Les Paris Conditionnels Et Les Prix Carte Blanche

A French title for a French themed post. I had an email from a subscriber which touches on the 'bet at any price' topic mentioned yesterday, as well as the challenge of what price should be used when recording bets. The email is below:

Thanks Cassini. It seems I backed 4 selections that were sent out in your initial email which then shortened at Pinnacle which meant they were no longer official picks. I have a bit of an issue with this. You send out your emails Wednesday or Thursday, I therefore act as quickly as possible to secure decent odds. Am I supposed to check Pinnacle again on Friday afternoon to see if any of the draws have gone below 3.15, and trade out of any that have dropped? I don't feel it's a fair reflection to remove initial picks from your results even if they have dropped in price because the majority of your subscribers would have already backed these selections.

First clarification is that whether or not a selection is official is, in the case of Ligue 1, only known when Football Data extract the prices from Pinnacle Sports on a Friday afternoon. I replied as follows, but it is such an important topic that I thought it was too good not to share more widely. Looking at my notes from Week One, there were four selections - all from Ligue 1 because no one else was playing - priced at 3.35, 3.19, 3.17 and 3.16. All four shortened to 3.34, 3.12, 3.08 and 3.09 respectively so the idea of backing early and laying off may have some merit. The one winner was the 3.34 match Bastia v Olympique Marseille. 

Anyway, here is the basis of my reply:

I think what is being missed here is that the selections sent out are, in the case of Ligue 1, “conditional” – the price backed at needs to be at least 3.15. Most selections are Official Selections, but there are also a number of Unofficial Selections involving newly promoted teams for who the ratings are yet to settle down. When 2015 arrives, these will all be Official Selections, but until then they are included for interest only. If someone wants to back or track them, they can.

And then there is the third category which is comprised of lower priced draws in Ligue 1. These could be classified as "Conditional Selections" – they will be recorded as Official if the price on Friday afternoon is 3.15 or higher, and will be Unofficial if the price is below 3.15 at this time. (With hindsight, I should probably have emphasised the 'conditional' nature of the selection rather than simply mention the 3.15 limit).

You say “I don’t feel it’s a fair reflection to remove initial picks from your results even if they have dropped in price because the majority of your subscribers would have already backed these selections” – but at what price have they backed them at?

The word ‘remove’ is misleading here. Nothing has been removed since the selection was conditional in the first place. Depending on the recorded price on Friday, it either becomes official or unofficial, but either way, anyone on at sub 3.15 is on at their own risk.

I will continue to track Official Results along with the Unofficial for Promoted Teams and Short Priced French Teams and I shall also make it more obvious when a selection is ‘Conditional’ in the newsletters (although that probably means any selection from Ligue 1 since it is always theoretically possible that any draw price could shorten to sub 3.15!)

If the Pinnacle Sports draw price at the time of the email is say 3.25, most subscribers will be looking for at least 3.3 and possibly up to 3.45 / 3.5 on the exchanges (with the commission to be accounted for). I don’t expect anyone to be backing Ligue 1 selections at less than 3.15 because I have made it clear that these are probably not profitable long-term.

As I mentioned in my blog post yesterday, and contrary to what some appear to think, the price of a selection is actually rather crucial, and while the price on draws is usually fairly robust, it hardly seems reasonable for a service to be saddled with being accountable for a bet recorded at a price below the minimum specified, when no one would actually be on at that low a price.

If the majority of subscribers have already backed at a higher price, then that is all well and good. Long-term, their results will show a positive return.

The problem with the way I am recording my bets and prices is that they err, quite significantly, on the low side, and I doubt that any subscriber, or indeed myself, has actual results that are worse than the official results. Most should be significantly better.

Using Pinnacle Sports prices as extracted at a certain time by an independent third-party has the one big advantage of opaqueness. If I send out an email on Wednesday and take the price at that time, or use the price from 30 minutes later, there’s always going to be a concern about the fact that the prices are being recorded by myself – an interested party.

I guess what I am saying is that while I want the recorded prices to be indubitable, there’s a pre-defined limit to my openness, which to me seems reasonable. Unlike Steve M’s friend for whom the “line doesn’t really matter that much”, my response is that the price does matter, and I’ve pre-defined where that tipping point is.

I don’t know of any services that send out selections and then are happy to record carte blanche the price as recorded two days later. The only reason this is not usually a problem is because the draw price has a certain robustness to it. For now at least, the low-price issue is only a problem in France. The EPL had no matches last season where the draw was recorded at < 3.15, but Ligue 1 had 40 such matches last season.

Looking at those 40 matches, it's worth mentioning that the best draw price available according to Football Data's numbers was an average of 4.8% higher than Pinnacle Sports - 16 of the 40 by more than 5%. 

NFL 2014

For those of you excited about the NFL season which starts tonight, there's an excellent article here which looks at how the pre-season has revealed more than usual about the regular season. It could be a profitable edge, if only a few of you read it. 

Tennis 

Finally, on a US Open Tennis thread on the Betfair Forum, George Bailey wrote that there is:

no market like tennis for having so many ops in running

I'm not sure about that, but a Jim Duncan replied correctly that:

can be very hard to judge it right and get matched though George with all the courtsiders

If we assume that courtsiders know what they are doing, then if you are matched on in-running tennis, it's because you are not getting value. Yes, you can still win short-term, but long-term you have some long odds to beat. George Bailey, perhaps realising that when it comes to trading tennis, it's not a wonderful life, returns to claim:

Lost £100k on Williams...thought she would come back but she buckled under the pressure 

Corrections And Objections

A change at the top of the table as Jamie A reported an error in his numbers. 

A Lay of Monaco was recorded as a loss, but the bet was winner after a 1:1 draw and the numbers are now updated.

I also had a sensible email from JG who pointed out that:

When ROI is calcuated by betting syndicates it is normal practice to exclude void bets so online trader for example would be -4.38/16 -27.38%

Indeed it is, and while I'm not sure how much importance anyone is putting on the ROI, if I am publishing it, it needs to be correct, so I have revised those numbers too. Thanks JG for pointing that out.

