All That Jazz

It's starting to get ridiculous. For the fifth game in a row, the Utah Jazz spotted their opponents, this time Michael Jordan's Charlotte Bobcats, a double digit lead, and came from behind to win. The lead this time was 19 points, but Utah clawed that back and won by a single point. The market didn't go as low as it has on other nights, partly because Utah were favoured to win the game at tip-off, but possibly plenty of people were wary of another comeback. I believe the lowest they traded was at 1.08, but another very profitable night. If only it was always this easy.

The football wasn't good, with just Montpellier at 2.22 winning out of the four home value selections. Brest repeated their Arles-Avignon game of two weeks ago, and gave the visitors their first away point of the season. Laying odds-on home teams in Germany gave winners as Werder Bremen and Mainz 05 both failed to win, and the unpredictable nature of the game there was further shown by Koln's 0-4 home defeat to Borussia Moenchengladbach, with all four goals coming in the second half.

Both 'strong' draws came up short with under 2.5 paying a conosolation prize as Wigan Athletic and Stoke City both won at home. One out of two for the 'weaker' draws though, although Kaiserslautern looked dead and buried at 0-3, before a Jazz-like comeback.

I had an Anonymous comment that I will mention, because it draws attention to the Statto web site which is excellent and a great source of information, and he makes it sound so easy to make money on football. He writes:

Great blog and love the articles. I do think the fact you come up with similar selections to Football Elite is that anyone who does value betting will generally come up with the same selections. That is surely logical. Every week I spend a few hours looking at the Soccer Stats at Statto website, compare the last 8 for the matches in each league and then look at the currently available prices. Guess what?, almost without fail the selections I make are very similar to yourself and Football Elite. I don't keep a spreadsheet with stats or anything and it takes up very little of my time. If anyone is reading the blog just and have a look and see what I mean. Bologna are unbeaten at home, Brescia haven't won in 8, Bologna are 2.22. It took me 2 mins, no fancy spreadsheet or ratings, very simple. I keep a record or my results and I'm doing very nicely. Trust me, the stats on Soccer Stats and Statto along with team news are all you need to gauge form and value. I implore everyone to do it and see what I mean. More importantly if you compare your home value picks for this weekend to the Statto website, all but one (Cagliari which has their price about right) are down as value picks, so basically anyone could just go on there, run down the match odds list in 1 min and they would have the same selections as you. People out there are trying to sell it to us as rocket science but it really isn't.

I do think it's great that you do post up your selections though so don't get me wrong. It's very generous and you come across as someone who knows a hell of a lot about trading, write great articles and I'm sure put plenty of work in to get where you have got. I just wanted to point out to people that it's a lot easier than you think to find value. Most of Football Elite's selections and yours are unsurprisingly the same as the value selections on Statto. I dare say that because when you put the stats together in a spreadsheet they all come out pretty much the same if it's yours, Statto's, Football Elite's etc. There can only be so many variables.

Using Statto to determine my picks would certainly save me a lot of time, but if the value on there was really significant, I suspect that word might have got out by now. I just don't see how a popular web site can be the answer to the great puzzle of making money consistently from football, but it is certainly a great web site. The key to it is that myself and Statto and possibly Football Elite all have different values and variables. My ratings are similar to Stattos, in fact the top nine in the EPL are identical in sequence, but their values are closer together than mine, and there is less volatility, which probably means they put a greater emphasis on form when determining true odds than I do, but anyway, our determination of a value bet is by quite different means. If we come up with the same selections, then all the better. Their odds on the Milan derby are way off when compared with the bookies: Internazionale 1.86, AC Milan 6, Draw 3.35. I have Inter at 1.99, and the current Betfair price is 2.66. For the record, I have the draw priced at 3.45, AC Milan at 4.8 and a small interest on Inter.