Midweek Bets

Not too much action this midweek with only 4 marginal bets. All 4 bets are decent prices away from home, so if two can win, a profit will be achieved.

Keeping this short tonight as I've something to do for work for tomorrow.

The Football Analyst Bets for 19th April

System 6
None

System 7
None

System 8
None

System 9
None

System 21
Date League Game Selection Odds Bookies
19/04/2011 League 1 Tranmere v Notts County Notts County 3.40 SJ
19/04/2011 League 2 Bradford v Burton Burton 3.16 Pinnacle
19/04/2011 Bsq Prem Kidderminster v Darlington Darlington 4.00 Corals
19/04/2011 Bsq Prem Hayes v Gateshead Gateshead 3.30 B365

System 22
None

System 23
None

System 6-21
None

System 6-22
None

System 7-21
None

System 7-22
None

System 8-21
None

System 8-22
None

System 16
None

System 17
None

System 18
None

System 19
None

System 20
None

Season's Results to 17th April

Just a quick post on the season’s results to date. Apologies to the anonymous poster who asked me yesterday for these results. I find it hard at times to read anonymous comments and decide whether it is being written by someone who has a genuine question to ask or whether it is some idiot trying to wind me up.

Being honest, the only reason I don’t look at the season’s results more often on here is because I tend to judge the systems on a monthly basis and therefore, my monthly reviews tend to cover everything I want to say about the systems. In addition, I tend to look at my own P&L on a monthly basis and always have done for a while, so I tend to not care too much about the season’s results so far.

Anyway, for those interested in the results on all the single bet systems this season, here are the results.



The returns have taken a massive hit in 2011 but then again, it has been a redistribution of profits between the traditional H/A betting and Draw No Bet betting. The number of draws after Christmas has meant it has been very difficult to make money backing each of the selections to win but by covering the draw, things have been OK after Christmas. Unfortunately, I didn’t think of this before it happened, so no one has been covering the draw (myself included!)

At the end of the day, I believe an ROI of 10% or so on football is highly acceptable and this is being achieved on all the systems from 6-21 to 8-22 and it is also being achieved on system 8 and system 22.

Systems 6,7 and 21 have lower ROI’s but they’ve all won an OK number of points I think, so although they have been disappointing in the main, it isn’t a disaster.

System 9 and system 23 are the two most selective systems and both are basically breaking even this season which is disappointing.

Overall, from a sample of 2,556 bets, the systems have made a return of 10.8%.

Looking at Draw No Bets, many of the systems have beaten the returns from traditional H/A betting. Systems 6,7,8,9,21,22 and 23 have done better with covering the draw rather than backing H/A outright. Systems 6-21 and 6-22 also have this characteristic.

Interestingly, systems 7-21,7-22,8-21 and 8-22 have done slightly better with traditional H/A betting than DNB but these are the strongest systems I have historically, so maybe this isn’t too surprising.

Overall though, DNB has produced a profit of 321pts and an ROI of 12.6%.

I don’t want to look at DC betting too much but a return of 6% has still been achieved which isn’t bad considering it hasn’t been a great season!

Looking forward to next season, I’ll be dropping system 9 and system 23 as they don’t produce enough bets each season for them to be viable to follow.

By dropping these systems, it will mean I’m left with 11 systems that will all have enough bets each season for any of them to be followed as a standalone system if someone only wants to follow one system for example.

I'm still in two minds about the systems 16-20. These are multiple bet systems which basically use the bets on the single bet systems to form multiple bets. The backtested results looked very good but only two of the 5 systems are making profits this season. 3 of the systems are losing.

Here's the results for this season:



Looking at the results, it doesn’t look too bad as it won’t take much for these systems to turn around and if following all the multiple bet systems, it has been an OK season but compared to the past seasons, it has been very poor. Obviously, this is linked to the fact that the single bet systems have had a poor season.

I’m not sure what I’ll do about these systems next season. I might keep one going or two going but drop the others.

