Saturday Football

[adnmdv]

It's also complete rubbish tbf.

[ACE2M]

It's also complete rubbish tbf.

based on?

[bobby1]

It's also complete rubbish tbf.

football is simply a sport that you cannot safely bet good amounts of money on any more, the variables outside of form and team news and head to heads are now just too wide ranging.

You disagree with that?

[Dubai]

Betting to 100%  doesnt matter if two pigeons are racing. In the long run betting blind u will break level- just run good and u win, run bad and u lose. There are loads worse things to gamble on than betting on any 100% market

[redarmi]

Don't really understand where you are coming from on this one Bobby?  In the long run football is very predictable and probably the sport more people make a living betting from than any other (except possibly racing).  Sure you get some strange results but that happens in any sport.  It is basically just variance.

[adnmdv]

It's also complete rubbish tbf.

football is simply a sport that you cannot safely bet good amounts of money on any more, the variables outside of form and team news and head to heads are now just too wide ranging.

You disagree with that?

red/Dubai have basically covered it, but it's like saying it's difficult to win at poker because you can't predict which cards are going to come out on the flop. Neither betting, nor poker, is about making accurate predictions.

[bobby1]

Betting to 100%  doesnt matter if two pigeons are racing. In the long run betting blind u will break level- just run good and u win, run bad and u lose. There are loads worse things to gamble on than betting on any 100% market

Hi Dave,


But you can bet almost 100% markets on many sports these days give or take a few % points for multi runner events.If you bet on a cricket match the result will be determined by how the players perform or the weather( which is taken into account in the prices) if a batsmen plays badly he is out, plays well and he scores runs. Same for a bowler to some extent. The umpires very rarely influence the game, in fact the review system takes most of the mistakes out of the game.

In football there are players on the pitch trying to gain an edge thru cheating, be it diving, fouling or other acts of gamesmanship. There are officials that get many decisions in every game wrong. We are betting on something that has so many variables to it that cannot be known pre game. I saw a Swansea player stand on an Arsenal players leg yesterday and he won a penalty for it. Decisions like that don't happen in every game, one game it will be a penalty and another game it will be a free kick the other way.

So in those example you can bet cricket in 100% markets, where very little outside the performance of the players leads to a result or you can bet on football in 100% markets where reffing situations and player conduct are the determining factor in the result a lot of the time.

Just because they are 100% markets doesn't mean they all have the same variables that combine to get a result does it?

[adnmdv]

Variables =/= unknowns

And as Dubai suggested, stuff like a bad referee decision is variance OR something that can be factored into your pricing. Also, if a variable truly is unknowable, then by definition it can't be incorporated into the price by the layer either, so it's irrelevant.

[bobby1]

Don't really understand where you are coming from on this one Bobby?  In the long run football is very predictable and probably the sport more people make a living betting from than any other (except possibly racing).  Sure you get some strange results but that happens in any sport.  It is basically just variance.

In a previous life I was one of a team of 6 that did football prices for William Hill ( this 10+ years ago now so I am talking when you printed the coupons on a Monday and had a sweat on all week when the team news started to form because in those days the prices were available in almost 2000 shops and online and a real ball ache to change in the shops)  football had the second highest turnover after racing and was the 2nd biggest winner for the firm, also after racing. Every Saturday afternoon we would have to make a snap call after the results were in as to what % we thought would be attained from that days football business so the higher managers could report to the even higher managers. On a usual looking set of results day we would start the figure off at 20%.

I have no doubt you work at the high end of the football betting market but bookmakers regularly have 30-40% winning days on football, sometimes higher if the results are freakish and sometimes they do their cobblers in but in the long run football is not a profitable sport for a very large % of people that bet on it

[bobby1]

Variables =/= unknowns

And as Dubai suggested, stuff like a bad referee decision is variance OR something that can be factored into your pricing. Also, if a variable truly is unknowable, then by definition it can't be incorporated into the price by the layer either, so it's irrelevant.

sorry to be blunt mate but that is rubbish. Reffing decisions cannot in any way be factored into pre match prices. In fact what you have just said means that neither betors or layers can know what the variables will be in a match, why is that a good event to bet on?

