Best Bookies, Bones, Bursting Bubbles, And Baldrick

Following up on the EPL Draw systems, Smithlondon writes:

Fair points about the bookies selected. Finding the right price is obviously the key to all/any strategy. As requested if you take the best of those 5 prices over the ten years, you get an 8.65 profit from 2808 selections.

Profit results from some big swing years (10/11, 12/13 & 15/16) all of which had (unsurprisingly) above avg draw % in those respective years.

I put Smithlondon's numbers into the table above, and added the averages and totals for the past five and ten seasons. As I had suspected, using the best of five price makes this strategy profitable over the past ten seasons, although not from 2006-10. It's probably no coincidence that the Home team won 47.6% of matches in this time, and just 44.9% in the six seasons since, while the Draw numbers remained fairly steady at 25.7% and 25.9% respectively.

Interesting that the two seasons 2011-12 and 2014-15 saw exactly the same number of draws overall (93) yet the later season would have produced a profit while the earlier won lost a little.

I mentioned a while ago that I had forwarded the details of some of my portfolio systems to Geoff, As I know that losing runs can and do occur, I put in my email that "Of course, Past Performance is no Guarantee of Future Results." Geoff wrote to me yesterday, saying "I have a bone to pick with you".

I was just wondering how you are getting on with the TBone in recent weeks as I'm wondering if I have chosen to get involved at completely the wrong time?

He didn't actually sau that he had a bone to pick with me, a strange expression that only a mother would use, but T-Bone did have a poor July, with the straight up bets losing 16.44 points and ending the month with a 3-11 record, but August's 10 selections have produced 7 winners so far and are +2.04 points so far. On the season overall, the system is up 9.28 points, but that's of little comfort since we only found this system last month! I say give it time.

Back to football, and while I'm not a big fan of tying my money up for a full season, I have had a few bets matched laying Leicester City in the Premier League this season, including for a top 10 finish at 1.46.  I suspect that Leicester City's bubble has burst, and with the added distraction of Champions League football and a key player departing, can see them struggling rather like Ipswich Town did in their first season (17th of 22 teams) after surprisingly winning the League.

I've also backed Crystal Palace in this market at a massive 4.0 with the cunning plan (thank you Baldrick) to lay off at 1.01 when their relatively easy start (no top 4 teams in the first 11 matches) comes to an end in November, by which time 33 points will have accrued, Alan Pardew will have been knighted for services to dancing, Hillary Clinton will be the President-elect in the United States and the UK will still be in the European Union. **

Finally, for those who haven't yet seen it, a post from Steve M on why he won't be following any football tipsters this season. Click on the link for the full post, but some of Steve's numbers are interesting.

Over the last 6 years I have placed 16,666 bets, that averages out to 7.6 bets every single day for 6 years straight.As mentioned earlier, with 16,666 bets, that means months worth of data entry, months worth of finding and/or waiting for the best odds, months worth of placing bets and months worth of recording results. Not to mention the fact I would sit up and watch all the games.

Each week I would spend at least 4-5 hours on soccer betting (just placing and recording bets). Let’s say the season runs for 8 months. That means I would spend 160 hours a year or a total of 960 hours over the past 6 years. We can double that number to 1920 hours when we include all the watching and other activities. That works out to waking up at 6 am and working non stop till 10 pm every day for 4 months straight.

That is a lot of hours! For me, the best part of betting with a portfolio is that you are punting, not trading, and so you don't actually need to watch the games. Being based in Australia, it's even worse for Steve with many matches in the middle of the night. I suspect many sports bettors conveniently forget to include the hours spent when calculating their profits.

** This all but guarantees that by November, Leicester City will be a top three team, Crystal Palace will be relegated, Alan Pardew will be the first managerial casualty of the EPL season, Donald Trump will win the Presidential Election by a landslide and Article 50 will have been triggered.