What do you think about Steve’s strategy for the Friendly Tipster League?If his strategy isn’t against the rules, can the rest of us use other tipsters/systems’ selections as well?
Steve's proposed strategy was outlined in his post here, but the key section was this:
So what’s my strategy? Well as I have mentioned copious times before on this blog, I couldn’t pick a winner if it smashed me across the face. But I am more then happy to pay other people to do the hard work for me. I pay a few tipsters that have bets in the same league, we know how well multiple bets did for me last season, but what I will be doing is selecting bets if TFA, Winabob, FB investor, or FB Elite agree. I think if 3 of them have chosen the same bet then that’s a pretty good indicator. A friend (Edwin) did some analysis using WIN,TFA and FBI last season and these bets produced a 13% ROI.
I wish the other entrants luck as they vie for second place.
Love the confidence. Steve’s strategy isn’t against the rules. It would be impossible to enforce a rule that disallowed selections from other tipsters or systems, simply because I have no idea where selections are coming from. Well, I might have an idea – UK_TFA makes no secret of the fact that his selections will be based on Graeme’s TFA selections, but Graeme has no problem with this, actively encouraging the entry name to be UK_TFA.
I noticed last season that while the EPL was the primary source of selections, it wouldn’t be unusual for some seeming random match from elsewhere to feature in more than one entry. Whether this was because two people independently identified value or because one was using a selection from someone else is hard to tell.
It sounds like Steve is planning to put together a portfolio based on the best of the best, and it will be interesting to see how this works out. It sounds good in theory, but in practice nothing is guaranteed.
One only needs to revisit last season to see how following the big names is no guarantee of success. Skeeve did very nicely (if you stayed away from his accumulators), Cassini overall was basically a wash, but a modified Football Elite struggled, and Peter Nordsted’s Premier Betting dropped 42.66 points.
Assuming that each individual service has a long-term positive EV, and that selections are diverse, one of the advantages of combining them into one portfolio is that short-term lows (and highs) are smoothed out. Unfortunately the initial assumption isn’t always correct. Success in the past is no guarantee of future success, and one rotten egg in your portfolio can soon spoil your omelette.
The best performing entry last season showed an ROI of 20.47% but Steve's 13% would have comfortable secured third place last season.
Stewboss added:
I was thinking the same thing as Skeeve. We could get mugged by our own subscribers!
Another week or so, and we'll find out if this is likely to be a problem for the bounty boys!
On the topic of accumulators, Marty commented on my post on the subject:
Doesn't this over-round argument miss the point that if you have an edge, then this increases by more than the over-round, so betting multiples can be a very effective way to generate EV.This is true, but the 'if' is a big one. Accumulators are a fun way for a casual punter to shoot for a 'lottery' type win, but there's a reason most serious bettors generally avoid them, or at least much past four or five-folds. Admittedly it was a small sample, but Skeeve last season showed how big a difference betting in just doubles and trebles rather than singles, can make. Steve M also mentioned the poor outcome of multiple bets in the excerpt at the start of this post. (I hope he meant 'multiple' as in accumulator rather than as 'many').
The problem unfortunately, is that probability is very simple – the more links you have in a chain, the more places it can break.
I will jump in on the accumulator debate here - As the representative of @ValueBankFooty
ReplyDeleteIt is not easy, nor fair on you Cassini, for me to throw over the full Valuebank ratings, which do actually rate every single game in the four English divisions - The time for you to go through them would be ridiculous - This may even work against me as the full ratings are proving profitable - For instance, this weekend, with four games to go, there is a 5pt profit to single point level stakes in backing every prediction!
Valuebank is about every game, but my entry is my interference of those ratings in trying to pick out the wheat from the chaff; so far not so good.
But also, the quench the thirst of a big win for my followers on Twitter I try to pull, Home and away accas, a weekly Jackpot and some other bits and pieces.
Back to the acca, I am indeed one entrant who is making acca predictions, albeit not ridiculous ones - and can guarantee that should one land, I will not shut up acca shop and concentrate on defending a lead (should it gain one) as that is not what I am about,(as anonymous would attest to I am sure!) albeit not against the rules. Really my aim is to prove that you CAN play accas and make use of the value in the prices within to BEAT the increased over-round by actually taking advantage of the value in a price, not once but twice,three or more times by having that value in an acca. Indeed, in my first week, prior to joining FTL, I landed a 30/1 away win treble, which is almost sufficient to keep that particular angle going for most of the season. I was unaware of FTL at that time which might be just as well,as to land one that early could have caused some ruptions!
In fact, anonymous introduced me to the FTL and may even have been thinking that my tactic was good enough to ensure another £50 dropped in the pot to his advantage at the end of the competition (Cheeky anonymous!)
So that's my take on the accas, never ridiculously speculative 3 figure to one odds or anything and something I will employ season long, whilst trying to slowly build from selected valuebank ratings predictions.
It's been fun thus far,and whilst I may have missed the away treble that I will get for the season, watch out, I've still to hit the home win acca yet!
All the best