Total Bookings (Spread betting)

[Jenspm]

Right, over the past couple of weeks I've been working on a system for total bookings in a match. It was originally intended for the over/under market, but due to a lack of good historic stats (specifically referee stats) and due to the way the system is designed, it would take A LOT of work to get it to show percentages and thus make it work on fixed odds. So, to save myself many hours of work, I've decided to use it on the spreads instead. I've only tested it a single week-end, in Italy, Spain, England, Scotland and Germany. Only 15 games and far from a good base to review it on, and really not enough to throw into the forums already, but with this international break I can't help it. Paper-trailing by yourself is boring :( After those 15 games, I am -24pts - which is just under a single red card or 2.5 yellows. So, even though it sounds big, it really isn't. What's caused the loss is a couple of extremes on both sides. On average, my variaton from the true booking points is 1.11 - one tenth of a yellow card. This is what makes me optimistic on behalf of the system. My biggest loss so far is -63pts, when a sell at 57 points ended in 7 yellows and two red cards between Fiorentina and Napoli. The biggest win so far is +48pts, when a sell at 58 points ended with 2 yellows between La Coruña and Zaragova. Now, a word of caution: for simplicity's sake, I stake 1pt pr. booking point. This means I get extreme wins and losses, as a single yellow card over the limit means a 10 point loss. So 1pt here isn't the same as a point elsewhere. Furthermore - there will be a lot of bets. The week-end of betting showed 15 bets in 18 games. Lots of bets and ups and downs - fun fun fun. I'll probably get to narrowing the amount of bets down to a few pr. week-end after I figure out what bets yield more etc, but for that I'll at least have to run this for a season. So, some info on the system. - The team stats are tracked back one full season - in the English premier league that would mean the last 38 games. - The referee stats are tracked from the start of the 2008-09 season - Home and away is factored in - How many cards a team draws from the other team is factored, in addition to how many they receive themselves I use these stats to create ratings for all leagues, teams and referees, and use these ratings to find a predicted amount of bookings when two teams meet. I will bet on anything that is over or under the spread. And some rules, - I will only bet on scheduled league matches - Newly promoted or relegated teams will not be bet on - I will win, in the end, somehow :unsure So, let's hope for the best :hope

[Jenspm]

Re: Total Bookings (Spread betting) So, first bet

Date	Lge	Home	Away	Prediction	Trade	Spread
04.09.2010	en1	Milton Keynes Dons	Hartlepool	25,11	Sell	32

[muppet77]

Re: Total Bookings (Spread betting) Fantastic, my kind of system. minor market spread betting, where the rest of the crowd bet with their heart and not their head and pc! Best of luck mate, I shall really watch this one.

[Jenspm]

Re: Total Bookings (Spread betting) Cheers :ok Annoying that the spreads only do booking points on games broadcasted on live TV - if only they could trust the leagues official bookings count, right? :\

[davidc]

Re: Total Bookings (Spread betting)

And some rules, - I will only bet on scheduled league matches - Newly promoted or relegated teams will not be bet on - I will win, in the end, somehow :unsure

Hi Jenspm, good luck with your system. I like the last rule best :clap I had a dabble with fixed odds betting for bookings and cards - see here and here. The first season went well but the second season was badly down and I let the thread slide. Perhaps if I had persisted or even paper trialled it might have turned round. Might have a look at it again to see if there is any mileage in it. GL

[muppet77]

Re: Total Bookings (Spread betting)

Cheers :ok Annoying that the spreads only do booking points on games broadcasted on live TV - if only they could trust the leagues official bookings count, right? :\

Yes thats the same with corners. The reason is that it is a minority market and must take them time and effort to price up. They probably think that no one bets on them on game they cannot see so don't bother. It is a special 'tv type' bet especially dreamt up for viewers itching to bet.

[Jenspm]

Re: Total Bookings (Spread betting)

Yes thats the same with corners. The reason is that it is a minority market and must take them time and effort to price up. They probably think that no one bets on them on game they cannot see so don't bother. It is a special 'tv type' bet especially dreamt up for viewers itching to bet.

ahhh, good point. I imagined it was because they wanted to do the counting themselves!

