Italian Serie A Silly Season

[Grex]

Relf has brought to my attention that it appears that the Serie A "silly season" has started. ....this weekend, the odds on a draw between Catania and Chievo are around 1.80 :loon. It's the same year after year.... teams come to a "gentleman's agreement" to play out a draw when it suits both teams. I think I shall do a statistical analysis on previous seasons to see if there's any profit on following these low-odd draws, because the vast majority come good. Don't you just LOVE the Italians :notworthy

[Grex]

Re: Italian Serie A Silly Season What !..... Arsenal involved in "gentlemens' agreements" :loon.... I can't believe it.... wash your mouth out ;)

[ofcourseitwas]

Re: Italian Serie A Silly Season

Relf has brought to my attention that it appears that the Serie A "silly season" has started. ....this weekend' date= the odds on a draw between Catania and Chievo are around 1.80 :loon. It's the same year after year.... teams come to a "gentleman's agreement" to play out a draw when it suits both teams. I think I shall do a statistical analysis on previous seasons to see if there's any profit on following these low-odd draws, because the vast majority come good. Don't you just LOVE the Italians :notworthy

wow. thanks GREX. i have been working on several systems but Italy always seemed to mess things up. I suspected the defensive style was to blame, but i feel much better now that zwei of you have given it a name. 'gentlemen's agreement' Cheers :beer

[Grex]

Re: Italian Serie A Silly Season

....zwei of you....

You're not German, by any chance ? ;)

[relf]

Re: Italian Serie A Silly Season

I think I shall do a statistical analysis on previous seasons to see if there's any profit on following these low-odd draws' date= because the vast majority come good.

Shall be waiting for your analysis then. :ok

[relf]

Re: Italian Serie A Silly Season I just noticed that for this weekend, Chievo (13th) vs Catania (15th) aren't the only mid-table clash. There's Bari (11th) vs Parma (12th). So my question would be why the draw for the latter match is "normal", unlike the former one. Euro Qualification: 6th place - 44 points [bari - 38 points, Parma - 37 points, Chievo 35 points.] If Bari and Parma harbour hopes for Euro qualification, I don't see why Chievo shouldn't. So is there value for the draw at 3+ odds for Bari-Parma? Or am I missing something?

[Vilamoura04]

Re: Italian Serie A Silly Season I find it is usually worth blanket backing the draw when odds dip below 3 in Serie A. Strike rate isnt as good as you would expect but has shown a modest profit in the last couple of years.

[Grex]

Re: Italian Serie A Silly Season This is what FCP says about the Chievo-Catania game on the "Western Europe Football Forum"..... "Many bookmakers already closed this game because there were a unusual amount of draw betting. On the bookmakers that remain with this game open, the odds dropped to half of their value. This is under investigation but everything indicate that this is a fixed game because the draw would be a good result for both teams. In any case, this would be always a balanced game where the draw would always be a probable result. I must pick a draw here at 2.40 in expekt." He's right that many bookmakers have closed their book on this match, and Expekt odds have gone down from the 2.40 quoted by FCP to 1.65.:loon Even my favourite, Pinnacle, is not offering 1X2 odds.... only Chievo (1.48) or Catania (2.90) on the AH(0) line. Whether this is due to unusual betting volumes on the draw, or "insider information", I don't know. Perhaps people who are more familiar with the bookie-mentality could comment :ok

[relf]

Re: Italian Serie A Silly Season I'm equally puzzled. I don't follow the ISA so this is the first time I'm seeing this phenomenon. If a match is suspected to be fixed, wouldn't the authorities step in? And why this match, and not the others? So the big question is: Is it wise to bet on the draw, or go for value by laying the draw?

[Vilamoura04]

Re: Italian Serie A Silly Season Its easy to get an answer to that. Just look through the Serie A games on football-data.co.uk where odds are below normal for the draw. This isnt a recent phenomenon, its been going on for years.

