Selective Laying

I spent some more time looking at the data from last season, and need to clear up a couple of points raised by Joep. One is that the prices used are from Bet365, and the second is that I do not use Betfair if I am subject to the Premium Charge, but while that was an issue for last season, it isn't right now, with my total charges running at 20.62%. So the prices and the assumed 5% commission can probably usually be bettered, but I prefer to err on the side of caution.

SimonM said...

Fascinating -- any conclusions on the reasons? Are the markets more efficient in Italy and Spain? Less attention paid to Germany? Or is it the nature of the football -- Bundesliga being a more open championship than Serie A or La Liga? Whatever the reason, thanks for the blog. Real food for thought with each post.

Certainly, the Bundesliga is arguably more competitive than Spain with Bayern Munich averaging 2.06 points per game last season compared with Barcelona's 2.61, but Internazionale's 2.16 points a game puts Serie A closer to the Bundesliga than to La Liga by this measure. France and Germany are almost identical too, but there are definite differences between these two leagues when looking at the performance of favourites. It's also true that worldwide, there is less interest in German games than Italian or Spanish, but it is still a major league - we're not talking Ryman League here, so it's hard to believe that the prices should be any less accurate than those of the other top leagues. Last season every team won at least two away games, something not seen in the other leagues, and there were some frankly bizarre scorelines which we have already seen again this season (Bayer Leverkusen 3-6 Borussia Moenchengladbach).

Anonymous asked "

What would the total P/L be across all those Leagues?",

and the rest of this post should answer that question. I mentioned that I included the Scottish Premier in my data yesterday, but it really doesn't belong in such exalted company, so I am excluding it from here on.

Backing the favourite in every match in the top five European Leagues would have resulted in a -2.61% ROI. As mentioned yesterday, this strategy would have been profitable in Italy and Spain. Laying the favourite in every game would have resulted in a loss of 1.85%.

I looked at the results of laying favourites at various price ranges.

Laying every odds on favourite would have been profitable only in Germany (25.38%) and France (2.23%). Across all leagues, the total loss would have been just 0.32%.

Laying just those favourites priced at 1.5 or less, and the loss across all leagues would have been 7.19%. Again this would be profitable in Germany (15.68%).

Narrowing the bands down still further, and laying any favourite priced at 1.19 or less would not have been a good strategy - just one winner (in France) from 49 bets for a loss of 86.55%, but if we take these out of the equation, things get interesting.

In Italy, favourites priced between 1.4 and 1.89 are overall value to back, whereas in Spain, favourites need to be priced at 1.7 and above to be value. Laying at prices between 1.3 to 1.69 is profitable, but not hugely. Overall, laying the favourite in Spain doesn't appear to be a profitable strategy.

In the Premier League, laying favourites priced at 1.9 or more is profitable (4.21%).

Overall France is pretty much a wash. Laying all favourites would have resulted in a 1.17% ROI, although favourites in the 1.5 to 1.69 are profitable to lay (33.49%).

That's a lot of numbers to take in, but to summarise, a strategy of laying all odds-on favourites across all leagues would be unwise, but with a few tweaks, it has some potential.

These numbers are from last season only, so too small a sample to draw any firm conclusions from, but just to throw it out there, if we exclude Italy and Spain from our selections, as well as any favourites priced below 1.3, we would have a total of 478 lays, and a profit of 63.47 units (13.28%). Not too shabby.

When time permits, I'll go back to earlier seasons and see if these findings hold true longer term. As I said yesterday, it looks like a low-risk strategy that could easily be quite profitable.

Laying In The Bundesliga

The storm at work has just about abated, and I finally have my life back.

I've written before about how the different football leagues I follow all have their own unique personalities, and this suspicion is borne out after looking at the numbers for last season.

The best league for backing the favourites was Serie A, where 1 unit bet on every match would have netted (assuming 5% commission) 23.89 units. This strategy would also have been profitable in Spain, but a losing idea in France, England, Scotland and Germany.

When I looked at the returns from a strategy of laying odds-on favourites, Germany was hugely profitable, with a profit of 40.6 units to a 1 risk. Two other leagues were also profitable, but only slightly, while in Spain this strategy would have lost you 27.14 units.

Thinking this might have been something of a fluke, I decided to look at how this would have played out in 2008-09 and again this would have been a profitable strategy in Germany, although not surprisingly by less than in 2009-10.

More work to do of course, but at first sight it looks a promising low-risk strategy.

Bettor Than Before

For anyone considering moving to California, but for whom a major stumbling block is the unavailability of Betfair in the United States, there is promising news, even if it will not take effect until May 2012, just seven months before the world ends anyway.

The promising news is:

In the US, the state of California took a step towards the implementation of Betfair-style exchange betting last week after a proposed bill from Assembly Speaker John Perez passed the Assembly Government Organization and Appropriations Committees following a compromise deal.

Assembly Bill 2414, if passed as is, would increase the amount of money horseracing tracks can take from wagers while also putting measures in place to attract the prestigious Breeder's Cup to California on a permanent basis.

However, the most controversial portion of the proposed legislation would allow bettors to take side bets and set their own odds. This had been opposed by Magna International Developments, owner of the Santa Anita Park and Golden Gate Fields tracks, and members of the California Thoroughbred Trainers but, a last minute compromise brokered by State Senator Ron Calderon saw the Bill pass through the committees unanimously.

Although the proposed legislation was originally due to come into force immediately after passage, Calderon's compromise would see implementation of exchange betting delayed until May 2012 in order to permit tracks and the California Horse Racing Board to study its effects.

The compromise saw Magna International Development withdraw its opposition to the plan and the legislation subsequently passed through the state’s Assembly last week on its way to the Senate.

According to a report from the Pasadena Star-News newspaper, opposition to the proposed legislation now comes ‘primarily from thoroughbred trainers and the owners of Churchill Downs in Kentucky’. Trainers see exchange betting as a first step towards race fixing and have cited suspected examples in England and Australia.

“We remain opposed to this Bill,” said Darrell Vienna, Southern California Vice-President for the California Thoroughbred Trainers.

“But, amended it's better than before.”

