Although it’s not been mentioned on the blog, I’m working on a blueprint as to how to improve The Football Analyst service. I don’t want to go into depth at the moment as we’re still a long way from finishing this season but one thing that will be looked at during the summer is AH betting. I think if you look at my post on Friday and the results at the weekend, you can understand why this needs to be looked at.
Clearly, for the majority of systems, AH betting won’t improve them and therefore, when I discuss AH betting, it’s not aimed at every system or every bet I have. Instead, I’m thinking about a particular group of bets that are thrown up as value by my ratings.
As I said on Friday, I had 42 system bets at odds of 5.0+ this weekend. As it turns out, Lincoln conceded a 92nd minute equaliser which effectively meant 42pts were lost on these games. If Lincoln had held on, it would have been a 4.8pt profit on these bets rather than a 42pt loss, so that late goal was very, very costly. Put this fact to one side though for the moment.
Do I really want to be betting on so many teams at 5.0+? Do I enjoy backing teams I don’t think will win and do others enjoy this? I suspect the answer is no. Of course, in the long-term, these games are profitable on the systems and can achieve an ROI of 10%+ no problem at all, so they are profitable games to bet on. However, they do add a helluva lot of variance to the systems they appear on and simply, I suspect they undermine the performance of the systems as the capital needed (betting bank) to play these bets means that the return on capital you achieve is understated even though the ROI may be quite decent.
Is there a way around this? Well, yeah, Asian Hanidcaps would do the job I suspect.
Taking the odds at kick-off and the strategy I would employ if betting on AH’s, the AH and odds for each team (taken from Odds Portal) was:
Lincoln -0.5 at odds of 2.20
Oldham -0.75 at odds 2.09
Preston -1.25 at odds of 2.01
St Mirren -0.5 at odds of 2.16
Tamworth -1.25 at odds of 2.08
From the 5 bets, 2 would have returned full winners (Lincoln and St Mirren) and Preston would have been a ½ winner. The other two were losers. Therefore, a profit was made on these games.
As I discussed in a recent post, http://www.the-football-analyst.blogspot.com/2012/02/roi-for-show-roc-for-dough.html , I actually don’t think AH betting will increase the returns of the systems. Actually, from the work I’ve done, I can guarantee you this won’t happen. However, they can provide a much smoother journey to profitability and hopefully, a better return on capital that can be achieved in the long-run. You will however sacrifice the ROI that will be achieved but as that post says, ROI isn’t everything in this game.
Anyway, I thought it was worth mentioning that there is work going on in the background where I’m looking to improve the performance of the systems. Of course, some people may not mind backing big prices and suffering bad losing runs but achieving a decent profit in the long-run but for me personally, I can live without this sort of variance in my profit and loss account!
Onto the weekend. It was a shocker really although if Lincoln had held on, it would have been a break-even weekend. I can’t recall another goal this season that sickened me as much as this one did but I’m sure it won’t be the last bad beat we get at this game.
Algorithm one had 15 bets, only hit 3 winners, 4 draws but a massive 8 losers. A nightmare day. A loss of 8.59pts for H/A betting and a loss of 6.38pts for DNB betting.
Unfortunately, algorithm two found exactly the same bets as algorithm one this weekend, so it was the same performance again!
Algorithm three had 18 bets, 5 winners, 4 draws and 9 losers. Another nightmare. A loss of 5.34pts for H/A betting and a loss of 4.9pts for DNB betting.
Overall, a disaster of a day again for my ratings and base systems. Fortunately, the only good thing that happened this weekend was the more selective combined systems again showed why they are the best football systems on the planet at the moment (in my humble opinion of course!)
System 7 managed to take the 15 bets and narrow them down to 4 bets. It hit 3 winners and a draw. An amazing performance! System 8 did its job by taking these 4 bets and narrowing them down to 2 bets. 2 winners.
System 22 did well too by narrowing the 15 bets down to 2 bets and finding one winner.
Therefore, the systems did a great job in limiting the damage this weekend.
The established system lost 10.95pts for H/A betting and lost 11.63pts for DNB betting.
