What happened to AH0 this season?

This is a quick post but I think it’s interesting.  It’s based on the established systems only.

One of the interesting aspects of this season has been the relatively poor performance of Draw No Bet (AH0) this season, compared to last season. I did a bit of work last Summer to try to weed out some of the games that were drawing too often and ultimately, my intention was to improve the outright returns a little but worsen the AH0 returns.

It’s always impossible to know if any changes I’ve made have resulted in the results obtained this season or is it simply the case the systems would have performed worse this season for AH0 than last season, regardless of the changes I made. 

I’ve just dug out a piece of analysis I did on the blog last season on the draw and updated it with more data for this season. A very interesting update and if it points to one thing, it’s the fact that when my selections haven’t been winning this season, they haven’t really been drawing either!

Considering 70% of my selections have been Away bets this season (73% last season), it is remarkable that there have been Home wins in 47.8% of the system bets this season! This is up from 39.1% last season.  Therefore, clearly, when my Away teams haven’t really been winning, they have been losing.

Last season was a nightmare for the draw for me which ultimately meant better returns for AH0 and the returns were much in line with the outright returns over the season.

This season, the draw % for the system bets is down at 25% whereas it was 30.4% last season.  A circa. 20% change is a dramatic change over such a large sample of bets.

It’s funny as if I had looked at this table early on this season, Aways were doing tremendously well and Homes were really struggling for my systems. The second half of the season has flipped this and the Homes have actually outperformed the Aways over the course of the season on the systems and this is reflected in the chart.

As always, it’s hard to use any of this going forward. Anyone following AH0 this season may have felt a little aggrieved to have achieved a much lower return than backing outright but then again, as I said last Summer, AH0 only really comes to the fore when there are too many draws on the systems. I personally don’t want draws on the systems, so the changes last Summer may have actually worked out well. Then again, maybe this season is just a lower season for draws on the systems like last season was a higher season!

If you look at the draw % by month for the systems, it is also very interesting. This season, the highest draw % in any month is 27.7% in September (the only losing month this season).  However, last season, 5 of the 9 months had a higher monthly draw % than this! As I remember only too well, April had nearly 42% of draws last year with over 32% and 36% in January and February. 

If anything, I think this analysis shows that in the short-term, the range of returns can be quite volatile. Short-term in this case being a season!