Winter Gold Mine

I hate to be rude, but the Betfair Forum these days is mostly full of nonsense, but occasionally there's a thread that piques my interest. 

One such thread in the Football Forum appeared at the start of the season with the plan to lay odds-on Away teams in the Premier League this season. 

The opening post stated that "We’ve seen lots of posts over the years saying what a gold mine it is", and while it's certainly not the worst idea I've seen, and like many systems has it's moments, blindly following this approach long-term isn't likely to reap huge rewards.  

It's fair to say that this strategy hasn't got off to a great start this season, with just the one winner so far, Chelsea at AFC Bournemouth, but it's early days.

Including this past weekend, the results over the years are as shown to the left. 

Note that the prices used are from Joseph Buchdahl's Football Data site and the definition of odds-on and the Lay price are based on the fair odds after the overround has been removed. 

Overall a loss of 23.19 units from 1,330 bets but as is often the case, there are sometimes some interesting trends. For example, the EPL Draw system is usually stronger in the early part of the season, and here it's interesting that if you only applied this system during the winter months of December, January and February, the results are much improved, with a 52.45 unit profit from 488 matches, an ROI of almost 10.75%.

Exclude Sunday matches and games involving promoted clubs (see left) and the ROI during these months increases further to 24.5% which really is quite interesting, and a possible candidate for inclusion in an updated Sacred Manuscript! 

The Segunda División draw system had just one winner, but the last two matches from the 'official' site are not yet updated. 

On to the NFL and with Week 3 giving us another winner, the season's record currently stands at 23-7, which is +14.9 units. 

Too early in the season for a meaningful ROI, but a good start and the College System is at 10-5-1 for another 4.52 units. 

I shall also be adding a new system for this sport to the aforementioned document. 

From the feedback I receive, this isn't a sport that is widely followed, but there is a Totals System that is too good not to share with a 9.3% ROI over the past 10 full seasons, with not a losing season in that time. 

In the Rugby World Cup five very hot favourites won, with Georgia at 1.13 drawing with Portugal the big upset of the round. In the two competitive games, Wales (1.85) beat Australia with the best game, in my opinion, Ireland's win over favourites South Africa who were an average of 1.84.

Samoa at 1.52 to beat Japan on Wednesday is the only game that doesn't have a favourite at 1.1 or shorter. The knockout phase can't come soon enough! 

With four financial trading days to go, September has turned green. If it's not careful, Q3 might go green too, but one day at a time.