Humidor Dead Balls

With the break in baseball for the All-Star Game this week, I've been digging around in the MLB numbers this week trying to understand what might be causing the decline this season in home runs, hits and strikeouts and aside from the Designated Hitter (DH) rule that has been much discussed, there has also been a change to the type of ball being used. 

According to Sports Illustrated, there is a new "less lively ball" in use throughout the MLB, although interestingly the article mentions that it was introduced last year, but not everywhere. I would love to know where but I'm not sure these statistics are available and according to this CBS article, this mix wasn't intended. 

Not surprisingly, a "less lively" baseball isn't going to travel as far as the previously "more lively" baseball. What would have been a Home Run in 2021, at least in some games, becomes a deep fly-ball out in 2022. 

Apparently all 30 ballparks in MLB now use a humidor for storing the balls. I was aware that Coors Field used one, I believe as a condition for allowing the Colorado Rockies to become an expansion team (they play about a mile above sea-level where the air is obviously thinner), but I wasn't aware that they were now in use everywhere.

Last season 10 clubs had them, (5 NL, 5 AL), and as cigar aficionados will know, the purpose of a humidor is to dry out the ball in humid climates and dampen it in dry climates, and of course the drier the baseball, the further it flies.

By design, the baseball does not carry as far because of more uniform manufacturing specifications. (It was introduced last year, but this is the first season with 100% use of the less lively baseball.) Add the use of humidors in all 30 ballparks for more uniform storage protocols, and you get the end of a Rabbit Ball Era from 2016 to ‘21.

No wonder the Totals systems have become unusable. It was apparent that something had disrupted the markets, but until now I was thinking it was more likely the DH rule, but the change of ball is clearly a significant factor and I shall sleep well tonight. 

The CBS article concludes with this:

Bottom line, the baseball is not carrying the same way it did the past few years. The home run rate is down significantly early in the season, and because hitters have yet to adjust, offense is way down too. The season is still young and we need a lot more data before we have a full understanding of how this baseball works and the humidor's impact. The early returns suggest a return to 2013 and 2014, the last time teams averaged fewer than a home run per game, and offense was this low league-wide.

There's never a dull moment in sports betting with changes like this coming along - seemingly every season in the US sports.

The annual MLB system of backing favourites in their first game back had another profitable year, and all-time (well, since the data started in 2004) the ROI numbers for this simple system are now 13.2% (Money Line) and 12.5% (Run Line). Some of you might recall that I mentioned this back in 2016, if not prior:

One trend that did hold true again this season was that of favourites doing well in their first games after the break. The rationale for this is that although the better teams are likely to be better represented at the All-Star game, many of those will only put in a less than exhausting cameo performance, while the majority of their players enjoy the break and get some rest which apparently benefits better teams more than worse teams.

These once a year trends are of limited value of course - come next year and 99% of people reading this will have forgotten about it.

Hopefully some of you enjoyed a boost to your accounts this week but I suspect most fell into the 99% category.

The numbers for Away (or Road) favourites are even more impressive at 20.1% and 29.8% respectively. It's just a pity there's only the one All-Star game a year.

The Women's Euros Quarter-Finals wrapped up yesterday with two Draws from the four games, and a profit whether you backed the Draw in all matches or just the 'no-odds-on' game. It was very nearly three from four with Sweden unable to score against Belgium until stoppage time.

While we only have 12 Semi-Final games with prices from Women's Euros and World Cup, the four Draws mean that, as in the men's game, backing the Draw is a profitable strategy. 

Three matches had an odds-on favourite, with one Draw, and nine had no such favourite and three Draws. 

England are likely to be odds-on on Monday against Sweden, although they have drifted significantly, while the Germany v France game looks fairly even and would currently be a 'Toss-Up' if it were an EPL game. 'Toss-Ups' in men's elimination games have an ROI of 34%. 

MLB Half-Term Report

As I've mentioned before, this MLB season saw a significant rule change with probably the biggest difference between the two leagues, i.e. the Designated Hitter (DH) rule, being implemented universally. 

For non-baseball fans, in the past National League (NL) pitchers bat whereas in the American League (AL) their place in the batting line-up is taken by a DH, and this rule now applies to both leagues.

As you would expect, more runs are scored in games played under American League rules (those where the Home team is an American league club) compared with games played under National league rules. Since 2004, and excluding the 2020 Covid season when the DH rule was also applied universally, the numbers are 8.4 in NL parks and 8.8 in AL parks. 

As you might also expect, edges that used to exist on betting Totals have been disrupted, and the Overall numbers are not good for this season:

However, the losses are all for NL games, with AL Totals still showing a profit, albeit of just 0.6% but all things considered, I think sitting out Totals for this season at least is probably the smart decision.

The disruption appears to have impacted the Hot Favourites System also, at least in the National League, but for American League clubs the system remains profitable with an ROI of 0.9%.  

After sizzling for several seasons the T-Bone System, which like many other strategies stopped working in the 2020 Covid season, appears to have been overdone and burned to a crisp as it continues to be a loss maker this season. I'll continue to spend time on this idea updating results, but not any money.   

I've mentioned in the past a couple of trends connected to the All-Star Break, with Favourites good value in their last matches before the break as well as in their first game after. 

Peter commented that:

Harking back to your 16/07/21 post about favs in final game b4 the ASB: 7-5 today not so flash but yesterday went 15-1 ! and Friday 9-5 perhaps the full 3 game series b4 the break is worth a look?

Always good to hear that someone is paying attention, and looking at the three days leading up to the break does show that the strategy is successful for all three days.

My post back then pointed out that:

Certainly blindly backing all favourites in the final game before the All-Star Break is a profitable strategy, +6.7% Money Line, +12.1% Run Line.

Here are the numbers including this year's data: 

Saturday this season was rather unusual with the largest return from all 42 days under examination, but a loss on the Run Line! 

