Home For The Holidays

Steve "Mull It Over" Mullington consoles me with:

Unlucky there on your debut Cassini. Still, you got third so there is plenty to build upon.

Perhaps if I'd had a little more warning, I might have prepared myself better.

Geoff of Fulltimebetting blog, reminded me of how the race unfolded:

Slowly away, in touch in last trio, ridden over 2f out, progress to chase winner over 1f out, no impression after, lost 2nd near finish, kept on (tchd 5/1).

Better luck next time Mr C!

Yes I do know. I was there! The race summary was reminiscent of my Friday nights out as a young man. Chasing, making no impression, and losing out near the finish.

Recognising that the race was a touchy subject with me, Geoff smoothly (and with smooth moves like this, his Friday nights must be quite different from mine) changes the subject to football, writing: 

Regarding your posts concerning the "backing all homes idea" I wonder if you had the stats to hand showing what would happen if you excluded the first and last 6 sets of fixtures? Stewboss takes this approach with the view that form needs to settle down at first, with games at the tail-end sometimes meaningless.

I've tried looking at the data via the sites you suggested but cant quite seem to get my head around it to see where I should be looking.

Backing all homes wasn't so much an idea, as an observation. At the start of the season, there was no reason to look at backing Homes. The trend had been towards Away wins. It was curious how last season Homes were so prominent in different top leagues, but nonetheless, for now at least I suspect it was a temporary blip in the general increase in Aways over recent years than the start of a Home trend. We'll see.  

The idea of waiting for a few rounds (six seems to be the favoured number of matches for form) for form to settle down has merit for a model, as teams can change considerably from one season to another. It also allows the model to incorporate promoted teams which can be a challenge. The motivation factor at the end of a season can also be disruptive, but it can also be lucrative.

Just look at the record of teams managed by Tony Pulis once they have reached the 'magic' 40 point total - 6 wins in 46 such games. Last season, West Bromwich Albion reached that total by the end of February, yet picked up just five more points all season, and just one point from their final eight games of the season. 

While omitting the first few rounds from the results makes no sense when looking at a trend, what might be interesting is whether the first few rounds are enough to signal the possible start of a trend. 

Looking at the first six rounds of the EPL last season, Home wins were in profit after 60 games, with an ROI of 4.3%, but the leader early on was Lay the Draw with an ROI of 9.3%.

At the end of the season, Home wins were up another 27.58 points, while Laying the Draw had added another 6.32 points.

The gains for Homes in the EPL were all in the mid-season winter months, November to March +38.77 points, rest of the season -8.60. I think it's a coincidence, but in this case, eliminating early and late matches would have improved returns from backing Homes. 

The trouble is, in the EPL we had no strong signal for Homes until 14 rounds were in the books on December 5th, and the ROI was at 3%. 

36 of 58 (62%) of December's fixtures resulted in Home wins, and a 21.71 point profit in this month. 

Close behind the EPL's Home Win percentage of 49.2% was the Bundesliga with 49.0%, and as the table below shows, here the trend was evident from the start.

December was, by some distance, the best month for backing Homes, profitable in every league. 

One season's results mean little though, but it'll be interesting to see what trends unfold for the 2017-18 season.