[Jase82]

Re: Italian Serie A Silly Season I don't understand the Serie A some times, but am aware of how the league goes towards the end of the season. What I mainly don't understand is how a draw helps either side at this stage of the season?

[Grex]

Re: Italian Serie A Silly Season

Shall be waiting for your analysis then. :ok

OK, I’ve done an analysis using Bet365 odds on Serie A from the 2000-01 season up to and including last season (a total of 2,910 games). Here are some figures I’ve come up with….

a) If you had blindly backed the draw for every match, there would have been a negative yield of 10%;

b) If you backed the draw on all odds less than 2.90, you would have a positive yield of 2%;

c) If you backed the draw on all odds less than 2.90 after 19 March of each season (approximately 8% of games played), there would be a positive yield of 23% :loon

Interesting statistics…. it would appear that there is potential profit by backing the draw at odds of less than 2.90 during the final stages of the season. However, there is some bad news…… if you look at the number of qualifying matches season by season, the figures are:

Season		Games
2000-01		11
2001-02		7
2002-03		18
2003-04		15
2004-05		33
2005-06		25
2006-07		27
2007-08		9
2008-09		4

So, it would appear that the (shall we say) “agreed draws” are diminishing (or, at least, the bookies perception of "agreed draws"). They were at their peak between 2004 and 2007, around about the time of the Serie A game-fixing scandal when Juventus were forcibly relegated to Serie B and other sanctions were applied to three other clubs. I’m not saying the two issues are connected, but you never know. ;)

Conclusion….. whether drawn games are “arranged” towards the end of the season is unclear….. if they are, then the practice is on the decline.

Still, it will be interesting to see what happens with the Chievo-Catania game on Sunday. :ok

[Lardonio]

Re: Italian Serie A Silly Season I checked the football data stats for last season, and it didn't look profitable. But I think these data are collected some time before the match, so the draw odds might not be that relevant. Still, there was only 1 super-suspicious game last year according to the stats, and that was Chievo-Bologna 24th of May. And that ended 0-0 ... But the rest was above 2.80 and while you could get a tiny profit backing matches with below 2.90 for the draw when looking at all odds under 3 you would lose £23.77 pounds if you staked £1 on all of them. You would probably get a better return by throwing dice for your draws.

[relf]

Re: Italian Serie A Silly Season Kudos to Grex and Lardonio for the hard work! :clap So all the suspension of betting and unusually low draw odds make sense after all. I will keep a close look at this match.

[wettspou]

Re: Italian Serie A Silly Season Thank you very much for your analysis so far. I suppose the filter for possibly agreed Draws shouldn't be the draws-odds only, since Lardonio made a good point about their collection. Why not start looking for situations in which a match qualifies for a potential draw: - Both teams are a few points ahead of relegation-positions - Both teams have a position which qualifies for euroleague, but no chance for C-League and a small buffer before falling out of Euroleague. - Last game of the season: Both teams stay in first league / euroleagu if they draw Any other Situations you can think of? I'm kind of helpless right now. It would be interesting how the draw-% looks like when filtering this not so easy to set up way ...

[Grex]

Re: Italian Serie A Silly Season Thanks for the suggestion, Wettspou. To back-test your proposal would take a lot of time and effort (when I have a spare month or two, I will try ;)). The main purpose of this thread was to open discussion on whether there is any mileage in following matches that the bookies appear to consider are "arranged". Whether there is any value in these bets is open to question..... back-testing suggests there is, but I'm not totally convinced.

