Handinaps - How did you do?

With Johan winning the Lincoln on Saturday, 21 tipsters in the Handinap competition will be very happy.  But we all know that a good bet can lose and a bad bet can win.  It is about the process rather than the outcome. 

So what were the good bets?

The Experts

StarSports had released a market on who would win the Handinaps competition.  It quickly reflected the money as a couple of users clearly wanted the honour of going off as favourite.  Some unknown names moved to the top of the betting and the compiler has mentioned some losers in the book.


However before the market was turned upside down I took a screenshot.  It would be handy to have a list of twitter profiles which were rated highly for their tipping ability, coming from another expert on racing and trading.  So this is the list that I will use as the experts.  The list is solid, I've enjoyed any content, interviews and guests on podcasts this list have put out.

Below are their reported picks. 



And broken down by frequency:


The standout difference between the experts and the rest of the competition is "Darkness" picked 18% of the time by the experts but only 8% overall (the popular horses were given in the googlesheet shared by Handinaps).

This is a French horse that had never raced in the UK before, had not raced in 286 days and was racing for a new Trainer for the first time.  Maybe then a hard one for the betting public to get behind, maybe a good angle there at finding a generous ISP.

There were some write-ups on Darkness here and here.

The Markets 

As well as the experts, we can benchmark our picks against the market.  The market is often the ultimate expert.  Which horses did the market favour?  Lets look at the horses BSP's.



Most horses were negative EV compared to the expert opinion of the market. So its more a question of which were the least bad picks rather than which were the best picks.  Marie's Diamond each way the only one that indicates (tiny) positive EV.  The next best picks were also each way selection on What's the Story and United Front.

So even if you are sitting on -4, there might be still some reason for you to feel vindicated by your picks.  

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Bet Unfair

Image
Read my blog for the tips that bookies do NOT want you to know. The proof is that they continue to restrict my accounts for using the strategies I share here. Betfair have ordered a restriction on my account. So they join the growing list: William Hill Ladbrokes Sky bet Paddy Power Betway Betfred 888sport The list now also includes Coral and 188bet (who still allow me bonuses but is basically unusable thanks to stake restrictions on horses). In betfair's case I received this email - ironically just a couple of hours receiving a separate email inviting me to take part in different promos. With betfair their promotions had been decent but not great. The horse offer was frustrating. Basically you place a bet at 3/1 odds or higher and if he wins then you get a free bet to the same value of your original stake. I stayed clear of this one as 3/1 price had to be the SP. After backing a couple of horses, and and then watching their SP drop to under 3/1 and so missing out
Read more

Deconstructing WDL and O/U 2.5 goals odds.

Input odds below (in decimal): Home Odds: Draw Odds: Away odds: Over 2.5 Odds: Calculate Params See also Elo Reverse Calculator . Dixon Coles Dixon Coles is a method of generating probabilities on football matches.  It is related to Poisson but adds a correlation for low scores.  It seems to be one of the most accurate public methods.  It requires three parameters lambda, mu and rho.  rho describes how related low scores are.  lambda and mu represent the average goals the home and away team are expected to score. In this calculator I have fixed rho = -0.13 (more info here  and here ) and I simply do a brute force search varying lambda and mu to find the values that has the lowest error from the Win Draw Lose and Over 2.5 odds entered.  I use the WDL odds and Over/Under odds as they are the most liquid betting markets and you can usually read a very accurate estimate for these off oddschecker or the exchange.   The solutions (from this brute force search described
Read more

Chrome Extension 1000

Image
Donations now accepted If you have enjoyed using this extension and want to show your appreciation then click "Buy me a coffee" below, otherwise continue further down to read about our features! This started off as just a personal project.  I got full value from the effort that I put in already.   The effort included a few days coding initially and a day or two here or there to fix and add features, perhaps a full working week but fragmented all over the place.  In total it is now about 150 lines of code.   The reward was learning some javascript, learning about chrome extensions, earning some cred on twitter, and getting to connect with different people.  And of course I am actively using it and can identify potential betting opportunities myself. However surprisingly many have found it useful and some have asked for a way to say thanks.  So here it is. Feature Request (01 February 2024) - only available to manually install due to gambling exetnsions being rejected by Chrom
Read more