A few people have sent me emails enquiring about plans for next season. I’m still unclear about what I’m doing next season but I’ve already got a long list of things I need to do this summer. A few highlights are:

1). I’ll be rebuilding the algorithm on systems 21-23. It has a few flaws in it I think and they’ve shone through as the season has progressed. I know what I think I need to do to fix them but it will take a good few hours to rebuild this. Of course, the fundamental variable won’t change in the algorithm but I’ll be adjusting the weightings. Hence, it won’t invalidate the historical results at all but it should improve the future results I hope!

2). I’ll be tweaking the algorithm on systems 6-9. This will be a tiny change but I now have 3 season’s results that involve no backfitting, so I want to try to analyse the results and see what works and what doesn’t work. I won’t change it too much but there are one or two things I want to analyse in more depth, so if I find anything, I might change a couple of weightings in the model.

3). I’m seriously thinking of building a new algorithm. I’m coming around to the idea of Draw No Bets and I’m thinking it would be quite interesting to look at building an algorithm to maximise DNB profits. This would change the type of teams I’d be backing as you could have teams at 4/1+ away from home that aren’t worth following as they draw too many games for them to be profitable but by doing them DNB, they could be worth following. It takes me around 4 weeks work to build an algorithm using backfitting of data and then backtesting the results for the other data I have. If I do go ahead and do this, I would probably not test it live next season but behind closed doors. I’d get it proofed but not post the results as I’m always wary of giving out bets that aren’t proven to be profitable. This season was a one-off but next season, I want judged on the systems that are proven from this season. Not a new set of systems!

4). I want to look at maybe building a system to pick out the best 4 or 5 bets each weekend to bet on. This is a unique idea but it would probably involve a mixture of DNB’s, DC’s and traditional H/A bets. It might take into account things like seasonality, variable staking and anything else I can think of! Not sure if I have the time or inclination to do this as it would mean I end up getting judged on this one system I suspect and there would be no guarantee it beats my other systems!

That’s the 4 main things I want to look at this summer but as always, it depends on how much time I can set aside. With no football taking place and with a fair bit of time to take off work, I reckon I can do a fair bit this summer in time for next season.

Apologies if it feels like I'm not giving more away about my plans next season but I honestly haven't made up my mind yet what I'll do. I'll no doubt post it on here when I decide.

Such a thin line.........

One thing that has become clear to me this season has been the thin line between success and failure when you are betting on the football.

This afternoon at 4.40pm, I was looking at a small profit on the footie and given the way the current run had been going, a small profit wasn’t a disaster. I was again looking at the number of draws and thinking to myself, “this can’t continue, can it?” I said in my last post that something had to give this weekend and thankfully, a late goal in the Villa game and a late goal in the Huddersfield game turned both these games from draws into away wins.

I was left waiting on Hearts to score a winner for a multiple bet to come in but I was maybe looking for too much there with another late goal.

Overall, it was a decent enough day on the footie and it is long overdue this month.

In total, there were 16 games where a team represented value. I ended up with 7 wins, 5 losses and 4 draws. 25% strike rate is the long-term average for draws and therefore, I can’t complain. It was a profit of 3.2pts which is an ROI of 20%.

The systems had 38 bets which returned 27 wins, 7 losses and only 4 draws. Much more like it thankfully and a draw rate of only 10.5% on the systems. This brings the overall draw rate down to 35% for this month which is still the second highest month ever (behind February 2011). Hopefully the next few weeks can see the draw % fall further which will allow the systems to win back some of the losses from earlier this month.

For the record, the 38 system bets made a profit of 29pts today for an ROI of 76%.

Draw No Bets made a profit of 16pts today on the systems and Double Chance made a profit of 5.5pts.

After this weekend, the systems remain 32pts down so far this month. There is still a fair bit to go this month, so we’ll see if they can possibly get somewhere back to break-even on the month. Given they lost 55pts on the first day this month, -30pts isn’t a disaster at the moment!

