Prophets Coming - Have Faith

I guess that in a way it's good news that so many blogs these days make reference to 'value' bets, 'value' selections etc., but the bad news is that 'value' should really be a noise word, and totally unnecessary. Why would a bet be recommended if it isn't value?

The problem I have is that so many times someone list their 'value' bets, but offers no evidence to support their assertion that the bet is value, or any evidence offered is somewhat flakey. To me, something like

Team A v Team B - 7 of the last 10 Team B away games have seen 3 or more goals - Over 2.5 (1.98)

suggests a very lazy approach. Who were those last ten away games against? Did team B lose every game handily? Surely the suggestion is not that Over 2.5 in game 11 has a probability of 0.7 ? Where did the 1.98 come from too? Is that the price that the value kicks in at, or the price that is available? If it's the latter, then is 1.97 still value? Is 1.5 value? Why does the market make this price 1.98? How has the market missed this 'key' statistic?

I may be being a tad harsh here, but the idea that a sweeping look at something like a league table - especially one where no team has yet played - or the last few games is going to uncover value that the rest of the world has somehow missed seems a little optimistic. There may well be some more research done behind the scenes that is never revealed, but the impression is that this is not often the case. Rather than give reasons why the bet is considered value, you simply add 'value' to the description and away you go.

On the topic of little evidence, it seems odd to me that someone would try to sell a system without some results to back up the system's claims. Actually, I'll correct myself. It's probably quite reasonable to try to sell such a system, but it seems unlikely that anyone would consider buying one with no evidence that it works.

And funnily enough, such a system just happens to be for sale over at The Best Betfair Football Trader.com for just £37.

The video at Premier Winners starts off with the claim that it is a profitable English Premier League strategy for 2012-13, which is some claim given that we are eleven games in, and the first weekend was missed out of necessity "due to some of the filters that I have identified in creating this winning football betting system".

Presumably Chelsea v Reading was a winner.

And then we have this: "For the first time since starting my website I've decided to sell a system as I believe it should perform better than most football systems available". The evidence for this flimsy claim? It's here:

An angle that 'should' help us to make some good profits. Well that's reassuring, as are these words:

That's a lot of 'believes' and 'shoulds' I see. So basically we have for sale an untried and unproven system, that can be yours for just £37. The back-testing results look good though, 2009-10, you 'would' have made 22.72 points, 2010-11 48.32 points and 2011-12 32.63 points! 

That's almost as good as my XX Draws! 

There is also talk of a £200 to £20,000 challenge, for which the last update was in March when Steve wrote:

So the challenge bank is now on £389.34, which leaves just another £19,610.66 to go. Which seems a long long way away when I write it down like that! 

With no updates in five months, can one assume that the challenge has stalled? Which would be strange, since the author claims to be a "Professional Betfair Trader", although the definition of "professional" here may be a little loose as he states "My name is Steve and I’ve been a professional Betfair Trader since December 2009 when I lost my job and used it as a sink or swim opportunity to make my Betfair trading pay". 

It is certainly possible to go from £200 to £20,000 but I'm glad I didn't set myself such a finishing target. What's the point of a final target? Is anyone going to find a method that gets them there, and then quit? I suppose they might if the target is the Super Premium Charge threshold, but that's something of an exception.