Tout Le Brest

One of my picks for today, Brest, are the subject of a blog post on BBC Sport. Titled “Revolution on the rampage in France's Ligue 1”, the post details Stade Brestois 29’s rise to the top of the league, although to suggest there’s a ‘revolution on the rampage’ is ridiculously premature. We’re 12 games in to the season, not 32, and with Paris St Germain just two points behind, and Marseille three back (with a game in hand), to suggest that Brest are anything but a flash-in-the-pan team seems a little ridiculous. It's a good story though; the club were in the Fourth Division just 11 seasons ago. If you think the blog post isn't premature, Brest can be backed at 130. For those who like backing goalscorers, Romain Poyet is on a run with goals in the last three Brest games.

The reason the price today is so generous is no doubt because Brest have only won two of their five home games, and annoyingly for me, I picked them to easily beat hapless Arles-Avignon a couple of weeks but were held to a 0-0 draw – Arles’ only away point all season so far.

Adam (Mouldhouse) commented:

I have Inter down as a strong back and also I like Brest (boom boom) - good luck this weekend.

Do you have a spreadsheet or document with the strong draw bets on, or the home value picks? It's quite clear that there's a lot of quality in the picks by the fact you so often front-run Football Elite. Appreciate the "This is NOT a P&L blog" tagline at the top so fully aware of the possibility of being told to **** off.

Cheers :)

Right then - **** off. Ah, just kidding. Yes, I do keep a spreadsheet with all my bets on. I’d be surprised if anyone serious about making money didn’t. You have to. If you don’t keep accurate records, you’re not going to get anywhere. Apart from making it easy to see what’s working and what isn’t, it’s all part of a disciplined approach to investing. Human nature is to remember the good things in life, and erase the bad. Gamblers remember winning bets easier than losing bets.

It’s also quite a compliment to be compared with Football Elite. They are the only service I, use and have a proven track record making profits every year. It would be hard to imagine how anyone could find fault, but of course, there’s always one, although clearly, once again, he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. It’s always good to come up with my value picks and then find Football Elite have the same opinion. It’s when we differ, as we did last week on the WBA v Manchester City game, that I have a decision to make.

John had a comment / question too (my e-mail was busy yesterday):

I just wondered how often you change/tweak your ratings system? At first I thought it would be a good idea to build a basic rating system then build on it and let it grow but now I'm not so sure. At the end of the day any rating system is a measuring device and therefore changing it will give you strange results. You wouldn't start building your house one measurement then change it once you get half way through, so is it then a bad idea to start tweaking a ratings system once you have begun collecting data? More importantly, does it actually matter if a rating system is accurate? Is it not more important for it to be consistent and allow you to take a more precise measurement of what's happening. If you are consistently off the mark with a prediction system that's better than mixed bag of results because you kept moving the goalposts so to speak.

Could the most basic of ratings systems kept as-is from day one provide more details than a regularly tweaked one. Shouldn't we be looking at and studying the results compared to the ratings to try and work out 'why' rather than tweaking the system to match the past results.

He raises a good point. It’s certainly true that my forecasts from last season cannot be directly compared to my figures for this season, but I think overall, this is a small price to pay for achieving better numbers going forward.

It’s also important to be clear that the formula for calulating the ratings has not changed from day one. All that has changed is the accuracy (mathematically) to which the expected outcomes of matches is displayed.

You say that you “wouldn't start building your house one measurement then change it once you get half way through”, but I think I actually would. If something’s not working, or not working as well as it could, then I have no issue with making a change, whether it’s to a ratings system, a home improvement project, my job or my personal life. Doing something the same way because “it’s always been done that way”, is simply not a good enough reason not to make a change.

The only thing that matters is being profitable, and by making the changes I made during the close season and early this season, I have made it much easier to identify value.

The big change was to improve the accuracy of the ratings so that they now give a figure to 0.1 of a goal rather than round to a whole number as they did last season. Yes, this means I can’t directly compare the numbers, but that’s ok. The other big change was to automatically factor in form, and here – if I do say so myself – I have been rather clever. I modified the spreadsheet so that the original number is still generated, (allowing comparisons with earlier versions), alongside a new ‘with form’ value.

I may well adjust the form weightings if I see that form is more or less important than I have estimated, but again, the important thing is that the ratings formula has been the same since inception. I do agree that changing this would not likely be useful.

Think of it like the game of football. The rules change very infrequently, but the data that is collected on matches is far more, and used quite differently, than was the case just a few years ago. Similarly, my ratings calculations stay the same, but the way I use them changes.

Appreciate the comment and the question though, and here’s a final comment from Greece:

You have maybe the best blog out there right now for all of us BF addicts, and soccer maniacs - keep up the good work!

Thank you, although I would take out the ‘maybe’ and the ‘right now’, but other than that I have to say I totally agree with you.

And finally, the Utah Jazzz won their fourth game in a row, all on the road, after trailing by double digits beating the Atlanta Hawks. Don't say I didn't tell you. They were available +4.5 at 1.82 pre-game.