Yes, I would say so. In a country that likes to call itself the "land of the free" people really aren't very free. Steve Chapman wrote a very sensible piece in the Chicago Tribune:

Whenever the federal government tries to prohibit citizens from engaging in “a peaceful, popular, and enjoyable activity,” said Steve Chapman, people ignore the law and do it anyway. That’s why Congress should move forward with a proposal to lift the ban on online gambling. “Law or no,” millions of Americans with broadband connections spend $6 billion a year on offshore gambling sites, making the U.S. “the biggest online betting market on the planet.” That represents a massive amount of lost tax revenue for the U.S. treasury.

Some people consider gambling immoral, but in a country where we condone lotteries and casinos, “there is no moral argument” for excluding one type of gambling. Indeed, at this point the main argument against legalizing online gambling is that it will hurt casinos, off-track betting parlors, and state lotteries—but that’s life in the free-enterprise system. As for the charge that legalizing online gambling will transform millions into gambling addicts, Great Britain made it legal five years ago, with no upsurge in addiction. So let’s grow up. Internet gambling can’t be stopped. Why try?

Traceability

The benefits of the exchanges are outlined to Gambling Minister John Penrose MP in an open letter from Charlie Brooks of the Daily Telegraph:

You may not have been expecting to hear from me again so soon, but the ongoing impact of betting exchanges on horse racing and the scandal enveloping the Pakistan cricket team force my pen to paper.

At first glance, one might not think that a squeeze on the finances of British racing and the alleged cancerous corruption on the subcontinent are connected. But they are very much part of the same landscape, which is now your parish to sort out.

The success of betting exchanges has been a mixed blessing for horse racing. On the one hand, they have provided transparency to betting transactions previously unheard of. It is now possible, for instance, to monitor who is consistently benefiting from below par performances from horses, trainers or jockeys – which was impossible before the advent of exchanges. But the 'sunny skies’ of the exchanges are contributing significantly to the drought which horse racing is now coming to terms with.

A significant number of individuals are 'bookmaking’ on the exchanges. They are backing and laying horses, sometimes with the help of computers, and effectively being bookmakers without the burden of overheads that licensed bookmakers face. The most significant of which is the 10 per cent Levy on profits.

You, Mr. Penrose, will have to decide when recreational gambling on an exchange becomes earning a living? It is inevitable that new legislation will have to be passed. Failure to grasp this nettle will make a mockery of the necessity for bookmakers to hold a licence.

But it’s the positive aspects of exchange betting which, I believe, you should now be extolling to the cricket world. Whether they like it or not, cricket and gambling are bedfellows and the tentacles of evil are reaching around the globe.

An enlightened International Cricket Council should, with your encouragement, be considering setting up their own betting exchange; the profits of which could be returned to the sport. An official exchange is the best possible way to tackle the corruptness of illegal bookmakers. It would then, for instance, be easy to see the origin of unusual amounts of money wagered on no balls, bizarre run outs etc.

Cricket has never benefited from betting, there is no reason why it should have done. Which means there will be none of the conflicts, which are now causing strife in the horse racing world.

One side effect of the Pakistan Cricket scandal is that the Indian government is reportedly looking at proposals to legalise the country's multi-million-dollar underground gambling market to tackle corruption in cricket.

India is regarded as the hotbed of global betting syndicates, with gamblers and bookmakers involved in a massive network of illegal "spot-fixing" -- when stakes are pitched on individual balls or on short passages of play.

"The aim is to ascertain whether legalized betting can exist in India without the stigma attached to it now. So, we are looking at the pros and cons with great care," an unnamed sport ministry official told the Times of India.

Croydon Athletic

As a former Croydonian, the furore surrounding Mazhar Majeed and his association with Croydon Athletic, a club I have visited many times, is of particular interest.

A good run in the past couple of years, the result of a 'surprisingly talented squad', is perhaps now explained, and probably also at an end.

In the Financial Action Task Force's report from July 2009, the funding of a non professional football club as a means of money laundering was highlighted as an example (albeit from France), and there appear to be similarities with the situation at Croydon, where the club has gone from being £46,000 in the black in 2006, to £382,000 in the red a little over a year ago.

Investments in football clubs can be used to integrate money of illegal origin into the financial system, akin to investment of proceeds crime in real estate. Football clubs are indeed seen by criminals as the perfect vehicles for money laundering.

Following the receipt of a STR made by an accountant, a European FIU investigated a case regarding the funding of an amateur football club. It appeared that the accounts of the club were regularly in deficit and were balanced at the end of the season by exceptional payments from a businessman through a number of his companies. This businessman was the president of the club; however, his investments appeared suspicious for the following reasons:

(1) the funding was provided without any negotiated compensation, neither financial nor sportive,

(2) the funding was provided through the companies of the businessman to their prejudice: the
amounts invested in the football club were extremely disproportionate to the companies' financial possibilities.

Further investigation by the FIU revealed that the accounting information of some of the companies had not been correctly registered as required by the law. So it was not possible to verify the exact financial capacities of those companies. Finally the financial analysis revealed gaps between the accounting documents showing the breakout of the various payments for funding the club and financial flows observed on the bank accounts of the various companies of the businessman, the president of the club.

By excessive withdrawal of funds from the treasury of its companies without economic justification and in a way which compromises the financial balance of those companies, the businessman was misusing company assets, which is a criminal offence. The funds derived from this offence are illegal and their use to fund the football club constituted a ML [Money
Laundering] offence. The case was transmitted to the public prosecutor on the basis of a presumption of misuse of company assets and laundering of proceeds from the misuse of company assets.

Found Money

There's an interesting article on the Yahoo!Finance page today which reports on a study which found that winning a big jackpot is often not the answer to all ones financial problems.

The article and study touch on 'found money' which presumably would include winnings from the betting exchanges, and no doubt some people do treat this differently from 'earned' money, but I think once you get serious about trading, it's all the same. For most of us, the exchanges don't give us that one-time huge win which perhaps would be easy to treat differently, but when the winnings are slow and steady, it's a lot easier to treat it the same way as earned income.

Here's the article in full:

In the new movie "Lottery Ticket," the rapper Bow Wow plays a sneaker salesman from a poor part of town who has to survive a three-day weekend after his neighbors find out he's holding the winning numbers.

But for financially troubled consumers, the size of the jackpot may not matter: Five years out, people who win $150,000 are just as likely to declare bankruptcy as those who win less than $10,000.

That's according to a new study by researchers at the University of Kentucky, the University of Pittsburgh and the Vanderbilt University Law School. The paper appears in a forthcoming issue of the Review of Economics and Statistics.

