Goals and Dodgy Home Favourites System

[Boulder5111]

A couple of seasons ago I was looking into finding a system for highlighting weak odds on favourites at home with a view to laying them. This seemed like a good approach since it's hard enough finding home bankers due to the unpredictablity of football games at the best of times ! :( I stumbled across www.footballanorak.com which has the stats I was after. There is a section of this website that has a summary of the results for the last 8 games in which the home team has started as the odds on favourite. This seemed to be a good starting point for finding teams which were likely to 'let you down' when expected to win. There is also a section on the website with a summary of the results for the last 8 games in which the away team has started as a 5/2 or bigger outsider. My idea was to combine these 2 stats to find a poor value home favourite playing an away team who had the ability to get something from the game when an underdog. My criteria is as follows : 1. Use an odds comparison site to find the 'suitable' games. I use www.oddschecker.com and pick out all the games where the away team is best priced at 5/2 or bigger. 2. Using www.footballanorak.com, add the home teams number of losses (when odds on favourite) to the away teams number of wins (when 5/2 or bigger outsider). 3. If this total figure is 5 or more then we have a selection. All pretty logical so far then.... I've collated the results for these games (79 in total) which are as follows. The first figure is the total derived from point 2 above. 5 Total Games 37 - HOME 19, DRAW 8, AWAY 10 6 Total Games 33 - HOME 20, DRAW 7, AWAY 6 7+ Total Games 9 - HOME 3, DRAW 2, AWAY 4 Overall Total Games 79 - HOME 42, DRAW 17, AWAY 20 Using www.betexplorer.com, I worked out the average odds on the home team which worked out at 1.81 (or 4/5). The average best odds on the away team by the way is 4.07. By my reckoning, laying the home team would yield a profit but unfortunately not a very big one.:wall I then looked at the results and noticed an interesting pattern but was wary that I didn't want to be guilty of 'back-fitting' the results to engineer a profitable system. The results showed a much higher than expected percentage of games with >2.5 goals. To my thinking, this would make sense because the games selected are where the away team 'gives it a go' rather than sitting back and playing for a 0-0. The away team actually scored in 59 of the 79 games which makes for a more open game with the onus on the home favourites to attack more if falling behind, hopefully resulting in more goals. The breakdown for >2.5 goals is as follows : 5 Total Games 37 - Overs = 18 (48.65%) 6 Total Games 33 - Overs = 20 (60.60%) 7+ Total Games 9 - Overs = 6 (66.66%) Overall 55.7% (or 61.9% if using just the 6+ rated games). Finally, a couple of other points to note..... 8/79 games (10.13%) finished 1-2 which is a 9/1 shot when the actual odds available would probably average at around double this price. nb adding the filter for 6+ rated games gives 5/42 (11.9%). And finally, I don't have any stats on this one but I also think that backing draw half time and away full time would show a profit. This is usually available at about 10/1 on Betfair. Conclusion and Summary I have presented the results and data as I have it but I suppose the conclusion is still that there isn't enough data to draw any definite conclusions. My best guess at this stage would be to apply the filter to do just 6+ rated games in some way. Doing over 2.5 goals looks like a definite and I also like the look of the 1:2 scoreline and the DRAW/AWAY double result. To be honest, I haven't yet given up on the laying of the home favourite despite the small profit margin, but time will tell whether this relatively small sample is indicative of the true profitability or otherwise. I'll put any qualifiers on this thread and hopefully the trends will become clearer as the season progresses. As always, any comments or suggestions welcome. PS It looks like there'll be 5 selections for the coming weekend.

[Bedlam]

Re: Goals and Dodgy Home Favourites System Very best of luck mate, will be watching with interest, hope all your hard work provides you with a winning system!