Average Loss:Win Ratios

The much anticipated debut selections of  The Football Analyst are here, and they are from the Conference Premier League:

The bets (with current Pinnacle prices in parentheses) are Woking (2.88) at Alfreton Town and Tamworth (2.21) v Southport. Higher prices than Pinnacle's are available on the exchanges, so depending on your premium charge / commission situation, you should, as always, shop around.

Rubicon made a winning selection of a lay of Croatia, coincidentally the only World Cup qualifier I had money on with an opposing lay of Serbia. Skeeve's associate's Croatian Football Bets recommended a back of Croatia with the Draw No Bet, but I went for the safer lay option meaning that both Rubicon and myself profited from the 1-1 result.

Unfortunately for Rubicon, he will have to make do with just his winnings, as these matches do not qualify for the FTL.  

Skeeve of course has more selections with his leagues of expertise not impacted by the International break, 

In plenty of time, Emp has already submitted a whopping 23 selections for next week. There is no maximum number of bets, although I encourage the number to generally be 10 or less to avoid me having to retire and run the FTL full-time, but as Emp says:

though given there is money (however small) on the line, I do feel I should be able to make this larger number.

Since I didn't specify a limit, Emp has a point, so I am happy to go along with this number. Scatter Gun may feel slightly aggrieved at being encouraged to stay at 10 selections for the opening three weeks so in future, I'll work with as many as he wants also.

What I suspect will happen is that with as many as 23 selections, value will be wafer thin, and losses will soon mount, but I hope to be proven wrong.

My old buddy Mark had a post from August 13th that I had not read until yesterday, (too many bookie adverts on the blog...) talking, refreshingly honestly it has to be said, about a big loss on the cricket. One line caught my eye, which was this:

However, what is apparent is that when I’m unable to rescue a situation, I’ve been settling for a loss bigger than my average win.

I think most traders are probably guilty of this. Traders who cut their winning bets prematurely will certainly see their average win size lower than their average loss size. My numbers for the NBA illustrate this all to clearly - after almost eight years (1463 matches), the losses to wins (median) are:

For the NFL, (290 matches, so a much smaller sample), they are even worse:

It would be interesting to know how the results of others compare. I suspect that a 'perfect trader' will be closer to or indeed above 100%.