Champions League: Matchday 6 Roundup

Wolfsburg – Manchester United – Manchester United@ 3.28 with Pinnacle LOST (3-2) -1

Chelsea v FC Porto – Chelsea @ 2.0 with Dafabet WON (2-0) +1

2 bets, 1 win, 2pts staked, 0pts

 

Results so far

21 bets, 6 wins, 21pts staked, -5.29pts

 

Ends with a no loss day and another disappointing night for Man United. Bet on them 4 times this season in this and they lost 3 of those costing -2.2 points. Missed a few draws as well but hard to put any positive spin on such a big loss.

BTTS long list for w/end 28.02.2014

List of matches for the coming weekend where the both teams combined (home matches for the home team and away matches for the away team) have the highest percentages of BTTS so far this season.

DateLeagueHmAwHm % BTTSAw % BTTS% BothEq. Odds
1/3NL EridvisZwolleNijmegen7783801.25
1/3Ger BundLeverkusenMainz7382771.29
1/3Eng Lge 1Bristol CityGillingham7669731.38
1/3NL EridvisGo Ahead EaglesPSV Eindhoven7569721.39
28/2NL EridvisHeraclesHeerenveen6775711.41
1/3Eng ConfGatesheadForest Green5980691.44
1/3Eng ConfGrimsbySalisbury8056681.47
1/3Eng PremStokeArsenal6269651.53
1/3Eng PremSouthamptonLiverpool5477651.53
1/3Eng Lge 2CheltenhamBury6960641.55
1/3Eng ConfAldershotLincoln6069641.55
1/3Eng Lge 2Newport CountyScunthorpe6959641.56
1/3Eng Lge 1RotherhamNotts County7553641.56
1/3Eng Lge 1TranmereOldham6959641.57
1/3Eng ChampBoltonBlackburn6363631.6
1/3Eng ChampBurnleyDerby5669631.6
1/3Eng Lge 1CarlisleBrentford6560621.6
1/3Scot PremSt MirrenKilmarnock5469621.62
1/3Eng ChampReadingYeovil6360611.63
1/3NL EridvisDen HaagNAC Breda6754601.66
1/3Scot PremRoss CountyPartick5762591.69
1/3Ger BundDortmundNurnberg4573591.69
28/2Tur SuperBesiktasAntalyaspor4473591.71
1/3NL EridvisVitesseRoda JC5858581.71
1/3Ger BundAugsburgHannover7045581.73
28/2Fra Lig 1Evian Thonon GaillardNantes8531581.73
1/3Eng PremFulhamChelsea7738581.73
1/3Eng ConfChesterNuneaton Town5659581.74
1/3Scot PremMotherwellHearts5064571.75
1/3Eng Lge 2Fleetwood TownAFC Wimbledon6944561.78
1/3Fra Lig 1ReimsValenciennes5854561.78
1/3Fra Lig 1LorientBastia5062561.79
1/3Eng ConfWelling UnitedMacclesfield5060551.82
1/3Eng Lge 2NorthamptonBristol Rvs6050551.82
1/3Eng Lge 1Leyton OrientColchester5060551.82
1/3Eng ChampLeicesterCharlton5653551.83
1/3Eng Lge 2RochdaleOxford4763551.83
1/3Eng ChampHuddersfieldBarnsley6347551.83
1/3Ger BundWerder BremenHamburg4564551.83
1/3Eng Lge 1PrestonWalsall6344531.88
1/3Eng ConfHerefordWrexham4759531.89
28/2Tur SuperAkhisar BelediyesporBursaspor6045531.9
1/3Por SuperEstorilOlhanense6044521.91
1/3Eng Lge 2SouthendWycombe5053521.94
1/3Eng ChampSheffield WedsMiddlesbrough5350521.94
1/3Fra Lig 1RennesGuingamp6242521.94
1/3Eng Lge 1CreweSwindon5053511.94
28/2Spa PrimeraAth BilbaoGranada7725511.96
1/3Eng Lge 2YorkExeter3171511.96
1/3Fra Lig 1St EtienneMonaco5446502
1/3Eng ConfBarnetWoking5941502
1/3Fra Lig 1SochauxBordeaux3367502
1/3Eng ChampBournemouthDoncaster5644502
1/3Tur SuperEskisehirsporKasimpasa4060502
List of matches with possibilty of BTTS this weekend

BTTS (Guest Article)

Jonny Grossmark offered me the chance to feature one of his articles and like a tv with a broken volume control I could not turn it down.

