froment

Maybe it is bad idea, but it's certainly nice idea, I enjoy crumbling numbers, especially when you have a vast source of statistcis, similar to one created by poster above, Giraldi, check site in his signature to see what is next level statistics. And I think it's valid as long as you see betting as entertainment and not source of living.
As for your article, I can hardly take seriously people who play "football" using hands, and who christened actual football as "soccer". Why not checking native British expert, Joe Buchdachl, he has several amusing books on that topic, and you can find nice and short briefing on stats based betting in his site: https://www.football-data.co.uk/ratings.pdf
Finally, PuntersLounge has its own stats based system, ELO Ratings, and @NickP recently proved that it can be successfull, see here:
Overall, I believe you cannot generalize that systems based on stats are good or bad; they are as good or as bad as you can process available statistics and predict when match will follow the trend and when it will deviate.

Maybe it is bad idea, but it's certainly nice idea, I enjoy crumbling numbers, especially when you have a vast source of statistcis, similar to one created by poster above, Giraldi, check site in his signature to see what is next level statistics. And I think it's valid as long as you see betting as entertainment and not source of living.
As for your article, I can hardly take seriously people who play "football" using hands, and who christened actual football as "soccer". Why not checking native British expert, Joe Buchdachl, he has several amusing books on that topic, and you can find nice and short briefing on stats based betting in his site: https://www.football-data.co.uk/ratings.pdf
Finally, PuntersLounge has its own stats based system, ELO Ratings, and @NickP recently proved that it can be successfull, see here:
Overall, I believe you cannot generalize that systems based on stats are good or bad; they are as good or as bad as you can process available statistics and predict when match will follow the trend and when it will deviate.

Been away from the forum for a while,poor health and general life coming in the way ...Let's see if I can remember how to do this

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.

Your observation is totally correct, you are absolutely right!
You only need to pay a bit of attention to your words that I emphasized above. If you check, you will see for yourself that odds for under 5.5 if one goal is scored at HT, and under 4.5 if no goals at HT, are barely 1.05 or even less. And if you check this year games, not a dozen of today games, but thousands of this year games, you will find that usually 5 out of 100 such a matches go over 5.5 or over 4.5. So, if you bet 100 units each time, you will win 5 units 95 times, add or take two or three times, and lose 100 units 5 times, add or take two or three times. Now do the math, and you will see where does your system go.
Though, if you are able to select games, not to bet on all today games or all this year games, but to select matches so that you hot over 4.5 or over 5.5 less than (100-100/odds) out of 100 matches, where "odds" are average winning odds you get, after commission, then indeed you have a profitable system. So, all you need is to find such a matches.

Your observation is totally correct, you are absolutely right!
You only need to pay a bit of attention to your words that I emphasized above. If you check, you will see for yourself that odds for under 5.5 if one goal is scored at HT, and under 4.5 if no goals at HT, are barely 1.05 or even less. And if you check this year games, not a dozen of today games, but thousands of this year games, you will find that usually 5 out of 100 such a matches go over 5.5 or over 4.5. So, if you bet 100 units each time, you will win 5 units 95 times, add or take two or three times, and lose 100 units 5 times, add or take two or three times. Now do the math, and you will see where does your system go.
Though, if you are able to select games, not to bet on all today games or all this year games, but to select matches so that you hot over 4.5 or over 5.5 less than (100-100/odds) out of 100 matches, where "odds" are average winning odds you get, after commission, then indeed you have a profitable system. So, all you need is to find such a matches.

https://gamescreener.com/ - my favourite to filter my matches
https://www.poisonfoot.com/ -> Value finder ->
https://www.over25tips.com/ -> in my opinion THE BEST in finding EDGE on BTTS and OVER2.5 markets
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/soccer-predictions/matches/ -> another site that I recommand
https://www.adamchoi.co.uk/#/ -> another stats website
https://footballxg.com/xg-league-tables/ -> xG STATS
https://www.stats24.com/ -> BET FINDER, ACCAs, VALUE BETS
https://www.forebet.com/ -> WEATHER and field condition
http://www.spordb.com/en/analiz/futbol/ms/ -> for BTTS is the best, GAME SIMULATOR
https://www.thestatsdontlie.com/ -> a simple and useful tool to find quick games to bet
https://soccerkeep.com/ -> complete stats website
http://footballzz.co.uk/ -> another stats website
http://www.statarea.com/ -> another stats website
http://1x2stats.com/en-us/
https://understat.com/ -> THE BEST using xG stat
https://bettify.com
https://www.soccerstats.com/
http://www.soccer-rating.com/
 
I use
https://gamescreener.com/  in combination with https://www.over25tips.com/ and http://www.soccer-rating.com/
 
This is my list, choose wisely and don't believe in luck.

