UEFA Super Cup

Since UEFA's Super Cup went to a single game, the 24 matches have produced 10 draws with a noticeable increase in recent seasons.

Hopefully some of you took advantage of this bias yesterday as the Chelsea - Villareal game became the fourth consecutive Draw in this fixture, the sixth in the last seven, and seventh of the last nine. If any one category is in form for this strategy, this is it! 

I have historical prices for the matches since 2005 and not since 2014 has the game been decided by more than one goal. 

After yesterday's result, the ROI of backing the Draw increased from 116% to 125%. 

The numbers do show that clubs take this game seriously, with English and Spanish clubs making up the majority of appearances. 

It's interesting that adding in the larger sample of UEFA club Finals (Champions League and Europa League) featuring English and Spanish teams, the Draw ROI increases from an already solid 37% to an even higher 69%:

Olympic Finals and Community Shields

Hopefully some of you made a profit backing the Draw in the two Olympic Football Finals, matches which have historically produced Draws at the rate required to be profitable. For the Women three of the six Finals had finished as Draws, with this year making it four of seven, while in the Men's Final three of eight have now finished even.

Excluding the Bronze Medal games where laying the draw is the recommended strategy, (none of the 15 matches have ended as a Draw) 36.6% of Women's knockout matches have been Draws, while in the Men's (U-23) the number is 28.6%. 

The Community Shield game is also one where the Draw is historically value and we came close again this year, with the Draw broken by an 89' penalty. Results since prices have been available:

The ROI drops to 32% from this small sample size of matches.

Olympic Football

At least one reader has been paying attention this summer to the Knockout Draw System in International tournaments, which is good to know. Whether Hareeba has been investing or not I have no idea, but he's been taking an interest in the Olympic Football competitions currently being played in Tokyo.

Hareeba noted that in the Men's tournament, 4 of the 6 knockout games have ended as Draws, as have 3 of the 6 in the Women's competition. Since the Men's tournament became an Under-23 event in 1992, the 56 matches have produced just 12 Draws before this year, while for the Women there have been 11 Draws from 40 matches. 

While backing the Draw in third-place playoff games isn't usually a good idea, it might be logical to think that with a Bronze Medal at stake, these games in the Olympics might be a little more competitive compared to what might be considered a meaningless inconvenience, but the results suggest this isn't the case. 

The Women have never seen a Draw in this match, and the Men not since 1972 when East Germany and the Soviet Union were both awarded Bronze medals after a 2:2 draw in the time when Eastern European countries dominated Olympic football from 1952 to 1980. Apparently the attraction of a Bronze medal isn't strong enough to overcome the disappointment of missing out on Gold in football. 

Unfortunately I have no historical prices for any of these matches, but other than backing the Draw in the Gold Medal game, aka the Final, there was nothing to get too excited about. Of the 13 finals to date, five have finished as Draws and none have been won by more than a single goal. Sweden play Canada in the Women's Final while Brazil play Spain in the Men's.

  

Buying the Farm

On May 5th 1978, a young Warren Buffet (age 47) skipped the annual celebration of Cinco de Mayo to attend a seminar at Stanford Business School which was held as part of an Investment Management course being taught by Professor Jack McDonald. As of 2016, McDonald was still teaching the class.

I was reading through some notes from that day, and some of young Buffett's thoughts from that event seem to me to apply equally well to sports betting markets as they do to the financial markets that were being discussed that day. For example, his opening statement:

The game of making money in the stock market is deceptively simple. It is one of the few businesses where one makes offensive decisions and is not forced into making defensive ones. You play the game only when and where you wish to. You need only swing at the fat pitches which are over the plate and belly-button height.

In other words, be patient. Wait for the market to offer value and only play when it does. As punters or investors, we have the huge advantage of not having to bet in every event. Buffett gives an example of a farmer, who...

only sells or buys a farm once. Therefore, he must be right when he does. In contrast, the stock market gives tremendous choices. Most people turn this vast array of choice into a disadvantage rather than an advantage. Be patient and wait for the right buy.

In a theme which has recently been well documented by Morgan Housel in his excellent book The Psychology of Money which I mentioned in my last post, Buffett touches on the fact that when it comes to investing:

There is absolutely no correlation between hours worked or intelligence and money management success, but that there is a tremendous correlation between approach and temperament, and investment success.

As Housel puts it:

In what other industry [finance] does someone with no college degree, no training, no background, no formal experience and no connections massively outperform someone with the best education, the best training, and the best connections? I struggle to think of any.

Buffett lists four basic rules: 

1) resist the temptation to be in every game all the time 

2) maintain an even temperament 

3) have a reasonable knowledge of the subject and interest in it and 

4) be disciplined 

There are other nuggets hidden away in the notes, including the advice to "learn what you can’t value" and that he "would absolutely never invest in any of the largest 50 companies in the U.S. The market is incredibly efficient at this level."

When it comes to sports betting, I think the lesson is that accurately valuing the outcome of an event is very difficult, and when it comes to football or big sporting events, your opposition includes some highly sophisticated participants with access to far more useful data than yourself. 

One Tweet appeared on my timeline at the weekend from an account claiming to offer "Powerful tools for experienced players" and these words:

In the Advanced Goals Statistics module, select a live game then the score and the minute will be taken over automatically and used to calculate the next 5 minutes percent to see what happened on previous seasons similar games

Further, you can also apply other complex filters

Who knew that investing was so simple? I won't give any publicity to this vendor - you can find the thread on Twitter if you are interested - but of course the idea that this kind of thing is useful is based on the flawed logic that what happened in previous seasons has some kind of bearing on future matches and similar games. 

