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Thread: mathare's gamblog

  1. #1

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    mathare's gamblog

    5th October 2009
    I have decided to resurrect my gamblog and figured that here is as good a place as any in the forum for it to reside. Now that I have given up poker (at least for now, see my poker diary for details) I need somewhere to keep all my thoughts and so on. I find that keeping some sort of diary/blog really helps me focus my thoughts. I get so much more out of something when I write things down. Putting things into words such that others may understand them too helps me understand them a lot better; I am forced into unravelling uncertainties so that it all becomes clear in my mind. Hopefully there will be odd snippets in here that will be of interest to at least some of you.

    For those of you that don't know me or my circumstances that well let me start with a brief introduction. I came to gambling 6 or 7 years ago with a keen analytical mind and that's the approach I have tried to continue ever since. I barely know one end of a horse from the other but knowing I am a gambler I still get friends asking me for racing tips. That's not my specialist subject at all. I'm more the type of person to analyse stats and staking plans to try and get that extra little bit out of a system. I couldn't design or build you a car but I could retune the engine to make a car more powerful if you want an analogy for what I do. I gave up my job as a software test manager back in August due to a combination of ill health (which continues to dog me to this day but which I don't plan to discuss here) and boredom/frustration. I am currently unemployed with gambling as my only source of income so if that makes me a professional gambler then that's what I am. However, what I make from gambling isn't anything like a living as I am still a small stakes punter. I experience daily swings of about £100 meaning a good day can see me win around £100 and a bad day can see me lose that sort of amount. I am trying to build the banks and increase the stakes to increase the income from gambling but I am naturally risk-averse and prefer banks to grow organically rather than being artifically boosted as I always fear that when I boost a bank and increase the stakes a losing run will wipe out the profits I had previously accumulated. However, I am starting to recognise that you can't make an omelette without breaking eggs and am preparing to start taking a few more (controlled) risks to build the banks I use for the systems I follow.

    My betting portfolio at the time of writing consists of:
    • 5 x flat win systems
    • 2 x flat lay systems
    • 7 x NH win systems
    • 2 x NH lay systems
    • 4 x mixed racing code win systems/methods
    • 5 x mixed racing code lay systems
    • 7 x football systems
    • 1 x darts system
    • 1 x NFL system
    • 2 x general sports systems

    I have dabbled in spread bets, trades, poker, dutching, multiples, exchange games and casino games over the years but these have all been dropped from the portfolio at this stage. I plan to reintroduce poker to the portfolio at some point in the future but I'm not sure when although it won't be for a while yet.

    I am the type of person who picks up a nugget of an idea and runs with it for a while until something more interesting comes along. While working on something though it becomes almost like an obsession for me but my hard drive is littered with half-completed ideas and projects I have been working on over the years. I'd like to revisit some of those if I can as often they are good ideas that I just haven't see through far enough to reap the benefits of. Knowing this weakness of mine I tend to have plans that I try to stick to but often revise on a regular basis. I rarely put dates or deadlines on these plans as I don't like to put pressure on myself, and I know there is little point as I will often change my mind and the plan long before any of the tasks on that plan are due. You'll probably see throughout this thread my plans changing left, right and centre but I'd like to think I won't change them too much as I know some of the things I am planning are great ideas that I should see through.

    As an unemployed bum I need a source of income that isn't my girlfriend's salary. Any money I win from gambling stays in my betting banks so I am not drawing an income from that. This isn't so much of a problem at the minute as I don't actually have all my betting banks in my bookies/exchange accounts - quite a bit of it sits in my current account and I spend it as necessary. But as far as I and my betting spreadsheet are concerned the betting banks are all present and correct and I can call on them at any time I need to. But it is better that the 'float', the portion of a betting bank that isn't invested on a regular basis, sits in my current account earning me a few pence in interest rather than being lodged with a bookmaker where it is earning him interest. Anyway, I am trying to get to the point where my betting banks are such that I can keep them pretty much constant (or growing slowly) and use them as capital which effectively earns me an income from being invested (gambled). I want to be able to make a proper income from gambling and to do that I need bigger banks, successful systems and a balanced portfolio.

    Why a balanced portfolio? I'm sure you know the saying about having all your eggs in one basket and gambling can be like that too. Sometimes the NH form just goes out the window and your NH systems won't hit a winner regardless of how much you pray for one so it is important that you have other systems you can rely on to see you through these bad times. I picked NH as an example there but the same applies to flat racing, football and so on. Balance is important so that if performance in one area drops off other systems can pick up the slack. I admit now that I don't know a lot about balancing a portfolio. I think I have the mix of horse racing systems about right but there is room for one or two more win systems as I have quite a lot of lay systems and they tend to lead to regular small profits punctuated by some killer losses at times so lay banks rise steadily and undramatically. It's win systems that provide the big winners and the large jumps in bank balances so I am looking to add some more of those to the mix at some point.