While that change doesn't affect the positions, the extra 2.00 points for Jamie do. He moves up from 7th to 4th, and here is the top of the table after the correction:

JG had couple of other comments on the FTL:

It is great to see that Draw Picks is doing so well this season ( had a great season last season as well ) and pleasing to see that Pete is having a good season.

I am delighted you have onlinetrader on your team and it is a great pleasure to see that they are -24.33%.

I understand they are part of the OLBG team . ( Value Bank Foot) = OLBG = -34% .

You have something in common with Online Trader as he spent most of last season "attacking me".

Perhaps if you get a chance you can send an email to Online Trader and send my regards?

Keep up the good work.

Kind Regards

JG

footnote : I think I may sign up for FTL next season .

Draw Picks is certainly off to a solid start, as is Pete's Drawmaster. Online Trader isn't on my 'team' though, and nor do I know much about OLBG. 

Betting doesn't lend itself too well to being a 'team' activity. As for Online Trader and myself "attacking" Jonny for most of last season, JG would be better served by looking at the common denominator rather than playing the 'persecution' card.

I read Steve M's latest post over at Daily 25, and as his his wont, Steve went on something on a rant about tipsters and the problem of getting decent bets on at the recommended prices or lines. Read the post in full here, but here's an excerpt:

I’ll first start with the usual moan. One big issue I had this week was with the PCG (Pro computer gambler) service. Tom advised some bets on college football. These were big bets too, 2 units on three separate games. Now only 1 bookmaker had the lines up for this game and the max bet they take is to win $250. 2 units for me means $1,000 on these picks. By the time I woke up these lines has moved from -8,-9 and -4 to -13, -19 and -9.5. These are massive moves and not unexpected if there is only 1 bookmaker offering the lines with a $250 limit. The same issue happened when I tried to follow college bets with Sportpunter, the lines move quickly and unless you could get on first, then it was a pointless exercise. I emailed Tom asking if he still thought I should bet as the lines had blown out. He replied with “In my opinion, the books shouldn’t even offer betting on these games. I don’t think the line matters that much.”. So I decided to bet them. You can already guess what happened. One game won, one game lost and one game won for the service while losing for me. So while the official return will state close to 2 units profit, the reality for most people is a 2 unit loss. A 4 unit turnaround. These games should not be sent out as official plays, when only 1 person can get a tiny amount on it, it just isn’t fair. It leaves me seriously questioning whether to continue with the service.

What jumped out at me from that section, and would make me ditch the service immediately, was the comment:

In my opinion, the books shouldn’t even offer betting on these games. I don’t think the line matters that much.”

The second sentence there should have a full stop after the word 'think'. The line matters very much, it's crucial, and for a tipster to suggest otherwise shows a distinct lack of understanding of what profitable betting is all about. So the bet was value with the line at -8. That's good, and the bet may still have been value at -13, but at some point it is no longer value.

If you understand that -100 is not value, then you understand that the line matters. I've written before that rather than tell tipsters to bet on a selection at a price, they should include the price that they have for the selection and in the all too common scenario that the price suggested is no longer available, the subscriber can make their own decision on whether or not to bet at the price available to them at the time.

This is less of an issue with some bets than others of course. College football is something of a niche sport with relatively soft opening lines, and as Steve ranted, the line indeed moved significantly. To simply email subscribers and say "bet on this selection at as best a price as you can get" is not acceptable.

And yes, I do exactly this myself with my XX Draws but the selections are from the top five leagues in Europe, and the price has historically been robust enough that there was plenty of wiggle room. The EPL strike rate implies a price of 3.11, and there are not many matches that you can't beat that price for the draw.

Having said that, as I touched on yesterday, the declining draw price in Ligue 1 has meant that anything priced under 3.15 with Pinnacle Sports is no longer an official selection. The downside of recording results against one sportsbook, is that the results are lower than should be achievable with a small amount of effort, but they are the same for everyone in the FTL which is the main purpose.  

For the Value Selections, I email the price that I have the selection priced at, along with Pinnacle Sports' price at the time of writing, and it is up to the subscriber to decide whether or not to bet. Based on results so far, they may well be deciding not to bet!

Stoking The Fire

First item on the agenda is an apology to Peter Nordsted, and his Drawmaster followers, for my publication of this weekend's selections on Saturday morning. I was under the wrong impression that these were published on goal.com and were freely available, but Peter has advised that they are in fact paid for by subscription, so I apologise for this error. As it happened, it wasn't the best of weekends for last week's FTL leaders, with one winner from seven selections.

As Peter, and no doubt others, noticed from my Portfolio Strategy post, a couple of entrants were on Stoke City to win at Manchester City which has seen them soar up the FTL table. The lucky (or shrewd) entries were Fulltimebettingblog and BettingTools.co.uk - basically if your entry was a website name, you had a winner! As Geoff said in his email with the selection:

Stoke to beat Man City (and if that one comes in I’m sure the odds will be long enough to put me top of the table!)

That would certainly have been the case if Geoff hadn't selected Newcastle United to beat Crystal Palace in what many pundits were describing as the battle to join the Super Seven and form an Elite Eight. Zaha's late (first of many in the EPL) goal bought joy to most of us, but despair to not only Geoff, but also a few others as well and none more so than Marc Owen Banks who saw his four team Home win accumulator come unstuck because of this result (although Villa didn't win until Sunday). He had NEWCASTLE, ASTON VILLA, MILLWALL, MK DONS, an acca that "would" have paid 12.54 had it come in.

Marc had a comment on the accumulator versus singles debate:

I will jump in on the accumulator debate here - As the representative of @ValueBankFooty

It is not easy, nor fair on you Cassini, for me to throw over the full Valuebank ratings, which do actually rate every single game in the four English divisions - The time for you to go through them would be ridiculous - This may even work against me as the full ratings are proving profitable - For instance, this weekend, with four games to go, there is a 5pt profit to single point level stakes in backing every prediction!

Valuebank is about every game, but my entry is my interference of those ratings in trying to pick out the wheat from the chaff; so far not so good.

