Friday 9 March 2012

Sledgehammer to crack a nut

Whilst browsing the interwebs looking for some mathematical inspiration (more of which in a moment) I came across a link to an interesting website run by one Michel Wray. It's not that inspiring a website - and that's no sleight on Mr Wray's web authoring ability. You see, he has committed the cardinal sin of making the British Leagues 2011-12 fixture lists available in a downloadable spreadsheet format. How very dare he!? Toes have been trodden on, and in his own words

For now, the site's activities are suspended due to the notice below. After 14 years, it saddens me that a site that asks for and receives no money from users, regularly declines offers of advertising to keep the service clean, makes no claims to have "invented" the fixtures, denies no other party any revenue and provides a unique service can be pursued under a dubious point of law that has been perverted from its original intention by an insane level of corporate greed let loose on ordinary fans.

This is a crying shame - see the whole sorry story for yourself at http://www.michaelwray.co.nz/sheets.html.
The reason I'm particularly peeved to be denied these spreadsheets is hidden within the 'Michael' page where it becomes apparent that Mr Wray's sheets are the electronic equivalent of the League Ladders given away pre-season with 'Shoot!' - causing a wave of nostalgia to wash over me.



I have unashamedly pinched the above image from google images - and that nostalgic wave has just washed over me again for shiver me timbers I do believe the Shoot! ladders are pictured on a Subbuteo pitch! Aah, 'Appy Days indeed!

For non British and younger readers of my witterings Shoot! was a weekly football magazine that no self respecting young football fan did without. Written in an accessible manner, and in PROPER ENGLISH (publishers of the 'footie' rag my teenage son 'reads' please take note!) they produced a cardboard League Table for each of the four divisions of the Football League and the Scots First and Second Divisions, complete with pre pressed cardboard 'T' cards for each club. The idea was that you could hang them on your bedroom wall and update them on a Saturday night as the results came out.

As a teenager in the seventies I'm sure the financial worries of the footballing world were hidden from my gaze, and not foremost in my thoughts. But I'm fairly sure that it's not nostalgic to suggest that the Corporate Greed referred to above is very much alive and kicking in all professional sport today.

Rant over... what was I looking for when I stumbled across Michael's site?

Until a recent PC change I had an Excel dutching spreadsheet with a tab for back dutching and a tab for lay dutching. I wrote it myself and it worked well, but seems to have got lost in the switchover.

On the Back Dutching tab I had worked in a way of allowing a percentage insurance to be factored into some outcomes - so if I wanted to dutch some correct score and was prepared to make a 50% loss if the match finished 0-0 I was able to so so.

In writing a replacement the actual dutching aspect works as it should. But I can neither remember, nor work out how to replicate, the insurance aspect!

Basically if I want to stake say £100 in total and am prepared to lose say £50 on 0-0 and £25 on 0-2 how can I work those stakes in amongst normal dutched bets on some other scores? If anyone can point me in the direction of a solution I'd be grateful.


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