It's absolutely worthwhile, it's been worth thousands of pounds to me, whether that's viewed as reducing my losses (especially in the earlier days) or increasing the winnings.
First and foremost, especially now, it's used for recording every bet I place and giving me the ability to analyse the results in detail. That strips away the universal tendency to overestimate how well you're doing or underestimate how badly. Recently I've eliminated bets that were costing me a lot of money even though I assumed it was one of my strengths (past results being no guarantee of ongoing profit) and found profitable bets to put real money on after tracking paper trades for a while. None of that data is available elsewhere, hence it's value to you.
For sports other than football, there's not necessarily the same depth of data out there so capturing and analysing you own stats is necessary. Even for football, you can do more targeted analysis on specific areas with Excel than you can do online.
Excel (or other freely available equivalent tools) is only the entry level tool when it comes to data capture and analysis in betting and I'm by no means an expert user but I can't imagine betting without it and I guarantee it's worth the effort of mastering the basics.

THE WINNERS/LOSERS WILL BE POSTED WHEN ALL THE MATCHES HAVE FINISHED FOR THAT DAY 
 
ive been using this strategy a lot the past few weeks and made a lot of profit so ive decided to create a thread. All selections i choose are based on the league table only. All form and past meetings between the teams are irrelevant all that matters is the league table. The teams i back to win must be at least 1.80 odds. I will be staking £10 per bet also.
the team im backing to win must be in the top 4 and the opposition MUST be outside of the top 4. HERE IS AN EXAMPLE -
 
As you can see before kick off Inter Milan were 2nd in the league whereas Torino were 12th. This fits the criteria we are looking for as inter milan are in the top 4 and Torino are outside of the top 4. As you can see Inter won 0-3.
 

 

Hi, just found this. I think the issue with other ELO tables being stubborn is the different dates so I have changed some formulas in the input sheet
Change F2 to this and then copy down: =COUNTIFS($A$2:A2,">="&$B$1,$A$2:A2,"<"&$B$2+50000)
Change G3 to this and copy down: =IF(AND((A3>($B$1-1)),(A3<($B$1+50000))),"Start","")
This means that instead of just matching with the date in B1 it looks 50000 units (not sure what they are but it works) ahead.
Works for me - needs testing though. You could now add a date column in the ELO ratings sheet
In the example below the bottom two games are on different dates to the rest. It is broken though - says Man United will win
Edit: Change B2 to this and copy down: =IF(AND((A2>($B$1-1)),(A2<($B$1+50000))),1,0)
You can now paste data from multiple ELO tables!

 
Edited again - Added date column in ratings sheet. Hard to explain (if you know arrays, you know!) so will find a way to upload file (with massive thanks to Froment)

Results for the weekend, rescued by the 8/1 winner on Osasuna +3.5 goals without doubt!

 

So overall results mean slightly down for the weekend.

Interesting discussion, but I'm afraid it will never have a definite answer, it is highly subjective matter, everyone has opinion and believes it is right.

1.
This all goes to personal skills on how to estimate the value and calculate your own odds... and bit of luck during the match itself; I remember few matches where one team had like 70% or 80% ball possesion and 20 shots on goal vs 2 shots on goal by their oponent, yet the oponent endured all attacks and materialized one of those two shots to win match 1-0, despite being completely outplayed.

Take as an example West Bromwich tonight; I am surprised to see it at ~2.30; based on table position and recent form, it should be 1.70, max 1.80. I see no major injuries on both sides, but they say that Stoke’s coach Nathan Jones has left the club; it means club is not satisifed with recent results and atmosphere is probably not good; so it brings the price down to 1.60, hence 2.30 is massive value.

