Well, for the second time in a couple of weeks, my results will hinge on Accrington Stanley this midweek. They look a really decent bet to beat Hereford but given the way things are going, it will probably be a draw!
After that, apart from a couple of obvious bets, nothing stands out this midweek and I don't hold out too much hope. The month has been a nightmare for the last couple of weeks, so I look forward to April now I think!
I'll be back on Thursday with the results.
The Football Analyst Bets for 29th-30th March
System 6
Date League Game Selection Odds Bookie
29/03/2011 League 1 Sheff Wed v Brentford Brentford 3.60 Ladbrokes
30/30/2011 League 2 Accrington v Hereford Accrington 1.83 VC
System 7
Date League Game Selection Odds Bookie
30/30/2011 League 2 Accrington v Hereford Accrington 1.83 VC
System 8
Date League Game Selection Odds Bookie
30/30/2011 League 2 Accrington v Hereford Accrington 1.83 VC
System 9
None
System 21
Date League Game Selection Odds Bookie
29/03/2011 League 2 Port Vale v Lincoln Port Vale 1.83 Ladbrokes
30/30/2011 League 2 Accrington v Hereford Accrington 1.83 VC
30/30/2011 League 2 Burton v Macclesfield Macclesfield 3.40 B365
29/03/2011 Bsq Prem Newport v Gateshead Newport 2.10 Ladbrokes
29/03/2011 Bsq Prem Tamworth v Wrexham Wrexham 2.10 B365
System 22
Date League Game Selection Odds Bookie
30/30/2011 League 2 Accrington v Hereford Accrington 1.83 VC
29/03/2011 Bsq Prem Tamworth v Wrexham Wrexham 2.10 B365
System 23
Date League Game Selection Odds Bookie
30/30/2011 League 2 Accrington v Hereford Accrington 1.83 VC
29/03/2011 Bsq Prem Tamworth v Wrexham Wrexham 2.10 B365
System 6-21
Date League Game Selection Odds Bookie
30/30/2011 League 2 Accrington v Hereford Accrington 1.83 VC
System 6-22
Date League Game Selection Odds Bookie
30/30/2011 League 2 Accrington v Hereford Accrington 1.83 VC
System 7-21
Date League Game Selection Odds Bookie
30/30/2011 League 2 Accrington v Hereford Accrington 1.83 VC
System 7-22
Date League Game Selection Odds Bookie
30/30/2011 League 2 Accrington v Hereford Accrington 1.83 VC
System 8-21
Date League Game Selection Odds Bookie
30/30/2011 League 2 Accrington v Hereford Accrington 1.83 VC
System 8-22
Date League Game Selection Odds Bookie
30/30/2011 League 2 Accrington v Hereford Accrington 1.83 VC
System 16
None
System 17
None
System 18
None
System 19
None
System 20
None
Monday, 28 March 2011
Frustrating Weekend (Again!)
It's hard to not feel slightly frustrated again after the weekend that has just past.
I'm trying my best to not get too sucked into the short-term at the moment with the number of draws that my systems are hitting but after a nightmare January and February, and after a decent start this month, it is starting to go the same way as the preceding two months.
For the second or third time this month, simply backing each of the games that appeared as value was the way to make a nice profit. I know long-term that this isn't an optimal strategy (these games all appear on system 6&21 which aren't great systems) but in the short-term, it is very annoying when this happens.
8 games this weekend, 4 wins and 4 losses. With Yeovil in there at 7/2 along with Rotherham at 17/10, it was always going to be a profitable week for this strategy. A profit of 3.78pts from 8 games.
Unfortunately, the systems took this profit and turned it into a 4.84pt loss on the weekend for the single bets! 19 bets, 5 wins and 14 draws were the system results.
The multiple bet (system 17) had no chance either with the 4 teams returning a winner and 3 draws for another 11pt loss.
I'll be writing my usual monthly review later this week and therefore, I don't want to quote too much on what has happened this month as it will spoil the enjoyment for me when I write the review. However, systems 22 will be having its 3rd losing month in a row this month which is most disappointing for one of my best systems. I've had a quick look this morning and system 22 is sitting with a 37% draw strike rate in 2011. Amazing really considering it is over a sample size of 110 bets but then again, 110 bets can hardly be described as a large sample!
My best hope is that the systems stop hitting so many draws and simply go back to somewhere near the long-term trend for draws. Over the last 3 months, the number of home wins have been bang in line with the long-term average. Unfortunately, the away win % is down by 6 points each month on average which is being eaten up by the draw. Over two thirds of the bets my systems find are away bets, so when this sort of run happens in the short-term, there isn't a lot I can do about it but hold tight!
Anyway, there are some midweek games in England on Tuesday/Wednesday this week, so I'll be back later with the bets for those.
Thanks for the comments on here and across at the TFA forum regarding the DNB/DC analysis. The weekend was a good example of what can happen with these systems and the draw, so it was good timing from me in that respect to write the post this weekend!
I'm trying my best to not get too sucked into the short-term at the moment with the number of draws that my systems are hitting but after a nightmare January and February, and after a decent start this month, it is starting to go the same way as the preceding two months.
For the second or third time this month, simply backing each of the games that appeared as value was the way to make a nice profit. I know long-term that this isn't an optimal strategy (these games all appear on system 6&21 which aren't great systems) but in the short-term, it is very annoying when this happens.
8 games this weekend, 4 wins and 4 losses. With Yeovil in there at 7/2 along with Rotherham at 17/10, it was always going to be a profitable week for this strategy. A profit of 3.78pts from 8 games.
Unfortunately, the systems took this profit and turned it into a 4.84pt loss on the weekend for the single bets! 19 bets, 5 wins and 14 draws were the system results.
The multiple bet (system 17) had no chance either with the 4 teams returning a winner and 3 draws for another 11pt loss.
