FTL 3k Winners

The FTL entries reached the 3,000 winners mark this weekend, but the overall losses increased, although by just a modest 10.74 points. There were three big winners. Jamie A was top dog on points and places making 10.35 of the former and climbing eight of the latter to move into the green. Gecko made 9.55 points to close the gap on leader BettingTools.co.uk (+3.01) but stayed in second place as these two pull away from the pack, and Mortimer made 8.54 points moving up seven places.

The only other profitable entries were Fairfranco, who will be pleased to turn a profit (1.75) after a tough four months, and Overgoalify who picked up 1.35 points.

Once again, it was a tough week for the more famous, or infamous, names in the table. The Bounty Boys all lost points again and their portfolio is now down by 14.04 points. More importantly for those above them in the table, their liabilities now total £1,725.

Football Elite dropped three places to 11th after a loss of 5.23 points and is now the only Bounty Boy in profit. Skeeve dropped six places to 20th after all five selections lost. Football Investor dropped four places to 22nd with a loss of 3.05 points and the TFA's Draws lost 0.30 points and dropped just one place.

It was another tough weekend for draw seekers, with just 11 from the 40 top league matches, and the Draw Portfolio also lost points. Six of those 11 were in Serie A, with none in France or the EPL, although with just the one game, that's perhaps not a huge surprise! The XX Draws lost 4.84 points, Draw picks lost 1.89, TFA Draws lost 0.30 as mentioned, Drawmaster lost 0.42 and TFA Euro Draws lost 3.31 points to remain in last place.

The biggest loser of the week was the XX Unders which followed a Cup week of 10 wins from 3 with a weekend of 11 losers from 15 and a loss of 7.68 points.

Here are the leaders with no changes in placings on last week. The Prize money includes the Bounty bonuses:

The chasing pack currently in profit is comprised of the following:

The 17 entries in the red are:

Jamie A takes the early lead in the monthly competition, his 11.13 points leading Gecko (+9.55), Mortimer (+7.37) and BettingTools.co.uk (+6.80). TFA_Raz props up the table down 8.65 on the month.

The net loss climbs to 115.89. Coincidentally, the Cassini wins and Bounty Boy wins are both at 307.

A few qualifying games in play this midweek as the Conference National has six games, plus a handful in the lower English Leagues as the FA Cup quarter-finalists make up their lost match.

Joan left a comment on the Push / Yield debate:

congratulations for your last post about Push bets and Yields. Personally I also include to my ROI the pushed bets that aren't postponed matches.

Another similar issue could be how to account the strike rate, which influence have a push bet on it, not consider the bet, some kind of strike rate reduction. The same issue will arise with half won and half lost bets, which part of them would have to take into account to increase or reduce the strike rate. I haven't found a simple solution for this yet.

I do track the strike rates by excluding any Pushes from the calculation, but I don't find it a very useful number. Abromo currently leads the table based on Strike Rate at 71.9%, but the strategy he uses sees him sitting on a small loss. Contrast this to Trend to end:

The lowest Strike Rates are those shown above, and Trend to end is currently in 5th place and up 16.88 points with the third lowest Strike Rate. "Lowest" is meaningless without knowing the context, i.e. what method is being used. Laying long-shots will give you a high Strike Rate, but if more win than implied by the odds, you won't make any money.  

Finally, Home wins this season are at 10 year lows in the EPL and Serie A and in the Big Five overall, while Draws are at a low in Ligue 1, League One and the Conference National.

Had you been lucky enough to decide to back the draw blindly in Serie A this season, you would be sitting on a pile of 68.07 points (Pinnacle's prices) as they are following their lowest draw strike rate for 10 years in 2013-14 with their highest this season, 34.11%.

For Aways, La Liga, Ligue 1, League One and Overall are at 10 years highs with only the Bundesliga and League Two seeing 2014-15 Aways below their 5 and 10 year averages.