Weekly Articles "Road to Riches" by Rich 'Tighty' Prew
The Road to Riches: Weekend 8th-9th August
Coming Up this weekend
- Football, the start of the English football season with a full schedule of Premier League and football league games.
- Racing, flat meetings on Saturday at Ascot, Haydock Park, Newmarket, Redcar, Ayr and Lingfield Park
- Cricket, Days 3 and (possibly) 4 of the Fourth Ashes Test at Trent Bridge
- Tennis, ATP Austrian Open and ATP Citi Open in Washington. WTA Citi Open in Washington and WTA Bank of the West Classic in Stanford, California
- Golf, World Golf Championships - Bridgestone Invitational at Firestone in Ohio.
- Rugby Union, the final weekend of the Rugby Championship with unbeaten Australia and New Zealand meeting in Sydney.
Free Tip of the Week :
Saturday sees the conclusion of the Rugby Championship, the annual Southern Hemisphere competition this year truncated because of the impending World Cup. The Bledisloe Cup game at the ANZ Stadium in Sydney between Australia and New Zealand will decide the winner of the tournament with both teams going into the game having beaten both South Africa and Argentina.
Both teams had very narrow victories over South Africa. South Africa were 20-7 up on Australia in Brisbane and Australia scored on the last play of the game to win 24-20 and deny this column a win. The week after the All Blacks trailed in Johannesburg with ten minutes to go, a late try securing a 27-20 win. Both teams beat Argentina comfortably.
So recent form lines are similar and Australia are at home.
The World Number One All Blacks have held the Bledisloe Cup since 2003 and have not lost to the Wallabies since August 2011 in Brisbane. The Wallabies are currently enduring a 10-match winless streak but have got close recently, despite being in the doldrums under recent coaches. In August 2014 they drew 12-12 in a wet game at the ANZ Stadium and in October they lost 28-29 at Brisbane to a match winning conversion as the last play of the game.
The All Blacks are not unbeatable. They are ahead of the rest and have been for a decade, but several teams within that pack of chasers have either overturned the All Blacks on rare occasions (England in 2012, South Africa last year) or come within a whisker of doing so. As well as Australia, Ireland for example have come close. The All Blacks though are renowed for winning games in tight situations and trusting that game plans will eventually bring the result home.
For this game they are selecting as close to their first choice team as they can after some rotation earlier in the tournament. Dan Carter is back at fly half, Sonny Bill Williams returns at centre. Deservedly they are 1/2 outright for this game, Australia 15/8 and six point underdogs on the handicap.
Australia though are a more competitive unit than they were as recently as six months ago. For several years their weakness in the scrum has been a real problem and negated their competitiveness in the back row (where here Pocock/Hooper will go toe to toe with Richie McCaw at the breakdown) and forced their very dangerous backs to operate off the back foot.
The lack of a platform left them exposed against the top few teams. Under Michael Chieka though they have put a lot of work into their physicality. Over the years they've always been extremely dangerous with ball in hand, and that added physicality they've brought has been notable, and probably gives them more of an all-round game now. The real test they are building to is the World Cup group with England and Wales
With Australia more competitive I expect a close game here. I wouldn't go as far as predicting an upset but it should be within two scores and the "Winning margin" market has the All Blacks winning by 1-12 points at 13/8 with Ladbrokes and 6/4 generally. New Zealand winning by 13+ is no more than 2/1 and I would consider much less likely.
8 points New Zealand to win by 1-12 points in the Rugby Championship game versus Australia 13/8 generally
The game kicks off 11.05am Saturday (Sky Sports 3)
Football, Moneyball?
Almost exactly a decade ago, the American writer Michael Lewis published a book called "Moneyball". It told the story of Billy Beane, the general manager of an unfashionable baseball team, the Oakland A’s, who was using new statistics to evaluate baseball players and strategies.
Moneyball changed baseball and almost all ball games from basketball to cricket but it also affected worlds beyond sport. Ken Mehlman, Republican campaign manager in the US presidential election of 2004, instructed his staff to read it, because he realised that it wasn’t just a sports book. It was also a perfect case study of how crunching numbers can give you an edge.
Football was always the most hidebound sport and it held out longest against the numbers revolution. In the last few years though, and in betting in football in the decade before that, the use of data has infiltrated football. .In football, people always did what they did because they had always done it that way. Clubs were historically run by autocratic managers who had left school at 16 to become players and didn’t hold with book-learning.
