Summer Highs

The knockout stages of both major summer international football tournaments - the 2024 Euros and Copa América - were extremely profitable for backers of the Draw with an ROI of 45% from the combined 22 matches. 

I know some of you were following, with the good Dr Tsouts (@drtsouts) reporting:

I started following from stage of 8 in Euro and Copa America 2024 and these are the numbers:

Euro 3 wins-4 losses, 7 units at risk, + 2.26 units
Copa 4 wins-3 losses , 7 units at risk, + 6.37 units

Stu_the_Hut (@progman68) also shared his numbers on Twitter, including the eight 'Round of 16' matches:

Here's my results :- 

Euro 5 wins, 9 losses, 14 units at risk, +3.78 units
Copa 4 wins, 2 losses, 6 units at risk, + 6.80 units

It looks like Stu may have skipped the Colombia v Panama game with the favourites a very short 1.34 at fair odds and winning 5:0, as well as the Spain v Georgia where the numbers were 1.23 and 4:1. 

Excluding matches where the fair priced favourite is shorter than 1.5 increases the overall ROI across all major tournaments from 25% to 30%. 

My 'official' numbers from the Quarter-Final stage are +2.25 and +6.09 units respectively, but these totals should be beatable as indeed Dr T and Stu have shown. The Round of 16 made another 1.59 units 'officially'. 

 

We now have data from 115 matches going back to 2004, and the overall ROI is a very solid 42%. Almost half the matches are quarter-finals, and the overall ROI on matches at this stage is now at 77%. 

There will be a UEFA Nations League tournament in June next year, although I'm not sure this young tournament is yet to be considered 'major' - and England won't be featuring given their relegation last time out - and in late December there is an Africa Cup of Nations to look forward to. 

The 2025 CONCACAF Gold Cup will be a dress rehearsal for the 2026 World Cup and looks likely to include teams from Europe, Africa, South America and Asia. The Gold Cup is the one international tournament where backing the Draw isn't profitable with several lopsided games with a hot favourite (usually Mexico or USA), but if you exclude these matches, the ROI is positive, albeit by 'only' 9%, a number that would usually be quite exciting but when it's compared to the other tournaments, perhaps not so much. If countries from other confederations do end up taking part, the results may be more typical. 

It will also be interesting to see how the proposed expanded FIFA Club World Cup competition fits in with all this, since the United States is also hosting that competition. It's all getting a little messy with only FIFA appearing to be enthusiastic about the club competition. 

I'll expand on these numbers more in the Sacred Manuscript as I finalise the 2024-25 version over the next few days but here are the updated high level numbers for the major international football competitions:

I've had a couple of people ask me about Baseball, which I've suggested might be a sport best left alone while data following the major rule changes of recent years can be accumulated, but I do see a possible edge in some games which I'll be including.

A few weeks ago I mentioned Wayward Lad and his Pension Builder blog which hadn't been updated for a while, but Ian is back with an update on his Self-Invested Personal Pension account including a plan to "position the portfolio into more of an income generator than a pure growth vehicle." 

On a personal note, I picked a good week to head up to Scotland and hike up Ben Nevis. The first morning there was perfect, and unlike last year in the Lake District when I had to wait out the rain for a couple of days to climb Scafell Pike, this time I was done on day one with the reserve days not needed. 

The round trip took a little under seven hours and a few new records were set with the 36,200 steps and 251 flights recorded by my iPhone new all-time daily 'highs':

With Snowdon checked off in 2022, that's now the National Three Peaks off my bucket list. I think I'll climb Helvellyn in 2025 though - it's a mountain I hiked up with some school friends when I was 16 but I don't remember too much about it, except that the weather wasn't terribly good and we were woefully unprepared. I'm a little more sensible now. 

And then back to Scotland for Ben Macdui in 2026 perhaps, assuming I'm still able to walk. It's good to have goals. In 2027 I hope to turn 70, so a physical challenge on that day would be nice. The Yorkshire Three Peaks Walk looks like a possible candidate, but I'm open to suggestions.

