Le Championnat Draw

At the risk of being accused of quantophrenia, here are some more Draw related numbers, this time from France's Ligue 1. Again, the period under review is the six seasons 2012-18, and the prices used are Pinnacle's Closing Odds courtesy of Joseph Buchdahl's Football-Data.co.uk site.

Backing the draw blindly in this league is a terrible idea, costing 109.12 points and a negative ROI while blindly laying the draw is actually profitable as shown above. Eliminating Draws with an implied probability less than 0.25 would save you 94.78 of those points, and it doesn't pay to blindly back the draw when the true price is below 3.6. Another 61.91 points can be saved by skipping these.

Using the 'difference' between the win probabilities, backing the draw in matches in the 25% or less category, i.e. the closest matches, results in a small profit of 2.09 points from 492 matches, ROI 0.42%.

When it comes to Big 6 matches (Bordeaux, Paris Saint-Germain, AS Monaco, Olympique Lyonnais, Olympique de Marseille and St Etienne), as with the EPL, backing the Draw in these matches is profitable, up 44.89 points from 170 games, ROI of 26.4%. 

As a top league with no promotion, the Big 6 concept comes into play again.

The Big 6 in France is debatable, (Nice / Bordeaux?), and certainly not as strong as the EPL's, and a Big 6 game doesn't preclude a short price on one of the teams. While the shortest (adjusted) price for an EPL Big 6 game is 1.4 - Liverpool v Tottenham Hotspur 30th March 2014 - the dominance of Paris Saint-Germain means that 22 such games saw this price matched or beaten with the shortest price 1.09. Ignore matches with red hot home teams and the profits and ROI increase.

Next up: Germany