SPOTY the dog

 
At the beginning of August, I (perhaps prematurely) spoke about The Sports Personality of the Year, and piously suggested that it was already a "done deal".

Of course this was before Mo Farah, Jessica Ennis, Chris Hoy and a host of others had even had a chance to participate. Well, participate they did, and their amazing performances really shone out and were outstanding.

Back then, Bradley Wiggins odds were something of a joke. He is still incredibly short and the hot favourite to win this year, but in my opinion there are a few things to consider.

Who won this competition last year? Oh yes, it was the cyclist, Mark Cavendish. Do we really want another cyclist winning again this year?

Well, yes, perhaps we do. Wiggins is affable, has performed amazingly this year, maybe better than anyone, and he would be a fitting winner of SPOTYif it is indeed awarded to him. If he does win it, I won't mind at all.

Personally, as you can see from my bets above, however, I've chosen a slightly different course. I have absolutely no edge when it comes to this type of betting (who does?) and, based on my puny stakes, you can see that I'm only getting involved for a bit of fun, but here's my reasoning.

Two miserly pounds on Chris Hoy at odds of 270 seems like a no-brainer to me. Yes, it is another cyclist, and I don't think we can say he's achieved as much as Wiggins has this year, but he is now our most bemeddled Olympian with six golds and that's hugely noteworthy. I do realise that he's already won SPOTY a few years back, but I'm hoping that his odds will come in somewhat as the competition draws nearer.

My big outside bet is Ben Ainslie, who may just have helped his cause a little bit by announcing his retirement today. He has four straight gold medals and is the most decorated Olympic sailor there has ever been. Sailing is almost certainly too much of a minority sport, but surely he's still worth £2 for a punt.

And then we have little Jessica Ennis. She was the face of the London Olympics, with pictures and posters of her up on every street corner months before the competition even started. She had enormous pressure on her to do well (perhaps more so than any other competitor), but she pulled it off with consumate ease, marking up three PBs along the way. At 17s, I've bunged a tenner on her and consider that a fairly decent little bet.

So what of the others?

Well, there's Nicola Adams the boxer, Katherine Grainger the rower, Rory McIlroy, Laura Robson, Sarah Storey, David Weir and Ellie Simmonds. Not a hope in hell for any of these.

Mo Farah. This guy was very popular during the Olympics, he comes across as affable and likeable and of course he also has the Mobot to help him along. Somehow though, I just can't see him winning this.

Andy Murray. I'd personally put him in the same kind of chance category as Mo Farah. He's had a very good year, helped himself out a bit with a few well-placed tears, but I just can't see him winning it. I may be wrong, but that's my view.

As I say, this is all just a bit of fun, and there'll be no harm done if I lose my bets, but it may be interesting to look at the odds if one of my two big outsiders is in with a chance just before the winner is announced.

Let's wait and see.

Bring on the hangdog Messiah

 

So here we are again. A London club struggling at the bottom of the Premier League. A team that people generally seem to agree really don't belong in that position in the table, that the quality of their players should really be sufficient to lift them up to a reasonable position.

Right, kick out the useless twat of a manager, the perennial under-achiever, and in his place bring forth the guy next door. Yes, let the wiley old multi-chinned persuader be the new man for the job. He may not have too many tactical weapons in his little footballing toolbox, but when it comes to assuaging the feelings and boosting the egos of all those precious, highly-paid superstars, there is no one to surpass him.

As I write, Redknapp is 1.02 to back in the next manager's market and it appears a cast-iron certainty that he will indeed be the next QPR manager. At those odds, of course, he just has to be layed - and layed him I have at a financial risk that's almost not worth worrying about. Any little doubt tomorrow will provide a green opportunity, whilst if he is appointed tomorrow, it is of little consequence.

QPR have Man Utd away in their next match, which by all common reason should be a walk in the park for Utd. However, if Redknapp is appointed over the next day or two, then their Tuesday match away to Sunderland and/or their next home match against Villa tomorrow week could see the usual "new manager bounce" - which, with Redknapp's excellent man-manager skills, could have quite a pronounced effect.

