Distorting Reality

Lay Away observed:

Oh dear Rick appears to have taken hum bridge [sic] and deleted all of his blog posts

While it is Rick's blog to do with as he wishes, it is a little petulant, and pointless, to remove everything after a result goes against you. Burying your head in the sand is one way of dealing with setbacks I suppose, but it might be a little more positive to look at what went wrong, find why it went wrong, (although in this case it's fairly obvious), and make some changes. Before deleting the posts, Rick blamed the loss on the surprise of Liverpool scoring five at Berner Sport Club Young Boys 1898, and while eight goals was an unusual result, the Europa League, and matches between two teams with little in the way of form lines, are always something of an unknown quantity and hard to accurately estimate the risk.

Rick has a habit of removing old blogs / posts. He sent me an email in 2011 touting www.premierfootballtipster.com which is now, you guessed it, no longer with us. One can reasonably assume that this venture was similarly unsuccessful. 500 to 5000 has also commented on this, and posted on the subject on his blog.

It would be nice, in betting as well as in life, if we could simply remove our mistakes. How much better the XX Draw Classic results would look for this season:

The Perfect World

In the real world, there was no luck on today's selection which was Bastia v Paris St Germain. This was one of those selections which I really wish the spreadsheet hadn't generated. One problem with objective ratings early in the season is that the ratings for newly promoted teams haven't settled down yet, and a second problem is that big changes in team line-ups also take time to be absorbed. With Bastia newly promoted, and PSG in transition, this was not an ideal selection, but we play the numbers as they fall knowing that sometimes things won't work out.

Bastia only recently lost their 42 match unbeaten run at home, but a 6' goal from PSG pretty much killed this bet off, and Bastia have already concede 16 goals, by far the worst in Ligue 1. There were also three Extended selections, with the two from the EPL going down to 0-3 and 1-2 away wins, as Everton beat Swansea City and Fulham beat Wigan Athletic. These two were also in Peter Nordsted's Drawmaster list, along with Southampton v Aston Villa, and Griff and Jon (Talkbet) also fancied the draw at Swansea. The final selection of a disappointing day was Brest v Valenciennes, which was tied after 76' before a penalty won the game for Brest. 

One tipster I want to comment on is Tony, who has recently shown good form with a strategy of laying odds-on away teams. Here are his results for this month (including losing selections):

The Real World - and not too shabby

He is opposing Real Madrid (at Rayo Vallecano) tomorrow at 1.34 - this was a close game last season, with  Real winning 1-0. As things stand right now, Tony tops the table. One to watch.