    I have 25 horse racing systems and 11 other sports systems. I like racing systems as there is racing every day so there is always something to bet on, which isn't always the case with football unless the systems you have cover lots of obscure leagues, which mine don't. But there is English football on most days - certainly 3 or 4 days most weeks so there are plenty of opportunties for bets to be struck there and this is an area I plan to focus on initially. I am good with stats and numbers and feel confident that I can find a few profitable football systems that I can add to my portfolio so that is where I plan to start. I have a lot of data to work with a a lot of ideas on what to do with that data. There is an international weekend coming up in the football calendar so my short-term aim is to have a profitable Premiership football system ready to go by the time the Premiership starts up again after that international break.

    In my mind I have rough parts of a short-term, medium-term and long-term plan developing but as I don't have timescales for any of these plans I can't really say what is short-term, what constitutes medium-term and how long long-term really is. As an aide memoire and a line in the sand though I will say my plans currently include the following:
    • football systems (short-term to medium-term)
    • portfolio balancing (short-term to medium-term)
    • poker (medium-term)
    • horse racing system development (long-term)
    • greyhound systems (long-term)
    • forex trading (long-term)
    Those last couple of items on that list may never come to anything but they are potential revenue streams I have considered in the past and ones I would (probably) like to investigate in the future, even if it is just to rule them out as not being suitable for me.

    So there we have it. The start of a very open, very honest gamblog. I plan to update this on a regular basis with news of my progress to date and any changes to my plans for the future. Feel free to chip in with any comments or thoughts at any stage and to ask any questions. I will do my best to respond in a timely manner and to help out where I can. But right now I'm going to start crunching football data...



  2. #2

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    Best of luck with this Mat, hpoe it goes really well for you. I'm sure with your statistical nous and excel skills that you'll be able to come up with some profitable football systems too.

    Are the football systems you are currently running profitable? I've looked at a few over the years but most of them seemed to be fairly obvious ideas. I've used the football data site to work on ideas in the past as well. I keep meaning to get back onto my ht/ft idea as well as that showed promise but with one thing and another haven't had time to yet. That really does seem a market that is based on the match odds rather than recent results and scoring trends and as such I think is one that could be open to a good system. The main problem I had was deciding what to go with, best value, most likley outcome, dutch lowest two odds, etc etc.

    "I put a skylight in my apartment...... the people upstairs are furious." - Stephen Wright


    My Website : http://www.mrmrsportssystems.co.uk
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  3. #3

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    Quote Originally Posted by MattR View Post
    Best of luck with this Mat, hpoe it goes really well for you. I'm sure with your statistical nous and excel skills that you'll be able to come up with some profitable football systems too.
    Thanks. Although I am experiencing a very slow start to things at present. I had some great ideas for under/over systems but they aren't turning out too well just yet, which is disappointing.

    Are the football systems you are currently running profitable?
    Absolutely! Some of them are tipster services more than systems I suppose but they are profitable. There are some systems in there too, one running at around 29% ROI in fact but it's only good for the first half of the season really. It was designed for the Premiership but I have extended it to the SPL this year as a trial with small stakes and while it is still early days really it is currently running at a ROI of 41%.



  4. #4

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    6th October 2009
    Progress with the football systems has been mixed shall we say. I have been focusing on a single aspect of football betting (under/over 2.5 goals) to start with and have been crunching the numbers for the Premiership in the quest for a profitable system. Have I found one? I've actually found a few but they are barely profitable and I am looking at ways to increase the ROI even if that means reducing the number of bets slightly. For example this afternoon I found a system that prduced just under 25pts of profit from 1009 bets, a ROI of 2.44%. That's a good number of bets bearing in mind I have the required odds for 2713 games so there's a bet in 37% of games - 3 or 4 each weekend in other words. A manageable workload but a disappointing ROI. I haven't set a target minimum ROI or got one in mind but to me that one slips under the minimum. It's a lot of work for a return of just 2.44%. And those 25pts were acheived over around seven and a half seasons. A system that produces just 3pts profit per season (on average) isn't worth much is it? Still, it's a start and work in this area continues.

    One thing I will say that horse racing has over football as a betting medium, other than the frequency of events in the sport, is racing has an SP. Football has more markets that horse racing but no SP. This evening while walking into town to pick my missus up from work and go shopping for tea I had a cracking idea for a clean sheet system but I don't have any odds recorded for teams to keep clean sheets in past matches, and without an SP (or some form of odds archive) I won't be able to get those odds. I have archives of past match result odds and some under/over odds but little else so it is these markets I need to focus on. I may develop systems for other markets but if I do they will need to be paper-tested as back testing won't be possible due to the odds. Ho hum. Perhaps I should try harder to understand horse racing and analyse that data more instead. But no, I said I'd aim for a profitable football system and that's still the plan. The system I have found at present is a start but it doesn't count really as I wouldn't bother with it due to the low ROI. I want something I can usefully add to my portfolio.