I'll be writing my usual monthly review later this week and therefore, I don't want to quote too much on what has happened this month as it will spoil the enjoyment for me when I write the review. However, systems 22 will be having its 3rd losing month in a row this month which is most disappointing for one of my best systems. I've had a quick look this morning and system 22 is sitting with a 37% draw strike rate in 2011. Amazing really considering it is over a sample size of 110 bets but then again, 110 bets can hardly be described as a large sample!
My best hope is that the systems stop hitting so many draws and simply go back to somewhere near the long-term trend for draws. Over the last 3 months, the number of home wins have been bang in line with the long-term average. Unfortunately, the away win % is down by 6 points each month on average which is being eaten up by the draw. Over two thirds of the bets my systems find are away bets, so when this sort of run happens in the short-term, there isn't a lot I can do about it but hold tight!
Anyway, there are some midweek games in England on Tuesday/Wednesday this week, so I'll be back later with the bets for those.
Thanks for the comments on here and across at the TFA forum regarding the DNB/DC analysis. The weekend was a good example of what can happen with these systems and the draw, so it was good timing from me in that respect to write the post this weekend!
Saturday, 26 March 2011
Draw No Bet/Double Chance Analysis
Firstly, I should add that I mentioned last week about doing this analysis on the blog and I’ve been discussing doing this in the TFA forum for a wee while. Some may just look at this weekend’s results and think it’s a knee-jerk reaction to even consider doing something with the draw and these systems (especially given how much profit they have made this season!) but I never consider changing anything based on a short-term run of results. Simply, I’ve been disappointed about the results from some of the systems this season and after a piece of analysis I did on the draw a few weeks back, I decided the next step was to look at Draw No Bet and Double Chance betting for each of the systems.
As you can imagine, it isn’t an easy job to gather this data but thankfully, I’m a bit of a whiz with Excel as you have probably noticed, so I can usually do things with data that others can only dream about! A lot of work has gone into collecting this historical data but thankfully, it will be easy to keep it updated going forward, so this has been a worthwhile piece of analysis.
When carrying out a big piece of analysis such as this, there are some golden rules you need to follow. In my opinion, you should state any assumptions around the data you are using, you should state any priori beliefs/hypotheses about what you expect to find, you should carry out the detailed analysis and then lastly, you should draw any conclusions including referring back to whether your hypothesis was correct or not. If you stick to these steps, you won’t go too far wrong with analysis I tend to find.
Assumptions
As discussed in various places on the blog, I don’t think that the results in season 2006 and 2007 can be used for any meaningful analysis. These two years were involved in the backfitting of my systems although as I have said before, the backfitting is probably only 50%-75% in these two seasons. I obviously had other data from earlier seasons too when I was developing the ratings and therefore, I didn’t use all of the data from 2006 and 2007. However, I used enough of the data for me to say that these years suffer from backfitting and therefore, I don’t want any analysis or trends to be used involving these two years if I can help it.
Apart from excluding these two seasons, I’m happy to use all the data from 2008 and 2009 as well as all results to the 23rd March 2010 to draw any conclusions. You need to a draw a line in the sand with this sort of thing as your data would be moving all the time. In total, I will be looking at 7,488 bets and these are split 2,483 homes and 5,005 aways for the data from 2008 to now. For parts of analysis which include 2006+ data, there are 14,361 bets. Overall, I think there’s enough data to be able to draw meaningful conclusions even though I have missed out the first two years of data when drawing any conclusions.
Priori beliefs/Hypotheses
I think my main priori beliefs before starting out on this analysis were:
1). DNB betting will be less profitable than traditional H/A betting although it may provide a smoother P&L
2). DC betting will be much less profitable than H/A and DNB betting and I don’t think this will be worth following in future. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was even loss making
3). DNB betting will be best utilised on away bets rather than home bets as away bets have a much higher average odds and a lower win strike rate
4). DNB betting will work well on teams priced 2/1+ as I think this is the area where the systems lose out on most profits as many of these big priced away teams draw regularly
5). Lastly, DNB will not work on short priced aways (less than 2/1) as covering the draw when you are backing at short prices away from home can’t really be a profitable method
Overall, my main hypothesis is that DC betting will not work on these systems and DNB betting may provide a smoother P&L but it is likely to be much less profitable than traditional H/A betting.
Detailed Analysis
I think the first place that is worth looking at is simply the performance of H/A v DNB v DC by year and by system. I have also graphed the 3 P&L’s on the same graph for each system. The drawdowns are only for the H/A betting. For information purposes only, I have also showed the key metrics by each system and league although I don’t think we can use this for any analysis.
Below is a picture of the results:
OK, I could really go to town on what trends I see but I think there are better ways of analysing this data than I’ve shown here. A few things worth mentioning are:
- On every system, the overall returns from H/A beats DNB and DC
- However, this is partly due to the results in 2006 and 2007. If we look at the graphs of each system, the DNB P&L looks parallel to the H/A P&L over the last few seasons
- Looking at 2010 in particular, DNB beats H/A on many systems and overall, it looks fairly close between DNB and H/A betting
I think the above is interesting but it doesn’t really help us to understand how HvA betting compares to DNB and DC overall as it includes 2006 and 2007 data. Let’s exclude this data and just look at the returns by season:
OK, this is starting to look more interesting. Based on the last 3 seasons, the ROI for H/A is 18.3% and the ROI for DNB is 16.1%. DC ROI is lagging behind but is still a very respectable 7.5%.
Interestingly, looking at 2010, DNB easily beats H/A betting for my away bets. The same was also true in 2009! Hence, this isn’t just a trend this season, it was already there at the start of the season.
I think the next stage is to look at the performance of home bets and away bets separately. I could look at this by season but I don’t think it is going to add much by doing this, so I’ll look at it by system and overall. Here it is:
Now, this is getting very interesting. As you can see, Away bets have an ROI of 16.4% for H/A betting whereas Home Bets have an ROI of 22.3% for this type of betting.
Amazingly though, Aways have produced an ROI of 18% for DNB betting and Homes have only produced a profit of 12.3% for DNB betting.
DC is fairly consistent with homes producing a profit of 6.9% and aways producing a profit of 7.7%.