In the mid-1990s, the spread of computers began to change this. Companies such as Opta and Prozone began collecting stats on football matches. Suddenly, clubs knew how many passes each player had completed, how many tackles he had made and how many kilometres he had run.
All 20 clubs in the Premier League – and many in the lower divisions – now employ data analysts to make sense of this information. Manchester City has 11 of them. In 2012, Liverpool caused a stir by creating a new position, director of research, for Ian Graham, who has a PhD in theoretical physics. The analysts are involved in pre-match preparation and post-game debriefs; they help to identify transfer targets and devise strategies for nurturing young players through the ranks
Data isn’t everything. It is one tool among many. It gives you an edge and, since you could employ perhaps 30 statisticians for the £1.5m that the average player in the Premier League earns, it’s an edge teams can afford. . They believe that a football match can be translated into numbers and – much as a hedge-fund trader does with the stock market – those figures can be crunched and scanned for patterns.
Some in the industry now predict that the biggest innovations will come from poorer clubs, football’s equivalents of the Oakland A’s: Rich clubs such as Chelsea can succeed simply by buying great players. Analytics will help you win, but so will money
It is here where the betting industry and the football industry coincide. Successful long term football bettors like Tony Bloom and Matthew Benham own clubs and especially in the case of Brentford, analytics is informing player recruitment and contract negotiations.
Last season for example Mr Benham made it clear he wanted a more 'Moneyball' approach run through a director of football and Brentford issued a statement on the departure of their manager saying the club would introduce a new recruitment structure "using a mixture of traditional scouting and other tools including mathematical modelling". Benham is also the majority shareholder in Midtjylland a Danish club that won their Superliga in 2014-15. Chairman Rasmus Ankersen told Reuters in an interview,
"We do quite a few things differently but the two main things are the statistical analysis and the way we approach talent development,"
The new numbers-based regime was implemented when Benham bought a majority shareholding in Midtjylland in July 2014. The Danish club and Brentford, are run along similar lines and although Ankersen acknowledges the human element is important in terms of running the club, the stats are key.
"The data is not perfect but I think it's less imperfect than the human judgement. It's got to be a combination all the time," he added.
With a limited budget, analysis is particularly important when it comes to recruitment.
"We use the data to find undervalued players in undervalued markets and we also do a lot in terms of development”
Ankersen added that statistical analysis is used in almost every aspect of the team's preparations, from recruitment and training to what they do on the pitch and why.
"We have identified metrics that we know statistically work over time, it comes down to the number of dangerous situations we create and the number of dangerous situations we prevent the opponent from creating."
The relevant statistics are beginning to change from computational curiosities to player recruitment and then contract negotiation items much like WAR (Wins above replacement, a baseball statistic developed to sum up "a player's total contributions to their team") did after Moneyball.
Even in an era with ever bigger TV contracts allowing for ever more transfer market largesse, the ongoing transformation of the use of data within football clubs is a bigger factor than ever before in team composition and tactics and therefore strategy, and can inform our betting selections through the football leagues.
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The Road to Riches: Weekend 1st-2nd August
Coming Up this weekend
- Football The start of the domestic football season with the Community Sield between Chelsea and Arsenal and the first fixtures in the Scottish leagues.
- Racing, the final day of Glorious Goodwood the highlight of Saturday's racing with meetings also at Doncaster, Newmarket, Thirsk, Hamilton Park and Lingfield Park- Tennis, ATP events in Gstaad, Hamburg and Atlanta
- Golf, European Tour: Saltire Energy Paul Lawrie Matchplay in Aberdeen and USPGA Champions Tour: 3M Championship in Minnesota
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We are less than two months away from knowing who will be the next Labour party leader. The ballot closes on 10th September and the result is announced on 12th september.
For this election the electoral college used in 2010 was replaced by a pure one member one vote system. Candidates will be elected by members and registered and affiliated supporters, who will all receive a maximum of one vote and all votes will be weighted equally. Members of Labour-affiliated trade unions need to additionally register as Labour supporters in order to vote.
The vote, as in previous elections, will be held by the AV system. Until one candidate wins a majority the candidate with the fewest votes in each round is eliminated and his or her second preference votes distributed to other candidates.
The frontrunner in the Labour leadership race is Andy Burnham but the big story has been Jeremy Corbyn. Mr Corbyn, who initially struggled to find the 30 MP supporters required to feature on the ballot paper, is nearly odds-on favourite in a £1m+ matched market on Betfair having previously been as long as 100-1. He has been nominated by over 100 local Labour associations and has strong left-wing grass roots appeal and the backing of major unions including Unite and Unison.
