Rugby World Cup 2023

[harry_rag]

Starts a fortnight on Friday. Not the most heavily punted sport on here but I think the World Cup merits it's own thread!

[harry_rag]

Help me out here, I've seen 16/1 each for either NZ to beat France in the pool game and France to win the tournament or the reverse (France win the game but NZ win outright). Surely that's a value bet?

Assuming the game isn't drawn you're holding one losing ticket and 16/1 outright about the team that loses that game winning the whole shebang. The game's virtually a coin toss (France favoured with home advantage and after South Africa's win over NZ at the weekend). Call your bet a 15/2 shot (dutching two at 16/1), it's unlikely that the loser will drift that much unless they're thrashed. You're currently looking at 3/1 and 7/2 best bookies prices and 4.2 and 4.5 on the exchange.

Surely worth a small bet on both in the expectation of holding an inflated outright bet on the loser after the game?

@Torque you love a puzzle; how's my thinking on this one?

[harry_rag]

6 minutes ago, harry_rag said:

Help me out here, I've seen 16/1 each for either NZ to beat France in the pool game and France to win the tournament or the reverse (France win the game but NZ win outright). Surely that's a value bet?

I've seen the same bets elsewhere at the same price BUT with the stipulation that the two teams meet in the final (so it would be the team that lost in the group game beats the other team in the final). I'd guess that's way too short. It's 7/2 for the two teams to meet in the final and you'd need one team to win the pool game and then the reverse in the final.

[Torque]

24 minutes ago, harry_rag said:

Help me out here, I've seen 16/1 each for either NZ to beat France in the pool game and France to win the tournament or the reverse (France win the game but NZ win outright). Surely that's a value bet?

Assuming the game isn't drawn you're holding one losing ticket and 16/1 outright about the team that loses that game winning the whole shebang. The game's virtually a coin toss (France favoured with home advantage and after South Africa's win over NZ at the weekend). Call your bet a 15/2 shot (dutching two at 16/1), it's unlikely that the loser will drift that much unless they're thrashed. You're currently looking at 3/1 and 7/2 best bookies prices and 4.2 and 4.5 on the exchange.

Surely worth a small bet on both in the expectation of holding an inflated outright bet on the loser after the game?

@Torque you love a puzzle; how's my thinking on this one?

Seems ok to me. I was thinking that it depends on how much the odds of the loser drift but it looks like you've got that covered and 17's will still be value.

[harry_rag]

1 minute ago, Torque said:

Seems ok to me. I was thinking that it depends on how much the odds of the loser drift but it looks like you've got that covered and 17's will still be value.

You're effectively getting 15/2 as you're guaranteed a losing bet on whoever wins the match. You also need to avoid the wipeout of a draw. So you're hoping that one team wins and the other doesn't drift as far as 15/2 afterwards. Both should make the quarter finals regardless; the loser needs to win their remaining games against Italy, Namibia and Uruguay. I've decided to go with it, it's with Hills.

There should be more specials priced up over the next few days. Some of the spreads look high to me but my finger isn't on the pulse when it comes to any rule changes that might inflate the expectation of points, tries and cards etc. That said, I reckon most prices on tournament totals will be inflated by the expectation that most punters are buyers.

I posted the prices and stats for a load of spread lines in the 2019 WC thread if anyone wants a refresher before looking at this year's prices (I also captured the totals from the last World Cup for reference.)

[harry_rag]

Thoughts on the score related spread prices for this year (spoiler alert; they all look too high to me). Prices shown with 2019's in brackets and last 5 World Cup totals with most recent first.

Total Points : 2590-2640 (2550-2575), 2196 - 2439 - 2245 - 2478 - 2835
Price up from last year, that line not covered in any of the last 4 World Cups. 2610 this year.

Total Tries: 350-350 (305-315), 285 - 271 - 262 - 296 - 332
Price up to a line not covered in any of the last 5 renewals. 325 this year.

Total Tryscorer shirts: 3730-3800 (3500-3550), 3239 last year but no earlier data
Seems a bit low in terms of dividing it by the expected number of tries and comparing that to last time's prices and actual totals. Not enough data but there would be better avenues for going low I think. 3798 this year

Total 50-ups: 405-425 (440-460), 199 - 328 - 386 - 474 - 647
Distinct downward trend there but suspect we'll see a regression to the mean in this market. 464 this year.

If you forced me to pick one of those totals to sell I'd opt for total tries at 350. That's equivalent to 67.5% of the sell price for total points which is higher than any of the actual percentages for those last 5 World Cups. If the general trend is towards the prices being too high that looks the most wrong to me. It was the only market where a sell would have been profitable.

Edited October 30, 2023 by harry_rag
Added in this year's totals for reference.

[harry_rag]

Here's the disciplinary market prices and stats.