Would you rather bet a three runner cricket match or a three runner football match. One last for 90 mins and has so many different things influencing the outcome, one last for 5 days and usually the team that plays the best wins. It's a no brainer surely?

[redarmi]

The only reason that football seems to have more strange results is that goals are rarer than, say, runs in cricket so small-ish events such as a refereeing decision can have a bigger impact on the overall result whereas a single wicket not being given in a cricket match won't, normally, affect the result.  If a factor is not quantifiable then it is a level playing field and doesn't affect your or the bookies ability to win on it so long as there are factors which are predictable ie. form, injuries etc.  Incidentally I have it on fairly good authority that the very best football punters do factor in various stats about referees and use that in their modelling for example they look at how many fouls they give and factor that into likely injury time etc for betting on totals and if a game is likely to have a lot more injury time then the favourite is more likely to win.

[bobby1]

If neither the layers nor backers know, then the layer does not have an informational advantage, so you may as well be flipping a coin when it comes to referee decisions -> it doesn't matter in the long run. I bet on what is most EV+, 'predictability' does not come into it. For me, the most profitable sport happens to be football because I have the ability to price up markets in the sport accurately, the same isn't true for my cricket pricing skills.

I'd be interested in your answer to this: Do you think that the reason bookies win so much from Correct Score markets is a) the massive overround on said markets or b) because it's difficult to predict a scoreline correctly because of variables? Your argument seems to be along the lines of 'people make bad bets because they cannot predict games well in football' so...

fwiw, all other things equal, a market with more variables than others will be harder to price but that does not mean it is less profitable to do so...if anything, it's the opposite because the people on the opposite end are often...not great.

'If neither the layers nor backers know, then the layer does not have an informational advantage'

That's the bit you aren't getting mate, all that means is that everyone betting on that game is clueless pre game as to the variables that will occur in the game that affect the result.

That is my whole point, the difference being in most cases a layer will have 2 runners going for them and the punter will have one, that is the main reason the layers can overcome the variables because when you bet a team to win with me for example I have two chances to get the variables on my side , you have one. In some games your team will get them in their favour and you will win.

[bobby1]

The only reason that football seems to have more strange results is that goals are rarer than, say, runs in cricket so small-ish events such as a refereeing decision can have a bigger impact on the overall result whereas a single wicket not being given in a cricket match won't, normally, affect the result.  If a factor is not quantifiable then it is a level playing field and doesn't affect your or the bookies ability to win on it so long as there are factors which are predictable ie. form, injuries etc.  Incidentally I have it on fairly good authority that the very best football punters do factor in various stats about referees and use that in their modelling for example they look at how many fouls they give and factor that into likely injury time etc for betting on totals and if a game is likely to have a lot more injury time then the favourite is more likely to win.

'The only reason that football seems to have more strange results is that goals are rarer than, say, runs in cricket so small-ish events such as a refereeing decision can have a bigger impact on the overall result'

But Red, that is my exact point.

There was a particularly terrible call in last nights NFL game between Green Bay and the Giants, in the end the Giants overcame that to win the game but the pre game total line was 54. That's a perfect example of a sport that is better to bet on than football. if a team get an unjust TD against them in a game with an expectancy of 54 points it is easier to overcome than an unjust goal in a game with a pre game goal expectancy of 2 and 3/4.

[bobby1]

I'd be interested in your answer to this: Do you think that the reason bookies win so much from Correct Score markets is a) the massive overround on said markets or b) because it's difficult to predict a scoreline correctly because of variables? Your argument seems to be along the lines of 'people make bad bets because they cannot predict games well in football' so...

Sorry I didn't see the before posting.

Well the answer is both but the bookies that bet the correct score markets on Betfair to 2% still win in the long run, they just win a lot less, slower. The punters will still bet the same score there as they would with the traditional bookies but they will still lose their money, only slower.

[redarmi]

Doesn't the fact that people can win money laying correct scores to 102% prove that it is a very predictable game rather than the inverse?