Wednesday 26 November 2014

Recent Results Update

It has been a really busy week for the systems since the last update. The systems were down 197pts from the first half of November and on Friday night last week, another 75pts were lost. To be 272pts down on the month, going into a Saturday set of selections is about as scary a month as I can imagine. Massive losses across most systems at this point for the season and there didn’t appear to be much light at the end of the tunnel.

At least a few times a season, everything appears to fall into place for the ratings, we get a little bit of luck, a few teams come back to win and it turns an OK day into an amazing day. Thankfully, this day arrived on Saturday. 365 system bets in total, a profit of 202pts. Wow!

It says it all that even after the best day of the season for the systems, they are still down for the month which is actually quite scary. Without Saturday, we’d have been looking at the worst month ever for the systems, so I’ve at least avoided this (for another month!).

There were too many highlights to mention them all but Altrincham coming back from 2-0 down with 10 men to beat Wrexham has to be the highlight for me. Wrexham did get a man sent off after their 2nd goal and then another man sent off in the second half, so it ended up 10 v 9 but even so, a great achievement to come back from 2-0 down.

The rest of the weekend was treading water, as was the midweek games last night.

In summary then, the systems have pulled back the deficit a fair bit for the month and although it’s going to be another losing month this season unless we hit another big weekend, the ratings and systems are really fighting hard to try to get through this horrible spell. Saturday showed what can happen when we get a few Away winners and if we can just get a few more weekends like this, the season can turn around for us I’m sure.

Here’s the results for all systems.

Est Systems


63 winners from 148 bets and a profit of 39.62pts.

The filtering is always going to look bad on updates like this as you really don’t want to filter out any bets but again, it feels like it has done worse than expected. The higher system bets didn’t do as well as I would have hoped which is the consistent story over the last 2 seasons now.

New Systems


58 winners from 120 bets and a profit of 61.86pts.

A great performance from the ratings here and the filtering wasn’t too bad I think. The filtering of these systems has worked consistently better than the Est Systems for the last two seasons really, so maybe not too surprising.

Misc Systems


38 winners from 82 bets and a profit of 24.14pts.

The SMG systems are having a nightmare of a season and STOZ is the worst of these. These systems rely on Aways predominantly and it’s not been the place to be so far this season.

Draw Systems


32 winners from 86 bets and a profit of 24.45pts.

A good comeback from these systems after a terrible start this season when the strike rate was very low. Things are starting to normalise now and the systems are back on an even keel. Just need them to start making profits now like last season!

Euro Systems


2 (yes 2!) winners from 74 system bets. A loss of 64.4pts.

Euro Draw Systems



41 winners from 86 games and a profit of 59.1pts.

The Euro systems still have the issue of too many games overlapping on both sets of systems and backing two outcomes isn’t profitable long-term as they both don’t have that big an edge. The over-round will eat away at any edge they have.

I guess we just have to stand back and let the best Euro systems win at the end of the day. First time this season the Euro Draw systems actually looked like they know what they are doing!

Overall, a profit of 144.77pts from 596 bets. We could do with a few more updates like this in the near future to build up some momentum as at the moment, the systems are working hard to stand still! 

Tuesday 18 November 2014

November so far.....

I felt like I gave the ratings and systems lots of praise over the first two months of the season even though results weren’t great as I thought they did a brilliant job of minimising losses given how difficult the underlying results. The first half of November has been like someone has opened the floodgates though and the ratings and systems have been swept away in a tidal of losses unfortunately.

11 weeks into the TFA season and it’s safe to say that we haven’t experienced a start like this before for the Underlying results. The Away strike rate in the UK leagues is abysmally low for the games I’ve rated so far and the losses if backing all Aways is massive. As the number of games rated increases, things should start to trend towards the mean but it’s not happened yet and every time I think we’re seeing an upturn in the number of Away winners, a weekend like Saturday comes along and it’s a bloodbath for Aways again.

I’ve never had a losing November before and it is traditionally a very strong month for the service but unless we see a sharp change in fortunes, this could be the worst month I’ve ever seen for the systems. At a time when I could do with the systems getting a little bit of luck due to how difficult it has been, we’ve been hit by a number of late goals turning wins into losses and combine this with the difficult conditions and it’s not a pretty picture I’m afraid.

The good news is that this is as bad as I’ve ever experienced and assuming we’re all bankrolled appropriately, we will get through it as long as things don’t continue like this indefinitely. I had to delay the bet release for the weekend past as I was away on Thursday and releasing the bets later saved the systems a helluva lot of points as on the Thursday evening, we’d have been on even more of the League Two Aways. 10 games on Fri/Sat in League Two, 9 Home wins and 1 Away win. Unreal.