Common sense should tell you that Manchester United v Liverpool in August 2020 has no relevance to the same fixture played in May 2022 due to, for a start, the fact that players, tactics and sometimes managers may all be quite different a week apart and certainly a season apart.

So I asked the question:

Help me understand how what happened in a previous season with different players, managers, weather etc. has any predictive value?

It will come as no surprise that what followed was not an answer, but deflection - "I will help you if you tell me why for a given event (even live event) the odd 2.10 may be good to play and let's say 1.90 may not be good."

Oh dear. Expected Value is a basic concept for anyone taking betting seriously, but in exchange for my answer giving a clear example of why 2.1 might be value and 1.9 not, I never did get an answer as to how a game from a previous season could be relevant in any way to a current game. 

The software can be licensed for just €27 for 3 months and apparently lets you enter a game state and in return will give you historical outcomes, which might be interesting as a curiosity but is absolutely useless as a predictor for how a current match might play out. 

A couple more thoughts and observations. Entering the number of minutes elapsed is meaningless, because what is important is how many minutes remain in a game, not how many have elapsed as I have explained before. The 90th minute in a game with several minutes to be added on is quite different to the 90th minute in a game with none.

There's also the problem with these in-play bets that you are competing against some extremely sophisticated models which actually are profitable. The money they are consistently winning is the money from those who think that matches from previous seasons have any relevance. If profitable betting was really this easy, we'd all be millionaires and Premium Charge payers, but this use of historical data is not an approach that will get you to that point.     

July 2021 Review

July is now in the books, and another profitable month in the MLB for 'hot favourites' although for left handed starters, some regression to the mean has not unexpectedly taken place this month.

Overall the system was up another 23.55 units taking the season total so far to 82.95 units, recovering nicely after a shaky start in April. 

The return for left handed starters is now at 22.5% on the Money Line, and 26.7% on the Run Line after a small loss in July. 

The T-Bone System had a losing July, dropping 1.87 units from 64 bets, and is now currently down 6.05 units (ROI -2.8%) on the season. 

The Totals Systems are now both in profit for the season although Unders is contributing 85% and for reasons previously discussed, this percentage will likely continue to drop.  

I've already covered the Euros, the Stanley Cup Finals and the NBA Finals which reached their conclusion last month, and advised that the Gold Cup was not a place to try the knockout Draw system. 

With all six knockout matches so far being won by the favourite, anyone looking for Draws would have been out of luck, but all competitions are not created equal as I cautioned.

The final, for the seventh time, is between Mexico and the United States with Mexico shortening from around 2.71 when the finalists were known, to a current price of ~2.32. Across all international tournaments, when the fair probability of the favourite is less than 0.5, backing the Draw has an ROI of 27% which initially makes this a tempting proposition, but in Final matches the ROI is only 6%, and in Gold Cup matches is negative, which makes it far less tempting.

As previously mentioned, sports investments now make up a very small percentage of my income, and as would be expected for someone of my age, my monthly spreadsheet update is far more about pension and property investments than the outcome of a few football or baseball games. 

Some of the individual stocks I've mentioned in this blog are included (left) but in real terms, 1.18% of my pension is far more than 2.36% of sports profits. 

One company I've not mentioned before is $CMG (Chipotle Mexican Grill) which I bought last September, primarily because I suspected a stock split might be imminent. 

Only five companies in the S&P 500 have higher share prices but no split has yet been forthcoming. 

While stock splits don't, in themselves, create any value, "a stock split can influence share price and valuation in a number of ways. The action signals management's confidence in the company's growth outlook and it can be viewed as an indication that they believe the business is in position to expand in a way that will push the stock back up to its pre-split levels." This benefited my holding in Telsa last year, and similarly Apple although I don't directly hold any of that company's stock.

Given that the stock is up 55.75% since I invested, I'm happy to wait this one out.

Tesla had a flat month, while my Bitcoin investment remains in the red despite a decent July.

"Investing becomes so much simpler when you're willing and able to measure progress in years and decades instead of weeks or months." 

Overall July was the ninth consecutive positive month, but wasn't quite up to the numbers from March to June. 

As Morgan Housel puts it in his excellent book The Psychology of Money "Two topics impact everyone , whether you are interested in them or not: health and money", and on that theme what wasn't so great in July was a 10.6lb gain in weight. After breaking my leg, I dropped 27lbs in the first quarter of the year, but since then 14.5lbs has been regained. Walking again is great, but perhaps my destination shouldn't be the pub so often! 

Making money is great, but without good health it's all rather pointless, so a new month and some new health and exercise goals.

Good luck to you all in August.

 

NBA 2020-21 Over

The 2020-21 NBA season wrapped up this week with the Milwaukee Bucks winning the final series against the Phoenix Suns in six games. For those of you following my Totals System it was another profitable season, in fact the best ever since totals started climbing, with the final numbers as below:

Roughly the same number of selections as last season, but an ROI of 22.5% was the best ever by some distance. There were only four qualifiers throughout the whole of the playoffs, and three of these went Under, but it would be churlish to grumble about that. 

For anyone following this system, the Total for next season will be 234.2 points, the smallest increase in a few years. The other metrics I track also show a likely slowdown in the increase in points, with the number of possessions showing a decline for the first time since at least 2012 and the number of three-point attempts only up by 1.5% which, by some distance, is the smallest in that time. 

