UK Underlying Results to April

This is another update post on the UK Underlying results this season. This post takes us up to the end of April. You can read the previous post here which was to the end of March.

I’m not wanting to write too much as quite simply, I put a helluva lot of work into the previous post and given we are so close to season end, there is no point in me spending a long time writing a post here which I’m going to have to update again in a few weeks.  What I’ll do is just paste in an update of the tables I’ve shown previously and make a few comments.

Here’s the results by season at an overall level:

Things have changed a great deal from the end of last month. Backing all Homes is no longer profitable this season and has changed from +0.8% to -1.2%, backing Aways has improved from -7.6% to -2.9% and Draws has moved from -2.6% to -4.9%. Overall results have improved from -9.4% to -8.9%.

What we can deduce from this is that it has been a phenomenal month for backing Aways and a really tricky month for backing Homes. It has also been a tough month for Draws going by these results at an overall level and looking back to the previous post.

If we break it down my month, we can of course see the April month in isolation. Here are the results by month this season:

As we can see, April looks nothing like the rest of the season for those of us betting on Aways! A profit of 23.3% if backing all Aways in April and a strike rate of 37.7%. This is a full 10.1% points higher than in March. Homes lost 12% in April and Draws lost an enormous 17.9%. The strike rate for draws was only 22.3% and therefore, you can see why I didn’t say too much about the fact the Draws had a small losing month in April. A small losing month was a good result!

If we try to look at the April month and the ratings in the context of all the months since the systems started, we get the following picture:

As always, a lot to take in here.

I think the first point to make is that all 4 algorithms are in profit this season again. Admittedly, algorithm 3 is the only one doing anything special (8.2%) but even so, a profit is a profit.  

Breaking it down by month, we can see how special April was as a month. All 4 algorithms achieved a profit of 35%+ this month. The best ever on algorithm 3 and 4 and on algorithms 1&2, the 2^nd best behind May -11 which of course was a much smaller number of bets.  Hence, you can say it’s the best ever month for all the algorithms.

If we look to the left and the underlying results, we can see why. The strike rate of 37.7% for Aways is the highest of all the months shown. The 40% strike rate for Homes is one of the lowest and the strike rate of only 22.3% for Draws is one of the lowest. Putting all that together, combined with the fact that my ratings favour Away bets and we can understand why this has been such a good month for my ratings.

I think these underlying results I’m tracking really help to explain the ups and downs on a monthly basis and although I can’t control the underlying results, I think it has been a great addition this season for my mindset more than anything. When you see that Sep-13 and Jan-14 are the worst months for Aways since I started, combined with Mar-14 being a nightmare, then it starts to explain the issues my ratings have had this season. The fact they are all now in profit shows how good my ratings are. :)

As discussed in the last post on the Underlying results, it’s not just as simple to look at the overall results for all bets as we know that my ratings play in certain areas.  For example, here are the underlying results of all bets based on higher/lower than 2.50:

As discussed previously, the vast majority of my bets are in the price range 2.50+. This season, we’re looking at a loss of 6.3% if backing all these teams. It was a loss of 8.7% a month ago, so you can see why I’ve done so well over the last month! However, it also explains why my ratings aren’t doing as well as previous seasons.

Here’s the results by league this season:

I haven’t looked at my own results by league for a while if I’m honest but last time I looked, League Two was the only league my ratings were doing well in! The Bsq Prem and SPL were both nightmares. Looking at the underlying results, I wouldn’t expect my results to have changed too much from before. I’ll do full analysis at season end.

I ended the previous version of this underlying results post with a similar table of all systems but I think at the end of the day, the best judge for my UK ratings and the systems are the results since inception for the UK systems. These UK systems have had to endure the underlying results for the last 4 seasons. Here’s an updated table after April: