Beware the 'Dog

The Draw in the Argentina v Cape Verde match on Saturday ensured that the Round of 32 would end in a profit for draw backers, but at the halfway point of the Round of 16, not one match has yet gone to extra-time, although only Morocco v Canada was decided by more than one goal. 

Norway's win against Brazil was a very rare win in 90 minutes for the underdog, with only one other such outcome in the last 42 World Cup knockout matches (Morocco beat Portugal 1:0 in the 2022 Quarter Final.) 

We have had 95 knockout matches in the World Cup since 2006 and this was just the 12th underdog win with the ROI now at -50%. The ROI for the Favourite is -0.02%, with the Draw at 28%.

In the major Confederation tournament (Euros, Copa, AFCON, Gold Cup and Asian) knockout matches, backing the 'dog has an ROI of -23% from 317 matches. 

Bottom line: If you're on the underdog in these games, good luck - you'll need it. 

Hit Me

Although my attention has been distracted away from betting and blogging for quite a while, this blog has continued to garner hits with over 400k last month despite only one new post in about eight months. 

In total, Green All Over is not too far off 6 million hits, but it has been going since March 2008, which means the average monthly hit count is around 26k, which is well shy of last month's 400k.  

As I don't make money from the blog, my interest is academic, but growth in hits does appear to be exponential unless something unusual happened last month. 

In February 2017 I noted that:

At the current 2017 hit rate of 770 a day, this blog will reach one and a half million hits in less than five days time

So the pace has certainly quickened.  

Interestingly, that post contained a couple of prescient comments:

Along with not updating this blog, the updated Sacred Manuscript for 2025/26 was another casualty of 'Palace in Europe', but before I disappear off to Mallorca for the Total Eclipse in August, and possibly to Europe for some Europa League games in the autumn, I should have time this summer to complete a 2026/27 edition. 

I started on it today, with American Football the first system, and it might be a good thing I now have two more years of data. For one of the most basic systems described in the document as "consistently profitable since 2006", the 2024 season was not good at all, with a losing 24-30-0 record. 

However, in the 2025 season, the system recovered those losses and more with a 34-22-2 record. With a single season generating a low number of selections, variabilty always has the potential to be an issue. 

World Cup Knockout Matches

As I may have mentioned once or twice, one of the most consistently profitable betting strategies is that of backing the Draw in the knockout rounds of major international football tournaments, and with the current FIFA World Cup reaching that stage in a few days, I thought a post on this topic might be timely and of interest.

I have data going back to 2006 and blindly backing the Draw in all 75 elimination matches since then would have generated a profit of 25.59 units, an ROI of 34%. 

Only in 2010 would you have made a loss, (-1.62u) with 2014 the best year with 16.94u. 

Of the four rounds, only the semi-final is currently showing a loss, albeit just 0.66u.

If you'd excluded matches where the favourite was odds-on, the 30 matches would have an ROI of 61% (18.17u). Only five of the 30 games was decided by more than one goal.

Of course a quadrennial tournament such as the World Cup doesn't generate a huge sample size, but as I've mentioned before, it's a trend that persists across the individual confederation tournaments, Euros, Afcons etc. Only CONCACAF's Gold Cup bucks the trend, but even here their new Nations Cup competition falls in line:

An extra "Round of 32" this year will mean more than twice (31) as many elimination matches than in the past. This might not be great news with the likelihood of mismatches. The Round of 16 is currently the stage with the most goals, averaging 2.45 goals per game and of course, goals are not what we want. It's quite likely that the Round of 32 will be even higher with at least one team ranked in the 60s definitely through (South Africa). 

Friend of the blog Peter K wrote to say:

Since the last World Cup where I did rather well on your recommendation for the strategy following the group stage, I've been looking forward to doubling down this year.

But after 50% of group games so far have ended in draws I'm getting somewhat anxious :(

At the time of writing (54 matches completed) the percentage of drawn matches has reverted to a more typical 26% so hopefully Peter's fully back on board. Past performance is no guarantee of future success of course, but this is an edge that shows no sign of fading away. 

Since 1986, when the Round of 16 was first introduced, 53 of 150 elimination matches have ended (after 90 minutes) as Draws, and the lowest number in any single tournament was 4 in 2010, 1998, 1994 and 1986. 

On a personal note, my European adventure following Crystal Palace around Europe came to a wonderful end in Leipzig last month. I saw my team play in Norway, Poland, France, Ireland, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Poland (again) and Germany. On the one trip where my wife was with me, we additionally spent a week in Rome and time in Switzerland and Belgium. The issue I have now is that after telling my wife this was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, Palace won the tournament and get to do it all again next season. I made some good friends along the way, (reader Andy being extremely helpful), saw some wonderful places that I hadn't previously heard of, saw the always friendly Mark Bright on three consecutive trips, bumped into an equally friendly Steve Parish on the eve of the Final and drank too many beers. Retirement came at a good time. 