 

Shots, Bucks and Graeme

In their first game back after the All-Star game, my wife's hometown San Diego Padres scored a club record 24 runs beating the Washington Nationals by an American Football score of 24 to 8 on Friday night. This is also the most runs by any team this season. 

On track to win the second game of the series last night, the game was suspended for the most American of reasons - a shooting outside the stadium in Washington with reports saying that four people were injured. Not my joke, or a joking matter, but some have said that one American pastime was interrupted by another American pastime.  

Backing the favourite in the first game after the break added another 1.11 units to our total, and since 2004 this simple system is up 49.22 units on the Money Line and 26.54 units on the Run Line, ROIs of 14% and 13.1% respectively. This was mentioned in 2019 so hopefully some of you took note:

Sports Insights has found that blanket-backing favourites had been profitable before and after the break in recent years, although those studies only look at the one game either side.

In the NBA, the first four games of the Finals went to the home team, but Game Five last night was won by the visiting Milwaukee Bucks . After winning the first two games, the Phoenix Suns traded as low as 1.23 to win the championship, but they are now outsiders at 3.94. Game Six is on Tuesday in Milwaukee where their record since mid-April, including the play-offs, is an impressive 17-1 straight up, and 12-6 ATS. 

I layed the Suns at 1.59 before the Finals started, and I'm happy to let this investment run. 

Finally some sad news that I stumbled across earlier today. In the early days of this blog I exchanged thoughts and ideas with Graeme Dand, who I described in this 2009 post as "very personable".

Graeme was also an entrant in the Friendly Tipster League and was famous for his (often extremely) lengthy blog posts often accompanied by screenshots of carefully compiled spreadsheets complete with pivot tables.

Check out some of his posts here. 

Even when communications with someone are all electronic, you get an idea of who the good guys and decent people are, and Graeme was definitely in that category. 

Our paths haven't crossed for several years, but it came as a shock to find out this morning that Graeme is dealing with a serious illness with a bleak prognosis.

Graeme was also an entrant in the Friendly Tipster League and actually one of the "Bounty Boys" as I called them, donating additional money to the prize fund.

Graeme was one of the winners with his TFA Draws finishing in eighth place but I can't recall if he came out ahead in the end.

Graeme also appears to have collected a small sum with his TFA_Raz entry, but after six years I have no recollection of what that was about.

All of this of course pales into insignificance when compared with the only really important thing in life, which is health. Making money is great, but without good health it is meaningless. I wish Graeme the very best and will be following him on Twitter with positive thoughts. You should do the same. 

After The Break

With no MLB All-Star game last season, some of you may be forgiven for forgetting the strategy of blindly backing favourites in their final game before the break. As I wrote in 2019: 

Certainly blindly backing all favourites in the final game before the All-Star Break is a profitable strategy, +6.7% Money Line, +12.1% Run Line

This year the success of this strategy continued with another 4.15 units won. 

Baseball was scheduled to resume after the All-Star game last night, but the New York Yankees v Boston Red Sox game was postponed for COVID-19 reasons. There are 17 matches tonight, including two double-headers, but in the first game back after the break, since 2004 backing the favourite has an ROI of 14.5% on the Money Line and 9.2% on the Run Line.

The break gives us a good excuse to look at results for our systems to date, and overall it's been a winning one so far:

As I've mentioned before, I'm not sure why lefties are having so much success with our systems this season, but the numbers don't lie and are included above. This is a new trend this season so it could be just noise, but unfortunately with the pending demise of Killer Sports it will be a lot harder to track once this season ends. 

Who will take the second shot in this snooker match? We'll find out, after the break.

When the Draw is Winning

For those who took the Draw and Under in the two finals this past weekend, another profit and the final numbers for the Draw system for the two 2021 tournaments are 11 Draws from 22 matches and a profit of 15.96 units.

For Copas, Euros and World Cups combined since 2004, 153 matches have resulted in 60 Draws, and 60.92 units of profit, an ROI of 40%. 

Sixty Draws is 39.2% of matches and while we, or more specifically I, only have prices going back to 2004, I do know that the percentage of Draws in the 401 matches going back to the 1919 Copa America tournament (the first year that a knockout match was played) is 34.2% with an average goals per game of 2.64.

Goal expectancies were higher in those early years, with the probability of a match finishing as a Draw consequently lower. Prior to the 1976 Euros, the Draw percentage was less than 22% with an average goals per game of 3.6.

Since 1976, the Draw percentage is over 38% with an average goals per game of 2.34. The average has stayed pretty much the same over the past ten years (2.36), twenty years (2.27), thirty years (2.38) and forty years (2.33) with the percentage of Drawn matches over that time 41%, 38%, 37% and 37%. 

It seems reasonable to conclude that the system would have been profitable for longer than the 17 years for which I have data. A Draw percentage of 37% means an implied price of 2.70 and not one Euro, Copa or World Cup match has been priced at that level. A couple of Africa Cup of Nations matches featuring Egypt had the Draw as favourite in 2017 at an average 2.61 and 2.65 but this is highly unusual.  

Some of you may be wondering if this system works in the CONCACAF Gold Cup, which is the North, Central America and Caribbean equivalent of the Euros, but is equivalent in name only as it is a tournament of a much poorer quality.

Only Mexico (11th) and the USA (20th) are ranked in FIFA's top 40, and knockout games where the favourite is as short as 1.06 aren't exactly the competitive games this system is looking for.

Either Mexico or the USA have won 14 of the 15 previous tournaments (Canada with the one other title) and these two countries have met in the final six times. 