What does all of this mean then? Well, I don’t want to draw too many conclusions without further analysis but clearly, DNB is going to work better on Aways rather than Homes and secondly, the ROI is higher on Homes than Aways for traditional H/A betting, so I don’t think homes are the issue here. Clearly, it is the away bets that are suffering from too many draws and pulling down the ROI of my systems. This backs up what I said above looking at the last two seasons.
So, now we know it is the Away bets that are suffering from too many draws. Let’s drill down a bit further into these bets. This shows the performance of the away bets by season:
As you can see, this clearly shows that DNB betting is better than traditional H/A betting on my away bets. When you consider the average odds of DNB bets will be much lower and will have a much higher strike rate, if given the choice of two systems who produce the same returns, you will always choose the system with the highest strike rate, lower losing runs and smaller betting bank. Hence, DNB is better than traditional H/A betting on my away bets.
What does it look like by odds range though? Well, if you think back to my hypothesis when I started out, I believed that DNB would work better on longer prices but on shorter prices, DNB could never work……..
Here are the results of teams at 2/1+ playing away from home:
As you can see, traditional H/A betting has produced an ROI of 18.5% on these bets. However, DNB betting has only produced a return of 16.1% and DC betting has only produced a return of 8.1%. I find this very surprising as it shows that for teams at 2/1+ away from home, you are better with H/A betting rather than DNB!
So, what does it look like for teams priced less than 2/1 playing away from home:
Well, you can knock me down with a feather duster! Covering the draw when you are backing teams at less than 2/1 away from home has produced much bigger profits than traditional H/A betting.
The ROI from traditional H/A betting is only 14.9% whereas the ROI from DNB betting is a remarkable 19.4%! Over the 3 seasons, it comes to 130pts profit across the 2,896 games.
I rest my case your honour……..
Conclusion
After doing all the analysis, spending a few hours analysing and then writing up this report, I’m just left to try to decipher what the hell it all means!
Let’s go back to each of my priori beliefs and check which ones were right and wrong as a starter for ten.
1). DNB betting will be less profitable than traditional H/A betting although it may provide a smoother P&L
Over the last 3 seasons combined, the statement is true that DNB betting is less profitable. However, in 2010, DNB has an ROI of 13.7% and H/A betting has an ROI of 13.1%. Interestingly, if we split this into Home and Away bets, DNB on away bets have beaten H/A betting in 2009 and 2010. DNB on Home bets has never beaten traditional H/A betting.
As for producing a smoother P&L, I would have to undertake further analysis but based on the fact the strike rate for DNB needs to be much higher than H/A betting to make a profit, it’s safe to say that DNB must provide a smoother P&L overall.
2). DC betting will be much less profitable than H/A and DNB betting and I don’t think this will be worth following in future. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was even loss making
I think it’s safe to say that DC betting is much less profitable than the other types of betting. However, it still produces a steady ROI of 6%-8% a season and therefore, it isn’t exactly loss making like I thought it might have been!
The overall ROI for backing DC Aways is actually just short of 8% and when you consider the strike rate you need for DC betting to be successful, I don’t think it’s the worst system I’ve come across!
3). DNB betting will be best utilised on away bets rather than home bets as away bets have a much higher average odds and a lower win strike rate
This statement is definitely true although DNB betting on homes still isn’t bad and produces an ROI of 12.3%. However, this is much less than the 18% on away bets. In addition, H/A betting beats this ROI on Home bets, so there is no reason to consider DNB for Homes I think.
4). DNB betting will work well on teams priced 2/1+ as I think this is the area where the systems lose out on most profits as many of these big priced away teams draw regularly
This is the most surprising thing from this whole analysis but it is actually more profitable backing these big priced away teams to win outright, rather than covering the draw. It’s hard to understand why but clearly, there must not be as much draws in this category as I thought.
I think finding this out is a massive step forward. Without doing this analysis on odds, I would have been in danger of making a massive mistake and considering backing these bigger priced away teams DNB I suspect.
5). Lastly, DNB will not work on short priced aways (less than 2/1) as covering the draw when you are backing at short prices away from home can’t really be a profitable method
Well, I was pretty certain that I would find out that this was true but it is most definitely not true!
It’s quite hard to believe that covering the draw when you are backing short priced teams away from home (less than 2/1) is actually a better method than backing them outright but this is definitely the case. The difference in profit is actually quite substantial with traditional H/A betting producing an ROI of 14.9% but DNB producing a profit of 19.4%. As I said above, it is 130pts profit across 3 seasons.
So, the piste de resistance of the analysis, what will I do going forward? Well, at the moment, nothing! For a start, we’ve got 9 weeks left this season and therefore, I’m not going to be suggesting that we start covering the draw on away bets at the moment. I’d much rather wait for the season end and take another look at this analysis in the summer before making any wholesale changes. We are playing with profits at the moment, so we don't need to make rash decisions.
Importantly, if I did decide to go down the route of covering the draw with away bets, I would do it with all bets and not just shorter priced bets. Overall, the ROI has been better for the last two seasons on all the away bets and therefore, I don’t want to reduce the sample size by only doing it on a proportion of the away bets.
The other thing to consider for my own betting and anyone else following this is how practical is it going to be to cover the away bets each week with the draw? It is pretty easy to knock up a DNB calculator in Excel where you can enter the stake and best odds for the away team and draw and that will tell you what to stake on each team. However, is this practical for people to follow? I honestly don’t know……..
I’ll leave it there for the moment and hopefully people will have some questions which I can answer. For those that question how powerful this sort of analysis can be, look at the results from this weekend so far…..17 bets, 14 draws, 3 wins. 7 individual games, 3 wins, 4 draws. May look like a freak weekend but read back for the past few months on the blog and in particular, read this post from a few weeks back. The draw is a pain for these systems this season and if backing the draw can increase your profits, surely you have to consider doing this?
http://the-football-analyst.blogspot.com/2011/03/just-track-draw.html
Friday, 25 March 2011
Explanation of the system numbers....