However, odds compiler might be niece of that brother-in-law of manager’s wife, and have some insider information that mere mortals do not have, and argue that coach replacement is actually beneficial for players morale, hence they priced it as it is, 2.30.

So is it value or not? I don’t know now; I will not know in about 8 hours, when this match ends, either; I can only know after I placed a hundreds of bets on matches based on the same selection criteria – if I earned a profit after that amount of matches, yes, all my bets were value (and I probably do not care what’s the name for that, let alone to bother with selling those predictions, as some wise businessmen do); but if I lost money, I am not good at spotting a value; I might write nice analyses, present stats and reveal insider info, but if I don’t make long-term profit, there’s no value in my bets.

In other words, I do agree with your statement in last paragraph of point 1. :) Some they say good indication is movement of odds at Pinnacle – if you place a bet at odds which drop subsequently, you spotted value before Pinny; but at the end it has the same black/white outcome, no grey area there –you are making profit or you are making loss.

2.
Gambler’s falacy, in my opinion, is not applicable to football matches, or any other sport event, at all. It applies to independent events, as you mention, but in terms of football matches, independence means “lack of duration”, so to say. What I mean; white ball and red or black slots are absolutely the same throughout the process of spinning, they do not change from the moment of spinning the wheel untill it stops, probability of each event remains the same for that duration of time, 18/37 for black and red, and 1/37 for the house; you spin the wheel, and you are sure that those probabilities do not change in those dozens of seconds untill it stops. In a football match, however, even if there are two perfectly balanced teams from all aspects (including tiredness impact from previous matches that you mentioned), so we are sure that probability of each outcome is 1/3, each match lasts for almost 100 minutes and it will develop differently throughout that period – a key player can sustain an injury or receive red card after 5 minutes, a sloppy keeper can commit an own goal, an incompetent referee can make a crucial mistake, etc. – a lot of human, unpredictable occurences that send match beyond calculated probabilities.

In your example, if a team has 5 wins, is it worth laying it with Martingale? If that team plays in major, well known leagues, and odds are close to evens, as originally meant for Martingale, then yes, go for it by all means – I am pretty sure no team will ever win 100 consecutive matches in Premier league or La Liga (while I would not be that sure for, say, Ethiopian regional league... or even Serie A, I'm afraid), so that team is bound to fail to win sooner or later, and you’re bound to win those 10 quid at the end, provided that you start with 10 quid, you have bank comparable in size to that of Ronaldo, and you know a bookmaker willing to accept stake of ~10 million quid in case your team goes to another 20 winning streak, let alone if they go to all 100. :)

On a more serious note, it goes back again to available odds – Martingale is originally designed for even odds in each leg; whereas odds for each match fluctuate, hence you have to adjust the stakes each time; it doesn’t affect final outcome, but affects your stake, and thus number of matches you can afford

to bet on before you have to give up, either because of your bank, or because of bookmaker limit.

Interesting discussion, but I'm afraid it will never have a definite answer, it is highly subjective matter, everyone has opinion and believes it is right.

1.
This all goes to personal skills on how to estimate the value and calculate your own odds... and bit of luck during the match itself; I remember few matches where one team had like 70% or 80% ball possesion and 20 shots on goal vs 2 shots on goal by their oponent, yet the oponent endured all attacks and materialized one of those two shots to win match 1-0, despite being completely outplayed.

Take as an example West Bromwich tonight; I am surprised to see it at ~2.30; based on table position and recent form, it should be 1.70, max 1.80. I see no major injuries on both sides, but they say that Stoke’s coach Nathan Jones has left the club; it means club is not satisifed with recent results and atmosphere is probably not good; so it brings the price down to 1.60, hence 2.30 is massive value.

However, odds compiler might be niece of that brother-in-law of manager’s wife, and have some insider information that mere mortals do not have, and argue that coach replacement is actually beneficial for players morale, hence they priced it as it is, 2.30.

So is it value or not? I don’t know now; I will not know in about 8 hours, when this match ends, either; I can only know after I placed a hundreds of bets on matches based on the same selection criteria – if I earned a profit after that amount of matches, yes, all my bets were value (and I probably do not care what’s the name for that, let alone to bother with selling those predictions, as some wise businessmen do); but if I lost money, I am not good at spotting a value; I might write nice analyses, present stats and reveal insider info, but if I don’t make long-term profit, there’s no value in my bets.