Reasons and Excuses

As some of you may have noticed, I have been somewhat distracted for the past few months. I've had a few emails from concerned readers asking if I am OK, and another has become a very good friend through our shared love of Crystal Palace, helping me to obtain tickets for some of the club's away matches in Europe of which I have so far seen five out of six. These are memories which I shall cherish. When you support a club such as Palace, if they qualify for Europe it's an opportunity that can't be missed and I'm fortunate that this adventure happened in the sweet spot between retirement and decrepitude. If Palace (currently favourites) can win the UEFA Conference League, then it'll be more of the same next season in the UEFA Europa League. That's a big "if" though.  

My wife accompanied me on one of the trips (the Strasbourg match) as the game there coincided with the opening of the Christmas markets with Strasbourg one of the main such places, but her match experience wasn't great as she was knocked over during the surge when Palace took the lead, and tear-gassed or pepper-sprayed (I'm not exactly sure what it was in the air) on the way back to the hotel after being detained in a muddy, pot-holed car park before being funnelled out through a small gate. That Palace went on to lose after taking the lead didn't help, but I suspect that affected me more than her. She was quite pleased to have a photo taken with Mark Bright, who I also saw on the flight to Dublin and again in Bosnia before the game. He's going to think he has a stalker! Mrs Cassini doesn't seem in a hurry to come to any more games in Europe, but with Andy keeping me up until 3:30am in Bosnia watching me dribble half my dinner down my shirt, that's not really bad news. I knew I'd had a good meal, I just couldn't recall what I'd eaten. 

I've typically travelled to wherever Palace play early in the week to spend some time in the local area, and have seen southern Norway, eastern Poland (Lublin was my favourite so far, a city I had previously never heard of and an unexpected delight), Dublin and Sarajevo and Mostar in Bosnia. The Strasbourg game was preceded by a week in Rome with my wife, two days in Basel and followed by a few days in Baden Baden and Bruges. I've rekindled friendships with old friends and made new friends along the way too, some in the most unlikely of places. The Majdanek concentration and extermination camp at Lublin in Poland, the War and Genocide Museum in a still very divided Mostar, Bosnia and at Sarajevo Airport where several of us were delayed five hours and had an unsceduled overnight stay in Zurich. Being on my own, I was made very welcome by a group of fans there and while a lengthy delay is usually not the best news, I actually quite enjoyed the experience.

Unfortunately it hasn't all been good times, as we suffered a loss in the family to suicide last November which has been rather upsetting, especially for my daughter whose two year old son will now grow up and never know his Dad. The statistics are shocking. It's basically an epidemic with suicide being the leading cause of death in men under 50. I don't mean to sound trite about this, but if anyone reading this post is struggling with their mental health, please get the help you need. It's absolutely devastating to those left behind.

As regular readers will know, I am partial to a spreadsheet and when updating one of them a couple of weeks ago, had the rather unsettling experience of finding that £48,000 was missing from one of my accounts, and then find that another £30,000 was taken from the same account the next day - both transfers made to the same Charles Schwab account, and neither of which I knew anything about. Had I not spotted the fraud within two days and stopped it, I dare say other amounts would have been withdrawn until the account was drained. From what I've been told, the funds were recouped, but how someone was able to access my account this way is concerning. I was told to take my PC to be cleaned of any viruses which I did, but none were found, and I had to file a police report. The young officer asked if I wanted to prosecute the fraudster if they were found, though I suspect the chances of that are slim to none, with slim being out of town! 

Some positive news though, and I do have a new granddaughter born to my son and daughter-in-law last Friday, so we leave tomorrow for a trip to Surrey to see her with a few days in Faversham to follow. We will spend Easter in Berrynarbor, North Devon (my parents and maternal grandparents are in the churchyard there) before spending time with my older granddaughters on half-term holidays and taking in a couple of Crystal Palace home games and hoping to meet up with some old and new Palace friends. 

With one glaring exception, actually two as we had to say goodbye to one of our dogs last week - and as anyone who has been through this will know, it's very upsetting - but mostly the last few months have been busy and positive and betting has not been the priority in life that it once was. Another project has come along which has taken up much of my spare time.

Nevertheless I have made a start at updating the results for some of my systems, but I am told by Dr Tsouts that he has been following the:

"Greek draws and Serie A away wins and the results are good!"

while Peter wrote that he has:

"been enjoying a terrific run in the past month or so thanks to soccer and NFL. Draws aplenty in EPL :) have boosted my bank to a new high."

That's what we like to read, although that was back in January, so things might have changed, but next month I should be able to provide some updates.

It is quite remarkable how many hits a blog that hasn't been updated in months continues to get, which does make me feel slightly bad about my absences and lack of posts, but life is short and I've been having a lot of fun, which is really what life is, or should be, all about.