The Happy Medium

In the previous blog we explored Simple Betting Strategies - where we went for the long odds or the short odds.  Neither strategy really panned out in the long term although betting on the underdog did have some 'weekend changing' results and we almost broke even on betting on the favourite each week.  But maybe the happy medium is somewhere in between.  So not necessarily the short odds or the long odds, but maybe the evens shots for example.

To this end I compiled all the odds offered on the Spanish La Liga and English Premiership, and counted the successful bets on each odds choice.  I banded the odds together for example anything shorter than 1/9 implies 90-100% probability band.

For each band I calculated the average percentage profit per bet.  It seems that the bookies are under no pressure to offer genuine value on the long shots.  People see the money signs and will happily bet on a 10/1 shot even though the long run average can be so dismal - losing as much as 30% of your bank roll.  This re-affirms are previous findings.
chart of odds by profit returned. for example 3/1 odds => 25% chance so falls into the band 20-30% above, 9/1 => 10% so would fall into the 0%-10% band, evens would be 50% and so would fall into the 40-50% band above.
The most interesting is the short odds.  Over the seasons 2001/02 to 2013/14 in both the Spanish La Liga and the Premier League Bet365 have only offered the likes of 1/9, 1/10, 1/11, 1/12, 1/14, 1/16, 1/20 and even 1/24 on 73 occassions.  When the bookie is that sure you really have to take notice.  After all the bookies make piles of money by being right.  If you did take up these bets you would have won 69 of your bets for a total profit of 1.95%.  Not much of a return over 13 years!  Indeed in the Premiership such a strong favourite has not been upset since 2006 (over 8 years ago).

69 winning bets out of 73 means that only 4 times in the Spanish and English top flight has a team shorter than 1/9 failed to win.  These can be seen in the table below.

2014-05-03	FC Barcelona	vs	Getafe CF
2010-09-11	FC Barcelona	vs	Hercules CF
2012-12-16	Real Madrid CF	vs	Espanol
2006-04-14	Manchester United FC	vs	Sunderland AFC

table showing all premier league and la liga matches in the  last 13 seasons where the strong favourite failed to win.
We can test our hypothesis by extending our reach to all the top Divisions in Europe including the German, French, Italian, Turkish, Greek, Belgian, Dutch and Scottish top divisions as well as the English and Spanish top tiers.  If you do this and focus just on last season then 37 of the bets out of 38 were winners - making a neat 4% average profit.  With bets like this coming up only 38 times per season across all of europe, you would want to be staking large sums of money to take advantage of this potential positive expected value.  For example an average of €10 profit per week would require you to be putting €250 on each bet.
My advice - don't.  Betting should be fun and exciting, where is the excitement in winning a paltry 1 euro for each 14 euro you stake on a 1/14 favourite?
Is this really a winning betting strategy?  Is it worth risking €250 of your hard earned money each week just to find out if you can make €10 profit here or there?