Local Derby Factor

It's the Merseyside Derby today and Derby games traditionally are good value for Draw bettors. 

Since 2000 in the EPL, the return from blindly backing the Draw in Derby using prices adjusted to an over-round of 103.7% is 1.1% which may not sound like much, but it compares well with non-Derby matches which would have lost you 4.47%.

Like most recent Merseyside Derby games, Liverpool will be odds-on to win today, but of the last eight matches where they haven't been odd-on, six have resulted in Draws. 

For the record, while games such as Liverpool v Manchester United and Crystal Palace v Brighton and Hove Albion are often described as 'Derby' matches, the term is used as in 'local Derby'. Big rivalry games is another category. 

The "Close" matches means matches where the teams are within 25% of each other in Win probability, and "Toss Up" is where teams are within 10% of each other.

Little evidence yet that Home Advantage has vanished in the EPL with the three teams winning Away so far all playing at clubs in the bottom four of the table. 

Meanwhile things aren't looking great for baseball this summer. While the league and players argue over how many games to play and how much they should be paid, the two states where "Spring Training" takes place (Arizona and Florida) are both seeing surges in the number of new cases, the result of poor leadership at the state level with Republican Governors opening up the state prematurely, going along with the argument that the "cure can’t be worse than the disease”. As the disease is killing people, it's hard to understand how the cure could be any worse. 

As a result, teams have announced they will train in their own stadiums, potentially costing Arizona and Florida a ton of money and hopefully Republicans a ton of votes. With cases on the increase, MLB should probably just call it a day. Assuming, and it's a big assumption, that the US get the first wave under control, the second wave is likely to arrive around World Series time, hence the reluctance of the players to extend the season. Spring has gone now, so the traditional pre-season warm ups would be "Summer Training" but to me, it looks like they are running out of time to strike an agreement, and the conditions don't support a return any time soon anyway. 

With conditions worsening in Florida, the NBA's plan to resume play at the Disney World Resort in Orlando might be re-considered, and the NFL training camps are due to start next month. It's hard to see how that season will be anything like normal.

I've not checked the prices today, but the Biden and Democrats to be the winning party bets can't have been hurt by last night's rally in Tulsa, where Trump kicked off his campaign. With ticket demands over one million announced several times on TV last week, Trump was no doubt very excited and scheduled to speak to 19k inside and another 40k outside but it seems he was punked by teenage Tik-Tok users ordering tickets they never intended to use, and the actual attendance inside the arena was 6,611. The outside crowd was zero, and that speech was cancelled. He's finished, and he surely knows it.