My Lays for today ...

mayoman1973

Going to see how these few go today ... Lay the away team in each case. Anyone see any value in these?
Oct-29 England Conference South - Farnborough Town v Bath Lay away @ 2.9
Oct-29 Spain Primera Liga - Espanyol v Malaga Lay away @ 3.7
Oct-29 Poland Ekstraklasa- Pogon Szczecin v Piast Gliwice Lay away @ 3.5
Oct-29 Poland Ekstraklasa - Wisla Krakow v Widzew Lodz Lay away @ 7.8
Oct-29 Brazil Serie B - America Mineiro v Paysandu Lay away @ 5.2
Oct-29 Iran Pro League - Esteghlal v Mes Kerman Lay away @ 9

Matt_Trakker

mayoman1973 wrote: »

Going to see how these few go today ... Lay the away team in each case. Anyone see any value in these?
Oct-29 England Conference South - Farnborough Town v Bath Lay away @ 2.9
Oct-29 Spain Primera Liga - Espanyol v Malaga Lay away @ 3.7
Oct-29 Poland Ekstraklasa- Pogon Szczecin v Piast Gliwice Lay away @ 3.5
Oct-29 Poland Ekstraklasa - Wisla Krakow v Widzew Lodz Lay away @ 7.8
Oct-29 Brazil Serie B - America Mineiro v Paysandu Lay away @ 5.2
Oct-29 Iran Pro League - Esteghlal v Mes Kerman Lay away @ 9

How did they go?

Personally I rarely lay the underdog, I find it better to lay the fav (away from home) and maybe back a few Correct Scores as cover.
Also, something I read in The Numbers Game (great book), according to their research, it's only 60% of the time that favourites in football win. Therefore, if you back or dutch, the draw and the home win when an underdog is at home, you should turn a profit over the long term.

For example, last weekend PL fixtures, games where an underdog was playing at home:
Sunderland Vs Newcastle (home win won)
Crystal Palace Vs Arsenal (away win - bet would've lost)

The previous weekend, it would've been Newcastle Vs Liverpool, (draw bet win) & Arsenal at West Brom (Draw bet win)

The guys over at http://thegoallist.co/ write about this:
Their selections are free, but their grading system/reports are available for a fee.

paulo6891

Matt_Trakker wrote: »

Also, something I read in The Numbers Game (great book), according to their research, it's only 60% of the time that favourites in football win. Therefore, if you back or dutch, the draw and the home win when an underdog is at home, you should turn a profit over the long term.
.

I'd say the bookies love you!

mayoman1973

lol, not going to retire yet, 3 points down after that lot.
Up 12% over the month. 122 games. It's interesting the points you make about laying the fav. Less expensive I would think. Must read that and maybe paper trade that system for a while.

Anyways check out these for today. All have 1 point lay on the away team.


Oct-30 Italy Serie A Cagliari v Bologna 1.75 3.75
Oct-30 Italy Serie A Hellas Verona v Sampdoria 2 2.75
Oct-30 Italy Serie A Juventus v Catania 1.18 16
Oct-30 Italy Serie A AC Milan v Lazio 1.73 4
Oct-30 Italy Serie A Sassuolo v Udinese 2.88 1.4
Oct-30 Spain Primera Liga Valencia v Almeria 1.4 7
Oct-30 Spain Primera Liga Real Madrid v Sevilla 1.18 12
Oct-30 Belgium Juliper League Genk v Kortrijk 1.53 5
Oct-30 Belgium Juliper League Charleroi v KV Mechelen 3 1.3
Oct-30 Belgium Juliper League Zulte Waregem v Gent 2 2.75
Oct-30 Belgium Juliper League Oud Heverlee v Mons 1.91 3
Oct-30 Belgium Juliper League Lokeren v Lierse 1.44 6.5
Oct-30 China Super League Dalian Aerbing FC v Liaoning Hongyun 2 2.75
Oct-30 China Super League Shanghai Shenhua v Changchun Yatai 4 0.83
Oct-30 China Super League Tianjin Teda v Guangzhou R F 1.8 3.33

paulo6891

Hi mayoman, to the right you have two figures (eg 1.8 and 3.33 in the last one), what exactly does this mean? The 1st one looks like the home team's price, but I can't figure out the 2nd one? Some sort of draw no bet price?