I didn't pick such a good day for my visit to the Oval on Friday 5th July with Surrey's T20 game against Middlesex abandoned without a ball being bowled, but a full refund softened the blow and a quiet day before a twelve hour wedding on the Saturday might have been a good idea anyway. 

Drawing Breath

So far so good for anyone applying the Elimination Match Draw System to the Euro 2024 tournament with two winners from the six games so far at 'official' odds of 4.33 (England v Slovakia) and 5.25 (Portugal v Slovenia) although as is often the case, these prices were easily beatable and were backed personally at 4.5 and 5.4 on Betfair (with the 2% commission rate making the odds an effective 4.43 and 5.312 respectively.)

Prior to these two results, no Draw priced at greater than 4.09 in Euros Knockout Stages had ever won, so these weren't the likeliest of matches to produce winners, but they all count.  

These tournaments have such a small sample size that although I suspect long-term the ROIs might be higher from the "more competitive" matches, so far there's not a lot of evidence for this. 

Going into the tournament, the ROI on Draws in ALL Euro elimination games was 40%, a number rising to 45% in only those games with no odds-on team, but after six more games this week, the numbers are now 42% and 36% respectively. 

For the Copa América, the numbers are 44% and 34% but to reiterate, when we're talking about such relatively small sample sizes, one or two results can change these numbers in a hurry. 

Unfortunately, I shall be away from my computer for the next two weeks so there will be no daily updates as the Euros and Copa América tournaments reach their conclusions but I'll be home on the 18th July, all being well, and there will be plenty to catch up on. 

Baseball will have had it's All-Star Break, so there will two and a half seasons worth of data with the universal Designated Hitter rule in place, which is a decent number of games given how many games a season are played. This rule was in place in 2020 too, but with a shortened season, an unusual fixture arrangement due to COVID, and the fact that it was at the time just a temporary change, I'm inclined to exclude these games from any analysis. 

I plan to work on the new version of the Sacred Manuscript through that first weekend back home and should have it available by Monday 22nd July. 

The England Quarter-Final will be kicking off in the middle of my niece's wedding reception, which wasn't the best planning on her part, but I suspect I won't be the only person with an interest in the game, and the Semi-Finals will be while I am in Fort William, with Thursday 11th July now looking the most likely day for my long anticipated hike up Ben Nevis with the current weather forecast not looking like it'll be all sunshine and blue skies. 

Enjoy the Summer. 

Splits, Hikes, and NHL 2023

It would normally be rather concerning that a stock closes at $3283 on a Tuesday and opens at around $64 the next day, but the long anticipated 50:1 split for Chipotle has finally arrived. 

As I wrote a few months back, I bought this stock ($CMG) in September 2020 with the expectation that a split would be coming much sooner, and like many Southern Californians my wife likes her Mexican food, ("your Indian food is my Mexican food") but it's performed well while I've been waiting. 

What hasn't been performing quite so well of late is Bitcoin with a 10%+ pullback in the last month providing an opportunity to "buy the dip"; or to throw good money after bad, depending on your point of view. 

More on my financial investments next month as we close out the first half of 2024, at least in months if not quite in days. I'll be away for a couple of weeks in early July, with a family wedding in Faversham followed by another long anticipated event, my hike up Ben Nevis. My sister will not be happy that the reception potentially clashes with an England Euros Quarter-Final game should we advance from the Round of 16, but I did warn her several months ago. 

As for Ben Nevis, the exact date will be weather dependent. I got lucky two years ago with Snowdon, and last year with Scafell Pike both days having clear skies and fantastic views, so I'm hoping for the hat-trick. Tuesday the 9th is my preference, but I have two, or at worst three, reserve days if necessary. 

As for sport, the NHL season is now over, with the Edmonton Oilers falling at the last hurdle with winning four consecutive games proving too much against the Florida Panthers. The wait for Canada goes on. 