Interestingly, DNB is down 6.5pts this month now (was -29pts earlier this month) and DC is down 9.7pts now (was -26pts earlier this month). Both are fighting back well and for next season’s possible strategy, I really hope to see DNB continue on the road to recovery this month. DNB has only had 5 losing months in 44 past months, so I would like to see it make another profit this month after a disaster of a start to this month!

There seemed a lot of goals about today which definitely helped things turn in my favour and I hope this trend can continue over the next few weeks. I definitely feel that when there are goals around, it helps the profitability of my ratings in the long-term.

I’ll be back in midweek as there are 12 games and then there is obviously the busy weekend next week with it being the Bank Holiday, so there will be plenty of action there too I think.

I'll do a post in midweek with an update of the season totals on the systems. I've had a few comments asking and two are from people who are accusing me of not posting the season results as they are now so poor. Admittedly, I don't post the season results too often but they are all on here if people want to look for them themselves! I'll post them in midweek......

Weekend Bets

A complete lack of decent value bets this weekend. Maybe that's a good thing given the current run of form! Everton and Huddersfield are the strongest value bets thrown up on each algorithm but I'm not fond of either as a bet.

I'll be back on Sunday with how the weekend has went.

The Football Analyst Bets for 16th April

System 6
Date League Game Selection Odds Bookies
16/04/2011 Premiership Everton v Blackburn Everton 1.73 WH
16/04/2011 Premiership West Ham v Aston Villa Aston Villa 3.36 Pinnacle
16/04/2011 Championship Bristol City v Ipswich Ipswich 3.10 Ladbrokes
16/04/2011 Championship Burnley v Swansea Swansea 2.70 Tote
16/04/2011 League 1 Notts County v Bournemouth Bournemouth 2.80 WH
16/04/2011 League 1 Sheff Wed v Hartlepool Hartlepool 4.33 Ladbrokes
16/04/2011 League 1 Tranmere v Dagenham Dagenham 3.20 Ladbrokes

System 7
Date League Game Selection Odds Bookies
16/04/2011 Premiership Everton v Blackburn Everton 1.73 WH

System 8
Date League Game Selection Odds Bookies
16/04/2011 Premiership Everton v Blackburn Everton 1.73 WH

System 9
Date League Game Selection Odds Bookies
16/04/2011 Premiership Everton v Blackburn Everton 1.73 WH

System 21
Date League Game Selection Odds Bookies
16/04/2011 Premiership Everton v Blackburn Everton 1.73 WH
16/04/2011 Premiership West Ham v Aston Villa Aston Villa 3.36 Pinnacle
16/04/2011 Championship Bristol City v Ipswich Ipswich 3.10 Ladbrokes
16/04/2011 Championship Reading v Leicester Leicester 4.00 VC
16/04/2011 League 1 Charlton v Huddersfield Huddersfield 2.25 WH
16/04/2011 League 1 Notts County v Bournemouth Bournemouth 2.80 WH
16/04/2011 League 1 Tranmere v Dagenham Dagenham 3.20 Ladbrokes
16/04/2011 League 1 Walsall v Brighton Brighton 2.20 Blue Sq
16/04/2011 League 2 Accrington v Oxford Accrington 2.10 Corals
16/04/2011 League 2 Burton v Cheltenham Burton 2.20 Skybet
16/04/2011 League 2 Chesterfield v Macclesfield Chesterfield 1.57 Corals
16/04/2011 League 2 Torquay v Port Vale Torquay 1.83 Ladbrokes
16/04/2011 Bsq Prem Hayes v Darlington Darlington 2.88 Blue Sq
16/04/2011 SPL Inverness v Hearts Hearts 2.30 Blue Sq

System 22
Date League Game Selection Odds Bookies
16/04/2011 Premiership West Ham v Aston Villa Aston Villa 3.36 Pinnacle
16/04/2011 Championship Bristol City v Ipswich Ipswich 3.10 Ladbrokes
16/04/2011 League 1 Charlton v Huddersfield Huddersfield 2.25 WH
16/04/2011 SPL Inverness v Hearts Hearts 2.30 Blue Sq

System 23
Date League Game Selection Odds Bookies
16/04/2011 League 1 Charlton v Huddersfield Huddersfield 2.25 WH

