A Split Success
A Split Success
With the English Premier League operating its first ever split gamweek, it meant that there has been a bit of a backlog in my pursuit of data driven betting excellence and with a new week on the horizon, it is finally time to look back on the previous article on this topic.
To get you fully up to speed, it was an article which saw me undertake a fundamental tweak in terms of predictive modelling and one that would hopefully allow me to win big after a raft of successful data driven football predictions.
Once again, it meant that my good friend ‘PremBot’ served up another 10 matches and offered up a prediction. While should all of them have come good, it would have meant victory to the tune of nearly £4.5k.
However, there was one plot twist and it was one that saw Storm Ciara get the better of Manchester City vs West Ham and with them having to play the game a week later, it meant that leg of the 10-fold was void.
This meant that the final odds were nearer 3500/1 on the revised nine-fold and it is one that looked something like this:
WAIT A MINUTE
Now with Manchester City’s game rained off from it’s original date, it meant that there were only three games played on the first half of the split and by the time Sheffield United got a late winner against Bournemouth, it meant that the win was very much on.
Just six more matches left to go and what made it all the more interesting was that each game was played in an individual time slot, which meant in theory I could check of each game leg by leg with the prize pot getting ever bigger.
DARE TO DREAM
Unfortunately though, like all bad gamblers I had already spent the money in my head and was already deliberating a ‘cash out’ if Liverpool got the better of Norwich and completed leg six of this potentially incredible journey.
However, that was a dream that was cultivated on Friday night and before Wolves and Leicester played out a goalless draw – one that scuppered any hopes of ‘PremBot’ serving up a perfect raft of data driven football predictions.
With that game becoming a bust, the dream was over and it got no better by the time Burnley had got the better of Southampton, leaving Liverpool to pick up the Saturday slack with an expected win over Norwich.
Sunday started better (only just) as Tottenham got the better of Aston Villa, although the ask of a draw in the final two matches of the schedule were too much and by the time Manchester City got the better of West Ham second time around, it meant an above average week in terms of overall performance.
A NEW STARTING POINT
With six predictions correct out of a possible ten, this was a marked improvement from the previous attempt and it seems after the nadir of a few weeks back, when just three out of ten were correct, we are seeing some gradual improvement.
This means that from a sample of 110 matches, 52 have had the correct outcome – giving me an overall success rate of 47.2%. Obviously for all your maths fans, that is just under half and it raises a question could gut instinct do better in a given week. Something that I will look to answer over the next few days.
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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