Every Little Helps
Every Little Helps
If you read my previous article, you would have known that I made a slight but all-important tweak to ‘StatBot’, one that flipped the way in which the form was being looked out and from there, how it was indexed.
With any change, there is always the question as to whether or not it is going to be a successful. Because as they say “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” and especially after returning 33% profit in the first week (ok, I added that second bit myself).
But before we dive into the analysis, lets remind ourselves of what ‘StatBot’ churned out last Friday:
As you can see there were five home wins and three draws, something that if you were going of ‘gut feel’ is arguably not a combination you would have opted for and when we look at the results, we will see why.
The Results (outcomes in brackets, correct picks in bold)
FC Ufa vs FK Akhmat – (FK Akhmat Win)
FC Orenburg vs Dinamo Moscow – (FC Orenburg Win)
Rubin Kazan vs FC Tambov – (Rubin Kazan Win)
PFC Sochi vs Krylya Sovetov Samara – (Krylya Sovetov Samara Win)
Ural vs Zenit St. Petersburg – (Zenit St. Petersburg Win)
Lokomotiv Moscow vs Arsenal Tula – (Lokomotiv Moscow Win)
CSKA Moscow vs FC Rostov – (FC Rostov Win)
FC Krasnodar vs Spartak Moscow – (FC Krasnodar Win)
Not one single draw took place last week in the Russian Premier League, which begs two questions:
is this a freak week in terms of results and is this something else I am going to have to factor in.
As you can see, just three wins out of eight came in. Not great
However, although it looks bad on the face of it, we still managed to turn a profit in week 2. Admittedly it was only 8p after 8 units (£4), but every little helps and that’s now two positive weeks in a row for ‘StatBot’.
With a second positive week in a row, it means from an outlay of £8, I have returned £9.40 which is a 17.5% ROI at present. Although, by getting less picks correct, it has thrown up another really interesting question.
Is it not necessarily the amount of correct picks, but the quality of the picks?
I mean admittedly if I’m only going to be getting 3 out of 8 picks correct each week, then you would have to say that the long term feasibility of the project is low. However, if you can select the games that have odds that are more than 2.0 in decimal odds (or evens in fractions) AND provide an edge over the bookmaker, that is where we start to find the true value.
Take the three wins I had last week:
FC Orenburg vs Dinamo Moscow – (FC Orenburg Win)
Lokomotiv Moscow vs Arsenal Tula – (Lokomotiv Moscow Win)
FC Krasnodar vs Spartak Moscow – (FC Krasnodar Win)
While the odds of those three winners were:
FC Orenburg 9/5
Lokomotiv Moscow 1/2
FC Krasnodar 17/20
And what can we tell from this, quite simply a win for FC Orenburg dug me out of quite a big hole last week and the straight eight singles strategy, might not be the one that is operated across the course of the season.
There might be more scope to select trebles instead, but then that has to be weighed up against one team letting you down and so on. Ultimately a case can be maid for both but as we are two for two in profit, I think the current strategy will continue for now.
With a brief respite over the international break, I’m going to offer up some more background posts as to development/logic and might even trial some video posts also (well I have to kill all this free time somehow)
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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