Few And Simple

Following last night's demolition job by Manchester City, all results have been tabulated for the FTL and the current standings are:

Some administrative notes before we get down to the individual results, and the first is that entries eligible for the cash prizes are shown with a ($) before and after their name. I am also going to include the 'official' results from services such as Peter Nordsted's Premier Betting and Skeeve. For example Premier Betting this weekend had twelve official bets, but some are non-qualifiers as far as the FTL is concerned because the Half-Time prices are not recorded by the excellent football-data.co.uk web site, and neither are the Under 1.5 prices. Where the bet is an Under or an Over, the FTL records the 2.5 goals market, but Premier Betting sometimes tip the Under 1.5 and the Under 2.5 so only one bet makes it into the FTL. Since this might be seen as doing the service a disservice, I'll try to track the full results using those given by the service. Clear as mud?

Skeeve sometimes puts his selections into doubles, but to keep things simple, the FTL will treat these as two single bets, but track the official results as well.

So in descending order, Fizzer (I chose the name Forza Fizzer as a temporary measure pending an official choice of name) went for a no nonsense approach selecting one team (albeit one with a rather long name) and one winner as Inverness Caledonian Thistle beat Motherwell 2-0 at a Pinnacle price of 2.59. Very nice start. I personally got matched at 2.52 on Betfair and close to kick-off the price had shortened to 2.36.

Football Elite will be pleased to get into profit early this season selection just one bet also, Nice who beat Rennes 2-1.

Skeeve had one winner and one loser, Alfreton won, Luton drew, but Alfreton's Pinnacle price of 2.09 ensured a small profit.

The Bundeslayga selections had one qualifier in the end, but Moenchengladbach won easily for a losing bet.

Pete's Drawmaster returned for the new season, but one winner from five (Norwich City v Everton) meant a small opening day loss.

Last week's co-leader Punter's Friend went for five home lays, but only one (Sunderland) obliged by failing to win.

The XX Draws Under 2.5 bets had just three winners from nine selections with four matches seeing four goals, and two seeing three. Two of the matches saw all four goals come in the second half.

Premier Betting started the FTL season with a win on the Liverpool v Stoke Unders, but lost the other five of six selections. Arsenal v Aston Villa and Swansea City v Manchester United both went over, while Chelsea v Hull City somehow stayed Under, as did Sunderland v Fulham, and Cardiff City needed more than +0.5 to cover at West Ham United. Their official bets included five half-time bets, only one of which won.

Fedslam will not look back on opening weekend in the EPL too fondly, dodging winners in all six selections. The failure of Crystal Palace to beat Tottenham Hotspur was especially upsetting.

Scatter Gun repeated week one's performance finding two matches from ten ending 1-1, 2-1 or 1-2 for another loss, and propping up the table are the XX Draws.

Just two winners from nine meant a second losing week. Winning draws at Norwich City (v Everton) and Toulouse (v Bordeaux) were the good news, with the hard-luck loss of the week being Southampton scoring a 90' penalty at West Bromwich Albion with the perfect draw in sight. A couple of other selections were draws as late as the 76' and 79' but it's a long season and any bad luck will even itself out. I hope.

The mistake I mentioned on Saturday was backing Croatia Football Bets selection of Dinamo Zagreb to cover -1.75 rather than the -1.25 stated. I nearly got away with it as Dinamo Zagreb led 2-0 until NK Lokomotiva scored in the 78'.

All in all a disappointing weekend for many of us, and so far the lesson seems to be to keep the number of bets few and the type of bet simple.