FTL Midweek Carnage Update And Tsunami Warning

The midweek results were no kinder to most FTL entries than the previous weekend. One entry made a profit, with thirteen making a loss. The eight idle entries were the beneficiaries. I have added a new column on the far right showing the change on the previous published table.

The "in-profit" entries are down to five, and they are:

The Bundeslayga were the one profitable entry with the lay of Borussia Dortmund in the Revierderby a winner finishing 0:0. 

The "in contention" group is up to three members, and they are:

No positional changes, but all three lost as shown in the new column.

As for the "losers", you can see from the final column that all who were active lost a little more this week.

Peter Nordsted was the biggest loser with none of his Premier Betting selections winning, and no Drawmaster winners either, but Jamie A, the XX Draws and Rubicon didn't fare much better. The Football Analyst reduces his bounty liability to £300 by virtue of Peter's woes rather than his own success, and the Totals section of the spreadsheet makes for depressing reading. 

For those of us looking for draws, the last few weeks have seen what might be described in business terms, as a challenging environment. Skeeve left a comment on my post regarding his selections, or more his staking and multiples strategy, which ended with a PS:

I hope this upcoming weekend is the one when you nail all the draws and get back to profit :)

The problem I have with that statement is not the sentiment, which is appreciated, but that it implies the draws are there to be nailed. However this season, the draws have been notable for their absence across all five of the leagues I follow.

It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that a system looking for a particular result will struggle when the frequency of those results drops below it’s expected and long-term average, and will look great when they exceed expectations. The key is whether the selections being made are performing better or worse than a set of selections chosen at random. Your index fund might have been up 22% in 2013, but if the index it uses as a benchmark was up by 35%, that was a poor year for the manager. Something I will perhaps incorporate into the FTL next season is likely a benchmark or two.

Looking at the EPL, the last 50 matches have resulted in just 6 draws. Overall this season, this league is on course for its lowest draw total since the outlier of 2005-06 (20.3%). With the 10 year average at 26.3%, it's clear that a draw system will struggle, but unless something fundamental has changed, there will be times when the draws exceed expectations. In other words, when judging selections, it is important to look at more than just the P&L. A rising tide lifts all boats.

Backing all draws in the EPL would have lost 50.12 points. Limiting bets to the sub 4.0 selections would have lost 19.31 points (I used 4.0 because it is rare for an XX Draw selection to be priced greater than this) so it's some comfort that the EPL XX Draws are up 4.22 points. 

La Liga is my best performing league this season, and I will look at them along with the others this weekend. One plus to the poor run is perhaps seeing that the selections have value, even if the tide has ebbed. I'm hoping the receding tide it is due to a coming tsunami.