The fewer "the horses" the better

[Guest przeszczepan]

Hello again My English Friends, Forgive the silliness of the issues I am rising here but I am a "mug punter" with a very short betting history and little experience who tries not to lose his money too soon. I am naively thinking that there must be some "tricks" bookies didn't think about. The tricks that will help us beat them or at least decrease their advantage. Therefore I experiment a bit. Today I noticed my bookmaker didn't offer Asian handicap bet on a certain match. I thought it was no problem to divide my stake on home win and draw in the way that I would get a refund in case the draw occurred( Asian handicap 0:0). Of course I should bet 1/(odds on draw) on draw and 1-1/(odds on draw) on home side. In this way my "handicap 0:0" odds on home win equal: [1-1/(odds on draw)]*odds on home win (*) I was elated. Soon, however, I compared my "Asian handicap 0:0" odds to those offered by other bookies and noticed that mine were lower! I wondered what was the reason but wasn't so naive to believe that all of them made such a mistake. The odds looked like this: home win: 2,45 draw: 3,2 away win: 2,65 handicap0:0 1: 1,82 handicap0:0 2: 1,89 my "handicap" 1: 1,68 I tried to take advantage of the value I thought occurred( 1,82/1,68=1,08) and find a way to separate the odds on home team( inverting the (*) equation, odds on home side looked like 2,65 compared to 2,45 on 1X2), but failed of course. Coming back to the topic, I think the reason "my odds" are lower is that they accumulate the overround of "1" and "X". Another issue is that the overround on "1X2" is bigger than on asian handicap, because the first is "two-" while the second is "three-horse race". I checked the overround on under/over, HT/FT and the correct score and learned that " the more horses in the race" the bigger the overround. It's probably because bookies want to sustain the error margin on each option, so obviously the more options to cover the higher the overround. Moreover, a common punter has no idea that in Danish Div 1 huge 27% of games were 2/2 HT/FT whereas it's a common knowledge that Italian Serie B and Spanish Segunda are leagues for draws, thus it's easier for the bookmakers to make fools of those betting on "higher number horse races". ( I am not sure if I make myself clear :/). To sum up, it looks like asian handicap is better solution then the "1X2" bet. Not only do bookies offer lower overround on this kind of bet, but it also seems easier to predict. After all it's not that difficult to say if team A is better than B, which is the case in handicap bets, whereas to determine whether A is so much better to beat B is a though task. Lucas

[Joe]

Re: The fewer "the horses" the better Good work. Asian handicap is definitely good "bet". Check out the overrounds at Planet Pinnacle, almost non-existent.