Backing the underdogs in the NRL

nrl1The NRL season is about to start this Friday. It’s looking to be a great season with Parramatta slight bookie favourites over last years premiership team Melbourne Storm. Sportpunter’s NRL model has done exceptionally well over the years, making over 10% ROI since 2002 on 900 bets.

The next few days we will be giving you all the analysis about the NRL model with the anticipation of the new season about to start. But to start off with, here is some amazing statistics about how one would have gone blind betting teams since 2003.  Blind betting basically means that we will back each team no matter what to win $100. How would we have gone in certain circumstances? The results are shown below.

#Bets#Wins%Wins$Bet$Profit%ROI
Home151888258.1% $89,491.49 -$1,141.49 -1.3%
Away151863641.9% $66,913.50 -$3,463.50 -5.2%
#Bets#Wins%Wins$Bet$Profit%ROI
Hosting Interstate89253059.4% $53,674.46 -$524.46-1.0%
No Interstate123661850.0% $63,654.07 -$1,854.07 -2.9%
Travelling Interstate89236240.6% $38,253.69 -$2,203.69 -5.8%

The first table, as shown above looks at betting home teams or away teams. A 1.3% loss was made blind betting the home team, whilst a 5.2% loss was made blind betting the away team. Hence, the home ground advantage is probably a little underrated by the bookmakers and general public.

This is also shown in the results for when hosting a team travelling interstate or betting on a team that is travelling interstate. A greater profit, or perhaps I should say, a smaller loss, was made for the host team to a travelling team.

Interesting statistics, but not all that useful. What is useful is the statistics below which look at how we would have gone blind betting teams at certain odds.

Odds#Bets#Wins%Wins$Bet$Profit%ROI
11.213911280.6% $12,322.31 -$1,022.31 -8.3%
1.21.433824371.9% $26,146.71 -$1,646.71 -6.3%
1.41.648331164.4% $32,352.89 -$902.89-2.8%
1.61.833217953.9% $19,775.25 -$1,875.25 -9.5%
1.8229415352.0% $15,555.93 -$255.93-1.6%
22.548222646.9% $21,781.14 $768.863.5%
2.5338513936.1% $14,156.33 -$556.33-3.9%
350058315526.6% $14,314.43 $885.576.2%
TOTAL3036151850.0% $156,404.98 -$4,604.98 -2.9%
Odds#Bets#Wins%Wins$Bet$Profit%ROI
22.222311451.1% $10,715.58 $684.426.4%
2.22.41707946.5% $7,410.70 $439.305.9%
2.42.72508734.8% $9,879.46 -$1,229.46 -12.4%
2.732248537.9% $7,931.72 $318.284.0%
33.51845731.0% $5,789.53 -$189.53-3.3%
3.541073028.0% $2,915.59 -$15.59-0.5%
451353425.2% $3,074.10 $325.9010.6%
55001573421.7% $2,535.22 $764.7830.2%
TOTAL145052035.9% $50,251.90 $1,098.10 2.2%

Amazingly as shown above a profit was made betting all underdogs. That is blind betting all teams with odds of 2.00 or more, made a profit of 2.2% ROI. This is quite substantial, and the second of the two tables above looks at this race a little more closely.

Betting on teams with odds of 2.00 to 4.00 basically broke even, which obviously means that betting on teams with odds of greater than 4.00 has been amazingly successful. In fact, if one had bet every large underdog with odds of 4.00 or more, you would have made a profit of 19.4% ROI from 292 bets. On average that’s 36 bets per year.

The bias in the odds in massive. And we will be looking at certain circumstances where this might well be even more highlighted. What happens about big outsiders when home teams or when the opponent is travelling interstate. We will look at this in the next article, as well as an indepth analysis of Sportpunter’s NRL Model.

To sign up to the Sportpunter’s NRL model in 2010 click here.

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3 Responses to Backing the underdogs in the NRL

  1. Sportpunter says:

    and the theory comes up trumps with Newcastle getting up at 4.45

  2. james says:

    Do you think the market would have corrected the underdog bias this season, either the bookies making the odds or the money driving the market?

  3. admin says:

    well this article was written in 2010, and I believe the bias has changed since then. But its kinda like the fav/longshot bias. The bookies know that the money comes on the favs.

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