Before I reply to Toby, I've just had a comment from Ryan asking how much I charge for this! It's the second such comment in 24 hours. Simply, all of this is done free of charge by me this season as it is a trial season and I want to build up some exposure. Even if I charge next season (depends how well this season goes I guess), it would be a minimal fee to help me justify my time posting on here if nothing else! I follow the bets myself and whether I do the work for myself or 50 people, I still need to do the same work. Hence, I haven't given charging people much thought really as I can do without the hassle although my fiance may not agree with this statement!
I know 'free' blogs like this can be abused though by some people and therefore, I would probably cap numbers on my email distribution list to ensure we all got prices and I would possibly move to posting the bets after I release them to others. Whatever happens, my intention is for me to make a profit first and foremost. Anyone else who wants to follow can do so if they wish but I really don't care!
Just so you know, I will be posting up an analysis looking at Draw No Bet betting and Double Chance betting this weekend on here. It's probably worth a read for those that enjoy this type of betting rather than traditional H/A betting.
Onto the reason why I started writing this post. Toby asked a very valid question about the numbering of my systems. Well, he asked 2 questions really but in essence, he asked what has happened to systems 1-5 and systems 11-15. He also asked why I don't have systems like 6-23,7-23,8-23,9-21,9-22 and 9-23. Interestingly, he didn't ask what happened to system 10 and he won't know this but he should have asked what happened to any other systems as I had as I also have systems 24 and 25 too!
I touched on this back on the first day I posted bets as I had a few friends asking me about the numbering of the systems when I sent the email out with the first bets this season. Looking back now, my answer to the question was fairly ambiguous at the time but I can expand on it further now. For info, here's what I wrote back then... http://the-football-analyst.blogspot.com/2010/09/first-system-bets-this-weekend.html
A few people have asked about why the systems are called 6,7,8,9 and not 1,2,3,4. Quite simply, there are other systems on the go and I'm always looking at data for other systems. These systems 6-9 are the ones that performed the best last season and therefore, I have kept the names the same for those following in the TFA forum. Next season, I will probably change the system names but at the moment, I'm sticking with these names.
Clearly, when I started out this season, although I went live with systems 6-10 on day one which covered the top 5 English Leagues and the SPL, I had other systems on the go in the background. The guys in the TFA forum know about these systems but when I started out on this project in January 2010, my intention was to have systems for the top 5 English leagues, all the non-leagues in England, all 4 leagues in Scotland and the top league in Italy, Germany, French and Spain. I would also move into the Scandinavian leagues when I had time to look at that too. :)
Looking back now, I'm sure they will laugh as much as me at the size of the project I was trying to undertake and after a few weeks this season, all the systems tracking these other leagues were consigned to the bin. I might resurrect that project one day and I still think I can do something in the European Leagues especially as my systems had a big edge when I started looking at this in the second half of the 2010 season.
Ultimately, that consigned systems 1-5 to the scrapheap from about the 3rd week of the season even though no bets had taken place. I kept systems 11-15 live for 2 months and tracked the results and although they did manage to break-even, the upkeep of these systems again ensured that they had to be consigned to the bin.
Therefore, I was left with systems 6-10 which concentrated on the top 5 leagues in England and the SPL. At the same time, I also had a different rating algorithm built which was for the same leagues as systems 6-10 but due to the need to build a way to track these bets like I was doing system 6-10, I didn't want to be posting up bets without being able to track the results closely. Hence, for the first few months this season, these systems produced bets in the background and I checked the results each month but I didn't want anyone following these bets (including me!) until I could get the formatting of the results in the same way as I track systems 6-10.
That explains systems 1-5 (dead from very early on), systems 11-15 (dead after a few months) and systems 20-25 (alive in the background and alive on here and fully proofed from the start of November).
So, what happened to systems 10,24 and 25? Well, amazingly, they had no bets! As you will have seen, the higher up the system you go, the less bets you have on the system as it is filtering the bets by the amount of value each bet is perceived to be. This season, no bets had met the criteria for systems 10,24 and 25 and therefore, after a few months, I knocked them on the head and don't even check to see if any bets appear on these systems now. The systems were so selective and would only be throwing up 1 or 2 bets a season I suspect these days, so they weren't practical to follow. In addition, having a system like this is meaningless as you can never tell if it has an edge or not due to the lack of bets.
Well, that only leaves systems 16-20. Where did they appear from? Well, I always had the idea of doing multiple bets based on the single bet selections thrown up. Some of the guys across at the forum weren't too keen on doing lots of single bets each week this season and they were more interested in playing small multiple bets. They asked me to take a look at how this would do and system 16 was born. System 16 is basically a combination of bets appearing on system 8 and system 13 (which is now dead but is used by system 16 when it throws up bets!). After a bit of work, I managed to build systems 17-20 and I had 5 multiple bets based on the single bet systems.
Overall then, I'm left with systems 6-9, systems 16-20 (multiple bet systems) and systems 21-23.
Early on this season, I highlighted the fact that teams that were appearing on the different algorithms (6-9 and 21-23) were having a very high strike rate when they appeared together. Due to the fact I had no time to look at this and hadn't even thought of looking at it before now, I mentioned it in my weekly email and I even mentioned it on here once or twice. Due to the work involved in looking at this and the past performance, I said that if people wanted to follow this, they could do but I would not be able to track the results until after Christmas. http://the-football-analyst.blogspot.com/2010/11/change-of-direction-needed.html
So that was the birth of systems 6-21 et. al.
Why no systems 6-23,7-23,8-23,9-21,9-22 and 9-23 ? Simple, there aren't enough bets. System 23 only has 80 bets a season and if we only start backing teams that appear on system 6 etc. we would be bringing that down to less than 50 bets I suspect. Likewise, system 9 only has 40 bets a season, so combining that with anything else is useless.
Being honest, system 9 on its own is fairly useless I suspect as with so few bets, you can't get an idea of how good the system is and all it takes is a few games to go against you and it could be loss making.