[Lardonio]

Re: Italian Serie A Silly Season I'm not at home now with my stats, so can't really check it out, but I think it could be worthwhile looking at certain teams, possibly at certain stages of the season like Grex's research hinted (much better research than mine, by the way!!). Some teams, like Chievo, seemed to recur when I had a quick look, and it could be interesting (and fairly easy) to make a chart of how each team performs at certain stages. I'll consider doing it when I get back to my stats, if my kids are behaving :-) Unfortunately the selection of matches would of course lower, so it would be hard to prove anything statistically, but one might get some ideas.:cash

[Grex]

Re: Italian Serie A Silly Season Interesting, Lardonio (and good luck with the kids this evening ;))....... I had a quick look at individual teams' performance within the criteria of draw odds less than 2.90 and games after mid-March. Of those in the current Serie A, the outstanding performers are: Cagliari - 10 draws in 12 games (83%) Chievo - 7 draws in 15 games (47%) Palermo - 8 draws in 12 games (67%) Roma - 4 draws in 5 games (80%) Of course, this doesn't take into account the teams' league position at the time... however, I would imagine the reason for the low number of games for Roma is that they are usually in contention for a European cup competition qualifying place etc. and therefore don't often qualify for an "arrangement".

[bagaspuds]

Re: Italian Serie A Silly Season Yep, I noticed this last year. There was a crazy amount of draws in one particular weekend?:@

[Box3r]

Re: Italian Serie A Silly Season

Relf has brought to my attention that it appears that the Serie A "silly season" has started. ....this weekend' date= the odds on a draw between Catania and Chievo are around 1.80 :loon. It's the same year after year.... teams come to a "gentleman's agreement" to play out a draw when it suits both teams. I think I shall do a statistical analysis on previous seasons to see if there's any profit on following these low-odd draws, because the vast majority come good. Don't you just LOVE the Italians :notworthy

I remember when Roma vs Lazio played and odds was 1.50 or something and not only there wasn't any goals but there wasnt any shots on goal :)

[Grex]

Re: Italian Serie A Silly Season

I remember when Roma vs Lazio played and odds was 1.50 or something and not only there wasn't any goals but there wasnt any shots on goal :)

Like I said, don't you just LOVE the Italians.... unbelievable :spank

[relf]

Re: Italian Serie A Silly Season My local bookmakers have priced the draw at 1.90. Interestingly, the scoreline 1-1 is priced at 3.00, as compared to 0-0 at 7.50, and 2-2 at 10. 0 goals in the match is priced at 7.50, while 2 goals in the match is 2.90. Does this imply a 1-1 conspiracy? LOL! :loon

[Grex]

Re: Italian Serie A Silly Season 1-1 it is then..... sell everything - the house, the car, the wife, the kids... and put everything on a correct score of 1-1 ;) Peculiar "back" odds on Betfair as well.... the draw is 1.89 with the volume matched on the draw being 449,000 GBP out of a total matched on 1X2 of 454,000 GBP :loon. For the correct score market, 1-1 is 3.7, 0-0 is 5.0, 2-2 is 7.0. But, 1-0 and 0-1 are both at 2.22 and there is very little liquidity on the "lay" side..... normally 1-0 should be around 7.0, and 0-1 around 10.0..... very strange :unsure. I suppose this is what happens when you allow punters to set their own odds :D

[Lardonio]

Re: Italian Serie A Silly Season I can't believe their nerve if they actually play 1-1 this Sunday.... surely someone will investigate it. But if it's an Italian police man, with a brand new Fiat, then nothing happens....

[bagaspuds]

Re: Italian Serie A Silly Season It's crazy alright. By my calculator these are the odds; Draw - 3.7 Score 1-1, Odds - 7.8 Cut & pasted this from Betfair just now, score 1-1 market, tells it's own story :cash

Betting on:	0 - 00 - 10 - 20 - 31 - 01 - 11 - 21 - 32 - 02 - 12 - 22 - 33 - 03 - 13 - 23 - 3Any Unquoted
Total matched on this event:	€48,993
Betting summary - Volume:	€41,497
Last price matched:	3.70

[relf]