The 2021 tournament began last week, with the knockout stage starting on July 24th, but with an ROI (since 2009) of -15% (-6.03 units from 41 matches) it's not a tournament that sets the pulse racing. The ROI is positive at 13% on matches where the favourite has a 'true' win probability of less than 0.667, but none of the six matches where the Draw is considered most likely have ended that way, but six is a small sample size of course. 

Wrong Number

A great story yesterday about a major error made by Las Vegas Sportsbook Circa Sports when posting the opening points total for the WNBA All-Star Game, a total which subsequently moved by some 50 points.

The error was that the sportsbook director, Matt Metcalf, failed to take into account that the All-Star game wasn't the typical All-Star game which usually see no defensive play and ridiculously high totals. With an Olympic Games coming up, the game this year was between the WNBA All-Stars and the US Women's National Team, and as a result the game would be taken rather more seriously than usual. 

The game finished under the closing total by 19 points and under the opening total by some 70 points. A couple of observations I found interesting were that the total was posted for two hours before the first bet was made, a bet on Overs which may well have been a spoof, and how many other books simply copied the line. 

Credit to Circa Sports for honouring the bets they took, and if you haven't seen their sportsbook in Las Vegas, I've heard it's worth checking out at three floors and more than 30,000 square feet. I had a ticket offered to me for the Tyson Fury v Deontay Wilder III fight later this month, but unfortunately that has now been postponed to October 9th. If my ticket offer still holds, I shall check out Circa Sports for myself at that time. With the NFL season underway, it should be a great atmosphere. 

 

The full story from ESPN is here:

The over/under total on the WNBA All-Star Game moved more than 50 points Wednesday, a historic line movement on a number that a Las Vegas oddsmaker calls the "worst I ever made."

Las Vegas sportsbook Circa Sports, the first to hang an over/under on the total points scored in the game, opened it at 248.5. An hour before the game tipped off, the total was sitting at 195.5.

The 53-point movement was the largest shift that multiple veteran bookmakers could ever recall, and it wasn't caused by any attempt at corruption or by a rush of big wagers. Instead, it was simply a mistake by an oddsmaker who was short on time.

On Wednesday, around 7 a.m. PT, Matt Metcalf, sportsbook director for Circa Sports, saw an opportunity to post the first total on the WNBA All-Star Game on the betting market, he told ESPN. He had a morning meeting at 9 a.m. and still needed to get showered and dressed for work. Rushing, Metcalf said he looked at the total points scored in the previous All-Star Games and landed on 248.5 as the opening number for this year's game.

"At worst, I don't think this was more than 15 points off. That's as bad as I think it could be," Metcalf said. "I didn't think it would be the worst number ever."

Metcalf said he didn't take into account that WNBA All-Stars were facing the U.S. women's national team, which is tuning up for the Olympics and expected to take the game more seriously than traditional high-scoring All-Star Games that are often played with reduced intensity and lackadaisical defense.

"This is very different than a [typical] All-Star Game," Las Vegas Aces coach Bill Laimbeer told Sports Illustrated. "Normally everybody is kind of goofing around. That's not what USA Basketball wants. USAB wants a very competitive game."

The 248.5 opening number was up for a couple of hours at Circa before the first bet came in, and it was on the over from a respected account that pushed the total up to 252.5. Metcalf said he believed the bet on the over was designed to "dummy up" the market, a tactic used by professional bettors to mislead bookmakers about which way they're going to bet.

At that point, sportsbooks in the U.S. and internationally began posting over/under totals similar or identical to Circa's number. With more sportsbooks having the total on the board, bettors started to bet the under, and the line began to plummet.

"I've been monitoring this stuff since 2004, 2005," said Rex Beyers, risk manager for the SuperBook at Westgate Las Vegas, "and, off the top of my head, I can't think of a bigger move. It's certainly in the top five."

The SuperBook opened at 251 and moved the number 32 times before it settled at 197. Beyers said they hadn't taken any limit bets on the under but were just trying to stay in line with the market.

"We have more money on the over than the under," Beyers told ESPN a few hours before the 7 p.m. ET tipoff.

The WNBA All-Stars ended up handing the Olympic squad a rare loss for a final score of 93-85, with the total 19 points shy of the closing over/under.

In the past when some bookmakers have posted bad point spreads or totals resulting from a typo or mistake, the sportsbooks have voided the bets on those numbers, claiming "palpable error." Metcalf emphasized that this wasn't the case with his WNBA total: "I made a horrific number, hung it and took bets," he said.

Metcalf estimates Circa took only six to 10 limit bets on the under that caused the line to drop so significantly. The opening limit was $2,000 and later reduced to $500.

Circa, which caters to professional bettors, has earned a reputation in the industry as having sharp lines and totals.

"I always say a bad number is better than no number," Metcalf said. "I think we earned some trust by the numbers we've put up in the past -- granted, we may have blown that all today.

"I think the market respects our numbers for the most part, but we're not perfect. We're going to make some bad numbers. That said, I would never expect that we'd put up a number that's 50 points off on a total."

Final Countdown

As previously mentioned, and as some of you may be aware, a couple of major football tournaments come to a conclusion this weekend, with the Draw worth considering in both games.

At the time of writing the Draw for the Copa América final between Brazil and Argentina as priced by OddsPortal has shortened by several clicks to an average of 3.13 and when the Fair Draw probability is calculated, it is 0.308. In major tournament knockout matches where this number is 0.3 or greater, the ROI for the Draw is 48%. 