"I've always been interested in whether you could solve people's problems to some extent by giving them additional cash," says Mark Hoekstra, assistant economics professor at Pittsburgh, who co-authored the paper with Kentucky's Scott Hankins and Vanderbilt's Paige Marta Skiba. "And anecdotally you always hear these things about lottery winners -- someone wins a bunch of money and the story doesn't end very well. But we weren't aware of any real empirical evidence on whether this was true."

The researchers identified 35,000 people who won between $600 and $150,000 in Florida's Fantasy 5 lottery game from April 1993 through November 2002. (They eliminated the 153 people who won more than $150,000). They cross-referenced that list with people who filed Chapter 7 or Chapter 13 petitions in Florida five years prior to winning the lottery and five years afterward. Then they compared people who received $50,000 to $150,000 to those who won less than $10,000.

They found 1,943 winners -- or 5.5 percent -- declared bankruptcy within five years of taking home the jackpot. While the bigger winners were 50 percent less likely than small winners to file for bankruptcy within 24 months, they were more likely to file for bankruptcy three to five years after winning. The net result is that within five years, large winners were just as likely to file for bankruptcy as small winners.

Moreover, when people who won $25,000 to $150,000 did file for bankruptcy, their net assets were just $8,000 higher than those who had won less than $1,500. Bottom line: The median big winner took home $65,000 in cash. That would be enough, on average, to pay off all unsecured debt or to boost the equity in new or existing assets. Instead, the big jackpots simply evaporated.

"The fact that winning a large sum of money only postponed bankruptcy rather than prevented it didn't surprise me too much," says Hoekstra. "But I was struck by the fact that when the recipients of large sums did file for bankruptcy, they didn't have much of anything to show for the winnings they had received. It didn't go toward a house, paying down debts or buying assets that were worth something a few years later. We couldn't find any evidence that five years earlier, these people had received what would be, for many people, a life-changing amount of money."

What happened? Hoekstra says he can only speculate. "We know quite a lot about lottery winners' finances once they file for bankruptcy, but we certainly don't know what they were thinking when they won the money," he says. "It's possible that people in our sample weren't used to dealing with large sums of money, and thus they may not have used it wisely."

Mental accounting may also play a role. "We treat 'found money' differently than money we earn. So if you find $20 on the sidewalk, you may decide to blow it on a nice dinner, whereas if you earned it you wouldn't have done that," Hoekstra says. (And lottery winnings are the ultimate "found money.") Other possible suspects: A lack of financial literacy or a surplus of impatience -- some people would rather have fun today than be financially secure five years in the future.

The researchers also found that while large winners lived in somewhat more expensive houses than small winners, they were no more likely to own a home outright, and had no more equity in their homes than small winners. This suggests that larger winners were not strategically planning their bankruptcies and gaming the homestead exemption in Florida bankruptcy law, which allows filers to keep their primary residence. If this were the case, winners would have bought a home for cash or paid off their existing mortgage prior to filing, in order to keep some of their assets out of bankruptcy.

What Policy Makers Can Learn

The study has policy implications for governments deciding how to help heavily indebted people who are struggling during economic downturns, Hoekstra says. It appears the simplest solution -- giving them cash -- doesn't enhance longer-term financial stability, and only postpones, rather than avoids, bankruptcy. The lottery findings are consistent with a 2007 research paper that showed consumers initially used their 2001 federal rebate checks to reduce debt, but eventually debt returned to its pre-rebate level.

"Our research suggests that perhaps there is something more systematic about the types of people who get themselves into financial trouble -- and the appropriate policy prescription for helping them out is going to be considerably more complex than giving them additional resources," says Hoekstra.

In addition, the findings challenge the assumption that bankruptcy is caused primarily by major financial shocks.

"Winning the lottery undid any negative shock (that previously occurred) for the large winners, and they still ended up filing for bankruptcy," Hoekstra says. "That is inconsistent with the idea that the only people who file for bankruptcy are those with negative shocks such as divorce, job loss or health issues."

Finally, if you're one of those people who fantasizes that winning the lottery will fix your financial woes, it's time to stop dreaming and get a real handle on your money. "Our results suggest that people in financial trouble shouldn't expect that winning $100,000 will cause a lasting impact in their finances," Hoekstra says. "On average, that doesn't appear to happen."

Pyjama Punting

Another ScienceDaily article, this one from 2008:

People who gamble from the comfort of their home tend to think they're more in control of their gambling than people who gamble in casinos, according to a new study in the Journal of Consumer Research.

Authors June Cotte (University of Western Ontario) and Kathryn A. Latour (University of Nevada-Las Vegas) found surprisingly little previous research on their subject: the habits and motivations of online gamblers, who contribute to a $10 billion a year industry.

Their study found that, unlike casino gamblers, who seek thrills and social experiences, online gamblers seek the anonymity their home computers provide. "For casino gamblers, gambling provides a perceived social connection with unknown others in a sense of shared fates and temporary community. Online gamblers, on the contrary, perceive a lack of social connections in the online realm."

The researchers conducted a study of 30 Las Vegas gamblers. Ten were online gamblers and 20 were casino gamblers, and all considered themselves to be regular gamblers. The study involved in-depth interviews using visual images and collages created by the participants.

In the course of the study, the authors found significant differences in perceptions and attitudes between people who gamble in casinos and people who gamble on their home computers. Because sensations are not as intense in online gambling, online gamblers tend to play for longer amounts of time, and they think they're more in control of their gambling, the authors found.

The authors believe that regulating online gambling may remove the excitement of doing something illicit.

"When gambling consumption moves into the home, gambling behavior becomes a part of everyday living. When not seen as reserved solely as behavior for an outing, gambling is more likely to become an insidiously integrated component of a consumer's life," the authors conclude.

Winter Draws On

September is here, and one more month to go until the 'money months' arrive. August is my 9th best month, September is 8th, and then the top six are October through March, though not in that order.

August was already a short month, and the half-month I was trading saw nothing to write home about. Things have been busy at work, with longer hours in the office expected, so there has been less time available for trading than usual. It was at least profitable, but then again it was also the least profitable green month in four years. Since August 2006 to be precise.

The Monday night match between Atletico Madrid and Sporting de Gijon was a pleasing result, with the Atletico Madrid -1.5,-2 coming in comfortably (4-0), and as Richard commented "...in hindsight that was like giving money away!" Hindsight's great! 2.21 was a value price, (or I wouldn't have backed it), and maybe I should have invested more, but as Richard added, it's best to be cautious early in the season.