———————————————————————————-

Goals Galore betting has become very popular in recent years and the bookmakers have been quick to offer the general public the ability to bet on an individual game (BTTS) Both Teams to Score or in a minimum of 3 matches were the the slogan is ;

“when both teams score it is goals galore”

You can even do a lucky dip with  a fixed price for the 3 correct at 3/1 and 4 correct at 11/2 and 5 correct at 10/1 and 6 correct at 16/1 moving up to 15 correct at 1350/1 so if you simply backed 3 matches to end BTTS YES then this bookmaker would pay you £4 back with £3 being your net profit.

On line Betting tipsters who are not directly associated with the bookmakers but either charge for their “tips’ or are paid by the bookmakers to promote them are now trying to also cash in on what has become a very popular bet with the general public.

As an example i found  a free tipping site with a Betfred goals galore logo with the offer to back 4 matches at 8/1 with Betfred to all score. In the four games offered six of the teams did score and Aston Villa and Northampton were the two teams to not score.

The key is whether 8/1 is a fair price for having to predict all 8 teams to score in four games and to make this analysis easier to understand I have looked at BTTS in the EPL 2008-2009 to the current date so we can look at individual teams and work out what price is required just to break even.

The BetFred advert says meet Dave who has won at 12/1 as he backed 4 teams to score on the Betfred enhanced coupon which means that the odds were increased.

What is of great interest is the profile of Dave who is a white male and about 28 years old who wears glasses and the perception would be that he is well educated and probably went to University.

When betfred looked for someone to be the face of their campaign, they would have done a lot of market research and discovered that people who bet on line are drawn to the idea that they  could become a “winner” and they aspire to be like Dave who is well educated and by inference must live in a nice house and obviously has a great job and is a winner in life as he has just had a 12/1 winner backing goals galore and this must be sensible behaviour.

With the increased turnover in people betting on the internet as a result of all the media coverage which has extended to the use of twitter and facebook to trigger “bet stimulation” I would think it would be a good time to regulate the industry to make sure that all advisory services provide their profit and loss for the whole season so that people can make an informed opinion and we must also recognise that past performance is not an indicator of future performance.

BTTS YES betting has become so popular that over the last few months the bookmakers have had to cut the prices because there has been very little betting on BTTS No and this has resulted in a one sided book so the bookmakers do not want to be left in this position so have no choice but to cut the price of BTTS YES.

My question is why is the bet so popular and do people make long term profits from this bet?

Firstly the majority of people bet on an event to happen such as goals or a team to win and this would explain why so few people back a game to end in a draw. The mindset in the majority of people is to follow a perceived trend which is generally triggered by media coverage. What is of great concern is that the majority of people who are betting on BTTS YES are only looking on a game by game basis so if their BTTS bet wins then the “tipster” who advised that bet will reinforce that the bet is a good bet and if it loses it turns into an unlucky bet that was a value bet.

If we look at Arsenal v Manchester City then a number of people backed BTTS Yes because the most high profile advisory service advised the bet.

If you backed BTTS in this game then you lost the bet as the final score was Arsenal 0 Man City 2 and i am wondering how much research went into advising the bet?

We can use predictive modeling to give an expectation of the goals that both teams will score using shot on target data and goal to shot on target expectation.