For the Euro 2020 Final, the Draw is also very short, with an average price of 3.00, and with the fair probability here at 0.324, when this number is 0.32 or greater the Draw ROI is 79%. Here are the results of previous matches in this range:

Bear in mind that the sample size is small since I only have data going back to 2004 but in my opinion the Draw in both matches offers great value, and if you have followed this strategy through the tournaments you're playing with profits. I have bets at 3.3 and 3.1 for the two matches.

The Under 2.5 goals is also a value proposition here at around 1.5, with 13 of 14 similar matches going Under until the Paraguay v Peru game last week where the Draw was strangely favourite as mentioned here. The Under is this game was 1.37. 

NHL 2020-21 Review

Tampa Bay Lightning clinched their second consecutive Stanley Cup this week beating the Montreal Canadiens by four games to one, and the NHL season is now over. I know I wasn't the only one following my system this season and while it disappointed in the post season, overall it was another successful season, as they have all been for many seasons. 

The basic system is on the left, and a slightly modified more selective system is on the right.

Unfortunately with the Killer Sports site going into a permanent hibernation in the next few weeks, producing such tables as above will no longer be possible but clearly the edge persists and I'll continue to follow the systems next season. 

For those wondering, over the 11 seasons above, the record in playoff games is +23.78 units (ROI 9.7%) and +22.79 units (19.3%), slightly above the regular season averages.

Avoiding the Draw and backing the favourite in third-place playoff games continued to be a profitable strategy last night in the Copa América although the winning goal, and a good one it was too, didn't come until a few seconds after the three minutes of added time, just as the game was looking guaranteed to go to a penalty shootout at 2:2. This tournament doesn't bother with extra time. 

Of the 13 third-place matches in Copa América tournaments, only one has ever finished as a Draw as I mentioned previously while in Euros and World Cups all-time, the numbers aren't much better with just 4 of the 25 matches finishing as as Draws. In the era of prices, the record is:

 

Euro and Copa Profits Locked In

The Euro 2020 semi-final between Italy and Spain last night saw another win for Draw backers, who are now up by 8.98 units with just two games remaining and thus a guaranteed ROI for the tournament of at least 47%. With the smallest probability difference (19%) of the competition between these two teams, this result was not a huge surprise and the 'official' average price of 3.16 was easily beatable with Pinnacle at 3.22 and higher on the exchanges.  

In the 2021 Copa América, another guaranteed profit with the same system now up 3.14 units, with just the final to come. The second semi-final between Argentina and Colombia finished 1:1 with Argentina advancing to the final on penalties where they will face Brazil on Saturday. 

There's also a third place playoff game in this tournament, but as mentioned previously, it's best to ignore these matches, especially in the Copa where only one of 12 such contests has ever finished level - the 2001 game between Honduras and Uruguay in case you were wondering. 

The two teams had met in a Group game just 10 days earlier, which may be an angle to research. Honduras isn't a CONMEBOL country of course, and were invited to take part in the tournament for the first time, but after taking third place they've not been invited back! 

I'll update the numbers once both tournaments have ended, but hopefully some of you took advantage of this perennially profitable system.

The Phoenix Suns held serve in Game One of the NBA Finals beating the Milwaukee Bucks and covering both the 6.5 point spread and the Overs - Game Two is on Thursday - and in the NHL the Montreal Canadiens avoided a sweep by winning Game Four against the Tampa Bay Lighting, who now lead the best of seven series 3:1. Game Five is tonight but first, another Euro semi-final. 

Copa América Draws

This year, the Copa América tournament is proceeding simultaneously with the Euro tournament. In the past the Copa has usually been played in odd years, with the 2016 tournament a one-off centenary celebration.

Effective from 2020, CONMEBOL have now aligned their tournament with that of UEFA in even years, but of course the COVID-19 pandemic delayed both tournaments.

For those of you backing the Draw in the Copa knockout matches, and this is historically a good strategy for the same reason it is in other major tournaments, we are in profit after the Quarter-Finals with a very unusual winner in the Paraguay v Peru game. 

This was the text book example of a "toss-up" game with the Draw actually the favourite at prices varying from 2.7 to 2.86. 

The Draw should never be favourite as I explained in 2013:

The probability of a draw is clearly highest when the expectancy of goals is low. Of the under 1.5 goal outcomes, one-third (the 0-0) results in a draw. Add another goal and one-third of the six possible outcomes results in a draw, but add one more goal, and the draw probability drops precipitously. The draw outcomes from the Under 3.5 goal markets total two from ten.

So unless the goal expectancy in a match is two or less, the draw will never be favourite, but the closer to zero the goal expectancy is, the more probable the draw is. The relative lack of interest in the draw as a betting outcome does, in my opinion, make the draw a value bet when the market’s expectation of goals is higher than it should be.

Some books had Peru as second favourite, others had Paraguay, and the result was indeed a Draw, although if the market was expecting few goals, they might have been shocked with the 3:3 final score! 

Starting with the 2007 tournament, backing the Draw in the knockout stages of Copa América tournaments has an ROI of 45% with Quarter-Final matches at 75%, but as with the Euros, in Semi-Finals the value is historically on the favourite with an ROI of 20%.  

Lightning Strike and Sinistral Pitching

Hopefully some of you made some money on the Tampa Bay Lightning who won Game Three at an 'official' 1.79, and who will be a qualifier in Game 4 tomorrow when they attempt to sweep the Montreal Canadiens to retain the Stanley Cup. Their odds won't be so generous this time though, currently at around 1.67 but drifting slightly. 

