Freak Show

Football Elite had one short-list bet today, and Hannover obliged at 3.7 with a healthy 4-1 win. He has a couple more short-list selections tomorrow. My ratings actually had Hannover - Werder Bremen as a draw, but the Bundesliga strike-rate on draws is just 25% so I went with FE's selection and that proved a good decision. Mainz were layed at 1.99 but won 2-0 to drop the ROI on the Laying System there to 75.74%.

The Elo ratings saw a little action in the lower leagues, leaving the League Cup matches well alone. Of the two games in League One, and the eleven in the Conference, five were predicted as draws, and three of those five finished that way - the games at Dagenham & Redbridge, Darlington and Gateshead. The matches at Altrincham and Hayes & Yeading United were misses. AFC Wimbledon v Crawley Town on Thursday is also predicted a draw.

I mentioned a study into the "well documented NFL home-underdog anomaly" in a post recently, and a little more research tells me that between 1980 and 2001, (the data is a little old), just 48.8% of home favourites and 46.7% of visiting favourites covered the spread. Steven Levitt, of Freakonomics fame (check it out if you haven't already), found that bookmakers are well aware that more money (approximately 56.1%) is bet on favourites than underdogs, and so skew the line to take advantage of this fact, and increase profits.