Inevitable Profits

It was not the best of weeks for followers of the NFL Small Road Dogs system with the three selections all losing. I'm beginning to regret making my comment last week regarding the remaining selections that:

Even if all seven lost, we'd still have a healthy ROI.

The ROI drops to 16.15% with one week, and probably three selections, remaining in the season.

If you're following the Small Road Dogs in the NBA as I suggested last week, you're probably thanking me, in spirit at least, given the start to the season they have made - i.e. six winners from seven selections, with four more over the next couple of days.

In the Premier League we had plenty of Draws, which isn't unusual in the December part of the holiday season. Blindly backing the Draw gives a return of 3.78%, while limiting yourself to "Close" matches increases the ROI to 30% since 2000.  

I'll update the Draw numbers in a couple of days once Wednesdays games are complete.

A few days ago, I was kindly sent a copy of a book called "Inevitable Profits" written by Dave Holdsworth which he says: 

was inspired by David Sumpter's book [Soccermatics] and your blog 

Dave's approach is to: 

"look for systematic bias in the odds. We can do this by modelling the betting market rather than the underlying sport. Instead of trying to predict which team will win we can try to understand under what circumstances the bookmakers’ odds are skewed away from true, showing us where to bet."

Readers of this blog will understand why such an approach is music to my ears. 

Dave outlines a strategy based on the stage of the season, comparing results from different stages of the season, and finds some interesting trends.

I've looked at results by month before, and noticed some interesting trends, but Dave inspired me to drill down still further, and while my interest remains primarily on the Draw, I'll share some findings in the next few days.

With the US markets open today, no doubt many of you are happy with adding another 1.92% to your balances as Tesla climbed again. Just three days remain in 2020 and I'm pretty sure this will be another category ending the year with a healthy ROI!