Are Football Trading Results Just Random

Football, Soccer - whatever you call it. It is the beautiful game.
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lmf21734
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Dear Community

Is there an edge in football trading?

For instance everyone knows that the dutch football leagues are high scoring leagues yet last week there were 4 games over last weekend which ended up 0-0.

Today Celtic drew 0-0 against St Johnstone. Juventus and Napoli the top scorers in Serie A could only win 1-0. Galatasary (usual pace setters in Turkey actually lost 2-1 against Kasimpasa a lower placed team.

The results in football seem to be so varied and as manual traders because we can only trade a few games at a time or in a day it just seems to me that we are subject to high levels of skewness and variance where outcomes dont go according to what we would expect or project for a football game which makes it very difficult to make money consistently.

Apart from Pyschoff I dont know of anyone who would show their football trading results (and pyschoff only showed his wins and never ever seemed to show his losses) and am wondering if its because football trading is so inconsistent/random subject to variance that most traders are unable to show any consistent levels of profitability over a sustained period of time.

Its easy to make a quick buck here and there but when it comes to sustained income as a full time job making £50,000 or more per year from football trading is there anyone in the community who meets this level.

Just wondering. I know in Tennis and Cricket and Darts there are more swings inplay as the market reacts to what is happening so there are great opportunities to take advantage of the swings but I have found that Football is not like this because unless their is a goal or the lack of a goal then the price just continues to come in or go out.

Just keen to hear what the community take is on this because dont understand how one can do some really indepth statistical analysis, do all your homework, Choose 5 matches for the day where you get in as a time that repressents great value and then you end up with either nearly all the trades working against you or you barely get out with very low profit or a scratch.....

Scratching my head sometimes as to the results I sometimes get which sometimes makes you think whether you simply went against your homework and statistical analysis and traded the oppositie way whether you would actually be more profitable.

uktrader
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Euler
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The short answer is that football is highly variable from an outcome perspective and therefore you would expect large profits and losses unless you are chasing or working on a very distinct timescale. If you scalped time value you would probably get lots of small payoffs and an impressive P&L but the occasional horrific loss.
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lmf21734
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Euler

Thanks for your comments.

Scalping time and having the occasional horrific loss. Isn't that similar to the types of strategies in the financial markets that trading gurus tell you to avoid. The ones with fantastic win rates but horrendous reward to risk ratios. I see very few people in the football trading industry promote strategies with low win rates but high reward to risk ratios (many finance traders seem to imply going for a 2:1 reward to risk). Maybe its because that kind of approach doesn't sell if your trying to sell a football system or service to the public.

Also do you feel the strategies we devise is because we need a framework or safe place to operate from and that the safe place is irrelevant to the actual market even though we try to impose our strategy onto the market.

For instance I have been trading a particular strategy which is doing ok but then I tested a random approach by simply choosing the first 6 games per day that show on betfair inplay tab. And guess what the random approach generated the same overall profit as the strategic approach. The only difference being that there were wild swings with the random approach where there were more red days but higher profitable days whereas the strategic approach had minimal red days but more constrained profits but overall the 2 systems virtuall nearly ended up with same overall profit for the period of time I was testing.

Cheers

uktrader
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BlackHat Betting
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I have tried football... seemed easy the first 2 or so days... then it all went very wrong and I gave up :D

Back to losing money on the GGs instead :D
Bluesky
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The football markets are very efficient so its difficult to find an edge trading them. I know a couple of people that make a decent living trading news this is before the match starts, however this is far from a simple strategy. You need to have a very good knowledge of football (various leagues, teams and players etc.). You need to be constantly checking various news sources (twitter, chat rooms, message boards, team web sites etc.). Once you have a tradable item of news they you need to work out how this might affect the price and act on this immediately. You often do not have much time to act on this information, and often just being a minute or two too slow to get on means that all the value from the information has gone.
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psychoff
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Hi all,

I think, football results are not random but the difficulty of gaining regular profits from football depends on the accurate odds that the bookmakers (and betfair) give. It is nearly impossible to bet on value odds pregame especially in major leagues. That's why I mostly prefer inplay trading which you can find value odds more easily and get the opportunities to trade out. Football is a dynamic game and nobody can define the exact correct odds throughout the whole game.

For the results, you are right, I prefer to post my best performances as (I guess) nobody wants to watch Messi's 10 big misses instead of top 10 superb goals. Of course I have losses, sometimes big in amount but I am trying to reach monthly/annually profit targets.

Finally, I sometimes share inplay goal alert tips at my twitter account. It means, I have an expectation of an upcoming goal in that match. They are usually around min. 70-75 and odds (under x,5) 1,50-2,00. You can follow them from twitter account:@psychofftrading

Best of luck...
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lmf21734
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Hi Pyschoff

Thanks for sharing. I completely agree with you because I had an experience 2 years ago where I was following a tipster who claimed that by following his over 2.5 bets at the beginning of a match you could make easy profits..