But also, the quench the thirst of a big win for my followers on Twitter I try to pull, Home and away accas, a weekly Jackpot and some other bits and pieces.

Back to the acca, I am indeed one entrant who is making acca predictions, albeit not ridiculous ones - and can guarantee that should one land, I will not shut up acca shop and concentrate on defending a lead (should it gain one) as that is not what I am about,(as anonymous would attest to I am sure!) albeit not against the rules. Really my aim is to prove that you CAN play accas and make use of the value in the prices within to BEAT the increased over-round by actually taking advantage of the value in a price, not once but twice,three or more times by having that value in an acca. Indeed, in my first week, prior to joining FTL, I landed a 30/1 away win treble, which is almost sufficient to keep that particular angle going for most of the season. I was unaware of FTL at that time which might be just as well,as to land one that early could have caused some ruptions!

In fact, anonymous introduced me to the FTL and may even have been thinking that my tactic was good enough to ensure another £50 dropped in the pot to his advantage at the end of the competition (Cheeky anonymous!)

So that's my take on the accas, never ridiculously speculative 3 figure to one odds or anything and something I will employ season long, whilst trying to slowly build from selected valuebank ratings predictions.

It's been fun thus far,and whilst I may have missed the away treble that I will get for the season, watch out, I've still to hit the home win acca yet!

All the best

I must say I am happy that I'm not being asked to sum up profits and losses from 46 games each week, and as mentioned earlier, Marc came within a whisker of hitting the home win acca this weekend. At 12.54, it would still have been a little short of the 17.95 that Stoke City were to win as a single. As one might expect, that result shook things up at the top of the table, and the current FTL looks like this:

Ten entrants have still to make a selection, although I imagine most will be in action after this upcoming international weekend. As always, if you see anything wrong with your numbers, let me know. I found a couple of errors including with my own XX Draws / Unders but I believe everything is now correct.

Although Drawmaster had a disappointing weekend, they are still in profit , as are Draw Picks who opened with two losing weeks, but have found 9 draws from the last 19 for a 13.02 point profit over the last two weeks. Draws are certainly back in the top leagues so far this season - 38 in 118 matches (32.2%) while Home wins are down - a trend I mentioned that I expected to continue in my Betting Expert article here.

Also in that article, and if you haven't read it, there's some interesting things in there, is this table on the rise of away wins in the English top division over the years:

Home wins across the top five leagues are currently below 40% this season. It won't last, and neither will the 50% draw strike rate in Germany! A number of matches that would have previously been official XX Draw Selections have been dropped this season - matches involving newly promoted teams are unofficial mentions until 2015 while selections in France at sub 3.15 are also no longer official selections. Backing the draw at such short prices is not profitable as I may have mentioned before. 

Backing selections at 3.15 and over would have made +8.80 points using Pinnacle Sports' prices, while backing draws priced under 3.15 lost us 13.78 points.

I will also not be including newly promoted teams as official draw selections until the second half of the season, i.e. January 2015. Last season these selections were profitable from January (a whopping 0.82 points) but they lost 26.16 points prior to that. I will still track them and include them each week, but they will not be Official.

Early days still, but omitting newly promoted teams has actually cost 2.71 points this season. 0.91 points on the Draws and 1.80 on the Unders, while omitting Ligue 1 draws priced by Pinnacle at sub 3.15 has saved 5.26 points (5 on the Draws, 0.26 on the Unders).

FTL Porfolio Strategy

Skeeve asked via a comment on this post: 

What do you think about Steve’s strategy for the Friendly Tipster League?If his strategy isn’t against the rules, can the rest of us use other tipsters/systems’ selections as well? 

Steve's proposed strategy was outlined in his post here, but the key section was this:

So what’s my strategy? Well as I have mentioned copious times before on this blog, I couldn’t pick a winner if it smashed me across the face. But I am more then happy to pay other people to do the hard work for me. I pay a few tipsters that have bets in the same league, we know how well multiple bets did for me last season, but what I will be doing is selecting bets if TFA, Winabob, FB investor, or FB Elite agree. I think if 3 of them have chosen the same bet then that’s a pretty good indicator. A friend (Edwin) did some analysis using WIN,TFA and FBI last season and these bets produced a 13% ROI.

I wish the other entrants luck as they vie for second place.

Love the confidence. Steve’s strategy isn’t against the rules. It would be impossible to enforce a rule that disallowed selections from other tipsters or systems, simply because I have no idea where selections are coming from. Well, I might have an idea – UK_TFA makes no secret of the fact that his selections will be based on Graeme’s TFA selections, but Graeme has no problem with this, actively encouraging the entry name to be UK_TFA.

I noticed last season that while the EPL was the primary source of selections, it wouldn’t be unusual for some seeming random match from elsewhere to feature in more than one entry. Whether this was because two people independently identified value or because one was using a selection from someone else is hard to tell.

It sounds like Steve is planning to put together a portfolio based on the best of the best, and it will be interesting to see how this works out. It sounds good in theory, but in practice nothing is guaranteed.

One only needs to revisit last season to see how following the big names is no guarantee of success. Skeeve did very nicely (if you stayed away from his accumulators), Cassini overall was basically a wash, but a modified Football Elite struggled, and Peter Nordsted’s Premier Betting dropped 42.66 points.

Assuming that each individual service has a long-term positive EV, and that selections are diverse, one of the advantages of combining them into one portfolio is that short-term lows (and highs) are smoothed out. Unfortunately the initial assumption isn’t always correct. Success in the past is no guarantee of future success, and one rotten egg in your portfolio can soon spoil your omelette.

The best performing entry last season showed an ROI of 20.47% but Steve's 13% would have comfortable secured third place last season.

Stewboss added:

I was thinking the same thing as Skeeve. We could get mugged by our own subscribers!

Another week or so, and we'll find out if this is likely to be a problem for the bounty boys!

On the topic of accumulators, Marty commented on my post on the subject:

Doesn't this over-round argument miss the point that if you have an edge, then this increases by more than the over-round, so betting multiples can be a very effective way to generate EV.