System 6-21
Date League Game Selection Odds Bookies
16/04/2011 Championship Bristol City v Ipswich Ipswich 3.10 Ladbrokes
16/04/2011 Premiership Everton v Blackburn Everton 1.73 WH
16/04/2011 League 1 Notts County v Bournemouth Bournemouth 2.80 WH
16/04/2011 League 1 Tranmere v Dagenham Dagenham 3.20 Ladbrokes
16/04/2011 Premiership West Ham v Aston Villa Aston Villa 3.36 Pinnacle

System 6-22
Date League Game Selection Odds Bookies
16/04/2011 Premiership West Ham v Aston Villa Aston Villa 3.36 Pinnacle
16/04/2011 Championship Bristol City v Ipswich Ipswich 3.10 Ladbrokes

System 7-21
Date League Game Selection Odds Bookies
16/04/2011 Premiership Everton v Blackburn Everton 1.73 WH

System 7-22
None

System 8-21
Date League Game Selection Odds Bookies
16/04/2011 Premiership Everton v Blackburn Everton 1.73 WH

System 8-22
None

System 16
None

System 17
Date League Game Selection Odds Bookies
16/04/2011 Premiership West Ham v Aston Villa Aston Villa 3.30
16/04/2011 Championship Bristol City v Ipswich Ipswich 2.88
16/04/2011 League 1 Charlton v Huddersfield Huddersfield 2.25
16/04/2011 SPL Inverness v Hearts Hearts 2.20 VC
Any 2,3 and all 4 = 11 Bets

System 18
None

System 19
None

System 20
None

Statistical Freak?

One point I should make before people start reading is that with any form of statistical analysis, you need as many data points as possible. That's not the same as saying you can't draw meaningful conclusions with a smaller sample of data but simply, you need to be careful hat you don't get sucked in to believing the conclusions too much as they will never be statistically significant if the sample is small.

One thing I've looked at briefly before (after February's disaster) was the draws that the systems hit on a monthly basis.

In general, the systems pick out on average 325 games per month. We can then look at the number of home wins, away wins and draws that appear each month. If I convert these numbers to percentages, we get the % number of home/away/draws that occur per month.

This is shown in the table below.



Now, even just looking at this table with no statistical analysis at all, we can see a few things quite quickly.

On average, there are more home wins a month than away wins and draws. Over the period of data (over 14,300 games), there have been 41% home wins, 34% away wins and 25% draws.

In addition, without being too smart, you can that there is a range where the percentage of each result bobs around on a monthly basis. Looking quickly, I'd say homes bob around between 35% and 50%, draws bob around 20% and 30% and aways bob around between 25% and 35%.

However, with just a little bit of introductory statistics, we can analyse the results a little more scientifically.

We have 45 discreet months here which means we have 45 data points for Homes,Aways and Draws. By looking at the standard deviation of each sample, we'll be able to put a confidence level on how likely it is that the % stays within a range.

Simply, once you know the St Dev of a sample, you know that there is a 10% chance that any data point can lie outside the range if the range is defined as within 1.645 St Devs of the mean. Likewise, increasing this to 1.96 St Devs, there is a 5% chance a point can lie outwith the range. Lastly, by using 2.576 St Devs, there is a 1% chance that a data point can lie outwith the range.

Turning this on its head then, you can be 90%,95% or 99% sure that any data point will within the chosen range.

I'm not really too interested in what is happening with Homes/Aways as they aren't the issue at the moment. Let's look at the draws to begin with.



I have highlighted blue any months where the draw % falls outwith the 90% boundary. Over a sample of 45 points, you'd expect this to happen between 4 and 5 times. It has happened 4 times in total.

Looking closer though, it doesn't take a statistical expert to see the draw % in the last few months on these systems.

Jan-11 32.3%
Feb-11 38.5%
Mar-11 30.1%
Apr-11 41.7%

The first thing to point out is that February 2011 is the worst month ever for draws and I quoted on here that I believed that could only happen once every two seasons or so. The probability of it happening looking at the data is somewhere between 1% and 5% although going by the fact the 95% confidence interval stops at 38.4%, the probability of it happening is very close to 5%.