In this game my predictive model had both teams scoring around 1.6 goals each in the game so on the surface the bet looks like a good idea but you will not believe what the price was as some bookmakers were going as low as 1.53 so they have the belief that there is around a 65% chance that both teams would have scored.

If we look historically at games involving Arsenal at Home to Man City in the EPL, we see that the last 5 games have now ended BTTS NO so that would not have inspired any confidence in backing a 1.53 shot even though each game is a seperate entity.

There are in running factors that will impede goal expectation.

1. Heavy rain will reduce the expectation of goals.

2. A Red card will impede goal expectation to the team with 10 men

3. Lack of motivation can reduce the expectation of a goal.

4. Inability to have the strength of shot to consider expectation of a goal. When QPR played Spurs for  example they never looked like scoring and the data shows that they had no shots on target.

5. Early home goal to a superior side. When a team like Man UTD score an early home goal then a team like West Ham will look to limit the damage. In the game this season West Ham had only one shot on goal and spent most of the game trying to stop Manchester United from adding to the goal scored by Van Persie after 1 minute.

There are in running factors that will increase goal expectation during a game.

1. An early away goal is known to increase goal expectation for the home side so very welcome if you do back BTTS YES.

2. Light showers have the ability to make the ball move faster and allows for quicker circulation of possession.

3. A red card to the superior side allowing for increased expectation of a goal to the inferior side.

4. The ability of a team such as Manchester United and Everton to “fightback” when conceding the first goal

 

If we look at the data for Arsenal at home in the last 4 completed seasons they have an average of 50% BTTS YES so just to break even you would need to take a price of EVENS and against Manchester City the price was 1.53 so I am hoping that you can build a picture that in this game the price was terrible value even if the bet won.

Everton may have had BTTS YES in sixteen of their last 18 games but there is no evidence to suggest more goals are being scored in the EPL and that the distribution of goals is evenly balanced.

If you look at the graphs you will see in the last four completed seasons the price that you needed to have taken just to break even.

My conclusion is simple which is that BTTS YES is an invention by the bookmakers as they make money from it, They have cut prices as there has been an increased interest and their marketing has worked as well as the fact that advisory(fee charging) sites and free sites have promoted the BTTS as well. Bookmakers have cut prices to increase their margin and not because they are losing money on the BTTS bets. If a bookmaker receives many more bets on an outcome then they have to cut the price as they would like a balanced book. A bookmaker does not gamble and if 10 000 people back BTTS YES in the Arsenal v Manchester City game then they will reduce their liability by backing BTTS YES as well or inducing people to back BTTS NO by increasing the price to give a more balanced book.

People are known to conform and this may explain why the majority of people lose when betting and I think the figure is 95% and I am aware that bookmakers expect clients to lose 11% of their volume of bets so if over your life time you bet £50 000 they look for you to lose around £5500 with many people losing rather more.

Personally I would not be in a hurry to be like Dave or Ray and I advise you to do your own research before you “trigger” a bet. Do not assume that your advisory service has done all the data analysis although I acknowledge that there are some free tipping services and advisory services that offer a level of service that is to a very high standard but if they do not post their profit and loss on their website for this season then I personally would be concerned about their ability to produce long term profits. If you consider joining a service then ask them to supply you with their bets for the season and the profit and loss to get an indication of the style of bets and the bottom line which is will they make you long term profits?

image002 image004image006

Goals Galore Article (Betting Insiders April 2011)

This is an article I originally wrote for the Betting School in April 2011. Some of the content should be worthwhile despite some of the data being slightly old.

When both teams score …

In the last few months I have often come across people talking about the Goals Galore coupon with Betfred and the equivalents that other bookmakers offer. For those who are unfamiliar with it the aim is to find matches where both teams score and Betfred pay 9/4 on 2 correct, 9/2 on 3 correct all the way up to 1150/1 for 12 correct for those keen to lose money.

Working with Betting School we have come up with a console that will hopefully help to pinpoint games that are more likely to have both teams score and that is already available to members.