In other words, I do agree with your statement in last paragraph of point 1. :) Some they say good indication is movement of odds at Pinnacle – if you place a bet at odds which drop subsequently, you spotted value before Pinny; but at the end it has the same black/white outcome, no grey area there –you are making profit or you are making loss.

2.
Gambler’s falacy, in my opinion, is not applicable to football matches, or any other sport event, at all. It applies to independent events, as you mention, but in terms of football matches, independence means “lack of duration”, so to say. What I mean; white ball and red or black slots are absolutely the same throughout the process of spinning, they do not change from the moment of spinning the wheel untill it stops, probability of each event remains the same for that duration of time, 18/37 for black and red, and 1/37 for the house; you spin the wheel, and you are sure that those probabilities do not change in those dozens of seconds untill it stops. In a football match, however, even if there are two perfectly balanced teams from all aspects (including tiredness impact from previous matches that you mentioned), so we are sure that probability of each outcome is 1/3, each match lasts for almost 100 minutes and it will develop differently throughout that period – a key player can sustain an injury or receive red card after 5 minutes, a sloppy keeper can commit an own goal, an incompetent referee can make a crucial mistake, etc. – a lot of human, unpredictable occurences that send match beyond calculated probabilities.

In your example, if a team has 5 wins, is it worth laying it with Martingale? If that team plays in major, well known leagues, and odds are close to evens, as originally meant for Martingale, then yes, go for it by all means – I am pretty sure no team will ever win 100 consecutive matches in Premier league or La Liga (while I would not be that sure for, say, Ethiopian regional league... or even Serie A, I'm afraid), so that team is bound to fail to win sooner or later, and you’re bound to win those 10 quid at the end, provided that you start with 10 quid, you have bank comparable in size to that of Ronaldo, and you know a bookmaker willing to accept stake of ~10 million quid in case your team goes to another 20 winning streak, let alone if they go to all 100. :)

On a more serious note, it goes back again to available odds – Martingale is originally designed for even odds in each leg; whereas odds for each match fluctuate, hence you have to adjust the stakes each time; it doesn’t affect final outcome, but affects your stake, and thus number of matches you can afford

to bet on before you have to give up, either because of your bank, or because of bookmaker limit.

A few days ago I had a discussion with some friends about two very controversial topics.
I opened the discussion here because both topics are the basis for many betting strategies.
It's about "gamblers fallacy" and "value in betting"
 
There are probably just a few who don't know what we are talking about here, so I will remind them:
Value, in betting, appears when the odds are suggesting that the chances to happen the event are smaller than they really are.
And
according to Wikipedia: The gambler's fallacy, also known as the Monte Carlo fallacy or the fallacy of the maturity of chances, is the mistaken belief that if something happens more frequently than normal during a given period, it will happen less frequently in the future (or vice versa).
Now, the problems in discussion were, and I would appreciate your opinion
1.
We talk every day about value but is it possible to calculate the exact value for a price so we can tell if we will have profit on long run?
If we have the price 2.10 for 50% event like coin flip  it is a clear value and will have profit on long run  but,
For example we have 1.90 odds for home team win and we know with 15 minutes earlier than anyone else (my brother’s best friend is  brother in law with the wife-s manager) that the away team will play with the second team or something similar.  
On this particular situation the odds 1.90 is a certain value and should hurry to get it?  Why? Common sense tell us that should be value, but based on what? We bet based on common sense or based on value?  What is the probability for home team to win event? What way is calculated?
I agree that there are way more chances to have value but my opinion is that will never know if we bet with value or not. Until will see that checking the money into accounts of course.
2.
I have often warned about the danger of “gambler’s fallacy” but I was right regarding to betting on football?
We have an average team that won 5 in a row. Would be correct to start a strategy like Martingale against them?  At first sight would be terrible wrong if looking to “gambler’s fallacy” concept.
But, extremely important, the concept is about independent events. If there will be red 100000 times the next red/black will have the same 50% probability to appear.
This is the same thing for our team?  The next game is not affected at all by the previous games? Some players are probably getting more and more tired.  And many other similar things that affects next games.  
I am against Martingale in betting but my opinion is that is am extremely good strategy in some very particular situations.
 
