Tuesday 30 August 2016

Frossi The No Man

The Draw-4 System has a stellar weekend with three winners from three selections. Tottenham Hotspur v Liverpool and Crystal Palace v AFC Bournemouth on Saturday were followed by a perfect draw on Sunday between West Bromwich Albion and Middlesbrough.

Courtesy of Greg Evans and The Football Pink, I was pleased to read that I am not the only person in history who thinks the 0:0 draw is 'perfect'.

Although Mr. Evans pulled his quote below from the (premature) Gazetta World article on the decrease in Serie A 0:0 results last year:
The great Italian player and coach Annibale Frossi once said: “0-0 is the perfect result because it is the expression of total balance between the attack and the defence of the two teams"
other sources suggest that Frossi "OFTEN" declared that "the perfect result to a football game is 0–0".

The Gazeeta World article I mentioned was premature because after a slow start to the 0:0 scoreline last season, perfect results returned to ultimately exceed the totals of 2014-15 and 2013-14.

So after three rounds, the basic Draw-4 System is up 7.08 points from 18 bets, an ROI of 41.6%.

Only one Away Steamer in the EPL this weekend, and Liverpool came up short.

The only Bundesliga match I want to write about is the Bayern Munich bet on Friday night, which paid off without any worries - 2:0 up after 13 minutes, and running out 6:0 winners. Werder Bremen will be glad to get that fixture out of the way, having lost their previous four games in Munich by 6:1, 5:2, 6:0 and 5:0. This is a rather one-sided fixture!
In baseball, Sunday saw the San Francisco Giants join the sub -300 (75%+ Implied Probability) club as 1.32 favourites to beat the Atlanta Braves, but were available pre-game on Betfair at 1.35. They cruised to a 13-4 win and became the 13th hot favourite to win, with just 2 losses.

Recorded against the (usually beatable) official lines, the profit on the season so far is 1.97 points, an ROI of 13.1 %.
Unsophisticated bettors may balk at backing such short priced favourites, but it is hard to argue with the numbers over the past three seasons. As I wrote in October last year regarding the long established reverse Favourite-Longshot bias in baseball has apparently vanished:
but clearly things have changed and the conclusion of a famous study from 1994, updated in 2003, doesn't seem to hold true today
I also wrote in that post that:
It's also interesting that fewer teams, a lot fewer in fact, have been starting at 1.5 or less in the last few seasons. The 356 in 2004 became just 124 ten years later. 
And so far in 2016? Already 218 bets, with a full month to go. 53 of those, not surprisingly, are the best record Chicago Cubs, although it's a little surprising to see the team with the second best record (Texas Rangers) as short as 1.5 only three times so far, but they did win all three. The last two were in the second half of August, so expect them to be a bet in September.

2 comments:

fizzer555 said...

Hi Cassini,

Yes you have made me a believer in MLB Shorts (or whatever title you have for them - you usually come up with better names!).

I think the reason the Texas Rangers have not been on the list much this year is because, unlike the Cubs where every baseball watcher has had them as the clear No1 rated team all year, there are a lot of people who are not convinced by the Rangers (me included), hence the better odds.

Doesn't mean I'm right of course but I have the Cubs clear top rated and also have the Nats, Red Sox, Blue Jays, Dodgers and others well ahead of the Rangers.

What the Rangers have been outstanding at is winning close games. In fact last night they beat the Mariners 8-7 and that was the 30th game they have won this season by 1 run. In contrast they have only lost 8 by a 1-run margin. That ratio is exceptional. A .789 winning percentage in one-run contests would top the modern era single-season record (since 1900), which was set by the 2012 Orioles, who went 29-9 in such games (.763).

Those narrow wins, along with some heavy defeats along the way, doesn't push up their ratings much so, up until recently, you can see why the odds have been more generous on the Rangers.

Having said that, their rating is improving. They made good acquisitions at the trade deadline at the end of July, notably catcher Jonathan Lucroy, and, in addition to Cole Hamels being an elite Starting Pitcher all year, Yu Darvish has had more success with the help of more run support and the Rangers have won the last 5 games that he has started.

Given all that I'd agree that shorter odds are likely on the Rangers going forward. For me, unlikely to be value in following the Rangers in September.

SportsPicksSystem said...

Do you know Sports Data Query Language (SDQL)? It's great to check systems past performance. The one you play can be queried by line < -300. As you can see it's pretty risky since 2004, it's down by 39.65 units. You can also get the performance by season (line < -300 and season). The last 3 seasons have been profitable.

You can to check by yourself
http://sportsdatabase.com/mlb/query?output=default&su=1&sdql=line+%3C+-300+and+season&submit=++S+D+Q+L+%21++

BTW Nice blog