For the 'official' NHL System, the 2023 season's results were disappointing with Killer Sports showing a negative ROI from 416 selections of -1.0%. However, given that Killer Sports' odds are generally to an overround of 104% or greater, (it was 104.84% for the Stanley Cup Finals for example) that 1% loss doesn't look too bad. While there is much to admire about Killer Sports, it's fair to say that their numbers are generally beatable by shopping around or using the exchanges.

But there is always room for improvement, and I'll be taking a closer look at the numbers in the next few months. Certain matches between teams from different conferences (Eastern v Western) have long shown a bias, and a system with just four losing seasons out of the 18 for which we have data sounds good at first, but when three of these have come in the last four seasons well, not so good. Markets typically adjust unfortunately. 

Lost Bloggers Found

One of the blogs on my list to follow is Wayward Lad which has been going since 2010. Not quite as long as this one, but in the world of sports investing - Horse Racing in this case - 14 years of almost daily updates is a very good run, but no updates since the end of March had me wondering what had happened. 

Author Ian is of a similar age to myself, not quite as advanced, but in the same decade, and without being too morbid about these things, one never knows what lies around the corner. 

Ian also writes the Pension Builder blog, although by its nature, that was always only updated periodically, but the lack of updates since July 2022 was extreme even for Ian. 

With a little research, I was pleased to discover that Ian is still actively posting these days, albeit on Substack, a medium I know very little about, but may look into.

I also received an update from Steve, the legend from the daily25 blog, after asking out loud about him in this March post, and he is taking a year off to travel the world, although his initial plans have been disrupted. 

He did mention that he's not had a sports bet in three years due to challenges with being able to get a decent bet on (more than $20) at acceptable odds, but he's staying busy and waiting for the NFT markets to bounce back from "their deep bear market" - his words, not mine. I suspect he may be waiting for a while for that to happen, but I have been known to be wrong. 

I mentioned last month that "one subscriber had very generously donated a College Basketball System for my review, with the possibility of it being added to the Sacred Manuscript for next year."

Since the next College Basketball season is some months away, it took me a while to get around to reviewing it, but it's a very interesting idea and the data shows that it has some merit. I promised not to divulge details on the blog, but just to say that I like the fact that there is some rationale to it, and over the last ten seasons, with a logical adjustment to the types of games included, the system has a 1 in 2432 probability of not being this profitable from luck. 

I shall be adding it to the Sacred Manuscript because, as the contributor noted, "surely it is good to add another league to bet on".  I agree, and something to look forward too when conference games start up in January. 

The Stanley Cup has a Game Seven tonight, with the Edmonton Oilers recovering from a 0-3 deficit to tie the series with the Florida Panthers. With home advantage, the Panthers are slight favourites to win, but with 18 goals in the last three games, the Oilers have momentum. Not to mention that ice hockey is Canada's national sport and no Canadian team has won the Stanley Cup since 1993. No pressure. 

NBA 2023

In NHL's Stanley Cup Finals, the Edmonton Oilers have so far survived two elimination games versus the Florida Panthers and trail by just one game with Game 6 upcoming this evening in Edmonton. A comeback from 0:3 down has been done once before in the Stanley Cup, 82 years ago during the Second World War when the Toronto Maple Leafs rallied to beat the Detroit Red Wings.

So the update on the 2023 season for this sport will have to wait, but the 2023 NBA season is over, with the pre-season favourite Boston Celtics defeating Dallas Mavericks 4 -1 in the final series and winning their 18th championship - a record.

For subscribers to the Sacred Manuscript, the six systems recommended a total of 939 bets, and generated 38.38 units of profit, an overall ROI of 4.1%:

After a losing 2022 season, these results were very welcome. I'm pretty sure that no one would have placed 939 bets, and there's probably an opportunity to reduce this number next season. 

System 3.0 is the Overs system, and while the Total varies from year to year (last season was 239.5 points),  about one bet a day through the season is a good number. Too many selections and a system becomes a pain to manage, but have too few (2.1 for example) and you risk missing out on selections because you lose interest in running the query each day. 