As for backing the Favourites in their first outing AFTER the break, we wait. Here are the numbers up to, and including, last season from way back in 2004:

As for the game itself, the New York Yankees have the best record with a winning percentage of .688 (which most people would write as 68.8%) while the Washington Nationals have the worst record at 0.33. No wonder Juan Soto reportedly turned down a 15-year, $440 million contract extension last week, and will likely be traded. 

Women's Euros 2022

Quite a few comments in the past few days, and all are positive which is always a plus. Regarding the ongoing Women's Euros Tournament, I wrote on the 10th July that:

So far every odds-on favourite has won, while every game without an odds-on favourite has finished as a Draw.

It appears that quite a few of you were with me on this simple idea, and it certainly paid dividends. 

Of the 24 Group games, 19 had an odds-on favourite of which 16 won for an ROI of 7.9%, while the more open five matches produced four Draws for a meaningless ROI of 173% or 8.65 units.

Interestingly none of the seven longest priced favourites won, so a 'Lay The Favourite' strategy for any team priced at 1.6 or longer would have been worthwhile. 

The one result with a 'hot favourite' failing to win was the very last match of the round. Favourites France led from the 1st minute all the way up to the 12th minute of time added on when they conceded a penalty (converted) to Iceland for a 1:1 result. It was Iceland's third 1:1 score from the three group games, but despite being unbeaten in the tournament, Iceland were eliminated. 

Leading for 111 minutes and failing to win must be some kind of record!

Prices as short as those you see on the left above are not too exciting, but Larry wrote to say:

Lovely work on the Euro Women's. Round 2 been very profitable. Playing anything above 1.60 as a single and multi betting the real shorties.

Larry's selection of 1.6 as his cut-off appears to be quite prescient, but combining shorties into multiples is a good strategy I like to do myself when possible. 

None of you will remember my post from October 2010 when I mentioned my habit of buying the Racing Post back in the 1980s, possibly into the early 90s, but back then I wrote:

When the Racing Post started covering sports betting, I would buy it just for those two pages. I opened several telephone credit accounts with different firms, and would spend my daily train journey to London comparing the odds offered by them, noting down any prices that were out of line with the others, on sports such as football, the NFL, Formula 1, cricket, tennis, Boat Race, snooker, rugby league and union, and politics.

While I didn't mention it back then, I may have done somewhere else here, but one of my habits in those days was to lump short priced favourites together in multiples, exactly the strategy being followed by Larry. 

Despite passing my 'A' Level in Pure Maths With Statistics, it was often surprising to me just how rewarding a multiple of those shorties could be with, for example, a treble of three 1.3 shots paying out at 2.2.

Incidentally, that 2010 post mentions the exact moment when I realised that looking at the Draw in certain games might be a strategy worth following, and one category of 'certain games' is that of major tournament elimination matches, which is where we are now in the Women's Euros.

Previous Women's Tournaments haven't been a good environment for Draws overall, at least going back to the 2009 Euros, with an ROI of -2%, but in matches with no odds-on favourite, the ROI is a positive 11%. Quarter-Finals have a 26% ROI, Semi-Finals 9% and Finals 263% (with only one qualifier). The Round of 16 is a loss maker, but of course the Euros don't have a Round of 16 so 'Draw' you're own conclusions.

With no odds-on favourite in yesterday's England v Spain game and I took the Draw at 3.5 and a 1:1 result was an excellent start. The other three Quarter-Finals will all have an odds-on favourite, with Germany and Sweden very short. 

Finally. a few of you expressed interest in the 'Sacred Manuscript' mentioned in my last post, with Rob writing:

You’ve previously helped me with some queries regarding your systems which continue to make me a nice return. Thank you for that.

Always nice to hear. 

Next post should be a half-time look at the MLB season, as it takes a short break for its annual All-Star Game, won for the ninth consecutive time this year by the American League. At least one reader will be following the once-a-year system coming out of the break.

Sacred Manuscript

"This is the nature of what we do. It's the intersection of business, people, psychology, sociology, and numbers. It's just inherently fascinating. There's a lot of macro factors and stuff that make sure you never have the game beat. Never."

The quote above comes from Michael Mauboussin who has spent more than three decades studying companies and the investment process.

Substitute "business" with "sports" and what most readers of this blog are trying to do is rather neatly summarised. 

As for the final seven words there, while it is true that no edge should last for ever, and we need to constantly evolve our ideas and systems as "macro factors and stuff" change, it is apparent that edges can last for a lot longer than we might expect. 

And yes, sports investing is inherently fascinating. Warren Buffett long ago moved past the point where more many had any utility for him, and is quoted as saying:

"In a sense, the game that I'm in gets more interesting all the time. It's a competitive game, it's a big game, and I enjoy the game a lot"

Compared to financial investing and Warren Buffett, for most of us sports investing isn't quite such a big game, but back in 2009 I described betting on sports as being a game:

I've never been one for games, (friends at work spend hours playing Call of Duty - why? What's the point?), but in many ways the exchanges are one big on-line game. It's me versus an unknown opponent. My opinion versus yours, except in this game the points are real money.

Thirteen years on and while a lot of things have changed, for example I no longer have any friends at work - the result of being moved to full-time work-from-home status rather than my personality, lest any of you be wondering - I do still enjoy the intellectual challenge of investing, and a little extra money is never a bad thing.

Sports markets are, or should be, examples of complex adaptive systems, but they are often verifiably inefficient. It's these inefficiencies we need to identify to gain an edge. 

A couple of comments on my recent Comment Review - Farewells, Draws and Muscle Mass post expressing interest in the document I mentioned "detailing the exact process and breaking down each step but it comes with details of 8 other long-term profitable systems".

The modestly named Onebrickshort wrote:

As a long term reader of the world's number one sports investment blog, I might also be interested in being able to purchase the sacred manuscript.

