat than a 15% return that is all over the place every month.

Just on this point. Any of those reading the blog for a while will know I went back and looked at the returns of DNB and DC betting for my historical results. DNB seemed to do very well and DC was profitable but much less so. On Friday, I wanted to check how DNB and DC did at the time of kick-off compared to the odds I had saved in my results sheet. I noticed that something wasn't right as DNB was doing much better than DC in terms of the odds my results sheet said. Simply, there was an error in the sheet that was overstating DNB and understating DC returns historically. It doesn't make a huge difference to any conclusions I have drawn before (H/A is better than DNB and DNB is better than DC) but there is a bigger gap between H/A and DNB now and of course, a smaller gap between DNB and DC. Not ideal when you find a data issue that is your own doing but I'm not perfect!

So, now my waffling is over, what happened yesterday? Well, the same as what has happened most weeks in 2011. Far too many draws!

25 different games defined as value. 9 wins, 10 draws and 6 losses. 3 of the losses were actually 90 min goals against my teams, so it could have been 9,13,3 which would have been amazing. Still. another 10 draws in 25 games which is a 40% strike rate for draws. A loss of 3.21pts from the 25 games.

The systems went to town with the games that finished a draw and from 108 games, they hit 46 draws along with only 32 winners and 30 losers. When you hit 32 winners from 108 games, it isn't going to be pretty....

A loss of 34pts for the systems yesterday. Even DNB had a poor day with losses of 9.3pts but DC had a good day with profits of 8.9pts.

The multiple bets had another shocker of a day which is nothing new there in 2011 either.

With only Saturday's games to go, the systems are on course for their worst ever month. Considering Feb-11 holds that record at the moment, it hasn't been a good few months! The systems are 73pts down in April and they lost 66pts in February. In 2011, the systems are now 63pts down which considering they made 300pts from September to December this season, it is pretty hard to predict what would have happened in the second half of this season as I wrote my December review in early January. I sort of pre-empted a downturn but this is like something suggesting it will be windy before a hurricane hits! I would never have believed things could get as bad as this.

On a brighter note, although DNB has had losing months in Feb and April (so far), it is still up 48pts in 2011.

Lastly, but definitely not least, DC is having an OK month with 10pts profit this month and of course, is doing pretty well in 2011 with a profit of over 100pts and an ROI of 8% in 2011.

It will be fairly interesting to write my monthly review next week after the worst month the systems have ever had but maybe Saturday will come to the rescue and reduce the losses to below February's disaster.....I doubt it though!