Tied Down

On the surface, a weekend with fifteen XX Draw selections and five winners sounds decent enough, but for anyone backing the derivative markets, the unders or the Half-Time 0-0, the story wasn't so pretty.

The Under 1.5 goals bets had not a single winner, and just one match was 0-0 at half time, and with a very approximate average price on these markets expected to be around the 3.65 and 2.98 marks respectively, under performing to that extent takes some doing. Just four matches ended under 2.5, and only six ended under 3.5.

There is also a big discrepancy between the returns on the three Unders markets I follow. Of the 155 total selections to date, the Under 2.5 market is basically flat (actually +.29 point), but compared to the Under 1.5 and Under 3.5 markets, this is relatively impressive. Th U1.5 shows a loss of 30.12 points, the U3.5 a loss of 10.24 points. These markets do tend to be less liquid than the popular 2.5 market, but even so, it is quite surprising to see such a difference in returns. 155 isn't exactly a huge sample, so it's probably too early to draw any conclusions, but as the latest Friendly Tipster Table shows, some of these fringe markets are not performing too well, even if the draw component is holding its own.

Things did not go to plan in the NFL this evening. Ties in the NFL are rare, I believe the last was in November 2008, but typically there was one today and one where I had traded to a nice "Green All Over" position. The result meant that all bets are void. Ah well, half of the profits would have gone in taxes anyway!

I shall update the Friendly Tipster League table tomorrow. After nearly four hours of back and forth action, I'm feeling somewhat drained right now.