There probably won't be any football betting from me for a couple of weeks now, with the International break coming up, meaning that Spain and Italy start their season, play one game, and then take a two week break. Seems a little strange really. At least get a couple of games in!

ScienceDaily has an interesting article about gamblers and rational thinking today:

Gamblers who think they have a "hot hand," only to end up walking away with a loss, may nonetheless be making "rational" decisions, according to new research from University of Minnesota psychologists. The study finds that because humans are making decisions based on how we think the world works, if erroneous beliefs are held, it can result in behavior that looks distinctly irrational.

This research, forthcoming in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) "Early Edition," examines the roots of a seemingly irrational human decision strategy that occurs in so-called binary choice tasks, which has perplexed researchers in economics, psychology and neuroscience for decades. In these tasks, subjects are repeatedly asked to choose between two options, with one option having a higher probability of being correct than the other (imagine a biased coin that will land on heads 70 percent of trials, and tails on 30 percent of trials). While the right strategy is to always pick the higher probability option, subjects instead choose the options in proportion to the probability of it being correct.

"The overarching idea is that there is typically structure in the world, and it makes sense that when we make decisions, we try to understand the structure in order to exploit it," says Shawn Green, a post-doctoral fellow in the College of Liberal Arts' Department of Psychology and Center for Cognitive Sciences. "One of the simplest kinds of 'structure' is when the outcome that just occurred tells you something about what is likely to happen next."

"Where people go astray is when they base their decisions on beliefs that are different than what is actually present in the world," says Green. "In the coin example, if you toss a coin five times and all five times are heads, should you pick heads or tails on the next flip? Assuming the coin is fair, it doesn't matter -- the five previous heads don't change the probability of heads on the next flip -- it's still 50 percent -- but people nevertheless act as though those previous flips influence the next one."

Green says when things are actually independent over time, meaning they don't have any structure, people will interpret results through possible structures, a way of thinking often seen among gamblers. For example, gamblers who win three hands in a row, may believe themselves to be "hot" and thus more likely to win the next hand. Green, with advisors Daniel Kersten and Paul Schrater, showed that similar behaviors are seen even in an optimal, fully rational computer learner given similar incorrect beliefs about the world.

Furthermore, when the context of the task was changed so that subjects understood that the outcomes were actually independent, a drastic shift in their behavior was noted, with subjects all doing the "right" thing for the way the world actually worked.

"This demonstrates that given the right world model, humans are more than capable of easily learning to make optimal decisions," Green says.

The paper "Alterations in choice behavior by manipulations of world model," forthcoming in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), was co-authored by C. Shawn Green, Charles Benson, Daniel Kersten and Paul Schrater in the Department of Psychology, College of Liberal Arts, University of Minnesota.

Kuchar Falling Star

A decidedly average weekend finally took off on my last action of yesterday. In PGA's ‘The Barclays’, I layed Martin Laird at 1.08 on BETDAQ, while he was 1.1 to back on Betfair, and 25 minutes later, after a sudden death play-off, Matt Kuchar was the winner. The lowest price matched on Betfair was 1.1 and liquidity on BETDAQ for golf isn't too shabby these days, with over £1.7m matched on this event.

Football Elite had a down weekend, with the one Recommended Bet, St Pauli, losing to an 87th minute goal versus TSG Hoffenheim. Their Short-List bets also lost overall with just one winner in Sampdoria at 2.26. Blackpool and Bolton drew, while Blackburn Rovers and Udinese both lost.

While there were some matches that went to form in the top leagues, the Bundesliga defies all logic. Never the most predictable of leagues, of nine matches this weekend, just three favourites won. Beaten at short odds on were Bayern Munich (1.5), Nuremberg (2.0), Schalke 04 (1.41), Wolfsburg (1.64) and Bayer Leverkusen (1.43). 10 Away wins to 7 Home wins, with 1 draw so far.

The English Premier League was better, with just the results at Tottenham Hotspur and Sunderland off by much. Manchester United were -3 on the ratings and won by exactly that, and draws were predicted at Aston Villa and Fulham. On for two there.

In France, four draws were expected, with just the one at Bordeaux coming in. Caen couldn’t, losing to two late goals, and Lille at 1.58 failed to beat Nice.

A good early strategy would appear to be ‘lay the favourite’, especially in Germany.

Scott at Sport is for Betting commented that Andrew Black’s Bettorlogic.com measures the impact of players by results. For example, they have this to say about my favourite Italian team:

Cagliari have also failed to make any impact in the transfer market, although the return on loan of striker Robert Acquafresca should be a big boost with the Italian having made a major impact in his last spell here in 2008/09 when he played 26 of their 38 games with a PPG of 1.50 compared to 1.17 without him. If this 28% improvement were applied to their points total from last season it would have them challenging for a Europa Cup spot.

There are some great statistics there, but much of the site’s contents are not free. Any happy or disappointed members out there? The cost appears to be £20 a month for unlimited access. Not too bad, but better, I’m sure, with a referral / Promo Code (hint, hint).

I spent some time looking at the teams who perform significantly better on home soil or away. It’s an interesting list – more teams than I would have expected pick up more points away from home than at home – Crystal Palace, Dundee United, Lazio, Racing Santander, Nancy, Werder Bremen, Wolfsburg and Cologne to name a few of the top teams.

OK, so top teams and Crystal Palace.

Some of the top teams playing far better at home than away are Fulham, St Mirren, Genoa, Udinese, Bari, Mallorca, Atletico Madrid, Espanyol, Villareal, Almeria, Mainz 05 and Borussia Moenchengladbach.

Which brings me neatly to tonight’s Atletico Madrid v Sporting de Gijon tomorrow, and Gijon are not good away. More accurately, Gijon are just not good, but they under-perform on the road. My ratings have Atletico Madrid -1.25 and Atletico Madrid -1,-1.5 has been taken at 2.21. The risk is that Atletico will be a little flat after their heroics on Friday night.

Just two more days to go in a shortened trading August, and for the third consecutive month, it appears my P&L will be in three figures. This happened just four times in the previous three years, so to hit three in a row is unusual. Summer is always quiet, but this is even more quiet than usual. I suppose I could always try cricket, but it’s not a sport that interests me, and after today’s News of the World exclusive, that’s not likely to change.