The NBA Finals are set, with the previously mentioned Phoenix Suns playing the Milwaukee Bucks, a franchise that last reached the Finals in 1974 and last won the title in 1971. The Suns have home court advantage and they have never won the title, losing in 1993 to the Chicago Bulls and in 1976 to the Boston Celtics. The Suns are favourites for the title at around 1.63. 

No more winners for Draw backers in the Euro 2020 tournament, but a profit is already guaranteed with three matches remaining. Profits from the 12 matches so far are 6.82 units.

History is on our side. Of the 88 Euro knockout matches ever played, only 51 have been decided in 90 minutes, with Belgium the only country playing five or more games with all being decided in regulation. 

Of the remaining teams in this tournament, Italy's Draw percentage is 57%, England 50%, Spain 47% and Denmark 29% but in Euro Semi-Finals, the edge is to back the favourite, with an ROI of 39%, but obviously a small sample size. 

If we include World Cup Semi-Finals, the ROI on favourites is still high at 26%, but the Draw becomes profitable also. Which all looks rather promising for a dream Italy v England Final but this scenario also looked promising in 1990 until two disastrous penalty shootouts led to the elimination of both countries and to probably the worst World Cup Final of all-time.

In baseball, July has continued the good run for hot favourites with four out of four so far and one selection (Los Angeles Angels) today with the added bonus that the starter (Patrick Sandoval) throws left-handed, and such throwers have a remarkable 33-3 record this season.

Moving Day

Yesterday was Moving Day in Quebec, but at two games down in the Stanley Cup Finals, the Montreal Canadiens will need to get moving if they are to end Canada's drought in this competition!

It was also Canada Day, but little to celebrate for that province with the Tampa Bay Lightning winning the first two games and game three tonight likely to see the Lighting as a qualifier for the NHL System, although so far this season, this has not been profitable in the playoffs overall even if the Lightning specifically haven't been to blame.

The regular season gave us 51.5 units of profit to play with, but unfortunately the 26 playoff games have seen us hand back 6.23 of them.

In the MLB, June continued the good fortunes of May with the Hot Favourites adding another 14.1 units. Left handed starters were 14-1 for the month (32-3 for the season) as I mentioned last week. 

The T-Bone System lost 2.07 units, while the Overs added 9.8 units. You may recall that I mentioned the success of Unders in May writing:

The Totals Systems combined are comfortably in profit after 179 games (29.96 units) but interestingly all the profit is from Unders with Overs slightly down, although making up ground after a slow start to the season.

The probable reason was discussed in early June and the subsequent clampdown my umpires has not surprisingly seen this avenue of easy money closed down. After being in profit by 28.85 units through the end of May, in June we lost 4.8 units, but again overall a profit for the Totals Systems.

There's also a football competition currently in progress, and if you took my advice about backing the Draw in knockout matches, we're almost guaranteed a profit already, even with seven matches still to come. Four draws from the eight Round of 16 matches mean we are up 6.94 units so far, perhaps a little lucky with two 3:3 results on Monday given that no World Cup or Euro knockout game had previously ended with this result, but we'll take it. 

In the NBA, the Phoenix Suns reached the final after missing the playoffs for ten years straight, a record I believe, and will likely play the Milwaukee Bucks who now have a 3:2 load over the Atlanta Hawks. For the Overs System, we've only had four qualifiers in the playoffs, three of which went Under. As in most sports, there's a big difference between regular season games and playoffs. 

Good luck in July. At noon today, the year will be half over. 

Euro Draws, Canada Hopes, And Suns Shine

Rather a thrilling day in the Euros 2020 tournament with two more winners for Draw backers, although not many would have expected the 3:3 result in both matches. 

At 3:1 to France in the second match, I tweeted this:

Quite remarkable, especially given that no previous Euro - or World Cup for that matter - knockout game has ever finished 3:3 after 90 minutes! The Copa America last had a 3:3 in 1999 (Mexico v Peru). 

Draw backers currently have a healthy profit of 5.69 units from the six matches played with another nine matches to come.

It's Game One of the Stanley Cup Finals tonight, with Canada having another shot at ending its 27 year drought since the last win for a team from that country coming in 1993. 

The winners that year were the Montreal Canadiens beating Wayne Gretzky's Los Angeles Kings and the Canadiens are back this year, underdogs against the reigning champions Tampa Bay Lightning.

Five Canadian teams have reached the Finals since 1993, but all have lost; Vancouver Canucks (twice), Calgary Flames, Edmonton Oilers and Ottawa Senators. 

The regular season NHL system this season was very successful, +51.5 units with an ROI of 14.9%, but wasn't so successful in the playoffs losing 6.23 units for an overall ROI on the season of 12%, which is not too shabby at all. 

Going back to 2006, the system is profitable in playoffs (ROI 10.2%), but in any one season with a small number of matches, we are at the mercy of variance. 

The NBA season is close to determining its final series also, with the Phoenix Suns looking to clinch their place in the final tonight when they face the Los Angeles Clippers at home and with a 3:1 lead. Whoever advances from the West will play either the Milwaukee Bucks or the Atlanta Hawks.

Euro 2020

When it comes to the knockout stages of big tournaments such as World Cups and Euros, it should come as no surprise that the Draw is generally where the value lies. 

I only have data going back to the 2004 Euros, which means a sample size of just 96 matches. The third-place play-off games in World Cups tend not to be competitive, nor are they technically elimination games.