Will I change the names of the systems? I'm not sure. I've grown fond of the systems and I see them as my little pets. I adore system 8, detest system 23, love system 16, hate systems 17-20, love system 8-22 etc. In addition, anyone following this season knows which system they follow and why and therefore, changing the names of the systems would lead to ultimate chaos I suspect. In addition, all my results are based on these system numbers, so I don't fancy changing them all either!
For those that prefer pictures, this diagram is something I have been working to for a long time now but I know it helped many of the guys in the forum following the bets, so I'll post it again on here. It is somewhere on the blog also a wee while back I think.
Any questions, please leave a comment.
I know 'free' blogs like this can be abused though by some people and therefore, I would probably cap numbers on my email distribution list to ensure we all got prices and I would possibly move to posting the bets after I release them to others. Whatever happens, my intention is for me to make a profit first and foremost. Anyone else who wants to follow can do so if they wish but I really don't care!
Just so you know, I will be posting up an analysis looking at Draw No Bet betting and Double Chance betting this weekend on here. It's probably worth a read for those that enjoy this type of betting rather than traditional H/A betting.
Onto the reason why I started writing this post. Toby asked a very valid question about the numbering of my systems. Well, he asked 2 questions really but in essence, he asked what has happened to systems 1-5 and systems 11-15. He also asked why I don't have systems like 6-23,7-23,8-23,9-21,9-22 and 9-23. Interestingly, he didn't ask what happened to system 10 and he won't know this but he should have asked what happened to any other systems as I had as I also have systems 24 and 25 too!
I touched on this back on the first day I posted bets as I had a few friends asking me about the numbering of the systems when I sent the email out with the first bets this season. Looking back now, my answer to the question was fairly ambiguous at the time but I can expand on it further now. For info, here's what I wrote back then... http://the-football-analyst.blogspot.com/2010/09/first-system-bets-this-weekend.html
A few people have asked about why the systems are called 6,7,8,9 and not 1,2,3,4. Quite simply, there are other systems on the go and I'm always looking at data for other systems. These systems 6-9 are the ones that performed the best last season and therefore, I have kept the names the same for those following in the TFA forum. Next season, I will probably change the system names but at the moment, I'm sticking with these names.
Clearly, when I started out this season, although I went live with systems 6-10 on day one which covered the top 5 English Leagues and the SPL, I had other systems on the go in the background. The guys in the TFA forum know about these systems but when I started out on this project in January 2010, my intention was to have systems for the top 5 English leagues, all the non-leagues in England, all 4 leagues in Scotland and the top league in Italy, Germany, French and Spain. I would also move into the Scandinavian leagues when I had time to look at that too. :)
Looking back now, I'm sure they will laugh as much as me at the size of the project I was trying to undertake and after a few weeks this season, all the systems tracking these other leagues were consigned to the bin. I might resurrect that project one day and I still think I can do something in the European Leagues especially as my systems had a big edge when I started looking at this in the second half of the 2010 season.
Ultimately, that consigned systems 1-5 to the scrapheap from about the 3rd week of the season even though no bets had taken place. I kept systems 11-15 live for 2 months and tracked the results and although they did manage to break-even, the upkeep of these systems again ensured that they had to be consigned to the bin.
Therefore, I was left with systems 6-10 which concentrated on the top 5 leagues in England and the SPL. At the same time, I also had a different rating algorithm built which was for the same leagues as systems 6-10 but due to the need to build a way to track these bets like I was doing system 6-10, I didn't want to be posting up bets without being able to track the results closely. Hence, for the first few months this season, these systems produced bets in the background and I checked the results each month but I didn't want anyone following these bets (including me!) until I could get the formatting of the results in the same way as I track systems 6-10.
That explains systems 1-5 (dead from very early on), systems 11-15 (dead after a few months) and systems 20-25 (alive in the background and alive on here and fully proofed from the start of November).
So, what happened to systems 10,24 and 25? Well, amazingly, they had no bets! As you will have seen, the higher up the system you go, the less bets you have on the system as it is filtering the bets by the amount of value each bet is perceived to be. This season, no bets had met the criteria for systems 10,24 and 25 and therefore, after a few months, I knocked them on the head and don't even check to see if any bets appear on these systems now. The systems were so selective and would only be throwing up 1 or 2 bets a season I suspect these days, so they weren't practical to follow. In addition, having a system like this is meaningless as you can never tell if it has an edge or not due to the lack of bets.
Well, that only leaves systems 16-20. Where did they appear from? Well, I always had the idea of doing multiple bets based on the single bet selections thrown up. Some of the guys across at the forum weren't too keen on doing lots of single bets each week this season and they were more interested in playing small multiple bets. They asked me to take a look at how this would do and system 16 was born. System 16 is basically a combination of bets appearing on system 8 and system 13 (which is now dead but is used by system 16 when it throws up bets!). After a bit of work, I managed to build systems 17-20 and I had 5 multiple bets based on the single bet systems.
Overall then, I'm left with systems 6-9, systems 16-20 (multiple bet systems) and systems 21-23.
Early on this season, I highlighted the fact that teams that were appearing on the different algorithms (6-9 and 21-23) were having a very high strike rate when they appeared together. Due to the fact I had no time to look at this and hadn't even thought of looking at it before now, I mentioned it in my weekly email and I even mentioned it on here once or twice. Due to the work involved in looking at this and the past performance, I said that if people wanted to follow this, they could do but I would not be able to track the results until after Christmas. http://the-football-analyst.blogspot.com/2010/11/change-of-direction-needed.html
So that was the birth of systems 6-21 et. al.
Why no systems 6-23,7-23,8-23,9-21,9-22 and 9-23 ? Simple, there aren't enough bets. System 23 only has 80 bets a season and if we only start backing teams that appear on system 6 etc. we would be bringing that down to less than 50 bets I suspect. Likewise, system 9 only has 40 bets a season, so combining that with anything else is useless.
