FTL Update 2.Mar And Speciousness

Another tough week for the FTL entrants, with an overall loss of 41.33 points. It was particularly bad for the Bounty Boys portfolio which lost a combined 20.47 points, and whose combined bounty liabilities have now increased to £1,525. On the season the overall net total is now down by almost 100 points with 148.19 points lost in January and February.

The potential (still a long way to go yet) additional bounty money is good news for anyone in the top 20 though, and the total league pot up for grabs currently stands at £3,175.

It was also a very bad round for the Draw Portfolio which lost a combined 18.80 points. The top five European leagues had just 11 draws (from 46 matches) while the lower four English leagues (Championship, League One, League two and Conference National) had just 9 (also from 46 matches).

Peter Nordsted's Drawmaster selections lost another 9.27 points, TFA Draws lost 5.62 points, Draw Picks lost 2.87 points, TFA Euro Draws lost 2.27 points and only XX Draws showed a profit, albeit just a whopping 1.23 points but on a tough weekend, I'll happily take it.  

It wasn't all doom and gloom though, with the big winners being Gecko and TFA_Raz and of course four entrants advanced to the semi-finals of the Erskine Cup.

Gecko made an impressive 12.49 points to close within six points of leader BettingTools.co.uk (-2.21), and as a bonus threw in that Chelsea would win the League Cup (although this match wasn't a league game and was thus ineligible). Gecko moved up five places, and with a gain of 9.44 points, TFA_Raz moved up nine places.

The leaders in double figures, with the new and old ROI%, are:

The four Erskine Cup Quarter-Finals were played, and in the first tie there was no treble joy for @ValueBankFooty this time around and his loss of 6.45 points combined with a 2.90 point profit for XX Unders, meant a comfortable win for the latter.

Randolph graced the league with his presence for the first time since November and picked up a small profit from two short-priced selections, but he could have remained idle since Jamie A had a bad weekend losing a round worst 12.26 points.

Abromo was a no-show which meant that all Talkies Tips needed to advance was a profit, and he did that with some ease making 3.97 points.

The fourth tie was between Club Havana and Gecko, and while both made profits, it was Gecko's huge weekend that trumped Club Havana's more modest profit of 1.17 points. Club Havana does have the consolation of being the only entrant so far to win a monthly price and a cup prize.  

The semi-finals to be played over the weekend of 20-23 March will be:

Back to the league, and the number of entries in profit dropped to 15 after both Football Investor, Fulltimebettingblog and Jamie A all dropped into the red. The others in profit are:

In the red zone we have:

The totals and Portfolios now look like this

The February monthly prize goes to BettingTools.co.uk although in the end it was closer than expected. Only six entries were profitable last month:

No rest for the League Commissioner as there are plenty of games this midweek in England, and some elsewhere, and the entries are already coming in.

For those of you into Golf betting, I came across the Golf Betting Form web site which had this to say about this blog:

Green All Over – possibly the best betting related blog around. Mainly taken from the angle of Betting Exchanges and focusing on Football and US Team sports. Well written (and sometimes combative in style!), there is plenty that can be gleaned from the blog if you want to bet successfully.

Possibly? If there is a better one, I'd live to know about it so that I can add it to my blog roll. I'm also not sure what is meant by "sometimes combative in style".

Moving on, and Betslayer left a comment on my recent excellent Ignoring The Result post writing:

You are getting a little obsessed with goal times....I imagine and in fact know that Benham and his operations as applied to football include goal times in their analysis!

I'm hardly obsessed with goal times. I do have a habit of tracking how close to the end any draw-breaker goal comes, (just so I can torture myself with "if only"), but as I have explained before, while goal times in football are interesting, they are not useful for predictive purposes. The suggestion that Matthew Benham would base his betting decisions on basic historical goal times is no more credible than that he would look at the result of a game in 1930 between two teams before making a decision:

Previously the two clubs met in the 1930 Semi-Final with Arsenal advancing after a replay winning 1:0 at Villa Park after a 2:2 draw in the first match at Elland Road. Hull led 2:0 with 20 minutes to go in the first match, and I therefore perceive value in laying Arsenal in the half-time market. These matches are particularly relevant given that both were played on neutral grounds, as of course the FA Cup Final will be. Interestingly 1930 saw the first World Cup finals and with this year also being a World Cup year, I perceive there is value to be had in backing Uruguay to win the World Cup.

Yeah, makes sense! I'll leave readers to make up their own minds about Betslayer's claim that he "imagines and in fact knows" anything at all about Matthew Benham and his strategies, but if you know something for a fact, you don't preface your remark with "I imagine and..." !  

Such a claim should be easy enough to back up with some evidence, but I have my doubts that any will be forthcoming. Somehow, I can't see the rather naïve Biggie Betslayer (last blog post May 2013) as an insider on the hugely successful Benham's "operations".

Admittedly, "including goal times in their analysis" is a rather wishy-washy statement (one would hope that every detail available would be included if you are betting big money) but the implication that raw goal times are given much weight when taking serious betting decisions is specious.

I really wish successful football betting were as easy as looking at historical results or historical goal times. We'd all be rich! But of course it isn't, and making money consistently from football is not easy.

I imagine, with a high degree of certainty, that Betslayer is talking nonsense, and not for the first time. I'll let you all know should any evidence be forthcoming, but don't hold your collective breath.