A couple of observations...........

A couple of quick observations from last weekend's games which may help us achieve maximum profitability as the season progresses.

Firstly, I'm sure I'm not the only one who noticed that the DNB odds I quoted were easily beatable in all but one of the games last weekend by backing DNB at certain bookmakers. It's funny, I didn't do any great tests to check whether DNB odds were better than my dutching method when looking at DNB returns but I assumed that 90%+ of the time, taking the best odds for the selection to win and draw would beat the best Draw No Bet odds. Last weekend, it happened once out of 7 games.

In the game where it was better to dutch, it was on a big priced selection that was 6/1 to win and therefore, it may just be that on teams that are priced lower, backing DNB may be better than my dutching method. If this is true, it means that I may be understating the DNB returns historically a little but that's no bad thing. I'd much rather be understating returns rather than overstating them.

Of course, with no draws last weekend, backing DNB was a useless method anyway!

Secondly, as I've said throughout the summer, there is no reason to believe that my new systems for this season are any less likely to make a profit than the systems from last season. A couple of you queried with me after the weekend why I've only really talked about following the established systems from last season and not the new systems from this season.

Simply, the systems from last season have one season's proofed results behind them and the new systems have no proofed results behind them. Therefore, if given the choice between two sets of systems, you would automatically lean towards the systems with the proven results and this is why I’ve steered people more towards the established systems if they’ve asked me. I personally have placed more faith in the systems from last season too although I am following some of the newer systems too as I’ve said before.

However, if you read this post here, this shows a whole host of systems that people could follow this season that even I’m not following or tracking.

http://the-football-analyst.blogspot.com/2011/06/final-systems-for-201112-i-hope.html

As I’ve said before on the blog, I don’t have the time to track all of these systems and therefore, I chose 3 new systems to follow this season which are shown on that post. However, if someone likes the look of system 6-31 for example, then they can follow that.

Depending on how this season goes, I may well look at all of these combinations again and if they are all as profitable this season as they were in backtesting, then I don’t see an issue with having 40 systems on the go. Again, it would give people greater choice of systems to choose and that’s no bad thing.

However, I think that any system involving my new systems this season carry more risk than the systems from last season and therefore, I’d much rather watch the new systems this season before diving in myself. For all I know though, the new systems might all make twice as much profit as the systems from last season! We’ll find out more this season.

I thought it was worth touching on these two observations. I think people maybe ignored my new systems due to thinking these weren’t going to be as good as my established systems and although you can’t read much into one set of games, I wouldn’t be surprised to see my new systems do better this season. When I built my initial systems, I wasn’t as good at building systems as I am now and therefore, it may well be the case that the newer systems have more potential than the systems from last season. I can only reiterate though that I think it’s better to follow systems with one season’s proofed results than brand new systems!

I’ll be back on Friday with this weekend’s bets.