The idea with this article is to search round the both teams to score angle to see what can be found and how the console can be used with these ides. In this article the abbreviation BTS will be used for both teams score/scored/scoring. The data used is from the English Premiership, Championship, Leagues 1 and 2, the Conference and the top league in Scotland, France, Italy and Spain. I have included the results for Germany in a table below and we see why Betfred don’t include it on their coupon.

Some readers may think this is a bit late in the season to be looking at this type of bet but as I showed in the January article as we get to the end of the season the number of goals increases and therefore so does the number of games where BTS. The table below shows the percentage of games where BTS by month.

 

Month

Matches

BTS

No BTS

% Games where BTS

August

1742

905

837

52%

September

2154

1126

1028

52%

October

2018

1080

938

54%

November

1753

863

890

49%

December

2214

1110

1104

50%

January

1922

957

965

50%

February

2040

977

1063

48%

March

2376

1167

1209

49%

April

2417

1226

1191

51%

May

966

521

445

54%

You can see that the start and end of the seasons look the best times for attacking this angle and overall in 50.7% of matches BTS. Therefore the chance of getting a double with two random games is 1 in 4 which equates to 3/1 and so Betfred only offering 9/4 mean we need to find more angles. To get to a break even situation we need to find games where the chance of BTS is between 55-56%. If we find games where the chance is 56% the decimal odds should be 3.19 on the double but Betfred are offering 3.25 (9/4) so we get value.

If we break the statistics down by the individual leagues we can see if some are better for concentrating on than others.

 

Div

Matches

BTS

No BTS

% Games where BTS

Ger Bund

1530

853

677

56%

Eng Champ

2760

1457

1303

53%

Ita Serie A

1900

998

902

53%

Eng Lge 2

2760

1436

1324

52%

Eng Lge 1

2760

1428

1332

52%

Eng Conference

2624

1343

1281

51%

Spa Primera

1900

966

934

51%

Scot Prem

1140

568

572

50%

Eng Prem

1900

903

997

48%

Fra Ligue 1

1900

859

1041

45%

The German league comes out on top and it’s no surprise that this does not feature on the Betfred coupon. The French league is considerably lower than the others and it’s a bit of a surprise to see the Italian league so high up. The 4 English lower leagues also fair well but in any analysis like this I like to look at results with and without the big teams to see if this makes a difference to the results.

The leagues I am using and the clubs I am classifying as big are as follows:

England – Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool and Man United

France – Bordeaux, Lyon and Marseille

Italy – Fiorentina. Inter, Juventus, Milan and Roma

Scotland – Rangers and Celtic

Spain – Atletico Madrid, Barcelona, Real Madrid, Sevilla and Villarreal

If we look at matches involving big teams only we some interesting results.

 

Big Team v Big Team

Matches

BTS

No BTS

% Games where BTS

Eng Prem

60

27

33

45%

Fra Ligue 1

30

22

8

73%

Ita Serie A

92

58

34

63%

Scot Prem

20

8

12

40%

Spa Primera

150

86

64

57%

The two British leagues are the odd ones out in this as all the other leagues have a considerably higher percentage of BTS when it’s just the big teams playing. It is very high in France, and although the sample is very small this would be a pattern I am happy to follow. The same has to be said for Italy where the 63% BTS is well above the 56% threshold we are after.

Normally I would look at games with big teams against non-big teams overall but in this I think it makes sense to break it down depending on who is at home. If we start with games where the big club is at home against a non-big club we get the results below.

