Quick intro to the new TFA Euro Systems

Unlike last Summer, I’m not going to be reviewing these new Euro systems in any great depth. I’ve made my feelings known earlier this Summer but I personally have zero faith in new Euro these ratings I’ve built after seeing the results last season.

I’ve basically rebuilt these ratings from scratch but I have tweaked a couple of things in the rating building process to hopefully overcome the issues I had last season. The biggest change is the fact that you will see opposing teams appearing in the systems!

One of the things I decided quite early on with the UK ratings was that I would never have a conflicting bet on any of the rating algorithms. There is a built in rule that determines that this can’t occur. Last Summer, I spent a while looking over the Euro ratings as there seemed to be a lot of conflicting bets at times. I applied the same rules as per the UK ratings and forgot all about it.

Before I started building the new ratings, I was curious how much this has had an impact on the Euro systems last season and it was much bigger than I thought if I’m honest. Admittedly, it’s not helped by the fact the ratings would favour the team with the higher % value from the TFA rating and in 95% of cases, this would be the big priced away team. However, what I found in the Euro ratings last season was a number of strong home teams were knocked out as one of the algorithms threw up a big value away bet in the game and the ratings then dropped the home team and the away team appeared on one of the systems.

For example, you had a team appearing on E1, E2, E3, E6 and E7 and yet, didn’t make it onto any of the systems as the opposing team had made it onto E1 too. Hence, the opposing team stays on E1 and the other team is removed.

Anyway, rather than try to be smart again this season, I’m not going to apply these filters and therefore, we will see conflicting bets on some of the systems. I’m just trying my best to remove as much intervention as I can from the ratings process.

Looking quickly at the data, it looks a little strange to see two teams from the same game on the same system or conflicting bets on the same combined system but I think this makes me feel better as it least it removes one variable from the results which skewed the results a little last season.

My concern is obviously the draw then and in a game where we have both teams to win, the draw will really hurt the results of the systems but the backtested results all have this too.

So, here are the results from the backtested seasons.

In terms of going forward, I would take these results with a pinch of salt based on what happened last season. These are the targets which the Euro systems are going to be judged against:

As you can see, all the targets are fairly conservative based on the backtested results but being honest, if these systems could achieve a profit this season, I’ll be over the moon. That’s the target, first and foremost. 

In terms of following these systems, my view hasn’t changed. I wouldn’t touch them with a bargepole!