When Averages Mislead

Some observations about the usually excellent Soccermetrics predictions on the EPL season ahead. One is that while the total number of draws predicted seems reasonable at 96, their distribution is anything but.

Every team will draw 8, 9 or 10 matches? Over the last ten seasons, the high in each has ranged from 12 to 17 while the low has been 4 up to 7. Stoke City, Aston Villa and West Bromwich Albion are prime candidates for more than 10 draws in my opinion, but it's a sure bet that someone will have more than 10 draws. Even in the draw-drought seasons of 2013-14 (78) and 2005-06 (77) West Bromwich Albion and Aston Villa had 15 and 12 respectively.

I'm also not happy at all with Crystal Palace's projected finish. Dr. Howard Hamilton writes:

Crystal Palace simply played over their heads last season and are candidates to regress back to the mean, which in their case would mean relegation. If Tony Pulis can get his defense to perform ahead of expectations again (16 goals better), they might be able to approach their points total from last season. If he can’t, it will be a mad scrap to stay up.

Based on their form since Mr Anthony Pulis took over, Crystal Palace would have finished eighth last season, not too far off a Europa League place.

I think Dr. Howard has made the mistake of looking at Palace's last season results overall. They were clearly a different team under Ian Holloway than they were under Mr Anthony Pulis.

21 of the 48 goals conceded were given away in the opening 10 games meaning they conceded less than one goal a game after that, (including 3 in our 3:3 win over Liverpool) which comes to 37 over a season.  How many goals did champions Manchester City concede last season? Oh, let me check - back in a minute.

Back! It was 37. So Howard wants Crystal Palace to improve their defence by 16 goals which makes it 21 goals conceded which would likely make us Palace Champions.

Averages can be misleading, but I do agree that Palace were efficient last season. 33 goals were scored, (more than only relegated Norwich City and Cardiff City), yet they won 13 matches - eight by 1:0. They will need to score more, not concede fewer, unless we concede just 37, in which case we Palace really will be looking for a place in Europe next season. If we Palace concede 21, it'll be as Champions.

Geoff from fulltimebetting has set up a couple of tournaments that readers may be interested in. Not a patch on the FTL of course, and while Fantasy Leagues are not my cup of tea anyway, I think I have more than enough on my plate this season, but I know some people enjoy them:

Not sure if you ever have time but the free to enter Fantasy football game http://fantasy.premierleague.com/ is superb in that it lets you have one team but then use that team in up to ten different leagues. It’s not everyone’s cup of tea but I’ve set up a league with a £100 prize that you might perhaps want to mention to fellow subs. 525120-134301 is the code to enrol.

Geoff has also set up a Last Man Standing competition with Paddy Power:

https://lastmanstanding.paddypower.com/?do=home

Click on Private Tournament and then its fulltimebettingblog and password is fulltimebettingblog. Winner takes 90% with greedy paddy taking the rest! £5 TO ENTER.

That might have been fun, but it appears you need a Paddy Power account to get to the private tournament page. If you have one and want to enter, Geoff would love to see you. Meanwhile, he is busy reading up on "How to create a strong password".

Speaking of the FTL, we are now up to 24 entries with the entry of Jamie A, and Draw Picks makes his debut tonight with these two:

Kilmarnock v Aberdeen 

Patrick Thistle v Ross County 

Will we see the leaders challenged? The table will look a lot different after this weekend, that's for sure.

If you fancy yourself as a tipster, there's £1,200 up for grabs in the League, plus an exciting Erskine Cup, Monthly prizes, and bounty prizes to compete for.

FTL Weekend Update 11.Aug.2014

The FTL season got underway, albeit slowly, this weekend with entries from the names in the table below, which reflects the current standings.

With 16 of the 23 entries still to make a selection, Fairfranco should probably not plan on spending his four figure prize money just yet, but he is off to a strong start. Online Trader was very excited about starting off with a winning set of picks, and seems to be going for quality, not quantity, this season. So far so good.

Abromo was the most prolific with 25 selections, but he showed a small deficit despite 17 winners and currently props up the table.

A long way to go though, and still nine places available if anyone wants to sign up before the EPL gets going next weekend.

The World Awaits

For some reason, despite The Sultan announcing his retirement from the blogging world in February, I kept his blog on my blog roll. I now think that was a mistake. He wrote in a post titled Goodbye Traders:

So I've come to the conclusion that this is the perfect moment to end my blogging. I know it's not the first time I've said this but I'm certain this time! I had planned to continue through 2014. I felt I might still have a bit left to contribute because my tennis trading academy had given me a new lease of life in terms of material to blog about. But recent events have finalised in my mind that the online trading world is a place I no longer wish to be part of.

The retirement held for five and a half months, before he was back with "Sultan Tennis Trading Academy: Hot News!" (His exclamation point, not mine). Then earlier this month, we get this:

I've lived on the edge for a few years now and have come through it but things can change. I think more and more about what I'm going to do with the money I've accumulated and how I'm going to invest it in future.

Perhaps my memory fails me but I thought there was a Sultan pleading for investment because he had no funds of his own to invest. Didn't he write something like this in 2013?

I want to make some serious cash or I'm really not that bothered. I always thought that was going to happen one day and I'm almost certain that it would if I could only compound my profits. But that isn't going to happen this year and I don't know if I can continue treading water for another year, when I could be doing something else. Without investment, I'm stuck and although I've been doing well, everything I earn goes straight back out.

I was not far away from quitting trading completely back in February. I remember being very frustrated at the fact I could not afford to compound my profit and would not be able to do so for the foreseeable future.

It was only about a year ago when The Sultan reminisced about his days of trading for one of the court-siding syndicates:

I was asked to trade on behalf of a syndicate. I would love to have that kind of opportunity again (it was pulled after a month, despite me making a good profit) but until that happens, I will continue to slog away on the ladders every week and see where it gets me.

