Tuesday 23 November 2010

Ghost Town

Well, what did I expect? Not one reply to my last post! Not surprising really as I know I don't blog very often these days, but I'll try once more.

For the record, my thoughts for the last round of games only threw up one solid opportunity and that was for Blackpool to beat Wolves. Why? Well, the first thing I try to identify is for one team to have a strong supremacy over the last 4 games and Blackpool fitted the bill with 3 strong performances and an average rating of 21.00. Wolves on the other hand had 3 poor performances on the bounce and only one strong performance which was 4 matches ago. Their average was only 16.75.

Secondly, I look at the average home and away ratings for the relevant teams for the season to date. I'm looking for the supremacy to continue here and in this example it did. Blackpool had an average home rating of 19.80 compared to Wolves' away rating of 13.00 - that's quite a difference!

Finally, after spotting a mismatch it's all down to the prices on offer. If I get to this stage then I'm confident that I've been able to narrow the result down to a 50/50 shot so if I can get better than odds of 2.00 then I've a short-listed selection. The odds on a Blackpool win was 2.48 and that was good enough for me so I made the bet.

Now I'm not preaching that this is a fool-proof system as there are other factors to consider (like the loss of a key player etc.) but as a rule the idea is to spot value over the long term through a few simple steps. It's not rocket science but there's quite a bit of method behind the ratings so I'm hopeful the run can continue.

For those of you who might still be interested here's my latest form table taking us up to the 22/11/2010. Some unexpected teams are towards the top:


8 comments:

BH said...

Glad to see you blogging again Mark. Have always enjoyed your posts. Thanks for going through your ratings system. Found it very helpful.

Richard said...

Hi

Just found your blog, very interested in the table you have produced, will you be posting the updates continually? If not would there be someway to get the up to date file so it could be manually updated by myself. Been trading myself for little under a month, but making steady progress. Hope this reads well, late and eyes are going. Anyway, keep up the good work.

Rich

Mark Iverson said...

Hi both!

Thanks for the comments - what was i worrying about :-)

BH - The ratings are still a 'work in progress' but I find getting my thoughts on the blog helpful in the same way as my discipline improved when i first started out.

Richard - I'll probably post them for as long others and myself find them useful. I know the footie markets have a big following so it would be useful to get some feedback from those who are more experienced in this field.

Good luck and best regards,

Mark

Cassini said...

Hi Mark - I did read your post with some interest as it's a similar idea to what I try and do with my Elo based ratings. I did link to you on my blog, and will comment more soon. I do have a few questions - for starters: why 4 matches? Do you weight the most recent game heavier than the -2, and the -2 more than the -3 etc? Do you account for the games being at home or away? Do you account for the strength of opposition? Why 4 to 34 and not 0 through 30?

Bet you wish you'd never asked...

Take care.

Mark said...

Hi,
nice blog. I just started my own, but I have been trading on Betfair fulltime for 5 months. I would like to change links with you, please add my link: http://markstrading.blogspot.com/ and send me email with yours. Thank you, Mark

Mark Iverson said...

Hey, now we're cooking!

Cassini - Funnily enough you were a bit of an inspiration behind me kicking my ass into gear and getting these ratings up and running. I've been very impressed by your ELO system.

I've taken a different approach here but I'm happy to answer any questions you may have.

Why 4 matches? My system only takes into account Premier League matches (not cup games etc.) so if you go back more than 4 games then you could be talking about 5-6 weeks ago. That's too long ago for me.

Do you weight the most recent game heavier? Not in the rating, but it's something I consider when looking at the overall trend of the 4 games.

Do you account for the games being at home or away? Yes. I use different scorecards for each but a 20 rating at home should represent a similar 20 rating away so you wouldn't know the difference.

Do you account for the strength of opposition? Yes.

Why 4 to 34 and not 0 through 30? There's some free points on offer. Maybe I should change this to 0-30! lol! Won't do it for this season but maybe next year.

Thanks for your interest and all feedback appreciated.

Mark - Nice blog and some nice daily figures. happy to add a link to your blog tonight.

Thanks!

Cassini said...

http://green-all-over.blogspot.com/2010/11/form-fitting.html

Mark Iverson said...

Thanks for the mention Cassini.

I think the differences must be in the amount of weighting we assign to the results themselves.

It's a factor for me but not a huge part of my performance ratings. I set-out to identify if 'the best team won' rather than just take the final score as the true picture.

If WBA were to beat Chelsea 1-0 it doesn't necessarily mean they were the better side.

Good luck as always.

Mark

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