This is true, but the 'if' is a big one. Accumulators are a fun way for a casual punter to shoot for a 'lottery' type win, but there's a reason most serious bettors generally avoid them, or at least much past four or five-folds. Admittedly it was a small sample, but Skeeve last season showed how big a difference betting in just doubles and trebles rather than singles, can make.  Steve M also mentioned the poor outcome of multiple bets in the excerpt at the start of this post. (I hope he meant 'multiple' as in accumulator rather than as 'many'). 

The problem unfortunately, is that probability is very simple – the more links you have in a chain, the more places it can break. 

S Club 7 And Clive Dunn

The Wisdom of the Crowd last week gave us just three winners from the 10 EPL matches, and a 1.54 point loss at Pinnacle Sports' prices. Two draws, Everton v Arsenal and Hull City v Stoke City, and Manchester City's Monday night win were the only winners if backing the most popular crowd choice in each game. The Hull v Stoke draw price with Pinnacle was a rather low 3.18, exactly the same as for this fixture one year ago which finished 0:0. Not much has changed since December apparently.

Here's the table for this week's games:

Only two Home teams are reckoned to represent value, Newcastle United v Neil Warnock's Crystal Palace in a mid-table clash and the Everton v Chelsea.

There has been some discussion this week on what to name the top seven clubs in England, a group that seem to be rather boringly cemented unfortunately, and the other 13. Super Seven or Superior Seven were suggested, although I liked the proposed shortened version of S Club 7. A little catchier than any of the latter's songs. Threatened Thirteen had a nice ring about it too.

FTL leader Drawmaster (Peter Nordsted +5.47) is going for the following draws this weekend in his bid to extend his lead:

And finally, congratulations to FTL sponsor Graeme (TFA), who now has another mouth to feed after giving birth to a 9lb girl this week.

Steve (Daily 25) M is also expecting, which all makes me feel rather old as the next baby in the Cassini line (due early November) will make me either a granddad or a grandma - not sure yet, as the gender is going to be a surprise.

Friendly Banter

Scott forwarded me a link to an article in The Telegraph regarding the text messages of Malky Mackay and Iain Moody. You can read it here, but crux of it is that the writer, Brendan O’Neill, was critical of the fact that the two men are being publicly judged on comments made in ‘private conversations’.

His opening paragraph sets the tone:

Last week, two men in the world of football lost their jobs and suffered widespread public ridicule for things they said in private conversations. I can’t be the only person who finds this outrageous. I don’t particularly care what was in Malky Mackay and Iain Moody’s text messages; I care about the Enlightenment-era principle that, in the words of the great 17th century jurist Edward Coke, “No man shall be examined upon the secret thoughts of his heart, or of his secret opinion”. In other words, we should never be punished in public for what we think or say or believe in private. That principle, that central ideal of civilised society, has now been breached, and we should be very worried that this has happened.

O’Neill’s logic goes astray when he confuses secret with private, and his "in other words" is incorrect. They are not the same, and much of what follows is based on his failure to understand this. A secret opinion is just that, a secret. Once you express that opinion to someone else, it is no longer a secret, and in expressing that opinion, you will be judged by whomever you reveal that opinion to and if you reveal your opinions via technology or by social media, you risk the whole world knowing.

Now for most of us, that doesn’t present a problem as the world is not interested in what we think, but Mackay, and to a lesser extent Moody, are public personalities. The fact that their text messages were examined in the first place may be because they were sent on devices owned and paid for by their employers, Cardiff City FC. On the very rare occasion that I use my employer’s equipment or network for personal use, it is with no expectation of privacy. It’s part of the agreement. Even if they were sent on privately owned equipment, no one with an ounce of intelligence should consider their texts private. Phones get hacked, and messages are usually stored long after they are "deleted".

Unfortunately, Mr. O’Neill has a history of trivialising racism in football.

He considers efforts to combat racism in football to be "a class war" driven by "elites' utter incomprehension of the mass passions that get aired at football matches”. Referring to high-profile cases of racial abuse and alleged racial abuse, he argued, "these incidents and alleged incidents are not racism at all, in the true meaning of the word", due to the levels of passion involved, describing anti-racism efforts as "a pretty poisonous desire to police the ... working classes"

Presumably Mr. O’Neill subscribes to the point of view that this is all just ‘friendly text message banter’, a position adopted by the League Managers Association in their initial statement (later modified) which did nothing to dispel concerns that racism is not something it takes seriously.

I disagree with this position, and think that the topic is all the more relevant given the racial diversity of football these days. It’s not an abstract or hypothetical issue - Mackay and Moody work, or worked, in an industry with many people from different races and cultures on a daily basis. Once you make your true views known, whether intentionally or not, it makes it very difficult, if not impossible, for you to work with those you have insulted or expressed a prejudice against.

It emerged that Palace had given Moody time off following the raid on his home and that players at the club had been aware of allegations about him for some time.

Henry Winter wrote a far more intelligent piece on this topic which far more closely resembles my own opinion.

Incidentally, Mr. O’Neill is also on record as being opposed to same-sex marriage. Why the right for two people to marry bothers him is another issue, and while his “article” doesn’t give his opinion on the homophobic text messages that were reported, which may have been intentional, it wouldn’t be an unreasonable inference that he has no problem with those texts either.

What a nice boy Brendan O’Neill appears to be. What was that Henry Winter said about 'bumbling dinosaurs"? 

"Be careful how you think; your life is shaped by your thoughts" [Proverbs 4:23]

Threat Of The Big One

Still eleven entries yet to wet their feet, but the table is starting to take shape with no less than 12 entries in profit right now, and all separated by less than 5 points. A great improvement on last weeks total of two in profit. Peter Nordsted's Drawmaster now leads the way, followed by Draw Picks. Peter found four winners from seven selections, while Draw Picks found five from nine. The XX Draws found a mere three from ten for a meagre profit, but eight unders moved the XX Unders into profit.

I received an email from one entrant, I'll keep it anonymous as it came by email rather than a comment, with the subject FTL Accumulators:

A quick thought and concern regarding the above.