Just something to think about and consider.

______________________________________

My little losing streak continues at the moment. I'm busy right now working on my bots again, so can't say I'm fully-focused on my normal line of business - but it's not that difficult and really I've no excuse for the bad little run I've been experiencing lately. This is my performance over the last seven days. Not great, is it?


Cricket: £27.13 | Football: -£133.42 | Tote: |  Total P&L:  -£106.29 

 

Football Showing 1 - 20 of 61 markets

Market Start time Settled date Profit/loss (£)
Football / Fortuna Dusseldorf v Hamburg : Over/Under 2.5 Goals 23-Nov-12 19:30  23-Nov-12 21:28  7.57
Football / Fortuna Dusseldorf v Hamburg : Correct Score 23-Nov-12 19:30  23-Nov-12 21:28  0.88
Football / Fortuna Dusseldorf v Hamburg : Over/Under 1.5 Goals 23-Nov-12 19:30  23-Nov-12 20:57  9.56
Football / Le Mans v Guingamp : Match Odds 23-Nov-12 17:45  23-Nov-12 19:39  -3.00
Football / Academica v Plzen : Over/Under 2.5 Goals 22-Nov-12 20:05  22-Nov-12 21:59  -0.85
Football / Mgladbach v A.E.L. : Over/Under 2.5 Goals 22-Nov-12 20:05  22-Nov-12 21:58  -3.86
Football / Marseille v Fenerbahce : Over/Under 2.5 Goals 22-Nov-12 20:05  22-Nov-12 21:58  1.37
Football / Steaua Bucharest v Stuttgart : Match Odds 22-Nov-12 20:05  22-Nov-12 21:56  -6.00
Football / Benfica B v Covilha : Over/Under 2.5 Goals 22-Nov-12 20:00  22-Nov-12 21:54  2.22
Football / Liverpool v Young Boys : Over/Under 3.5 Goals 22-Nov-12 20:05  22-Nov-12 21:53  1.67
Football / Liverpool v Young Boys : Over/Under 2.5 Goals 22-Nov-12 20:05  22-Nov-12 21:36  16.41
Football / Lazio v Tottenham : Correct Score 22-Nov-12 18:00  22-Nov-12 19:53  16.52
Football / Lazio v Tottenham : Over/Under 1.5 Goals 22-Nov-12 18:00  22-Nov-12 19:53  4.34
Football / Ajax v Dortmund : Match Odds 21-Nov-12 19:45  21-Nov-12 21:42  -4.00
Football / Man City v Real Madrid : Correct Score 21-Nov-12 19:45  21-Nov-12 21:39  33.11
Football / Dinamo Kiev v Paris St-G : Over/Under 2.5 Goals 21-Nov-12 19:45  21-Nov-12 21:38  1.35
Football / Schalke v Olympiakos : Over/Under 2.5 Goals 21-Nov-12 19:45  21-Nov-12 21:38  -4.04
Football / Arsenal v Montpellier : Correct Score 21-Nov-12 19:45  21-Nov-12 21:36  12.82
Football / Arsenal v Montpellier : Over/Under 2.5 Goals 21-Nov-12 19:45  21-Nov-12 21:36  -2.08
Football / Anderlecht v AC Milan : Over/Under 2.5 Goals 21-Nov-12 19:45  21-Nov-12 21:18  -1.60


 Pages: 1  2 3 4   of 4 Pages 

______________________________________

I've had a couple of comments about my ratings posts, asking if I could finish them up and not leave everyone hanging. There are indeed a few more posts due on this subject. The first concerns how to weight Poisson properly, the second is how to come up with the a more detailed method of discerning each team's goal expectation. I did briefly mention Maximum Likelihood Estimation (or MLE), and alluded to the fact that I may - at some point - put up a post explaining all this.

Well, I suppose I'll have to get off my backside and scrawl something down about these things. If you'd be good enough to keep reading then I promise that I will indeed get around to posting on these subjects.

I don't, as yet, have anything in the can, so to speak, but given a bit of concentration and a clear run, I'm sure it won't take me too long to knock something out.

Do bear with me.