Research by YouGov for The Times published ten days ago found that Corbyn led Burnham 43-26% on first preferences from the voter sample. Yvette Cooper was on 20% and Liz Kendall 11%.
In the YouGov sample, one-third have joined the leadership-electorate since this year’s general election; and 16% of respondents have signed up as members of affiliated trade unions or paid £3 to be registered as party supporters. These figures accord with media reports that Labour had 200,000 members before the election, and that the leadership-electorate is around 300,000, with 50,000 having joined as full members and a further 50,000 registered via the trade union or £3 route.
It is clear that the affiliated trade unionists who are being signed up for this election are helping Corbyn’s chances. among those who have the vote in the current contest because they have paid a £3 registration fee or signed up as a member of an affiliated trade union, Corbyn is well ahead, with 57% of first preferences and a 69-31% lead in the final round. What's more the voting register is open until 12th August.
Whilst it is not as clear cut as it was given the groundswell of anti-Blairite support for Corbyn from newer, younger and Union derived voters and the clear momentum the campaign has, the generally accepted view has been that if Corbyn can’t win a majority on the first count, he can’t win at all, because few who back Burnham, Yvette Cooper or Liz Kendall will give him their second preferences. Labour’s preferential voting system is an active handicap to his campaign, as he has a far smaller pool of second preferences to draw on than any other candidate. In nomination meetings, Corbyn gets a handful of second preferences, matching YouGov polling which shows only 20-25% of Burnham and Cooper supporters gave Corbyn their second vote; Kendall’s supporters seem overwhelmingly averse to Corbyn: he receives only 6% of her second preferences.
As long as Corbyn polls below 50% in the first round the issue of second preferences becomes vital in determining the final winner. Here Cooper scores well. She is a lot of people's second choice: Burnham supporters prefer her to Kendall, Kendall supporters prefer her to Burnham, and Corbyn’s supporters look to split evenly between Burnham and Cooper.
Cooper’s somewhat soporific campaign (the antithesis of Corbyn's conviction politics that is engaging the voting base so well, it seems) isn’t offending anyone and with the campaign having some weeks to run, we cannot be certain whether Burnham or Cooper will face Corbyn in the final round; and, if Corbyn’s and Burnham’s campaigns stumble, Cooper has a chance of eventual victory.
Taking prices on the exchange just as I publish this week's column we see the following
Corbyn 2.42
Burnham 3.05
Cooper 4.0
(Kendall 65)
The Burnham price has until recently been rock solid and firmly assumed that he will be in the run off in the final round and the Corbyn price has collapsed. Cooper's price was under-estimating her strengths in a second preference competition. Neil and I were gearing up to recommend a big bet until....
This week a new private poll leaked (caution required) once again showing Corbyn winning - but this time, Yvette Cooper, not Andy Burnham is the candidate who makes it to the final round. The Daily Mirror published the figures: Corbyn ahead with 42 per cent of the vote, Cooper in second with 22.6 per cent of the vote, Burnham in third with 20 per cent, and Liz Kendall in fourth with 14 per cent. Corbyn wins, but by a narrower margin than he does if Burnham makes it to the final round, 51-49 against 53-47 once second preferences are taken into account
For the first time Burnham's price began to lengthen as his position as favourite began to be questioned and the thought began to develop that Cooper might be the best candidate (from the centre of the party) to stop Corbyn. Cooper's price contracted from just under 4.8 to 3.4 and then back to the price recommended below.
Neil and I discussed the market and we were both agreed that the Cooper price still offers us something due to the AV characteristics of the election they are fighting, that hers is the price that is the value among the three realistic winners. The price is assuming Corbyn wins the first round and Burnham is the candidate who survives to face him in the final run-off. We'd agree that Corbyn looks like winning the first round, but consider Cooper just as likely as Burnham to win through to face him. It would then be very tight indeed.
Rumours and polling news are daily and the market is volatile. Would recommend patience on the recommended price, there will be chances around 4.0 or higher in the next fortnight
8 points Yvette Cooper next Labour leader at 4.0 on Betfair
This week a guest article. Danny Hart is a Betting Emporium subscriber, and wrote the following
Price sensitivity and how it may be affecting your win rate following tips.
When following tipsters, I feel that when facing inevitable price drops, people aren’t nearly as strict as they ought to be regarding price sensitivity. People in general develop their own “rule of thumb” for these kinds of situations, but I believe it’s a bit of a grey area that needs to be addressed.