By allowing these it is possible for somebody to hit a "big one" and then sit back all season just picking a few singles each week.

It goes completely against the discipline that I have maintained for many years now by not getting involved in lining the bookmakers bottom line by backing accumulators and I feel that there is no place for it in such a prestigious league such as the FTL.

Just my thoughts of course but I remain concerned...............

I do understand the concern, and share the writer's opinion on accumulators myself. As I wrote last season when only one odds-on favourite out of 19 in the top four English leagues failed to win:

The mathematical fact is that on 110% over-round markets, the over-round on an eight-fold accumulator grows to 214.4%. [Fixed Odds Sports Betting by Joseph Buchdahl]

Most people in the FTL understand this, or should do, and the accumulators that have been submitted have been few and far between, and gentle in nature. The biggest was a five-fold that was all odds-on home teams that, had it hit, wouldn't have been that much bigger (20.54) a payout than Leicester City were to win at Chelsea (17.7) on Saturday.  

Wisdom Of The FTL Crowd

With only two of 33 (yes, 33, more on that later) FTL entrants currently in profit, it might be a good idea not to go too mad on the table below, but it summarises the opinions of the entrants as to where the value lies this weekend in the EPL.

Note I wrote "where the value lies", which is quite different from predicting who will win. For example, most people are avoiding Chelsea v Leicester City this weekend, but the two who are playing both see the value on the Away team. Not much interest in Tottenham Hotspur v Queens Park Rangers either.

The match with the most interest is the Southampton v West Bromwich Albion game where eight people have found value, but not all on the same outcome.

As for the 33, this came about because the final two both entered on the same day, and the one that was 33rd to show interest (Betcast) was the 32nd to pay, and offered a sponsorship. The 32nd to show interest (Gecko) paid soon after, so I will be recording one more set of results than planned. Not a big deal, and the total guaranteed prize fund closes at £2,250. The other adjustment I need to make with 33 entries is that whoever is in 33rd (i.e) last place after the selection weekend of September 20th will miss out on a place in the Erskine Cup. I hope it's not Ian Erskine!

Entries from 21 of the 33 this weekend, so the pace is picking up.

Exit Stock Pickers

It seems longer ago than a mere two months, but time flies when there's a World Cup. Back in June, I wrote about my long-term financial investing philosophy of investing in a bunch of low-cost index funds rather than try to pick higher cost managed funds or even individual stocks. For the record, I do have some individual stocks, but most of my investments are in index tracking funds.

Emp disagreed at the time, but it seems I am not alone. After Warren Buffett wrote earlier this year that he had advised his trustee to "put 10% of the cash in short-term government bonds and 90% in a very low-cost S&P 500 index fund. (I suggest Vanguard's.)", investors poured $5.5 billion into the Vanguard fund over the next five months, "or about three times more than during the same period the previous year".

An article in yesterday's Wall Street Journal is worth reading.

The public during this bull market are overwhelmingly favouring low-cost, index-tracking mutual funds rather than those that try to beat the market averages.

The company [Vanguard] is a pioneer in the accelerating shift toward so-called passively managed products like index funds and exchange-traded funds that track baskets of stocks or other assets. These funds typically promise diversification and are relatively inexpensive compared to traditional mutual funds.

It is "a trend that I see continuing on, probably forever," said David Barse, chief executive officer at New York-based Third Avenue Management, which manages $13.5 billion. He said the challenge for active managers, like his firm, is to identify overlooked investments that don't merely track the broad market.

But he acknowledged that is increasingly a tougher sell, particularly to retail investors.

While investors hang on every word that the Sage of Omaha comes out with, it would have been nice for the WSJ to have given this blog a mention.

Betcast, Late But Worth The Wait

The FTL is now full - 32 entries, and a total guaranteed prize fund of £2,200, a total boosted by a £200 sponsorship from #32 - Betcast.

Another Australian based entrant, David runs bettingwebsites.org and has a number of trading Betcast Podcasts which you should all check out immediately.

The prize money will be split as follows: League £1,600, Erskine Cup £400 and Betcast Monthly Prizes £200. This works out rather neatly so that the two sponsors who donated money up front get name recognition on their respective sub-competitions, while the league is comprised of the entry fees plus the possibility (probability?) of at least some bounty payments being added.

The Bounty Boys, lest we forget, are:

Football Elite http://www.football-elite.co.uk/

TFA http://the-football-analyst.blogspot.co.uk/

Football Investor http://www.football-investor.co.uk/

Skeeve http://www.skeevepicks.com/

All will be paying out £25 to every entrant finishing ahead of them (up to a cap of £500).

The first monthly prize (of £25) will be for the table leader at the end of September, by which time the Erskine Cup will be in progress. With 32 entries, some of you may have guessed that the format will be the same as that used for the FIFA World Cup. I could have made it a straight knock-out tournament, but this way seemed like a fun idea.

Eight groups of four will see entrants play at least three 'matches' against another, with the top two in each advancing to a knock-out phase. With £400 to play for, the winner will get £150, the runner-up £75, losing semi-finalists £37.50 and losing quarter-finalists £25. With the cup and monthly prizes to compete for, the hope is that interest is maintained, as even someone out of the running for a league prize can always get lucky on a weekend or a month.

The Erskine Cup schedule will be:

September 27th, Group Stage Match 1

November 1st, Group Stage Match 2
November 29th, Group stage Match 3
January 31st, Round of 16
February 28th, Quarter-Finals
March 21st, Semi-Finals
April 25th - Final

The date refers to the Saturday of the weekend, but entries from all four days will make up the round. For the group phase, the winner will get three points, and the winner will be the more successful (or least unsuccessful) of the match up. In the event of a draw, one point each. 

The 'draw' will be seeded, with positions based on the FTL table as it stands after the weekend of September 20th. And I don't want to see anyone tanking to give themselves an easier draw!

Skeeve's Croatia Football Bets had another winner, and were they eligible, would be running away with the FTL already:

Three more selections in-play tonight, but that ROI is looking impressive.