______________________________________

Oh, by the way. I've just hit the 70,000 mark, which I'm very pleased with. Thanks to you lot.

Happy Birthday

This is going to be another decidedly self-centred and introspective entry – but I make no apology for that, because this blog is now one year old tomorrow.

That’s right, a year ago, Old Mother Blogger reluctantly opened her pock-marked, cellulite-riddled legs and, after screaming blue murder, out slid "A Football Trader’s Path", all covered in verbal diarrhea, a bloody wash of unrealised ideas and urine-stained trading thoughts. Thus this blog was born.

Yes. It may be that you consider this blog to be the after-birth of all blogs out there in the world today but, as ugly as this one is, I’ve slowly grown to love her. And it's her birthday.

So, let’s get down to the introspection then shall we? Laughably, one of my most popular posts remains Guaranteed Winning Betfair Strategies. When I think of some of the other posts that I’ve put out which - even if I say so myself - have contained some decent analysis of football-related matters and data, it does make me shake my head to see how continually gullible and downright lazy people are. Everyone wants the “secrets” of trading all handed to them on a plate, so they won’t bother reading-up on decent material, they won’t bother putting in the hours, days, weeks, months and years of practice in to learn how to trade. Oh no. Instead, let’s just Google winning strategies and see if some nutter is going to give away all their secrets. I initially put the post up as a joke just to see if the title would attract more visitors for that week – but the joke is on me now as it sits comfortably in fouth place of most read pages.

Easily beating this, however, is my Correct Score Overview, which even now attracts a continually large number of views each and every week. Personally, I don't think I have put up anything groundbreaking or new with this post, but I suppose it’s a decent source to get a group of strategies all in one place. Second place goes to the Poisson for Dummies post, which ties-in nicely with a lot of my other posts on ratings.

Okay, well this is a birthday celebration so I’m going to rejoice in my numbers now. I think I mentioned a few posts back that, when I first started this blog up there were virtually no readers, and it’s taken me a while to build-up a reasonable level of visitors. Now, however, on the blog’s first birthday, I’m closing-in on 70,000 visitors and am currently getting between 9,500 and 10,000 visitors each and month. Considering that betting/trading is something of a niche market, and also taking into account that there are already some other very good and well-established betting blogs out there, then I don’t think I’ve done too badly really.

I’ve crossed swords with a few of the other bloggers too – although I like to think this was kept at gentle ribbing stage and no more. All the blogs that I may have criticised or directed jibes towards are all good contributors to the blogging/betting community, and I hope they continue and go from strength to strength.

As has been mentioned on several occasions by several bloggers (and it’s true), maintaining a blog and coming up with interesting and entertaining material on a regular basis is no easy task, so my hat goes off to those who have managed to keep their blogs going and making them so good to read. My blogroll of honour is up on the right side, and you can pick any one of them and get something of value out of them.

So, thank you for allowing me to be so self-indulgent in this post (actually you had no choice in the matter), and wish me all the best for the good ship Trader’s Path in the future. Oh, and thanks for reading.

Blog On!

Quite a few comments from my last post. First, we have this shy, self-deprecating and timid comment from Signor Cassini:


Cassini14 November 2012 06:34
Amazing how that Cassini keeps on going, with fascinating posts, invaluable advice whilst at the same time staying modest and darned amusing.

Hmm, yes, quite. A comment obviously made in jest, but strangely it doesn't sound tongue-in-cheek. I wonder why that should be?

Personally, I do enjoy Cassini's blog. He waffles on a little bit too much about American sports (which, as we all know, are not really sports at all), and he should perhaps move his little friendly tipster league reports off somewhere else as I can't see them interesting anyone but the individuals involved. But besides these minor gripes, there is a lot of content there; Cassini is eloquent, writes well and covers a broad spectrum of subjects. For my money, one of the best out there.

What I've just said, however, flies in the face of this comment:

Anonymous14 November 2012 12:51

Cassini is just a master of the cut and paste never too much original content other than patting himself on the back to be fair. Although I have noticed now he's charging he likes to mention super PC every other post and stick in the odd cherry picked screenshots as often as possible like all the other leeches in this 'profession'.