Also, when you say you're 12% up... just to make sure, when you lay a team at 5.0 for 1 point and they lose, what is your percentage winnings?

mayoman1973

the price on the right is the price I got to lay the away team. so the last one has a lay liability of 2.33 X my stake
When I lay a team at 5.0 my liability is 4 X my stake
My total over the past month or so is on last 122 games I made a lay on, I won 99 and lost 23.
Of the 23 I lost the average liability was around 3 points. So in short my bank is 12% higher than it was on Sept 21st. To keep it real I just play with £2 per point.
Today had 12 out of 15 but there was a -7 stinker in the pot so today is -0.15.
I have scraped data off odds portal for the past 2 yrs for some of the leagues.
Adopting the simple formula of lay the underdog if the fav is at home would have produced around a 35% gain both years on the French league 1, the same approach with England Div1 would have put you out on the street with losses of 30%.
Its a bit mad I think how there can be such a deviation between leagues. Eng Conf South would also have produced a healthy profit the past 3 yrs.
Even this year, Eng Div1 is in (-) while France is again in +
An interesting fact I pulled from analysing the odds of the underdogs that win when away from home is in both leagues the average liability is almost 3 on the button, only diff is in England the ratio of losing lays vs wins is around 3 to 1 while iin france it's over 4.5 to one. I can't imagine there is anything to this but while I'm not losing a fortune and like crunching numbers I will keep at it.

Matt_Trakker

paulo6891 wrote: »

I'd say the bookies love you!

You can mug bet all you want brother, stats and trends are where it's at. :pac:

paulo6891

mayoman1973 wrote: »

I have scraped data off odds portal for the past 2 yrs for some of the leagues.
Adopting the simple formula of lay the underdog if the fav is at home would have produced around a 35% gain both years on the French league 1

I don't want to be a kill joy but are you sure you're doing it right?

I had a look at Ligue 1 over the last 2 seasons, and laying the underdog in every match where the home team was a favourite yielded a profit of 1.6% after 576 bets

Also, the prices on the right aren't the correct prices for the away team.

e.g.
Oct-30 Italy Serie A Hellas Verona v Sampdoria 2 2.75

if we're saying that Hellas are 2.0 and Samp are 2.75, that makes the draw around 6/1 which we know it is not.

Its a bit mad I think how there can be such a deviation between leagues.

The law of averages my friend!

mayoman1973

@ Matt, what do you mean by trends?

Aside, Just threw this years PL games into the pot.
48 out of 62 ( Fav at home ) games produced a win when laying the away team.
Total profit of -6.
France1 in the same period produced +22 for 42 out of 50 games.
Will be interesting to see what way this wknds programe goes if I just stick to my same dumb method .... France1 all the way.

As luck would have it , it's 6 games in each league that qualify this wknd. I expect a profit of +3 pts from the french games, The PL ones could leave me bankrupt

18:30 Paris SG - Lorient 1.19 6.58 15.64
15:00 Rennes - Marseille 2.64 3.14 2.77
18:00 Ajaccio - Valenciennes 2.48 3.05 3.04
18:00 Reims - Bastia 2.20 3.21 3.40 17
18:00 Evian TG - Toulouse 2.62 3.08 2.82
18:00 Lyon - Guingamp 1.90 3.34 4.29