Well somewhere along the way, The Sultan has hit the big time - apparently. He now muses about his strolls on the golf course, and his fear of ending up collecting lost golf balls like one gentleman he sees there:

I presume he sells them back to the course owners in exchange for a few pennies. I suppose it's not the worst job in the world. You spend all day outdoors in a picturesque environment. But I always feel a sense of anxiety whenever I see him - because I'm scared that I'll end up the same as him.

That's some presumption for a start. As someone whose parents' back garden adjoins a golf course, I can tell you that many people, including my Dad, actually enjoy finding lost golf balls, and happily give them away to anyone interested in them. And as for looking scruffy, well it's not typically an activity that requires a suit and tie, and best shiny shoes - although having said that, my Dad is of a generation where he does feel improperly dressed if he goes to Morrison's without a jacket and tie!

But what's this about a sense of anxiety? How could that be?

...even though my debt worries are long gone and I will be comfortable for years to come - barring a disaster. But what happens if there is a disaster? I've lived on the edge for a few years now and have come through it but things can change. I think more and more about what I'm going to do with the money I've accumulated and how I'm going to invest it in future.

Well something changed in a hurry. We've gone from being stuck, with anything earned being spent, to being comfortable for years to come, and "which ISA should I invest in?" all in the space of a few months. Having never made more than £10,000 in a month until October last year, and despite not having reached the Super Premium Charge threshold yet, he is somehow comfortable for years to come - still renting mind you - and something just doesn't add up.

Comfortable is a relative term for sure - to some it means having no debt, to others it means that income from your investments covers living expenses. One person suggested:

Financially Comfortable: To me, this means that you have a sizeable portfolio, you own a reasonably successful business or you’ve got a very stable job, and you either own your home outright or have a very manageable mortgage. You could go out and buy a new car without needing a loan. You could afford to take a year off from work to pursue a dream and not return mired in debt. If you’re half of a couple, you could live well enough if either of you stopped working.

It's all very curious, although quite possibly intended to inspire naïve readers into signing up for the "email only" academy and achieve their dreams of living the high-life like him. Usually these ads are accompanied by pictures of the seller in his Ferrari parked in the driveway of his palatial home as his private jet takes off in the background.

I enjoy my own company (I really am delightful companionship) but for the first time in a long time, I have started to crave some real-life interaction.

But I think I am now reaching the stage where perhaps solo trading is actually starting to turn me a tad insane.

Modest and mad, an irresistible combination.

Finally, yesterday we had this vomit inducing paragraph:

I know I have a lot to offer the world in some capacity but at the same time, I'd be stupid to throw away the incredible income stream I have fought so hard to generate. It's a real conundrum.

He IS the messiah! As Hejik wrote in his excellent and detailed look at The Sultan earlier this year:

Unfortunately, his head is now stuck so far up his own backside that he can no longer see things in a clear light.

The Artful Dodger And FTL Update

The FTL entries are up to 23 now, so just 9 spots remaining, and a reminder to anyone entered that entries for the weekend (tonight through Monday) need to be in by midnight tonight.

The roll call to date, in alphabetical order, is shown below.

Some new names as well as some familiar names. It should be an interesting season, and the total prize money, League, Erskine Cup and Monthly prizes, is now at £1,550.

Only one entry so far for this weekend other then the XX Draws, but I am expecting a few more to come in during the day with the Football League and Conference kicking off this weekend, and the table will start to take shape.

Right now, Fairfranco is pocketing £1,290 as the only entry in profit! (This excludes the Erskine Cup and seven of the eight monthly prizes, in case you were wondering why the numbers didn't add up).

We have some good names too - Mountain Mouse was amusing, and as Geoff himself said, Fulltimebettingblog took several hours to come up with as a name.

Finally, not sports investment related, but Rubicon, aka Scott, sent me a link to an article in The Daily Telegraph on the fare dodging Fund Manager Jonathan Burrows and "collective madness" in the City, which I enjoyed reading.

FTL Attractions And Identifying Poison

Although several of the less followed leagues have already started, the 2014-15 party begins for real this weekend with the Football League and Conference back, along with the top league in France.

Twenty entries now make up the FTL and the selections should start flooding in any minute. A reminder that selections for matches played this weekend (i.e. Friday through Monday) should be in by midnight on Friday, with any Friday selections of course needing to be in before kick-off.

The twenty entries will now be competing for £1,400 in prizes, plus bonuses for finishing ahead of any of The Football Analyst, Football Investor, Skeeve or Football Elite. The Erskine Cup will also add some excitement (in my opinion) as the season unfolds.

The first Cassini Service email has also been sent out, with some selections this weekend, although there will no draws featuring promoted sides until the new year, and nor will there any longer be any ridiculously short priced draws from France and Italy. I will still be including these matches because they can usually be backed at higher prices, but backing these matches at Pinnacle Sports prices is just not viable. Backing at shorter than 3.15 in Ligue 1 cost us (the XX Draws) 13.78 points, while 12.28 points were lost backing at under 3.21 in Serie A.

The Draw price can vary by a lot - just this week the Draw price from the Ligue 2 game between Brest and Clermont Foot was recorded by Football Data at a best of 3.3, with an average of 3.06 (also Pinnacle's price). The low I saw was Ladbroke's 2.85. It is stating the obvious that there is a big difference between 2.85 and 3.3 - 15.8% value.

Even though my recorded prices are Pinnacle's, and they are chosen because betting with them is sustainable, it is worth mentioning again that their price can usually be beaten. The last time I checked, in the EPL of 2012-13, Pinnacle Sports had the top draw price in just 73 of 360 matches, although that 73 was higher than any other single book. I'll probably take a look at 2013-14 in the next few days.

Matches involving newly promoted teams in the first half of 2013-14 cost us 26.16 points before being profitable in the second half.

