Early Bird Prices

I have been well and truly reprimanded on the lateness and incompleteness of my football picks. What I have been doing is typically enter the data from the weekend's matches into the spreadsheet on the Tuesday and Wednesday, and then start looking at available prices on Friday, as earlier in the week they tend to be a little gappy, especially the Over / Under markets. This week I'll put the prices I calculate out there sooner, and leave it to the discretion of readers to determine whether or not prices are value as they settle down. I haven't been too serious about this yet because a) it's early in the season and b) I'm off for a couple of weekends shortly, but if there is interest, I will endeavour to have the selections earlier in the week than has been the case previously when the betting season starts after the International break.

P commented:

Also Cassini, would you kindly explain why you would recommend laying Marseille as well as backing the draw in that same match for the XX selections?

Do you feel it is better to dutch the two outcomes that show value or to choose which of the two shows the most value?

A fair question, and the answer is that the XX Draws are based purely on my ratings whereas the Match Odds and Over / Under value picks use the ratings along with a number of other factors to produce my own prices which are then compared to those available. This does result in occasions where a draw is predicted in one system, but the other system finds value elsewhere. As in today's example, the two aren't exclusive, and I have both backed the Draw, and layed Marseille (unfortunately!**) The XX Draw picks have served me well over the past two season, even though they are less sophisticated than the value picks, which are still in their formative stage. Sometimes you can over-think these things it seems.

** Update: Forget the 'unfortunately' - at the time of writing, Marseille had a 2-0 lead, but Auxerre did the business and tied it up at 2-2 giving both systems a winner.