Posts Tagged draw
0-0
Posted by Peter Webb in Football / Soccer on December 10th, 2011
Just position taking at half time on this Saturday’s matches and there are a plethora of 0-0′s. 11 out of the 18 matches I am looking at are that score line as I speak.
Of course, underlying those matches are very different characteristics and odds. But I can tell you that each match if you look in real detail will reveal a significant difference between each 0-0. Some are heading for few goals and some should have loads.
The two stand out matches from the crop of 18 I am looking at are Liverpool vs QPR and Birmingham vs Doncaster. Both should not have reached half time with no score. On the flip side Reading vs West Ham is a “deserved” 0-0.
Right, now I’ve set up my positions I will be off doing some Christmas shopping. Had a good day at Cheltenham but the rest of the racing was pretty dire. Bet Angel is going to look after my positions while I am out shopping. Check out the automation feature so you can do the same!
Sometimes shots don't equal goals
Lay the draw – automatically
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel, Football / Soccer on December 3rd, 2011
Last week we backed the draw using the new automation feature in Bet Angel, this week we lay it.
Whether you use the new feature to implement something or test an idea, it’s a powerful tool to do either. Based on immediate feedback we have expanded the number of conditions you can apply to your automation which expand your capability further. Bear in mind that using the practice mode you can play around without risking any money and by using the P&L export function in the automation, you can export your results to a file long after the market has closed. This will allow you to see how you did on the day when you return to your desk.
We plan to introduce even more elements to the automation, so please keep your version up to date with the very latest beta. Next release is on Monday.
Here is a video explaining how we laid the draw and greened out after a goal, using automation. I’ll export and post the automation file that did this on the forum.
http://www.betangel.tv/video/using-bet-angel/automation/220-automatically-lay-the-draw
Be careful laying the draw in certain Italian matches!
Back the draw
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on August 27th, 2011
I’m going to put up some information on Saturday’s about football / soccer. Some of it may seem contradictory for some of you and some logical, but it’s all based on years worth of research and application in the market.
For starters: -
If you backed the draw, pretty much at random, last weekend; you would have have netted a cool profit. I know, because I did exactly that and suffered a 60% thumping as a result! I was doing some work on how diversification affects your net P&L if you are backing varying numbers of events and wanted to test something.
It drew me back to a spreadsheet I did in 2005 based around the efficiency of the market. I came up with a back the draw strategy that squeaked around a 1% margin on average out of the market. I brushed down the spreadsheet and updated it and had another look at the efficiency of the market.
I looked at 15935 recent matches and discounted the implied probability the market was giving on the draw. I then compared that to what happened. On average the market was only about 0.66% out. The chance of a draw occurring versus what the market offered at the time was pretty much spot on. It also highlighted that you could come up with some crazy system based on the draw and still end up with only a small slice of luck. A lot of filtered selections could still end up and fool you into thinking that you had discovered some edge. Check out a few e-books for some examples of this.
The main problem was not an edge though. I worked out, with a simplistic calculation, that using £10 stakes I would have lost £8686 to commission. If you imagine somebody staking in a sequential manner, their £10 per match turned into nearly -£9k. This also highlights the difference between commission on outright betting versus trading on the price movements. It is much more favourable for the latter.
If you think hard enough though, even with that commission paid is possible to overcome. It ‘only’ represents 3.9% of the total amount bet at the worst rate of 5%. Pay above 5% though and it becomes very hard indeed.
So there you have if. The market is still as efficient as ever, but this means you will need a fair chunk of data to ensure you have an edge. You will also need to ensure that edge is quite large to overcome commission. By trading you reduce some of the liability and that will help you overcome that 0.66%.
I predict a draw
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on March 26th, 2011
Hold on, haven’t I posted that before? Has this happened before? Err… yes at the end of each Italian football season. I’m wise to it now!
Part of my preparation for the weekends football fixtures, I suck in all the matches via Bet Angel into a spreadsheet and a couple of pre-set formula’s point out areas of interest. Last night it threw up Padova vs Atalanta as ‘odd’. You can see why on the following graph. The volume of matched bets is way above any other match on the same day and 97% of the volume is, unusually, on the draw. I wonder what the result of this match will be? Anybodies guess!
I predict a draw (Part 2)
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on December 20th, 2010
Second part of what will probably be a three part post.
The draw is now trading at a remarkable 1.42 and £2.85m of £3m on the match is on the draw! To put that into perspective only 10% of the money on the Man City vs Everton match is on the draw, a more rational number.
Question now is what sort of a draw will it be. 1-1 is usually the favoured result and that is being backed in as well. I think I may have a play on this match.
I predict a draw (Part 1)
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on December 20th, 2010
The draw is a “underactive” area of the match odds market. Out of the three outcomes availble, the draw tends to get proportionatly little attention and volume out of the three.
So, a bit of a surprise to see the draw accounting for 96% of the volume in the match. Not only that but even more surprising to see the odds backed in from 3.00 to 1.30, before the off. The italian football market is a curious one isn’t it?
Predicting a draw
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on October 2nd, 2010
Before I start, my ratings on the champions league this week were almost spot on. Thanks to the standard deviation of these things, its quite rare to hit the nail on the head. But the large number of matches did help quite a bit in hitting the bullseye this week. So it’s been an excellent week on the footy, I’ve got some money to give back now!