And Hkibuzz, a man of efficiency and few words, simply added:

Same here :)

I may steal the term 'Sacred Manuscript' for future use, as it appeals to my sense of humour, as does referring to this blog as 'the world's number one sports investment blog'! There's no downside to having fun while simultaneously taking sports, or any, investing seriously.

Unfortunately comments don't give me your email address, so if you are interested, please use the Contact Form on the top right of the blog or simply send me an email at calciocassini @ aol.com after removing the spaces of course.

The document is updated with last season's results and only the current MLB season is in progress. 

I may need to add another System since I mentioned here last weekend that:

To fill the off season for football, this year we have the Women's Euros, and so far every odds-on favourite has won, while every game without an odds-on favourite has finished as a Draw.

It's been a better suggestion than I imagined, with 12 of 13 odds-on teams winning so far (the only loss so far was Norway's at 1.91 yesterday), and of the other five matches, four have been Draws. The one 'Dog to win so far was Germany at 2.83 versus Spain, and both these teams are odds-on to win their games today.  

Winning In Your Sleep, and Women's Euros

Some of you may enjoy this story about a guy who entered an online qualifying tournament for the World Series of Poker’s Main Event, fell asleep after working late, and won.

The online satellite cost $80, and Goldstein registered. But he was worn out from working late that day and went to sleep, forgetting that he signed up.

Unlike most satellites that are structured similar to a standard poker tournament, this one required players to go all-in every hand until there was a winner from the 126 entrants.

As a result, Goldstein’s cards remained live rather than being automatically mucked even though he was sound asleep and not clicking buttons at his computer. The whole satellite lasted a little more than three minutes, according to records from WSOP.com.

Goldstein, whose screen name is “GoldsteinE,” started out with pocket queens on the first hand and won nine consecutive all-ins to take the Main Event seat. On the final hand, he made a flush to beat his opponent, “Basil_Hayden,” who got $72 as a consolation prize.

Goldstein woke up early the next morning and said he had approximately 50 messages from friends informing him he won.

“I was just like, “There’s no way,’ ” Goldstein said. “And then I looked at my email, and there’s an email from WSOP.com saying come get your chips. Kind of a little surreal.

“I was literally getting ready for work, so I didn’t have too much time to comprehend it. It was more just, ‘Holy cow, I guess I’m playing the Main (Event) now.’”

The full story with additional details from the Las Vegas Review-Journal is here.

To fill the off season for football, this year we have the Women's Euros, and so far every odds-on favourite has won, while every game without an odds-on favourite has finished as a Draw.

France are odds-on to defeat Italy in the next match. Matches with no odds-on are usually good prospects for Draw hunters, but in the Women's game, this isn't yet the case.

The previous three Euros have just 21 matches (including group games) with no odds-on favourite, and only four of these have ended as Draws.

At some point, the Women's game should mature and become as competitive as the Men's, and perhaps this year is that moment. Something to watch, literally.

Comment Review - Farewells, Draws and Muscle Mass

I was going to blame being away from my computer for a few weeks for getting behind with a few comments posted on the blog, but since they were all from May, I should probably just put my hands up and admit that sometimes I forget to go to the "Comments" page and allow publication of the non-spam ones, which are typically the minority. 

In reverse order, I had a couple from Mulldog regarding the departures from the betting scene of two long-time virtual acquaintances.

The partial end of an era with Mark calling it a day.

Mark Iverson finally called it a day for full-time trading as I wrote about here, and there's not much more to be said that hasn't been said already. The betting environment has evolved considerably in recent years,  and that Mark was able to stay ahead of the game for so long is creditable. 

I'm thinking that the slow evolution is what Mulldog means by "partial end of an era", but as I've written over the years, full-time betting was never a realistic proposition for me for a number of reasons, but that doesn't mean it's not worth pursuing as a serious hobby. Far from it in fact.

I was re-reading a book last week, triggered by a comment from SimonM back in April, and in it was this section:

Nature plays chess, not checkers. There are as many winning strategies in the game of life as there are species on the planet. The best play depends on local conditions and on the strategies of those around you. High-energy strategies have obvious advantages, but low-energy risk-averse strategies can be winners as well.

The book was the previously referenced "Burn" by Herman Pontzer, and is about how we burn calories, lose weight and stay healthy (more on this later), but the statement seems to me to apply quite neatly to the world of sports investing. 

We all have our 'local conditions' and ultimately, as I've stated before, we are all in competition with those around us, and if the efficacy of their strategies catch up with, or surpass ours, then we are in big trouble. 

A high-energy (high-risk) strategy of full-time betting comes at the cost of a career, pension contributions, paid holidays, sick days and the less tangible, but social, benefit of working with others.

The other departure Mulldog commented on was the sad loss of Graeme Dand, who had been a friend virtually for probably 15 years. 

RIP Graeme. I never realised Graeme was a reader here too.

Graeme loved his horse-racing, his spreadsheets and his family - though I'm pretty confident not in that order - and the high esteem in which he was held was obvious in the support and comments he received as he so courageously faced the end of his life. 

As for being a reader here, he was the first ever commenter back in 2008 and was heavily involved in the football betting / tipping competition I organised back in 2014-15. He was one of the "Bounty Boys" with a contribution to the pot and with his TFA Draws (D1-D6) entry, came out on top of the Draws entries. 

On May 17th, modern synthesist commented:

Only just discovered this blog, and it's really excellent. Is the EPL draw system explained anywhere? I'd be interested to know how it works.

"Only just discovered this blog"? Unbelievable! The world's number one sports investment blog (admittedly self-proclaimed, and somewhat tongue-in-cheek) and some people are still unaware of its existence! 

Better late than never I suppose, and as for the EPL Draw System details, basically the idea is to find games where the fair (after removing the overround) win probabilities for both teams are within 25% of each other. 

These are what I call "Close" matches, with "Toss-Ups" being a subset of these that are within 10% of each other. I use Pinnacle's Closing prices for calculating the 'official' results, but strategies can vary.  