However what he didn't sell in his sales pitch was that if you do any form of statistical analysis you will realize that games which have a high probability of over 2.5 goals at the beginning of a match will start out anything from 1.3 to 1.7 so if you risk £100 to make £30-£70 then you have reward to risk ratio which is anything from 0.3:1 to 0.7:1. Based on past performance I mentally cant stomach any strategy where my reward is going to be far less than my risk even if the win rate is high since there are clusters of losses which can seriously set you back. Even with a 75% strategy you could have 5-6 losing trades in a row.

For instance Man City losing 1-0 to Wigan, Ajax winning only 1-0 at the weekend...We see them every day where teams who are as low as 1.3 to 1.7 to back end up in games where no more than 2 goals are scored.

I think the industry has conditioned us about win rate so much without us understanding that the other side of the coin to take into account is the reward to risk ratio. No point making lots of £20 wins when all it takes is a cluster of 4-5 £80 losses to completely set us back. Also when you are looking to increase your position size its challenging risking £800 to make £200.

I personally believe sharing losses is good because it helps others to understand how frequently your winning days are to your losing days so that they can have an insight into the type of equity curve associated with your strategy.

My last question Pyschoff is have you experimented with going in at 80 minutes or 85 minutes so that even though your win rate is reduced your reward to risk goes up. Have you done any testing in this area to see if it makes a difference to your equity growth.

MESSAGE TO BLUKESKY: Since football markets are so efficient do you think that most football systems being touted are simply selling a dream that doesnt really exist. Most of them never show their equity curves or results and those that do the equity curve growth is far from anything sustainable from a sole income perspective.

Thanks

uktrader
spreadbetting
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lmf21734 wrote:
Wed Feb 21, 2018 1:24 pm

We see them every day where teams who are as low as 1.3 to 1.7 to back end up in games where no more than 2 goals are scored.
1.3-1.7's losing is no different than 10/30 or 6/4 shots winning and I doubt you'd be shocked at those results.

I'd agree with most people that football is so modelled these days and with so much info available to everyone it's hard to find any value pre off if you're straight betting or even looking to close pre off bets in running. Scalping is still viable pre off but so slow and time consuming it's generally not worth the effort , at least imo. I think in play is the only place you can find value on a regular basis these days
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lmf21734 wrote:
Wed Feb 21, 2018 1:24 pm

We see them every day where teams who are as low as 1.3 to 1.7 to back end up in games where no more than 2 goals are scored.
1.3-1.7's losing is no different than 10/30 or 6/4 shots winning and I doubt you'd be shocked at those results.

I'd agree with most people that football is so modelled these days and with so much info available to everyone it's hard to find any value pre off if you're straight betting or even looking to close pre off bets in running. Scalping is still viable pre off but so slow and time consuming it's generally not worth the effort , at least imo. I think in play is the only place you can find value on a regular basis these days


lmf21734 wrote:
Wed Feb 21, 2018 1:24 pm

MESSAGE TO BLUKESKY: Since football markets are so efficient do you think that most football systems being touted are simply selling a dream that doesnt really exist. Most of them never show their equity curves or results and those that do the equity curve growth is far from anything sustainable from a sole income perspective.

People selling systems are simply filling their own pockets, most of the systems I've seen touted on forums are usually just some whacky way of betting against a longshot result by playing a few markets at once. You'd usually be better off simply laying the results they haven't covered on the relevant market.
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Euler
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[/quote]

People selling systems are simply filling their own pockets, most of the systems I've seen touted on forums are usually just some whacky way of betting against a longshot result by playing a few markets at once. You'd usually be better off simply laying the results they haven't covered on the relevant market.
[/quote]

I completely agree. I presented recently on football markets and when we went to the Q&A the first question was, 'What do you do about a loss'

I got berated because the audience wasn't happy with my answer and felt I was withholding something because they had seen other 'traders' use secondary markets to cover positions. They were even less happy when I told them that was just another way of chasing a loss.
Bluesky
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lmf21734 wrote:
Wed Feb 21, 2018 1:24 pm
MESSAGE TO BLUKESKY: Since football markets are so efficient do you think that most football systems being touted are simply selling a dream that doesnt really exist. Most of them never show their equity curves or results and those that do the equity curve growth is far from anything sustainable from a sole income perspective.
Thanks
uktrader
I absolutely agree with you, if anyone finds a really profitable market inefficiency on the pre start soccer markets then the last thing they would do would be to sell that knowledge. The soccer markets for the big leagues are fairly liquid so there would not be a problem putting a lot of money through them. The only time you would consider selling this knowledge was when the inefficiency was no longer present in the market. Most systems don't last forever, and once they become unprofitable that's when they are likely to be sold to the general public.

