Established in 2008, this blog is an independent, common sense, look at challenges and opportunities in sports and financial investing, with occasional diversions as my mood takes me. I am not a tipster, nor is this a Profit and Loss report either. They are boring.
Saturday, 24 May 2014
La Liga - 2013-14
La Liga is never the best hunting ground for draws, and like all the other top league, the draws were down on their long term averages here too, but only a little short of the 5 year average. Backing the draw in every La Liga match would have cost you 23.65 points.
Here the Favourite-Longshot bias is present, and if we look at the 380 matches in five groups of around 76 each, the draw returns break down as follows:
The top two - favourite - quintiles make a small profit, but the benchmark of backing sub 4.0 is down 4.70 points, not too far off the XX Draw total of down 3.07 points The Unders fared relatively well too. Backing the Under 2.5 goals in every match would have lost you 15.76 points, while the XX Draws backed as Unders made a loss of 6.48 points. Next up, the Bundesliga.
I have had a life-long interest in sports and after studying Pure Mathematics with Statistics at secondary school, have been fascinated by odds and probability.
The first system I came up with was a simple one - back the favourite and double up after a loss until a winner. Simple enough in theory, and I told my Dad about it. Not being a betting man himself, he ran it by some of his colleagues, and came home to tell me that it wouldn’t work because a long losing run would mean that the bank would be empty. Then there was always the possibility that the winner would be returned at odds-on, meaning that the total returns would not match the outlay. Not what a ten year old wants to hear! Only slightly daunted, I then went on a search for the Holy Grail, the secret to riches that I knew was out there somewhere. Finally in 2004 I stumbled across an article about Betting Exchanges and four years later I was able to make a steady profit.
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