Monday 19 March 2012

Creative Accounting

After a weekend of football overshadowed by the events surrounding Fabrice Muamba, it feels a little dirty to look at our insignificant wins and losses, but life goes on and the Tipster Table as of tonight is shown above.

The XX Draws / Unders showed a small loss on the weekend - the draws were actually in profit after fluking a 2-2 draw courtesy of a 90' goal from Paris St Germain at Caen. While the losing draw pick at Nancy did at least finish 1-0 for a consolation win on the Unders, the third and final selection of the weekend wasn't ever close, with Juventus running out easy 5-0 winners at Fiorentina.

Football Elite's run of form continued, (12 winners and 6 losers in the last 18 picks), picking up a small profit on the weekend with a win for Augsburg (DNB) v Mainz '05 at 2.2, but a loser today with Bologna unable to beat Chievo.

Geoff's Draws took a miniscule loss, but dropped to fifth, and Peter Nordsted's Drawmaster had one selection (Wigan Athletic v West Bromwich Albion) yesterday which won. He has two more selections from the midweek schedule - Everton v Arsenal and QPR v Liverpool.

The Green Pullover is on a losing run of ten, and just one winner in the last sixteen. No selections from Mark J again, nor from Griff, probably due to the trimmed EPL schedule.

The fallout from my post illustrating how easy it is for punters to take a distorted view of their results continues. 500 to 5000 continues to protest too much, methinks, and he would be better served to look within himself rather than scream at me.

Pierre misses the small, but important, detail that we were talking about the 2012 results here. He writes:
well you can be in profit with losses in january and february. for instance mr500 may have lost 1 in january, 1 in february and actually making 3 in profit. The laws of mathematics are pretty clear about this.
Indeed, and just to clarify, if you lose in January, lose in February and are losing in March, (as 500 has written in his blog), you are not in profit for 2012. Fact.

If you want to look further back in time, then read the blog in question, and you will see that the likelihood of Mr. 500 being in profit since day one is pretty low. In February he wrote:
I am not going to be a complete fool and start off with a massive bank. I have made mistakes with a big bank before and so this time round (learning from my mistakes) I am going to give myself the princely sum of 100 pounds to begin with.
It's up to readers to make their own minds up on this, but to me it's a classic example of how someone paints a more flattering picture of their results than is actually warranted, and the absence of any updates to the P&L on the blog since May 2011 speaks volumes.

Al (little) gets the point, saying:
i don't understand the hostility towards Cass on the comments.

he is educating those new to gambling and may save them time and cash when they think they might have stumbled upon the holy grail (betfair).

symptoms of people with problems include hiding those losses from people around them and themselves.
Al (big), not for the first time, misses the point, writing:
Don't let that get in the way of a chance for the author to try and make someone feel small.

Just one of many completely inaccurate statements from Cassini. The most regular of which is "if you can't show a profit to level stakes you don't have an edge."
Interestingly, that last assertion is backed up with no evidence at all - and for good reason. It is not inaccurate on any level.

A system that profits long-term to level stakes has an edge. A system that loses to level stakes, doesn't.

This is understood by most gamblers, although the O'Dywer school of thought suggests that an edge is derived from bank size rather than from getting better odds on a selection than the true probability. Unfortunately, the O'Dwyer philosophy has been discredited in all academic circles, with only David Icke and his Babylonian Brotherhood continuing as adherents.
It would be most interesting to read Big Al's revolutionary theory on how you can show a level stakes profit without an edge, or a level stakes loss with an edge, but I fear we shall all be disappointed, and have to continue with the boring facts.

Depending on his age, Big Al's paper on this could put him in line for the 2014 Fields Medal! Perhaps this blog will be graced with a preview. Start checking flight prices to Seoul now. Meanwhile, a quick search of the Internet shows no end of support for the tried, tested and proven conventional wisdom:
Finally, once again the Cassini clan will be taking a break, and a well-deserved one at that if I do say so myself. My kids and Mrs. C will be accompanying me on a trip to Hawaii, Maui to be precise, and service will be much reduced for a couple of weeks starting this Saturday. The XX Draws for the weekend will be sent out ahead of departure, and I shall take the laptop with me and give up paradise time to keep my subscribers happy. The sacrifices I make for you all.

3 comments:

laidback said...

Pointing out my current losing run of 10 draws prompted me to look at my figures as generally my draw selections have performed poorly since the turn of the year. All to do with your 'law of variability' no doubt or however it was you described it, but interesting nonetheless that based on a simple mathematical system (not backfitted), the draws had shown a profit in each of the previous two seasons.Indeed by 18th December I had 24 correct from 77 selections this season and due to the prices of some of the selections was again well in profit.However, since that time exactly the same selection method has resulted in just 10 draws from a further 80 selections and as a result the draws are currently making a big hole in the portfolio.
Including draws, my return on investment (after deduction of commission)is just 3.7%. However, remove the draws completely from the equation and all the other bets (of which there have been exactly 600) are showing a very respectable 11.4%, with all the categories in profit. Clearly then I have an edge, as the same selection method produces all the bets. All the same, if the friendly tipster league still exists next season, unless things improve dramatically I shall be proofing any category but draws!

BigAl said...

A system that profits long-term to level stakes has an edge. CORRECT

A system that loses to level stakes, doesn't. NOT NECESSARILY CORRECT.

It would be most interesting to read Big Al's revolutionary theory on how you can show a level stakes profit without an edge. UMM, YOU THINK THAT'S WHAT I SAID?

Have a think. It's really not difficult. Throw it open to your readers if you really need to.

Average Guy said...

Regarding 500-5000, don't pick on those less fortunate than you, after all the likes of him are probably paying for your little vacation. What really surprises me is the fact that his comments provoke you so much, are you a sensitive man ?