Tuesday 2 March 2010

One Small Step


Oh dear. I am either not making myself very clear as to what the goal with the Elo predictions is here, or there are some readers who really shouldn’t be pitting their wits against others on the exchanges. Funnily enough, these slowpokes are always called Anonymous.

The latest input, specifically concerning teams predicted to win by two, is this:

But that's where you are going horribly wrong. There is no value in that selection long term.Around 44% of the time a team priced at 1.45 will win by two goals or more. There is no value in that, especially if you take off commission.

Followed by:

Just went to the correct score market and the shortest price is 2-0. Not exactly rocket science is it, but where is the value?

Where is the value?!!

I should probably just roll my eyes and ignore it, but there’s always the chance that someone is genuinely missing the point.

Firstly, if I was “going horribly wrong”, I think I might have noticed by now, and changed tack.

Secondly, I am not backing 2 goals OR MORE, I am backing the 2-0, 3-1 and Any Unquoted scores. Big difference. When the correct score hits at anything close to 40%, this is huge value. (ok, so Any Unquoted could include AND MORE, but let’s not split hairs).

Where is the value?

In my sub-set of matches where the prediction is two goals, it is quite probable that the 2-0 scorline is the pre-game favourite, but that fact is not important. What is important is whether that price is value or not.

Say the price is a relatively short 7.0 as it was for Leeds last week in their game versus Oldham. The 2-0 score was spot on. If this score results in more than 1 in 7 games, then it is value. If less than 1 in 7 games finish this way, then it is not value.

The data may well show that the value here is to lay that score.

As I keep saying, some leagues are more accurate than others, and less than a full season’s worth of data is not enough to draw any firm conclusions from. Whether there is value long-term remains to be seen.

This is an ongoing exercise to determine whether or not these predictions offer an edge, and in some leagues, it appears so far that I do, but I am not getting carried away with it. Nothing in investing is ever that simple, but the challenge is fun.

3 comments:

wilf said...

i dont know why you even bother responding, i find your ratings very useful and i hope the anons dont stop yyou writing your blog.

Cassini said...

Thank you. I can take criticism, but I wish people would be constructive with it rather than misinterpret what I am trying to do here.

Anonymous said...

I think you should drop the AU from the dutching as in effect you backing a whole series of scorelines of which your predicted superiority is probably in the minority (say 4-2 and 5-3 in a 2 goal adv) Also as you discovered in the Chelsea game your also backing the diametric opposite of your prediction which presumably is poor value.