Do It Again

Do It Again

If you read my previous article, you will be fully aware of a rather impressive debut offering from ‘BundesBot’ and with my pursuit of data driven excellence, only tantilising close from ultimate success, it is time for another crack at all things Bundesliga.

To set the scene, last week was the control week in terms of this model and with such a good return, it begs the question what if anything should be changed and to be honest, there’s not a lot if anything that will be done in terms of tweaks under the bonnet.

Therefore with that in mind, here is the Bundesliga form guide across the last six matches (home vs away)

As you can a medley of colours and it highlights the strong form that Bayern Munich are in along with FC Kolm and Borussia M.Gladbach at home, while Hertha Berlin and Augsburg have very little to write home about as of late (allowing for a 2 month hiatus)

The home teams seem to a lot more dominant when compared against their visiting counterparts, although with that said there was only one home win last weekend and that is something that we will need to keep an eye on over the course of the next couple of months.

In theory, there should be five home wins this week, but as we know when it comes to betting life is never that simple and with the form guide now revealed, lets take a look at the predictions from ‘BundesBot’ this weekend:

WIN, LOSE OR DRAW?

Here’s this week’s offerings and what is the first thing that you see? It’s that “BundesBot’ has served up no draws, which admittedly is a risky strategy. However, last week he only served up one and had a decent level of success, so draws aren’t necessarily pivotal to all of this.

A couple of things to consider here, is that the weight might be too high for away games at both Hertha Berlin and Borussia M.Gladbach – especially when you consider what is at stake in these two meetings.

Firstly a Berlin derby or any derby for that matter, is one that has the potential to upset the formbook and therefore an away win here is a bold prediction, even if Hertha have been rather poor in front of their own fans.

While the most interesting output is the tie between Borussia M.Gladbach and Bayer Leverkusen, one that will have a huge bearing on who finishes in the top four at the end of rhe season and with ‘BundesBot’ going bold and plumping for the visitors, could risk equal reward.

Of course, there is the title race to consider and with Borussia Dortmund and Bayern Munich going head to head on Tuesday night, they will both want to make sure that they clear their respective weekend hurdles.

WHAT ARE THE ODDS

Last week my nine fold offered up odds of 890/1, this week the odds are less than half at 402/1 and this suggests that the data driven football predictions are more in tune with the thoughts of the bookmakers.

Which either means we are a step closer to the path of success or our intuition is rather wrong and we will be caught out come the end of Sunday afternoon. While it goes without saying, that I hope it is the former.

Apart from the two examples above (Berlin/race for fourth) I’m relatively confident that seven out of nine can be repeated again and if that is the case, we know that the framework of the model is not just a fluke.

If it’s fair less, then may need to keep testing it, to see what the natural success rate as there will probably be an element of regressing to the mean. But I’ll cross that bridge, if and when I have to come to it.

While although I said I would not make any changes this week, I have added an additional element to offer me a level of insurance and if this is something that works in the long run, it is also something I can scale up quite quickly.

TAKE A DOUBLE CHANCE

With the ‘BundesBot’ model offering up no draws this weekend, I’ve taken the liberty of adding them myself and therefore I’ve also created a 9-fold ‘double chance’ accumulator, one that opts for whatever the prediction and the draw.

Admittedly the odds are far far less than the 402/1 and to be honest they are shy of 7/1, but if there’s a modicum of success here, it could make for more sense to place bigger bets at the latter odds, rather than smaller odds at the former.

If anything it just makes it a little more interesting and adds more security to the ‘BundesBot’ model going forward. Security, that I hope at least offers some form of win over the next few afternoons and evenings.

That’s your lot for this article, the review will come around quite quickly due to midweek action, so hopefully there’s more to celebrate and if not, well at least I get another chance to do it all other again.

Happy punting and thanks for reading. Dan

(THESE ARE NOT TIPS PER SE, THESE ARE JUST DATA DRIVEN FOOTBALL PREDICTIONS IN A PURE TEST AND LEARN MODELLING CAPACITY)

If this has grabbed your interest and you would like to discuss/feedback then please feel free to drop me a message at dan@realfootballman.com. 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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