Spaghetti Boltonaise

Always nice to start the weekend off with a winner, and the Hamburg v Bayern Munich match finished a draw as predicted here yesterday, and priced at a generous 3.5.

The precise expectation on this game was 0.04, for those who think that one decimal place is not enough. I found another problem with the codes assigned to each team, with Bologna v Juventus throwing up a surprising price until I realised that BOL was assigned to Bolton. After the correction, this game is now rated a strong draw.

Ben @ Sports Trading Life had a few words to say about value in the draw, essentially confirming that blindly backing the draw will, to the surprise of no one, not work. However, the key as with everything in betting, is to be selective. When I was in my teens, I was told that the one big advantage punters had over bookies is that they can choose when to bet. While bookies have to price up every race (in those days betting WAS racing), we don't; we can cherry-pick.

In the Bundesliga today, Freiburg look over-priced at 2.32 v FC Kaiserslautern, as do Hannover 96 at 2.16 v Koln, and Eintracht Frankfurt at 2.96 v Schalke 04.