  5. #5

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    Mat, a thought on getting or at least approximating your clean sheet odds so you could back test it. Are you using goals for/aga as a basis for your under/over system ideas? If so could you not got the correct scores also and from this all the 1-0, 2-0's etc to get odds for a clean sheet. Then you could also get match odds from the correct scores and then get rough guide of what the clean sheet odds would be when corresponded to a certain odds range. Then with that you could maybe back test it. It won't be a hundred percent accurate of course because some winning teams concede some don't, like Arsenal compared to Chelsea for example but you could take the lower odds and test with that.

    "I put a skylight in my apartment...... the people upstairs are furious." - Stephen Wright


    My Website : http://www.mrmrsportssystems.co.uk
    Now offering three subscription based betting systems and daily free bets.
    Free bets 34.7pts up in October


  6. #6

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    I'll be honest here Matt and say I'm not really sure what you're suggesting.

    In order to properly back test a system I need the actual odds that were available for the bet at that time. This is easy with the horses as the SP is recorded with the results but nowhere I know of records the odds for Chelsea (or whoever) to keep a clean sheet in every game they have played over the past few seasons. As I said before I have a few seasons worth of over/under odds and around 8 years worth of match odds from several different bookies so I am focusing on those markets. It's fine for now. I can think more about the other markets at a later date and try to work out how best to test any systems I devise. I can work out value odds for each system and then get a rough idea of whether it would be profitable from that.



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    I must admit it didn't read back very well

    Ok, I'll try to explain better what I mean.

    Are you using for/against goals to produce odds for unders/overs for the system you were working on? If so you could get odds for correct scores and therefore also odds for a clean sheet.

    So...

    Let's say for arguements sake your clean sheet idea involves home teams who are generally around 1.20-1.40 to win the match.

    If you run through upcoming games over the next week or so that fall into the category you are looking at you could get some data on what the clean sheet probabilities are for those games. If they generally fall into the same smallish range of odds then you could use that to backtest.

    This depends of course if the match odds are relevant to your clean sheet idea though.

    "I put a skylight in my apartment...... the people upstairs are furious." - Stephen Wright


    My Website : http://www.mrmrsportssystems.co.uk
    Now offering three subscription based betting systems and daily free bets.
    Free bets 34.7pts up in October


  8. #8

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    Quote Originally Posted by MattR View Post
    Are you using for/against goals to produce odds for unders/overs for the system you were working on? If so you could get odds for correct scores and therefore also odds for a clean sheet.
    I am looking at goals for/against (partly), yes. But I don't see how that then leads to the odds for correct score and clean sheet odds. I can calculate value odds for each score and thus clean sheets but I don't have any actual odds against which to test the system. If Arsenal win 10% of their home games 3-0 then one could say you want odds of greater than 9/1 to back that scoreline but what I don't have is anyway of telling how often such a scoreline is on offer.

    This depends of course if the match odds are relevant to your clean sheet idea though.
    Ah, they're not. At least not initially.



  9. #9

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    7th October 2009
    I have been playing with the system ideas I had yesterday, in particularly those that looked marginally profitable, to see if I can improve on them and I thought I was getting somewhere. Just over 30pts profif from around 600 bets - still not great but better. The graph was looking promising too, a rocky start but then the trend was very much upwards. So I threw this season's data in to see how that would perform under the same test conditions - argh! A loss of 13.23pts from just 42 bets - that's BAD!

    I have tried tinkering with all sorts of variables on the system but nothing I do to it seems to make a significant amount of difference. As with all systems it is a case of trying to balance profit, ROI, number of bets and the complexity of obtaining the selections in the first place. The rules need to make sense too. For example, I can improve the profitability of the system by ignoring Arsenal, Man City and Sunderland home games but why should I? What sense does that make? What makes those team different to the others? I am looking at general trends and why should those three teams buck that trend? There is nothing significant that means they shouldn't follow the same rules as all other teams so what I am seeing is just a statistical blip - something that shouldn't influence the rules in any way.

    So my best system at present has a ROI of 2.57% and produces 16.91 profits in four and a half seasons. Not good enough to be worth bothering with really. I have ruled out lots of ideas in doing this exercise though, which is always useful.