The Graduate

Of the 156 NBA teams that have trailed a best-of-7 series 0:3, and not a single one has been able to rally and win four straight. After last night's Game 3 loss at home to the Boston Celtics, the Dallas Mavericks find themselves the 157th team in this unenviable position. They are currently slight favourites to win game 4, but past history suggests the value is on the Celtics with teams in this position (3:0 ahead and small road 'dogs) 9-4-1 ATS.

In the NHL Finals, the Florida Panthers won the first two games of their series at home to the Edmonton Oilers, and game three is tonight. Historically Western teams returning home as favourites after losing the opening two road games of a Final series are undervalued with seven wins out of eight (small sample size of course, as is always the case with playoffs).

I'll post a review of these two sports once their seasons end, which could be very soon in the case of the NBA with Game 4 on Friday.

The adjustment to retirement continues, and apologies in advance if I waffle on about this too much but it is a significant milestone in life.

I'm sure some of you will have seen it already, but Roger Federer's commencement address at Dartmouth a few days ago is worth checking out. 

I know the word is “retire.” “Roger Federer retired from tennis.” Retired... The word is awful.

You wouldn’t say you retired from college, right? Sounds terrible.

Like you, I’ve finished one big thing and I’m moving on to the next.

Like you, I’m figuring out what that is.

Graduates, I feel your pain.

I know what it’s like when people keep asking what your plan is for the rest of your life.

They ask me: “Now that you are not a professional tennis player, what do you do?”

I don’t know… and it’s OK not to know.

So what do I do with my time?

That's a very good question! Training for the Ben Nevis hike next month is ongoing, although I had another fall last Friday on a local hill which wasn't too clever. No broken legs this time though, but I left some skin at the scene and my coccyx doesn't feel great. Sit ups are on hold for now. Fortunately it doesn't seem to affect me when cycling, and I've been out of the road bike a couple of times a week getting in some miles. 

There was another part of Federer's speech which has received some attention, and that was where he contrasts the percentage of matches he won during his career (almost 80% of his 1,526 games) with the percentage of points he won in those games - "only 54%."

"Only"... Such a small word, but it's a similar situation in sports betting. If you can hit winners betting the dime line at just 51.23%, then with compounding you can be very profitable over time. Of course, no one wants to get rich slowly, so very few people actually have the mindset to achieve this, but as I wrote in 2019 here:

Given that my grandmother would be expected to pick winners at a rate of around 50%, and she's been dead for over 30 years, this didn't seem to be a hugely impossible task.

Most systems can be fairly easily improved and just by eliminating a couple of losing propositions from every 100 bets, you're in profit. 

 

I updated my profile a few days ago. Since day one of this blog, my profile ended with my saying that "retirement wasn't too far off and that anything made from sports investing would bring that day forward." 

Well, it didn't play out like that - it almost made my Chipotle stock split prediction look timely. In March of 2008 I turned 51, so while it was good that I was thinking about, and planning for, retirement, in hindsight the "not too far off" prediction wasn't too accurate. Maybe at that time I was still thinking early retirement was a goal, but as my career progressed it became clear that retirement wasn't the goal I once thought it was. 

Besides, profits from sports investing exceeded my net salary for a couple of years, but didn't result in any change to my retirement date, and work became less like work in recent years - working from home with a little travel was very comfortable and what was there to retire from, or more importantly, to retire to? However, the clock was, still is, ticking, and it's certainly possible to work too long and limit the good years of retirement when you are still physically active and able to travel before the body and / or brain start to give you problems. 

With my redundancy payment now in the bank, my spreadsheet has been updated and projections for the next few years are in place. The markets have been kind to me so far, with Tesla on fire the past couple of days pending the outcome of the vote regarding Elon Musk's pay package. Per the latter:

With the vote still in progress, this statement had better be accurate or there will be another sizeable fine coming. 