Being honest, system 9 on its own is fairly useless I suspect as with so few bets, you can't get an idea of how good the system is and all it takes is a few games to go against you and it could be loss making.
Will I change the names of the systems? I'm not sure. I've grown fond of the systems and I see them as my little pets. I adore system 8, detest system 23, love system 16, hate systems 17-20, love system 8-22 etc. In addition, anyone following this season knows which system they follow and why and therefore, changing the names of the systems would lead to ultimate chaos I suspect. In addition, all my results are based on these system numbers, so I don't fancy changing them all either!
For those that prefer pictures, this diagram is something I have been working to for a long time now but I know it helped many of the guys in the forum following the bets, so I'll post it again on here. It is somewhere on the blog also a wee while back I think.
Any questions, please leave a comment.
Thursday, 24 March 2011
Quiet Weekend
As I said the other day, there are not too many bets this weekend due to the internationals and the way the weekend looked in terms of fixtures. There appears to be a lot of very close games and value is quite difficult to find when this is the case. I prefer the fixtures to have lots of odds on teams and big priced teams as the big priced teams usually have a value bet or two hidden in there!
The best value bet is Bury but I have my reservations about this one. Port Vale have a new manager and it’s things like this that tend to mess up my systems from time to time. Obviously, in the long run, things like this won’t really matter which is why I don’t really overanalyse the results of any particular day but on any day, circumstances like this can affect the results of a game where my ratings determine one of the teams as overpriced.
Anyway, we’ll see what happens. Below are the bets.
I laughed at an anonymous comment posted on the blog today on an older post. It says “What is this? I don’t understand how you can follow so many bets? How much do you charge?”
Being honest, I’m not even sure what this blog is and for anyone coming across it, unless you read the historical results and the season’s results to date, it must be pretty confusing!
Simply, this blog is an attempt by me to show off the work I’ve been doing for the past year or so. It’s not the finished article and therefore, that’s why I haven’t been going out my way to attract readers to the blog and I’m still not doing that. I liked the idea of slowly building up readership to the blog as the season has progressed and so far, I've managed that I think.
I don’t say anywhere on the blog that people should follow these bets as until the end of this season, I don’t really know how profitable they are. In addition, even if they are profitable, I might have fluked this season’s results and therefore, I wouldn’t suggest anyone go out their way to follow the bets with money at the moment. I follow the bets as do many others who are known to me but they understand the systems and the work that has gone into this project, so they understand the potential but also understand the risks.
As for charging, how could I charge anyone? I don’t know if the systems will prove profitable and I don’t know how to maximise the returns from the systems and therefore, how could I charge people for this? In addition, I follow the bets myself and have done OK this season, so I don’t need the hassle at the moment of worrying about others following the bets. It’s hard enough to make a profit at this game without trying to pull another X number along with you.
In my opinion, the results from some of these systems look too good to be true and I have tended to find in life, when this is the case, it usually is! Hence, I would want to see lots of evidence that these systems are as good as they appear at face value before I even thought of following with my hard earned cash. Easy for me though as I built them all, so I know the potential these systems have. I’m not the only one though…..
http://theportfolioinvestor.blogspot.com/2011/03/if-carlsberg-did-football-tipping.html
The Football Analyst Bets for 25th-27th MarchSystem 6
Date League Game Selection Odds Bookies
26/03/2010 League 1 Bournemouth v Charlton Bournemouth 1.91 Corals
26/03/2010 League 1 Colchester v Exeter Colchester 2.20 Tote
26/03/2010 League 1 Leyton Orient v Yeovil Yeovil 4.50 B365
26/03/2010 League 2 Port Vale v Bury Bury 2.63 Ladbrokes
System 7
Date League Game Selection Odds Bookies
26/03/2010 League 1 Bournemouth v Charlton Bournemouth 1.91 Corals
26/03/2010 League 2 Port Vale v Bury Bury 2.63 Ladbrokes
System 8
None
System 9
None
System 21
Date League Game Selection Odds Bookies
25/03/2010 League 2 Lincoln v Rotherham Rotherham 2.70 Blue Sq
25/03/2010 League 2 Northampton v Torquay Torquay 2.75 Corals
25/03/2010 League 2 Aldershot v Accrington Accrington 3.00 Ladbrokes
26/03/2010 League 2 Port Vale v Bury Bury 2.63 Ladbrokes
27/03/2010 League 2 Cheltenham v Gillingham Gillingham 2.38 Ladbrokes
System 22
Date League Game Selection Odds Bookies
25/03/2010 League 2 Northampton v Torquay Torquay 2.75 Corals
25/03/2010 League 2 Aldershot v Accrington Accrington 3.00 Ladbrokes
26/03/2010 League 2 Port Vale v Bury Bury 2.63 Ladbrokes
27/03/2010 League 2 Cheltenham v Gillingham Gillingham 2.38 Ladbrokes
System 23
None
System 6-21
Date League Game Selection Odds Bookies
26/03/2010 League 2 Port Vale v Bury Bury 2.63 Ladbrokes
System 6-22
Date League Game Selection Odds Bookies
26/03/2010 League 2 Port Vale v Bury Bury 2.63 Ladbrokes
System 7-21
Date League Game Selection Odds Bookies
26/03/2010 League 2 Port Vale v Bury Bury 2.63 Ladbrokes
System 7-22
Date League Game Selection Odds Bookies
26/03/2010 League 2 Port Vale v Bury Bury 2.63 Ladbrokes
System 8-21
None
System 8-22
None
System 16
None
System 17
Bet 1
Date League Game Selection Odds Bookies
25/03/2010 League 2 Northampton v Torquay Torquay 2.70
25/03/2010 League 2 Aldershot v Accrington Accrington 3.00
26/03/2010 League 2 Port Vale v Bury Bury 2.60
27/03/2010 League 2 Cheltenham v Gillingham Gillingham 2.25 B365
Any 2,3 and all 4 = 11 Bets
System 18
None
System 19
None
System 20
None
Wednesday, 23 March 2011
I don't like milk anyway!
