Player Manager

The final action of this weekend's football is complete, and another win for the home value picks as Manchester United picked up the 'expected' one goal win over Arsenal. I also had the Unders in this game, thinking that 2.0 was excellent value for a game between two closely matched teams, a fixture that has gone Under 2.5 in the Premier League have 19 Unders in 36 meetings, but a viewpoint not shared by fellow blogger Blue Orange who somehow had the Over 2.5 goals priced up at a surprising 1.31.

I recommend a bet or 2 on the under/overs markets. Betfair have over 1.5 goals at 1.31 but I rate it at 1.12. The over 2.5 goals is up at 2.0 but I rate that at 1.31 so that's what I'll be going for.

Whether the calculations fail to compensate for the seven goals in the Blackburn Rovers game or what I don't know, but there's no way 1.31 (76.34%) can be close to value in a game like this. I'm not picking on Blue Orange by the way - he had a much better pricing and opinion on the Tottenham Hotspur - Chelsea game where he wrote

The goals markets on Betfair have odds similar to my own the only stand out odds are the under 3.5 odds of 1.4 when I believe them to be 1.28. I'd put money on under 3.5 goals and also lay Chelsea at 2.34 as these odds are far too low for a team with bad recent form and away from home.

or indded on the Newcastle United - Liverpool match:

...you could back over 2.5 goals at 2.12 as my odds have that result at 1.68.

Still on football, but a different topic - Echo Sports have come out with something that may be of interest to some of you. Not to me, as personally, the 'pure' fantasty sports seems like a big waste of time, time that can be much better spent actually making money from sports, but this is slightly different.

Player Manager Mashes the eBay and Betfair Business Models To Create A New Generation of Social Betting
Player Manager - http://www.playermanager.com - is a new and unique product based on the English Premier League that allows those who like to bet on player performance to profit from their skill every week. Leading independent football blog Soccerlens describes Player Manager as "taking the game beyond the limits".

The emergence of eBay in the mid-90s allowed individuals to place a "maximum bid" on an item so that eBay could automatically bid for it on their behalf. Betfair's introduction of an open-market betting exchange in 2000 allowed individuals to set their own prices on bets. Now, ten years on, the eBay and Betfair models have been blended to create the next evolution of social sports betting.

Participants in Player Manager create one master-list of Premiership players, setting a maximum bid for each of their selected players that can then be tweaked each gameweek. Like eBay, players are auctioned automatically to the highest bidder in order to create teams and, like Betfair, the price of players is effectively being determined by the punter, not an intermediary.

Compared to your office fantasy football competition, players receive points for real-life sporting occurrences (e.g. goals) but that is where the similarities end. The beauty of Player Manager is that it takes the same amount of time and effort to generate multiple teams as it does to generate one. This innovative model has the effect of spreading risk and profit potential across as many teams as the manager wishes at the push of a button. Teams cost just £1 each and results are paid out every gameweek.

Player Manager, which uses the innovative NEOVIA Payment Network™, is the brainchild of the CEO and Founder of Echo Sports, Jason Bryant. After 16 years in the Financial Services industry spent across Australia, North America and Europe, Jason decided to combine his experience of the trading floor with the regular football player auctions he was running in the City of London's leisure and dining establishments.

"Traditional fantasy football games represent low chances of winning against a great number of participants," said Bryant. "They just weren't providing the pay-off potential given the odds and effort required."

"We've removed as much friction from the experience as possible, whilst ramping up the intelligent gameplay," Bryant continues. "Our automated player allocation process allows you to get on with your life whilst profiting from your skill. I believe that we have created the next-generation of pay-to-play sports gaming."