FoG

So I finally nailed the Paddy Power 5-fold UK Accumulator.  In a previous article here  I had estimated only averaging a 8.53c return on each 10c staked.   So how did I compare? Well as discussed in the other article I was not convinced of the value even with the 20% bonus so I stuck to the minimum of 10c bets.  I made 8 bets in total and finally on the last week of the promotion I hit the win which didn't quite save the experiment but at least it wasn't a total washout.   The accumulator won 53c but the 20% bonus should push my winnings up to 64c.  So I won 64 back eventually after staking a total of 80c which is an average of 8c back on every 10c staked.  This is quite close to my estimated return according to my previous article.  So it looks like in practice and in theory the advice here is to be very cautious of long accumulators even if they are dressed up with money back offers, or bonuses.  The bookie's edge accumula...

For each team there are bound to be many peaks and troughs throughout the season.  This strategy is to back teams when they are down - when their odds are long.  It takes guts but can pay off.   It will be important to be able to anticipate when a team's odds will lengthen or shorten.  For example it may have been worth waiting till now to back Man City.  They were to face Liverpool, Arsenal and Chelsea in their first 5 matches.  It was always likely that they would drop some points over that period and hence their odds would lengthen.  The result is that you can get them at better value now than compared to the start of the season. Lets have a look at this strategy in practice.  The graph below charts the rise and fall of the 5 premier league favourites.  As you can see there has already been quite a bit of movement over just the first 5 matches.  Marked on the chart is the longest odds over the first weeks for each team. odds...

Paddy Power are running an interesting free   Last Man Standing  competition.  The prize for each competition is  € 1000.   I have done some brief analysis on the previous competitions which are archived on the site, and here are the results for 2013/2014 Season . In 2013/14  competitions ran for an average of about 14 weeks.  So in that case you would never have to pick the 6 worst teams.  However some competitions have gone on for 16 weeks.  So to be on the safe side you should plan 16 winning picks.  Therefore, you will never have to pick any of the worst 4 teams.  (Going by bookie's odds rather than current position in table, the current position can be influenced by tough run of games or one lucky/unlucky result). odds to finish bottom Unfortunately you will have to pick all the other teams once, even Leicester and Newcastle.   I am basing my strategy on three simple rules. Rule 1. Always pick a home win (h...

The midweek Champions League games have been dominated with English clubs versus German clubs.  This gives us a chance to get an insight into the relative strengths and strength in dept of both leagues. On the face of it the Bundesliga is dominated by Bayern Munich who are streets ahead of the likes of Dortmund, Leverkusen and Schalke.  The Premier League this year is emerging with the strong two of Chelsea and Man City, followed by a pack of three Man Utd, Arsenal and Liverpool.  The gap between the top 5 in the Premier League would appear to be much smaller than the gap between the top three German sides (Leverkusen are 18/1 and third favourite to win the Bundesliga outright, while even the likes of Liverpool and Arsenal are much shorter odds at 12/1 for the equivalent bet in England). Recent articles have focused strongly on bookie's odds.  We will continue that theme today. So what can the bookie's odds tell us about the big question on EPL vs BL?  How...

Colossus Bets have a HDA5 offering .  In this you predict whether the result will be Home win, Draw or Away win for 5 matches selected by Colossus.  All money goes into a Pot.  Colossus takes 30% as their share, they also guarantee a  € 1000 prize even if the Pot is not filled.  The overall prize is divided equally among all those with the correct predictions.  What is the best strategy here?  Always pick the favourites?  Pick the underdogs?  Pick all Home?  Pick all Draw? I'm recommending these picks.  Read on to see why. Lets think about the Pool for a minute, a simplified version where there is only one match.  Suppose the home team is favourite with a 50% chance of winning, Draw and Away are 25% each.  The cost to enter is    € 2 and 1000 people enter.  The operator pockets 30% of the pool money and divides the rest among the correct predictions.  So there is a total    € 140...