A special mention has to be made for the fact systems 6-22 to 8-22 managed to make a profit in the face of one of the worst performances for my base ratings this season! Not bad going if you happen to follow these systems. I noticed Malcolm across at http://mybettinglife.blogspot.com/ seemed fairly happy with his portfolio of 4 systems yesterday.
The new systems couldn’t quite limit the damage anywhere near as well as the established systems. A loss of 30.52pts for H/A betting and a loss of 23.64pts for DNB betting.
Overall, not a day I’m proud of but then again, with the high average odds overall, you need a few breaks to go your way and unfortunately, it didn’t happen this weekend.
Overall, the systems are well down on the month overall although the combined systems 6-22 to 8-22 are all in profit this month. 6-21 is down 13pts which is pulling down the overall performance of the 6 combined systems but I can’t really complain. It could have been a disaster of a month to date as the ratings are well off the mark at the moment but hopefully they’ll get back on track in midweek.
Bets will be posted on here at 9am on Tuesday.
Graeme, I'm sure you've said this above, but my terminology is a bit lacking ......
ReplyDeleteif you'd put £1 on every selection that cropped up on any system (and therefore £20 on Aldershot to win as it appeared on all 20), you'd have staked £147 and returned £114.80 at the odds you've given.
However, if Lincoln hadn't conceded late, £9 of that stake would have returned a further £54.20.
The two Scottish 0-0s cost £17 but if either had gone the right way would have returned a profit for north of the border.
So it was a "very nearly" weekend.
As to your comment about betting at odds >5.0, it doesn't bother me as I realise the best profit comes from higher odds. Yes, they are less frequenrly successful, but your systems show a decent enough profit to take the hit.
If my records from your blog are correct, using the adaptation of your system as mentioned above, you'd have staked £470 on these and returned £470.10 :-) and that's only because the last £70 have returned nothing, so that confirms the >10%ROI up until 21st Jan at least (and more recently just an annoying downturn).
I can't really comment on the AH, as I don't know anything about them and had to use Google to even find out what it meant :-)
Following 6-21 to 8-22 (the 6 established combined systems) I showed a very small profit (.5 units) on the weekend as I achieved slightly better odds on the winning selections than those quoted, but whilst it continues to on the plus side I'll stay happy.
ReplyDeleteLes
Hi Dartguru.
ReplyDeleteYeah, my posts regarding results can sometimes appear to be overly dramatic (especially on a ‘poor’ weekend!) but I agree with what you say. It was very nearly a break-even weekend with Lincoln and simply, that game caused weekend to go from a break-even one to a poor one in my opnion. That’s ignoring the fact that there were a couple of 0-0 draws in there in Scotland on decent priced aways as you say.
Being honest, with hindsight, the majority of people are following the combined systems and in that subset, a fair number are following only system 7-22 I suspect or 7-21+. Throw in the fact that some may be doing something with all the systems (i.e. counting up how many times each team appears) and that means they may have only had Aldershot at the weekend and overall, I’m probably in the minority who suffered a loss at the weekend.
I try my best to be as honest as I can on the blog and I tell it like it is in terms of the way I feel. Saturday felt a poor day and too many sides went behind early on and it always looked to be a losing day. In a way, I wasn’t surprised Lincoln conceded as I’m not sure I deserved to break-even overall as I was well off the pace in a few games where teams got badly beaten.
Anyway, it’s only one set of fixtures and a small blip on my way to continued profitability I hope. I do feel like things have started to turn though and the months of October and November seem a little way off again. I just want to get through the rest of this season with the profits in tact from what I have at the moment!
Cheers,
Graeme
Hi Les.
ReplyDeleteSimilar to my comment above really. Those following 6-21 to 8-22 were unlucky as the Lincoln goal turned it from a profitable weekend into a break-even one really. This month, 6-21 is haemorrhaging losses but then again, last month, it was this system that kept the 6 system portfolio afloat. Hence, you can see why following this subset of systems does well most of the time. 6-21 is the high turnover system with the capability of winning and losing a few pts every month but the other 5 systems are fairly steady with a lower level of turnover.
Hopefully 6-21 can get back on track soon though as it is pulling down the performance of my proofed results this month! ;) The other 5 systems are on fire!
Graeme