5% of the time is once every 20 months which based on my data, is twice in nearly 5 seasons. Hence, February was a blip that I didn't think could be repeated.

Although we are only half way through April, the draw % is sitting at 41.7%. Considering the 99% confidence interval stops at 42.6% and the 95% interval stops at 38.4%, we are talking between a 1% and 2% chance of this happening.

Now, I don't want to get too drawn into statistical probabilities as this is gambling after all and nothing is ever a sure fire winner but I will be astounded if the draw % for April ends up at 41.7%. That's basically saying that over 2 in 5 games finish draws. Considering the average draw odds are much larger than 6/4, then anyone backing the draw in April would be raking it in. February made over 100pts backing the draw and April would be on course to beat that!

In 2011, there have been 1,323 games picked out by the systems and 459 have resulted in draws. This is 34.5% of the games finishing draws! Looking back, I can't see a run like this at any time within my data and therefore, what we are witnessing is a statistical freak that can't continue.

Before I conclude, let's look at the away win % in April. This is down at 16.7%. The worst month ever for Aways was a win % of 18.8%. This month is therefore 12% worse (or 2.1% pts) than any other month EVER for away wins on the systems. Considering most of my selections are away bets, then this means my systems have to lose this month.

Overall then, what does all the above mean?

Well, I reckon we are experiencing a freak occurrence with draws since Christmas and in particular, February was the worst month ever experienced for my systems and the worst month ever for the % of draws. April is now ahead of February although, we still have the second half of the month to go. The draw % has to drop (100/1 to not drop I think!) this month and hopefully, the away bets % will increase as the draws reduce and things will get back to more like the normal.

The great thing about seeing this up close during this season is that I'll be more mentally prepared for this in future I think. I know the boundaries of what can happen and I also know that quite often, the results achieved will be outside the boundaries but due to the fact I've seen it this season, it won't surprise me when it happens again.

Will things ever get back to the norm? We'll see what this weekend brings........

Painful......

Having worked on this football project for 16 months now, it is actually quite painful to watch what is happening at the moment. After 14,000 historical games, you sort of assume that you've seen everything that can possibly happen to the systems but unfortunately, that appears to not be the case.

This midweek was another amazing turn of events and this month is now pushing the boundaries of being another statistical freak. More on this later today as I've been looking at the draw again!

We'll deal with the update of results in this post and worry about trying to interpret the results later.

Simply, 5 midweek games, 1 winner and 4 losers for the systems. A loss of 1pt as the winner was Coventry at 3/1. Looking in slightly more depth, 1 winner, 3 draws and 1 loser in total.

The single bet systems turned this 1pt loss into 12pt loss. 32 bets, 5 winners at 3/1 and 27 losers.

Breaking this down though, 5 winners, 24 draws and 3 losses. 24 draws in 32 games. You really couldn't make this up. :(

The 3 big games in midweek all finished 1-1.

You can do the sums yourself at a high level but DNB was profitable and DC was also profitable this midweek. Hard to not be profitable with only 3 losses in 32 games!

I'm sick to death of writing about the draw and I'm sure readers of the blog are sick of hearing about it but quite simply, when things like this happen, the only way I know to rationalise it is to go back to the data and try to understand it further.

Hence, my next post will be another post on the draw.........

Here's the mess from midweek.

Midweek Bets

Below are the bets for the midweek. Fairly obvious games with Swansea, Crawley and Rushden all standing out which isn't surprising given their recent form and the opposition they are up against.

