OddsPredictor

West Ham (2) 3.00 £10 Single

There is a difference between fair fixed odds events such as a roulette wheel and sporting events. If 8 Reds come in a row on a fair wheel then we all know that this has no relevance to the next spin. I mention fair as if not specified then eg if I toss a coin twenty times and it comes up heads everytime then there is a damn good chance it will be heads again. However in sporting events that may not be the case for instance if Southampton let a lot of goals in when its cold and raining it may well be that the next time it is cold raining the probability that they will do so again may be higher than if it is a sunny day. But we may never know as there may well not be enough events to determine the validity of this hypothesis. In fact I wonder whether there is such a thing as the 'True Odds' on a sporting event and searching for value odds as per my OddsPredictor is like searching for the holy grail. Sure if someone offers me odds of 10/1 against Liverpool beating Man City on Sunday I will take the bet as that is just an obvious error but what about if you are offered 2/1 is that value or not? Whatever you think and whatever the outcome you will never know whether it was a value bet or not. Looking back at past data to test your value bets is also fraught with dangers of unintended influences on your choice and even paper trading has its problems as it is so easy to correct mistakes. I try to use micro betting for my sandpit trials but even that has its problems. What keeps me going is not whether I understand all the concepts but that my system keeps making me a profit albeit small. Maybe I have found the answer by luck. Praise be to Fortuna.

A busy November weekend with selections on many of the UK and European football leagues available for free download from the OddsPredictor.Org.Uk web site.

Arsenal (1) 1.65 £10 Single

Forest Green Rovers (1) 2.90 £10 Single EDIT Forest Green match postponed - if allowed can I change my selection to Derby County (2) 3.10 £10 Single

Just the single selection for this coming weekend.

It was not fated to be - however still in profit by the smallest of margins.

STOKE (1) 2.87 £10 Single

Just the one selection this week as the season moves towards its endgame. But a good price one if it wins.

If I could add my two pennies worth I think the answer is never. If your original stake was the correct level and affordable to begin with and you are winning don't change it. Take your winnings and spend it on a luxury or something useful and carry on as before. If you increase your stake you end up trivialising all your earlier work and trust me it usually ends in tears.

Like everyone else's experience with tennis the issue is that collecting the data and predicting matches with hundreds of players and thousands of matches the data is massive and cumbersomel and I have only been working on the women's game. Tournaments come thick and fast during the season across multiple time zones so keeping up to date is a considerable feat. Placing my own bets let alone posting the selections for others to use in a timely fashion is almost impossible. So an alternative is to focus on predicting the outright winner though the downside is that only a limited number of bookmakers and exchanges offer reasonable odds. However to this end I have created a small spreadsheet for each tournament and added the bookmakers' prices albeit a small selection for the non majors - and bingo you have a handful of players to place your bets on to win outright and then you can sit back and relax. All that is left to do is to skim the final results at your leisure ready for the next tournament. Oh and of course to count your winnings. Take a look on my website if you are curious. I think this is the way forward though you can still download the massive 12mb Excel TennisPredictor spreadsheet if you wish.

Southend (1) 2.40 £24 Single Thankyou BillyHills for doing all this - great fun - hopefully I have not fallen foul of any rules. Percy I think you need to rethink your stake or you will be in real trouble !

and for the record

And now we have another break in Super League matches until the 18th October apart from one match on the 13th. In the meantime check out the selections from other leagues on the OddsPredictor web site.

Just a reminder that a PDF of selections for the weekend's football can be downloaded from the OddsPredictor.Org.Uk web site on a Thursday. The 10 match delay before predicting the top leagues is coming to an end so the number of selections will expand over the coming weeks. As always the spreadsheets and everything else is free to download and can be useful as a data resource in its own right. As a one off I am posting this weekends selections here. Good luck everyone.