Where have all the draws gone? Only 4 from 55 games so far this season in the Premier League, and laying them all would have resulted in a profit of £42.10 to a £1 level stake. Positively Premium Charge territory if you use Betfair for these bets, which I hope you don't. The prices available on BETDAQ are usually the same, and no Premium Charge on your winners.
The Elo ratings produced 6 winners and 1 loser (Fulham) from the 7 matches this weekend not involving promoted sides for a £3.49 (50%) profit.
I have had the promoted sides on probation for six games at the start of the season, but with Burnley ranked 8th, Wolves 11th and Birmingham 12th, (all three within a place of their starting rankings) I still feel these teams are rated too high. I'm not fully confident that these ratings have fully settled down, so for the next 4 games I'll restrict my investments to 50% and review again.
On a different topic, there were some technical difficulties on Betfair yesterday in some of the minor markets. It is incredibly annoying for a trader to take a position, and then be unable to exit it. Even a call to Betfair asking them to make me red-all-over was of no use. Fortunately I was only in for £60, and, as it turned out, it probably made me money. The power of prayer! (It was a WNBA game, and Indiana came from 9 points down in the fourth quarter to tie the game in the last two seconds, before going on to win in overtime).
I trust the issues are all resolved now, especially with the lucrative NFL starting in a few minutes, because it certainly doesn't build confidence when these things happen, and as I told the Betfair person, when you put a bet in, it's on the understanding that you can get out later. All bets up to the time of the freeze stand - there is no voiding of all bets. It's one thing having a £60 dabble on WNBA, it would be quite another to get caught with a three, or sometimes four, figure position on the NFL.
Back to women's sports for a second, and Rob the Builder commented yesterday about the "mental fragility" of women in sports. This is something I believe I have written on before. Rob has noticed how this can be a factor in the WTA, and I have noticed the same thing in WNBA. Not meaning to sound Taliban like in any way, but it does seem that once things start going wrong for girls, they seem less able than men to gather themselves.
Sunday, 20 September 2009
Every Problem Has A Gift For You In Its Hands
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1 comment:
Cassini,
Although I think it wise to give newly promoted & relegated teams a probationary period, their Elo ratings are probably more accurate right now then you think.
How much though depends on how accurate their ratings were compared (to say the Premiership in the case of Wolves etc) last season. In other words, if you're overall league table of teams (all 92 clubs plus maybe more) is largely accurate, then you can have some confidence in their rating now (remember its not the rating itself thats key to get right but its relationship with every other team.)
I wouldnt put too much on a teams positional movement either as these are subjected to a lot of things out of their own control (for example, have Wolves position been helped by Portsmouths decline? Could possibly be the case even though Wolves rating could possibly be very accurate.)
I know last season I was a little bit cautious by saying ideally, you needed at least 30 games to be rated for it to be trustworthy. I still stand by this, but the upside of this is that once that 30 game threshold has been reached, depending on how you update them (from what I can tell, I differ from you on this aspect) they are remarkably "robust."
For some extra backup, to some dry runs with fictious results. Take your current genuine ratings and then put in some results for the next week assuming some big games were thrown (ie completely false) and then do the next 3 games where the "expected" results actually occured. You might be surprised at how close each teams rating at the end of the fictious run is to how the teams rating actually ends up after the genuine results over the same period.
By the way, that temporary breakdown of the exchange also affected the Premiership match odds markets too!
JPG
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