    Hmm, just as I was writing that I had another thought and have found a tweak that improves the profit to 31.7pts over 479 bets for a ROI of 6.62% - that's better. It's still only an average of 7pts a season or so but it's better. The thing is that 05-06, 07-08 and 08-09 are profitable, a small loss is made in 06-07 and this season (09-10) still shows a significant loss - just over 6pts so far - so I can't shove this system live into my portfolio right away because I simply don't know if this season is a blip or a change in the trends. It needs paper trading for a while, perhaps the rest of the season to see what happens and also to bring some live odds into the equation. I'd better set about creating a spreadsheet to pick out the qualifiers nice and easily...



  10. #10

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    Mat, can I ask where youre getting your data from. Is it football-data?

    "I put a skylight in my apartment...... the people upstairs are furious." - Stephen Wright


    My Website : http://www.mrmrsportssystems.co.uk
    Now offering three subscription based betting systems and daily free bets.
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  11. #11

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    Quote Originally Posted by MattR View Post
    Mat, can I ask where youre getting your data from. Is it football-data?
    Sure is



  12. #12

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    Hi Mat,

    I too am trying to come up with a couple of reliable & profitable football systems.

    I am/have been working on an 'over 2.5' goals system which I originally put together early this year, & to my surprise churned out a small profit by the end of last season.
    It's strike rate was a bit erratic though.......I'd get 5 or 6 winners on the trot, making me think it was a brilliant system......& then get a losing run of about the same if not more, thus prompting me to start tweaking it, but not actually improving it at all.
    It was mainly based on goals for/against, recent home/away form & previous meetings of the teams involved.
    It's still a major work-in-progress project as I just can't achieve a consistent strikerate/performance with it.

    I rely on data from numerous sites......obviously they all provide the SAME data......they just display/present it in varying degrees of 'easy reading'.
    Maybe I need to be a bit more selective of the data I use as I tend to spend ages crunching numbers from countless sites & invariably come up with the same end-result.....a LOT of effort all for very little, if any, monetary reward at the end.

    Another system I'm looking at, basically, is to be able to (correctly) predict half-time results, ie Win or Draw.....NOT actual scores.
    If I can get this bit consistently right then a couple of 'insurance' bets at low stakes ensures a profit on the game regardless of what happens in the second half of the game.
    Again, towards the end of last season, based on match odds rather than form, goals etc., it seemed to work quite well.
    Different story this season so far......extremely erratic success rate causing a small loss thus far.
    I know the % of matches at the end of the first half which sees the teams drawing is higher than one team winning.......but I just can't seem to grind out a system that provides even a modest return.......all part of gambling......I know.

    I would love to make my football betting more successful.....so....

    ......any guidance would be greatly appreciated.

    (By the way, due to my failings in the world of football betting is a major reason I'm not playing the Football Result Prediction Game. :) )




  13. #13

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    Quote Originally Posted by Ada View Post
    I too am trying to come up with a couple of reliable & profitable football systems.
    And you've come to me for help -pressure's on now

    I am/have been working on an 'over 2.5' goals system which I originally put together early this year, & to my surprise churned out a small profit by the end of last season.
    I'll be honest and say that surprises me too, not that you of all people have found a (potentially) profitable system but that it's an over 2.5 goals system as all the profitable systems I have found over the past few days (and they have only really been marginally profitable) are for unders rather than overs. I did some thinking about why this was and think there's actually a full article in it so I won't go in to too much detail here as I will post up my thoughts elsewhere on the forum if that's OK.

    It's strike rate was a bit erratic though.......I'd get 5 or 6 winners on the trot, making me think it was a brilliant system......& then get a losing run of about the same if not more, thus prompting me to start tweaking it, but not actually improving it at all.
    How did you develop the system in the first place? How much data from the past have you used and what have you tried to do with it (in general terms if you'd prefer)? What I am trying to get at is why it needs tweaking as more data becomes available.

    Take a system I have been toying with as an example. I look at the number of times a team has had a game go under 2.5 goals and the number of times their games have gone over 2.5 goals and use those figures to derive value odds for each outcome. I can then compare these to the actual odds on offer and decide whether to bet or not. The more back data I have the more accurate the value odds can become (unless for some reason a team has a major change in playing style, which can happen under some managers admittedly) so there is no need to tweak the rules in the future. I have what I consider to be value odds for each outcome and then it's just a case of seeing whether those odds can be bettered or not - no tweaking required.

    I rely on data from numerous sites......obviously they all provide the SAME data......they just display/present it in varying degrees of 'easy reading'.
    Maybe I need to be a bit more selective of the data I use as I tend to spend ages crunching numbers from countless sites & invariably come up with the same end-result.....a LOT of effort all for very little, if any, monetary reward at the end.
    What sites are you using and for what data? The one MattR mentioned earlier (www.football-data.co.uk) is brilliant for loads of data. It doesn't have goal minutes recorded or anything but it does have all the FT and HT results plus odds and various other things going back several years. It's possibly the nearest football has to things like the data in the Raceform or ProForm databases.

