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The AFL season has finished for 2014 and the mighty hawks have once again reigned supreme. At the start of the year, we had them as massive favourites to win and the big overlay came home.

But line betting was our major market this year, and it produced a significant profit like previous years. Over the course of the year we had 146 bets on the line for 88 wins. That resulted in a 7.7% return on investment per bet. Whilst this is down on our long term average of 12.5% covering 10 years, it is still a very handy profit for the year, and our bet on Hawthorn in the grand final capped off what has been a very enjoyable season.

So what teams were the main winners and what were the main culprits. The table below might surprise you.

On top of the list is wooden spooners St. Kilda. We backed them 10 times at the line each of the 4 times we bet against them they lost. In total 14 bets involving the Saints made us a very handy 58% ROI. Most of the bets were early in the season, when the saints were not winning matches, but covering lines.

We heavily favoured Richmond this year with 15 bets for and only 2 against, for a 38% ROI, whilst we loved backing against the pies with 9 bets against and only 3 for.

It took the model to account for Port Adelaide’s resurgence. We backed against them 17 times which produced a few loses. In fact we backed against them in their first 6 matches of the year. The two other points of interest were the two grand finalists. We were heavily backing against the Swans, and came out slightly in front, whilst we also heavily backed the Hawks and finished slightly down.

So all in total, it’s been a great betting year, and I am looking forward to 2015 already (for another Hawthorn premiership! 😉 )

The 2014 NFL season starts tonight, and Sportpunter are releasing our models picks once again. To become a subscriber, click the link here: http://www.sportpunter.com/sports/nfl/

But first, we will do an analysis of the last 4 years of betting. Firstly, totals betting.

As shown on the betting history on the page listed above, we have managed to make 5.9% ROI from totals betting. Note that all odds are based on closing prices, so there is even a greater scope for potential profit betting early if you can get a good approximation of the weather.

But the good thing about totals betting is that each year since 2010 we have made a healthy profit. We’ve even done some analysis on how the model has gone by round. Shown below is the amount bet, profited and %ROI per round.

The first 5 rounds have been about break even for totals betting, but after that, a very handy 8% ROI has been made. I’ll leave it up to the individuals if you want to wait till round 6 to start betting, because after all, a simple round by round analysis like this is a little cherry picking. So either way, the totals model looks to be right on target, and hopefully in 2014 we can gain just as much advantage betting it.

Line betting is a little different, despite making 2% ROI in the 4 years, and 7.6% ROI last year, it hasn’t been as smooth sailing as the totals, with a disaster year in 2012. That said, one might still be able to get some value of it when looking at the round by round analysis shown below in the table.

This table shows that the first 10 rounds have recorded a 2.6% loss, whilst from rounds 11 to the end of season, a 6.9% ROI profit has been made. I don’t believe that this is just a coincidence, as the model gets smarter, and probably takes a little while to rate the teams as the season progresses.

Of course we are cherry picking a little here, but clearly history suggests that later in the season has produced better results that early for line betting.

Either way, hopefully the good trends with totals betting, and last years line betting will continue in 2014. Make sure you visit the Sportpunter NFL webpage http://www.sportpunter.com/sports/nfl/ for all the subscription information, betting history and analysis, and the important calculator which is essential for betting the NFL.

Release times for the NFL will be at this stage 9pm AEDT before each days play (subject to debate in the forum)

Cheers and best of punting luck
Jonathan Lowe

Well the Rugby Union Super15s season has finished and what another great season it was for Sportpunter clients. The free tips were given out every Thursday for the upcoming weekend, and punters well left very happy with the results.

In total we made 77 bets for a massive 28% ROI. It was our biggest year since the first year that we ran the model in 2003 and since then we have made a very nice 9.2% ROI.

There were some big wins at big priced odds throughout the year. We rated the western force a 47.3% chance to defeat the Chiefs in Perth in round 6, and they got up at odds of 3.77. The Lions defeated the Stormers and Cheetahs in rounds 1 and 2 at odds of 4.18 and 5.04. Full betting histories are shown here.
Shown below is a table about how we went betting for and against every team this season.

As you can see there are some very interesting things to note. At the top of the list is Western Force, who we bet on 8 times and never against. Similarly, the Lions we bet on 10 times and never against. Both these two teams provided a lot of the profit. Western Force improved from 13th spot in 2013 to 8th this year, and we were all too keen to bet on them. The Lions who came back into the competition on behalf of the Kings, surprised all by winning 7 of 16 matches.

Third on the table above is the Reds. 2011 champions, they finished 5th last year before blowing out to 13th this year. Whilst we had 4 bets on them and 6 against, the best against them summed up to 3 times the bets for, and we made a very nice profit betting against the Queenslanders.

We never bet on the Chiefs, and despite them finishing 5th this year we made a handy profit. But it was the Sharks who we struggled with the most. 3 bets for them and 6 against failed to make a profit. The sharks finished 3rd this year, up from 8th the previous, and I guess there has to be some kind of random variation when looking at numbers with such small sample sizes.

So in conclusion, a 28% ROI profit made, and backing up from a 20.5% ROI profit made in 2013, the 2015 season can’t come quick enough!