14:00 Hull City - Sunderland 2.08 3.34 3.64
14:00 Manchester City - Norwich 1.20 6.72 13.92
14:00 West Brom - Crystal Palace 1.54 4.08 6.23
14:00 West Ham - Aston Villa 2.16 3.36 3.41
16:30 Arsenal - Liverpool 2.23 3.39 3.22
12:30 Everton - Tottenham 2.47 3.27 2.91

mayoman1973

@paulo6891
The skeptic in me says it's just a lucky run I'm on. My program pulls in all the results for a given league,
Here are all the french games this year. odds are from odds portal, so for instance the
Monaco v Lyon game was one I picked, that had a lay liability of 6.2
71 out of the 84 games came in, the 13 that didn't made a hole in the bank to the tune of around 40 points. ( These are only average odds across all bookies, betfair would be slightly higher ) I didn't but if I had done, just layed the away team each time I'd be around 30 Points better off.
I guess the true % gain as you put it is % staked vs returns which is probably something like an average liability of 5 points per game for an over all gain of 30
5 x 71 = 355
Gain of 30
Profit = approx 10%
I guess saying I'm 30 points up after laying on 70 games does make nicer reading.
Once again notice the average lay liability of the losing games is around 3 .....
So the holy grail is getting a strike rate around 80% upwards ( and ideally without having to rely on laying teams at odds of 10 or more which could leave you in deep s**t )
Interestingly about 1 in 30-35 games with odds of above 10 would have lost. So with those stats it's more than worth it to take the risk of laying a high odds team.
Again, law of averages, if I do this across all leagues then I lose overall. My plan is to find the leagues which for what ever reason are consistently going with the bookies pre match expectations.

Game Home v Away Home odds - Away Odds
Won: Monaco v Lyon 1.5 6.92
Won: Bordeaux v Montpellier 2.08 3.81
Won: Bastia v Nice 2.41 3.08
Won: Guingamp v Ajaccio 1.61 5.85
Won: Lorient v Sochaux 1.75 4.98
Lost: Toulouse v Rennes 1.95 4.19
Lost: Valenciennes v Evian TG 1.96 3.98
Lost: Marseille v Reims 1.6 6.35
Lost: Nantes v Lille 2.64 2.88
Won: Lyon v Bordeaux 2.11 3.54
Won: St Etienne v Lorient 1.61 5.83
Lost: Evian TG v Guingamp 2.31 3.18
Won: Rennes v Valenciennes 1.79 4.7
Won: Paris SG v Bastia 1.25 12.53
Lost: Reims v Toulouse 2.7 2.73
Won: Bordeaux v Sochaux 1.61 6.18
Won: Montpellier v Lyon 2.34 3.15
Won: Guingamp v Rennes 2.2 3.38
Won: Lille v Ajaccio 1.36 10.07
Won: Nantes v Evian TG 1.76 4.93
Won: Toulouse v Nice 2.14 3.57
Won: Valenciennes v Reims 2.13 3.62
Won: Monaco v St Etienne 1.56 6.54
Won: Bastia v Lorient 2.33 3.13
Lost: Rennes v Nantes 2.28 3.32
Won: Evian TG v Bordeaux 2.55 2.85
Won: Lyon v Lille 2.72 2.73
Won: Nice v Guingamp 2.05 3.78
Won: Sochaux v Valenciennes 2.43 3.07
Won: St Etienne v Bastia 1.55 6.52
Won: Paris SG v Toulouse 1.3 10.7
Lost: Lorient v Marseille 2.67 2.75
Won: Montpellier v Rennes 2.04 3.84
Won: Monaco v Bastia 1.27 11.37
Won: Bordeaux v Reims 1.79 4.86
Won: Guingamp v Sochaux 1.82 4.57
Won: Nantes v Nice 2.23 3.44
Won: Toulouse v Lorient 1.89 4.43
Won: Marseille v St Etienne 2.11 3.72
Won: Lille v Evian TG 1.55 6.41
Won: Paris SG v Monaco 1.75 4.71
Won: Lyon v Nantes 1.78 4.85
Won: Nice v Valenciennes 1.84 4.53
Won: Lorient v Bordeaux 2.35 3.25
Won: Reims v Guingamp 2.16 3.56
Won: Evian TG v Montpellier 2.36 3.1
Won: Rennes v Ajaccio 1.65 5.59
Lost: St Etienne v Toulouse 1.8 4.78
Won: Lyon v Rennes 1.91 4.24
Lost: Lille v Nice 1.69 5.48
Won: Monaco v Lorient 1.33 9.68
Lost: Ajaccio v Evian TG 2.5 2.96
Won: Guingamp v Bastia 1.95 4.12
Won: Montpellier v Reims 1.81 4.92
Won: Nantes v Sochaux 1.8 4.8
Won: Nice v Montpellier 2.18 3.51
Won: St Etienne v Bordeaux 2.28 3.46
Won: Bastia v Toulouse 2.61 2.87
Won: Reims v Nantes 2.34 3.2
Won: Lorient v Valenciennes 1.85 4.5
Won: Sochaux v Ajaccio 2.08 3.75
Won: Paris SG v Guingamp 1.18 17.04
Won: Ajaccio v Nice 2.67 2.83
Won: Lille v St Etienne 2.02 4.04
Won: Bordeaux v Bastia 1.61 5.97
Lost: Evian TG v Rennes 2.33 3.2
Won: Guingamp v Lorient 2.4 3.12
Lost: Lyon v Reims 1.59 6.09
Won: Montpellier v Sochaux 1.76 4.85
Won: Monaco v Toulouse 1.42 8.15
Won: Paris SG v Ajaccio 1.18 17.44
Won: Lorient v Nantes 2.1 3.75
Won: Monaco v Montpellier 1.53 6.97
Won: Bastia v Valenciennes 2.12 3.59
Won: Nice v Rennes 2.3 3.29
Won: St Etienne v Guingamp 1.52 6.91
Won: Toulouse v Bordeaux 2.54 3.04
Won: Marseille v Evian TG 1.47 7.7
Won: Evian TG v Sochaux 2.2 3.52
Won: Lille v Lorient 1.64 5.76
Won: Lyon v Nice 1.72 5.04
Won: Nantes v Bastia 1.87 4.57
Won: Rennes v Reims 1.79 4.81
Won: Valenciennes v Toulouse 2.64 2.83

