Colossal Rhodes

Still a few matches for the Tipster League to play tomorrow, but highlights to this point include the continued success of backing the Lay The Draw selection, which produced two winners from five selections, and an ROI of 83.3%! The final selection only missed out to a 90+4' goal, in a game that was goal-less to the 77' which would not have been good for Lay The Draw followers at all. The anti-draw selection was Olympique Marseille v Lorient, or L'Orient as they were named in the e-mail. Misnaming a team like this doesn't send the message that you know your football, but I guess Ian missed my post from March last year on this subject. But he does keep finding winners - for us!

I've also mentioned that fluking a 3-3 draw shouldn't be allowed when it comes to finding draws, six goals is just a crap-shoot, but Geoff goes two better today. He super-fluked a rare 4-4 draw as Sheffield Wednesday played Huddersfield Town in League One, and saw that additional rarity of two teams coming back from two goal deficits, with the final goal in the 90+7', and the extra additional rarity of one player, Jordan Rhodes, scoring four. Now that's drama.

With three draws from six to date this weekend, Geoff's final two matches this weekend are Aston Villa v Liverpool and Cesena v Internazionale.

Flash asked a couple of questions:

Hi Cassini, after recently getting into basketball trading I have a couple of questions:

Do you watch/trade the Euroleague?
Plus you mentioned in your interview with the Centre Court Sultan that in basketball "the same patterns repeat themselves time after time". What are these patterns?

Thank you!

I do occasionally watch/trade Euroleague, but the NBA is just better for both activities. Playing in NBA stadiums, with NBA rules and officials, NBA teams are 27-2 v Euroleague teams, and 36-7 overall so there's no debate about the quality. And English is my first language - far gooder than my Turkish, Russian, Greek, Polish, Croatian, Isrealish, Serbian, Lithuanian and Slovenian.

As for the same patterns repeating, you really need to put in the hours yourself to get a feel for it, but essentially the game is one of momentum, and you will see overreactions to momentum changes all through the game. An 8-0 start will bring the price on a favourite down too far for example. Time-outs are crucial, and watch for key players getting into foul trouble. The market is often slow to understand for example that two early fouls will mean an extended seat on the bench and if that player is key, the team is likely to struggle. Late in games, you can lay at 1.0x for a very low risk / high reward bet. A couple of three-pointers and a stop in between will see a comfortable 10 point lead reduced to a very manageable four point deficit, and that 1.0x will soar. Please feel free to use the Donate button to thank me!