Correction And Reflection

Thanks to Habotron, possibly not his real name, who spotted a rare error in my recent post on College Basketball pointing out that:

I think there is a mistake in the first image. Total P/L and ROI%. In the text it is ok 5.9 ROI%, is it?

Anyway I really love you blog.

Thanks!

The image has been corrected from:

To:

It doesn't take a genius to see how the mistake occurred, but that's no excuse. It's gratifying to know that someone actually looks at these things!

We, at Green All Over, have a zero tolerance policy on mistakes, and appropriate action has been taken with the staff member responsible - or should that be irresponsible? 

It's a long time ago now, but one of the more amusing memories from my school days in Croydon involved an incident where one of my peers threw a piece of chalk at a teacher as he wrote on the blackboard. The teacher turned around and said "Watkins! Are you responsible?" to which he replied immediately "No Sir, I am totally irresponsible". When you're 13, that's quite funny. 

Tony Stephens had a comment on my Runaway Train post asking:

Just to confirm. Your ROI is based on Pinnacle (SP?) prices that UK based bettors cannot take advantage of at the moment? Do you still get your bets on via Pinnacle so that your actual betting reflects the stats in the blog? If you are not using Pinnacle are you finding that the exchange prices are inflated enough beyond the Pinnacle prices such that the ROI is not affected by commission charges? Obviously you cannot get a bet on with a traditional UK based bookmaker any more or you haven't tried to. Would that be correct to say?

The numbers I publish for football are all using Pinnacle's Closing Odds, provided courtesy of Joseph Buchdahl's excellent and essential Football Data web site. They are for illustrative purposes only, and used not because they are necessarily available to everyone, but because they are the most accurate reflection of the 'true' odds that I have access to. 

Do I personally wait until just before kick-off and bet with Pinnacle? No. As I've written before, real life means that this is rarely possible, so my actual results will always vary from the 'official' results of a system. 

Some selections are backed at longer prices and shorten by kick-off, some selections drift from when I back them, and some weeks I'm travelling and unable to place the bets at all - or at least I'm not prepared to jump through hoops to get a bet on Mansfield Town to win at Coventry City.

With some systems where qualifiers depend on the line, it's not unusual for me to be live on a selection that ends up not being a qualifier, or conversely not being on a selection where a late move does make it a qualifier - but I don't worry about these things as they are unavoidable and things tend to even out over time.

Betting on the Exchanges where the over-round is often close to non-existent (e.g. 100.06% ) and paying commission is about as good for most people as being able to bet with Pinnacle (102.54%).

Pinnacle's claim of:

is debatable. Coventry City are currently available at 2.24, Mansfield Town at 3.9 and the Draw at 3.35. (As an aside, Mansfield Town have shortened considerably since trading at 4.5). 

As I wrote on October 25th:

Once again, if you're following this system, it now behoves you to bet early. It's as if, for some reason, people are piling onto the Aways closer to kick-off. What was that about an edge shared?

Everyone's situation is different, whether it's where you can 'get on', how much commission you pay, or how much free time you have to place your bets. The big advantage of both the Exchanges and Pinnacle is that you will not be restricted, and both are competitive. 

Yes, Betfair have their Premium Charges and Pinnacle are not currently taking bets from the UK, Spain or USA (which is ironic as "Pinnacle offers some of the best betting lines for American sports - compare theirs with any other bookmaker’s betting lines on American sports and you’ll see the better line at Pinnacle at least seven times out of ten") but serious bettors will have options available to them.

Again, I've mentioned this before, but if 100 people are playing the NCAAF Small Road 'Dogs system this season, I doubt that the actual ROI percentages of any two would be the same, and none would match the 'official' results I publish. 

The 'official' results should always be beatable, although having said that, I noticed this week that Pinnacle now operate a 102.93% over-round on College Football Handicaps, and incidentally a whopping 103.41% on Totals, compared to their 102.4% in the NFL, so I need to adjust the official returns to account for this.

We had a winner last night (BYU winning by 10 at UNLV) which hopefully augurs well for the remaining (probably seven) Week 11 qualifiers today.