At times like this, my only solace is to look at the strike rates, look at the historical results and believe that things need to turn at some point. I look forward to things getting back to normal!

Here’s the update. The crazy thing is that we still have 2 weekends left this month. Another two weeks like this and we’ll be analysing the betting banks for the systems at month end. :(

Est Systems


 250 bets, 63 winners and a loss of 65.74pts. I had a quick look at the split between Homes and Aways – Aways lost 65.53pts from 185 bets.

A nightmare month so far for both sets of ratings and all 11 systems. 

New Systems


292 bets, 81 winners and a loss of 69.15pts. Aways lost 80.05ps from 176 bets.

An unbelievably bad month for these systems so far.

Misc Systems


191 bets, 50 winners and a loss of 43.74pts. Aways lost 48.62pts from 142 bets.

Same story as above. Aways have had a nightmare so far this month.

Draw Systems


41 winners from 127 bets and a profit of 15.39pts. 

Slightly better from these systems after a horrible start so far this season. I feel like these systems haven’t had the best of luck so far this season and the P&L should be a little better I suspect. I’ll take any sort of profit on this results update though!

Euro Systems


51 winners from 154 bets and a loss of 16.7pts.  A tougher month for these systems so far but our old friend the Draw has been a menace on these bets so far this month. Probably due a correction after the amazing start these systems had this season.

Euro Draw Systems


39 winners from 144 bets and a loss of 16.8pts. These systems have really struggled this season and of course, when the Euro Systems suffer from too many Draws, it’s not the same games these Draw systems are backing! I keep feeling like a correction is due on these systems as the Draw algorithms are running at -26% and -41% respectively so far this season. They can’t be as bad as this!

Overall, a loss of 197pts from 1,158 bets. An ROI of -17%. That’s probably as big a loss in two weeks as I’ve ever posted. The systems are now in a massive hole this season and all the good work of the last two months in the sense of not losing too many points has gone down the tubes.

It would be easy to start panicking and thinking something is wrong but the underlying results are to blame. I expect to the systems to lose when we see the results we’re seeing.  I can’t expect the systems to win when they are based on historical results and we’re seeing different trends at the moment to what we have seen historically. We have to hope (and pray!) things get back to some sort of normality and we can start moving forward again as at the moment, my ratings are taking a bit of a beating this season.

Tuesday 4 November 2014

October 2014 Monthly Review

I’m going to try to keep this monthly review a little shorter than usual. Everyone is aware of the trends we are seeing, we all know they are short-term trends and therefore, trying to read too much into the results so far this season is a little meaningless. 

I spent a lot of time in the September review looking back at the previous season and highlighting how I felt the UK ratings were performing better after the Summer refresh. I haven’t seen anything that makes me change my mind although the actual results aren’t very impressive at all. However, as I keep reiterating, my ratings can’t turn water into wine and for example, if there are very few Draws in a month, I expect my Draw systems to make a massive loss. That’s part of the game since my ratings are based on historical data and for my ratings to be successful, I need the future to look something like the past!

Anyway, it wasn’t a disaster of a month overall but as always, depending on which systems or strategy you are playing, the results for all of us will look wildly different. October wasn’t a bad month for me and I hope the same was true for most of you but as always, there will be outliers at both ends of the scale.

Est Systems

Here’s the results for algorithm 1 in October:


A really good performance from this algorithm in a tricky month. A profit of 7.6pts from 91 bets at an ROI of 8.3%. It is split 2.3pts (4.6%) for Aways and 5.3pts (12.9%) for Homes.

Looking at the breakdown of value bands, I guess the disappointing thing is that the higher value bets didn’t have a great month. All bets with 10%+ value lost 3.3pts from 26 bets.

As always, drawing conclusions on the value bands on tiny samples is meaningless and we’re better waiting until the end of the season before drawing any conclusions that are meaningful.

The last thing I’d highlight is that the AH0 returns were better than the outright returns and therefore, the Draw has been a pest this month on this algorithm. Not too surprising given we know that backing all Draws in the month were profitable but it shows it was probably a better month for the algorithm than the results indicate.

Here’s the results for algorithm 2 in October:


A profit of 1pt from 88 bets (1.1%). Aways lost 7.2pts (-13.8%) and Homes made a profit of 8.1pts (22.6%). Similar comments to algorithm 1 in the sense the Draw was a pest here and the AH results were better than the outright results.

The low value bets (<5%) lost 3pts from 46 bets and the next two bands made a profit of 13.7pts from 30 bets. The highest value bands here (15%+) lost 9.8pts from 12 bets. As always, if filtering by value, you need to be careful as the higher value bets may have the highest ROI long-term but they also have the highest variance due to the low bet numbers each season.