Football Elite's Matt sent out a very interesting preview of the Football League and some non-leagues too yesterday, and made some good points about the impact of the close season. I had a question on the Cassini Service email which was how am I making selections already when teams have yet to play. It's a fair question, but my thoughts are rather like matt's on this, and as Matt wrote:

And of course you also need to ensure that there’s no wholesale changes to the club otherwise last seasons performance is totally irrelevant. All clubs have some change, don’t be put off by individual player changes or even in some cases manager changes. Just as long as there’s not been a lot of changes to key men.

Southampton is one example of a team whose rating from the end of last season is basically redundant, but for most teams, as Matt also pointed out, the close season is relatively short. Three months, and not too much usually happens - it's not like expecting World Cup form to roll over from 2014 to 2018 - which would not be a good thing for England.

Peter Nordsted has entered his Drawmaster in the FTL, expected to debut selections next weekend, and
also sent out an email which included some of his services for next season, which includes "Pete Nordsted's Weekly Football Ratings and Analysis sheet".

An example of the Arsenal v Crystal Palace game can be found HERE

This match is of particular interest to both Peter (an Arsenal fan) and myself (not an Arsenal fan, although my Granddad was), and I was interested in comparing our numbers on this. Arsenal are a club who have made a number of moves this summer, and are likely (in my opinion) to be underrated by my ratings and thus suspended from any systems until their rating adjusts. Crystal Palace have made fewer moves and will struggle to beat last season's 11th place finish (in my opinion), but let's look at the numbers.

Peter has Arsenal expected to score 1.4 goals, Palace 0.31 while I have Arsenal scoring 2.03 and Palace 0.99.  A 2:1 home win if ever I saw one, although the market favours 2:0.

These numbers make the Over 2.5 goals 1.97 in my opinion, 4.11 in Peter's. Betfair's price has traded as low as 1.11(?) and as high as 1.89.

I also think (and I say this as a numbers man, rather than as a Palace fan) Peter's 0.31 goals expectation  is way too low. The market thinks so too. 1.32 for Under 2.5 goals is rather unusual (to say the least) in the EPL. The Crystal Palace v Aston Villa game was the shortest priced Under last season, at an average of 1.61.

In the 1,714 matches since I started recording goal expectations and actual goals, I only had two teams with an expectation as low as 0.3. Both did indeed fail to score, but a tiny sample size means little. Looking at other low expectancies, there were 85 teams expected to score 0.5 goals or less, but half (well, 42) managed to score, and 17 managed to score more than once.

It could be coincidence, but it's a promising sign that the closest expected to actuals is in the range where I have the highest number of predictions.

Teams        :          Variance        :         Actual            :         Expected

It's a good way to validate that the model is working close to 'expectations'; after all, the output is only useful if the data being entered is accurate. Poisson can quickly become poison.

Fortunately the markets are there to help - if our numbers are too far off the market's, well chances are we've messed up somewhere.  If it looks too good to be true, it probably is. 

Brest In Show

The FTL continues to take shape. We are up to sixteen paid entries, with three more promised, and this now includes Matt ( of Football Elite ) and Peter Nordsted who will be entering his Drawmaster selections.

Matt looks like he will also be offering a bounty to anyone finishing ahead of the net of his Recommended Bets, Vulnerable Home Favourites and Football League bets, and I suspect it will be the same bounty terms as the generous The Football Analyst, Football Investor and Skeeve have already committed to, i.e. £25 to each entry finishing ahead of them up to £500.

We also welcome back Fairfranco from last season, hoping to improve on his 13th place last time out after a disappointing run from February took him out of the profit and prize money finish he held at the start of that month:

He's off to a good start as the first selection of the season was Brest (~1.95) who came from behind to beat Clermont last night in Ligue 2.

We also have an entry sent our way from TFA Graeme, UK_Raz, and here is the latest list of entries along with the estimated prize money for the League, the monthly prizes and of course the Erskine Cup which will start in November, if not sooner.

As the only entry in profit, Fairfranco is currently looking at a cash prize of £1,104.

But wait, there's more - there's also the August / September monthly prize of £17, plus £100 in bounty money - not too shabby for an investment of just £52.50.

With a cap of 32 entries, there are just 13 spots remaining. Rules and details can be found here. Don't wait too long.  

FTL Rules Update

In the FTL Rules for 2014-15, I wrote:

Draw No Bet (DNB)

Football Data do not record prices on these bets. A selection of Team A (DNB) will therefore be treated as a lay selection of opponents Team B, in other words you have the Draw on your side, but stand to win less. Bear that in mind before choosing this market.

This was never a very satisfactory solution, and after an exchange of emails with Matt of Football Elite, for whom an accurate reflection of his bets in the FTL table is important, I am updating this rule. 

Basically, it is not rocket surgery to deduce the DNB prices from the Match Odds, and so I spent a total of about five minutes setting up the spreadsheet to accept Match Odds and spit out the DNB prices.

So the rule will now read: 

Draw No Bet (DNB)

Football Data do not record prices on these bets, but the prices will be calculated using the Match Odds that are published. The probability implied for the draw will be re-assigned proportionately to the Home and Away prices, for example

Bounty Hunting

The good news for the 2014-15 FTL continues, with Skeeve becoming the latest to step up to the plate and offer a bounty, matching the offer of The Football Analyst and Football Investor. Another service willing to put their selections up against all-comers. For anyone new, the bounty is £25 for finishing ahead of any or all of these three, up to a maximum of £500 (which is 20 entries, and we don't have that many yet!).

It's unfortunate that Croatia is not a league covered by the Football Data web site because Skeeve's Croatian Football Bets not only finished in profit last season (94 bets, 56 wins, +18.36 points, 19.5% ROI), but have started this one in fine form too:

Not only is Skeeve generously adding to the bounty, but he is offering a special deal for Green All Over readers and offering the discount price - €400 (reduced from €500) for the full season, or €280 (reduced from €350) for the August-December period.

The FTL is taking shape. As of this morning we have 14 entries, listed below in alphabetical order with the current prize money assuming every entry in profit by the same amount. It won't end that way!

