New Season Draws Closer

With one of my dogs not having eaten in six days, my travel plans are currently on hold, and while that comes at quite a financial cost to me, the lucky beneficiaries are you readers, as I find myself with some unexpected time on my hands.

Football Investor tweeted the above yesterday, and as probably the world's leading expert on the Draw in football, of course my interest was piqued. 

Unfortunately Mr Investor was a little disingenuous in that he doesn't actually say what the profitable strategy is, but merely shows the results of this strategy, but the selections and results look very similar to the Draw strategies that I have suggested over the years.

When you are looking for value with the Draw, you need to look for matches that are between teams with similar win probabilities.

Footy goes back to the 2012-13 season, which was the first to feature Pinnacle's prices, and he looks at the English Premier League, the top two leagues in Spain, and Serie B, all of which have been extensively covered in this blog previously.

Investor's selection criteria appear to change from league to league, and there is nothing wrong with that since each league has its own personality as I have written before.

For example, last season he had 230 selections from Serie B, 90 in the EPL, 47 in La Liga and 21 in La Liga 2. 

Serie B was last reviewed in June and included these numbers showing the profitability of the Draw in 'close' matches, i.e matches where the 'true' difference between the two teams is 25% or less.

2016-17: ROI of 9.7% from 107 selections

2017-18: ROI of 24.8% from 105 selections

2018-19: ROI of 11.4% from 94 selections

These ROIs are very close to Footy's 8.8%, 17.6% and 9.9% returns respectively. Although the more selective criteria I use does generate a higher ROI, the higher number of selections Football Investor uses generates more points of profit. 

The Draw in Spain's second tier La Liga 2 last season was reviewed here back in June, and in 'close' matches had an ROI of 6.6% from 102 selections. Footy Investor's 21 selections had an ROI of 19.7%, but ROIs from such a small number of selections are almost meaningless.

Certainly there is value to be found in backing the Draw in competitive matches. David Sumpter's Big 6 idea worked well when the six teams were comparable, but we're in an era now where such matches see a 1.26 home favourite or a 1.5 away favourite. We may look back and talk about the Big 2 era. 

David's idea worked well, not because the six teams were the best, but because the majority of Big 6 matches met the following criteria:

It turns out that when two well-matched teams meet (i.e. the probability of a home win is only slightly bigger than the probability of away win) then draws are under-priced. When matches are skewed so there is a strong a favourite (i.e. the probability of one team or the other winning is larger than the other) then draws are over-priced.

Stick with this principle, and whether you look at the differences between win probabilities, or exclude hot favourites, you will improve your chances of making a profit.

Worth mentioning that one season is a small sample with a lot of variance, and when a season such as last season's EPL comes along, with Premier League records broken for average goals per game, most Away wins, and fewest Draws, even the best of Draw strategies will struggle.