Overall, just better than break-even in the month can never be described as a good month for an algorithm but given the Underlying results and the fact the Draw was a nuisance, I’m fairly contented with the results of this algorithm this month.

Here’s the results for the Est Systems this month:


A profit of 24.9pts from 378 bets (6.6%). Given everything I’ve written about the Underlying results this month with the Home & Draw bias, to achieve any sort of profit on these systems is a great result. 9 of the 11 systems were profitable with the highlight being system 7-22 which hit 6 winners from 11 bets (just like the good old days for any long-term readers!).

The combined systems in total made a profit of 13.8pts from 143 bets (9.65% ROI) and overall, I’m really pleased with these results this month. The filtering is a bit hit and miss as always with the small bet numbers but after a very tricky first month of the season, the systems have bounced back a little.

Overall, a respectable month for the rating algorithms and it has translated into an OK month for the Est systems. Still a long way to go to recover the losses from last month, never mind make a decent profit but it’s a step in the right direction.

New Systems

Here’s the results for Algorithm 3:


A loss of 2.1pts from 96 bets (-2.2%). Homes made a profit of 7.3pts (17.7%) and Aways made a loss of 9.4pts (-17.1%).

One thing that jumps off the page here is the performance of low value (<5%) Aways. A nightmare month for these Aways with 3 winners from 27 bets and a loss of 17.6pts. Low value Homes didn’t do much better if I’m honest and it was break-even from 25 bets. Looking at it in total, 52 of the bets were <5% value and this created a loss of 17.8pts. Ignoring these low value bets gives a performance of 15.6pts profit from 44 bets.

As I said earlier, we can’t draw too many conclusions for one month of bets for the value ratings as we know that the sample sizes are tiny. However, we do know that historically, this algorithm hasn’t suffered from the same issues as the other algorithms when it comes to low value bets and therefore, it’s disappointing to see these results. Low value bets have been profitable historically on this algorithm.

Here’s the results for Algorithm 4:


A poor month again and a loss of 4.5pts from 81 bets (-5.6%). Homes made a loss of 3.6pts from 27 bets and Aways made a loss of 1pt from 54 bets.

A very poor performance for Home bets considering the Underlying results this month and this sets alarm bells going a little I think. If the algorithm can’t make a profit this month with Home bets, I have my doubts long-term about algorithm 4.

With both algorithms losing then, I guess we should expect to see the New systems post a loss and probably a biggish loss at that. Here’s the results:


Ah, I tricked you there, didn’t I? Both algorithms made a loss but all other 9 systems made a profit. I can count on one hand how often I would expect this to happen, so it’s a really good month for these systems.

A profit of 41.6pts from 429 bets at an ROI of 9.7%.

System 31-41 in particular did great and it filtered out 21 bets from system 41 and these 21 bets hit only 3 winners. That’s a decent filter by anyone’s standards!

To be fair, system 32,33 and 42 all had good months filtering the base rating bets and this hasn’t happened too often over the last 18 months or so.

The higher combined systems produced some very good results this month again and after a horrible season last season, they have bounced back a little this season.

Overall, a decent month for these systems and hopefully they can build on this during the remainder of the season.

Misc Systems

Here’s the results for this month:


38.8pts profit from 275 bets at an ROI of 14.1%. A really good month for these systems in total although the results varied by system as you would expect.

I remember discussing the fact that the STOZ returns were poorer last month than the other two SG systems and we have the same issue here. STOZ only made a profit of 2pts from 55 bets whereas TOX made 7.5pts profit (35 bets) and STOY made a profit of 7pts (32 bets).

Last season, STOZ really struggled compared to the other two systems and we are seeing the same again. I guess the confusing thing is that in the first two seasons, STOZ did better than the other two systems.

Draw Systems

Here’s the results:


A profit of 25.7pts from 263 bets at an ROI of 9.8%. A better month for these systems but still in the red this season. Not had a massive number of bets so far this season and although the systems haven’t reached the heights of last season, it’s still early days. 

Euro Systems

Here’s the results:


A profit of 54.1pts from 108 bets at an ROI of 50.1%. A stunning month for these systems but as I said in the previous blog post, let’s not get too carried away! The rating algorithms aren’t as good as they have shown this month!

Euro Draw Systems

Here’s the results:



A loss of 72.8pts from 110 bets. A negative ROI of 66.2%!

Algorithm 1 hit 2 winners from 21 and algorithm 2 hit 1 winner from 17. If randomly guessing, you would hope to do better than this I think!

Again, similar to my comments for the Euro systems above, it is no coincidence that these systems are so bad as the strike rate was very low this month for Draws. Admittedly, the systems should have done a little better than this but a number of late goals didn’t help but that’s the joys of betting on Draws.

Overall, a profit of 112.3pts from 1,563 bets this month. A step forward after the losses in September but we could do with another solid month in November (hasn’t started great!).