As for 500 to 5000 he was always due to fail , he just didn't seem to have a clue and was continually making excuses. Probably easy to think up stuff to write once you start up or if things are going OK but once those losses come in and you've no positive pnl's to fill the page things go downhill quickly. You only need to look at most peoples blogrolls to see a long list of blogs who haven't posted in months.

In the old days for every blog that quit another couple would appear, sadly these days that doesn't seem to be the case and bloggers are thin on the ground. Just have to hope the likes of 500 to 5000 come back with a new name like the majority of the failures do.

I do think the comments on Cassini are harsh. If those of us who presently are not caught by the Super Charge suddenly found themselves facing it, I'm sure we'd all be as concentrated on it as he is. It's not exactly an easy thing to forget.

Anyway, on the loss of the 500 to 5000 blogger, we have a solution in the shape of Betting Blogs Exposed. Not too sure what he intends to expose, or thinks he's going to expose, but good luck to him

bettingblogsexposed14 November 2012 17:09

In order to keep some sort of status quo in the betting blog world I've decided to have a resurrection and restart my old blog. Hopefully I can fill that niche market left by 500 to 5000.

Finally, a nice comment from Geoff at fulltimebettingblog.com

geoff14 November 2012 18:50

A great post.

One of the things that I find difficult is that although I track readership of the blog very few people bother to leave comments. Is this becasue they cant be bothered or just hate the blog? I'll never know and its annoying.I've just checked and Ive been blogging for 2 years now and cant really say whether its a good reads or not based on comments...

Keep up the good work- yours is a belter.

Thank you for the compliment. I like Geoff's blog. I was talking about content before, and there's lots to be had on Geoff's. 

He wonders about the lack of comments. I don't know what the answer is, but the only thing I can say from my perspective is that I tend not to comment on blogs where an email is asked for. I never understand what that is all about. The email request may not be a required item, and even if it is can easily be got around - but it is off-putting. My advice is to ditch asking for the email of commenters entirely. My suspicion is that that the number of comments you receive will increase.

500 to 5000... to 0

There seems to be two main pitfalls lying in wait for us blogging type people. The first one is really the same pitfall that any bettor faces  (whether they happen to be blogging about their progress and betting thoughts or not), whilst the second one is completely blogging-related.

Number one pitfall is that we will fail as bettors or traders. Now there are people failing to master betting or trading everyday, of course, but perhaps if you're also blogging about your activity, the failure is just that bit more ignominious. This is a public failure for all those regular readers (which admittedly is often not that many) to see.

Number two pitfall is writer's block, running out of ideas or just getting plain bored with blogging. There are a lot of bloggers (and I include myself here), who start out with a rush of enthusiasm and post an entry everyday - and sometimes even more than that. They have so many things they want to discuss, so many ideas, that they're virtually bursting at the seams. Some bloggers, however, soon start to falter. The ideas thin-out, the enthusiasm wanes, the posts begin to appear less frequently.

Often, there is a large pause between entries, followed by a couple of entries posted-up with an accompanying apology. Later, there is an admission of defeat and a goodbye post.

From what I've seen so far, 18 months seems to be a key time. Many apparently give-up around this time - whilst those who can break through this barrier seem to go on from strength to strength.

The reason I'm waffling on about this is because another blog has hit the dirt today. 500 to 5000 has decided to hang-up his keyboard after saying he's lost too much money (pitfall number one). I can't say that I read his blog on any regular basis - mainly because each entry was very terse and there didn't seem to be a great deal of content.

But, this was a fellow blogger, and as a member of our little community, his blog added to the diversity. For that reason, I'm sorry to see him go.

I suppose him shuffling off into the distance also shines a light on my own little blog. I'm coming up to one year's worth of entries on here, and so do want to ensure that I continue on through the 18-month barrier and beyond. I feel that I've still quite a number of interesting entries up my sleeve that I haven't laid out for you yet. I also still really enjoy my blogging and like to touch base with you all out there from time to time. I know that I will never be as prolific as someone like Cassini, but then again who is?