Fingers crossed it's a good midweek

The Football Analyst Bets for 12th/13th April

System 6
Date League Game Selection Odds Bookie
12/04/2011 Championship Portsmouth v Coventry Coventry 4.00 Ladbrokes
12/04/2011 Championship Swansea v Hull Swansea 1.73 General
12/04/2011 League 1 Walsall v Brentford Brentford 3.17 Pinnacle
12/04/2011 Bsq Prem Crawley v Luton Crawley 2.13 Pinnacle
13/04/2011 Bsq Prem Grimsby v Rushden Rushden 3.10 Corals

System 7
Date League Game Selection Odds Bookie
12/04/2011 Championship Swansea v Hull Swansea 1.73 General
12/04/2011 Bsq Prem Crawley v Luton Crawley 2.13 Pinnacle
13/04/2011 Bsq Prem Grimsby v Rushden Rushden 3.10 Corals

System 8
Date League Game Selection Odds Bookie
12/04/2011 Championship Swansea v Hull Swansea 1.73 General
12/04/2011 Bsq Prem Crawley v Luton Crawley 2.13 Pinnacle
13/04/2011 Bsq Prem Grimsby v Rushden Rushden 3.10 Corals

System 9
Date League Game Selection Odds Bookie
12/04/2011 Championship Swansea v Hull Swansea 1.73 General
12/04/2011 Bsq Prem Crawley v Luton Crawley 2.13 Pinnacle

System 21
Date League Game Selection Odds Bookie
12/04/2011 Championship Portsmouth v Coventry Coventry 4.00 Ladbrokes
12/04/2011 Championship Swansea v Hull Swansea 1.73 General
12/04/2011 League 1 Walsall v Brentford Brentford 3.17 Pinnacle
13/04/2011 Bsq Prem Grimsby v Rushden Rushden 3.10 Corals

System 22
Date League Game Selection Odds Bookie
12/04/2011 Championship Portsmouth v Coventry Coventry 4.00 Ladbrokes
13/04/2011 Bsq Prem Grimsby v Rushden Rushden 3.10 Corals

System 23
Date League Game Selection Odds Bookie
13/04/2011 Bsq Prem Grimsby v Rushden Rushden 3.10 Corals

System 6-21
Date League Game Selection Odds Bookie
12/04/2011 Championship Portsmouth v Coventry Coventry 4.00 Ladbrokes
12/04/2011 Championship Swansea v Hull Swansea 1.73 General
12/04/2011 League 1 Walsall v Brentford Brentford 3.17 Pinnacle
13/04/2011 Bsq Prem Grimsby v Rushden Rushden 3.10 Corals

System 6-22
Date League Game Selection Odds Bookie
12/04/2011 Championship Portsmouth v Coventry Coventry 4.00 Ladbrokes
13/04/2011 Bsq Prem Grimsby v Rushden Rushden 3.10 Corals

System 7-21
Date League Game Selection Odds Bookie
12/04/2011 Championship Swansea v Hull Swansea 1.73 General
13/04/2011 Bsq Prem Grimsby v Rushden Rushden 3.10 Corals

System 7-22
Date League Game Selection Odds Bookie
13/04/2011 Bsq Prem Grimsby v Rushden Rushden 3.10 Corals

System 8-21
Date League Game Selection Odds Bookie
12/04/2011 Championship Swansea v Hull Swansea 1.73 General
13/04/2011 Bsq Prem Grimsby v Rushden Rushden 3.10 Corals

System 8-22
Date League Game Selection Odds Bookie
13/04/2011 Bsq Prem Grimsby v Rushden Rushden 3.10 Corals

System 16
Date League Game Selection Odds Bookie
12/04/2011 Championship Swansea v Hull Swansea 1.73
12/04/2011 Championship Leicester v C Palace Leicester 1.53
12/04/2011 Bsq Prem Crawley v Luton Crawley 2.10
13/04/2011 Bsq Prem Grimsby v Rushden Rushden 3.00 General
Any 3 and all 4 = 5 Bets

System 17
None

System 18
Date League Game Selection Odds Bookie
12/04/2011 Championship Swansea v Hull Swansea 1.73
12/04/2011 Bsq Prem Crawley v Luton Crawley 2.10
13/04/2011 Bsq Prem Grimsby v Rushden Rushden 3.00 General
Any 2 and all 3 = 4 Bets

System 19
None

System 20
None