Sportpunter

On request, I decided to analyse how the soccer model has gone in the past 365 days with relation to the quality of the league. I have deicded to group the soccer leagues in terms of 5 groups, from 1 being the best most popular and more professional group, to 5 being the least popular and least professional.

Some of the leagues I will admit are in the wrong place, and there will always be debate about what leagues go in which groups, but for the meantime these will be them.

Group1:

england1
england2
france1
germany1
italy1
netherlands1
portugal1
scotland1
spain1

Group2:

austria1
belgium1
croatia1
czechia1
england3
england4
france2
germany2
greece1
ireland1
italy2
netherlands2
norway1
poland1
portugal2
scotland2
slovenia1
spain2
sweden1
switzerland1
turkey1

Group3:

argentina1
australia1
austria2
belgium2
czechia2
denmark1
england5
finland1
france3
greece2
iceland1
israel1
japan1
mexico1
norway2
poland2
russia1
scotland3
slovakia1
turkey2
usa1
wales1

Group4:

chile1
finland2
hungary1
latvia1
lithuania1
romania1
scotland4
sweden2
ukraine1
uruguay1

Group5:

ecuador1
estonia1
peru1
singapore1

And based on the above, here is how we have done in h2h betting over the past 365 days:

What is pretty clear from the above, is that as the grade becomes worse off, the %ROI becomes greater and greater. Profits are found in all groups which is pleasing, but less so in the more professional grades, which is, where you are able to bet more as well.

This makes sense to me. Lower, less followed grades probably dont have a lot of information are not studies as much as the top grades. Furthermore, the discrepancy between the best player in the team and worst player in the team is greater for the higher leagues than the lower leagues. This means that should a teams best player be missing in the lower grades, it will not make as much difference as it would the better leagues.

But still, profits in all groups is really good to see. As far as totals betting goes, the following are the results:

Better results here, with the totals results being spread relatively even amongst all the leagues. This is great news, and it tells me that the soccer totals model is basically spot on. The great records over the past few weeks has helped greatly.

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There’s plenty of new soccer leagues set to start within the next month. The following are some of the leagues that will shortly get underway:

• Chile Primera Division
• Ecuador Primera A
• Estonia Meistriliiga
• Finland Veikkausliiga
• Japan J-League
• Norway Eliteserien
• Norway 1. Divisjon
• Peru Primera Division
• Russia Premier League
• Singapore S-League
• Sweden Allsvenskan
• Sweden Superettan
• USA Major Soccer League

Also shortly to come are the following:

• Iceland Urvalsdeild
• Finland Ykkonen
• Lithuania A Lyga
• Ireland Premier League
• Latvia Virsliga
• Brazil Serie A

As well as the other 48 leagues that we are giving free predictions for already! And if anyone had checked the results for the soccer of late….if you had bet into the scottish premier league, you would have some quite well. Kilmarnock defeated Celtic at odds of 9.60!

In fact since live betting has gone underway, we’ve done amazingly well. Head to head (or 1×2) betting has netting 6.5% ROI from 3987 bets. All free predictions too.

Check out the free soccer predictions here.

Since going live on the 14/09/09, the soccer asian handicap model has basically broken even on 2677 bets. Considering the large profits made on the h2h betting, this is surprising, although it must be noted that asian handicapping is somewhat harder than simply betting on the team to win on the head. This is largely due to potential scoring ability of both teams.

More analysis into this area, and using the totals predictions will be used in the asian handicap side of the model in the not too distant future. Results are shown below.

There is not a lot to talk about in the analysis as shown above. Lower odds are favoured, which could be because of smart money moving the odds to lower amounts. This shows that we might be on the right side of the market more often than not. Also the 2.2% ROI loss on odds of 2.15 and above accentuates this.

Overlays of 20% and 22.5% and above have resulted in profits of 2.6% and 3.5% ROI respectively which are good results.

Interestingly, betting on lines of 1.0 or greater showed strong losses: 463 bets for a 5.5% ROI loss. It would be interesting to see how this went betting on home or away teams. So conversely, betting on 0.25 lines or less resulted in a 2.2% ROI profit from over 1000 bets. Either way, the results are marginal at this stage for asian handicap betting. More data, and more analysis is clearly required.

Since going live on the 14/09/09 we have made 2482 bets on totals for a very small 0.2% ROI profit – basically break even. This therefore is a great reason to have a look at where the sportpunter totals model has gone good and where is has gone bad. The analysis of these bets is shown below:

From the first table it shows that overs and unders have been equally profitable or maybe equally level. There doesn’t seem to be any major pattern with reference to better odds to bet. Perhaps a case can be made for betting with larger odds ( > 2.15), however the small sample size and the face that betting at odds of 2.10 to 2.15 negates this argument.