Plus there is £25 for finishing ahead of Football Investor, another £25 for finishing ahead of The Football Analyst highest placed entry, and now yet another £25 for finishing ahead Skeeve, although only one entry managed that last season.

For anyone who understands the importance of value, i.e. every reader of this blog, this is a great opportunity.

Pay just £52.50 to enter, have a full season of entertainment, and possibly walk away with over £1,000. Beat two of the Bounty Boys, and you basically get your money back even if you make a loss.

If anyone wants to change their entry name, or even the colour scheme for it, let me know, and if you are interested in joining, check out the rules here and sign up. The season for many of us is less than a week away.

2014-15 Fixtures Spreadie Ready

More than four thousand (4,034 to be precise) fixtures from the coming 2014-15 season are now in the spreadsheet I mentioned, after the Legacalcio finalised their schedule. The leagues included are the top 5 in England, and the top 5 in Europe - i.e. nine. 

The spreadsheet is a no-frills effort, with plenty of changes to fixtures ahead, but it's a decent starting point. Everyone has their personal preferences and needs, but in my experience entering the fixtures in the first place is the time consuming part.

As mentioned previously, if any FTL members or Cassini Service subscribers want a free copy, drop me a line. Some of you already have, and you should have received it this morning.  

The Gambler Returns, Jovial John

After going dark for several years, and by his own account coming close to death, John Tuohy, aka The Gambler is back. Some of you may remember John from years back. His blog was one of the original betting themed blogs, (though it was comprised more about food and frequent trips to the pub than anything too insightful) but if I remember rightly, he went on tilt one Saturday afternoon on Betfair, and lost enough money to cause him to self-exclude, and he then spent the next few months whining about why he couldn't re-open his account, rather than recognise that he might have a problem.

So I'm not sure if I should be pleased that he is back blogging and betting or not. I'm pleased he is alive of course, if not in the best of shape, but it's disturbing to see him repeating his former pattern of betting which seems to be to bet on whatever is on TV at the moment, with no consideration about finding value. Horse racing, cricket, pre-season football friendlies...  time will tell, but I fear we're witnessing a train wreck.

John featured in a Cigar Aficianado article back in 2004 which, unsurprisingly given that it is exactly 10 years old, looks very dated now, but might interest some of you. It includes this:

Only 20 percent of Betfair's customers are drawn to this rarefied form of wagering, [trading] and it has attracted a coterie of mathematically inclined players who've left their jobs in the city for a run at professional gambling. Such is the case with John Tuohy, a former IT consultant who's gone from being a regular day-to-day punter, with a 9-to-5 job, to gambling full-time on Betfair. He's a jovial guy, sitting on a couch in the study of his luxe waterfront high-rise apartment, watching races on TV and casually punching wagers into his computer.

I wrote a post triggered by this article more than five years ago, which is just as relevant today as it was then, and will interest all of you! The comments are particularly interesting. The article featured a “supersharp advantage player”, or a “nerdy-looking guy with a PhD in mathematics” by the name of Glenn Alcoe, (not to be confused with anywhere in Scotland) and a little Cassini research uncovered an interesting tidbit.

I suspect you're wrong... not to ruin the story, but there really IS a Glenn Alcoe who is involved with horse racing. He took part in the 2005 All Party Parliamentary Betting and Gaming Group inquiry into inside information and laying horses to lose. It’s an unusual name, so if I were a betting man, I would put money on him being the same guy. Incidentally, if you actually read that report, no one without inside information, and with an ounce of common sense, would ever bet on horses again.

Glenn still is active in the horse racing world (@rhillsisgod for those of you on Twitter)
There are still places in the FTL available - we have a quorum, but if we can fill 32 places it'll make things much more interesting. Still waiting to hear from Peter Nordsted or Skeeve regarding the sponsorship opportunity, but Football Investor Stewboss has offered to match Football Analyst Graeme's offer of a £25 bounty to anyone finishing ahead of him in the table (up to £500).  

£52.50 for the chance to pit your wits against the big boys and win their money.

Finally, a reminder that the early bird price of £129 for the Cassini Service next season expires at the end of July, and we are nearly at the end of July.

PayPal to calciocassini @ aol.com for either the FTL, Cassini Service or both, and if you haven't read my article on Betting Expert regarding updating ratings, check it out here.

Friendly Tipster League And The Erskine Cup 2014-15

As promised, here is an update for the 2014-15 Friendly Tipster League. I posted some thoughts on the 2014-15 version of the FTL back in June, and my ideas were fortunately all favourably received.

The essential details are as follows:

Cost

The cost is £52.50 per entry, with £50 going into the pot, and £2.50 covering ‘administrative costs’. No objections to this proposal were received, au contraire, I was told I was selling my time too cheap. Well, just a little, but I do quite enjoy this kind of thing.

Division of Prize Money (Overview)

Approximately 75% of the pot money will go to the League competition, 15% to a Cup competition, and 10% will go to the monthly prizes. If we reach 32 entries, and we currently have 12 paid up, with interest from at least three more, the prizes will be £1,500, £300 and £200 – a total of £2,000.

Hang on a minute, I hear you mathematical whizzes say. 32 * £50 is only £1,600 - where is this huge total of £2,000 coming from. Well the good news I mentioned on Friday is that Ian Erskine, the FTS Income man, has come up with an extremely generous donation to the pot, which after his own entry fee and subscription to the Cassini Service are accounted for comes to a little over £400. I propose that the Cup will be named the Erskine Cup in recognition of this fine and very generous gesture.

If any other service provider would like to donate anything to the pot in return for the good publicity of frequent mentions, please don’t be shy. While Ian has set the bar very high, every little helps. Stewboss, aka Football Investor, has said he will chip in something, and perhaps other services such as Premier Betting or Skeeve would like to get their names out there all season for a few quid.

Graeme Dand (The Football Analyst) is repeating his offer from last year of a £25 per head bounty to anyone finishing ahead of his best entry, capped with a maximum liability of £500 and again, this is a very generous offer. Last year, five qualifying entries beat his ‘Barcelona in the Conference’. Perhaps Pinnacle Sports would be interested in chipping in a few hundred as their prices will be used and referenced each week?

