Any opinions?

[Rob]

Morning Gents/Ladies, First up, I apologise if this is covered somwhere else, I've just been too lazy to check. I was reading about a system for finding value in the correct scores market yesterday and wondered if anyone had experiance of using it. Basically it involves using a poisson distribution to determine the probability of each team scoring a particular number of goals. All you need is the mean number of goals you would expect a team to score in the game. It reccomends using reliable spread prices to determine the mean no of goals for each team. e.g. Say for Man Utd vs Arsenal the spread for total goals is 1.95-2.05, and the spread for Man Utd supremecy is 0.45-0.55. In this case it would be fair to assume that the 'mean' score would be Man Utd 1.25 Arsenal 0.75 (ie total goals 2, with man u scoring 0.5 more than the arse). So, in excel if the mean score for Man U is 1.25 you can plot a poisson distribution to tell you the probability of them scoring 1, 2, 3 etc goals. You do the same for Arsenal, then multiply the probabilities together to get the probability of a particular score. You then convert the probability to odds, and find a bookie that will give you higher than your calculated odds, then bobs your uncle. Now generally speaking, I'm not a fan of these 'non-football' methods, but I can see the logic behind this. I can also see limitations, such as why do you trust spread prices over fixed odds? and the fact that the no. of goals scored by each team is not independant any thoughts welcome :ok

[Rob]

Re: Any opinions? Come on! somebody must have seen this before No response today and I'll have to test it out on here

[mr onemore]

Re: Any opinions?

All you need is the mean number of goals you would expect a team to score in the game. It reccomends using reliable spread prices to determine the mean no of goals for each team. ... You then convert the probability to odds, and find a bookie that will give you higher than your calculated odds, then bobs your uncle. I can also see limitations, such as why do you trust spread prices over fixed odds?

Hi Emerson, I think you've answered your own question here!!;) Why should you trust spread prices over fixed odds? I'd be surprised if there was any edge to exploit here - it's extremely rare that you can find an edge using one bookie against the another. The actual idea though has a sound base - but it does depend, as you say, on whether you can find a reliable way to measure/predict the mean number of goals a team will score in a game. It's hard enough just getting the winner, so I'd expect it to be harder work going down this particular track. I think the other problem here is that this sounds like you're going to have to perform a 'live' test - unless of course you have access to a large databank of spread prices to test out the theory. On balance, I'm a little sceptical here - but of course good luck if you pursue this, will make an interesting thread:ok

[Rob]

Re: Any opinions? Yeah, I think I share your sceptacism to be honest onemore. In theory it should work, but as you say it's all based on the rather large assumption that the mean scores are absolutely correct. I jsut thought someone on here might have tested the system, as I've read about it twice now, so I figured it might be a well known myth that someone could put me off straight away. I imagine that bookies come up with prices for correct scores in a similar manner, but where the apparent abnormalities come up it's just a case of their method being slightly more refined, rather than this method finding value. Don't think I'll go through the hassle of testing a system that I don't really believe in. Cheers for the response:ok