I do have a document detailing the exact process and breaking down each step but it comes with details of 8 other long-term profitable systems and in fairness to those who have paid for this, it wouldn't be right to give away everything here. 

Finally, on the topic of burning calories touched upon earlier, there was this comment from unknown posted on my April month end summary post titled "Darwen, Tesla, Twitter and April Losses"::

Sounds like your muscle mass is decreasing if between 1500-1900 is your calorie balance. Increase muscle mass will raise your equilibrium. Then 1900 will be you base line and you'll require 2300 to increase fat deposits.

The part that triggered this comment was this:

The net calories trend I mentioned last month - 1500 or fewer net calories a day and my weight goes down; 1900 or greater, and it goes up - was unfortunately reinforced after a month of too much eating and drinking and not enough exercise meant that my daily net calories averaged 2181 with a consequent guaranteed weight gain.

Not surprisingly, the pattern has continued through May and June although I really need some months where my net is between that 1468 and 1912. It seems that I'm either all-in on losing weight, or I'm not. Here are the updated numbers through June:

My AUs column refers to daily pints rather than the UK's definition of two units to a pint, and yes, before anyone comments, the numbers are arguably a little high with those 'dry' months clearly related to weight loss. 

Summer months are in yellow and with only one (so far) seeing a decline in weight, albeit by just 2.2 lbs, this isn't a great time of year.

The suggestion to increase muscle mass seems entirely reasonable given that muscle burns more calories than fat, but easier to achieve in theory than practice I suspect. My preferred exercise these days is the aerobic walking and hiking and my 2022 target of 1,200 miles is looking far too soft with 900 miles already behind me this year. Maybe I should hit my target and spend the last quarter of the year in the gym building muscle!

English Finals, Q2 22 and American League Hotties

Losses in the second quarter just ended set a new record, managing to beat the Covid panic losses of Q1 2020 by some margin, and this is also the first time that the first half of the year has been negative. 

Both the FTSE 100 and S&P 500 are down year-to-date, with the latter having it's worst start since 1970 when I was still singing treble and my income was half-a-crown pocket money a week, its purchasing power being slowly eroded by the 6.4% inflation rate at that time, a rate that is not too dissimilar to that of today.

Fortunately my income these days is slightly higher, and my voice slightly lower, so it's not all bad news. At some point in the future, hopefully soon, the markets will turn upwards again, and with the benefit of hindsight we will all look back and view the present time as a great buying opportunity. 

April actually started off rather well, with my all-time high set on the 20th of that month, but since then I'm down close to 9%. 

Sports investment profits have very little effect overall these days as I've mentioned before, but as this was primarily a betting blog, here are some numbers from June, although I was away for three-quarters of the month so the 'official' returns weren't close to my actual profits.

We had just the one football bet which was the National League Play-Off Final between Grimsby Town and Solihull Moors, with the Draw a winner at 3.58. Backing the Draw in English Finals in 2022 had an ROI of 86%, (impressive, but don't get too excited with such a small sample size), the full results for the season being:

A more meaningful ROI for this system is from the 138 finals since 2004 where the ROI is 8.5%.

Other than that it was just baseball, where the Hot Favourites made 5.15 units, an ROI of 2.7%, although again notably the National League selections generated a loss.

July, August and September (including a few October games) are usually good for this system, with that July 2016 loss something of an outlier.  

Doctor Doctor, Gives Me The News

It's always good to receive comments and feedback, and my old friend @DrTsouts was kind enough to send me his results after following some of my systems.

Overall his ROI is 7.1%, with the details (shown with the good Dr's permission) as follows:

The highest individual system ROI is from the low volume "English Finals Draws" followed by "Africa" (which was the 2021 Africa Cup of Nations played earlier this year) with the NFL systems also performing well.

With a losing ROI of 35%, the MLB Overs system is the biggest drain on the profits, but as I mentioned in the last post, right now I am not involving myself with games with National League clubs due to the changes to the Designated Hitter rule. As we saw this season with the NBA Overs System, when there is a significant rule change, established edges can rapidly be eroded, although in the case of the NBA the outcome was fewer bets rather than a lost edge. 

The reported EPL Draws loss was interesting given that for the Close matches my ROI% numbers for last season are 2.4% and for the Toss Up matches, 14.6% but Dr Tsouts confirmed that these results were for the second half of last season and as I wrote in January, this system declines sharply after December, a trend that continued in the season just ended, with the numbers for the two 'halves' since 2000-01 updated below:

Before you ask "well why don't we just follow this system for the first half of the year?", there are some interesting trends when looking at the day of the week when the matches are played. For example, one big exception is qualifying matches played on an April Saturday, which were again profitable this season. Wednesdays are also solid throughout the season: 

Anyway, many thanks to Dr Tsouts for sharing his actuals, and allowing me to share them with you all.    

Snowdon Summer Solstice Update

As mentioned in the previous post, this month has been one of parties and holiday, spending money and gaining weight rather than one for investing and dropping pounds. During my trip to Snowdonia, I went on (what is billed as) the fasted zip line in the world, and was quite pleased at the number displayed as I weighed in.

Unfortunately, it turned out the number was kilograms and not pounds and at the current exchange rate this means I'm looking at another negative month in this area. My wife and I did hike to the top of Snowdon and back again on the first day of Summer which would have burned a few calories, but this positive was more than offset by almost three weeks of enjoying life. And no broken leg on this hike which was a positive! 

The NBA playoffs wrapped up while I was away, with the Golden State Warriors winning their fourth title in eight seasons. Followers of the NBA Overs System will know that the traditional strategy ran into the problem of having very few selections with the rules changes made in the summer. The usual approach meant backing Overs in games where the line was set above 234 points, and while this strategy would have been profitable, there were only 80 selections all season.

After monitoring the impact of the rule change, in January I advised backing Overs when the total was set above 223 points and in 2022 the ROI on these has been 2.9% from 371 games.