Things typically pick up in September though, with football becoming more settled, and the NFL getting under way in the US. NFL also stands for Not For Long because once the season starts, it just flies by, but in October the NBA starts up, and then before you know it, another year is in the books and the whole cycle starts over.

Specialisation

After some basically reserve teams were put out by some of the Premier League clubs in midweek’s League Cup matches, I mentioned that I had made the decision not to include these results for Premier League teams in the Elo ratings.

I received a great comment, Anonymously, which said:

It seems reasonably fair to cast aside many of those Carling Cup games. But there are still some worthy of inclusion e.g. Wigan and Sunderland. You have information on these teams - use it.

Ignoring teams with weakened teams raises another question. What do you do when teams are forced to play League games with teams weakened to various degrees by injuries and suspensions? Adjustments need to be made. You can't rely on ratings which steadfastly ignore what strength of team has been fielded.

Say, for example, Chelsea had to play their next 10 games without Drogba. As far as I can tell from what you've said about your ratings, this wouldn't show in your ratings.

It's not easily done (accurately) but there are ways and means. When he is absent you should be tweaking your workings so Chelsea's results without him are achieved with a lower Elo rating.

These are all valid ideas, but the problem is that there just isn’t the time available, and more importantly, they require adding a lot of subjectivity to the ratings. The suggestion to exclude say Blackpool’s result because they made 10 changes to their team, but include Wigan’s and Sunderland’s results means that a line needs to be drawn somewhere. What number of changes invalidates a team’s result? If it is reasonable to exclude a team after they make 10 changes, should I exclude a team making 6 changes or 4? It seems better to me to treat these matches as nothing more than friendlies.

As the poster says, I do not adjust the ratings if a star player is absent from a team for some reason. Again, it’s too subjective. No one would deny that Drogba is a key member of the Chelsea team, but if he doesn’t play, someone else replaces him so evaluating his absence becomes fraught with problems. If he is replaced by a youth team player, that’s one thing, but if Chelsea loan a £30 million player to fill in, that’s quite another.

The comment continues:

It's similar to the type of change you need to make if a team has a numerical advantage for part of a game. I presume you already do this. Playing the best part of a game with 10 men makes an enormous difference.

Likewise, what should you be doing if a team signs a player who clearly, and immediately, improves their team. You need to up their rating appropriately. Your weighting of results alone will not be enough to capture the effect (there are players who fit this bill and won't need bedding in time)

I do not adjust the ratings to account for red cards. Again, the problem is that it is subjective. One of the most misleading headlines in football is “10 Man Team Beats Other Team” and then you read the report only to find that the sending-off was after 83 minutes or something. A sending off in the 90th minute is clearly less influential than a first minute dismissal.

The approach I take to “special situations” such as if a team makes a significant change, managerial of players, or undergoes another significant change such as relegation or administration, is to continue to update the ratings objectively per the results based formula, but flag the team as “on probation” meaning no bets, or maybe small ‘interest-only’ bets.

As the writer says,

To try and do those things for all the Leagues you maintain your ratings for is a near impossible task. You would need immense knowledge of European football and there wouldn't be enough time. You would need to know every player in every League and take time analysing every match and line-up.

Which is why it's important to concentrate on Leagues you know well and can follow properly.

There will be experts in every League who help shape the markets and will take in all these factors and many more besides. Ratings purely based on results are not enough to beat the markets long-term and anyone who thinks they are is simply kidding themselves. Specialisation into certain markets and expertise and knowledge in these markets is key.

It’s hard to disagree with the statement that one needs to specialize, and anyone who chooses to bet on football markets is up against a lot of competition. There is so much press coverage of the top leagues, and the markets are so efficient, that the implied probabilities are usually pretty accurate, but it is by no means impossible to find an edge as evidenced by the success consistently achieved by Football Elite.

Here is someone who specializes in the top leagues of England, France, Germany, Italy and Spain and season after season makes a profit. I am not familiar with his selection process, but he starts with certain filters, and after further analysis the end result is that he finds selections that are value. Very few selections in fact, and perhaps that is the key right there.

For me, my ratings are the first step, with the ‘on probation’ flag the next filter, with my ‘subjective’ research the next step. Football is not my main interest on the exchanges, (specialising on less popular sports works better for me when it comes to real money), but it is a fascinating challenge. At first sight, it seems like finding value should be a simple matter. Two teams, three possible outcomes. How hard can it be?

Well, five years on, and while the losses have been staunched and last season was profitable, there’s plenty of room for improvement. Matches are not decided on paper or in the computer as results like Tottenham Hotspur 0 Wigan Athletic 1 remind us almost every week, but winning at sports betting is a marathon and not a sprint. Some days it seems that nothing goes right, yet on other days, everything follows the script. September may be close, but most leagues still need a few more rounds of matches before I have the same confidence in the ratings that I had last season.

Yes We Caen

Still in August, and so still very little form to go on, but looking ahead to the weekend there are some interesting matches which if we were further into the season, would be worthy of an investment.

The Premier League throws up four teams expected to win by two or more goals, and the prices reflect this. The Elo ratings have Chelsea -3 over Stoke City, and the Asian Handicap at -2.5,-3 is around 2.2. Manchester United are also -3, with Tottenham Hotspur at -2.5. On the Asian Handicap, Spurs -1.5,-2 are 2.0. Liverpool are -2 versus West Bromwich Albion. Favoured by 0.5 goals are Wolverhampton Wanderers (2.5) v Newcastle United, and Bolton Wanderers (2.22) v Birmingham City.

In Germany, newly promoted teams Kaiserslautern and St Pauli both play their opening home games. While the former have a tough game tonight versus Bayern Munich, St Pauli are available at 3.35 and in front of their notoriously enthusiastic and politically sound fans, and after a good start last week, they look value to beat Hoffenheim. Other stand-outs are Schalke ’04 v Hannover at 1.41 and Nuremberg v Freiburg at 2.0 and Stuttgart (2.36) versus Dortmund.

La Ligue looks to have a lot of close games, with only Lille (1.58) v Nice and newly promoted Caen (1.97) v Brest expected to win by one goal or more. Caen won their opening home game 3-2 v a strong Lyon team, and this price looks value to me.

In Scotland, Aberdeen at 1.99 v Kilmarnock look value based on the ratings, and in Italy, Serie A gets under way tomorrow, with very little form to go on. As with Spain, just a couple of European games and tonight’s UEFA Super Cup for which Inter Milan look value at 1.98 incidentally. If the form from last season’s Serie A were to carry over, (big if), Bari at 4.4 v Juventus would be tempting. All three promoted teams here start with away games.

