September 2011 Analysis

My total for September 2011 is -22. The Championship was profitable for me, but Prem, League Two and Bundesliga all made a loss.

There were at least three bugs in my program. It looks like one of these skewed the results of my analysis of previous seasons, making some leagues look more profitable than they really were. In particular League Two seemed to be profitable in previous seasons, but actually made me a large loss this season. The second was an inaccuracy in estimating lay prices from back prices, again causing me to overestimate profit predictions. The third bug was a difference between the analysis of previous seasons and predictions for the current season, meaning that I made a few bets that I shouldn't have made according to my own model, which lost.

Having fixed these bugs, I need to rerun all my analyses of previous seasons. At the same time I'm going to test some more subtle strategies for picking games and for betting.

Predictions 27 Sept

Posting after the fact, but these were the bets I made:

Lay Brighton *3 (backer's stake)
Lay Reading *2.5
Lay Blackpool *3
Lay Derby *2.5
Lay Hull *1.5

The Reading lay lost (right at the death), but the rest won. +5 today.

Predictions 24 Sept 2011

Lay Arsenal *5 (backer's stake)
Lay Chelsea *14
Lay Liverpool *5
Lay Man City *6
Lay Man Utd *8
Lay Tottenham *4

[Edit] Results: only the Man Utd bet won. Total -7: not good.

Predictions 18 Sept 2011

Value bets today:

Fulham v Man City - Fulham or draw [Edit: bet wins]
Man Utd v Chelsea - Chelsea or draw [Edit: bet loses]
Southampton v Birmingham - Birmingham or draw [Edit: bet loses]
Hannover v Dortmund - Hannover or draw [Edit: bet wins]
Schalke v Bayern Munich - Schalke or draw [Edit: bet loses]

[Edit] Only two out of five correct, but because of differing stake sizes, I made a small profit.

Predictions for 13 September 2011

Some League Two predictions:

Macclesfield v Morecambe: Home or draw [Edit: Result - draw]
Hereford v Aldershot: Home or draw [Edit: Result - away win]
Crawley v Swindon: Away or draw [Edit: Result - away win]
Barnet v Plymouth: Away or draw [Edit: Result - home win]

[Edit] Two bets won and two lost. For me, a small loss.

Predictions 11 September 2011

Koln v Nurnburg: Lay Koln.
Wolfsburg v Schalke: No bets.

[Edit] Result: Nurnburg; bet wins. For me this recouped about half of the losses from yesterday. Still cash negative overall.

Predictions 10 September 2011

Today I am laying the home team in each of the six Bundesliga matches.

[11 September] Four home wins out of six. Cash negative. I suspect the unusual run of away wins in August 2010 has skewed the training data. Again, I find myself wondering how much training data is the "right" amount to use.