After a rare losing mid-season month in May, backing Hot MLB Favourites looks to have returned to profitability this month, although we still have a few days to go. July will be interrupted by the annual All-Star game on the 19th, but other than the outlier of 2016, it's usually a strong month.

With the universal adoption of the Designated Hitter rule for this season, and likely for every season moving forward, (baseball purists will not be happy), I've not been investing in the Totals yet in matches involving National League teams. For the Overs system, this has saved me 8.8 units, while on the Unders it has saved me a whopping 31.7 units. Following the Totals system in American League matches only would have resulted in a very small profit of 1.8 units from 108 bets. With not much else going on these days for sports investing, I may take a look at the numbers so far this season over the next few days. 

May Not The Best

Backing Hot MLB Favourites in mid-season has been a long term success story as regular readers will know. Excluding the delayed and abbreviated COVID season of 2020, only twice (June 2015 and July 2016) has this strategy failed to return a profit in a single month, yet this month looks like being the third. 

Mid-season means the months from May to August, but backing these favourites at the start and end of the season is also generally profitable. 

Unfortunately after the Los Angeles Dodgers loss on Monday night, we're looking at the worst mid-season month since July of 2016:

Unfortunately, April also saw a loss, so including Sep/Oct 2021 we are on an unprecedented (since 2013) run of three losing months, and more than 10 units down on the season to date. Time to panic? Probably not. The loss is small, and the system remains profitable where selections are coming off a loss, so I'd say hang in there. Besides, the 'official' prices I use from Killer Sports are to illustrate the efficacy of a strategy and can almost always be bettered if you shop around.

Most of the big football matches for the 2021-22 season are now in the books, although the National League Playoff Final is to come this weekend. Only five of the last 18 have ended as Draws, and there have been two or more goals every year since 2011, so don't bet the house on a Draw. 

In the EPL, the Draws faded somewhat in the second half of the year as is usually the case. The "Toss-Up" selections finished with an ROI of 14.6%, which was in line with the long-term returns from these bets, and still just the one losing season since 2009-10:  

The "Close" selections finished with an ROI of 2.4% from 73 selections. 

Real Madrid's victory in the Champions League Final over Liverpool meant that just one of the three UEFA club finals ended as a Draw, but that's enough for a small profit. 

And in less than two months time, it'll be the FA Community Shield and we do it all again, with the bonus of a mid-season World Cup.

May was a bad month in the financial markets, although a loss of 1.16% almost feels like a win after a good finish and a recovery from 8.12% down on May 12th. Overall I'm now down 5.35% from my high, and down 1.57% year-to-date. 

Unless June sees a six figure gain, the quarter will be the first negative one since COVID hit in Q1 2020. 

Elon Musk hasn't been doing Tesla investors any favours with his plans to purchase Twitter and removing any doubt about the type of person he is by aligning himself with the US Republican party. 

I'm still up 1,106% on this investment which sounds great, but the stock has fallen 39% from its high which isn't so great. 

Overall I'm where I was in December 2021 so things are not terrible, although I shan't dwell too much on the fact that I've been working for five months and basically stood still.  

May was also a bad month for calories, the month ranking 19th out of 20 since I started tracking these, and with the expected weight gain. Poor excuses include two work trips during the month, some big football matches and a couple of birthdays which interfered with my usual routine. The alcohol consumed during these activities has its own calories of course, but worse seems to be the additional calories from eating bad food when my ability to make smart decisions is impaired. I never seem to crave a healthy salad after beers; it's always fried chicken and chips or equivalent! There seems to be no way to cheat the scales unfortunately. 

June is unlikely to see much improvement either. After a trip to Los Angeles for an 80th birthday party this weekend, I return for an even bigger 95th birthday celebration (for my Dad) in Kent the following weekend, after which I'll be spending a few days in Snowdonia with my lucky wife. The thought did cross my mind to attend the funeral for Graeme Dand on Monday 13th and show my respects but as it's on the morning after Dad's birthday party, there's unfortunately no way I can get up to Dundee in time. 

Given the activities already planned, it's highly unlikely that my caloric intake will be anywhere near the under 2,000 a day needed to shed a few pounds. Oh well, there's always July!     

Play-Offs and Paris

When the Champions League Final is between clubs from different countries, it's historically not a good prospect, with just two Draws from the past twelve such matches. With a 66% ROI, backing the Favourite is the best option, with just one 'Dog winning. 

Liverpool are the favourites in Paris tomorrow, at around 2.09 and here are all the previous Final results since 2004:

There are also the two National League Premier Division Semi-Final playoff matches, where the Favourite (Home team) is not historically a good bet, unless no fans are present as was the case for the 2020 matches!

Usually the Home club has the theoretical advantage of being rested, but Wrexham played last week in the FA Trophy Final at Wembley losing to Bromley**. 

Wrexham host Grimsby Town (a repeat of the 2012-13 FA Trophy Final) and while some of you will no doubt be drawing parallels with Harrogate Town in 2020, the FA Trophy Final that season wasn't played until May of 2021, with Harrogate thus becoming the only Football League club to win the FA Trophy. Yes readers, you may laugh, but you never know when this kind of important information might come up at a Quiz Night and be the difference between a bottle of house white and a T-shirt. 

Solihull Moors play Chesterfield in the other semi-final, and in League Two, Mansfield Town are very slight favourites to beat Port Vale in the play-off final at Wembley. The favourite in these games has never been odds-on since 2004, but with Mansfield at 2.87, Port Vale at 2.93 and the Draw at 3.22 this is the most evenly matched game yet and the Draw price looks generous.

** Bromley were the first Wembley FA Amateur Cup winners in 1949. Should Bromley make it to the Football League in 2023, they will be just the second club to have won the FA Amateur Cup and the FA Trophy. 

