Holiday Draws

Did you lose money backing Home teams in the EPL over Xmas? You probably weren't alone.

Blindly backing Home teams over the holiday period (defined here as matches played from the 23rd December to the 3rd January) is historically not a good idea, with an ROI since 2000 of -7.5% from 621 matches.

As you may have guessed, this observation came to light while I was looking at whether the Draw was value at this time of year, the rationale being that with people taking holidays, and matches coming thick and fast and with less time to evaluate recent data, there may be opportunities.

I'm pretty sure I have covered here before how certain times of the season are better / worse for specific outcomes, looking at the results by month, but I mentioned a couple of posts ago some work done by Dave Holdsworth, who has taken this idea a step further, and analysed the data by Week or Round and come up with a simple strategy. "Simple" here is defined as easy to follow or use rather than a reference to the work behind it which is extensive and anything but simple.

For example, Dave's research suggests that backing Home teams between weeks 27 and 32, which he defines as "Crunch Time", is a profitable strategy, and accompanies this suggestion with a rationale for why this might be so.

Here are the Draw numbers through the end of 2020 by month, on the left all Draws, on the right, the Draw in "Close" matches only:

Blindly backing the Draw is clearly not a great idea in general, although it does appear to have some merit in January. Of course, we know by now that in most matches, the Draw should be ignored, and the matches where the Draw price is too long are those where the win probabilities of the two teams are relatively close. 

Last season was obviously an outlier with its lengthy suspension and ultimate return with no fans in attendance, and this year the latter continues to be an issue as well as the late start meaning that rather than being halfway through the season, we are a few games behind schedule. We may fall a few more games behind schedule if the uptick in COVID related postponements picks up, but that's another topic. 

Back to the Draw, and clearly in the first half of the season, August through December, the 'sensible' Draw is where this method should be applied, with an ROI of 13.9% from 873 matches.  

So I was wondering what happens in December / January to cause this second-half of the season decline. Obviously there's the Festive Fixtures, the onset of Winter, and fixtures are now between teams that have faced each other already that season. 

Over the last 20 seasons, the halfway point of the season is, with three exceptions in early January, reached in late December (see left). The actual mid-point is between the 28th and 29th of December.

Promoted teams have lost their element of surprise, and perhaps there's a feeling of rounding the turn and the second half of the season is where things get really serious. There's also the distraction of the FA Cup and for some the League Cup is still of interest.

I looked at the Festive Period and broke it up into a Xmas period of the 23rd to 28th, and a New Year period from the 29th to the 3rd - two six day periods. 

Here are the results as the season ends one half and starts the second half.

The sample size, even over twenty years, isn't huge, but there is a clear difference in returns.

Comparing the two halves of a season in their entirety shows these differences even more starkly:

In case you were wondering, for all Draws the first half of the season has an ROI of -2.95%, while the second half is again worse at -5.31%. Like I've said, don't back silly Draws.

Not all of you are interested in Draws, so what else do we see when we break a season down? 

For Homes, the second half of the season is where fortunes can be made.