So, it's another one down, but this one rolls on. And any new blogs that start up? Well, you're very welcome. The more the merrier.

Two's Company

Gundulf from Betfair Football Trading - the highs and the lows posted the other day about making a mistake. He'd left a keep bet in-play and forgot about it, allowing it to be gobbled-up by some lucky punter.

Silly man, I said to myself. Glad I didn't do anything so foolish.

Right, so we move onto yesterday's trading. I couldn't really make up my mind about what approach I wanted to take as nothing really stood out for me. So, I decided to just settle for scalping last night. Things started off slowly, but I slowly built-up an okay figure for the evening and then decided to call it a day. A profit for the evening of about £74. Not exactly earth-shattering, but a profit is a profit.

When all the markets had settled, I went to update my P/L spreadsheet... and found this:


Football: -£126.31 | Tote: |  Total P&L:  -£126.31  


Football Showing 1 - 8 of 8 markets 

Market Start time Settled date Profit/loss (£) 
Football / Middlesbrough v Sheff Wed : Correct Score 09-Nov-12 19:45  09-Nov-12 21:40  34.14 
Football / Mainz v Nurnberg : Match Odds 09-Nov-12 19:30  09-Nov-12 21:31  -10.00 
Football / Middlesbrough v Sheff Wed : Over/Under 3.5 Goals 09-Nov-12 19:45  09-Nov-12 21:23  3.53 
Football / Middlesbrough v Sheff Wed : Over/Under 2.5 Goals 09-Nov-12 19:45  09-Nov-12 21:06  -179.73 
Football / Mainz v Nurnberg : Over/Under 2.5 Goals 09-Nov-12 19:30  09-Nov-12 20:21  6.18 
Football / FC Koln v Duisburg : Correct Score 09-Nov-12 17:00  09-Nov-12 18:55  14.38 
Football / Erzgebirge v Braunschweig : Over/Under 2.5 Goals 09-Nov-12 17:00  09-Nov-12 18:49  2.16 
Football / Erzgebirge v Braunschweig : Over/Under 1.5 Goals 09-Nov-12 17:00  09-Nov-12 18:28  3.03 


Erm, sorry? What is that all about? I made money, not lost money.

I have to say I was a bit flabbergasted. How can my profit be a loss? I tried to retrace my steps, and even now am not totally sure what I did - but after working out what had happened, I suspect that I inadvertently placed an order into the 2.5 market thinking it was the 3.5 market and then duly forgot about it.

Oh dear. School boy error.

The funny thing is I don't really feel too bad about this loss. It's not as if I made a bad trading decision. This was just a silly mistake, pure and simple. It's also a combination of events that I cannot see happening again.

Those, of course, are famous last words.

And you've chanted back

A few comments from my last post:


puppyguts6 November 2012 09:40
i fully agree with you mate..... i thought it was ridiculous with the whole terry incident and how it went to court! before that happened i had no idea you could sue someone for a single act of verbal racism. the F.A. should have stepped in immediate and slapped terry with a ban, they don't waste time handing out silly punishments when a ref is criticized! that whole terry saga made EPL look a joke.

Baz6 November 2012 09:42
Prosecution will tell this person that his racist behaviour is entirely unacceptable to the majority in society, it is how we set and enforce acceptable behaviour.

AL6 November 2012 10:21
you've gone and done it now - the thought police will be all over you

Average Guy6 November 2012 11:42
Amen to that

General agreement with my view it seems, with the exception of Baz6. The problem, as I see it, is where to draw the line. Should we prosecute everyone who makes a gesture? What about all those people that are not caught on camera? Should they be prosecuted also? What about putting two fingers up at someone? Should that be punished too? With all the serious crimes that are perpetrated every day, do we really want our police force dedicating their time to arresting people for being rude?

It's up to you to decide, but you know my view.

________________________________________

Enjoyable night trading tonight. Plenty of ideas and opportunities flying around, and with so many matches on at once, it's easy to get spread too thin or to think that you must be active on a mass of markets. For me, unless I'm employing a particular strategy across the board, then I'll try and be relatively selective on my trades, depending on what's happening at the time.