Using Odds Portal prices adjusted to a standard over-round of 103% (in Euro 2004, this was over 110% declining to 102.6% for the 2018 World Cup), backing the Draw in all 96 matches would have profited you 27.22 units, an ROI of 28.4%.

The highest ROI is at the Quarter-Final stage, but every round (Round of 16, Quarter-Final, Semi-Final and Final) shows a profit. When games are 'toss-ups' or 'close' matches the ROI is 71%. Unfortunately 18 matches in eight tournaments would test the patience of most of us, but worth mentioning for those who use Kelly when determining their stakes. 

Euros / World Cups 2004 - 2018

In the 40 matches where there was an odds-on favourite (using fair odds) the ROI is 4%, while it is 46% in the more evenly matched of matches. 

Of course in any single tournament with just a few matches, the chances of a loss are very real, with three of the eight tournaments showing small losses. 

The 2010 World Cup lost 1.77 units from 15 matches, and both the last two Euros were losers with losses of 0.7 units in 2012 (from 7 matches) and 0.13 units in 2016 (from 15 matches). 

Killer Closing

A rare loss for the 'Hot Favourites' system on Tuesday, although with Gerrit Cole the starting pitcher, it perhaps wasn't a surprise given his poor record as a hot favourite this year. He already had more losses than any other pitcher this season for us, and now leads all comers by two, with five losses in his nine matches.

Overall this season the ROI on the Money Line is 12.6% and an even higher  

20.8% on the Run Line, but interestingly, by which I mean I have no explanation for this at the moment, when the starting pitcher is left handed, the profits are far higher this season compared with previous years. 

Unfortunately insights such as this will be much harder in the future as it appears the site I use (Killer Sports) is to shut down soon.

Whether any alternatives will reveal themselves remains to be seen, but it is bad news. For betting pre-game you need data, and this site has baseball data going back to 2004 which has proven to be very valuable. 

Unfortunately it attracts people who get excited by nonsense such as "Padres as a dog since 2008 of more than 125 before all star break in first game of series, last h2h was home win this season where opposing team threw 2+ strikeouts." When you play with enough parameters, random patterns are easy to be find.

Oh well, at least they are seeing the MLB season to its conclusion, and the NBA and NHL seasons will have ended, but no NFL for next season. Fortunately we have a clear edge in this sport going back to 2002 so I should be able to cope even if it will take a little longer to identify qualifiers. The other issue is that no longer will the results of systems be readily verifiable, but life goes on.   

Whyteleafe Woes

Not to depress anyone, but less than a week until the days start to shorten again, and 2021-22 pre season fixtures start to be announced. Unfortunately for my club, there is again no pre-season tour of Queensland and even more unfortunately for my local non-league club, any season at all is now in doubt.

Many years back, I trained pre-season with Whyteleafe but surprisingly they never called me back, (presumably they mislaid my number).

More recently my son went further and played a few matches for the first team there, but yesterday the club confirmed rumours that have been circulating for a while that they will not be playing in next season’s Isthmian South Central League.

The club has been forced to give up its Step 4 status after new owners of the Church Road ground refused to negotiate a new lease or licence agreement with the club for the 2021-22 season.

So that's a bit disappointing, but hopefully the club will continue, albeit in a lower tier. Depending on how much lower a tier, I may try out for the team again, although after the broken leg this year, I'm not sure my chances of first team action are any higher than they were 40 years ago!

The new owners of the ground are Irama Sports, a Singapore based company which has "close links" to former Liverpool and Wales player Ian Rush. Not sure how true their claim to love grass roots sports is though.

Sports investing has gone a little quiet this month so far with few qualifiers in either the NHL or NBA systems as both these sports are well into the playoffs. It's fortunate there have been few, as most have been losers.

The NHL ROI has fallen to 13.4% for the season, and the NBA Overs ROI to 22.5%. The MLB Hot Favourites continue to generate money though, with a 22-5 record and an ROI for the month of 16.8% and 11.7% for the season. June is usually a good month for hot favourites, though not quite up to May's high standards, but 2021 is on track to beat the June record set two seasons ago.

Sticky Situation in MLB

Last month, I wrote this in regard to the MLB: 

The Totals Systems combined are comfortably in profit after 179 games (29.96 units) but interestingly all the profit is from Unders with Overs slightly down, although making up ground after a slow start to the season.

Overall, Unders is the winner in 51.7% of matches, but in our subset of selections, the strike rate is currently 62.9%.

It appears that we may now have an explanation for why the Unders is performing so well. The latest Sports Illustrated magazine has an article titled "The inside story of how rampant pitch-doctoring in MLB is pumping pitchers up and deflating offenses" reporting that:

Over the past two or three years, pitchers’ illegal application to the ball of what they call “sticky stuff”—at first a mixture of sunscreen and rosin, now various forms of glue—has become so pervasive that one recently retired hurler estimates “80 to 90%” of pitchers are using it in some capacity. The sticky stuff helps increase spin on pitches, which in turn increases their movement, making them more difficult to hit. That’s contributed to an offensive crisis that has seen the league-wide batting average plummet to a historically inept .236.

The current World Series champions Los Angeles Dodgers are called out specifically:

According to the data, L.A. has by a large margin the highest year-to-year increase of any club in spin rate on four-seam fastballs, which are considered a bellwether pitch. In fact, the Dodgers’ four-seam spin rate is higher than that of any other team in the Statcast era. There is no proof the Dodgers are doctoring baseballs, but nearly across the board, their hurlers’ spin rates on that pitch have increased this season from last.

The Dodgers declined to comment.