Monday 3 November 2014

Quick look at the Underlying Results

I spent a lot of time at the start of October writing a blog post discussing the Underlying results for September. Given trends haven’t really changed too much, I won’t spend too much time on this post. The additional info in this post that wasn’t there last month is for the Euro bets, so I will touch on these results so far this season too.

In terms of the UK results, below is the table which summarises the results so far.


October’s loss on Aways wasn’t as bad as September’s loss but even so, a loss of 11% if backing all Aways is a difficult place to start from for Away betting. Homes had a good month again with a 5.8% ROI. Draws ended the month with a profit also of 3.5% which is a big improvement on September’s results.

I would therefore expect my Home system bets to have been profitable in October, I would expect my Aways to be loss making (again!) and I would have hoped for a decent profit from Draws.  Of course, my results aren’t 100% correlated to the Underlying results but there is enough of a correlation to help understand some of the trends we see on a monthly basis.

In terms of terms of the season to date, a nightmare season so far for Aways with a 15.4% loss.  This has been the toughest start to any season for Aways since I started playing this game 5 seasons ago. It’s also one of the toughest runs ever although it’s not the worst run by any means. We have had periods of 4 or 5 months in a row where Aways have been loss making but I guess the difference this season is that we are seeing it at the start of the season which always seems to hurt a little more!

The best algorithm so far this season has been algorithm 1 (system 6) and it is showing a profit of 2.9% which is a tremendous result given the difficulties faced so far. Algorithms 2 & 3 are not far away from break-even and again, given the difficulties so far, I think this is a respectable effort.

I guess my big concern is algorithm 4. It was my weakest algorithm coming into the season and after 2 months, I’ve not seen too much to change my mind. I’ve said this before but the strength of an algorithm is always seen during a tough period rather than an easy period as all algorithms make profits during an easy period. A loss of 8.5% is not a disaster given the underlying results and there is a big away bias on this algorithm which is not helping things this season at all. Hopefully once things start to get easier for Away betting, algorithm 4 can bounce back but at the moment, it has questions to answer.

I think that’s a brief overview of the UK results so far. Keep these results in mind when I review the UK systems.

Below are the results for the Euro games I’ve rated so far:


The first thing that strikes me looking at this is that I only wish the UK leagues had this pattern of results this season! :(

A big bias towards Aways, a small bias towards Homes which means that Draws have been in short supply. Basically, it’s been very easy to make profits backing Homes/Aways (Euro Systems) and it has been a nightmare for anyone trying to back Draws (Euro Draw systems).

I spent a little time looking at the overall results this season for Draws and not just the games I’ve rated and the results aren’t too bad overall for Draws. There was a bit of a bias towards Draws in the first 6 games played in each league and what we are seeing is something of a correction I suspect. Unfortunately, my Euro Draw systems in their first live season went live at the start of the correction and I’m already thinking break-even for these systems would be an amazing result this season. I’d probably take a small loss!

In a way, I’m really glad I wrote the blog post on the Underlying Euro results before the season started as it really opened my eyes to how difficult it can be making a profit from backing Draws in the Euro leagues and after 5 weeks, I’m seeing this myself! The Home ROI is very steady, so what we have seen is a number of Aways teams winning when they should really be drawing and this has caused the Euro Draw systems to get off to a terrible start.

The good news is that as my table shows, I’ll rate over 2,000 games a season for the Euro leagues and therefore, we are only just over 10% of the way through our season. The first weekend of November was another nightmare for Euro Draw backers and therefore, the overall ROI for backing all Draws in games I’ve rated is now -20%. We are now due a correction the other way I hope!

Anyway, keep these Euro results in mind when looking at the Euro system results. I don’t want people suddenly thinking my Euro Systems have a massive edge all of a sudden and likewise, I don’t really want people to write off the Euro Draw systems after their first 5 weeks of live results. It may well be the case these Euro Draw systems are useless and will show no edge long-term but they’ll be judged at the end of the season and not after the first 10% of games rated this season. 

Latest October results

A very quick post to close off the month of October. The next post will be a very quick update on the Underlying results for both the UK and Euro leagues games I’ve rated so far this season and then we can get onto the monthly review of October.

Here’s the results from last midweek.

Est Systems


4 bets, 4 losers. -4pts

New Systems


2 bets, 2 losers. -2pts

Misc Systems


2 bets, 2 losers. -2pts

Draw Systems


5 bets, 5 losers. -5pts

Euro Systems


23 bets, 13 winners. +11.4pts

Euro Draw Systems


13 bets, 2 winners. -4.3pts

Overall, a loss of 5.9pts from 49 bets.

Next post will be a quick look at the underlying results for September and October.