Selection Requirements

The FTL will run from Friday 1st August 2014 to the final match of the Serie A season, which I believe will be Sunday 31st May 2015.

Qualifying Leagues

As I use the Pinnacle Sports quoted prices from the Football Data.co.uk web site to record the results, selections are restricted to the leagues they cover, which are in England (top 5 leagues), Scotland (top 4), the top two in France, Germany, Italy and Spain, plus the top league in the Netherlands, Belgium, Portugal, Turkey and Greece.

Unfortunately Cup and European games are not included and are therefore ineligible. Bets on correct scores are also not allowed as the prices are not recorded.

Entry Deadline

Because the prices recorded are taken on Friday afternoons for weekend matches, and Tuesday afternoons for midweek matches, entries will need to be received by midnight on those days. Obviously if you have a Friday evening or a Tuesday evening selection, you will need to submit it before kick-off time, but otherwise so long as the entry is in by midnight Friday (for weekend games) or midnight Tuesday (for midweek games) the prices shouldn’t have moved too much. Most activity is on the English games, so this will give you all Friday night to fine tune your selections.

This will also give me time to publish some of the selections ahead of time which will make the Cup weekends in particular rather more interesting to everyone. Out of respect for the paid services out there, or rather to their subscribers, those selections will have to remain private unless they say otherwise.

Selection Types

Single / Multiple Selections

All selections will be bet risking one point, whether a back or a lay. Unlike last season, accumulators will be accepted. However, a selection can only be included once. If an entry is for example a double of Team A and Team B, and a second entry is Team A and Team C, the second bet will be treated as a single on Team C.

Match Odds

Selections will be recorded against the Pinnacle Sports Match Odds prices. For back bets, this is self-explanatory. For lay selections, the price used will be Pinnacle’s +0.025 (for odds-on or evens selections) and +0.05 for others. Thus for example, a winning lay at 2.00 will be recorded as a profit of 0.98 points.

Under / Overs

The price used to determine Under / Over bets will be that of the 2.5 goal markets. If the selection is under 1.5, 3.5 or whatever, it will be considered a bet on Under 2.5, and same on the Overs. The prices used will be an average of Football Data’s Average (BbAv) and Maximum (BbMx) prices.

Draw No Bet (DNB) [Updated on 3.Aug.14]

Football Data do not record prices on these bets, but the prices will be calculated using the Match Odds that are published. The probability implied for the draw will be re-assigned proportionately to the Home and Away prices.

Handicap

Similarly, a bet on a team to win + goals (e.g. +0.5) will be treated as a lay of the opposing team. A bet of a team to win – goals (e.g. -0.5) will be a back of that team to win.

Entry Format

There is no set format required for entries. I tend to reformat them into a Word document and play with them there, so simple text is preferred, but I will let you know if anyone’s format is problematic.

League Details

League prize money will be divided among all the profitable entries in the ratio of the profits. Thus if four entries are in profit, e.g. by 6 points, 4 points, 3 points and 2 points, the pot will be split 6/15ths to the winner, 4/15ths to second and so on. This will ensure that anyone in profit will win something. As a reminder, this was how the league ended last season:

Seven entries would have shared the prize money, with the prize money being distributed from 30% to the Cassini Value Selections down to about 2% for the XX Draws (Under) entry.

Of course, with the bounty in place, it is quite possible to be in the red but win £25 if you beat The Football Analyst.

Entries must make at least 76 selections to be eligible for prizes, which should be no problem for the likes of Neil who submit that many each week. I exaggerate. Slightly.

Erskine Cup Competition Details

The Erskine Cup format will depend on the number of entries received. If we reach our target of 32 entries, there will be cup match-ups on the following weekends:

September 27th,
November 1st,
November 29th,
January 31st,
February 28th,
March 21st,
April 25th

The dates have been chosen because all the major leagues are in action on those weekends. The last weekend in October would have made it more symmetrical but the Conference National have no matches scheduled due to the Fourth Qualifying Round of some other cup competition, but it's nicely spread out as it is and misses the FA Cup's scheduled rounds.

If we have less than 32 entries, then some of the earlier 2014 dates will be skipped. For the Cup, there will be a public and open draw, and entries will be paired together. The Cup results will simply be the profit or loss for that weekend's matches and would also count in the FTL. You could lose 3 points, but advance if your 'opponent' loses 4 points, or you could be up 10 points and be eliminated if your 'opponent' makes 11 points. Cup winnings will be 50% for the winner, 25% for the runner-up and 12.5% each for the losing semi-finalists.

Monthly Winner

Eight monthly prizes will be awarded to the most profitable entry In each month. August and September will be combined into one month, as will April and May. If we reach 32 entries, this monthly prize will be at least £25.

Places will be awarded on a first come, first served basis as fees are received - PayPal to calciocassini @ aol.com and if anyone wants to top up the kitty with a sponsorship, and a mention each week, please feel free.

Finally, please remember this is a friendly competition. The rules are intended to make it as fair as possible to everyone, so if you don't like the entry deadlines, or have any other issues, don't enter.  I try to be as accurate as possible with the updates, but it the entrant's responsibility to check their results and let me know within a week if I have made an error. Contrary to rumour, I am not perfect. The final decision on any grievances will be made by the League Commissioner - which is me. I just voted myself in. Any questions on the above, please let me know.

The bottom line is that for just £52.50, you get season long (10 months) entertainment, and an opportunity to show your skill and win some decent prize money. The pot odds are already good. What's stopping you?

My offer of the spreadsheet containing the 2014-15 fixtures has been eagerly snapped up by a few FTL entrants and Cassini Service subscribers, and I am pleased to say that this will now include the Championship, League One, League Two and Conference National fixtures making a grand total of 4,034 matches. Still awaiting Italy to schedule Serie A but that should be done on Monday, so some time next week it should be ready to go.  