A little bit of a frustrating night again last night with the Accrington game finishing a draw. I heard this on Sky Sports last night and it was confirmed on the BBC today but it does appear as if Accrington scored a legitimate goal last night that crossed the line but neither the linesman nor referee were sure it crossed the line, so they didn't give it. These things tend to happen now and again as we all know, so there's not much we can do about it. It's a bit of a nightmare though when it happens on an 23/10 shot who appears on 11 systems! Instead of a 25pt profit for the systems, it is instead an 11pt loss. A 36pt swing due to the fact the referee and linesman missed a goal! grrrrr.....
Overall, I can't complain too much about things. 7 games, 3 wins, 3 draws and only one loser. A 0.66pt loss on the evening if backing each of the games that were determined to be value.
As I said to Rowan in a comment on the blog today, I will be undertaking a project to look at the returns from the systems by using Double Chance (dutching the win/draw) and also DNB (covering the draw) on each of the systems. It was mentioned by one of the guys across at the TFA forum and he's been asking me for a wee while to have a look at this. It won't take me too long to collect the draw odds data and I'll obviously report back my findings on here too.
In the meantime, I'll be back tomorrow with the weekend bets although after updating the results for last night, there won't be too many value bets this weekend again. There might be a gem or two in there though!
Overall, I can't complain too much about things. 7 games, 3 wins, 3 draws and only one loser. A 0.66pt loss on the evening if backing each of the games that were determined to be value.
As I said to Rowan in a comment on the blog today, I will be undertaking a project to look at the returns from the systems by using Double Chance (dutching the win/draw) and also DNB (covering the draw) on each of the systems. It was mentioned by one of the guys across at the TFA forum and he's been asking me for a wee while to have a look at this. It won't take me too long to collect the draw odds data and I'll obviously report back my findings on here too.
In the meantime, I'll be back tomorrow with the weekend bets although after updating the results for last night, there won't be too many value bets this weekend again. There might be a gem or two in there though!
Monday, 21 March 2011
Accrington Stanley....Exactly!
There was an interesting discussion in the TFA forum today regarding which systems to follow for the remainder of the season.
It turned into a discussion where I was posting thoughts that I was having and as sometimes happens, I end up just writing and speaking to myself on the thread and coming to a conclusion that I already knew was the right answer before I started!
Rowan from http://theportfolioinvestor.blogspot.com/ has recently switched from following system 8 to following system 8-22. Simply, 8-22 is a stronger system and has outperformed the rest of my systems this season but he had previously been following system 8. Obviously, when you switch systems, you can guarantee that the new system will start badly and the old system will go on a good run!
The weekend past wasn't quite as bad as that but system 8 made a nice profit at the weekend and system 8-22 had no bets.
I brought up the fact that I didn't think Accrington were any better bet than Yeovil were at the weekend based on my ratings and therefore, I don't think that missing out Yeovil (3/1 winner) and backing Accrington this midweek is a good strategy.
However, when you look at the returns this season, it's hard to not argue that system 8-22 is a much better system than system 8 and therefore, Accrington must be better value than Yeovil were (even though Yeovil won). Hence, Rowan is correct to only follow system 8-22 if he wants to follow the strongest bets that I can find.
For the record, system 8 has an ROI of around 16% this season and system 8-22 has an ROI of around 35% this season. Hence, there is no denying that system 8-22 is the stronger system and therefore, Accrington must be a better value bet than Yeovil were at the weekend.
As it turns out, Accrington are the only team appearing on system 8 and system 8-22 this midweek, so my whole midweek will be determined by the result in this game. Fingers crossed they can sneak a win.
Below are the bets for tomorrow for all the systems.
The Football Analyst Bets for 22nd March
System 6
Date League Game Selection Odds Bookies
22/03/2010 League 2 Aldershot v Barnet Barnet 4.75 B365
22/03/2010 League 2 Crewe v Accrington Accrington 3.30 Pinnacle
22/03/2010 League 2 Port Vale v Hereford Port Vale 1.91 Ladbrokes
22/03/2010 League 2 Torquay v Cheltenham Torquay 1.75 Tote
22/03/2010 Bsq Prem Grimsby v Gateshead Gateshead 3.75 Skybet
System 7
Date League Game Selection Odds Bookies
22/03/2010 League 2 Crewe v Accrington Accrington 3.30 Pinnacle
22/03/2010 League 2 Torquay v Cheltenham Torquay 1.75 Tote
System 8
Date League Game Selection Odds Bookies
22/03/2010 League 2 Crewe v Accrington Accrington 3.30 Pinnacle
System 9
None
System 21
Date League Game Selection Odds Bookies
22/03/2010 League 2 Burton v Stevanage Stevanage 2.40 Corals
22/03/2010 League 2 Crewe v Accrington Accrington 3.30 Pinnacle
22/03/2010 Bsq Prem Grimsby v Gateshead Gateshead 3.75 Skybet
22/03/2010 Bsq Prem Histon v Mansfield Mansfield 2.19 Pinnacle
System 22
Date League Game Selection Odds Bookies
22/03/2010 League 2 Burton v Stevanage Stevanage 2.40 Corals
22/03/2010 League 2 Crewe v Accrington Accrington 3.30 Pinnacle
22/03/2010 Bsq Prem Grimsby v Gateshead Gateshead 3.75 Skybet
22/03/2010 Bsq Prem Histon v Mansfield Mansfield 2.19 Pinnacle
System 23
None
System 6-21
Date League Game Selection Odds Bookies
22/03/2010 League 2 Crewe v Accrington Accrington 3.30 Pinnacle
22/03/2010 Bsq Prem Grimsby v Gateshead Gateshead 3.75 Skybet
System 6-22
Date League Game Selection Odds Bookies
22/03/2010 League 2 Crewe v Accrington Accrington 3.30 Pinnacle
22/03/2010 Bsq Prem Grimsby v Gateshead Gateshead 3.75 Skybet
System 7-21
Date League Game Selection Odds Bookies
22/03/2010 League 2 Crewe v Accrington Accrington 3.30 Pinnacle
System 7-22
Date League Game Selection Odds Bookies
22/03/2010 League 2 Crewe v Accrington Accrington 3.30 Pinnacle
System 8-21
Date League Game Selection Odds Bookies
22/03/2010 League 2 Crewe v Accrington Accrington 3.30 Pinnacle
System 8-22
Date League Game Selection Odds Bookies
22/03/2010 League 2 Crewe v Accrington Accrington 3.30 Pinnacle
System 16
None
System 17
Bet 1
Date League Game Selection Odds Bookies
22/03/2010 League 2 Burton v Stevanage Stevanage 2.38
22/03/2010 League 2 Crewe v Accrington Accrington 3.25
22/03/2010 Bsq Prem Grimsby v Gateshead Gateshead 3.75
22/03/2010 Bsq Prem Histon v Mansfield Mansfield 2.10 Skybet
Any 2,3, and all 4 = 11 Bets
System 18
None
System 19
None
System 20
None
It turned into a discussion where I was posting thoughts that I was having and as sometimes happens, I end up just writing and speaking to myself on the thread and coming to a conclusion that I already knew was the right answer before I started!