Graeme Dand

Although we all knew it was coming, the news that Graeme Dand @theformanalyst has passed away today is incredibly sad. The fragility of life and the reminder that all that matters in the end is how we impact others in the way we live our lives. 

I never met Graeme in person, but as I've written before, he was the first person to comment on this blog back in 2008 and our friendship goes back even further.

Graeme was always friendly, encouraging, supportive, upbeat and positive, had a great sense of humour, loved his horse racing and - for a while - football betting, and wrote some of the longest posts in the history of blogs. He occasionally wrote some of the longest Twitter threads too and loved his Excel spreadsheets. 

Graeme showed incredible courage in the final few months of his life, and was a devoted husband, father and son and an inspiration to many of us.

Rest in Peace.   

Another One Bites The Dust

Trading legend Mark Iverson announced yesterday that after 12 years of full-time trading, the only laying he would be doing in future (at least trading related) would be the one-time act of laying his mouse down. 

Mark and I go back a long way, successfully co-hosting real-time trading sessions on a couple of NFL games back in September 2011, as Mark wrote at the time:

Overall, the first game covered in the NFL trading room received positive feedback. This is encouraging and although typing when trading can be distracting, I do enjoy speaking with others when a game is on. It makes you realise that there are other people who do this too! More good news is that I’ve managed to coax Cassini into covering another game next Sunday. So, if you’d like to take part then click on the link at the top of this page to register. The match in question will be the 6pm kickoff on Sunday (Buccaneers @ Vikings) which promises to be a close one so hopefully we’ll do well. As I couldn’t do this alone I’d also like to thank Cassini again for giving up his time, and it’s good to see he was able to post a fantastic result on Monday night with this result.

I'm somewhat in awe that Mark was able to make a full-time salary for so long, given that Betfair's Premium Charge has been with us since 2008, although in its earliest manifestation of 20% it was manageable. 

The writing was really on the wall when the 40% / 50% / 60% penalties were announced in June 2011. Although I still had a few months to go before I would pass the threshold of lifetime winnings and be eligible to pay this new tax, it was apparent that long-term winners were no longer, as the Betfair slogan used to say, welcome. 

By the time I reached the threshold in October 2012, I'd realised that the days, or more often nights, of in-play trading were over and focused my efforts on establishing a more sustainable betting style.

Full-time trading was never more than a fleeting thought. Although for a few years (2008-2011) my net income from trading matched that of my full-time job, I was only too aware that markets change, regulations change and with Betfair being the only viable exchange, I would be totally at the mercy of one platform.  Plus there were plenty of hours after work and at weekends when I could trade on the side, and a regular job isn't just about the paycheck itself. There are other significant benefits to full-time employment such as your pension, paid time off and gaining experience can pay off handsomely in the later years of your career as you move up the ladder with the pay / package differential getting larger between each rung.

Mark decided to go with being a full-time trader, hitting the 'super' Premium Charge threshold in May 2014. By December of that year he appeared to be questioning himself, writing:

2014 has been a year of 2 halves; the first 6 months contained a flurry of big events, big wins and record months whilst the second has been a story of grinding days out, living with increased premium charges and contemplating life away from Betfair. As we approach the beginning of a new year I’m probably more uncertain about what the future holds than I’ve been for some time. In short, things have become a bit of a struggle. Okay, I knew things were going to change, and yes it’s pretty much panned out the way I thought it would, but what I hadn’t fully appreciated was how much my motivation to keep going would come into question. Is it time to move on?

Mark was also the subject for one of this blog's all-time most popular posts back in 2012, a post that is worth reading if you've not seen it before, if only for the comments! Good luck in the future Mark, and credit for finding a way forward for another seven and a half years but I wonder how many full-time traders remain on the Betfair platform these days?  The Forum used to - at least on occasion -  be inspirational, and it's where I first became aware of the significance of psychology in betting and the related inefficiency of markets, but nowadays there's nothing that I see that's of interest. 

Mark is quite right in saying that the markets have changed. Even if I were interested in trading again, the money is generally not there these days to justify it, and it's apparent that courtsiders are everywhere these days and it's impossible long-term to overcome that kind of a negative edge. I'm old enough to remember when NHL and MLB games would have a decent amount of money for in-play trading, but it hasn't been this way for years. With the amount of time you need to spend trading in-play, it's just not worth the time. Bet-and-forget is far more efficient, and less stressful! 

Fortunately, while making profits slowly isn't as exciting, it is at least sustainable and with playoff games and Finals almost every day right now, it's an exciting time of the year for Draw followers.

The National League Regional Finals were played at the weekend and the strong recent record for the Draw in these matches continued with the Dorking Wanderers v Ebbsfleet United game ending 2:2 with the hosts equalising in the 10th minute of stoppage time before going on to win in extra-time.

Since 2013, the Draw in the North / South Finals has an ROI of 106% with 10 Draws from the 18 games (there were none in 2021):

The Europa League Final last week was also a winner for the second consecutive year with Rangers and Eintracht Frankfurt playing out a 1:1 Draw. At least one of you was on this one with me and hopefully many more.

The National League playoffs began with a Draw at Notts County yesterday, with another late equaliser as Grimsby Town tied the game up in after six minutes of stoppage time.   

Playoff and Cup Finals

It's that time of year where Finals and important matches come thick and fast.

Before my trip last week, I warned you all that in European Competitions:

For Second Leg Semi-Final matches where neither side has more than a one goal advantage, backing the Away side has historically been a terrible idea.

None of the five such Away sides won, so hopefully some of you were paying attention and either made some money, or at least saved yourselves from losing any. Liverpool did hold a two goal advantage, and were able to win.

With no favourites in any of the upcoming three finals currently at odds-on, backing the underdog in such European Finals is similarly not a great idea with only three of 21 managing wins, a strategy that would have resulted in a -54% ROI. Liverpool may well move to odds-on though before their Final versus Real Madrid, as they range from 1.98 to 2.08 currently. 