On a completely different topic, the Crystal Palace manager saga, I am seeing Cardiff city owner Vincent Tan in a whole new light. Like most outsiders at the time, I felt that Malky Mackay was rather hard done by, but check out this video where he hints at some problems when Malky's transfer dealings, and also gets in a dig that in his two years at Watford, Mackay didn't do too well. The incredibly stupid text messages that he and Iain Moody are accused of exchanging should make it very hard for either of them to work at a top football club again. They sound like two immature schoolboys from a century ago, and I think Palace had a lucky 1.01 escape. The video also reinforces my opinion that, regardless of who the manager is, the owners or board need to monitor what is going on with spending, one reason reportedly why Steve Parish quite rightly refused to give in to Pulis' demands.

Of course, that Pulis had already been tapped up for the West Ham United manager's job, and was looking for an excuse to walk, is just pure speculation.

Work : Labour, Toil, Slog, Drudgery, Goofing Off

A number of entrants were in action last night. Leader Fairfranco wrote that he only had the two selections as he was on holiday from work, and so “not had a chance to go through all the games”. I’ll let you go back and read that quote again. Notice anything strange about that comment?

It goes without saying that I shall be forwarding a copy of his email to his boss, (FTL Rule 27 Section 3 Sub-Section C gives me this right) who will no doubt be interested to know how his employee is engaged while at ‘work’, and having sought advice from Johnny “Fartpants” Grossmark, I have set up a meeting with the police at my house as they say this clearly is a criminal matter, not a civil case. 

For those of you wondering whatever happened with my own legal troubles, (I was accused of writing a blog post, some of you may remember), I have to tell you that I have yet to hear anything from the police about my heinous crime. Evidence collection may still be in progress of course, or another possibility which just occurred to me is that perhaps little Johnny is a bit of a fibber.

Anyway, as it turned out, Fairfranco might be wishing he’d taken a holiday from the FTL as well as his “work”, (notice the rather amusing use of quote marks there), because both selections (Peterborough United and Crawley Town v Bradford City Draw) were losers. He is still in profit, but his share of the prize money has dropped.

BettingTools Brian was the big winner. He had five 'bonus' selections with three winners and a profit of 5.68 points to catapult himself into first place. His big winners were Charlton Athletic and Huddersfield Town, with Middlesbrough chipping in a little too.

Online Trader had one winner and two losses, but lost 0.84 points and now drops out of the green.

@ValueBankFooty made his debut with 16 selections and a treble. As the treble was comprised of three of the single selections, and the rules require that a selection only be included once, the treble took priority but Reading let the multiple down. The other two legs, Mansfield and Burton were both winners, so a little unlucky there.

Club Havana had four selections of which two won for a 1.06 point profit of and Tony Watson also had four selections with just the one winner (Burton) and a loss of 2.29 points.

Talkies Tips had five Under / Over bets and won two of them for a small loss of 0.77 points, while Abromo had four selections, two winners, but a loss of 1.38 points.

Peter Nordsted’s Drawmaster found two winners from five selections and gained 1.75 points

And for anyone thinking “I could do better than this bunch of sorry losers”, the bad news is that the FTL is now up to 31 entrants, so just one slot remains.

Fairfranco - please forward me your boss's email address. Thanks, and thanks to Lay Away for pointing out that the link to Skeeve's blog in yesterday's post wasn't working. The error has been corrected. 

I also had a request to add My Bet Plan to the blog roll, which I have done. It's only been around for a few weeks and looks like a poor man's Daily 25 - mind you, compared to Steve at Daily 25, most of us are poor men. It'll be interesting to see how they (Paul and Nath) progress.

Weekend Round Up 19.Aug.2014

Fairfranco and Online Trader both lost points, but remained the only entries in profit, and thus the money, after the weekend's results.

Thirteen of the (now) 30 entries have opened the season in the red, which means that 15 are still keeping their powder dry.

Sponsor The Football Analyst has clarified his strategy for the season and you can read his post in full here, but the key points are that his 'Bounty Entry' for us to beat will be system D1-D6 while his second entry will be DE1-DE6.

Abromo did have a couple more "winners" on his unders selections, but unfortunately they were from Poland, and as I wrote back in July:

As I use the Pinnacle Sports quoted prices from the Football Data.co.uk web site to record the results, selections are restricted to the leagues they cover, which are in England (top 5 leagues), Scotland (top 4), the top two in France, Germany, Italy and Spain, plus the top league in the Netherlands, Belgium, Portugal, Turkey and Greece.

The XX Draws are off to a slow start, not helped by Tottenham Hotspur's 93' winner at West Ham United.

With both of Graeme's FTL entries being Draw systems, he says "I’m sure Cassini doesn’t mind a little bit of competition. :)" Not at all. We have Draw Picks and Peter Nordsted's Drawmaster that are pure draw selections, but none of us have started too well.

Another FTL sponsor, and last season's FTL prize money winner, Skeeve has returned to blogging after five years. Add him to your blogroll. His Croatia Football Bets are worth a look also - nicely in profit so far this season:

A couple of other opening EPL weekend comments, and perhaps some of you read my Arsenal v Crystal Palace preview last week, which include these prescient words:

I also mentioned in the Cassini Newsletter to subscribers that:

Some of you may be interested to know that over the last three EPL opening weekends, laying the favourite in all 29 matches would have produced 16 winners and a ~5.06 points profit. There’s usually a surprise or two somewhere.

This strategy was again profitable, although not by much. Five of the first six matches came in, but the final four favourites of the weekend (Arsenal, Liverpool, Manchester City and Chelsea) all won to trim the profit to about 0.67 points. That late Spurs winner hurt us here as well.

Early days of course, and there are now just two places remaining in the FTL to make it a nice round 32 entries. Steve M of Daily 25 fame and fortune has confirmed his entry, (he will start tied for 4th place) with the entry name Daily 25.

I'm sure most readers will be familiar with Steve. He is Australian based and his blog is far more than a P&L blog. He tells it like it is in typical Aussie style, or at least he tells it how he sees it, and when he is not taking the bookmakers to the cleaners, he is busy working on a e-book. Meanwhile you can sign up for his newsletter.

