Friday, 27 April 2012

Away We Go

A quiet day at home today recovering from the last night of regular season NBA action. I actually tried my hand at trading a couple of tennis matches. It's really not my game. As I discovered at a very early age, I'm only good at things I enjoy, and I do not usually enjoy watching tennis. I picked a good one though, with David Ferrer beating Feliciano Lopez in Barcelona in three sets, a match with two tie-breaks, and which paid for dinner.

Later I watched my first XX Draw Selection of the weekend go down as Lorient beat Olympique Marseille 2-1 - not a good start to the weekend's selections. My bonus selection of Toulouse v Montpellier also lost 0-1, although at least here was a consolation win on the Under at a whopping 1.66.

I was searching some of my old posts for a comment on the Betfair Forum, and came across a post I wrote at the time on the subject of the lack of draws in the EPL in early 2009-10, a subject which came up again recently. I also mentioned, and I quote:
There has been an increase in goals this season, which clearly affects the probability of a game resulting in a draw.
While I may not have stated it specifically, you can be sure I wasn't trying to say that an increase in goals makes the draw MORE likely. BigAl's assertion that this can be the case awaits supporting evidence, but I fear the wait could be long. I think what BigAl is missing is that if the goal expectancy for a team rises from say 1.2 to 1.4, the probability of that team scoring one goal increases, but so does the probability of it scoring two, three, four and so on, and the higher these probabilities go, the less likely the scores of 0-0, 1-1, 2-2 etc.

Incidentally, while I may be slightly biased, there are a lot of interesting posts in the archives of this blog, which is now closing in on the 400,000 mark.

One final observation is that in the EPL this season, 31.2% matches have been away wins. I believe this will break the record for the Premier League set in 01-02 at exactly 30% if it holds up.

I wrote that final piece before I read Rob the Builders post . Inthejungle, the odds-on favourite, almost fell before the jockey pulled off quite a recovery, and went on to win the race by 18 lengths.
£330 was matched on Betfair at 1000. It seems extremely likely that the same lucky punter then laid off £165k at 1.29. The unlucky punter may be having a bad evening.
I would say so. That'll take a while to claw back. With a relatively small upside, one wonders what the point of laying at 1000 is, although perhaps that is how he built his bank up to £165k in the first place. Like option sellers:
1000-1 layers "eat like chickens, and go to the bathroom like elephants" - Nassim Taleb.

2 comments:

  1. No, I'm not missing anything. I thought I'd explained it but obviously you still don't get it. And, even more obviously, you'll refuse to believe any explanation.

    Imagine a team with a strong supremacy (x) in a match with goal expectancy (y)

    That team then loses its entire defence to injury just before the match.

    (x) and (y) obviously change.

    Is it possible for this change to result in higher goal expectancy but a more probable draw?

    Yes it is. Not probable, but possible.

    I think I can guess the type of argument you will try and present against this. You're wrong - again.

    ReplyDelete
  2. And just to pick you up on the statement you made in font size 56

    "There has been an increase in goals this season, which clearly affects the probability of a game resulting in a draw."

    A totally different argument of course. Why would the total goals in a season so far have any direct impact on the chance of a game yet to take place finishing in a draw.

    ReplyDelete