Wednesday 30 June 2010

World Cup And Slicer's Holy Grail Found


A mixed day yesterday with the Portugal bet going down, but the expected close game earlier between Japan and Paraguay proving lucrative. If you backed the penalty shoot outs in these games as tipped here you are probably hunting for the "Donate" button on this page. Do those actually work? Anyway, as I pointed out, every R16 after 1986 has always had exactly one penalty shoot-out and history tends to repeat.

Hard to believe that there's no World Cup football for a couple of days, after 19 days of at least two matches a day. Just seven competitive matches left and Brazil are 3.6 favourites at the Quarter-Final stage.

This is historically the tightest round of the competition, with 46% of matches finishing as draws, and 29% finishing 0-0. 38% of matches are settled on penalties, and 58% are Under 2.5 goals. African countries have lost all (both) appearances, and Paraguay make their debut.

Only three countries left from the eight quarter-finalists of 2006, with Germany and Argentina meeting again, and Brazil, who lost to France. South America has a record 4 teams in the last eight, twice as good as ever before, and with one team in each match, an all South American semi-final line up is possible. Possible, not probable. While the three former champions are all favourites to advance, Paraguay are not.

More on these match-ups later in the week. Try to contain your excitement.

As you wait for the next round, you could always join in the hunt for Slicer's Holy Grail, because apparently, despite all the evidence to the contrary, and all the hours invested by Betfair forumites in vain to find it, it actually, really does exist!

The race to find it has been won by one of my readers no less. Yes, you guessed it, our friend Anonymous. He writes:

No doubt you're clever enough to figure it out yourself but there is a mathematical edge in those games and it's not that hard to exploit.
As someone on the forum commented, you can be pretty sure that anyone who claims an edge, and is happy to talk about it, is one of three things:

1. Very, very stupid - so unlikely to be in this postion
2. A charlatan - looking to profit from the gullibility of others
3. A smart individual who is attempting to manipulate the market to their advantage

I would add:

4. A sufferer of an attention seeking disorder

Still, credit where it's due, and congratulations are in order for Anonymous and the millions that will soon be his. A fantastic achievement that has proven to be beyond the talent of many other individuals and so well hidden that no Betfair employee has been able to crack it, even with access to Slicer's account history. Very well done.

I was about to post this when I noticed a new comment on the subject of Slicer, and it may be of interest to some of you (not Anonymous of course, because he's clearly cracked it). Thanks Strugar:
Well, at least the idea there is something like free money is enough amusing for everyone to try and catch that golden fish; so did I - when first heard of that myth, I spent about a week trying to prove myself to be smarter than probably thousands of betfairians who tried it before... to no avail, of course.

I don't know if you allow links to forums in your blog, but, for further reading, here is link to thread at UKBT, and then threads that annoying bloke with nick "kmabet" subsequently opened at PL and TDP, claiming that he solved "Holy Grail"; all threads caused a lot of interest and discussion, proving that people tend to accept the unbelievable if it promises profit, until realized that kmabet was only a cheater... and, as known long time ago, there is no such a thing like free meal...
http://uk-betting-tips.co.uk/showthread.php/20149-Slicer-s-bet

http://www.punterslounge.com/forum/f21/work-one-out-lunatism-where-you-96264/

http://www.thedailypunt.com/forum/general-betting-talk/124002-slicers-bet-myth-cracked.html

4 comments:

Brian Bee said...

Maybe i imagined it but im sure around the time of the thread there was a few matches that would fit the criteria whereby the FT 0-0 would be so high and the half time 0-0 not high enough so that come half time you could green up the full time 0-0 to cover your lay loss on the half time market.

thus giving you a risk free punt on their being a goal in the 1st half.

However once it was realised the FT 0-0 would get backed in so much the edge vanished.

Anonymous said...

Whilst I don't agree at all with your reasoning on the penalty shootout, there probably was some small value on the 12-1 shots.

A far better way of assessing the true odds (compared to your over-simplistic method based on a limited sample size) is as follows:

If, say, the draws were around 30% in each match - which is probably roughly in keeping with betfair prices - then approx 60% will then go to penalties (read that somewhere, may have been here?) then around 18% can be expected to go to pens. So 9% for either team if shootout assumed to be 50-50. Therefore some value at 12-1

NB - I am assuming the 60% is correct but haven't checked it. First impression is it seems a little high but on reflection it's probably about right given the pressure in extra-time and a probably reluctance to attack as much as usual.

Your stats on the tightness of 1/4 final games make interesting reading given the huge difference in draws and 0-0s compared to "normal" matches. If under 2.5 goals is 58% then the "normal" draw %, assuming equally matched teams, would be in the region of 30%. The 45% you suggest being the "true" price is way too high. But, 30% is perhaps a little too low due to "abnormal" factors in the games and hence there may well be some value in backing the draw.

(and if the draw is greater than 30% in the 1/4s it can reasonably be expected to be higher in last 16 as well. Which would mean there was greater value on the 12-1 than suggested in the earlier explanation)

Anonymous said...

Hi Cassini,

I was just wondering by using your rating systems exactly how you came up with the fact that the difference in rating, equates to 1/2 or more goals?

Googly

KMAbet said...

I actually got a mention on a blog page now aswell!!

Anonymous isn't the only one who cracked it!!

http://slicersbet.blogspot.com/