Open Your Draws

Open Your Draws

If you read one of my previous articles, you will be aware that the pursuit for data driven betting excellence continues and with another full weekend of Premier League action in the can, it is time to see how the three components of this process fared.

With the data driven football predictions just a couple of weeks away, it was once again time to test the gut instinct and one the evidence of the picks that were offered up by Social Media and I, it was far to say that our guts were rather heavy.

TIME TO RECAP

With so few draws in the Premier League thus far, there was a sense of that this cannot go on forever and therefore, it was time to throw a few more in the mix. To the point where the 10 below, would have conjuored up odds of 2,718 if they were all correct.

Everton/Liverpool Draw – Y
Chelsea – N
Manchester City – Y
Manchester United – Y
Sheffield United – N
Crystal Palace/Brighton Draw – Y
Tottenham – N
Leicester – N
West Brom/Burnley Draw – Y
Leeds – N

As you can see, all the draws that I selected got over the line which means a slight pat on the back but there were also a few more along the way that I didn’t see and this means it is no good getting the job only half done. So thankfully it was not a brutal week, but a bang average on at best.

With 5 out of 10 being correct, it is time to see how this compared with the random nature of social media and their picks, a set that went really big on the draws (well four) and because of this, the odds were 11,090/1. Let’s now see how they fared:

Everton – N
Chelsea – N
Manchester City/Arsenal Draw – N
Manchester United – Y
Sheffield United – N
Crystal Palace/Brighton Draw – Y
Tottenham – N
Leicester – N
West Brom/Burnley Draw – Y
Leeds/Wolves Draw – N

A rather brutal 3 out of 10, which means as before big odds usually means no reward and the bookies can breathe a sigh of relief in terms of getting bashed over the course of the weekend. While now we need to reflect on the bookies pre-match odds themselves, something that looks like this:

Tomorrow, 17 Oct			1	X	2	B’s
11:30	Everton – Liverpool		301/100	309/100	17/20	13
14:00	Chelsea – Southampton		27/50	89/25	501/100	13
16:30	Manchester City – Arsenal		13/25	377/100	5/1	13
19:00	Newcastle – Manchester Utd		373/100	78/25	73/100	13
18 Oct 2020			1	X	2	B’s
11:00	Sheffield Utd – Fulham		28/25	59/25	139/50	13
13:00	Crystal Palace – Brighton		89/50	231/100	42/25	13
15:30	Tottenham – West Ham		63/100	319/100	447/100	13
18:15	Leicester – Aston Villa		109/100	66/25	64/25	13
19 Oct 2020			1	X	2	B’s
16:30	West Brom – Burnley		31/20	58/25	193/100	13
19:00	Leeds – Wolves		3/2	119/50	49/25	13

To be honest it was an even worse weekend for the bookmakers themselves as they only correctly predicted that both Manchester teams would win last weekend and although there is the caveat of them not picking draws as a preference, so this is not an exact science.

Then again, it does show that they had a weekend to forget and when we look at the updated league table, it now looks as follows:

Gut Instinct – 56.2% correct (27/48)
Bookmakers – 52.0% correct (25/48)
Social Media – 52.0% correct (25/48)

Which means my gut instinct has gone to the top of the table, although looking at the actual percentage terms, that in itself is not going to make you reach and this is hopefully where data driven football predictions take the batten in a couple of weeks.

Usually we would be able to activate this in week 7 of the season, but because four clubs have yet to play their games in hand, it means we need to get to week 8 before the form index can be bought into play.

Still we know now that bookmakers only get on average five of their pre-match odds correct (ignoring the non-draw element), so if we use them as a guide we know that they are far from perfect and sometimes you may just have to trust your own gut.

That will concludes this week’s wrap up, I best get cracking as there is Friday night football and it is time for another round of picks.

Happy punting and thanks for reading.

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