Bookings points: 735-765 (625-630 last time), 480 - 555 - 230 - 400 - 300 750 this year
Yellow cards: 58-61 (54-55), 28 - 53 - 18 - 35 - 30 55 this year
Red cards: 5.3-5.8 (3.5-4), 8 - 1 - 2 - 2 - 0 8 this year

There's not much historical support to get long of the total points or yellow cards spreads unless you're expecting carnage at this World Cup but the red card situation is interesting given the bunker system that will be in place. Essentially the ref should be issuing clear yellows and clear reds as normal but any borderline red/yellow offences will see a yellow given initially with the ref signaling that further review is required. A dedicated review team then has 8 minutes to consider whether the offence should be upgraded to a red. The idea is that this speeds the on-field review process up but avoids players getting away with borderline calls. I can't help feeling that this may mean we see more red cards in total, certainly somewhere in the region of the 8 that we saw last time.

I've played a few fixed odds line for an interest in proceedings:

• >5.5 at 9/10 with Uni 
• >6.5 at 11/10 with 365 
• >7.5 at 2/1 with Hills 
• >8.5 and >29.5 yellows at 4/1 with Lads 

I've no idea whether the number of red cards in a tournament is likely to follow the poisson distribution but I've done the sums anyway and, on the basis of an expectation of 5.5, only the 9/10 for >5.5 would be clear value, the other prices would all be slightly short. However, if you assume the spread prices are on the low side and bump the expectation up a bit all of the prices would look bigger than they should be.

Edited October 30, 2023 by harry_rag
Added in this year's totals for reference.

[harry_rag]

365 doing a 25% boost on the outright winner market. Not much of a big deal really when you compare the price plus boost with the best exchange prices available so do the maths. Maybe South Africa would be the best use of it in terms of eking out any discernible value.

[harry_rag]

Here's the betting for the opening round of fixtures. I'm just comparing the prices to my "exclusive" rankings (the exclusivity largely born out of the fact that no-one else knows about them and wouldn't be interested in them if they did but we'll see how they perform over the tournament).

[harry_rag]

My forecasts for those games are as follows:

France +0 v New Zealand (e.g. a coin toss)

Italy +33 Namibia

Ireland +53 v Romania

Australia +12 v Georgia

England +1 v Argentina

Japan +24 v Chile

South Africa +12 v Scotland

Wales +3 v Fiji

Pretty aligned with the market barring the extent of Ireland and Australia's supremacy so the only bets that would point to is taking Romania and Georgia with the biggest starts you can get. As this is very much an experiment I won't be risking real money purely on these numbers at the moment.

 

[harry_rag]

Thoughts on this; 1/2 for any runner up in the group stages to reach the semi finals. Is it

• A - significant value
• B - about right
• C - a terrible bet

My value klaxon is going off for this one even though I’m not usually gagging to bet odds on. I’ll sleep on it and check my maths in the morning. Any thoughts welcome.

[harry_rag]

On 9/4/2023 at 4:31 PM, harry_rag said:

I can't help feeling that this may mean we see more red cards in total, certainly somewhere in the region of the 8 that we saw last time.

I've played a few fixed odds line for an interest in proceedings:

• >5.5 at 9/10 with Uni
• >6.5 at 11/10 with 365
• >7.5 at 2/1 with Hills
• >8.5 and >29.5 yellows at 4/1 with Lads

Added >9.5 at 9/1 with Sky Bet (a point shorter now). Not gone mad with the stakes but will be a tad disappointed if things go off tamely and the bunker review system is a damp squib. If you base the poisson distribution on an expectation of just 5.6 the "true" odds for those lines go 1.52, 2.05, 3.0, 4.9 (without factoring in the >29.5 yellows element) and 8.7 so the lowest and highest lines appear to offer best value. As I said though, Poisson may not be a relevant distribution for this market.

Hopefully we start with a fractious encounter between France and New Zealand!

[harry_rag]

Hills have just gone up with >6.5 red cards at 11/10 so I've had a top up (only allowed a very small stake on the original bet on that line and price elsewhere so my "portfolio" was out of balance). 

Probably the best price you'll get now, all the spreads have gone up to over 6 in the last couple of days. You could buy at 5.8 last night with one firm but it's 6.5 at best now. Also some of the fixed odds prices have shortened or the lines been raised. Not saying a flood to reds is nailed on but I think there's been some value at the prices offered up to now.

[philipwalsh19]

I've backed over 5.5 reds @ 4/6 and bought red cards @ 6.8 on Sporting Index

Some reference stats...

[harry_rag]

19 minutes ago, philipwalsh19 said:

I've backed over 5.5 reds @ 4/6 and bought red cards @ 6.8 on Sporting Index

Good luck, I'm on the red card express myself as you can see from the various bets above. There's obviously been a lot of late demand as you could have backed that line at 11/10 and bought at 5.8 a couple of days ago. Hopefully that translates into us having made value bets rather than being mugged off by a load of hype! 

[Torque]

I've had a look at the outrights and Ireland look too big to me. I'm also backing France and New Zealand. It's hard to look much past the market leaders and I'll be surprised if the winner doesn't come from there.