So, with several Champions League matches being played, along with a full set of fixtures for the Championship, League One, Two and the Conference, I traded only a small handful of markets.


Football: £52.91 | Tote: |  Total P&L:  £52.91  


   
Football Showing 1 - 4 of 4 markets 

Market Start time Settled date Profit/loss (£) 
Football / Charlton v Cardiff : Match Odds 06-Nov-12 19:45  06-Nov-12 21:44  25.66 
Football / Gillingham v Cheltenham : Match Odds 06-Nov-12 19:45  06-Nov-12 21:41  -6.48 
Football / Derby v Barnsley : Match Odds 06-Nov-12 19:45  06-Nov-12 21:36  31.50 
Football / Yeovil v Stevenage : Over/Under 2.5 Goals 06-Nov-12 19:45  06-Nov-12 20:52  2.23 

Also had a couple of straight bets tonight (not on Betfair). Both were asians. One win and one scratch.

Monkey Chanting

According to The Sun newspaper, the police have arrested the man who directed monkey chants towards Danny Welbeck in the Chelsea match last week.

The guy who did it is obviously a moron but I don't really want to talk about him at any length. Football will be a better place when that type of person is forced to stop attending football matches. The match is supposed to be entertainment and nothing more. Violence was a thing of the seventies and eighties, of which I saw my own share, and it's not something we want to allow back in to the game - in any form.

But perhaps just the smallest bit of perspective is required here. Chelsea football club announced last week that they were "investigating the situation" to try and find the culprit. I was a bit surprised when I heard that, but fair enough. That's up to them. If they want to spend their money and resources on trying to find this little wanker then that's their business. They're a private company and they can do what they want.

However, when I heard the police were also investigating the incident, I sat up and took notice. What? The police? I'm sorry, but was someone robbed? Did someone die? Did some kind of assault take place?

Erm, no. Some prat made a gesture.

Come on. Please. Are we really going to start wasting public money on this sort of shit now? Aren't there any real crimes left to investigate? I don't personally know Danny Welbeck, but he looks like a grown-up to me. I'm sure he's not going to shrivel-up and die because someone has called him a name or made a childish gesture towards him. Welbeck doesn't know this tosser in the crowd and I'm sure the affect is no worse than a fly landing on his shoulder. Why should he be affected by someone who means absolutely nothing to him?

Well, we can't and shouldn't tolerate racism in any form, some might say. It's a slippery slope.

Yes, okay. I'm not suggest we tolerate it. Just ban the little turd and that be the end of it? What the hell are the police doing wasting their time (and our money) on this sort of nonsense.

I'm sorry. I just don't get it.

Nil-Two? Lay, Lay, Lay!

During a recent trading session, Gundulf from Betfair Football Trading - the highs and the lows spotted an in-play opportunity. It was a short way into the second-half, and Bochum were two goals down at home to Energie Cottbus. He declared that he was laying Cottbus – and I think to most of us in the chat room, this seemed like a decent enough bet. It was low liability and with the natural home side advantage, it “felt” like it should pay-off.

I didn’t follow Dave on this bet, but it worked beautifully for him. Bochum got one back, so Dave removed his liability but kept the trade going. Bochum duly equalised and the match finished 2-2. Great stuff. Well done to him. A classic example of how trading in-play can work.

I thought to myself at the time that laying an away side under these circumstances should be a decent trade almost every time – but you know me: I like to check these things, so I looked back at my old data to find out how the trade would perform over the long-term.

I don’t only keep the data from football-data, but I also hold actual score time data too. Ironypirate from Scatter Gun Trading recently asked me what data sources I use, but I don’t have any amazing sources I’m afraid. I did once write a screenscraper to pull score data down, but I don’t think I did it very well as I soon got blocked by the website in question. Nowadays I manually download the raw score data from soccerway.com and have built myself a cool spready to automatically interpret it in its raw form and convert it for immediate analysis. I’m sure there are many people who do it in a much simpler way, but each league only takes me about 30 seconds a week to keep up-to-date, so it’s not too arduous a task.

