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Previously we had a look at how European Basketball had gone betting head to head, and line betting. This article we will look at totals betting with the data shown here.

Overall the model has made 4.5% betting on totals. It seems to be relatively consistent on all probabilities and odds, however a minimum 10% overlay might be preferred. There are as many overs bets as unders, which bucks most of my models trends, and both have performed equally well. What is interesting is that betting over 170 or under 145 both prove losses. And this is significant with 568 bets at 8.9% ROI.

This could be due to team injuries, or a conservative model, but it could be a strategy to eliminate these bets from your portfolio, although it is a relatively small sample size.

A minimum 10% overlay has produced consistent profits over the years and when looking at the results by league as shown on this link, we see no major big winning or losing leagues, thus strengthening the power of our totals European Basketball model

We previously analysed the h2h betting for European Basketball, and in this article we will have a look at the handicap, or line betting.

As shown on this link, our line betting model has made 3.5% ROI betting overall. Though looking closely, it clearly doesn’t make a profit where the probability is less than 60% to beat the line. This indicates that smaller overlays are not profitable, which is clear when looking at the overlay table. Line bets with less than a 20% overlay have resulted in a 0.5% loss on investment, whilst betting on the line with overlay greater than 20% has produced a 6.6% return on investment from 2169 bets.

Similarly to the results found in h2h betting, the line model doesn’t seem to perform when the line is 5 or greater. In other words it struggles betting on underdogs. Perhaps a minimum overlay of 50%+ is required to bet on teams when their line is greater than 5, but this is only from a small sample size.

A 7.5% or 20% minimum overlay might be preferable overall, and whilst profits might not increase much because of these adjustments, the return on investment will.

Shown here is a list of how each league has gone betting on the line, where bets on Austrian Bundesliga have produced the best results.

The next article will look at European Basketball totals betting.

Sportpunter’s Euro Basketball model has been in operation for free since 2011, and we thought it’s about time that we gave you some analysis of how it has gone. This is the first of a three part article on the statistical analysis of the results. This one will be about head to head betting, whilst the next will be line and then totals betting.

So let’s get started. Shown on this link is a summary of all the data for European Basketball, betting h2h. It shows that the model has made a conservative 2% ROI from over 6000 bets. But when we look a little closer, we notice that it has not done well on underdogs at all. In fact, it has lost 4.9% ROI betting on teams where were rated them less than a 40% chance to win. Conversely, it has made 4.7% ROI from 3400 bets where we rated the team a 40% chance or greater.

Note also the big losses when the odds were over 6. Using a minimum overlay of 12.5% seems to be optimal, and it would seem that there is no minimal overlay to use on underdogs. So suggested bets on teams with probabilities less than 40% would be best to be ignored.

A 6.8% ROI would have been made since 2011 had you bet on European Basketball teams with probabilities greater than 40% with a minimum 12.5% overlay.

Of course, this is very selective, and it’s only because we know the past data that we can analyse it in this way. However it is useful for making a scheme to bet in the future. One has to have a logical reason why the underdogs don’t seem to be winning. If we were to bet blindly on favourites to win $100, then we would have lost 2.2% ROI. However if we were to bet blindly on underdogs, we would have lost 2.1%, so this is quite comparable. However, if we bet to win $100 on every team with odds of greater than 6, we would have lost 17.2% ROI from 842 bets.

So clearly the favourite/longshot bias is there in the sport, and it would take a very good model to beat the 17% advantage that the bookmakers have at these high odds. I also have a theory that the model is bound to be conservative for big outsiders because of the assumptions of their distribution.

Shown here is how the model has gone betting on each league, which shows Croatia losing significantly, whilst France LNB Pro A, Spain ACB, and WNBA have had great returns. It might be wise not to read anything too major into these results due to small sample sizes.

Either way, whilst the overall percent return is a modest 2%, one can make significantly more by not betting on large underdogs as well as increasing the minimum overlay.

Our free European Basketball predictions, betting history and analysis can be found on this link.