Transitions, Bitcoin, Errors, Euros and Copas

Time flies, and even faster in retirement than before it seems. The early retirement days have been taken up with a few administrative tasks. The most important was having my redundancy agreement reviewed by an expert in these things, and as expected for a large company, all was in order and the advice, given the fact that I'm not looking to take my skills to a rival employer, was to accept and sign, which I duly did, although the final payout hasn't yet been received. 

I also met with my financial advisor and all was good there, with no changes required to the balance of my investments at this time, much to the chagrin of Signora Cassini who is a little more risk averse than myself. I received some welcome support that it would be crazy to pay off the outstanding mortgage - which is at a very low interest rate - and, in the advisor's words, "let the bank off the hook", but I probably shouldn't have told her that I'd (literally) doubled down on Bitcoin, this time via BlackRock's iShares Bitcoin Trust ($IBIT) - but so far so good with Bitcoin on a strong run right now. 

I'm not a crypto expert, but I feel now that Bitcoin is maturing, is becoming accepted as an asset, and has a certain future. Whereas my initial investment in Bitcoin (via $GBTC) was driven by FOMO, this latest one was made based on at least a basic understanding of the Bitcoin Power Law Theory. Anyway, I BIT - hopefully not more off than I can chew.

The redundancy money should see me through to next year at which time we (financial advisor and me, maybe the wife if she behaves) will meet again and see where we're at. 

Hopefully that will be at, or close to, an all-time high which would certainly be psychologically much more positive than starting retirement with a market downturn. Sequence-of-Returns Risk moves from theory to practice very rapidly once that steady income stream is turned off.

Onto sports investing, and there's a new, and much improved, look to Killer Sports these days. The original site with results displayed in the old format is still available for now as the site transitions to its new look, but the updates look great and include some new features. 

Old: 

New:

The new features include ROI, Profit and P-Value calculations, which will make my life a little easier as I update the Sacred Manuscript this summer.
 

The European club football season is over, and the NBA and NHL competitions are both down to their final (best-of-7) series. 

I did notice that I had inadvertently posted some incorrect numbers for the Regular Seasons of these latter two sports. I'll put the errors down as due to jet lag rather than from any post-retirement senility creeping in.

I wrote that:

In the NBA, the regular season finished last month with ROIs of 2.4% (from 476 selections), 10.2% (171), 10.3% (69) for the primary systems, -0.5% (55) for the Rested Team System, and 4.2% (164) for the Totals System, a total profit of 42.38 units for the season.

Unfortunately the NHL Systems lost a combined 14.64 units this season, but ahead overall in the US for these two sports.

After taking a second look, this is what I should have written:

In the NBA, the regular season finished last month with ROIs of 2.1% (from 464 selections), 8.8% (166), 5.1% (65) for the primary systems, 4% (77) for the Rested Team System, and 4.2% (164) for the Totals System, a total profit of 37.48 units for the season.

Unfortunately the NHL Systems lost a combined 17.15 units in the regular season, but ahead overall in the US for these two sports.

The error I made was to include the playoff games in these calculations, so apologies to anyone who is validating these numbers for themselves and noticed the discrepancies. 

I'll update the English Domestic and European Competitions in the next few days, and then it's a bonanza of international tournaments with the Euros in Germany and an expanded Copa_América tournament running simultaneously in the United States. The latter tournament features ten teams from South America's CONMEBOL federation plus six teams from Central and North America's CONCACAF. 

For those of who enjoy backing the Draw in the elimination games for these tournaments, the results historically are:

It's worth mentioning that CONCACAF's Gold Cup tournament tends not to follow this pattern, as I have pointed out before.  How the presence of any of these (CONCACAF) teams making it out of the group stage affects results will be interesting to see, but with only the USA and Mexico expected to advance, I suspect the tournament will play out as it would for a Copa or a World Cup. Argentina and Brazil are joint favourites to win this tournament, while for the Euros it's England in this position - no doubt due to the presence of no fewer than FOUR Crystal Palace players in the squad.