 

One bet no-one ever seems to want to place is on 0-0, so maybe with some filters that could be a fruitful strategy - although I remember years ago someone on here tried to turn a profit backing 0-0 but I don't recall it being successful. Probably not much of a useful contribution from me reading this back 

With the occasional post using the "holy grail" hook to attract attention I thought I'd post some thoughts and a question.
If I ever found a genuine "HG" I'm pretty sure I wouldn't reveal it on here or post many of my bets. I also wouldn't come on to do any of the "cock inflating" hinting and teasing that we occasionally see. Ultimately I'd keep it to myself to preserve the edge because a genuine edge is obviously a fragile and valuable thing.
It's my view that if there is a HG to be found it will involve selling on the spreads. As most people want to buy a thrill (e.g. bet on lots of goals/corners/cards/runs/tries etc.) this is reflected in the prices so that any value is likely to be on the sell side. As Kevin Pullein often points out, the best bargains are often to be found on the bets that no-one wants to place rather than the ones that are obvious and appeal to the majority. Also, most people are more inclined to overestimate how many of these things there will be in a game/match.
In the early days of spread betting (pre-internet and the wide availability of detailed statistics) there were some crazy prices offered, e.g. corners might have been 16-17 or even higher. The opportunity to blindly sell total corners at 16 in every game would yield a substantial guaranteed profit in the long run. Over time the firms and the punters got a better understanding of things, shrewder punters started to sell clearly wrong prices and the markets settled at a point much closer to reality. Despite that, the greater demand from buyers continues to inflate prices to a degree (remember Muppet's successful HG corners thread which ran for years).
So all that gets me to pondering, are there certain markets in certain sports where one could make a profit by blindly selling? Or, perhaps slightly more likely, by applying a limited set of filters such as minimum price and maximum "market" spread width? To give an entirely hypothetical example:
Sell player performance in cricket as long as sell price is 40 or more and spread width is 1 or less. So if a player is 40-44 with both firms that would be no bet but if one firm went 43-47 then that would signal a sell at 43 (as the market price would be 43-44 and the spread width just 1).
Assuming anyone makes it this far (I appreciate there aren't that many spread aficianados on here) the question I'd welcome feedback on is:
Are there any markets that you think are worth looking at from the point of view of the spreads always tending to be on the high side, offering value for a strategy based on selling?

Many thanks for sharing this and to let you know that it's working fine with LibreOffice.

and for the record

@froment - it works now!
I have tried the online version, without any problems. Great!!!
MANY THANKS!!!

we dont care for other games than sport betting on this thread

By "Parser" I am referring to the Spreadsheet developed on the previous thread, linked at the top of this one, provided by @froment in his post on 28th May, and which you are getting to grips with as per your post above.

By improving 2 AVG, I mean the "2 AVG" rating is higher than the "4 AVG" rating, focussing here for my purposes on home games. As exemplified in your post above for Etar and 14.00 > 18.00 and Viitorul. However I am using a minimum +19.99 on the "4 AVG" as a start point in my selections

My other site is, and please remove @Sir Puntalot if not supposed to be here, https://www.soccervista.com/
 

Hey, @The Maximiser, @Ratso, do you want to export daily ELO ratings or ratings for individual leagues?
If it is daily ratings, I can offer help untill your request is resolved. Indeed, data can be copied only into single column, even when using web query within Excel, so I created a small workbook that parses data into a proper table. You can download it from here: https://rvasi.me/files/Punters-Lounge-parse-ELO-ratings.xlsx
Instructions are inside, and please note again, it works only for daily ratings, not for individual leagues, they appeared to be too stubborn... ?

https://www.soccerwidow.com/football-gambling/betting-knowledge/value-betting-academy/learning-centre/betting-terminology/correct-score-betting-vs-ft-result-btts-combination-bet/
 
check out this interesting article from soccerwidows site @Rey86

Hello, Mocas, welcome to the forum, and good luck with exchanges!
Answer to both of your questions is yes, it would work as you explained, Betfair matches your money at best available odds at the moment. I say Betfair, I don't know for other exchanges.
The same applies to the other side - if you place lay bet at odds of 3.80, and odds of 3.76 appear in the meantime, your bet will get matched at better odds, 3.76, in amount of money available at those odds.