The 2015 tennis season is about to start this weekend, and once again Sportpunter will be releasing their high quality predictions for every match, including qualifiers and challengers. The Sportpunter tennis model is one of our oldest and most successful spanning over 12 years.

Every single year (with the exception of last year – and we will go into detail about that), our ATP h2h model has made a profit. And whilst we haven’t had great success with women’s h2h betting of late, we have made a profit in every year betting the line in each of the three years we have been predicting for.

Totals betting continues to impress, with the ATP model making 5.3% ROI from 3186 and in three years, with profits every year. Similarly with WTA, a 6.2% ROI has been made in the last three years (all with profit) from 2387 bets. Clearly our totals model is superior to everyone else’s.

However, with further analysis we can produce greater profits or at least stem the tide on losses. Whilst last year’s ATP h2h bets were quite disappointing, we have improved the model with some very important variables, which have proved to be significant. But also when analysing last year’s data we can see that the majority of the losses occurred when betting on underdogs. Whilst with WTA h2h betting, the underdogs did us well, making 9.2% ROI from 523 bets when the probability was less than 50%.

Strangely, it was betting on favourites in the line betting that was particularly useful in the women’s game. We made 5% ROI from 936 when the line for the match was less than zero. This could well be due to our analysis of certain players in the women’s game who have the ability to dominate and win easily, as opposed to those who struggle through victories.

We talked about how good the ATP and WTA totals model is, and whilst the majority of profits came from betting unders, overs still was profitable throughout 2014.

All the analysis can be shown on this link here, on the right hand side under “2014 Analysis”

With the long term betting history behind us, and with still great results betting the tennis, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t jump on board, or resubscribe for 2015.

Subscriptions are now open, and as previously said, the tennis season starts now with predictions already on the webpage

Click here for all the information with regards to the 2015 subs.

If you are new to Sportpunter, or even if you have subscribed for a long time, then you might not know of some of the FREE predictions that we offer.

European Basketball has always been free on our website and the results so far this year have been fantastic. This is our fourth year in a row that we have had predictions for European baseketball, and we have had an incredible last three weeks. We’ve made 20% ROI from 236 bets on totals, and we do have a long term successful record. All betting histories and current predictions which are updated at 6.15pm (jpg at 6.10pm) are available here:  http://www.sportpunter.com/sports/basketball/euro/

European Ice Hockey is also free of charge and been equally if not better performing. Our model has made 7% ROI betting on the line for 835 bets in the last 2 months. For totals betting, we have made 10% ROI from over 1100 bets since mid September. This also is our fourth year of predicting for European Ice Hockey and the free predictions and betting histories are shown here: http://www.sportpunter.com/sports/ice-hockey/euro/

Make sure you download the excel calculator and read through some of the betting analysis.

Best of punting luck

Jonathan

www.sportpunter.com

We talked previously about how Sportpunter’s NBA model excels early in the season. But today we are going to talk about Sportpunter’s new player based NBA Model. The only thing required at this stage is to estimate what the starting 5 lineup will be for each team. Given this we should see some greatly improved betting results. Keep in mind that all statistical analysis uses a hold out sample and progressive models every year.

Looking back sportpunter’s betting history, our previous model (with the data that we have played based information on) made around 1.3% ROI betting head to head since the 2011/12 season. However with the player based data, we managed to increase this to 4.7% ROI. However we did still record a loss from February onwards.
Betting on the line recorded a 0.8% ROI profit with the old model, and a 2.9% ROI profit with the new model. Similarly, a loss was recorded from Feb onwards.

And for totals betting, a 2.5% ROI profit was recorded with the old model, compared to a 3.8% ROI profit with the new player based model. The new and old models both recorded profits throughout the year.

Of course the above stats don’t include our best year betting the NBA model, the 2010/11 season.
So what does this mean? Well if we can accurately predict the starting line ups of each team we should be able to have an increased profit with the new player based model. Head to head betting and line betting is only recommended to follow until late January, whilst totals betting should be fine to go all the way throughout the season.