I was interested to see some discussion on predicting a draw bumping around a few blogs. This is poinant for me, as the draw was the first ever thing I tried to predict when I first started my quest to make money from gambling many many years ago.
The interesting thing I discovered was that predicting the price of a draw wasn’t actually too hard and you can be very accurate with a bit of effort. When I look at the market though, it is clear that I’m not the only person to know how to do this, which is no surprise. Sometimes distortions do exist and these have pushed the draw price around to levels that could be seen as value. But that’s quite rare. Certainly, on the high profile matches, the market is very accurate.
One issue you will have is that when you are placing an outright bet, you pay an arm and a leg in commission. Trade your position though and your effective commission is reduced. That is why I always have a preference to ‘trade’ where possible. For the draw I simply place orders at levels I know are value, if they get matched, great. If not then I have lost nothing. One thing you should always be aware of is that data mining is statistical deja vu. When you predict you are not concerned with the past, but the future. Its possible to find no end of things that work backwards, but unfortunately the future is not in the past! Always look for why things could happen, don’t rely exclusively on what has happened.
Here is something from the past however, I am glad I didn’t lay odds on this draw or else I would have surely been bankrupted!
http://www.betangel.com/blog_wp/2010/05/06/the-battle-for-forth-place/
Would you back the draw at 1.30?
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on May 8th, 2010
If a football match was near the end, perhaps ten or fifteen minutes or so, 1.28 may represent value. But before the match has started, no way! Mathematically speaking it’s highly improbable for the draw to be priced at 80% certainty in a fair match. However these strange odds seem to occur often at the end of the Italian football season. Not all of them play out as the odds intend but it’s certainly very strange to keep seeing such massive anomalies. We have another one for Sunday, make of it what you will.
The battle for fourth place
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on May 6th, 2010
While most eyes were firmly focused on Man City vs Spurs last night, a remarkable battle was taking place 200 miles further north for the same place in the Scottish Premiership. Unlike the English battle, which ensured ‘arry team has broken into the previously exclusive top four, the battle in Scotland was for Europa cup place and infinity more exciting and in fact totally remarkable.
UK users can watch the highlights here: -
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/scot_prem/8658858.stm
The match ended 6-6 and that included a saved penalty! The last goal in the match was worthy of squaring such an amazing game. As soon as the result flashed in I was scrambling through my data to find out if there had ever been a 6-6 draw in the top divisions before. When I was young I was lucky enough to watch a 5-5 draw but 6-6 seemed a virtually impossible result. Just seeing twelve goals in a match was remote according to the stats. If you are optimistic then it would be around a 1 in 20,000 chance, but on average it would take nearly 70,000 matches before you would see 12 in one match, the chance of 6-6 would be even remoter.
My correct score spreadsheet didn’t show a single one so I had to dig around to find another. From what I can find , there have been two previous 6-6 draws. Leicester and Arsenal drew 6-6 in April 1930 in the top division, and Charlton drew 6-6 with Middlesbrough in October 1960 in the second division. Charlton had three other matches that season with six or more goals. So unless somebody can inform me otherwise in the many tens of thousands of intervening matches there have been no 6-6 draws. The mean return time appears to be 30-50 years for the entirety of top flight football.
I feel sorry for the Motherwell fans who left at 6-2 down, they just missed a piece of football history.
Italian end of season matches
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on April 13th, 2010
Since my first posting some time ago there have been plenty more Italian matches with strange prices. However, not all have ended up with the predicted result. There appears to be a process of reversion to mean going on! I was lucky on this one, as rather than backing the draw I opted to back Lazio, who went on to win. Because of the propensity for these matches to be unpredictable I wonder whether an element of this unusual pricing is the madness of crowds and / or the net effect of lots of arbing with naive bookmakers. Having done some research these things appear to be more common place in Italian football than I suspected. Whatever, it’s a curious phenomena but one that is proving profitable if you are aware of where that all important next goal is likely to come from.
Couldn’t make it up
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on January 24th, 2010
One tie looks set to light up what otherwise appears to be a dull and predictable fifth round FA Cup draw.
I waited with baited breath knowing that there were a few ties that could produce a classic cup match, but was amazed when the one top of my list occurred, Southampton vs Porstmouth. I couldn’t believe it!
This should be a real classic fifth round tie. Local derby, quite a history behind this fixture and a perfect set up. One team seemingly in inexorable decline and another who suffered the same fate now back on the march with full confidence. I’m too close on this one to get involved, as loyaltes will get in the way of sound judgement. But it’s looking set up for an excellent fifth round battle.
The draw
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on January 30th, 2009
Price movement during the game
I was going to post about Liverpool vs Everton but never got the chance to do so. So here is a reverse appraisal. As most people know a local derby is always a tight affair and perhaps a match you would expect to end in a draw, as neither team want to lose.
Unlike a lot of myths this is actually generally true. I did some research a fair time ago and realised that there was a link between distance travel and the propensity to draw. So there are many factors that make a draw but in fact the proximity to the away team does indeed increase the chance of a draw.
One feature of the match the other night that was interesting was the persistance of the draw during the match. This meant there was ages where you trade the draw with only minor risk and during the match it felt inevitable that Liverpool would equalise. You often see this, but not as stark as in this match. An interesting match all round.