Re: Italian Serie A Silly Season

I can't believe their nerve if they actually play 1-1 this Sunday.... surely someone will investigate it. But if it's an Italian police man' date=' with a brand new Fiat, then nothing happens....[/quote'] Could this be their way of thanking the fans? :tongue2 The main problem I guess is that, once one bookie has odds like these, the other bookies would more or less have to follow suit (with minor differences). If not, there will be instances where one lays the draw at Bookie A and backs the draw at Bookie B and is guaranteed a decent profit. Not sure if I'm making sense though. Anyway, I have joined in the fun and backed the draw (1.9) at small stakes. Let's see how it goes then! :hope

[Grex]

Re: Italian Serie A Silly Season

...... The main problem I guess is that' date=' once one bookie has odds like these, the other bookies would more or less have to follow suit (with minor differences). If not, there will be instances where one lays the draw at Bookie A and backs the draw at Bookie B and is guaranteed a decent profit. Not sure if I'm making sense though.[/quote'] You're absolutely right... that's the name of the "game".:ok. By the way, Relf, don't you ever sleep... I know there's a big time difference between Europe and your part of the world, but you seem to post 24 hours per day, 7 days per week :)

[Lardonio]

Re: Italian Serie A Silly Season He needs to keep a low profile, so a Fiat now and the Ferrari will be delivered next year, when everything has calmed down :tongue2 Had a quick look at these teams, Chievo - Catania. Their last three similar meetings have ended 2-1, 0-0 and 1-1... On average 18% of the games these two teams participate in (Chievo at home, or Catania away) end with 1-1... a true odds of 5.53! Last year these two teams played 1-1 in 32% of their matches! (Chievo home, Catania away) - can you believe that? That is a true odds of 3.125, lower than what is offered for 1-1 in a fixed match :rollin They had 14 draws in 38 matches, 37%. That is decent value for 'normal' teams, but in this case the real value lies in 1-1, as 12 of those 14 draws were 1-1! To be honest, if one lived in a world where one could pick last year's stats and know that the exact same thing would happen the year after, then this match wouldn't even appear fixed - the odds offered reflect the actual chances :tongue2

[relf]

Re: Italian Serie A Silly Season

You're absolutely right... that's the name of the "game".:ok. By the way' date= Relf, don't you ever sleep... I know there's a big time difference between Europe and your part of the world, but you seem to post 24 hours per day, 7 days per week :)

LOL. Yes, I do sleep about 7 hours a day. That's probably during the evening/early night time over in Europe. And I have to attend lessons in the day as well - that's probably the time when you guys are sleeping. Apart from that, I guess I'm always online? ;) Anyway, Lardonio, that's an interesting set of results you have there. I did a little check on the past draw odds from Bet365 and they were 'normal'. Perhaps it was still 'early' in the season? Not sure if it's because this set of odds were recorded early before the dip, or it's really usual. Sept 28 2008: Catania 1 Chievo 0 (Draw odds: 3) Feb 15 2009: Chievo 1 Catania 1 (Draw odds: 3.2) Oct 28 2009: Catania 1 Chievo 2 (Draw odds: 3.1) Some extra information, Catania finished 15th and Chievo finished 16th last season.

[Kumquat Tree]

Re: Italian Serie A Silly Season

To be honest' date= it's probably just a case of everybody "jumping on the bandwagon". Nobody knows for sure whether this result has been "arranged" (except the players and the referee, perhaps) ;)

Yepp. Exactly my saying. How stupid must one be to fix a match that obvious? If that one will end in a draw, there will be investigations for sure. Especially as there are many ways probably involving less players, at least not both teams as needed for a draw. And I cannot imagine Catania to agree to a draw, forfeiting a possible win. 3rd last Atalanta play 2nd last Bergamo. 4th last Lazio plays last Siena. If Atalanta and Lazio win, which is likely, and Catania draws, then Catania are only 5 points ahead of relegation. So a Catania away win could be huge for them. So I will lay lay lay the draw. 1.92 odds smell like a huge value to me. Maybe there is a "gentlemen's agree". But I'm willing to take that 50/50 risk.