No winners this weekend for the EPL Draw System, with the ROI on Close bets now at 4.9% and for Toss-Ups at 14.7% for the season with just 28 matches remaining. 

The Football and National League Play-offs are underway, and in the Football League matches it usually pays to oppose the Home team at the Semi-Final stage.

The National League (Premier, North and South) is different, with the Home side usually value with an ROI of 9.9% from 148 matches, although at the Quarter-Final stage introduced in 2018, the small sample size doesn't yet reflect this. These regional matches start tomorrow but the National League Premier fixtures still have a round to go with the play-off final not scheduled until next month. 

There's also the FA Cup Final this weekend, with Chelsea making their fifth appearance in six years against Liverpool who haven't won this trophy since 2006. 

After starting as favourites in each of their last four finals, and losing three, Chelsea will be underdogs this time. For finals with no odds-on favourite, the results are:

Not a lot of goals as is often the case in finals, and with no more than one goal separating the teams in 15 of the last 17 finals the Draw at 3.8 looks like a value bet.

There's no place in the record books for fewest single goal wins in a top-flight English season with Crystal Palace following their first one goal wins away to Southampton with the same victory margin at home to Watford. As I wrote previously:

Crystal Palace missing out on the opportunity to match Darwen's 1891-92 season with no single-goal wins by scoring a stoppage time winner at Southampton. With two games remaining (v Watford and Manchester United) Palace do still have the opportunity to achieve the rare feat of going an entire season without a Home league win by said margin. 

Swansea City in 2013-14 remain the last club not to win a home top-flight game by one goal all season.  

Darwen, Tesla, Twitter and April Losses

No luck for the EPL Draw system this weekend, although two of the three qualifiers were level as late as the 86th minute and Crystal Palace missing out on the opportunity to match Darwen's 1891-92 season with no single-goal wins by scoring a stoppage time winner at Southampton. With two games remaining (v Watford and Manchester United) Palace do still have the opportunity to achieve the rare feat of going an entire season without a Home league win by said margin. The ROI on the Draw falls to 15.01% on the season. 

While there are still two-thirds of the year remaining, and much can change in that time, it does appear likely that the S&P 500 Index (US) might have a rare year in which it outperforms the FTSE 100 Index (UK). Of the 13 years since 2008, only one (2016) saw the FTSE come out on top but with April behind us, the S&P 500 is having its worst year since the market crash of 2008 when both Indexes saw losses in the 30% range. 

For me personally, April was the 135th best month of the 136 since I started tracking so closely, in real terms at least, saved from worst ever by March 2020 when the markets were in turmoil about the pandemic. 

In percentage terms April was the 129th best at -3.25% so not a lot to celebrate really. Tesla stock lost 19.9% during the month, with Elon Musk selling $4b worth of shares to finance his planned purchase of Twitter and my relatively insignificant Bitcoin holding lost 16.5% with Warren Buffett's comments this weekend at the Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting unlikely to help its prospects:

“Whether it goes up or down in the next year, or five or 10 years, I don’t know. But the one thing I’m pretty sure of is that it doesn’t produce anything,” Buffett said of cryptocurrency, as reported by CNBC. “It’s got a magic to it and people have attached magics to lots of things.”

He also criticized the passive nature of bitcoin, saying that if he invests in apartments, they'll produce rent, and if he investments in farmland, they'll produce crops.

"If you told me you own all of the bitcoin in the world and you offered it to me for $25, I wouldn’t take it because what would I do with it?" he said, according to CNBC. "I’d have to sell it back to you one way or another. It isn’t going to do anything."

Munger took a less measured approach, saying that "in my life, I try to avoid things that are stupid and evil and make me look bad - and bitcoin does all three."

“In the first place, it’s stupid because it’s still likely to go to zero," he said. "It’s evil because it undermines the Federal Reserve System and third, it makes us look foolish compared to the Communist leader in China. He was smart enough to ban bitcoin in China.”

Friday's losses mean that I am also now in the red year-to-date but by less than 1%. The net calories trend I mentioned last month - 1500 or fewer net calories a day and my weight goes down; 1900 or greater, and it goes up - was unfortunately reinforced after a month of too much eating and drinking and not enough exercise meant that my daily net calories averaged 2181 with a consequent guaranteed weight gain. 

As I mentioned previously, I shall be on the road this week for work which is never good for the scales with the company paying for my calories in and opportunities for exercise (calories out) limited but there is plenty of time left in May to get those pounds off. My employer made the decision to close my office location a couple of weeks ago, and so my working from home arrangement which has been unofficial since March 2020 is now official. This saves me several hours a week of course, and generally I've been putting the time to good use with 650 miles covered on foot so far this year, and the original target of 1,200 miles looking much too soft.  Back soon. 

Don't Go Away

The six UEFA tournament Semi-Final First Leg matches produced a small profit for backers of the Home team, with none of the ties looking to be settled, although the markets are predicting an all-English Champions League Final and all-German Europa League Final.

As I shall be away again next week, some comments on the matches next week based on data since 2003-04.

Liverpool are currently odds-on to win at Villareal in the Second-Leg, at the shortest price any Away UEFA Semi-Finalist has ever been. Away favourites don't have a great record so far, with just one of ten winning and none outside of their own country:

For Second Leg Semi-Final matches where neither side has more than a one goal advantage, backing the Away side has historically been a terrible idea. 

There have been 47 such instances, with the ROI on Away teams -49%, By way of contrast, Home teams have an ROI of 14% with the Draw at 20%. Of course it is worth noting that the rules have changed regarding Away goals, Home advantage is declining, and the sample size is still quite small, but it's nevertheless an interesting trend.

In this weekend's EPL, it looks like we will have three Draw selections in the 3pm Saturday games, with two currently Toss-Up qualifiers. 

