FoG

With Paddy Power if you place a €20 bet on any Premier League game that's live on Sky or BT Sports then Paddy Power are giving you two free €5 in play bets. I am making decent money on this promotion which now also applies to some of the Champions Leagues matches. I am not affiliated with Paddy Power and will also call them out when they run a bad promotion for example the  20% bonus on five fold accumulators . This new promotion though seems legitimate. Here is how you can potentially make money on this promotion.  1. Bet €20 on pre-match favourite to earn your free bets. 2. After kick off cover yourself as soon as possible by using one free bet on a draw and the other on an underdog victory. We discovered before, that the best value in the win-draw-win market is generally on the favourite . So before kick off put your own hard earned cash on the favourite to win. Then wait for kickoff, and wait for your free bets to register, it should be within 5 minutes. As soo

By comparing the difference between a team's average home goal difference and their average away goal difference we can see which teams gain the greatest advantage from playing at home. Most teams have played five home and five away this season. The results show that Cork and Galway have gained the biggest advantage from playing at home this season so far. Both of Galway's only wins came at home. Cork have been pretty solid at home until they were beaten by Dundalk on Friday. More interesting than that are the teams that have fared better on the road. It is expected that teams perform better at home - but what about Bohs and Shamrock Rovers. Shamrock Rovers home form is letting them down in a big way.  They have dropped points to Dundalk, Cork and Bohs at home - while winning all their away matches except Derry. You could argue that they had the tougher games at home - and this is true, for this season so far. But this is not a new trend. Shamrock Rovers home

Pythagorean Expectation for LoI Pythagorean expectation is a concept originally from baseball.  Bill James derived an equation that approximates the win percent based on runs allowed and runs made. win % = runs made  2 / (runs made  2  + runs allowed  2 ). It is a little more complex to apply to football, but some smart people have come up with different varieties of the equation that work very well for football to approximate points based on goals for and goals against. The one that I favour (for its relative simplicity) is copied below from here . Pts = Games Played * 2.74 (goals for 1.32 / [goals for 1.32  + goals against 1.32 ]) It can be applied to predict a teams points total for the end of a season. It can also be used to check how efficiently a team is converting their goals into points. The table so far for the League of Ireland is shown at the top. Most of the Pythagorean expectations are fairly accurate - although it does appear to over estimate th

What is PDO? Simply PDO is [percent of shots faced that are saved] + [percent of shots taken which result in a goal]. Usually it is multiplied by 10 to remove decimal places for presentation. This is important in football because no matter the team (good or bad), their average PDO rarely strays outside a narrow band around the 1000 average. Any deviation from this band is usually put down to good luck for a high PDO, or bad luck for an unusually low PDO. This is hard to explain why this measure tends to bunch very closely around the average. It could have to do with good teams defending so high up the pitch (as the defenders become extra attackers) and this would affect the type of chances they allow their opponents. It could have something to do with good teams taking their foot off the pedal when they get comfortably in front. It could have something to do with poor teams defenders becoming so conditioned to defending that they don't give out any straight forward cha

This article is based on the fantasy basketball competition run at www.dunkest.com . So now the playoffs are about to begin.   Dunkest has decided on a couple of things. 1. Your Credits are reset back to 95, and your score is reset to 0. 2. Each match day will cover a full real day's play, so not every team or player will be involved in every match day. The first point is a bit of a pain. The team you built and worked hard on all season in increasing its value is all now useless.  The second point encourages people to totally ditch their team after one Match Day to select players that will only be involved in the next Match Day. Player stats below, sortable by clicking on the column headers, last updated 2015-06-16 19:00 GMT. Player Team Pos Total Pts Expected Pts Credits Pts per game per Credit Last 3 (avg) Next Match Next 3 (exp) LeBron James CLE (F) 799.00 34.70 24.1 1.44 54.0 24.0 66.0 48.00 2015-06-16 GSW(H) () () 0.00 Stephen Curry GSW (G) 605.50 33.10