Fixtures, Schedules and Erskine Delivers

I’m putting together my spreadsheet with all the fixtures from the top leagues for 2014-15, and although the draw for the Serie A schedule isn’t until Monday, the differences between the leagues are always interesting to see.

The French are the first to start their season, kicking things off on Friday 8th August. Two midweek rounds are on the schedule, with a three week break at the half-way point over Xmas and the New Year sees the season finish on the weekend of May 23rd 2015.

The English Premier League starts a week later on the weekend of August 16th, and has three rounds of (non-holiday) midweek matches scheduled. No winter break for the EPL of course, in fact quite the contrary with two matches in three days over Boxing Day and the adjoining weekend. New Year’s Day (a Thursday) marks the start of the second half of the season, and there are a couple of blank league weekends for the FA Cup. Unlike other leagues, the history behind our primary cup competition means it still has a prominent place in the calendar.

The Germans have fewer matches to schedule, so they return to action full of World Cup pride a week later, on Friday August 22nd, take a six week long winter / half-term break, yet still conclude their activity on the weekend of May 23rd 2015. How very organized.

La Liga starts the same weekend as Germany, but they are happy with scheduling just 16 matches by the end of the year, and fitting 22 in after the New Year. The BBC site from where I pulled the fixtures may not be completely accurate on these games – they have Almeria ending the season with four consecutive home games which seemed a bit odd, and it looks like they have the matches versus Sevilla reversed.

Finally, Italy’s Serie A gets underway on August 31st, "a later start then usual because of the World Cup". It was a decision made last December, presumably by an optimist at the Legacalcio - or do a lot of Germans play in Serie A? The league will consequently wrap up a week after the other top leagues on May 31st 2015.

Once the Serie A fixtures are scheduled and incorporated into my spreadsheet, if any Cassini Service subscribers or FTL entrants would like a free copy, drop me a line. It took quite a bit of time, and will need to be updated as matches are rescheduled for various reasons, but the baseline rounds will all be there and it might save some of you several hours of work.

Finally, as mentioned earlier this week, I'll finalise the rules, terms, conditions etc. for the 2014-15 FTL, but I did hear from Ian Erskine (of FTS Income fame and fortune) and have some great news regarding his offer to sponsor this season's competition. Let's just say Ian's fortune is slightly less than it was!

Incidentally Ian, I did reply to you, but received an Undelivered Mail Returned To Sender message back.

<ian@ftsincome.co.uk>: host mail.ftsincome.co.uk[81.4.108.91] said: 554 5.7.1 Service unavailable; Client host [64.12.222.129] blocked using dnsbl.sorbs.net; Currently Sending Spam See:

If anyone else would like to sponsor the competition, please let me know. We also still have several places available at a cost of just £52.50 and after the news of Ian's donation, there might be a small stampede.

Ratings For Anoraks

I received a couple of comments on my recent post which compared my ratings with Statto's ratings. As I mentioned, I used Stattos' ratings as the starting point for my rather ambitious plan to track the lower English leagues down to the Conference in addition to the top five European leagues.

Fairfranco asked:

Out of interest do you know if Statto's ratings have been of any use over time?

Would be good to see historical results with ratings at the time alongside them to get a grasp on some accuracy.

Matthew T added:

I would also be interested Padrino if you had any experience regarding the validity of the Statto ratings. Once upon a time I used to paper trade a range of ratings system while betting my own but it became too time consuming. If I remember correctly I found the Statto ratings were very weighted to long term quality over short term form and I never could devise a method for incorporating their trend rating in to a betting system. They seem very similar in style to the Racing Football Outlook newspaper football ratings and both seem to have their origin in Elo. They seemed lackluster in the divisions where more complex models were rife e.g. EPL and better in the lower class European leagues. For top leagues a good free option remains Dectech for Poisson style goals for and against ratings.

The short answer is that I do not know if Statto's ratings have been of any use over time. They claim a pretty good record for them, writing:

The Science Behind Statto Index

The Index has been developed and tested over many years, starting in the 1980s before the World Wide Web era. Our testing uses around 25 years worth of results and approximately 10 years of bookmakers odds to test the accuracy and profitability of the system.

Naturally, no system is perfect and we continuously monitor its performance. For the mathematically minded, the correlation between our forecasts and actual results is just over 0.9, which means that approximately 90% of the final outcomes are explained by the prior forecasts.

Naturally, no system is perfect, but 90% isn't too shabby, although I think we need a more detailed explanation of what exactly "final outcomes explained by the prior forecasts means"!

Forecasts

The forecast odds on this site are produced by our Forecasting Engine using our unique Statto Index ratings. The Index currently covers 29 leagues together with all International teams - a total of over 750 teams. Our forecasted odds are based on a true 100% book and therefore do not take account of any commission or projected profit margin - this is left to you based on personal preference. Odds are forecasted for both match and outright markets.

I agree with Matthew that their ratings do appear to move rather slowly, and their focus appears to be more targeted at the anorak / weatherman types rather than someone looking to make money from them.

Having said that, I have to admit that I have a little of the 'anorak' in me myself.

A recent DNA analysis threw up some surprises in my ancestry - along with the alarmingly high Neanderthal percentage shown above, and the less surprising majority British and Irish percentage shown below, there was a small percentage of 'train-spotter' DNA detected. Where that came from is something of a mystery, although a great-great-granddad - in other words a "really fantastic" granddad - did work with the trains on Ryde Pier, Isle of Wight circa 1850.

Anyway, it's my excuse for finding the Historical Ratings from 1888 quite interesting.

The best (highest rated) English team of all-time is Chelsea (2006) who reached 995 points, just 35 points ahead of Aston Villa's historic best, which unfortunately for them was not last season, but came in 1897. Just two League clubs reached a new high in 2014 - Manchester City (960) and Burton Albion (706). At 958, City are in with a good chance of setting a new high this season - they don't face Crystal Palace until December - but whether it is possible to make money from such ratings seems unlikely.

