The Half Dozen

The Half Dozen

If you read my previous article, you will be fully aware that the quest for data driven betting excellence is nothing of short of perennial and with another Premier League weekend on the horizon, it is time to serve up the penultimate set of purely gut instinct predictions.

When we get to week 8 of the season, the trigger will be unleashed and this means “PremBot” will be dusted off the shelf and put into work, as we migrate from random picks to data driven football predictions.

Admittedly it should have been week 7, but those early games in hand have scuppered my preparations ever so slightly and this this means the smallest of delays in terms of number crunching, which means this weekend it is a case of going with the heart rather than the head.

Before I rattle off another set of Premier League picks, it is time to take a quick recap of how the league table looks in terms of predictions. Admittedly this is not an exact science, but it should give us an idea of early performance:

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

It is a small advantage for yours truly after week 5 of the campaign and if you were to return that percentage across 380 games of the season, you could pretty pleased with your efforts (or at least I would)

In previous season long trials, the success rate has always been in the low to mid 40’s in terms of percentage range and a rough target should be about 50/50 – then again, with a Home/Draw/Away format in terms of picks, it is not as simple as just flipping a coin like heads or tails.

The equivalent is more if you picked every game as a home win throughout the season and the percentage split would be nearer the region of 50/25/25 – so anything that can beat the halfway house should be commended.

RESTING ON YOUR LAURELS

Then again, that in itself is not going to make you rich (although you may be able to make some return if you did not always go for the hail mary 10 fold each week) and now it is time to see our attempts at beating the bookies this week:

Aston Villa
Manchester City
Fulham/Palace Draw
Manchester United/Chelsea Draw
Liverpool
Everton
Wolves
Arsenal
Brighton
Tottenham

A combination that will turn 1 currency unit into 939 if successful.

While as before, I have been testing my luck against social media and here are another set of picks – full disclosure these are still random, but someone is having a second crack at trying to beat the bookies (whether I can find 38 people to do this, I’m not sure so this probably makes sense)

Aston Villa
Manchester City
Crystal Palace
Manchester United/Chelsea Draw
Liverpool
Everton
Wolves
Arsenal/Leicester Draw
Brighton/West Brom Draw
Tottenham

Again a more draw heavy approach than me last week and this mean 1 currency unit will turn into 3,740. Whisper it quietly, but I would rather win off this set of my picks than my own!

Once again, there is variance between my gut instinct and the random picks, which is good because it stops us mimicing each other and keeping the results the same throughout the league table.

However, we do also need to see what the bookmakers are saying this weekend and their pre-match odds look as follows:

Today, 23 Oct			1	X	2	B’s
19:00	Aston Villa – Leeds		+112	+275	+235	12
Tomorrow, 24 Oct			1	X	2	B’s
11:30	West Ham – Manchester City		+629	+422	-238	12
14:00	Fulham – Crystal Palace		+175	+220	+177	12
16:30	Manchester Utd – Chelsea		+141	+266	+191	12
19:00	Liverpool – Sheffield Utd		-385	+544	+1091	12
25 Oct 2020			1	X	2	B’s
13:00	Southampton – Everton		+177	+248	+158	12
15:30	Wolves – Newcastle		-127	+254	+421	12
18:15	Arsenal – Leicester		-106	+277	+297	12
26 Oct 2020			1	X	2	B’s
16:30	Brighton – West Brom		-132	+297	+363	12
19:00	Burnley – Tottenham		+448	+309	-154	12

As always, the thing to remember here is that they will not plump for a draw as a preferred result – so that will not allign in terms of predictions. However, every game that I have picked as a win, the bookmakers have also and this at least offers some amount of synergy for the weekend.

With the bookmakers averaging 5 out of 10 picks per week, this means if there is synergy we either need to hope for an above average week or we are going to get caught out again, fingers crossed it proves to be the former.

That pretty much wraps up this week’s piece, as we move a step closer to activating the data driven football predictions. So if you have a flutter this weekend, let us know how you get on against the bookmakers.

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)