A Minsk Coat
A Minsk Coat
In my previous article I kickstarted my series on betting on the Belarus Premier League (once again beggars cannot be choosers) and although there was little in the way of data, there was just enough to work on and attempt for data driven betting excellence.
Now usually, I work on the basis of a form guide from the last six matches of the season and although we were a week short of that benchmark, there were some insights that could be deriven from the infograph below
Not a huge load to work with, but enough to at least get the ball rolling with a treble and it was one that saw me opt for:
BATE Borisov
FK Slutsk
Torpedo Zhodino @ 6.3
Unfortunately it fell down at the final hurdle as Torpedo Zhodino were held to a 0-0 draw at gome to Rukh Brest and what makes it all the more frustrating, is the fact that the visitors were also reduced to 10 men. I guess these are the pitfalls, that I’m going to have to deal with going forward.
So I put my money where my mouth was and unfortunately it came up short. However, there was certainly logic in these bets (The best known team and the top two in the table at the start of the weekend), so considering this really is a test of blind faith, it was not a total bust.
THE BELARUS ACCUMULATOR
In addition to that, I also served up an 8-fold accumulator, not for any financial gain but as a control measure to test against “BeluBot” that will come into play this coming weekend and with that in mind, lets remind ourselves of my 8 picks.
Dinamo Minsk – Winner
Draw
Slavia Mozyr
BATE Borisov – Winner
Dynamo Brest
FK Slutsk – Winner
Torpedo Zhodino
Draw
Just three out of eight, and if I had put Dinamo Minsk in my treble, I would have at least got off to a winning start. However, it is what is and there’s no point reflecting too much on a Belarusian Premier League treble. (I cannot believe I’ve just written that sentence)
Three out of eight gives me very little to write home about, although in a sense the last thing I would want is the control method to return six or seven (dare I say even the lot), as then I’d have nothing to work with going forward.
LOSING ON PURPOSE?
As the sub-title may suggest, that is not necessarily the case but my knowledge of this league is very limited and although it will grow each week, this does at least provide me with the perfect opportunity in which to serve up some data driven football predictions.
Not only that, but any knowledge gleamed can be fed back into other European models that are currently on hiatus, so this will at least give me the chance to remove any conscience bias that may have hindered any previous selections.
THE FORM GUIDE
Thankfully from this weekend, I’ll be able to fully utilise the form index that I’ve built and hopefully that will give me more to work with going forward, while in a few weeks I’ll look to expand to Over/Under goal markets also.
Therefore the challenge for this first week, is whether I can beat 3 out of 8 from my model “BelaBot” – that shouldn’t be too hard (famous last words), but I get the feeling this is going to be something of a gradual process. With that in mind, I’ll be back later in the week with some more stats.
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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