Subscriptions are available from the following website: http://www.sportpunter.com/sports/basketball/nba/

The NBA season starts in just over a week, and once again Sportpunter will be providing predictions. Predictions will be updated on a regular basis every day between 5pm and 6pm AEDT.

Our record has been extremely good as our betting history suggests here:
http://www.sportpunter.com/sports/basketball/nba/ with h2h betting making 1.6% ROI, line betting making 0.9% ROI and totals betting making 3.2% ROI.

Whilst those numbers might seem small compared to the rest of Sportpunter’s models, the truth is, is that traditionally over the past four years, almost all the profit has come in the first few months of betting, where the return of investment is far higher than later months.

And to prove this point, we have analysed the Sportpunter NBA model by weeks since the start of the season, and the results are shown in the tables below.

Firstly, betting the line. Shown in the right columns is the cumulative profit and %ROI which we can see reaches a peak after 7 weeks at $17,553. This means that in the past, the Sportpunter NBA line betting model has made 9% ROI in the first 8 weeks. That’s some decent profit. After this time, the model doesn’t do as well, and clearly profits decrease. There are number of reasons for this which we shall discuss in the next article.

But before that, let’s look at totals betting. Shown in the table below is our record betting totals week by week. Profits increase until about 11 weeks after the start of the season (or week 12). Here a $18.760 profit is made at 6.1% ROI. Profits decrease after this amount, but not as dramatically as line betting.

So what is to make of this? Clearly the Sportpunter NBA model has been very profitable in the early stages, and hopefully will be again. It is recommended to stop betting the NBA model at the stages listed above, and hopefully by then our banks will be thanking us.

However, there is another news in regards to the Sportpunter NBA Model, and that is the Sportpunter upgraded player based model….which will be talked about in the next article.
Check out all the Sportpunter NBA information here: http://www.sportpunter.com/sports/basketball/nba/

The NBL, or Australian Basketball starts this Friday, and hopefully we will achieve the same success as we have in the past. As our betting history shows, we have made 4.1% ROI betting h2h from 779 bets in 8 years. But better than h2h betting, is the line betting which has made 15.3% ROI in the 3 years that we have been recording it. Making profits of 18.1%, 12.8% and 15.4% in all three years, it clearly shows its profitability and consistency in betting the line.

Adding to that the totals model which has made 10.1% ROI form 723 bets in 8 seasons. Last year we made 17.5% ROI betting the totals.

Clearly the market is largely inefficient, and Sportpunter’s NBL model is very accurate. With only a small subscription fee, make sure that you get on board this season. Details shown here: http://www.sportpunter.com/sports/basketball/nbl/

We’ve done a full analysis of the NBL as shown below, and will be split into three sections. H2h betting, line betting and totals betting. Keep in mind that the sample size is small, so this is a guide and not gospel.

H2h betting.

As shown in the tables below, the majority of profits seem to have come betting on away teams which is a little surprising. Profits are spread amongst all odds amounts, however the biggest returns have come from outsiders, which tell us that the NBL model when betting h2h, does well picking up outsiders that are most likely playing away. About a 20% minimum overlay has worked well in the past, and history suggests that a lot of the profits come from the first few months.

Line Betting

Our line betting history has only been running for three years with amazing success. Profits are spread amongst different lines, and a minimum overlay of 30% and above has produced the most profit, (although its only 15% min when betting away teams). Profits are spread evenly throughout the season.

Totals betting

Unders is where the majority of the profit has come from, making 19% ROI from 367 bets. Little patterns show up in the totals line, however looking at the overlays is interesting. The greater the overlay for unders betting, the greater the profit, which is what we hope for in an accurate model. However when betting the Overs, it appears that the greatest overlays of 30%+ have produced a loss. This alone is probably the reason why Overs betting has not been as profitable as betting the unders. Why this has occurred, could be random variation due to a small sample size, or perhaps the model is missing some information that could make it more accurate. Either way, the results are amazing, and history has suggested that the first few weeks are where a lot of the profits come from.

Sign up or see the details of the NBL Subscription here: http://www.sportpunter.com/sports/basketball/nbl/