And finally, in Spain, La Liga starts with again very little form to go on. The three promoted teams all start with home matches. Hercules are 2.72 v Athletic Bilbao, Levante are 2.08 v Sevilla and Real Sociedad are 3.5 v Villareal.

There was a good comment on adding a good measure of subjectivity to Elo ratings which I will respond to in the next couple of days. Life is a little busy right now.

Coming Soon - LMAX (Tradefair)

From the Wall Street Journal:

By WILLIAM LYONS And JAVIER ESPINOZA

David Yu is in his element. The chief executive of U.K. online betting company Betfair is standing in front of a digital presentation re-running this year's Cheltenham Gold Cup. Four horses: Imperial Commander, Kauto Star, Cooldine and Denman are being tracked in a digitized bar chart that shows their odds throughout the race. It's a slightly surreal experience as the race is being relayed in slow-motion. Even more so as Mr. Yu, whose background is in the dot-com world of Silicon Valley, has no real interest in the race. His interest is in the platform.

"I think this is Britain's greatest dot-com success story," he says pointing to one of the many price indicators showing the live trading on the race. "On the surface we are very much a betting company, but what I see is a technology business. When I think about the business we wouldn't be here today if it weren't for the technology platform. Like other great internet businesses, whether it is Amazon.com Inc., eBay Inc. or Google, they all rely on their technology platform. Technology is at the core of this business."

Attention turns to the race as the favorite, Kauto Star, makes a mistake at the eighth fence. Immediately, his price falls as the odds on him winning drop. This is Betfair's unique selling point: the ability to allow punters to bet after a race has started right up to the finishing line. It has revolutionized betting on British horse racing and enabled the company to grow from one that took just 36 bets at its launch in June 2000 to one that now processes more than 5.5 million trades a day—more than on all European stock exchanges combined.

"Ten years ago, betting was a really inefficient market and was not a good deal for customers," he says. "The prices were inefficient; there wasn't the chance for customers to express their view on what the real value should be. There wasn't the ability to bet in play and there was nowhere to trade your positions.

"We changed that by inventing the exchange. A lot of people who were quite sophisticated and knowledgeable about sport were sitting on the sidelines because there was no facility for them to bet into. Now we have more than 1 billion page views per day and on average £3,000 is deposited every minute via our site."

Later this year, Betfair will move beyond the world of sports betting and into finance, with the launch of LMAX [London Multi-Asset Exchange], a financial trading platform that will allow punters to trade on the movement of a company's share price without actually owning the underlying stock.

Based in London, LMAX will hold a separate management team under the direction of Chief Executive Robin Osmond, a former senior investment banker.

Mr. Yu says the launch of the financial exchange, of which Betfair is the majority shareholder, fits the company's long-term goal of diversification. "We have built a high-performance, highly reliable transaction engine and we have applied it to sports betting." The LMAX business, he says, "is going to be bringing those advantages into the financial trading world so we can extend the use of our core platform into other domains over time."

Betfair, which is privately owned, chose to publish its results earlier this year, posting a 29% jump in earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization to £72 million in the year to the end of April, from revenue up 27% to £303 million.

It was the decision to publish its results that helped fuel speculation the company is preparing to float on the London stock market, joining a sector that already boasts PartyGaming, 888 Holdings and Sportingbet. It would also provide a large pay-out for its founders, Andrew Black and Edward Wray, who hold a combined 22.5%. Japanese telecommunication company SoftBank owns a further 21.5%, with the rest owned by private equity, private investors and employees.

"There was a lot of noise on their prospective IPO early this year," says Nicholas Batram, a gaming industry analyst with KBC Peel Hunt. "Cash generation is very strong and they have no debt. The market is a distinct possibility for Betfair."

"I think the rumors have been going ever since I started," says Mr. Yu. While he is reticent on the subject of a potential IPO, which analysts say could happen as early as this year, he doesn't dismiss it outright.

"If we think that it [an IPO] is the right thing for us then we will certainly consider it," he says. "We are in a great position because we do not have to go public. The company has no debt and is very cash-generative. We have a very strong balance sheet, therefore a lot of options are open to us. But we will continue to look after our shareholders, their best interests and monitor the market at all times."

An IPO would also rule out a move offshore. Betfair has tentatively suggested in the past that it might move all its operations to Malta if the disadvantage of paying tax in the U.K. worsened.

"If a company is offshore they pay less tax but can still advertise and still address the U.K. market just the same way we do. So it [being based in the U.K.] does in its current framework put us at a commercial disadvantage," Mr. Yu says.

At present, offshore gaming companies can target U.K. gamblers online and not pay U.K. tax. Betfair is lobbying for a change in the law so that every company that provides betting to U.K. gamblers has to be licenced and therefore pay U.K. tax.

"So we embrace regulation. We think it is good for the industry," he says. "Italy is a good example. Not that long ago Italy was trying to prohibit online gaming, now the government has a licensing framework for betting companies that want to enter Italy.

"The government found the best way to control and regulate consumers is to have a well-regulated framework. We want a regulated environment because it is then a level playing field and it ensures companies can operate fairly and consumers are protected."

One option for developing the business in the U.S., a market with which Mr. Yu. is familiar, as he grew up in Silicon Valley and started his career in technology working for start-ups before AltaVista brought him to the U.K. in 2000.

Last year, Betfair bought an interactive horse-racing betting business, TVG, for $50 million, a move spurred by renewed hope that U.S. lawmakers will lift the ban on internet betting. In July, the financial services committee voted by 41-22 to approve a move to repeal the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act, paving the way for legal gambling in one of the world's biggest potential markets.

"The U.S. is an interesting market as it develops," Mr. Yu says, noting that TVG's business — online betting on horse races — is the only legal form of internet gambling in the U.S.

But he insists that though there is potential in markets such as the U.S. and Asia, there is still enormous growth left in the U.K. and Europe, away from the traditional sports like horse racing.

"Horse racing is such a deep, traditional sports betting model," he says. "But what we are seeing is that more people are coming in and having their first bet on football as the game expands globally. Over time, football could certainly be bigger than horse racing."