10pts Ireland to win Rugby Union World Cup @ 6.68 Betfair Exchange

55pts France to win Rugby Union World Cup @ 4.53 Betfair Exchange

15pts New Zealand to win Rugby Union World Cup @ 4.33 Boyles

 

[harry_rag]

On 9/5/2023 at 11:16 PM, harry_rag said:

Thoughts on this; 1/2 for any runner up in the group stages to reach the semi finals. Is it

• A - significant value
• B - about right
• C - a terrible bet

My value klaxon is going off for this one even though I’m not usually gagging to bet odds on. I’ll sleep on it and check my maths in the morning. Any thoughts welcome.

Woah, form an orderly queue and don't all shout your answers out at once! 

The klaxon never stopped going off to the extent that the neighbours were complaining so I had the bet. Let's just say that the odds for all 4 group winners to win their quarter finals is likely to be at least a shade bigger than a 2/1 shot unless we see 4 unexpected teams get out of the groups.

[harry_rag]

France v New Zealand: Not trying to call this one as no result would surprise me that much. I'd say a narrow win for the hosts if I had to nail my colours to the mast but either team could win and, while I'd be surprised if there was much in it either way, there could be a wider margin if one team ends up chasing the game or yellow/red cards come into play.

I've had a couple of tryscorer bets at prices that reach the "just about" threshold; Jordan at 15/8 and Telea at 11/5 (both with Uni).

I've also had a couple of "routine" sells (i.e. bets I have week in week out on rugby games). I've sold France hotshots at 35 (25 points per Ramos, Penaud, Villiere or Marchand try) and New Zealand sub try minutes at 36. 

[Torque]

Best of luck Harry

[Labrador]

1 hour ago, harry_rag said:

.......................

I've had a couple of tryscorer bets at prices that reach the "just about" threshold; Jordan at 15/8 and Telea at 11/5 (both with Uni).

.......................

Telea after 2 minutes👍. !!!!!!!!!!!

[harry_rag]

Sold Italy hotshots at 85 and their sub try minutes at 99. Hotshots (25 points per try scored) are Capuozzo, Morisi, Ioane, Nicotera. I'd say they're worth about 73 based on their individual try minutes prices. Given I'd have still sold if those prices implied that 85 was about right it looks a sound enough bet though the potential for Italy to run riot is obviously there.

Capuzzo to score a try in both halves at 15/2 with Lads. Much shorter elsewhere, I wouldn't like to say the price is clearly value but it's at least close enough to fair to be worth an interest.

[harry_rag]

I'd be selling Ireland's hotshots at 130 and sub try minutes at 150 but I don't bet where an arb exists so I'll be hoping they cover the lines so that I've not let a winning bet go begging! 

[harry_rag]

Mixed fortunes with the Italy sells, only the single hotshots try but 3 late sub tries. Luckily the allowed stakes were in my favour here with less allowed on the subs bet than the hotshots. Can't find anything that appeals on the Ireland game and no need to force the pace. Maybe a couple of red cards to get that ball rolling!

[harry_rag]

Sold Australia hotshots at 60 and sub try minutes at 57. Hotshots are Donaldson, Nawaqanitawase, Koroibete, and Porecki. No sells in the England game.

[harry_rag]

3 players who strike me as reasonable value in the 5:00 game.

McReight at 13/5 with Betway, Gordon at 10/3 with Uni and Tabutsadze at 10/3 with Uni

One will do for a profit, what's not to like!

[harry_rag]

0/3 so far. Matched on May at 3.75, Bertranou 8.6 and taken 12/5 Matteo Carreras

[harry_rag]

Might be worth considering the possibility that my ability to beat the odds with RU tryscorers is on a par with my ability to do so with RL (i.e. abysmal)!

Just sold Japan hotshots in the opening game today; sold at 67, 25 at the break and trading at 72-76. I'll resist any temptation to go in again!

[harry_rag]

Sold South Africa's hotshots at 47 and sub try minutes at 46 so I'll be rooting for a solid defensive display from Scotland. The hotshots are Willemse, Arendse, Kolbe and Marx.

[harry_rag]

1 hour ago, harry_rag said:

Might be worth considering the possibility that my ability to beat the odds with RU tryscorers is on a par with my ability to do so with RL (i.e. abysmal)!

That notwithstanding it strikes me that Uni are dangling a considerable carrot by offering Graham and van der Merwe at 11/4 each. Call me Bugs but I've had a nibble.

[harry_rag]

My forecasts for the next round of games. (Last time round there were 2 games where the handicap looked "wrong" with one winner and one loser; Georgia just stayed within 22 points of Australia but Ireland covered the handicap with ease.) This time round (IF you trusted the ratings) there would just be the 2 games that were no bet.

France +51 v Uruguay - No Bet

New Zealand +60 v Namibia - Namibia +73

Ireland +43 v Tonga - Ireland -35

Wales +23 v Portugal - Portugal +31

Samoa +25 v Chile - Chile +33

South Africa +53 v Romania - Romania +70

Australia +5 v Fiji - No Bet

England +17 v Japan - Japan +22

Let's see how they do. I'm not backing these with real money, just testing out the ratings and seeing how they perform against other forecasts and the markets.