In a previous article on How Bookies Work  we saw how PaddyPower refused to be swayed by popular opinion and despite bucket loads of misplaced cash backing Liverpool to win the Premiership outright the bookie actually lengthened their odds instead of shortening their odds.  This would leave them exposed to paying out more ! Now this tweet from @SimonGleave (who is the brains behind fantastic articles on soccer analytics and predictive models such as this article  here ) got me rethinking about whether or not Bookies are swayed by popular opinion. @MC_of_A Thing is Michael there are different goals. Bookies will overrate Man Utd because that maximises their profit. — Simon Gleave (@SimonGleave) September 11, 2014 Now it is probably true that a sizable proportion of the bookie's customers will bet on their favourite team regardless.  Soccer is an emotive sport and fans can often be driven by their loyalty and their heart rather than facts .  This...

Cyprus (12/1), Albania (9/1) and Northen Ireland (13/2) pulled off the biggest upsets of the first international week of Euro Qualifiers.  We also saw big starts from the Czech Republic and England. Bosnia, Portugal, Netherlands and Greece all suffering from a World Cup hangover and are the big losers from the initial set of games.  With a potential of three from the group to qualify, I expect all these to pull themselves back into a qualifying position before the end of the campaign. Table below shows the betting trend for the Group Winners market.  Portugal and Greece make significant nose dives. Here on fog2014 we are also keeping an eye on how the matches affect the FIFA ranking.  There has been some media focus on the FIFA rankings in recent months on  football-rankings.info  and The Mirror .  This is because there is less than 12 months to go before the Seeding for the 2018 World Cup Qualifying Draw.  The ranking points are accumu...

San Marino made it 100 consecutive competitive games that they conceded a goal tonight (their last clean sheet was against Turkey over 11 years ago).  This is a new milestone for the nation that is now 113 competitive games without a single win since their first match vs Switzerland in Nov 1990 (won 0, drew 2, lost 111, for 15, against 514).  It begs the question should the qualifiers be restructured to give weaker nations a real opportunity to develop by playing against teams that they can actually compete with?  Are they actually improving by getting beat by vastly superior opposition all the time?  What would pre-qualifying look like anyway? There are 54 UEFA countries 24 places at the finals 1 host country automatically qualifies The current system is 9 groups (8 groups of 6 and 1 group of 5) 2 top teams from the 9 groups qualify automatically  1 best third placed team qualifies automatically too 4 more third place teams qualify through a ...

It was an unconvincing win, but a win none the less and Ireland are now 6 wins from 6 against the often dogged and stubborn Georgian side.  Both Scotland and Poland have come to Tblisi and left defeated ( Scotland in Euro 08 Qualifiers and Poland in WC 98 Qualifiers).  Let's not be negative about it, it is a good start and a statement of intent. This is two wins in a week for Martin O'Neil who has gotten the Euro Qualifying campaign off to a good start and is building a team and a platform that can climb up the World Rankings and hopefully once again be regular qualifiers for the main tournaments. In order to do this he must halt Ireland's slide down the rankings.  Yes, I know the FIFA Ranking points are flawed, and largely irrelevant 90% or the time.  But when it comes to seeding for the major tournaments they can determine what pot you are in.  Last time out in World Cup Qualifying Ireland were in Pot 3 as a result of their lowly ranking and were drawn ...

Reverse Chronological order of 11 game  unbeaten streak Qatar's draw against Morocco today has been lost among all the headlines about Germany's capitulation to an impressive Argentina. The significance though of Qatar's draw is that it equals their all time unbeaten streak of 11 games (see full list of games right).  A great achievement for an emerging soccer nation.  Morocco were favourites going into the game.   The Qatari national league has been attracting stars such as Ronald de Boer, Frank de Boer, Pep Guardiola, Gabriel Batistuta, Raul, Harry Kewell, Keita and Mark Bresciano for some time now.  The club teams have been successful in the AFC Champions League with Al Sadd recently winning in 2011.  The national team is starting to see some success now which reflects the improvements to their national league. The table below shows Qatar's record unbeaten runs.  Can they go one better this time?  Third time lucky. Table: ...