Reds See Red, Officially

At least one reader has proved me wrong this week on my assertion that 99% of readers simply do not have the discipline to follow some of the strategies outlined here.

Fizzer was all over my MLB strategy of following favourites in their first game back after the All-Star break, although this year was 'officially' a losing one on both the Money Line and Run Line. As mentioned in 2016:

One trend that did hold true again this season was that of favourites doing well in their first games after the break. The rationale for this is that although the better teams are likely to be better represented at the All-Star game, many of those will only put in a less than exhausting cameo performance, while the majority of their players enjoy the break and get some rest which apparently benefits better teams more than worse teams.

These once a year trends are of limited value of course - come next year and 99% of people reading this will have forgotten about it.

At least 1,034 people have read that post, so my 99% estimate should perhaps be 99.9%.

As for the 'officially' reference, I say this because both Fizzer and myself had basically the same outcome this year, which was of a small profit. 

'Officially' the Reds at -110 were the selection at home to the Pirates, but at the time I placed my bets, the Pirates were favourites at -105. 

As I've written before, sometimes these market moves work out for you, and sometimes they don't. Fizzer delved deeper and found that:

Reds opened as favourites, it flip flopped but Reds were favs again at 10:00am but after that Pirates became clear favs.)

Looks like the prices they used, checking some other games, were taken about 10:00am Eastern, so 10 hours before the game.

Yesterday the market turbulence worked out in our favour, with Fizzer writing that while the 'official' record...:

Shows a 2 point loss on the 15 games... my own records showed I made a small 0.3 points profit.

Officially then, the loss was 2.06 points this year, but since 2004 this has been a solid strategy with a close to 20% ROI, so the spreadsheet reminder for 2019 is in place. 

There will always be games like the Reds - Pirates yesterday, where teams qualify at one time in the day, but not at others. Don't worry about it.

Fizzer finished up with this line:

I’m also a big advocate of the EPL draws method you reviewed again this year. Been using that for some time now.

Good to hear. Although the trend is towards fewer Draws (in the first five seasons of the Premier League, 29% of matches ended as Draws, whereas the latest five saw this decrease to just 24.26%), eliminating consistent losers and applying a disciplined approach means that profits can be made for little effort.