And finally, one more FTL entrant is Marc at @ValueBankFooty and he has a site here to check out.

Parish's Post-Pulis Palace Possibilities

It all started with rumours on Thursday morning that a £500 bet had been placed with William Hill on Tony Pulis to become "the next Premier League manager to leave his position". Given that he was at that time priced 40/1, it was hard to believe that anyone had been able to get more than 10p on, but what was certain was that William Hill shortened Pulis’s price to 6/4 (2.50) making him favourite ahead of long-time favourite Sam Allardyce.

Other books followed suit or suspended their markets and, as we all now know, by Thursday night Tony Pulis had indeed left his post by “mutual consent”, although “mutual contempt” might have been a more accurate description.

Someone knew, and this kind of scenario highlights the reason why bookmakers need to protect themselves and should be able to refuse to accept a wager. They are in business to make money, and are not a utility offering a public service as some people seem to think. It's hard to see how any regulation could be implemented which would leave bookmakers exposed to coups of this nature.

The markets soon adjusted to the turmoil at Crystal Palace. Their price for relegation dropped a full point, from around 4.05 to a low of 2.82 before a bounce back up to ~3.00.

As implied not only by the drop in price for relegation, but also by his award of Premier League Manager of the Year last season, Tony Pulis was widely considered a key 'player' for Crystal Palace.

As I mentioned a few days ago, the Soccermetrics prediction model for the 2014-15 English Premier League season had Crystal Palace's projected to finish in 18th place and be relegated.

I wrote a rather excoriating post about this, at the time, rather unlikely prediction, but given recent events, the prediction looks a little more insightful with Palace now second favourites (behind Burnley) for the drop according to the Betfair markets.

Well, what do the markets know? Last season Palace were first favourites, and ended up in 11th place! By my reckoning, this means we'll finish 10th this year.

It would be stating the obvious that Tony Pulis did a great job last season, and only he and the insiders at Palace know the full story behind the split, but having had a close working relationship with Peter Coates at Stoke City for several years where his every wish was granted, it wouldn't be surprising if Pulis wanted more Stoke-like money spent at Palace.

Having only signed on in November, there were rumours back in January that Pulis wasn't happy about the lack of activity during the transfer window, so the break up is not the biggest of surprises. In the end, Palace made five signings, all on the final day. If it was true that Pulis and Parish had differences after just two months, and there's no smoke without fire, it was hardly likely to be a long term relationship.

More a marriage of convenience perhaps? What is a surprise though is why Pulis would have taken the job, knowing the constraints in place, and then start whining loudly enough for rumours to leak. Palace are not yet Manchester City. Heck, they're not yet Stoke City, but ironically the latter is the kind of example they might be looking to follow.

The timing of the departure is shocking of course. Tony waits until all the pre-season games are played, and with less than 48 hours before the season kicks-off, decides he can't continue.

If TP kicked up a fuss at the 11th hour then he's unprofessional in putting the club in what can only be called a blackmail situation. If that is the case he's better away from the club. Sometimes the nasty face of someone is exposed and maybe it's happened today.

Many of the quotes in this post are from a Crystal Palace fan forum, and like most forums it is best not to believe everything you read, but there were some insightful and well written comments that perhaps throw some light on the possible background to the split. The comment above does question Pulis's motives. If someone was looking for an out, what better excuse than "I don't have the owners' support" but leaving it until the last minute to thrash out any problem does smack of a distinct lack of integrity. I work in IT, and if a key resource decided two days ahead of going live on a major project that he or she would quit "unless you spend money that you told me you wouldn't spend when I took the job", it wouldn't be well received to say the least. If this is what happened, credit to Parish and the owners for not giving in.

As a Stoke fan I would just like to say TP has previous when it comes to this kind of thing. Probably a tactic to convince the owner/chairman to sign a player he wants.

At Stoke, If TP really wanted a player (like when we were after Crouch) he would always question the 'club's ambition' in any interview and manipulate Mr Coates into giving him more money. As proven in the past, TP is far better with a smaller budget because he gets far too excited with a healthy cheque book in his hand. Behind the smiles on camera he's a very stubborn and controlling figure. He got what he wanted from Coates for years but when he's challenged he throws his toys out of the pram.

Steve Parish and his co-owners are Palace fans and have the best interests of the club at heart. I am confident that they would not let have let Pulis walk unless his demands threatened the long term plan for the club and that a compromise was not possible. As a Palace fan, I have to say that despite the relative success Pulis enjoyed, I never felt that Pulis ever really felt part of the club in the way that Steve Coppell, Dougie Freedman or even Ian Holloway did. He always seemed to be keeping a distance.

Steve Parish has in the past stated that he and his co-owners want to leave a lasting legacy at the club, and that means building slowly but surely, and not risking the entire project on buying one or two big money players. It's not just the initial outlay, but there's the significant issue of committing to contracts into the future which, as several clubs have found to their cost, can become crippling liabilities. Portsmouth are the most recent example, and an extreme one at that, but other former established Premier League members such as Birmingham City, Blackburn Rovers, Bolton Wanderers and Leeds United have been languishing for some time outside the Premier League.

As one fan put it: 

Let us be thankful that the worst thing which could happen to us would be relegation to the Championship with the club in a healthy position financially.

Understandably, managers aren’t interested in long-term thinking. Their interest is themselves, immediate results and thus usually very short-term, (Arsene Wenger at Arsenal is a rare Premier League exception) but no one man is, or should be, bigger than the club. Besides, the money isn't coming out of their pockets. We could all ask our bosses for a bigger budget to pay for better resources and then take the credit when our productivity improves, but as important as Pulis was, at the end of the day he is an employee and needs to work with what was agreed when he took the job, not threaten to quit when he doesn't get his way.

