England lower leagues: Big Dogs

[allthethings]

Two things I've always heard specifically about the Championship and about the lower leagues in general: Anybody can beat anybody, and weekday games throw up a lot of big upsets. I decided to check these against results, and so far they have been very illuminating. First, these are the results of the lower leagues for which I have odds...all games where the dogs are 4.00 or better: Championship 17-17-32 League One 13-16-34 League Two 12-14-27 Conference 18-29-45 Were you to bet the dogs to win outright and draw (splitting the bet in some fashion), you'd have won some money playing them all. The overall winning percentage of this bet (you win between 1.75 and 2.0 when you get a draw, and between 3.0 and 5.0 or more when you get a win) is 49% (136-138). Of course, not all bets are equal. If the odds were 4.2 or below, you'd have won 55% of the time, if they were between 4.2 and 5.0, you'd win 51%, 5.0 to 6.0 46% and 6.0 and higher 39%. But you'd win more money for the really freak results. Also, the percentage of outright wins shrinks as the odds get better, as you'd expect. The breakdown of 5.00+ bets is 13-33-58, as opposed to 47-43-81 for bets between 4.00 and 4.99. Anyway, the weekday effect is huge. In fact, the weekday results have been so good that it shows the normal weekend results to be quite poor, actually. Here are the dogs' results at better than 4.00: Championship 5-4-3 League One 4-1-2 League Two 1-1-3 Conference 8-11-13 In total, that's 35-21 playing the dogs win/draw (63%). That means on the weekend, the strike rate is 45%. It's been just as good when you only count games of 5.0 and above: Championship 6-2 League One 0-1 League Two 0-1 Conference 9-3 Total: 15-7 (68%). One thing you might be wondering is, why not just play the dogs on the handicap? The answer is that the odds can be very poor, and what's more, when the big favorites win, they often beat the handicap, too. What I've found is that if you're going to play the dogs, you should play them for the big money, not the handicap. If anyone can share odds for the first week of Leagues One and Two, I'd be much obliged. To sum up, big favorites, particularly on weekdays, are not a good bet. Big dogs are.

[kukacomone]

Re: England lower leagues: Big Dogs league two first round http://i.imgur.com/ySZaz.png league one first round http://i.imgur.com/v76FO.png