UEFA Semi-Finals (1)

Another EPL Draw winner last night, with Crystal Palace and Leeds United playing out a perfect Draw, raising the season ROI above 15%. 

Someone on Twitter recently pointed out that Palace have yet to win a Premier League game by a single goal this season, and with five matches remaining, my research finds that should this remain true, it would be the first time this has happened in 130 years , since the 26 match 1891-92 season to be precise:

While not winning an Away game by one goal isn't that rare, not winning at Home by that margin has only happened on 15 other such occasions, excluding the two above. I'll spare you the details here, but let me know if you'd like the full list! 

The UEFA semi-finals start today, and England are again well represented with four clubs in the six matches. Spain and Germany have two each, while Scotland, Netherlands, France and Italy have one each. 

While this is the first season for the Europa Conference League, the data for Champions League and Europa League Semi-Final First Leg matches going back to 2004 shows a clear edge for backing the Home side with a 29% ROI from those 68 matches, a number which increases to 39% when limiting your investments to matches between clubs from the Big 5 Leagues. 

In all matches between clubs from different Big 5 Leagues (England, Spain, France, Germany, Italy) backing the favourite is historically where the value is with a 7% ROI from 573 matches, but when the two clubs are from the same league, the value bet is the Draw or the 'Dog.

Backing the Draw has an ROI of 11.7% from 83 such matches while backing the 'Dog has a slightly better 12% even, but what at first sight looks very exciting, upon closer inspection turns out not to be such a surprise after all, the reason being that all the profit comes from Finals where, as you all already know, the Draw is the value bet. We could see an all-English or all-Spanish Champions League Final and an all-German Final in the Europa League. The 'L' teams all winning their trophies would be rather poetic - Liverpool, Leicester and Leipzig.

Back to Champions League Semi-Final First Leg matches, and here is the record for Home teams starting at odds-on:

Without party poopers Chelsea as the visitors, a 100% winning record. 

Not that there have been any this season, or will be any, but in two leg matches between clubs from the same league, the value bet is to oppose the Favourite in the First Leg (ROI 17%) and back the Home team in the Second Leg - unless they are ahead - (ROI 38%). 

The Sting, Burn and Messed Up Thinking

April hasn't been the most productive month in terms of posts, with the distraction of a rare FA Cup Semi-Final appearance by my club, as well as travel opening up again for work which is great for air miles and car rental and hotel points, but disruptive to my usual routine. My next trip is in early May, one week from today, but despite the lack of new content, the number of hits is higher this month than last. 

A couple of comments on recent posts, which are always good to receive. On the topic of being able to bet on a result that is already known, Terry commented that:

Derek McGovern actually wrote about this in the early days of internet, you could get the results of matches and the bookies were still pricing them up a few hours later.

With new technology comes new opportunities, at least for a while. The film 'The Sting' from the early 1970s featured a similar strategy for horse racing using delayed wire transmissions, but I suspect opportunities these days are rather few and far between as technologies become ever more sophisticated. 

On the topic of the relationship between calories, exercise and weight, Simon M commented:

The book "Burn" by Herman Pontzer (the Associate Professor of Evolutionary Anthropology at Duke) published last year is very good on why exercise probably doesn't burn calories (like a car burning through petrol) yet is still healthy.

I thought the book was overlong (although I would still recommend if you are interested in the topic) but his appearances on free podcasts and magazine profiles do a good job of going through his research on exactly how many calories us (and our fellow mammals) burn.

Example: https://www.menshealth.com/uk/weight-loss/a39350294/dr-herman-pontzer-training-for-weight-loss/

I actually bought this book when it first came out, and can also recommend it. While 319 pages is quite a lot, if you're interested in this topic, and let's face it we all should be, it's well worth the time. Not surprising to read that amid mostly favourable reviews:

There have been two areas of pushback: one is people whose careers depend in one way or another on exercise being a great tool for weight loss; the other is the keto and carnivore bros, who don’t want to hear that we didn’t evolve to eat 100% meat.

Months with work travel are never good, and with the excesses around big football matches and the Tyson Fury fight, it's not looking like a losing month on the scales, with losses unfortunately currently being achieved on the investing front. We still have five trading days to go, but at the time of writing I am down 1.23%. 

A couple of Draws for Leicester City in the past few days mean that the ROI on the EPL Draw System now stands at 11.2% for the Close selections and 29.7% for the Toss-Ups. With just five rounds left, the two Merseyside clubs are keeping things interesting. Everton have played the most seasons in the top flight, and are the only 'Original 12' club still in the league never to have played outside of the top two divisions. They've been relegated just twice in their history but are now favourites to join Norwich City and Watford in relegation.

In March I mentioned that "In European competition, in Second Leg matches where the Home team has more than a one goal lead from the First Leg the value historically is on the Away team" and that "there is also an edge on the Away team when the First Leg was a Draw". 

Hopefully some of you cashed in with 6 of the 7 Away teams winning this month, and a 16.13 unit profit. The one losing bet was a Draw at 5.07 odds.

Of the other five ties, coincidentally all with the Home side trailing by one goal, only one result was an Away win.

One of the blogs on my blog roll is Bob Dancer's Gambling With An Edge. The world of Video Poker isn't an are of interest for me, but I enjoy reading some of Bob's thoughts and in a recent post he talks about how our reactions to profits and losses varies. 

Read the full post here, but essentially he "won" a $10 voucher from a grocery store on the same day as he lost $750 playing (I assume) video poker, and upon returning home, told his wife that he "felt great about that $10 win while the $750 loss immediately afterwards didn’t bother me at all."

His wife's bemused reply was “Your thinking is so messed up!”

I can certainly identify with Bob's thought process here. Some 'losses' are good, or at least healthy and simply part of the natural order of things. A four figure decline in the value of a stock index fund - not a rare occurrence if you have £100,000 or more invested - doesn't feel anywhere near as bad as a far smaller loss that was unexpected (dropping your iPhone and needing a new screen for example!)