Sportpunter have done a major major upgrade to their WTA and ATP models. So major in fact that we started from scratch and rebuild the model from the ground up. Predictions are now available on the website for clients as shown here

H2h bets

Line bets

Set bets

Totals bets

Bet Challengers

But we will go through some of the analysis of the results using a hold out sample for 2013 and 2014.

In this time the model had made 2788 bets, $463,000 bet for $15,731 profit at 3.4% which isn’t bad.

But this is better improved when looking at the table below. This outlines, how the model has gone based on various levels of probability.

As the table suggests, betting on anything less than 40% probability has resulted in a loss. A loss in fact of 16.2%. Maybe we should back the other side here! 😉

But anything above a 40% probability has resulted in a significant profit of $23,691 @ 5.7 %ROI.

So why is this so? Well astute sportpunter tennis fans will already know that the WTA model doesn’t seem to do well with outsiders or low probabilities, and there is a definite reason for this. Shown below is another table which outlines how one would have gone had they blindly bet to win $1000 on every single tennis match.

Note that when betting to win at odds of less than 1.4, you can actually make a profit, just by betting every outcome. The profit you would have achieved is $36,928 at 0.3% ROI, which no doubt includes a lot of big bets on 1.01 shots. But more interesting is the favourite long shot bias here. When you start looking at betting women tennis players at over odds of 4.00, the results are disastrous. Any blind bet to win $1000 here has lost an incredible 27.7% ROI.

It would appear that the WTA Sportpunter model doesn’t make money with small probabilities because it has to make so much ground up to overcome the favourite long shot bias.

Of course who knows how this bias will unfold in the future, perhaps more people will start betting favourites and hence give more value (or less nonvalue) to underdogs.

Either way, my limiting the betting to players with probabilities over 40% or 50%, one can have a significant advantage in betting the Sportpunter WTA model.

But that’s not all, we will analyse line and totals betting in the next article, and the results are very juicy indeed.

Both Sportputner’s Rugby Union and Rugby League model’s have cleaned up at the start of this season with amazing massive wins.

Firstly the Rugby Unions S15s model has started the year in amazing good form. With massive wins including the Lions in round 1 @ 5.04, and again in Round 2 @ 4.18. Last Saturday was especially good with three winners in a row, including the Western Force @ 3.77. So far this year we’ve had 23 head to head bets for 13 winners at an amazing profit of 76.7% ROI. This is the 12th year in a row for our Rugby Union model, and over than span of time we’ve accumulated an incredible 9.2% ROI.

With similar results to the S15s, the new player based NRL model has started fantastically well. We’ve put a bit of effort into the NRL model this year with the new player based stats, and it has already paid dividends. We’ve had 20 bets for 13 winners at an incredible 53.3% ROI. Big winners include St. George in round 2 @ 3.56 and Wests Tigers in Round 3 @ 4.89.

But probably the biggest winner was Gold Coast over Canberra last weekend. Despite offering odds of 2.73 for the win, our model rated them a 72.7% chance. Gold Coast won by 12 points, which could have been a lot more had they been able to kick straight.

Both the rugby union and Rugby League models are free of charge, or which you can find details here for rugby union and here for rugby league.

Hopefully, we will have some more winning weeks to come

Best of punting luck

Jonathan

www.sportpunter.com

The AFL season is set to start this weekend, and what a year we hope it to be. If the previous years are anything to go by then it should be another cracker. The betting history speaks for itself. The last 5 years has seen an 18.5% ROI with last year and 2012 both recording over 22% ROI. Incredible stuff! The new player based model has been doing just as well too in its break out year.

The AFL model I believe is Sportpunter’s best. The consistent profits made year in year out, and simplicity of only betting on weekends makes it the perfect subscription for professional punters and newbies alike.

But what is important is to get on board early in round 1. Too many punters like to start betting after round 5 or so because they want to have a feel for the teams. Well the Sportpunter model already has a feel from round 1 and the results speak for themselves.

Shown below are the profits made for line betting since 2005 by round.

Clearly this shows that the first few rounds are when a lot of the profit is made. So it is very important to get subscribed before the first bounce of the first game. In 2011 for example, we won all first 6 bets from round 1, and the two biggest bets in round 2.

But whilst the graph above looks as though the profits generally decrease over the season, it is not a general fault of the model why this is so. Keep in mind that the number of matches played in round 23 onwards are a lot less due to finals. The graph below shows the %ROI based on round for line betting since 2005.

This graph shows a pretty consistent profit made throughout the season. The profits early in the year are therefore bigger, because the bet size is bigger and this is because the overlay or advantage to punter is bigger.

So once again this shows the importance of signing up before round 1 starts to reap the rewards. The futures (probability of premiership, finals, spoon etc.) are now on the webpage, and traditionally these have done very well.

This will be our 16^th year at making predictions for the AFL. This model has significant profits from long term results. All the details about the AFL subscriptions as well as the betting histories are shown here http://www.sportpunter.com/sports/afl/

Best of punting luck in 2014

Sportpunter.com