The return of ELL TEE DEE.......

[only1woz]

I've been a bit bored this week, off work for the UK holiday this week. Not much to do, so trawled through the forum and came across my old system test. 

 

I'm going to give this a go again until the end of the season. Would love to make profit, but will be happy to just gain info and see what works (if anything!) to refine for next season. I got frustrated with it last time, as it's very much an up and down system, but looking to be more patient and positive this time!

Last time, the first season produced a profit of around £150.00 roughly.

Same selection criteria before, matches where the last 5 matches between the same 2 teams have produced AT LEAST four over 2.5 goals results. I originally was testing for an overs/under system, but it seemed to throw up a lot of wins for either team. Noticed after a while that it also performed better with no lays of 6.00 or above.

Will test for most European leagues, also English lower leagues. All prices from Betfair, where I now have 2% commission instead of 5% so that should help a little. Lays will be for £10.00 for the sake of records for the system, but NO MONEY WILL BE STAKED AT THIS POINT, and I would strongly recommend no one follow with actual bets this time around, but if anyone feels the need, it should be minimal stakes. Although the first season produced profit, it was £250.00 down at one point, before clawing back at the end. I stopped the 2nd season at -£200.00, so extreme caution advised.

Any questions or comments are welcome. I'll need to wait until at least Friday for first selections, and there won't be many but Saturday and Sunday should be packed.  

 

[harry_rag]

Good luck mate. My initial thoughts are that I can't see it yielding long term profit over a significant sample of games. I get the basic logic of why it might (higher scoring games are less likely to end in a draw than lower scoring ones) but there are 2 key things - identifying "higher scoring games" and assuming that the market is incorrectly pricing the draw in those games so that laying it would be profitable. I suspect you'd need to have an edge in identifying higher scoring games to be able to beat the market laying (or backing) the draw.

Given the methodology (looking at just the last 5 games) I can't see this being good enough as, quite simply, the sample size is far too small. Every sample of 5 games has a limited number of permutations (all 5 over or under, a 4-1 split either way or 3-2). I'd say that finding 4 or 5 overs is more a matter of random luck than something of significance for predicting future games.

In terms of the 5 games, do you only look at league games over the last 3 seasons or do you include cup games or games going back several years (e.g. where the teams have been in different divisions)? I'd suggest that cup ties and "old" games would weaken the validity of the data even further.

If I was looking for a rough and ready proxy for identifying "high scoring games" there are a couple of things I'd consider better indicators than head to head games. One would be looking at, say, the home team's last 5 home games and the away team's last 5 aways where both had at least 4 overs. The other would be using the spread firms' total goals expectation, e.g. any game where it was 2.9 or more (assuming the average to be more like 2.6). Again though, I can't see any reason why these wouldn't be factored into the draw odds that were on offer.

Hope I'm proved unduly pessimistic but just thought I'd offer my thoughts.