    Another system I'm looking at, basically, is to be able to (correctly) predict half-time results, ie Win or Draw.....NOT actual scores.
    Again, towards the end of last season, based on match odds rather than form, goals etc., it seemed to work quite well.
    Different story this season so far......extremely erratic success rate causing a small loss thus far.
    I have found that this season has thrown a lot of the systems I have looked at way off kilter. Consistent profits to the end of last season and then chaos this year - I don't really know why. This season has seen more goals than normal and fewer draws but is that really enough to cause the systems to go crazy?

    I would love to make my football betting more successful.....so....

    ......any guidance would be greatly appreciated.
    If I can be any help I will try. Have you read Paul Steele's book (Profitable Football Betting I think it is called)? It's outdated now but highlights some interesting angles that I have tinkered with in the past.

    (By the way, due to my failings in the world of football betting is a major reason I'm not playing the Football Result Prediction Game. :) )
    So you've picked the person at the bottom of the league table for said game to help :splapme



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    Mat, just remembered another useful site I came across. You do have to register and pay to get full access to it but you can check it out for free and run any of the parameters but you can only used data from scottish division 1 from 2000 to march 2009. It's pretty handy for testing theories on. I did subscribe a year or so ago now and it was useful but I didn't have time to use it too much at that time so i let the subscription drop. It's £10 for 3 months or £30 for the year.


    The site is studysoccer

    "I put a skylight in my apartment...... the people upstairs are furious." - Stephen Wright


    My Website : http://www.mrmrsportssystems.co.uk
    Now offering three subscription based betting systems and daily free bets.
    Free bets 34.7pts up in October


  15. #15

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    7th October 2009 (part two)
    Interesting. I seem to have stumbled across a simple system for under/over 2.5 goals that works well for the Championship even though it didn't work for the Premiership. Hmmm.

    The system is showing stats of 1920 bets, 963 winners and a profit of 115.84pts (ROI of 6.03%). Now 115pts profit over four seasons is worth bothering with. But how does it look for this season? Add that data in and the profit decreases to 102.01pts, i.e a loss of 13.83pts so far this season. The graphs don't show an obvious downturn over the past couple of seasons so this could potentially be nothing more than just a natural variation in the system but it is enough to set a few alarm bells ringing and for me to put the system on a paper trade watch for a while to see how it goes in the real world. But it's promising all the same



  16. #16

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    Quote Originally Posted by MattR View Post
    Mat, just remembered another useful site I came across. You do have to register and pay to get full access to it but you can check it out for free and run any of the parameters but you can only used data from scottish division 1 from 2000 to march 2009. It's pretty handy for testing theories on.
    Thanks Matt, I'll check it out



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    Mat, something just crossed my mind that would be interesting to see if it pans out as the under/over 2.5 does. What about 3.5 goals? Should be easy enough to get the 3.5 odds as they'll no doubt correlate to what they are on 2.5, so a quick check on betfair/daq should mean you can back check that with your data.

    "I put a skylight in my apartment...... the people upstairs are furious." - Stephen Wright


    My Website : http://www.mrmrsportssystems.co.uk
    Now offering three subscription based betting systems and daily free bets.
    Free bets 34.7pts up in October


  18. #18

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    Quote Originally Posted by MattR View Post
    Mat, something just crossed my mind that would be interesting to see if it pans out as the under/over 2.5 does. What about 3.5 goals? Should be easy enough to get the 3.5 odds as they'll no doubt correlate to what they are on 2.5, so a quick check on betfair/daq should mean you can back check that with your data.
    I can get current and future 3.5 goals odds but once again I don't have odds for past matches so can't back test. Also the 3.5 goals markets are limited to the exchanges so the competition for prices is less (and the markets are low liquidity) whereas the 2.5 goals markets are priced up my pretty much every bookmaker in the land so there is scope for competition on the prices



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    I have 3 football systems that I ran for around the last 1/2 to 1/3 of last season that were profitable. These were based on finding value in different markets (Half Time, Full Time and HT/FT). I havent started them this season as they use stats from the current season only so need a few games played first. I'm hoping the still stand up even with the more active season we're seeing.

    Using the data from football-data.co.uk I also came up with a Half-Time lay system this season. I posted here in test mode for a bit but forget to update when I got too busy. It was simple - take the favourite from the FT market and lay them in the HT market as my previous stats said they only are leading at HT ~ 35%. Last update here it was +2.25pts but the following weekends were vey good with lots of favourites going down so it would have gone up a fair bit.