Won 71 out of 84. Gain = 32.11

paulo6891

Hi mayoman,

you're 10% approximate profit from the above games does not include betfair commission, assuming that you are using an exchange to lay. It is important to include that, it brings the above down to around 8%.

Also, your prices aren't correct there. They look like they may be average home/away prices instead of lay prices. I have subbed in the correct prices into your figures there and it gives 5.5% profit, so still profitable but just letting you know.

I meant to say the central limit theorem instead of law of averages, eventually short term trends will disappear so be careful!

mayoman1973

Doh, yea, that old betfair comission. Yea, they are all avg prices. How do you get the betfair price for all games?
As laying the away is same as backing home & draw, how do you quickly calculate the amounts to back on the home team and draw to give the same returns as laying the away team, and by definition the same losses if the away team were to lose
Say a game is listed as 1 x 2
2.0 3.5 4.0
and I want to lay the away team. So I lay £5 on them with a liability of 15 if they win, or profit of 5 if they don't. Is there an easy way to calculate what I can back the home&draws with to get the same results?

paulo6891

Well, I'm not on expert on scraping data from sites, but you could *estimate* the betfair price by looking at the maximum price on offer by any of the bookmakers on oddsportal. Chances are that at least one of them is close to the betfair price. Obviously the best practice is just to go onto betfair on a friday night/saturday morning and just take a screenshot of prices.

If a team is 4.0 to lay and you put 1 euro on it, your total liability (/stake) is 3 euro. So putting 3 euro on a home/draw bet is going to be the same thing (i.e. the lay price minus one). If a team is 4.0 to lay, the other team/draw will be approximately be 1.33 (3/1 turns into 1/3). A 3 euro stake on this returns 1 euro if it wins and -3 euro if it loses -> same thing.

mayoman1973

A sample game on betfair ...........
To lay away is available @ 4.2
Home/Draw double chance is available to back at 1.19
Why the big discrepancy? An away loss will give me £1.25 if I take a lay liability of £4
If I back home/draw with the same money I only win 76p. An 80% difference. How does that work?