Let’s take an example. A football tipster with a solid long term win rate of 5% (similar to Brodders) tips a team to win at 1.91 (10/11), but the line unfortunately has shortened to 1.8 (4/5) when we come to place our bet. I’d bet most of the time you would be putting this bet on anyway, or at least be betting it with a reduced stake. But should you be placing this bet at all? Let’s delve deeper.
To work this out mathematically, one would have to equate the tipsters’ specific ROI%, and run a simulation which shows the difference in our expected returns from the bet in both scenarios. Here can we calculate our new hypothetical ROI% for this particular bet, and then we automatically know if the bet is still +EV or not. In the instance of this particular example, running a hypothetical ROI% simulation (assuming a standard medium confidence 12 point bet), makes our expected ROI% drop from 5% to -1%! So not only does this bet hold far less value to us, it’s likely to be actually losing us money in the long run.
All this may sound a little complicated, but to make things easier I’ve derived the equation which holds for all scenarios, and made this into an easy-to-use tool openable in Excel. An additional feature I’ve added is a “bet confidence” variable which allows you to input the confidence of the bet. This has been done by using the base ROI% as a medium bet and adjusting accordingly. I’ve increased tipster ROI% by 50% for large bets and reduced by 50% for small bets, this obviously an estimate of sorts, but it adds extra scope to the tool which makes things a little more realistic.
Go ahead and have a play with the tool, it's applicable on all sports/markets and you may even be surprised at some of the figures it throws out. Just remember it is a "model" and in reality all models do have their draw-backs and accuracy issues. In this instance the least it can do is to help us understand the mathematics of price sensitivity, and hopefully plug any leaks we may have been letting slip by unnoticed.
Thanks very much for reading; The download link for the tool is
http://www.filedropper.com/adjustedroicalculator
(if you have any questions about what Danny has said, or even have suggestions/improvements feel free to drop Danny an email via support@bettingemporium.com. Joe will pass them on)
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Getting the best price available is very important for all those who take their betting seriously.
Please open an account with all those bookmakers on the page on this link that you do not already have an account with using the links provided.
Betting Emporium results
The detailed results page has been updated as have the spreadsheets with the detailed bets. They can be found by clicking RESULTS
£10 per point on every recommended bet since launch in Feb 2013 would be winning £11,148.88 (as at 21st July 2015)
All bets have an ROI +2.98% and Horse Racing has an ROI +9.43%
There is also a Frequently Asked Questions Section
The Road to Riches: Weekend 25th-26th July
Coming Up this weekend
- Formula One, the Hungarian Grand Prix at the Hungaroring
- Cycling, the final weekend of the 2015 Tour de France taking in stages 20, Alpe D'Huez on Saturday and 21 on Sunday to the Champs-Elysees
- Racing, Saturday meetings at Ascot (including the King George and Queen Elizabeth Damond stakes featuring the Derby and Eclipse winner Golden Horn), Newcastle, Newmarket, York, Lingfield Park and Salisbury
- Cricket, the final NatWest T20 Blast group games and the start of the Royal London One Day Cup
- Tennis, ATP Sweden, Croatia and Colombia Opens and WTA Istanbul Cup
- Golf, European Tour: Omega European Masters at Crans-sur-Sierre GC in Switzerland. USPGA Tour: RBC Canadian Open in Ontario and European Senior Tour: The Senior Open Championship at Sunningdale.
- Rugby Union, South Africa v New Zealand and Argentina v Australia in the Southern Hemisphere's Rugby Championship
Free Tip of the Week :
Saturday sees the start of the Royal London 50 over Cup, the third English domestic competition of the season. The eighteen counties are divided (random draw) into two groups of nine, and each team plays the other eight in their group once. The top four in each group go through to the knock-out stages and then through to the Lords final in September.
The English domestic schedule sees T20 games played weekly until the end of August with County Championship games ongoing throughout. The Royal London cup is played in a block starting on Saturday but there are still the final stages of the T20 and 5-6 County Championship games to come for each team. With each county operating within a salary cap, and games coming thick and fast, squads are stretched. What we have seen in the 50 over competition starting in the second half of the season in previous years is that teams in contention in the 4 day competition typically rest players, rotate to play fringe players and be less competitive as a result. This is very much the third of the domestic competitions. Winning a county Championship is a key prize, reaching T20 finals day another. Then comes the 50 over competition, a scheduling after-thought and third priority for many counties..