Jumbo Jet To The Golden State

A change of heart since the post saying that I would be updating the ratings with League Cup results, albeit with reduced ratings. Well, it was true in a way, but the adjustments for games involving Premier League teams will be zero. Having looked at the teams that several clubs put out, there's just no point in counting the results at all.

Sampdoria almost took care of business on Tuesday by taking an early 2-0 lead over Werder Bremen turning a 1.29 lay into a nice green. They then went 3-0 up and had the tie in the bag, before allowing Werder Bremen back into the game with a 90th minute goal and ended up losing in extra-time.

On the subject of disparity in today's Premier League, Ian Plenderleith has this to say:

The Premier League has become a long-haul jumbo jet. A few of the elite are in First Class, then there are a handful of First Class wannabes in Business (also known as Europa Class), while the majority of passengers stoically walk by on their way to Economy, coping with a flush of envy before fighting for a bit of legroom with all the other undesirables who are making up the numbers. They’re all in the same machine, but no one’s pretending they’re equal, because what can you do? Economy Class doesn’t complain, because it can’t afford to. And, sigh, did you see those beautiful reclining seats they have up front? You’ve got to admire it, Guy, absolutely first class.

My Californian wife was excited to read the following news item yesterday, not the horse racing bit, but the other part

Legislation to raise takeout rates, supported by tracks and horsemen, has been introduced in the California state legislature. Although without much fanfare, the bill -- AB 2414 -- also would allow exchange betting in the state, and naturally has the support of the giant Betfair.

The English-based betting exchange already has established a strong California presence with its acquisition of TVG, the all-racing television network.

Czech Liszt

This story isn't really anything to do with betting, other than the importance of paying attention to detail perhaps, but it amused me. The book "The Checklist Manifesto" by Atul Gawande, relates how David Lee Roth of Van Halen used to insist that before all their concerts, a bowl of M&Ms (American Smarties, but not as good) be provided backstage, but with every single brown sweet removed. If this condition was not met, the band reserved the right to cancel the show with full compensation to the band.

Van Halen followed through at least once, canceling a show in Colorado when Roth found some browm M&Ms in his dressing room. But there was more to this than a celebrity going power crazy and making silly demands for the sake of it.

Roth explained in his memoir Crazy From The Heat...

...that Van Halen was the first band to take huge productions into tertiary, third-level markets. We'd pull up with nine 18-wheeler trucks, full of gear, where the standard was three trucks, max. And there were many, many technical errors - whether it was the girders couldn't support the weight, or the flooring would sink in, or the doors weren't big enough to move the gear through. The contract rider read like a version of the Chinese Yellow Pages because there was so much equipment, and so many human beings to make it function. When I would walk backstage, if I saw a brown M&M in that bowl, well, we'd line-check the entire production. Guaranteed you'd run into a problem.

Roth's brown M&Ms were just a test.

Reminds me of my Dad and his trick of occasionally putting the toothpaste on my toothbrush for me at night without telling me. Off I went to bed, and either through laziness or forgetfulness would occasionally fail to brush my teeth, but there was the evidence when he came up later. That's probably considered abuse these days!

Blues And Blucerchiati

A pleasing end to the weekend's Premier League matches last night, with Manchester City comfortably defeating Liverpool, and replacing them in fourth place in the Elo ratings.

One question for any sensible people out there is what price were Newcastle United at kick-off? I had them at 3.35 on Thursday and didn't notice the price after that except that when Football Elite tipped them, the best price noted on the e-mail was 3.3. According to Smarkets, the price on Newcastle had plummeted to 2.5, which if true, is quite remarkable. The price clearly dropped. Matt's weekend summary e-mail recorded the price at kick-off as 2.75 and expressed some concern that perhaps this was the result of more money backing Football Elite's selections. His other recommended bet, WBA, also dropped from 2.56 on Thursday to 2.2 at kick-off. Something to keep an eye on over the next few weeks.

A final word on the "-2.5 goals away from home debate", and I had a comment that "Results inform statistics; statistics do not inform results" supporting my reasoning that just because it hasn't happened before is no reason why my expectation should be summarily dismissed.

I did also get a very well reasoned, and polite, argument that while agreeing there should be no reason why 2.5 goals should be an invalid prediction, went on to say...

I have a number of different ratings systems for the PL and have never had a "top to bottom" difference of anywhere in the region of 3 goals. Off the top of my head, something like 2.25 goals is around the maximum I can recall at any moment in time. I suspect Blackpool are likely to get close to surpassing that number at some stage this year but, for now, they haven't.

The spreads and Asian markets for this match I think had Chelsea as around 1.75 goal favourites which can be used as a good guide to the "correct" number.

If your ratings made them 2.5 goal favourites then I would respectfully suggest you need to check your system for possible errors. To be 0.75 goals out compared to what can be considered a pretty efficient market should raise a red flag. It's a huge difference and, again with respect, the market makers and market movers are likely more accurate than a more casual bettor. It may be worth checking the spread firm's supremacy markets to get a good idea of how supremacies tie into prices etc.

Incidentally, someone took a £14k loss on this game after laying "no corners" at 1000. An excellent value lay, given that the true price is somewhere in the region of 26,781-1 give or take a few, but I doubt that the layer feels too good about that right now.

The League Cup starts for some of the bigger boys today, and while I shall adjust the ratings after these matches, the weighting will be much reduced. It seems that it's not just the really big clubs who don't make much effort in this competition these days, and to transfer too many points on a result that clubs don't care about isn't going to achieve anything positive.

There is one game that matters tonight though, Sampdoria v Werder Bremen. Last week, Werder Bremen had a 3-0 lead going in to the 90th minute of the first leg, but gave up a late goal to make the game tonight a lot more interesting. The ratings have Sampdoria as a 0.5 goal favourite and they are 2.19, but having traded as low as 1.05, Werder Bremen to qualify at 1.29 looks like a value lay. Sampdoria were unbeaten at home in Serie A last season, and failed to score only twice, while Werder Bremen conceded four first half goals on Saturday in a disappointing, and hardly morale boosting, loss at Hoffenheim.

Berlusconi Trophy

Football Elite got the Recommended Bets for the new season off to a great start with both selections winning this weekend.

Promoted teams West Bromwich Albion (2.56) beat Sunderland 1-0 and Newcastle United (3.35) thrashed Aston Villa, a strong away team last season, by no less than 6-0. Matt's strategy of backing promoted teams in their first home games of the season continues to bring success. Blackpool play Fulham next weekend in their opening home fixture.