Matt_Trakker

mayoman1973 wrote: »

@ Matt, what do you mean by trends?

Like I said, when an underdog faces a strong opponent at home, backing the home team to win and/or the draw will lead to a profit.

See attachment

What data mining software do you use?

paulo6891

mayoman1973 wrote: »

A sample game on betfair ...........
To lay away is available @ 4.2
Home/Draw double chance is available to back at 1.19
Why the big discrepancy?

the discrepancy arises due to the fact that there is more liquidity in the W-D-W markets than the double chance markets. That 1.19 will increase to around 1.3 before KO as long as the 4.2 stays constant.

Plus, I wouldn't pay too much attention to Matt! Again, the central limit theorem...

Matt_Trakker

paulo6891 wrote: »

the discrepancy arises due to the fact that there is more liquidity in the W-D-W markets than the double chance markets. That 1.19 will increase to around 1.3 before KO as long as the 4.2 stays constant.

Plus, I wouldn't pay too much attention to Matt! Again, the central limit theorem...

Whatevs Paulo, the proof is in the attachment. :rolleyes:

paulo6891

it doesn't contain very much data though? I can't make sense of it!

mayoman1973

just a bit of javascript I cobbled together myself, problem is accessing oddsportal DB directly which would be the best method but I neither know if this can be done or how to

mayoman1973

Guys, see the game
Salisbury - Hereford
the best prices across the 1 X 2 markets are
2.07 3.50 4.10

Now instead of going to betfair where I get a lay on away team of something silly like 4.3 I want to back the home team AND also back the Draw.
Now a Double chance on the home team gives me very poor results ( with the same bookie ) vs backing both home and draw seperately.
What's the simpleist way to calculate what I need to put on each home and Draw to get exactly a £5 return regardless of which outcome , home or draw happens. I'm not concerned about my losses if away wins. Just wrecking my head this is ... I work as a java programmer ( Just don't buy any software I write your thinking if he can't figure out this simple problem)

Matt_Trakker

Well you coulda asked instead of having a dig man

Anyway.... the attachment
First line:
Home Underdog (Cat 4) Vs Away Favorite (Cat 1)

Category ratings are based on odds

If away favorite is below 2.5 and & home underdog is above 2.9 then back the home win & draw

The attachment showed that over the past few seasons (probably shoulda said that but I forgot) that youd be up a nice amount if you back the home 'dog win and draw in these types of games

The 2nd line:
Home favorite (Cat 1 [below 1.6]) Vs Away 'dog (Cat 4 [over 5.5])

This shows that if you back the home win, youd be down over the long term so laying a home favorite win would actually lead to a profit. If you back it youd be down -8.31 points, so doing the opposite will put you in profit.
same with laying the draw.
& obviously laying the 'dog. But as we know laying away 'dogs at huge prices isnt for everyone.


So, theres money to be earned by opposing favorites in football. As I said above favorites only win 60% of the time in football. So 40% of the time obviously they either draw or lose. Backing the draw/underdog thanks to higher odds will lead to a profit over the long term.

Matt_Trakker

mayoman1973 wrote: »

just a bit of javascript I cobbled together myself, problem is accessing oddsportal DB directly which would be the best method but I neither know if this can be done or how to

Maybe try the BetAngel forum, someone there might be able to point you in the right direction?
Few lads over there are good at data mining to Excel.

mayoman1973 wrote: »

Now a Double chance on the home team gives me very poor results ( with the same bookie ) vs backing both home and draw seperately.
What's the simpleist way to calculate what I need to put on each home and Draw to get exactly a £5 return regardless of which outcome , home or draw happens. )

Maybe try and write a dutching calculator into your java thing?