Matthew mentioned Dectech as a good free option, but I remember questioning their sanity when I saw they had Norwich City predicted to finish fifth in the EPL last season with 68 points. They got 33, and were relegated of course.

Admittedly I had Norwich City avoiding relegation at the start of last season too, but didn't go so far as a top half finish, never mind chasing a Champions League spot. Perhaps Dectech reacted too much to Norwich's meaningless last day 3-2 win at Manchester City the previous season?

I mentioned earlier that I agreed with Matthew's observation that Statto's ratings move too slowly, at least from a betting perspective, but the other side of the coin is to be careful not to overreact to a result such as the one just mentioned. Norwich were never contenders for a European spot of any type based on league performance.

Thanks to all of you who have renewed or subscribed for the first time to the Cassini Service. The early-bird special offer of £129 (or £99 for renewals) is good through the end of this month. PayPal to calciocassini @ aol.com

I'll re-focus on the Friendly Tipster League this weekend, and see if we get some prizes / bonuses from the likes of Ian Erskine. Watch this space.

Emotional Discipline

Thanks to those of you who offered suggestions and ideas on obtaining closing prices on football matches, specifically Jamie A, Sheva Wigwam (quite possibly not his real name) and Marco Mattes. 

Steve, of Daily25 fame and fortune, wrote in a comment on following certain tipsters, specifically when to drop them:

But also it is a psychological issue too, once we decide to invest real money (and in my case, big money), into something, our brains then tell us that we must have made the right decision. To then go back on this and admit you were wrong and therefore stupid is a hard thing to do. There is a saying in the start-up world which goes "Hire slowly, fire quickly". It may be a mantra I need to follow in regards to tipsters too.

This is very similar to the error that many traders make, of emotionally attaching themselves to a selection, and being unwilling to admit that they were wrong and cut their losses quickly enough. As I have written before, cutting winners short and letting losers run too long, is probably the biggest trading mistake. 

The reason a trade is entered, or a tipster service is subscribed to, is because you are looking to make a profit, so it is human nature that this is the part you are most focused on. However, neither trading nor following tipsters is ever going to be all smooth sailing, and you need to have a plan in place in the not unlikely event that things don't go perfectly. 

Most traders don’t want to acknowledge that a trade could turn against them. They enter the market assuming they’ll be successful, refusing to look in the rearview mirror. It’s also common for emerging traders to use a calculator to predict how much they’ll make and how they’ll spend the unrealized profits!

Losses are part of the game but especially beginners have difficulties in accepting this. A loss creates frustration and you become “upset” on the market. You have the feeling that “the market” took something which you feel belongs to you: your money. You are determined to get your money back and you put on a position three times your normal position size in order to make the loss back. You do not stick to your trading plan, you are upset and want to take revenge for the previous loss. These kinds of trades are called “revenge trades” and can lead to huge draw-down’s as you can easily imagine.

Another mention for the fact that finding value doesn't mean that all decisions are profitable. Trading is about making money overall, not every time, and the lesson that profitable betting is about finding value, not winners, continues to elude some people.

Betfair Forum member Zazu who, after three years should have learned, responded recently to the wisdom that "When betting you try to find value, not pick winners" with:

Losing bets don't pay any bills

Needing to win bets to pay bills, or staking too high, leads to emotionally driven, less than optimal decisions. Bet (staking 'sensibly'), with money you don't need, and your trading / betting will be all the better for the removal of the emotional element. 

Books And Ratings Compared EPL 2014-15

I have spent most of this weekend building a new spreadsheet (although model sounds better) for the lower leagues in England. It may well prove to be too much work to maintain this, but others have success in the lower leagues, and I thought I would give it a try. The initial ratings are based on those on the Statto.com website, but mine will soon diverge and take their own shape as the results start coming in.

The close season is always disruptive to ratings but after a handful of games they correct themselves. Unless your club rating is based on individual player ratings, there is no objective way of incorporating dramatic changes at clubs. In the EPL, the activity at some of the top clubs this summer has impacted last season's closing ratings.

Liverpool finished 2013-14 in second place, not only in the EPL, but also in the Cassini Ratings, and were joint second in Statto's ratings too. Currently, based on Pinnacle Sports and Betfair's prices, they are rated fifth, behind favourites Chelsea and followed by Manchester City, Manchester United and Arsenal, and my current rating of second is likely to soon be adjusted down.

Southampton are another club where significant changes have taken place. Currently rated 7th by Cassin and 8th by Statto, they are ranked 11th on Betfair.

Assessing new (promoted) teams is also problematic. For their initial Cassini ratings, I use the performance of promoted teams over the last ten seasons as a guide. The last 30 teams promoted to the EPL have averaged a finishing place the following season of 15.2, and in 9 of the last 10 seasons, at least one promoted side has been relegated.

One odd fact is that the promoted Champions actually fare worse on average than the runners-up and play-off winners. Five Champions have been immediately relegated, including the last two of Reading and Cardiff City, while only two runners-up have suffered the same fate, and none since 2007. Five play-off winners have also dropped immediately, but the last three all finished highest of the promoted teams in the following season.

So it's a little surprising that the sportsbooks have the three promoted teams to fill all three relegation places. Here are the predicted finishing positions based on the bookies, along with the Statto and Cassini ratings.

Statto's rating of Leicester City in 10th place seems a little high to me, and both our ratings for Newcastle United are probably a little low. They certainly ended the season in poor form, but then they had nothing to realistically play for over the last few games. I seem to be a little high on West Bromwich Albion where the expectation seems to be of just about avoiding relegation.

Sharp Move

For a bookmaker, Pinnacle Sports publish some pretty darn good betting articles, and if you have a spare week or two, and have already read everything in this blog, you could do worse with your time than take a look at some of them.

One article from November 2012 titled Why Odds Movement is Vital contained a couple of statements that are somewhat related to yesterday's post:

The most accurate way to distinguish winning and losing players is to look at the odds a player received when they made their bet, and compare it with the Pinnacle Sports closing line on the game. If a player consistently beats the closing odds at Pinnacle Sports, they are likely to be a long-term winner.