Rowan from http://theportfolioinvestor.blogspot.com/ has recently switched from following system 8 to following system 8-22. Simply, 8-22 is a stronger system and has outperformed the rest of my systems this season but he had previously been following system 8. Obviously, when you switch systems, you can guarantee that the new system will start badly and the old system will go on a good run!
The weekend past wasn't quite as bad as that but system 8 made a nice profit at the weekend and system 8-22 had no bets.
I brought up the fact that I didn't think Accrington were any better bet than Yeovil were at the weekend based on my ratings and therefore, I don't think that missing out Yeovil (3/1 winner) and backing Accrington this midweek is a good strategy.
However, when you look at the returns this season, it's hard to not argue that system 8-22 is a much better system than system 8 and therefore, Accrington must be better value than Yeovil were (even though Yeovil won). Hence, Rowan is correct to only follow system 8-22 if he wants to follow the strongest bets that I can find.
For the record, system 8 has an ROI of around 16% this season and system 8-22 has an ROI of around 35% this season. Hence, there is no denying that system 8-22 is the stronger system and therefore, Accrington must be a better value bet than Yeovil were at the weekend.
As it turns out, Accrington are the only team appearing on system 8 and system 8-22 this midweek, so my whole midweek will be determined by the result in this game. Fingers crossed they can sneak a win.
Below are the bets for tomorrow for all the systems.
The Football Analyst Bets for 22nd March
System 6
Date League Game Selection Odds Bookies
22/03/2010 League 2 Aldershot v Barnet Barnet 4.75 B365
22/03/2010 League 2 Crewe v Accrington Accrington 3.30 Pinnacle
22/03/2010 League 2 Port Vale v Hereford Port Vale 1.91 Ladbrokes
22/03/2010 League 2 Torquay v Cheltenham Torquay 1.75 Tote
22/03/2010 Bsq Prem Grimsby v Gateshead Gateshead 3.75 Skybet
System 7
Date League Game Selection Odds Bookies
22/03/2010 League 2 Crewe v Accrington Accrington 3.30 Pinnacle
22/03/2010 League 2 Torquay v Cheltenham Torquay 1.75 Tote
System 8
Date League Game Selection Odds Bookies
22/03/2010 League 2 Crewe v Accrington Accrington 3.30 Pinnacle
System 9
None
System 21
Date League Game Selection Odds Bookies
22/03/2010 League 2 Burton v Stevanage Stevanage 2.40 Corals
22/03/2010 League 2 Crewe v Accrington Accrington 3.30 Pinnacle
22/03/2010 Bsq Prem Grimsby v Gateshead Gateshead 3.75 Skybet
22/03/2010 Bsq Prem Histon v Mansfield Mansfield 2.19 Pinnacle
System 22
Date League Game Selection Odds Bookies
22/03/2010 League 2 Burton v Stevanage Stevanage 2.40 Corals
22/03/2010 League 2 Crewe v Accrington Accrington 3.30 Pinnacle
22/03/2010 Bsq Prem Grimsby v Gateshead Gateshead 3.75 Skybet
22/03/2010 Bsq Prem Histon v Mansfield Mansfield 2.19 Pinnacle
System 23
None
System 6-21
Date League Game Selection Odds Bookies
22/03/2010 League 2 Crewe v Accrington Accrington 3.30 Pinnacle
22/03/2010 Bsq Prem Grimsby v Gateshead Gateshead 3.75 Skybet
System 6-22
Date League Game Selection Odds Bookies
22/03/2010 League 2 Crewe v Accrington Accrington 3.30 Pinnacle
22/03/2010 Bsq Prem Grimsby v Gateshead Gateshead 3.75 Skybet
System 7-21
Date League Game Selection Odds Bookies
22/03/2010 League 2 Crewe v Accrington Accrington 3.30 Pinnacle
System 7-22
Date League Game Selection Odds Bookies
22/03/2010 League 2 Crewe v Accrington Accrington 3.30 Pinnacle
System 8-21
Date League Game Selection Odds Bookies
22/03/2010 League 2 Crewe v Accrington Accrington 3.30 Pinnacle
System 8-22
Date League Game Selection Odds Bookies
22/03/2010 League 2 Crewe v Accrington Accrington 3.30 Pinnacle
System 16
None
System 17
Bet 1
Date League Game Selection Odds Bookies
22/03/2010 League 2 Burton v Stevanage Stevanage 2.38
22/03/2010 League 2 Crewe v Accrington Accrington 3.25
22/03/2010 Bsq Prem Grimsby v Gateshead Gateshead 3.75
22/03/2010 Bsq Prem Histon v Mansfield Mansfield 2.10 Skybet
Any 2,3, and all 4 = 11 Bets
System 18
None
System 19
None
System 20
None
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