Football forecasting system

[dalkent]

Hi All, I am pretty new to the site and have spent most of my time looking at some of the systems in here. Although new to the site I have been betting for years. I went through the whole Arbitrage betting phase and cashed all the free bets. After being banned from most bookies (due to the arbitrage phase) I have turned my attention to sports modelling. Currently I work in modelling in the banking industry so it’s not a large step to apply it to sports betting. Anyway I have models covering 4 English divisions, France, Germany, Spain and Italy with further additions in the pipeline. There is a specific model for each division and they include various variables such as short/medium term form, home advantage, goals scored etc. The models are all ordered logistic models and give a probability of Win, Lose, Draw and obviously at this point I can convert to odds and bet if value. My current system (which I will start presenting here) is to use the model as the first step, apply some expert judgement and cap my exposure as I was recently nailed when QPR won at Chelsea. (note: this is how models in banking generally work too. Nobody follows a model blindly) I have found that most of the value is in laying the away team and this is where 95% of my bets lie. Normally I put a £2 lay and cap the exposure at £15 although this isn’t set in stone. Also due to laying i have to build the commission charge into the odds. Obviously I wouldn’t be doing this if I was currently making profit so I expect to now start losing fast :) To kick things off here are tonight's matches. Later in the week i will post up the weekends. [TABLE=width: 508]

[TR] [TD]Home[/TD] [TD]Away[/TD] [TD]Team Bet[/TD] [TD]Bet type[/TD] [TD]Odds[/TD] [TD]Stake[/TD] [TD]Exposure[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]Notts Co[/TD] [TD]Leyton Orient[/TD] [TD]Leyton Orient[/TD] [TD]Lay[/TD] [TD]3.55[/TD] [TD]2[/TD] [TD]5.1[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD][/TD] [TD][/TD] [TD][/TD] [TD][/TD] [TD][/TD] [TD][/TD] [TD][/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]Bristol R[/TD] [TD]Exeter[/TD] [TD]Bristol R[/TD] [TD]Lay[/TD] [TD]2.78[/TD] [TD]2[/TD] [TD]3.56[/TD] [/TR] [/TABLE]

[assange]

Re: Football forecasting system From the graphs on your website, it looks like you use Stata. I am also a Stata-user (occasionally R) and am working on ordered logit models (among others), but am very much in the beginning stages. Can I ask you, when your model gives you WDL probabilities what are the cut-offs you use for each in determining edge? For example, say 4 games have predicted HW percentages of 75%, 60, 50 and 45% respectively. Do you calculate edge against the odds for all of them or do you have a minimum % that you stop at? And not just for HW, but D and AW as well. I'm looking for some rules of thumb or best practices regarding this as it seems that this one of the components of sports modeling which is more art than science. Thanks.