LoI LMS Last year I posted about the Paddy Power Last Man standing competition which was specific for the English Premiership. I have now discovered a new free  one for the League of Ireland with a prize of  € 200 . It is starting this coming weekend.  You need to play on your smart device - details are on their website here . My experience is that about 50% of players will fall in each round - so the winning plan really depends on the number of players entering.  In the English Premier League version of the competition it was likely that you would not have to pick every team but in the LoI (with less teams) it is quite likely that you will have to pick every team at least once. There are over 100 players already entered with still 3 days to the closing date and most people will leave it to the last minute. Also bear in mind that this tournament allows you to buy back in once. So lets assume that we will have to plan to win at least 12 rounds - i.e. pick every team onc

Another Friday passes in the League of Ireland and Dundalk, Cork and Shamrock Rovers all keep a clean sheet again.  All three teams are on only 1 goal conceded in 7 matches. If they can continue that rate then you could expect about 4 goals in their next 26. Is it possible that one of these teams can concede only 5 goals for an entire season? Last years best defense was Dundalk, conceding 24 goals. The chart below measures how well defenses have stymied the oppositions creativeness and for the times when the opposition did manage a break through, how well the last line handled the chance. Cork and Rovers (they share the same spot on the chart above) are the best last line with only 1 goal resulting from 43 shots created by their opposition. Dundalk edge it on defensive meanness allowing only an average of about 5 shots per match. Limerick are on the wrong end of the scale, allowing an average of 16 shots per match against, and not keeping a fair share of them out of the net.

Now that Bray have scored I can finally put up the attacking effectiveness scatter for the League of Ireland (see below).  This maps out the number of shots created per match versus the average number of shots per goal scored. You want to be in the top right quadrant - creating a lot of shots and  converting a fair amount of them. League of Ireland attacking effectiveness after 6 rounds. Dundalk and Cork are rising to the top on both scales.  This is showing in the League table too. Sligo Rovers numbers are absolutely extraordinary.  They have created more chances than all the top teams but their conversion rate is even worse than Bray (who took 6 matches before they actually scored a goal).   They almost fall off the scale on the chart above. Some more figures that I am following this season are in the table below. Team P W D L F A GD Pts Prob Shot % Save % SoTR TSR PDO Pyth Dundalk 5 5 0 0 11 0 11 15 40% 31% 100% 78% 67% 1314 13.70 Cork City 6 4 2 0 12 1 11 14 18%

Team Faroe Isl         284.44 Date #######                         Row Labels M * I * T * C = Total Pts Weighted Pts Year 1 0.2 0 7.5 502 3 0.00 0.00 11/08/10 Northern Ireland 0 2.5 138 1 0.00 0.00 11/09/02 Italy 0 2.5 193 1 0.00 0.00 11/09/06 Serbia 0 2.5 171 1 0.00 0.00 Year 2 0.3 0 16 1072 7 0.00 0.00 12/08/15 Iceland 0 1 70 1 0.00 0.00 12/09/07 Germany 0 2.5 198 1 0.00 0.00 12/10/12 Sweden 0 2.5 179 1 0.00 0.00 12/10/16 Republic of Ireland 0 2.5 172 1 0.00 0.00 13/03/22 Austria 0 2.5 121 1 0.00 0.00 13/06/07 Republic of Ireland 0 2.5 159 1 0.00 0.00 13/06/11 Sweden 0 2.5 173 1 0.00 0.00 Year 3 0.5 1 12 660 6 170.00 14.17 13/08/14 Iceland 0 1 130 1 0.00 0.00 13/09/06 Kazakhstan 0 2.5 51 1 0.00 0.00 13/09/10 Germany 0 2.5 198 1 0.00 0.00 13/10/11 Kazakhstan 1 2.5 68 1 170.00 85.00 13/10/15 Austria 0 2.5 153 1 0.00 0.00 13/11/19 Malta 0 1 60 1 0.00 0.00 Year 4 1 3 12.5 788 4.95 1351.35 270.27 14/09/07 Finland 0 2.5 145 0.99 0.00 0.00 14/10/11 Northern Ire