A Russian Revolution

A Russian Revolution

If you read my previous article on how my Russian Premier League betting model has performed, you will be aware that it was the first week in which I failed to return a profit on my predictions and although I don’t want to throw the baby out with the bathwater, it is certainly time for change.

After getting just two picks correct last weeks, it means that after an average enough start – the success rate is going backwards and although I am in a small profit overall, it only needs one more week to wipe out all the initial hard work.

WHAT CHANGES ARE TO BE MADE?

Firstly here is the predictions that ‘StatBot’ has offered up if I decided not to make any changes to the model and as you can see it is particularly draw heavy – something that although impossible does fly up something of a red flag this week.

Therefore it is time to change things around and that means not one but two changes – one that is enforced and one that has come around after doing some background tweaking, something that has uncovered a rather fatal flaw.

The enforced change is the form index and the way it was ranking six-match combinations, as on further inspections it was not including the amount of points won in those half dozen games as part of the sorting criteria.

WHAT DOES THIS MEAN?

The upshot of that is quite an important one, because it was ranking teams that have scored lesser points in their last six-matches, higher than that of teams who have scored more points. Which fundamentally should be the other way round.

Now with that out of the way and re-calibrated, I’ve finally got round to introducing adding more weight onto teams playing at home, as previously equal balance was being given to teams playing either home or away.

Which again, is something that could cause a lot of problems going forward because surely home teams will have a better of chance of winning in front of their own fans. Although that in itself asks another question and that is, ‘how much weight should be applied’

A question that I don’t know the answer of just yet and that is where all the test and learn procedures come into play. While although I do not know the answer to that, I can offer up what the ‘StatBot’ picks look like once these two changes have been made.

As you can see the outcomes of the top four matches have completely changed now that the new tweaks have been added to the mechanics of ‘StatBot’ and they are ones that offer a bit more protection to the home teams and makes the overall round of picks less draw heavy.

That said, we do know that the last two weeks of predictions have seen some very volatile results and this has certainly been felt when it comes to reviewing the results on the other side of the weekend, something that I hope is not the case this weekend.

Although there are a couple of issues that I can see cropping up this weekend:

• Two Moscow derbies = form book goes out of the window
• FC Krasnodar = only a home draw, when gut instinct would select a home win.
• With the additional weight, no away wins have been selected

Still I’m not going to over analyse the predictions otherwise I will start pulling things apart for the wrong reasons. Therefore I am going to ride the latest raft of ‘StatBot’ picks out and come the start of next week, we will see whether or not it is a return to winning ways.

Happy punting and thanks for reading, Dan.

 

If this has grabbed your interest and you would like to discuss/feedback then please feel free to drop me a message at [email protected]. While I am always looking for new football/data projects to work on and if you feel that my skills would be of use, I can be contacted at the same address.

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