Having a greater minimum overlay definetly helps here. With a minimum 17.5% overlay, 500 bets were made for a profit of 6.4% ROI, and with a minimum 20% overlay 334 bets were made for a 5.9% ROI profit.

Interestingly, and maybe quite expected, most of these profits were made betting unders than overs. It has been the case in many sports, especially for example, baseball or ice hockey, that overs are bet more than unders and hence a bias occurs in the odds. It will be interesting, and we will look at it, to see if such a bias occurs here.

Overs with a minimum 17.5% and 20% overlays resulted in a -1.9% ROI and -1.6% ROI respectively, whilst Unders with the same overlays resulted in a 11.2% a and 10% ROI respectively.

Keeping in mind that the above unders bets were only 313 bets for 17.5%,  and 212 bets for 20% minimum overlays. Hence about 10% of the original number of bets.

Whilst restricting yourself to only 10% of the suggested bets might mean a leaner betting season, it could mean greater profits over the long term. The small sample size is something also to keep into account.

I wouldn’t completely change your betting strategy just yet. An analysis of the potential bias, and perhaps the bias in the greater or smaller leagues, would be well worth looking at first, which we will do.

Also interesting is the lines. Overs are profitable at 2.25 line’s and below. (505 bets at 4.5% ROI), whilst unders are profitable at the line of 2.75 and above (541 bets at 3.9% ROI).

Clearly to me this shows the market overcompensating for recent matches. I’ve seen this happen a lot in other under/over markets like baskeball and ice hockey, and it seems to be happening here. It could be just one high or low scoring match that makes the punters get on board, and the odds are moved to much in one direction for just the one match. This over compensation, gives us a good edge, and we will look at the bias in this in more detail in the future as well.

In conclusion, it would be great if overall the totals model recorded slightly better results, but perhaps restricting yourself to higher overlay under bets, as well as perhaps over bets at smaller lines, then one can obtain a greater profit.

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Since going live on the 14/9/09, sportpunter’s soccer predictions have gone very well indeed. Head to head betting has been the main avenue of success with 7.2% ROI made on 3451 bets. Totals betting has pretty much broken even in the same time frame, whilst asian handicap betting has lost marginally.

So why not do some analysis into the areas with different combinations on certain variables. This might well help us make more educated bets, not bet on certain matches given certain circumstances and also help me play with the model to produce better results.

So first up in this 3 part series, is the analysis of head to head betting. Whilst not as in depth as totals and asian will be, some will say it doesn’t need to be given the great results. The summary is given below:

As shown above, profits were made in vitually all fields. Big outsiders with probability less than 20% yielded a loss, as too did odds of over 10, and this might be looked at closer. In particular would be interesting is how big outsiders faired when away and home. I would imagine that home based big outsiders (although this very rarely and probably never occurs), would give a positive result.

In fact betting at odds of 4.5 or more only resulted in a profit if 1.1% ROI. Still a profit, but it would seem the best results occur with odds lower than this amount and realistic opportunities for a win. Are outsiders bet more than favourites so that mug punters try to win big? The favourite/longshot bias might well be playing a significant factor here, in that the shorter the odds the more likely of a potential profit, irrespective of any of Sportpunter’s suggested bets. We’ll have a look at that in the future, but for now, it seems that betting on all ranges of odds and probabilities is successful, moreso on favourites.

Higher overlays resulted in greater profits which is great to see. A good model should clearly show this. The 91% ROI profit for 100%+ overlays is interesting, and on closer examination, there are a few daggers or maybe nuggets in a few bets. I note that following bets made with high overlays and strong probabilities:

Clearly the two wales bets have the odds around the wrong way, and hence these would not have been normal bets. The Greek bet seems legit, the Russia bet is possibly legit, whilst I cannot find odds on the Ecuador bet either confirming or denying its legitimacy.

These will come up from time to time in the program, so its important to look out for them. Either way, in 3500 bets, only 5 bets are suspect which is good. The profit for this according to the betting history would decrease the profit by $1235 only. So we still have great results for higher overlays.

Interestingly overlays less than 10% lost around 3% ROI. There might be a case for having a minimum overlay of 10% or probably better 7.5% considering the large profits made in the next section 10-20% overlays.

Either way, these are great results for head to head betting, and we will look closer at totals betting in the next post.

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