I agree with the other people in this thread that say you are more likely to find inefficient pricing with the in play markets due to the dynamic nature of them. I know several people who follow psychoff on twitter, and they say he has an uncanny ability to predict when a goal is about to be scored. Now I have no idea if psychoff is profitable or not, but I would imagine his ability to predict goals has a lot to do with his match reading skills. These will have been developed through watching thousands of hours of football matches together with some statistical analysis I am sure. Most of us would not be prepared to put the time and effort involved to get this good at goal prediction, anyone who does deserves to be well rewarded from the markets.
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northbound
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Bluesky wrote:
Thu Feb 22, 2018 9:12 am
Most of us would not be prepared to put the time and effort involved to get this good at goal prediction, anyone who does deserves to be well rewarded from the markets.
Exactly.

I met a guy a couple of years back, he was market making football markets straight after goals are scored.

Asked how long did it take him to become profitable, he replied: the first year I lost money, the second year I lost money, the third year I started being profitable.

Successful people practice until they make it. Unsuccessful ones just want a formula that works right away.
max_usted
Posts: 133
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Dear Community

Is there an edge in football trading?

For instance everyone knows that the dutch football leagues are high scoring leagues yet last week there were 4 games over last weekend which ended up 0-0.

Today Celtic drew 0-0 against St Johnstone. Juventus and Napoli the top scorers in Serie A could only win 1-0. Galatasary (usual pace setters in Turkey actually lost 2-1 against Kasimpasa a lower placed team.
Just very quickly, on these results (and I realise it's very easy to make this points in retrospect but anyway):
  • Celtic had a second-string team out with youngsters and random/crap players because they were playing Zenit in the UEFA cup later that week. I lost on this game but, having watched it, the result was not actually wholly unpredictable given the patterns of play in it
  • I very much disagree that Juventus winning 0-1 away to Torino was an unpredictable or surprising result!
  • Galatasaray have a very uneven away record - particularly so, given comparison with their home record - and they were away against Kasimpasa
  • Napoli winning by one goal against Spal was surprising. I managed to avoid loss in this game by watching it - It provoked enough doubt in my mind so that I didn't take a position. This is just to say how important it is to watch games. In my view, patterns of play often provide enough evidence to confound your expectations and this can mean avoiding losses.
Its easy to make a quick buck here and there but when it comes to sustained income as a full time job making £50,000 or more per year from football trading is there anyone in the community who meets this level.
I am 1.4 years in and still using relatively small stakes. I do not make this but I am certain that this is very achievable given the opportunities that exist in the markets. There are an enormous number of opportunities and they occur so regularly - but it took me 11 months of trading before I even started to perceive these.
Just wondering. I know in Tennis and Cricket and Darts there are more swings inplay as the market reacts to what is happening so there are great opportunities to take advantage of the swings but I have found that Football is not like this because unless their is a goal or the lack of a goal then the price just continues to come in or go out.
In my view, the comparative unresponsiveness of the in-play odds is what provides such opportunity. There is a lack of scoring events compared to tennis or other sports. The markets are highly conventional due to their adherence to the principle of time-decay. In my view, the above two factors mean that they are (comparatively/actually) very unresponsive to the nature of the event as it unfolds - for example, they don't swing like tennis odds in line with when one team is massively dominant and creating changes right, left and centre, until the point when that team scores a goal. They can't because they don't have a constantly updating record of the balance of dominance as exists in tennis - that is until the point a goal is scored.
Just keen to hear what the community take is on this because dont understand how one can do some really indepth statistical analysis, do all your homework, Choose 5 matches for the day where you get in as a time that repressents great value and then you end up with either nearly all the trades working against you or you barely get out with very low profit or a scratch.....

Scratching my head sometimes as to the results I sometimes get which sometimes makes you think whether you simply went against your homework and statistical analysis and traded the oppositie way whether you would actually be more profitable.

uktrader
In my view, where possible, the most effective source of (predictive) information for a game or in relation to odds during a game is the nature of that match itself (i.e. the patterns of play). Teams are groups of humans and aggregates of their past behaviour can never be accurately descriptive of their future behaviour during a particular period of time. Napoli just wanted the day off after scoring early against Spal, and this was arguably apparent through watching their on-field behaviour, but could never have been predicted in advance via empirical analysis. Another similar game was Betis vs. Sociedad (finished 0-0) which was unpredictable in advance, but arguably enough evidence during the game itself to avoid loss on this fixture (or even get a big win if you're open-minded enough).
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lmf21734
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max_usted thanks for your informative reply. Its quite funny because the justifiable information you presented on why specific games didn't meet the expected expectations is then countered by other games I have seen where inexplicably you have 5-7 goals scored in a match between 2 teams who are low scoring teams and whose games normally end up 1-0/0-1/1-1.

The truth is that things for the most part don't go according to plan when we are predicting scores or trying to be overtly precise in how we think a game is going to fare. For instance who would have believed West Ham would have held Chelsea 1-1 at Stamford Bridge or who would have thought the game between Man City and Man Utd would have ended up 2-3 or Ajax only beating Heracles 1-0 on Saturday or Galatasary losing 0-1 to a team ranked in the bottom 3 of the Turkish Super League.

Its an interesting discussion.

Mel (The Scientia Trader)
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