A Penny In It
A Penny In It
If you read my previous article on the Russian Premier League and ‘StatBot’s pursuit of data driven betting excellence, you will be aware that I made some tweaks under the bonnet in preparations of last weekend’s fixtures.
Those tweaks looked at home form vs away form instead of how the two competing teams had fared in their last six league outings of being either home or away and with the stage set, let’s take a quick recap and what ‘StatBot’ prepared for me:
Now regular readers will be aware, of the fact that each game is bet on with a stake of 1 unit (50p) and then there is an 8-fold accumulator for all of them (2 units = £1) to wrap things up to a neat 10 units per week.
Those same readers will also be aware of the fact that for me to return any real profit per week, I’m going to have to get either 5 favourites over the line or a couple of value adding draws and in addition to this, there is always the dream of scooping the magical 8-fold.
Which when you consider the odds were only 776/1 last weekend, is the lowest the accumulator odds have been since the birth of ‘StatBot’, although let’s be honest that is still a huge pipe dream in terms of return.
So with that all set out, you are probably wondering how did I fare? Well come the start of Friday evening the 8-fold was very much on, as Lokomotiv Moscow picked up an away win and got me off to the perfect start.
Unfortunately the run of form across Saturday and Sunday could not be continued and I only managed 4 out of the 8 picks to be correct last weekend and that meant that after spending £4, I returned £3.99. Yes for all that effort, I made a loss of a single penny.
Although, I do need to pat myself on the back for making an amendment to the model in regard to the amount of weight placed on away results. As this meant the model then offered up an FC Krasnodar win instead of a draw, something that made the final outcome a little more palatable.
While if we were being really fussy, we were 0.2p away from breaking exactly even because of the rounding of numbers. Yes these really are the fine margins that we are dealing with right now, still though it could have been a lot worse I guess.
Not only that but if CSKA Moscow had not picked up a late winner in the last fixture of the gameweek, that 1p loss, would have turned into a £1.99 profit (which would equate to a 49% ROI for the week), although let’s not get too tied up in the if and buts of it all.
That said a penny loss, is still a loss and that means after seven weeks of the project, four weeks have seen profit and three have seen loss. Although overall, I am still in the black and that means the project is still a relative success.
In terms of overall spend, I have spent £28 and returned £29.39, which is a 4.96% ROI. Considering we are only betting on single lines (bar the super acca) and not any combination of doubles/trebles etc, that is not too bad a return.
In all honesty, we only seem a game per week of really boosting the profits, so the margin of error is certainly thin and with it turning a profit from the last seven weeks, part of me thinks it might be better to leave this one unscathed as we go into the weekend.
Especially if you have read my latest English Premier League offering, you will know that change is not necessarily a good thing. With that in mind, we can certainly absorb a penny loss this week and therefore ‘StatBot’ will be unscathed for the weekend ahead.
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 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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