    Finally with a little smart excel work (or write a little extraction program) you can find the odds for any betfair market in the past. Check out data.betfair.com. You can download spreadsheets of all markets which have every price that every runner was matched at and the 1st an last time these prices were matched. Very nice for back testing. :wink



  20. #20

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    8th October 2009
    I realised last night that I have made a few fundamental errors in calculating the figures for the systems I have been looking at and will need to revisit them. In short I have been using the wrong odds - I was using the maximum available odds for each bet so what I was actually looking at was a best case scenario. What I should have done instead is use the average available odds to get a more representative profit/loss figure. I ran a quick test last night to see what difference it makes and it is quite significant. The average maximum odds figure is around 0.1 bigger than the average average odds figure, quite a difference when you're dealing with bets around evens.

    The odds figures I use have come from Bet Brain which uses 30+ bookies. I reckon this means that the max odds are likely to be from some of the more obscure European bookies rather than the mainstream UK bookies I tend to use, and that's why I need to re-evaluate the systems using the average odds. I reckon I should be able to beat the average odds in the long run but am not sure I will always get the maximum odds so it doesn't make sense to base a system (and my expectations of its performance) on odds I won't be able to acheive long term.

    I'll be working on the systems again this morning - I will let you know what sort of difference the change on in odds makes.



  21. #21

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    8th October 2009 (part two)
    I definitely jumped the gun with news of these under/over 2.5 goals systems as they are nowhere near ready to go live. They might not even work yet, I haven't done anywhere near enough investigation to prove they are worthy of even paper testing. I have sat and had a think about what I am trying to achieve and how to go about it. I now know what needs to be done and have set about some further work on the lower leagues as they are playing this weekend and there is an outside chance I could have some system qualifiers to paper trade this weekend. I'm not holding out much hope for that although I have this morning recorded under/over odds for all League 1 and League 2 games being played this weekend so that I can start to check back how the systems would have performed on real odds that I can verify.

    I have also been thinking a bit more about why some of these ideas seem to work for the lower leagues but not the Premiership. I reckon the Premiership is effectively a solved puzzle as far as the odds compilers are concerned. There is little that is not know about the Premiership teams and players. Various stats services maintain all sorts of information archives - I was sent some info the other day proving that Alan Wiley displayed excellent fitness and performance in the recent Man Utd game despite what Sir Alex Ferguson claimed - and the bookies will no doubt have access to these. The Premiership is perhaps the best league in the world and I would be amazed if it wasn't the backbone of most bookies's football betting operations in this country at least. I don't know how much more is gambled on the Premiership than the other leagues but you can bet your bottom dollar that more work will go into the Premiership markets than those for the lower leagues. It's best to get your prices right in markets that will see a lot of turnover but if you're slightly out in a low liquidity market then it won't matter too much. And that's what I think is happening in the lower leagues. The Premiership under/over markets are so well researched that there is little value to be found but further down the league pyramid that's not necessarily the case meaning there may be prices we can exploit if we are prepared to dig down in to the lower leagues, which I most certainly am.

    I hope to be able to report back in the next couple of days with some real news about potential systems for under/over 2.5 goals



  22. #22

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    10th October 2009
    I'm slightly hesitant about saying this but I think I have found an acceptable under/overs system for League Two. I'm still tinkering slightly with slight modifications to the rules to improve the ROI but I am basically there. I hope to go through the same sort of steps for League One and the Championship later before trying the Premiership one more time just to make sure I had the numbers right before.

    The systems I am looking for have to meet certain criteria. None of these are hard and fast rules for me selecting a system but I am looking for it to produce a decent number of bets per season (at least 100) along with a suitable profit level (~10pts per season) and not rely on longshots which means it needs a good SR. Obviously with under/over systems that last criterion is met automatically as you don't get longshots with under/over markets so if the other two criteria are met then the SR will also be acceptable. It's also important that the profits seem to accumulate steadily, i.e. a graph of the profits against time (or bet number) shows a steadily increasing trend rather than an erratic up-down sort of trend. I think I have a system that meets all those standards but I will continue to tinker and investigate to double check. Either way, I have already checked and it doesn't select anything for League Two today.

    More details as I have them



  23. #23

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    11th October 2009
    My hesitancy yesterday was justified for while I have found a League Two unders/overs system that on the surface of it seems quite good, a little digging shows worrying aspects to the figures.

