Seven From Nine
Seven From Nine
If you read my previous article, you will be fully aware that my pursuit of data driven excellence has taken me to Germany, as the Bundesliga is back in business and although the stadiums may be empty, the action was not lacking last weekend.
With my new ‘BundesBot’ unleashed, it is time to see how it fared in its first week of action and before we do, lets take a look at the predictions that it served up this time last week:
ITS RESULT TIME
In my previous article, my fear was that there were always going to be a handful of shocks, as the bigger names in Germany’s top flight fail to shake off the ring rust and thankfully those fears were largely unfounded….largely.
From the results below it was a positive week, but not if you are a fan of RB Leipzig, their 1-1 draw with Freiburg was one that unfortunately blew the coupon and stopped me from landing an 890/1 9-fold.
Usually though, outcomes like this are just the first of many collapses in any given weekend and you only have to look at my efforts in Belarus to see how bad things have been when offering up some Belarusian data driven football predictions.
Another concern was home advantage and the lack thereof and what was interesting here, was that only one team won at home last weekend out of nine matches and that was Borussia Dortmund’s stirling effort against Schalke.
NO FANS, NO ATMOSPHERE
Does this mean home advantage has been completely nullified, to be hones it is probably a little too early to tell and there are two mitigating factors in play here:
1) The ‘stronger’ teams were on the road and did the business, therefore it would have lessened any potential for home wins
2) A one week sample does not offer anywhere near a trend and although there was no home advantage last weekend, we should not right it off just yet.
BUT HOW DID WE DO
If you have a really short memory, you would have already forgotten that RB Leipzig’s home slip, was enough to stop me winning the big prize and although that was rather disconcerting, it was not a bad weekend….not a bad weekend at all.
That’s because the only other result that ‘BundesBot’ got incorrect was the goalless draw between Fortuna Dusseldorf and Paderborn, apart from that my control week – one where we literally test with no real additional logic, returned seven correct resutls out of nine.
JUST TWO SHORT
Just two short of an 890/1 winner, admittedly still short at the end of the day – but at the same time, ‘BundesBot’ definitely requires a pat on the back and if I’ve gone double chance of all these picks, I would have at least got all nine outcomes correct (albeit it at far greater odds)
However, the ultimate test is for the ultimate prize and although we fell short of the mark (to be honest I’ve rather be two short than one, because that in itself would only create more ‘what might have been scenarios’
Still a 77.7% success rate is not a bad benchmark and although we can herald this particular ‘triumph’ – we need to now test whether this was a fluke and do it all over again this weekend, can we match the same heady heights or can we go one better, more data driven football predictions to follow.
(THESE ARE NOT TIPS PER SE, THESE ARE JUST DATA DRIVEN PREDICTIONS IN A PURE TEST AND LEARN MODELLING CAPACITY)
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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