None of the last five winners of the one day cup (this season is the second as a 50 over competition, previously 40 overs) have finished in the top four of the County Championship. Two of the last five winners were in the second division. Last year's winners Durham did not make the T20 quarters, either.
Yet the market prices up an event off form in the longer form of the game and performances in prior seasons. Neither of which are particularly relevant. Yorkshire, Durham, Warwickshire and Middlesex are in contention in Division One of the County championship and Yorkshire look likely to defend their title despite many Egland call-ups. Yet they are installed as 7/1 favourites for the One-Day cup, a competition that they cannot prioritise.
In division two Lancashire and Surrey are attempting to be promoted, and Surrey in particular look too short as 10/1 third favourites.
Instead there are two unfashionable sides at big prices I like the look of who happen to be drawn in different groups in this competition. The market seems to have taken no notice of the upturn in fortunes at both counties as young talent has emerged and both are available at 25-1.
Kent are in the second division of the championship and in Bell-Drummond, Northeast, Billings and Blake have a lot of young big hitting batting talent. There is one downside though, which is that a lot of big totals are going to be compiled in this competition under the new regulations used in the World Cup earlier this year and Kent lack some bowling firepower, but its still a big price for an emerging one day team.
My other thought, Worcestershire are in division one and are a very versatile side. They are led by the best county batsman you've never heard of Daryl Mitchell, have hitters in Oliver and Whiteley augmented by New Zealand's Colin Munro, an under-rated county seam attack and Saeed Ajmal too. Whilst Ajmal is not quite threat he was before he had to remodel his action, he's still going to be a handful on dry pitches in August.
5 points each way each (1/2 odds, 1,2)
Kent to win the Royal London One Day Cup at 22-1 Sportingbet (20-1 generally)
Worcestershire to win the Royal London One Day Cup 25-1 Sportingbet, Coral, William Hill
Getting an Edge
In betting the margin between making a profit or not is variable depending on who you bet with and what price you take. Maximising your margin, taking best prices and finding edges is crucial to winning.
One way you can get that edge, and this is in an era where edges are reducing, is finding markets where you know more than the oddsmaker.Bookmakers are experienced and have vast data at their disposal, but they have their weaknesses. Niche markets are a great example. Bookmakers often offer minor leagues or novelty markets as a marketing ploy to boost acquisition. Not because they are experts in those areas. Of course at Betting Emporium our collective knowledge of some football leagues is much enhanced by Brodders. His track record strong suggests that his knowledge of some of the more specialist (to the UK audience) football markets gives him that edge.
In other sports, from cricket batsman and bowler markets, to tennis set and tie-break betting, to NFL first touchdown scorers to top players from a particular region or age group in golf majors just to give some examples, Betting Emporium writers frequently look at sub-markets for value and an edge especially when the efficiency of mainstream markets is high. Find that edge in these sub-makrets and in the long term, it can add to your returns.
When searching for edges, public knowledge will already be built into the odds. Twitter has opened up new opportunities here, speeding up the dissemination of information. However, it’s equally accelerated the time it takes information to become widely known. It has also increased the amount of rumour, speculation and noise. Identifying reliable Twitter feeds that announce team formations, weather, pitch conditions, injury news or club finances can be helpful. You have to be quick though, gone are the days where pricing inefficiencies on genuine transformational information persist for long enough to take your time.
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All Brodders bets since January 2014 are currently showing a ROI of +4.37% (1250 bets) (at 24th June 2015)
Betting £10 a point would be showing a profit of +£6650.30
May 2015 was Brodders' 3rd best month on record
May 2015 points bet 1468 profit 202.29 ROI +13.78%
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Bookmaker reviews and advice
Getting the best price available is very important for all those who take their betting seriously.
Please open an account with all those bookmakers on the page on this link that you do not already have an account with using the links provided.
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The detailed results page has been updated as have the spreadsheets with the detailed bets. They can be found by clicking RESULTS
£10 per point on every recommended bet since launch in Feb 2013 would be winning £11,733.10 (as at 24-06-15)
All bets have an ROI +3.22% and Horse Racing has an ROI +9.43%
There is also a Frequently Asked Questions Section
The Road to Riches: Weekend 18th-19th July
Coming Up this weekend
- Golf, the Open at St Andrews with the final two rounds over the Weekend. See Neil's coverage Free HERE
- Cricket, The second Ashes Test between England and Australia at Lords continues, concluding on Monday.
