Below is the screenshot of the result of our little play around with Scatter Gunning the opening fay of the Premiership. As you can see this paper trade would, if played for real, have secured a £10 return on a £54 investment - my simple maths suggests that's nearly 20%.
Interestingly the Strike Rate for these six games was 50% - as was the SR for the 'qualifying' games. But if I had restricted it t 'qualifiers' the £36 invested would have returned £45 or an £11 profit (30%). Six games is obviously far too small a sample to draw any meaningful conclusions from, but it sort of backs up what I expected - i.e. that game selection is more important that getting better odds.
The other thing that strikes me, talking about odds, is how broadly similar the odds on offer are, and the 'Summary' cell at the bottom of the individual columns gives the average odds on offer for the 3 scores. If we take them in turn.... 1-1 Ave Odds 7.8 - implied probability just shy of 13% . For 1-2 its 15.92, 6.25% and finally for 2-1 it's 11.02 with implied probability of 9%.
I've said before that I'm no mathematician and I'm certainly not a statistician but to my simple mind we are betting on three scores with a combined implied probability of 25ish % and getting a return in 50% of trades entered. Does this mean the humble old SG has a 50% edge??? Perhaps some of you more mathematically minded folk could explain (in English, please :-)) if this is the case or am I barking up the wrong tree???
I've been a longtime reader Gundulf (through each sporadicly updated incarnation), fist time commentator and thought I'd try to help out. You can't get a definite answer but you can ask yourself a couple of questions.
ReplyDeleteFirstly what are your criteria for selecting games? Straight away your post says that you use the match odds market to select reasonably matched teams. This is an issue straight away as it is where the market is wrong that value comes from, and in a set and forget trade your only hope of an edge is by finding this value. If you identified games through some other means i.e you analysis suggests that the teams are closely matched with a high likelyhood of both teams scoring then if your right and the market thinks otherwise your profit is going to be bigger, why limit yourself to other peoples thoughts?
Secondly your profit over the different outcomes isn't uniform, currently if you get 75% of your winners at 1-1 you'll win far more than if you get 25% of them at 1-1. Had all your winning matches finished 2-1 to the home side you would have finished with a £7.20 profit, had they all been 1-1 you would have made £110. As it is by betting on all 6 games you would have made £62 not the £10 quoted (I believe you averaged rather than summed the games) From Qualifiers only it was £27 profit.
I think the main issue before you can contemplate an edge is game selection obviously blindly backing 1-1, 2-1 and 1-2 in either every game or game with teams who are close in the markets isn't going to work. As you're rulling out straight away games like man utd on the road where they do tend to draw alot (50% of matches last season) yet will likely be an odds on favourite.
Anyway I suppose my answer to your question then is no, not as a set and forget where I would wager you have a negitive edge, however the Scatter Gun is a good base to trade around but I really cannot see any value from blindly placing as what is pretty much a punt. Please keep up the blogging however and don't go losing interest again, third time lucky...
Wow! Pete, what a detailed and interesting post, thank you.
ReplyDeleteYou are saying what I suspected to be the case, truth be told. If it was as simple as backing three scores out of 17 in matches where the sides are evenly matched I'm sure someone would have worked it out long before yours truly.
Please forgive the brevity of my reply, but I will incorporate your comment and my thoughts on what you say in a proper post later today.