Saturday 18 September 2010

EPL Efficiency


Another successful day for odds-on laying in England, with successful lays of Stoke City, Aston Villa, Everton and Arsenal. Tottenham Hotspur won, but a very profitable day for this strategy which now shows an ROI of 69.12% in England.

The two ratings selections both fell short, with Blackburn Rovers being held at home by Fulham, and West Bromwich Albion coming from behind to beat Birmingham City.

The Bundesliga saw one winner and two losses for the laying system, although Bayern Munich's failure to beat Koln at 1.25 was missed out on since historically lays at sub 1.3 prices are nor value (see favourite-longshot bias).

The one draw prediction from the ratings in Germany today was at Kaiserslautern where the game finished 2-2 at a price of 3.45.

In the one non-league bet of the day, Barrow beat Forest Green Rovers as expected.

Anonymous contributed two comments on my last post, concerning the lay of Aston Villa at 1.87.

The Villa game is a perfect example of why you can't expect to win purely off ratings.

Davies may miss out. Cahill and Jaaskaleinen are definitely out. These 3 are undoubtedly their 3 most important players.

It takes little time to research this information. Although it would take an impossibly long time to research it for all the leagues you try and cover.

Regardless of the outcome, 1.87 was an horrific price to lay. And some of the team information has certainly been available for some time.
Anonymous is a frequent visitor to the blog, so he should be aware that the lay of Aston Villa was NOT based on my ratings but on my observation that in the EPL (and other leagues), a strategy of laying odds-on favourites has been historically profitable in recent seasons.

Also, the price of 1.87 was that on Friday morning, and if one subscribes to the theory that the Premier league is an efficient market, there is no reason to think that this price was incorrect at that time. As he says, team information is not a secret, and the prices will reflect the latest news. There is always the possibility of a significant change to a line up that will affect the price between the time of placing the bet and kick-off, but it's often not possible to wait until the last moment with so many matches kicking off simultaneously.

In the end Kevin Davies did play, and in fact scored, presumably meaning (more by luck than good judgement admittedly) that 1.87 was indeed an excellent price to lay at. If Villa at 1.87 was "an horrific price to lay at", then it's a fair bet that Anonymous was backing at this price confident in his edge. However, when it comes to believing what the papers say, or going by what the market says, I would go with the market every time. If Anonymous thinks that he has an edge based on what's in the news, in my opinion, he is sorely mistaken. By the time any team news is public knowledge, the markets already reflect this. What you read in your morning 'news'paper is not news.

One caveat however is that genuinely fresh news is often received in the market with an initial overreaction. One poster on the Punters Lounge forum said something a while back to the effect that punters are far too easily influenced by minor events, and that people regularly over react.

Overreaction is also noticeable many in-play sports. As I have noted before, one example is in the NFL where a team scoring a touchdown in a close game is almost invariably backed too low. A minute or two later, the conceding team starts its drive, and the price bounces back.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Market efficiency does not require the market price to be "correct" at every point in time.

Indeed the major football markets are generally knocked into shape in the hours leading up to kick-off.

Villa I think went 1.67 at some stage and certainly weren't 1.87 at KO when it was known Davies was playing.

Of course I don't have an edge by what's in the news. However, I know how to interpret and use the news. Not something you would have a handle on of course.

You do seem a sensitive thing.