So, using this score data, I ran some imaginary trades based on the following criteria:

• Home team two goals down in the first n minutes. I made n a variable so that I could determine the optimum time that a lay should be placed. For example, it wouldn’t make a great deal of sense to lay an away team that had just gone two goals up with one minute remaining (although some of you may disagree). 
• If the home team only manage to pull one goal back after 75 minutes, then I’ve deemed that a losing trade. If, of course they have gone on equalise then I have marked that down as a full-win trade. 
• On pulling a goal back, this is treated as a 50% win of the lay stake (again you may disagree here. It obviously depends on how quickly they score). 

One thing that I have noticed whilst running these imaginary trades is that letting a bet run after the home team have got one goal back is, generally speaking, not the way the trade should be managed. This is in spite of Dave doing precisely that over the weekend and him reaping the rewards. Based on my figures, if a trader always lets the trade run, then they would end the season in the red.

The good news, however, is that all our instincts are correct. Laying the away team when they are two goals up does seem to be a profitable trade. Cottbus scored their 2nd goal in the 52nd minute over the weekend, but based on my analysis that game should then have been ignored as a trade possibility. The best time to lay the away team is if they are two up before half-time. After that, the ROI is negatively affected.

I ran my tests across several Premier League and several Championship seasons and each one proved a winning season using this strategy. Not one losing season. The ROIs went anywhere from 4% up to 30%. As you can imagine, there are not a huge number of bets for each league – maybe 20 to 30 on average – but if you multiply this number across all the top leagues in Europe, then you certainly have 100 to 150 bets a year that you can deal with. Add-in some additional filters such as ignoring a rampant Bayern Munich away to an out-of-form team at the bottom of the league like Augsburg, then the profit levels could be increased even further. Individual judgments could also be made to let bets run on a few selected matches – perhaps where the home team is particularly strong. Anyway, you get the idea.

The point is that, even if you apply no filters and blind lay each away team that goes two goals up in the first-half, then over the course of a season, you will almost certainly be in profit. Just remember to green-up after the first home goal (okay Dave?).

________________________________________________

Well I don’t remember the last time I regaled you all with how I’m doing personally. I seem to have got out of the habit of supplying a P/L but it’s not my intention for that to be so. The month of October was pretty crap for me. I had a decent start and a decent end, but the middle was something of a dog’s breakfast. Only just scraped into profit:

Soccer: £237.08 | Tote: | Total P&L: £237.08  


Soccer Showing 1 - 20 of 142 markets 

Market Start time Settled date Profit/loss (£) 

Soccer / Norwich v Tottenham : Match Odds 31-Oct-12 19:45  31-Oct-12 21:39  0.00 
Soccer / Chelsea v Man Utd : Correct Score 31-Oct-12 19:45  31-Oct-12 21:39  43.75 
Soccer / Inter v Sampdoria : Match Odds 31-Oct-12 19:45  31-Oct-12 21:38  33.28 
Soccer / Fortuna Dusseldorf v Mgladbach : Match Odds 31-Oct-12 19:30  31-Oct-12 21:20  -60.00 
Soccer / Chelsea v Man Utd : Over/Under 3.5 Goals 31-Oct-12 19:45  31-Oct-12 20:54  13.12 
Soccer / Huesca v Barcelona B : Match Odds 31-Oct-12 19:00  31-Oct-12 20:49  17.14 
Soccer / Chelsea v Man Utd : Over/Under 2.5 Goals 31-Oct-12 19:45  31-Oct-12 20:28  -10.00 
Soccer / Huesca v Barcelona B : Over/Under 2.5 Goals 31-Oct-12 19:00  31-Oct-12 20:27  5.61 
Soccer / Rio Ave v Freamunde : Match Odds 31-Oct-12 18:00  31-Oct-12 19:52  -26.63 
Soccer / Kickers Offenbach v Union Berlin : Match Odds 31-Oct-12 18:00  31-Oct-12 19:49  30.00 
Soccer / Montpellier v Bordeaux : Match Odds 31-Oct-12 17:45  31-Oct-12 19:41  23.77 
Soccer / Wigan v Bradford : Over/Under 2.5 Goals 30-Oct-12 19:45  30-Oct-12 21:36  -50.00 
Soccer / Wigan v Bradford : Correct Score 30-Oct-12 19:45  30-Oct-12 21:36  -7.00 
Soccer / Cambuur v Telstar : Correct Score 30-Oct-12 19:00  30-Oct-12 20:52  -4.00 
Soccer / Cambuur v Telstar : Over/Under 2.5 Goals 30-Oct-12 19:00  30-Oct-12 20:52  10.46 
Soccer / Sheff Utd v Portsmouth : Over/Under 1.5 Goals 29-Oct-12 19:45  29-Oct-12 21:38  11.44 
Soccer / Sheff Utd v Portsmouth : Over/Under 2.5 Goals 29-Oct-12 19:45  29-Oct-12 21:38  2.46 
Soccer / Sheff Utd v Portsmouth : Correct Score 29-Oct-12 19:45  29-Oct-12 21:38  28.73 
Soccer / Chelsea v Man Utd : Correct Score 28-Oct-12 16:00  28-Oct-12 17:53  0.00 
Soccer / Southampton v Tottenham : Match Odds 28-Oct-12 15:00  28-Oct-12 16:52  -1.01 