Dutching calculator.
http://www.oddschecker.com/betting-tools/dutching-calculator.html
For the home win (2.07) put on 10.68, for the draw (3.5) put on 6.32.
Profit will be 5.11


If ya get the dutching program in it, it could be a right wee program
Where do I sign up?

mayoman1973

If I made just 1% from a $hitload of manual work then it would be defo worth doing an analysis of how to automate the same steps via software and scale it to make a few quid. I'm pretty sure that this is what every other programmer/punter has in mind and has already tried. Any new angle I can explore is something that's worth doing. Trying to automate something that does nothing is pretty pointless

paulo6891

mayoman1973 wrote: »

Guys, see the game
Salisbury - Hereford
the best prices across the 1 X 2 markets are
2.07 3.50 4.10

Now instead of going to betfair where I get a lay on away team of something silly like 4.3 I want to back the home team AND also back the Draw.
Now a Double chance on the home team gives me very poor results ( with the same bookie ) vs backing both home and draw seperately.
What's the simpleist way to calculate what I need to put on each home and Draw to get exactly a £5 return regardless of which outcome , home or draw happens. I'm not concerned about my losses if away wins. Just wrecking my head this is ... I work as a java programmer ( Just don't buy any software I write your thinking if he can't figure out this simple problem)

Hereford are 4.1 to lay. Given that commission on BF is 5%, including that, you need to risk around 3.32 euro to win one euro profit. If you look at the double chance on offer by the bookies, (2/7) you need to risk 3.5 euro to win a euro, so in this instance, laying is the best option. Without wanting to go into much details here (time constraints) - look up asian handicaps!

And I can say for certain Matt, that your system won't work in the long run. All of the stats that you have given are utterly useless, and nobody who really knew what they were talking about would come up with such garbage! You're tricking yourself into thinking that you know what you're doing, and it's only going to lead one way...

To the OP - overall trends are useless. Things will end up averaging out. You need to try to figure out where/why the odds are wrong, and then take advantage of it. It is insufficient just to look at past records. Eg Ireland have never beaten the all blacks - does that mean that the all blacks will be 1.01 draw no bet when they meet this Autumn? I doubt that Matt will lay us 100/1 Ireland to win.


*Edit - most of the bets that people make with the bookies are on selections where the home team is short favourite - so if these systems as described above work, how are the bookmakers still in business?

mayoman1973

Is it not the case that the odds a bookies puts on an event is almost solely based on past events and trends? You can't very well base your judgement on an event that has not happened.
More goals are scored in the second half of a match than the first half around 70% of the time. Why is using that sort of data to make your decision different to saying, well the bookies got the odds spot on for 85% of last years games in france so I expect they will do the same again. Just trying to figure out what stats are useful vs useless.

paulo6891

Is it not the case that the odds a bookies puts on an event is almost solely based on past events and trends?

Not at all. There are way too many variables that change over time. e.g. Monaco were in Ligue 2 last season but started this season as the 2nd favs in the league. Looking at past stats will not tell you that. Man Utd are a shadow of the team they were, the opposite can be said of Arsenal. eg head to heads are useless in football as the teams only meet 2 times a year. There's not enough data there to come to any meaningful conclusions.

More goals are scored in the second half of a match than the first half around 70% of the time.

That's way out - it's less than 50%. There are more goals scored in the 2nd half but it's entirely logical - 1st of all there are more minutes in the 2nd half! Teams tire etc.

Matt_Trakker

paulo6891 wrote: »

And I can say for certain Matt, that your system won't work in the long run. All of the stats that you have given are utterly useless, and nobody who really knew what they were talking about would come up with such garbage! You're tricking yourself into thinking that you know what you're doing, and it's only going to lead one way...

Betting on Newcastle, the home underdog today won.
Betting on the draw lost.
Betting on Fulham, the home underdog lost,
Betting on the draw lost.

The profit from Newcastle winning means I'm up.
As I've shown from the image, the strategy works long term. :pac::pac:

I don't care if you accept it, I'm been greening up all season long thanks to it. :pac::pac:

Matt_Trakker

Cardiff were home underdog.
Cardiff win, bet won.
Draw, bet lost.