The one Short-List selection, Stoke City, lost to Tottenham Hotspur.

Only two games remain for this weekend so far as the Elo ratings are concerned, one in France later tonight, and the Manchester City v Liverpool game tomorrow night.

The Premier League positions don't change too dramatically, but the Championship is more volatile. Early risers from the start of the season are (no surprises) Cardiff City, Ipswich Town, Queens Park Rangers and Millwall. In League One it is Hartlepool and Oldham Athletic off to good starts and in League Two Shrewsbury Town and Accrington Stanley.

The Conference is always hard to predict, with a lot of former 'big' clubs trying to reclaim their place in the League. Luton Town are clear at the top of the ratings and tempting at 2.0 to win the league, but at this level, things can change in a hurry. Relegated teams often take a while to find their feet at the new level. For example, Grimsby Town lost 1-2 at home yesterday to bottom rated Hayes and Yeading United, who were coming off a 0-5 midweek defeat at Eastbourne Borough.

Big movers in Scotland are Hearts, Raith Rovers, Forfar Athletic and Berwick Rangers.

The Italian and Spanish leagues have only had their Super-Cups so far, although AC Milan go for their sixth Berlusconi Trophy in a row versus Juventus in a few minutes. With AC Milan at -1 on the Elo ratings, I have had a small interest on the Asian Handicap (-.05) at 2.23.

In France, Marseille and Lille take turns at the top, and in Germany after all of one game, the big movers are Bayer Leverkusen and the two new boys Kaiserslautern and St Pauli.

Barking On Simple Mathematics

With nine visits to the blog in the last 24 hours, Anonymous from Barking and Dagenham is one of my most loyal followers.

He's also a rather confused individual.

As some of you may have followed over the last few posts, Barking Anon has made some faitly dismissive comments on my assessment of Chelsea's superiority going in to the Wigan game.

As I said yesterday, "one game, especially one so early in the season, does not prove anything" but my point is that dismissing -2.5 goals simply because "no team has ever been 2.5 goal favourites away before" makes absolutely no sense to me. Sports and markets are constantly changing, and the Premier League today is certainly no exception.

Barking Anon seems to be suffering from cognitive dissonance. Having a set belief, such as that the maximum superiority for an away team in the Premier League is two goals, is dangerous. Failing to accept this results in misperception, rejection or refutation of the data, and the seeking of support from others who share the beliefs, and attempting to persuade others to restore consonance. I am not sure anyone out there also believes there should be a two goal limit on away team superiority, but perhaps Barking Anon will find some support among his "statistical expert" friends. Well, probably not.

Rather than respond to my reasoning with counter-ideas, the sour grapes result in this:

Such a poor post, in so many different ways.

Best leave the over-confident Cassini in the belief his ratings system is accurate despite being at odds with all statistical experts in this field.

I look forward to seeing Chelsea at -3.5 at home to Wigan later this season. It's pretty much the same thing. We'll see.

Leaving aside for the moment the fact that I clearly said "one game, especially one so early in the season, does not prove anything", hardly an approach suggesting any over-confidence, it should be more obvious to all that over-confidence is reflected in ill-reasoned (and self-described as "confident") comments such as "I can confidently state a team has never been a 2.5 goal favourite away from home in the Premiership. And nor are Chelsea this weekend."

More evidence that Barking Anon is confused can be found in these two contradictory comments:

[21.Aug 22:31] -3.5 at home is pretty similar (not quite the same) as being -2.5 away v the same team. There's such a thing as home advantage.

[20.Aug 21:03] And home advantage sure as hell isn't worth a whole goal.

2.5 plus 1 doesn't equal 3.5? I would suggest that Barking Anon is at odds with all statistical experts in this field [of simple mathematics].

Wigan Atletic v Chelsea (-5.5)

I was a little more interested in the Wigan Athletic v Chelsea game this evening than normally would be the case, secure in the knowledge that if Chelsea failed to win by at least two goals, I would in all probability find a mailbox full of "I told you so" messages.

On this occasion I was right, or at least more right than anyone arguing that -2.5 was too high, but I am well aware that one game, especially one so early in the season, does not prove anything. I stand by my opinion that just because there may not yet have been an away team expected to win by 2.5 goals in the Premier League, times are changing and history alone is not a valid reason why Chelsea -2.5 goals should have been summarily dismissed -

Anonymous: I can confidently state a team has never been a 2.5 goal favourite away from home in the Premiership. And nor are Chelsea this weekend.

Confidence can be a good thing - over-confidence, not so much.

Again, this fixture was a rare event in that the visitors were the top rated team, with the second best "current" form in the league, while the hosts were the bottom rated team, with the fourth worst "current" form in the league. I do not expect the Elo ratings to throw up another prediction like this all season, and it's a pity the game came so early, because there was plenty of money still available on Chelsea -1.5, -2 at 2.05.

The esteemed Mark Iverson commented

I don't normally comment on football but a couple of things to consider:

1) Wigan did beat Chelsea at home last season.
2) To beat the 2.5 goal handicap Chelsea would need to score at least 3 goals. A feat they only achieved 4 out of 19 times away from home last season.

Granted, losing 4-0 to Blackpool was mighty disappointing but Wigan's players should be a little more focussed today.

True, Wigan Athletic did beat Chelsea less than a year ago, but is that result really relevant to today's game? Given how rapidly teams change these days, and that the game was a year ago, not a week ago, I'm inclined to treat the fact as interesting, but not relevant from a betting perspective. Statistics can be very misleading. "Chelsea scored three goals away 4 in 19 times last season" is indeed true, but all opponents are not created equal. Taken at face-value, that statistic suggests the 2.5 goal margin is too high, but if the four games were Chelsea's matches at the bottom four rated clubs in the Elo ratings, then this statistic would actually support the -2.5 prediction. (The games were actually those at Arsenal, Sunderland, Bolton and Portsmouth).

"Wigan's players should be a little more focused today"? True, they may have under-estimated Blackpool, but on opening day at home, one might expect a team to be about as focused as they can be. The trouble is that all the focusing in the world isn't going to help if the team are just too weak. After the promotion / relegation adjustments, the ratings had Wigan rated bottom, and while it is still early days, Barking and Dagenham Anonymous's dismissive comment that "Derby were a worse team than anyone currently in the PL" could well prove to be debatable.

But debate and differences of opinion are what this blog is all about.