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 of 8 Pages  


This month is going okay so far, I suppose, but it’s no great shakes. We’ll see how it all pans-out. Last couple of days trading below:


Soccer: £341.61 | Tote: | Total P&L: £341.61  


Soccer Showing 1 - 18 of 27 markets 


Market Start time Settled date Profit/loss (£) 

Soccer / Liverpool v Newcastle : Over/Under 2.5 Goals 04-Nov-12 16:00  04-Nov-12 17:54  30.50 
Soccer / Liverpool v Newcastle : Correct Score 04-Nov-12 16:00  04-Nov-12 17:54  46.46 
Soccer / Liverpool v Newcastle : Over/Under 1.5 Goals 04-Nov-12 16:00  04-Nov-12 17:26  -10.11 
Soccer / QPR v Reading : Over/Under 2.5 Goals 04-Nov-12 13:30  04-Nov-12 15:23  32.14 
Soccer / QPR v Reading : Correct Score 04-Nov-12 13:30  04-Nov-12 15:23  27.52 
Soccer / AZ Alkmaar v VVV : Match Odds 04-Nov-12 13:30  04-Nov-12 15:22  1.90 
Soccer / West Ham v Man City : Correct Score 03-Nov-12 17:30  03-Nov-12 19:25  36.88 
Soccer / West Ham v Man City : Over/Under 1.5 Goals 03-Nov-12 17:30  03-Nov-12 19:25  15.34 
Soccer / West Ham v Man City : Over/Under 2.5 Goals 03-Nov-12 17:30  03-Nov-12 19:25  12.29 
Soccer / Dortmund v Stuttgart : Match Odds 03-Nov-12 14:30  03-Nov-12 16:27  -50.00 
Soccer / Nurnberg v Wolfsburg : Match Odds 03-Nov-12 14:30  03-Nov-12 16:25  29.32 
Soccer / Hoffenheim v Schalke : Match Odds 03-Nov-12 14:30  03-Nov-12 16:20  14.90 
Soccer / Man Utd v Arsenal : Correct Score 03-Nov-12 12:45  03-Nov-12 14:44  19.35 
Soccer / Man Utd v Arsenal : Over/Under 2.5 Goals 03-Nov-12 12:45  03-Nov-12 14:38  68.51 
Soccer / Brighton v Leeds : Over/Under 4.5 Goals 02-Nov-12 19:45  02-Nov-12 21:42  1.19 
Soccer / Brighton v Leeds : Correct Score 02-Nov-12 19:45  02-Nov-12 21:42  4.59 
Soccer / Eintracht Frankfurt v G Furth : Over/Under 2.5 Goals 02-Nov-12 19:30  02-Nov-12 21:22  -1.05 
Soccer / Eintracht Frankfurt v G Furth : Correct Score 02-Nov-12 19:30  02-Nov-12 21:20  14.04