 

Big Team at Home

Matches

BTS

No BTS

% Games where BTS

Eng Prem

324

126

198

39%

Fra Ligue 1

255

123

132

48%

Ita Serie A

364

185

179

51%

Scot Prem

170

75

95

44%

Spa Primera

420

206

214

49%

France is the only league where these results are above the average for all games. I would expect this figure to be lower as you would think these teams are more likely to keep clean sheets. I expect most people would not use these games anyway in their coupon but they can be useful when you look back over a team’s form as you may see a couple of games where both teams did not score, but if this was against a big side it may be worth ignoring it. For example on the console I looked at a Bolton away match and both teams had scored in a healthy 10/15 matches. However, the games when they didn’t were against Manchester United, Manchester City, Chelsea, Sunderland and Stoke. The first 3 teams, along with Arsenal fill the top 4 places in the league and have done most of the season so if we ignore games at the top 4 clubs their record becomes an even healthier 9/11. I would imagine these results also work for lower divisions based on the top sides each season but without testing this cannot say so for sure.

The table below shows when the big team is away.

 

Big Team Away

Matches

BTS

No BTS

% Games where BTS

Eng Prem

324

144

180

44%

Fra Ligue 1

255

112

143

44%

Ita Serie A

364

188

176

52%

Scot Prem

170

103

67

61%

Spa Primera

420

217

203

52%

Aside from France the results go up compared to the table above. The Scottish result is a particularly high one and any games with an old firm team away could warrant a second look.

Finally we look at games where none of the big teams are playing below.

 

No Big Team

Matches

BTS

No BTS

% Games where BTS

Eng Prem

1230

623

607

51%

Fra Ligue 1

1360

602

758

44%

Ita Serie A

1080

567

513

53%

Scot Prem

780

382

398

49%

Spa Primera

910

457

453

50%

The Premiership is again an exception here but for all the other leagues we can see that the results for this are more or less equal to the average for all games. Essentially in these games there is nothing outside of norm so we would need to look for patterns with particular teams.

With a bet like this you want to look for teams that follow patterns as they are likely to keep them up. I believe Peterborough and Crewe are often taken off the Goals Galore coupon as they were having BTS so much. Whist writing this article I used the console and saw that Southend host Aldershot on 2nd April and 14/19 Southend home games and 13/19 Aldershot away games had BTS. Both of these teams have a good pattern and would be a decent selection if featured on the coupon.

I looked at individual team patterns a bit more and found some startling results for certain teams over the course of a season. The table below shows 5 teams on either end of the extremes.

 

Season

Div

Home Team

Matches

Both Scored

One or None

% Games where BTS

06-07

Eng Prem

Man City

19

3

16

16%

07-08

Fra Ligue 1

St Etienne

19

3

16

16%

08-09

Eng Champ

Doncaster

23

5

18

22%

09-10

Eng Conference

AFC Wimbledon

22

5

17

23%

08-09

Eng Lge 1

Southend

23

6

17

26%

09-10

Scot Prem

St Johnstone

19

14

5

74%

07-08

Eng Champ

Colchester

23

18

5

78%

07-08

Eng Conference

Forest Green

23

18

5

78%

08-09

Eng Lge 2

Luton

23

18

5

78%

06-07

Ita Serie A

Atalanta

19

15

4

79%

Some of these values are outstanding but show how some teams get a pattern and stick with it all season. That’s not to say you don’t need to be aware of a change in pattern but hopefully the console will help with that. An example of a change in pattern would be Rotherham this season. At home 8 of their first 10 games had BTS but since then just 2 of the last 8 games have had BTS and what’s interesting is that they have kept scoring but have started to keep clean sheets and so those 6 games in the last 8 were all where they kept a clean sheet.

I hope this will all help with anyone interested in trying to make money from the Goals Galore coupon or similar using the console. The other two sections the console has show over/under goal statistics and also the average shots and shots on target. The over/under section just helps to give an idea of how many goals are being scored by these teams and it is all relevant to the both teams scoring market. In the nearly 20,000 games I have been through the games with both teams scoring average 1.4 shots more than those without. 0.95 of that difference is down to the visiting teams having more shots so finding teams with a better than average number of shots, particularly when away can be another factor that will swing whether to bet or not.

I can be contacted with ideas for improvements for the console, problems or any questions to do with it or anything in my articles.

Leon Pidgeon