Steve Parish and his fellow owners have been in a similar situation before. After making a flying start to the 2012-13 Championship season, manager (and playing legend) Dougie Freedman took the money on offer at Bolton and left. Parish came in for some criticism at the time for not doing enough to keep Freedman, but Bolton’s pockets were deeper than Palace's, and the responsible decision as an owner was the one Parish made. It paid off. Incidentally Crystal Palace was in fourth place at the time, while Bolton was twelve places lower in sixteenth. Managers move when there's a better offer, and that doesn't necessarily mean to a higher placed club.

The managerial appointment of Ian Holloway was a good one, if not a great one. Holloway fitted the bill perfectly - he was a manager with experience of taking a club into the Premier League, and while he wasn’t immediately seen by some fans as a great choice, his success in steering Palace to promotion via the play-offs more than vindicated the owners’ decision.

The Premier League was a different matter. After too many changes in the summer, it became clear that Holloway was out of his depth after just a few games. To his credit, Ian Holloway admitted as much, and the parting was genuinely by “mutual consent”. Pulis got a lot of credit last season, but just as crucial was Holloway holding his hands up early enough to give his replacement a sporting chance.

The club took their time appointing a replacement. For one month, three matches, Keith Millen was interim manager, and in my opinion, never got the credit he deserved, because there was a marked improvement even before Pulis was appointed.

Looking back, the delay was possibly down to differences in opinion about how much control Pulis would have, but they compromised enough to reach a deal which ultimately saw the Eagles soar up the table with Palace making the most of their goals, winning eight games by 1:0, and finishing in 11th place. Heady stuff.

As Pulis possibly realised, without any big money signings, that strong run was always going to be a tough act to follow. Leave now, and he's ready and available to take over in October or November for a struggling team who are looking for a new manager. Hopefully it won't be Palace! Wait too long, have a bad start, and his star starts to shine a little less brightly, but a good manager working with an improved squad from last year, should have been more than capable of another mid-table finish. The top seven in the EPL are for the time being at least, all but set. Did Pulis seriously think we could break into that elite group? The only way that will happen is to build a strong foundation off the pitch as well as maintaining a 'good enough' team on it. Any success needs to be sustainable. This season is one where the goal is consolidation.

Another observation is that, with the exception of his second spell at Stoke City which lasted seven years, it's interesting that Pulis doesn’t seem to last for too long anywhere. I'll leave readers to draw their own conclusions regarding that.

His managerial career started in 1992 with two years at Bournemouth which were followed by four years at Gillingham where he was “controversially sacked by the club amidst claims of gross misconduct”.

He later brought a £400,000 court case against Gillingham chairman Paul Scally for unpaid bonuses, which was settled out of court in 2001 for £75,000.

Ten months at Portsmouth followed before he was sacked, and after two years out of work, he had a three year spell at Stoke City followed by a season at Plymouth Argyle.

Steve Parish's task is now is to stay calm, find a manager who can keep the club in the Premier League while accepting that his role is as a manager, not the owner, and that he needs to work with the funds available, and that funds are not unlimited. Someone who buys into the long-term nature of the project. How long was Moyes at Preston North End and Everton for? I'm just saying. 

Pulis is not the messiah, and Moyes is not a pariah.

One door closes, another one opens. Tony Pulis pulled off something of a miracle last season, but no one in football is irreplaceable. Iain Dowie was once a hero. That finished well as some of you may remember:

The case was heard in the London High Court in the summer of 2007, and on 14 June The Hon. Mr Justice Tugendhat ruled that Dowie had "deceived" Jordan and made "false representations" in conversations with Crystal Palace on 20 and 22 May, stating he had had no contact with Charlton when he had in fact spoken to them on 17 and 22 May. Dowie was ordered to pay Palace's legal bill, estimated at up to £400,000 and a similar amount to his own legal team in addition to compensation due to Crystal Palace. In 2008 an out-of-court agreement between Dowie and Crystal Palace was reached "on terms acceptable to Crystal Palace Football Club".

Don't mess with Palace! Dowie was allowed to leave "to be nearer his family in Bolton" but eight days later was revealed as Premier League Charlton Athletic's new manager! Charlton is nowhere near Bolton of course, except in league position.

Dougie Freedman was a Palace hero too, as a manager for keeping Palace in the Championship after a 10 point deduction for entering administration had put that status at risk. He left, but most Palace fans understood why. 

Ian Holloway was the hero just a year ago, but football moves on, and "impossible to fill" voids are soon filled.

Given their past record, I have no doubt that Steve Parish and his co-owners will steady the ship and make another decision in the club’s best interest. 

They are heroes too in their own way, for saving the club in 2010 when it was on the verge of ceasing to exist. 

The position of manager at Crystal Palace is a lot more attractive than at most clubs these days, and the CVs dropping in to the mat at Selhurst Park next week should be impressive. Sir Alex may well be considering coming out of retirement as you read this, and Pep Guardiola is quite possibly reading the fine print on his contract. Malky MacKay is reportedly licking his chops. Roy Hodgson's a Croydon boy and a former Palace (youth team) player. He might be interested in a bigger challenge...

Anyway, Keith Millen will be in charge for the first game at least, and probably the first three with an International Break in early September, and there is no need to make a panic decision. Millen knows the players, he worked with Pulis last season, and the shortening in Palace's price in the relegation market is an overreaction and an opportunity.

This article pretty much sums up what I have been trying to say.

Now read the title of this post out loud ten times. I bet you can't do it. 

Princes Or Paupers?

Just five places remain in the FTL so if you are tempted, dally no longer.

I had assumed that they had died years ago, so it was quite a surprise when the Duke Brothers signed up. They may have failed to corner the market in frozen orange juice back in 1983, but are presumably looking to recoup some of those losses from the FTL. Whether or not they'll be trading places as the season unfolds remains to be seen.

Stevie G has also entered, hoping to go one better than another Stevie G who led most of the way last season before letting it slip at the end.

The current list of entries in alphabetical order is:

If you want to change your entry name or colour scheme, let me know, and if you want to fill one or more of the five remaining places on a first come, first served basis, £52.50 per entry to calciocassini @ aol.com via PayPal please.

This is the current state of play for entries who have seen action:

A reminder that entries for the weekend (games through Monday) should be in by midnight tomorrow.