Interestingly, Pinnacle Sports have found that this test is more reflective of a player’s future winning potential than their historical win/loss record with the company.

For example, if Pinnacle Sports’ closing odds on the Steelers was 1.960, and a customer played 2.050 earlier in the week – that was a sharp bet. When a player can anticipate the line movement, and does this consistently over a series of 100 bets or more, that player is conclusively sharp, and will be up over time.

This is another area where I need to focus some attention this season, but if anyone knows where I can find closing lines on last season's football, I'd be interested. As I have mentioned before, the odds published by the Football Data web site are not closing lines, but prices collected on Friday afternoons for weekend games, and on Tuesday afternoons for midweek games.

Kelly In Action

Prompted by a Cassini subscriber who wants to look at the 2013-14 Cassini Value Selections in more detail, I went through all my old emails and recorded the edges in a spreadsheet which is something I should have done all along. I expunged four matches from the records (three winners and one loser) because they were from the early days and were lays or draw no bet selections which left me with 117 pure selections and profit of 23.69 points. A small sample, but it was interesting that when sorted by edge percentage, the top five, and six of the top seven, were losers. There seems to be some truth in the saying that if something appears too good to be true, then it probably is. Selections with a supposed edge in excess of 30% all lost:

My calculated price is in column E with Pinnacle's official price in F and the edge in G.

At the other end of the range, there were 19 selections which, at the time the email was sent, had an edge of over 10%, but were less than that in the recorded Pinnacle prices. Those 19 selections were still profitable, generating 5.05 points.

One embarrassing and, in hindsight, avoidable loss was the selection of Bayern Munich to win at Augsburg in April. A price of 1.4 at the time the list was compiled looked good enough, with a 20.4% edge, to justify inclusion, although I did caution in my email that:

One comment is that Bayern Munich have clinched the league and their motivation may not be what it was.

In the event, Bayern fielded "an experimental side" and models don't work too well with "experimental sides". The motivation factor also cost me a few points at the end of last season. Once April was over, the results were poor:

One of the benefits of having a precise number for your edge is that if you are confident in that number, you can maximise your returns by using the mathematically proven and optical  Kelly Criterion.

I think the subscriber who prompted this review may be thinking in terms of this, and using a £1,000 bank, full Kelly would have ended the season with the bank at £2,837.58 (using the prices at email time) or £2,782.37 using the recorded Pinnacle prices.

The more conservative half-Kelly results would have been £2,524.34 and £2,490.85 respectively, and the quarter-Kelly  numbers are £1,750.52 and £1,736.14. Interestingly the maximum bet here would have been around £248 on the aforementioned Bayern Munich loss.

One other statistic I looked at was the price at email time versus the Pinnacle recorded price. (Worth mentioning that the Pinnacle recorded price is not necessarily the closing (kick-off) price but is the price recorded by Football Data on a Friday afternoon).

Anyway, of the small sample of 117 matches, 60 shortened in price, 20 remained unchanged, and 37 drifted.

The 60 that shortened by a total of 2.27 points made an official profit of 13.13 points. The unchanged made a 2.85 points profit, while the drifters added 7.71 points despite drifting by a total of 1.07 points. What was interesting was that the bigger drifters (those of 0.03 points or more) were net losers, while those selections shortening by 0.03 points or more were net winners. Follow the market.

Some lessons to be learned as the new season fast approaches - less than a month away in fact.

Cassini Selections 2014-15

Cassini is back after spending the last few weeks in the hot California and Nevadan sunshine watching World Cup matches with his wife, daughter and daughter's beau, and losing money on the Craps tables of Las Vegas. Fun bets only though, so it was all good, but back to normal now and with the EPL fixtures out for next season, it's time to look forward to 2014-15, with the small matter of wrapping up the World Cup this weekend.

Despite a disappointing 2013-14 season for the Draws, several of you have asked for my plans for them and the Cassini Value Selections next season. I'm assuming that this interest isn't merely curiosity, but reflects an understanding that although the draws were in the red for the first time, there was an underlying reason, and other redeeming factors were:

• that the draws backed  unders were (very slightly) in the green
• the Bundeslayga selections were profitable
• and last but not least, the FTL champion Cassini Value Selections were very profitable

All this means that after much pondering, deliberation, cogitation, mulling, rumination, thought, consideration and prodding, I have decided that I will continue the service next season.

While the Draws part of the service was obviously disappointing, the reason is clear, and I have no reason to suppose that the decline in draws is part of a long-term trend, although the World Cup group stage results didn't do draw backers any favours. At least they returned in the knock-out phase with a vengeance with 50% of matches ending as draws. Now a season like that in Europe would be very nice.

I have updated the Prospectus for next season, as some of you have already noticed and acted upon, but the highlights are that for new subscribers, the cost will be the same as last year, a very reasonable £149 considering the total selections will likely be around 700.

For former subscribers, the cost will be £99, and for anyone who is an entrant in the 2014-15 Friendly Tipster League, the price will be reduced to £124.

For anyone signing up before the World Cup Final, there will be an early-bird special price of just £129. As I picked July 13th as the deadline a while back, and then never posted it, I'll actually switch the digits around and extend the early-bird price through the end of July.

Back to the World Cup and it's been 36 years since a UEFA member failed to finish third, with only one CONMEBOL country even featuring in the last 8 matches (Uruguay in 2010). There have been 17 third place matches, with just one needing extra-time. As has been commented on all over the place, Overs are traditional with just three finishing Under 2.5, and none since 1974. A care-free approach makes this a tricky game to predict. Host nations have featured in four matches, winning three, and Brazil have won two of their three appearances, while the Netherlands lost their one appearance in 1998 - to Croatia. On form, Brazil look rather short at their current 2.14 but the team line-ups may well be changed significantly from those seen in the meaningful games preceding this one.