[harry_rag]

Re: Total Bookings (Spread betting) Best of luck, will follow with interest. You should find that all the spread firms quote prices for non-live Premier League games and at least SPIN might price up non-live games in the main European leagues (Spain if not Italy).

[clay747]

Re: Total Bookings (Spread betting) I have seen more matches with booking quotes than corners on spin. I will be following your thread with interest. Best of luck!

[Jenspm]

Re: Total Bookings (Spread betting) Yeah, Spin priced up all Premier League and La Liga matches, sadly only a couple of Italian games last week-end. This one will be the only bet of the week-end, seeing as the three others that are priced up include either newly promoted or newly relegated teams.. Also, I've decided to continue this thread with the stat and profit tracking I've been doing previously, as I cba to keep track of two seperate accounts. This means we'll start the thread at -24pts - hard mode :dude

[gloryhunters]

Re: Total Bookings (Spread betting) Good luck with this. I looked into trying to do booking myself last season along with goals and corners. I found it hard to find out who the refs were before the start of matches for all matches apart from the Prem. When looking at Spainish and Italy to some extend, I often saw a prices significantly higher than my estimates using stats. I think there should probably be a factor of history between teams (eg. derby games may have more bookings, etc).

[Jenspm]

Re: Total Bookings (Spread betting) Interesting you say that - I had 4 bets in Spain and 1 in Italy at the week-end - all were sells. Solid profit and 3/4 in Spain, aforementioned catastrophe in Italy, hehe. We'll see how it goes - often the reason can be as simple as the fact that the general public expects lots of bookings in Spain - doesn't mean it has to be true :ok In general there have been a lot of sells - 12/16 bets so far.. Too early to collect stats, but an interesting trend nonetheless..

[Jenspm]

Re: Total Bookings (Spread betting) Not a single card in the first 65 minutes, the spread drops to 12-15 and then they go on to get 2 yellows and a red. :\

Date	Lge	Home	Away	Prediction	Trade	Spread	Y	R	Points	Profit
04.09.2010	en1	Milton Keynes Dons	Hartlepool	25,11	Sell	32	2	1	45	-13

[Jenspm]

Re: Total Bookings (Spread betting) Found a slight flaw in my referee ratings - didn't think of seperating a ref's stats from different leagues. Fixed now thow, and it wouldn't have changed any of the logged bets anyway. Priced up all the week-end's games that'll be available (I think), but there's only one available at the bookies atm:

Date	Lge	Home	Away	Prediction	Trade	Spread
11.09.2010	scP	Hamilton	Rangers	61,00	Buy	42

[harry_rag]

Re: Total Bookings (Spread betting) That's some perceived margin in your favour, will be having a look at that one. The ref certainly seems capable of hitting that sort of number. Good luck.

[Jenspm]

Re: Total Bookings (Spread betting) indeed, but I do have some extremes in my system I must admit. I don't have the data at my side atm, but I'll post some of the numbers behind that prediction tomorrow evening :) edit - if memory serves correctly, it's a lot to do with Rangers grabbing a lot of red cards away from home, and Hamilton tending to draw reds from their oposition. Will clarify tomorrow as stated.

[harry_rag]

Re: Total Bookings (Spread betting) I'll have a read of that with interest. I often think there's value in Ranger's booking points or to get most bookings because the market is priced on how strong favourites they are to win the match and doesn't give enough weight to how dirty they are!

[clay747]

Re: Total Bookings (Spread betting) I have three previous games in my database. No red cards in any of them. The booking points were 10, 40, 0.

[Jenspm]

[Jenspm]

Re: Total Bookings (Spread betting) A nice result in the only game today, let's hope it continues into tomorrow so we can eat up some of the losses :)

Date	Lge	Home	Away	Prediction	Trade	Spread	Y	R	Points	Profit
10.09.2010	ger1	Hoffenheim	Schalke 04	37,12	Sell	39	2	0	20	19

[Jenspm]

Re: Total Bookings (Spread betting) Wow, massive odds differences between Spin and Extrabet in the Napoli v Bari match.. Spin have the line at 62-66, Extrabet have it at 54-58. For those of you with accounts there (mine's still being validated), you may well have a chance at guaranteed profits here..! I don't know how these firms are regarding "faulty" pricing, though. Anyways, system tells me to buy, so Extrabet it is.