    Since the start of the 05-06 season (which is as far back as I have suitable data) the system has generated 31.94pts of profit to average odds and 64.25pts of profit to maximum odds. If we assume I can beat the average odds (which ought to be possible with a bit of shopping around) but not achieve the maximum odds in all cases (they could be with obscure European bookies after all) then we're looking at around 40pts profit over 4 seasons so meets my profit level criteria. Depending on exactly which set of odds we use (average or maximum) we're looking at around 600 bets so approximately 150 a season and a ROI around 6%. Sounds good so far, right? But let's break these numbers down on a per season basis, using average odds as the kinda worst case scenario. Now we see virtually all the profit came from one freakish season (06-07) which generated over 31pts of profit with the other seasons pretty much breakeven. Not so good now is it? This trend isn't apparent from the graphs though. I have attached the relevant graph for this system showing the profit to max odds in red and to average odds in blue and the trends seem upwards. You can't see that one season is doing all the work from that.

    So where does that leave us? It actually leaves us where I expected to be - with a candidate system that would benefit from some live paper trading on this forum. So that's what I will do. I will post qualifiers as they crop up and maintain a profit/loss figure (along with other suitable summary data) and take another look at the end of this year (not season) to see how things are going before deciding whether or not to add this system to my portfolio.

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  24. #24

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    12th October 2009
    Over the weekend I did all sorts of number crunching and analysis of League Two data and pulled out a potentially promising under/overs system that I said I will paper trade live on the forum. I have just completed the same sort of analysis for data from League One and have come up with a couple more systems of interest.

    The first system, which is known as 1a (30) at present but will no doubt be rebranded at some point, produced 25.26pts of profit over four seasons when settled to average odds and 57.44pts when settled to maximum odds. I did a quick check this morning and by shopping around on Oddschecker (which covers most of the bookies I have accounts with) I am able to get prices that in general beat the average odds but aren't always up to the maximum odds (as I suspected) so the average odds case is basically a worst case scenario for me. So if we assume I will hit a middle ground I am looking at something like 40pts profit which averages out to the 10pts a season I was looking for. The ROI should be over 5% too, with probably around 650 bets in that period (the average odds produced 524, the max odds produced 813) so I am good on both of those measures too. The only slight concern is again the seasonal breakdown of those figures, as it was for the League Two system. This time three seasons are profitable with 07-08 resulting in a loss of 16.34pts. 05-06 generates a lot of the profit weighing in with 20.34pts (a ROI of 26.08%) but 08-09 shows an excellent recovery from the 07-08 disaster with a profit of 12.91pts (8.84% ROI). So it could be one of those systems that when it's good it's very good and when it's bad it's very bad. And that's sort of what the graph of the profits for this system shows. Again, profits to max odds in red and to average odds in blue. The drop off during 07-08 and the subsequent recovery are very obvious in the average odds line. This is one to monitor so I will paper trade this one live till at least the end of the year and see where we go from there.

    The other system has an equally catchy name - 3a (50), but again that will change in time. To average odds this produced 23.54pts of profit from 439 bets over four seasons giving a ROI of 5.36%. If we look at the maximum odds we see figures of 75.53pts profit from 746 bets or a ROI of 10.12%. I'd day we're looking at around 50pts on average here from maybe 600 or so bets, perhaps fewer so a ROI of around 7-8%, which is just what I was after. And better than all of that is the fact that the profits from this system are pretty consistent (despite what the graphs may show) which each season showing a reasonable profit, the first system I have found which generates seemingly steady profits so this is brilliant! I have attached the graph and if you look at the blue line (profit to average odds, as always) and you can see what I mean about it not looking like it produces consistent profits but it does based on the seasonal breakdown. The drop off at the end of the 08-09 season is more pronounced on the blue line than the red but this trend doesn't seem to continue into the 09-10 season based on the analysis I have done since this graph was produced. This is one system I have considered going live with straight away but the cautious side of me has reared itself and I will instead paper trade live on the forum but with a view to adding it to my portfolio unless disaster strikes this system before the end of the year.

    So I set out to find one profitable system and inside a week I have found up to three and I haven't really put that much effort into it

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    Interesting stuff Mat. Are those systems using both unders and over bets? Or just one or the other? If both does one perform better than the other?

    I would think part of the problem finding a consistently performing system for these leagues is the fact a quarter of the teams change year on year, but like you mentioned in an earlier post that can also play into our hands because it also makes it much harder for the bookies to be accurate too.

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  26. #26

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    Quote Originally Posted by MattR View Post
    Interesting stuff Mat. Are those systems using both unders and over bets? Or just one or the other? If both does one perform better than the other?
    All three of the systems I have come up with to date are actually just unders systems as I haven't been able to find anything profitable on the overs. I might have a sniff of one for the Championship though if my early analysis is anything like.