However, the Dodgers have been one of the non-profitable teams for this strategy this season, and along with the Padres and Giants have made this a non-starter in games involving NL West teams. In NL East matches however, the Under is winning 68.4% of the time. 

In the AL, where the Designated Hitter rule applies, matches involving an American League team, system matches are going Under 66.2% of the time.

Now that the issue of tampering with the ball has been exposed, it will be interesting to see how the Totals markets, as well as the leagues, react. We may not always immediately know why an edge exists, but if you wait until an explanation is found, you'll have missed the boat. 

The T-Bone System is firing on all cylinders this season too, with a 100% record this month and a season ROI of 5.6%, while the hot favourites are up 11.1% on the season. After losing 6.7 units in April, the system is now up 26.9 units.  

The Betting Bees - Benham's Brentford, and Bloom's Brighton

Other than fans of their promotion rivals, I suspect that most neutral football fans were happy to see Brentford promoted to the Premier League last Saturday. 

One club chairman who wouldn't have been so thrilled would have been Brighton's Tony Bloom, as it is well known that he and Brentford chairman Matthew Benham had a major falling out in the early 2000s when they worked together at Premier Bet. The two clubs did agree on the transfer of Neal Maupay in 2019, so maybe things have cooled off a little but the boardroom could be an interesting place when the two teams play each other next season.

I've previously written on this blog about Benham in February 2015 when Brentford were playing in the second tier after spending 59 of the previous 60 seasons in the third or fourth. I wrote about Bloom a year later in February 2016. It's worth reading the Benham article again, given that the post ended with:

None of us know what will happen next. But we can say this. Brentford and Midtjylland are clearly going the right way and their stories over the next few years will make fascinating viewing. And while Benham has taken some flak in recent days, history teaches us that in the long run it is unwise to bet against him.

Back in February 2015, FC Midtjylland had never won the Danish League or Cup, but since then have won the league three times, finished runners-up twice, and also won the Danish Cup. With Brentford now reaching the Premier League, it's pretty clear that Benham's methods work.

His betting strategy - "to exploit inefficiencies and errors in bookmaker prices" - should be what everyone strives for, and speaking of which, here are the results from May.

A couple of red areas, but in a short time period such as a month, results are always going to be skewed by randomness and luck, and worrying about wins and losses is rather silly if we have confidence in our strategies. Focus on the process, not the results.

"Bad bets sometimes win and good bets sometimes lose. Long-term it will work." - Mark Langdon (Racing Post)

Keeping Score

I mentioned Morgan Housel a couple of times late last year, and his book "The Psychology of Money" which is well worth reading if you are interested in finance. 

One of the main takeaways from the book is that investing is quite unlike any other field. In the opening chapter he writes:

In what other industry does someone with no college degree, no training, no background, no formal experience, and no connections massively outperform someone with the best education, the best training and the best connections? 

The 'outperform' in this instance is the often heard story of someone like a janitor or librarian who dies at a good old age and leaves several million in their will, and Housel includes the story of Ronald James Read who:

"was an American philanthropist, investor, janitor, and gas station attendant."

All that Read and others like him have done is typically invest what they can from their average salaries in stocks / index funds and let time do the rest.

Fewer than 4,000 of the 2.8 million Americans who died in 2014 left more than $8m and Read was in this group.

The Washington Post praised Read, writing, "How a man of modest means accumulated so much wealth contains exemplary lessons for saving that apply to all of us." 

The writer, Barry Ritholtz, noted that lessons could be learned from Read's experience adding: 

"But there is also a cautionary tale about recognizing the value of your finite time here on Earth. Perhaps learning to enjoy life while you can is part of that equation."

This subject was also touched on by Morgan Housel in a recent podcast interview I listened to, when the name of Warren Buffett was brought up, as it often is in these conversations. 

Early on, Housel is asked about Buffett and essentially the primary reason that he has become so well known and wealthy is because he started investing at age 10, and in his 90s is still going. The formula for getting rich is "be patient and wait for 75 years."  

Housel points out that 99% of Buffett's net worth was achieved after age 50, and 97% after he turned 65 and that his obsession with business and investing has come at a cost to his family and social life.

Most of us want wealth so that we can be independent and focus on other things in our lives, but for Buffett and I suspect some other billionaires, wealth is simply their scorecard in a game they can't quit. 

If you're into podcasts, check out "We Study Billionaires" Episode 378 - The Psychology of Money. It's 75 minutes of fascinating conversation and great to listen to while you're out for a walk or run. 

Back to the book and Housel declares that:

financial success is not a hard science. It's a soft skill where how you behave is more important than what you know.

This applies to sports investing too, as do some of the podcast discussion relating to Benjamin Graham and his evolving formulas!  

While not in the same league as Warren Buffett of course, not many of us are, I do like to track my investments and May was another solid month overall (+3.52%) although most of the gains were from property which is unusual. Seven consecutive months in profit and +33% since the end of October.

2010-2021

Tesla slumped 11.9% last month while my birthday Bitcoin purchase has now lost 40%, not one of my smarter investment decisions but at least I only put in a relatively small amount. Overall my play trading account lost 4.2% last month, and 0.6% year to date. 

I probably shouldn't mention the streak of profitable months because as soon as I mentioned the winning streak (of 19) for hot MLB favourites in the last post, we hit two consecutive losers on Friday. Normal service has since resumed with two more winners at the weekend, but I'll review the MLB, NHL and NBA systems for May in a couple of days. I'll also be publishing some results from the Europa and Champions League this season, now that those competitions are both finished.