Date	Lge	Home	Away	Prediction	Trade	Spread
12.09.2010	itA	Napoli	Bari	66,10	Buy	58

[harry_rag]

Re: Total Bookings (Spread betting) Well done on the winning start to the weekend. That's an unusually large arb on the Napoli game, though probably not so large that it would be "palped". At the very least, it's clear that there's a value bet to be had one way or the other! A few of your selections have a relatively small edge, are you not inclined to set a minimum margin in your favour, say 10 or 15%, before you bet? Anyway, best of luck, will continue to follow with interest.

[Jenspm]

Re: Total Bookings (Spread betting)

A few of your selections have a relatively small edge, are you not inclined to set a minimum margin in your favour, say 10 or 15%, before you bet?

yes, but I plan on logging the data and then collecting stats for the different levels of edge.. If a 5% edge gives a decent yield I cannot see why to leave it out :) So to answer: yes, I will find a minimum, but I have to figure out where to set it first.

[Kanga]

Re: Total Bookings (Spread betting) Hi Jens, Great work on this thread, I've done a bit of number crunching myself on the prem this weekend and the results are as follows :- Do you have your results to compare ? BTW ... how do you paste excel results here in neat columns. When i tried it was all over the place ? Kanga.

conv_1377.xls

[Jenspm]

Re: Total Bookings (Spread betting) My results can be found on the previous page :) here: http://www.punterslounge.com/forum/f21/total-bookings-spread-betting-106909/#post1767655

[Kanga]

Re: Total Bookings (Spread betting) Thanks, how did i miss them :$ I still need help cutting and pasting from an excel sheet into here neatly though.

[Jenspm]

Re: Total Bookings (Spread betting) For me it "just works" in Internet Explorer.. For others it works in everything BUT Internet Explorer.. No idea why

[Stuufe]

Re: Total Bookings (Spread betting) Hi Jens (and others) - what happened with this thread, just stopped? I'm really interested in this market (bookings spreads)

[renney90]

Re: Total Bookings (Spread betting) Hello everyone, I started spread betting a few months ago, however I wasn't very sure on how it worked or what it even was, so instead of jumping straight in and betting a load of money and losing it all I decided to try one of the virtual accounts on a website, i started with £10,000 and treat it like it was my own money so I didn't go and blow it all on one spread, I then started to gain little amounts at a time and i was reading many different articles on tips and strategies on how i could improve, eventually i started to get good at it and I started to make a lot of profit. This is when I decided to start with my own money instead of using virtual money (It too me a few months to get to know what i was doing) I studied the markets very carefully and looked at trends, I used many different websites to reasearch and see what would help me make a profit and also what I should avoid. I ended up making a profit of £1100 in 2 months which doesnt sound alot but I only started with £200 so it's not too bad, my profits are really starting to increase now. Some of the best advice I have been given was to start small becasue it is not as easy as it looks, if you start big and bet all your money on one spread, you have put all your eggs in one basket and you might lose it all, you might aswell just go to the casino and throw it all on red and take the 50:50 odds. Start with a market you are familiar with, research the market throughly before you go and bet on it, I started with the FTSE 100 as it is quite a slow paced market, I found it quite easy to make money within the FTSE 100, and it also helped me to gain a better knowledge on how and when to bet, how much etc. it's definatly a good market to start in. Have a look around the internet, try and find good website where you can get advice, a good website that I found when I first started out was http://www.spreadbettingforums.co.uk it is great for explaining spread betting and also offers useful tips and advice, the forums has many experienced members on to offer help and advice and it is very friendly. Set yourself objectives, it's all business at the end of the day so to make money you need to have some sort of a plan. You have to know when to quit aswell, some people really don't know when to quit and it will backfire and you'll end up losing money, I used to invest money in the AIM stockmarkets, at one point I was £900 up and then with a week I must have been only £100 up, I kept them in think I might I been able to claw some back but then I ended losing £100, but we all learn from our mistakes and I will certainly never to that again. Any questions ill be happy to help.