    I would think part of the problem finding a consistently performing system for these leagues is the fact a quarter of the teams change year on year, but like you mentioned in an earlier post that can also play into our hands because it also makes it much harder for the bookies to be accurate too.
    While it's true that the line-up in these divisions can change significantly each season most of the time the teams being relegated/promoted are going into a division they have some recent(ish) history in. So a team from League One may make a brief appearance in the Championship but will probably slip back to League One in time. There are exceptions of course, but unless a team has sufficient history in the division in question they aren't selected by the system. And I'm not going to quantify what sufficient history is as it varies by system.

    Out of interest I have just run the League One systems over the results for last weekend. 1a (30) would have picked three matches to back under 2.5 goals in (Southend v Southampton, Carlisle v Norwich and Yeovil v Brighton) which would have given us just the one winner, Carlisle v Norwich going under at 19/20 so a loss of 1.05pts. System 3a would have picked the Carlisle and Yeovil matches so would have lost 0.05pts. I won't be including these in the official figures when I start posting qualifiers on the forum though.



  27. #27

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    12th October 2009 (part two)
    I have just been revisiting some of the conclusions I drew about the League Two system and am now considering running an unfiltered version of it alongside the filtered version I mentioned yesterday. Why? It's simpler for one but also the filters affect the max odds bets reducing the profits slightly so it's not clear what they would do to the middle-of-the-road odds I expect to get. The worst case scenario is better for the filtered version but the best case scenario is better for the unfiltered version so it might be worth running the two side by side in a live test when I am not sure where on the scale my odds will lie.

    I also did a season-by-season breakdown of the unfiltered system to average odds and both the filtered and unfiltered version to maximum odds. When looking at the unfiltered system to average odds we see 06-07 is still a freak year providing all the profits with two years showing slight losses (05-06 and 07-08). But switch to maximum odds and all years show a profit. Not only that but while 06-07 still provides a lot of the profits, 08-09 weighs in with a good chunk too giving us two good seasons and two not so good ones. The same is true for the filtered system viewed in terms of maximum odds, although now 07-08 is actually a slight loser. So if we're getting closer to the maximum odds than the average odds we are probably better off using the unfiltered version and for that reason I will run both systems for League Two in the live test so we can see if there is any difference over the coming months.



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    Will be interesting to see how these pan out 'live' Mat, look forward to seeing it progress.


    A thought that just crossed my mind concerning under overs is that the Premier with a current average of 3 goals per game will probably with pretty reasonable 'certainty' (if that isn't a contradiction :D ) come back down by the end of the season to around 2.5/2.6. With that in mind you would think that unders would have to start coming in with much greater regularity than they have been. Much in the same way that we had 5 draws from 10 games on the last set of fixtures after just 4/66 previously. In other words can we take advantage of statistical correcting?

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  29. #29

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    Quote Originally Posted by MattR View Post
    In other words can we take advantage of statistical correcting?
    I'll be honest and say I'm not sure. I ought to look at seasonal goal averages in the Premiership and how they have changed throughout the season to get a better idea of this but you can be sure the bookies will be doing the same. But this could go one of two ways - the goals could keep coming and we could have a record season for overs or there will be a correction and things will revert back to normal with more unders than we have had so far to bring that average back down. The bookies can't price up both eventualities on a weekly basis so it will be interesting to see whether they start to lengthen the unders odds expecting the goals to keep flowing or trim them expecting a correction. What we have seen so far this season amounts to little more than a statistical blip though as not many games have been played. It would be interesting to see how other seasons looking in terms of goals per game at this stage and what they settled down to eventually. A job for tomorrow that one I think



  30. #30

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    Quote Originally Posted by mathare View Post
    A job for tomorrow that one I think
    I've cracked and done it now!

    I've attached the stats as images to keep the tables looking nice. I have calculated end of season averages and also the averages after 76 games, which is the number played in the Premiership so far this season.

    This season's goals per game ratio is high at 3.013, especially in the light of last season's 2.479 over the whole season. That is the second lowest average number of goals the Premiership has seen with 06-07 being the lowest. After 76 games this season is still by far the highest average goals per game figure but if you look at those seasons were the average number of goals after 76 games is greater than the overall average since the start of the Premiership (94-95, 95-96, 97-98, 99-00, 00-01, 03-04 and 08-09) all of these bar one (99-00) ended up with a lower average at the end of the season than they had after 76 games. Therefore I'd say the average number of goals is going to go down between now and the end of the Premiership season but I don't know how much. It was 2.592 before the start of the season so let's assume it drops back to that long-term average. That means we'd be looking at another 756 goals this season (or thereabouts) giving an average of 2.487 goals per game, not a lot below the 2.5 line offered by the bookies so how much value can we expect there? Not a lot I'd say.

    So really I think all we can say is that the average will come down but how far down no-one knows and I'm not sure I'd be looking to back a glut of unders as that average could drop slowly over the course of the rest of the season without seeing huge clumps of unders.

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