- Cycling, the third weekend of the 2015 Tour de France taking in stages 14 and 15 on Saturday and Sunday as the race heads from the Pyrenees towards the Alps with Team Sky leading the team classification and Chris Froome in the yellow jersey.
- Racing, Saturday meetings at Chester, Newbury, Newmarket, Ripon, Haydock Park and Lingfield Park on the flat and Cartmel and Market Rasen over the jumps
- Tennis, Davis Cup World Group Quarter Finals including: Great Britain v France at The Queens Club, London.
- Rugby Union, Australia v South Africa on Saturday in the Southern Hemisphere's Rugby Championship
Free Tip of the Week :
The Rugby Championship is the annual tournament played between the four major Southern Hemisphere rugby nations: New Zealand, Australia, South Africa and Argentina. It began today with New Zealand having played Argentina this morning and winning 39-18.
Compared to other years, this year's Championship, with each team playing each other once rather than twice at home and away, is truncated. It is designed to avoid too many hard-hitting encounters ahead of the World Cup in September and October.
Outright prices for the competition before the first game were as follows:
New Zealand 10/11
South Africa 9/4
Australia 5/1
Argentina 100/1
New Zealand, in this shorter tournament have to play both South Africa and Australia away, having played Argentina at home. The world number one ranked team and winners of this for the last three years, three New Zealand franchises made the playoffs of the Super 15 including both finalists and the team has a conveyor belt of talent reaping the benefits of an excellent rugby foundation from grassroots level up.
Even the two away fixtures from three shouldn't be enough to prevent them emerging with a perfect record.
Australia, now reduced to number six in the world, will at least not have to start their campaign with back-to-back tests against New Zealand, as they have in the last three years. Saturday's clash with the Springboks in Brisbane offers them more realistic hope of an opening victory, something they have not enjoyed since they won the final Tri-Nations championship ahead of the 2011 World Cup.
A tweak to the eligibility rules means new coach Michael Cheika has experienced backs Matt Giteau and Drew Mitchell of European champions Toulon back in the fold. Giteau is a hugely experienced and valuable utility player capable of starting in the No. 10 or No. 12 jersey, while Mitchell brings depth out wide.
South Africa coach Heyneke Meyer has a lengthy list of players unavailable to him through injury. No less than 450 caps feature in an injury / conditioning squad not available for this game
The last two Rugby Championships have seen New Zealand and South Africa claim the top two places by some distance, with the Springboks 10 points clear of the Wallabies in 2013, before ending up nine points clear in 2014. In the Autumn Internationals in the Northern Hemisphere Australia struggled particularly with their traditional recent failing, competitiveness in the front five forwards. Now in the run up to the world cup there is a new coach, the new eligibility rules and optimism is rising once again
It is certainly true that for this weekend's game they have some advantages
- A good record in Brisbane, including beating South Africa 7 out of the last 8 times there for what its worth (not a lot, South Africa won there 38-12 in 2013)
- the restoration of the Genia/Cooper half back partnership with Giteau outside should make the team a more potent attacking threat
- the South Africa injuries
but does it justify them being 8/13 favourites for this weekend and South Africa up to 6/4? I suspect it might not. I would expect the game to be very close. South Africa looked impressive playing with plenty of ambition in their warm up game, albeit only against a World XV, last weekend and are likely to be in the ascendancy up-front. They lack experience out wide but themselves have plenty of flair for hard ground rugby.
6 points South Africa to beat Australia at 2.58* Matchbook (would take 6/4 with sportingbet )
*pre-commission
The match is 11.05am Saturday morning, live on Sky Sports
Betting Expectations and Reality
If we thought that successful sports betting was all about going for the 'big score', then we're in the wrong game. It would be time to reassess expectations.
What successful sports betting is about is applying the fundamentals with repetition. Yes, it would be great if we could discover a betting system that would win 80% of our bets. This isn't the reality.
The reality is that the margins between success and failure are very small and which side of the margin you end up on depends on how you maintain your commitment to sound betting principles.
You will win some bets. You will lose some bets. You will have winning runs. And you will have losing runs. This will happen.
Nobody likes losing, but losing in this way is something that all successful sports bettors must learn to deal with. It is a fact of life for a long term sports bettor. The reality is that those who are successful in sports betting are so because they have earned hard fought experience. If you can't learn to lose, then the perils of inconsistent betting strategy await you.
You must be persistent. Yes, there will be setbacks. Yes, you will have frequent moments of doubt.
Like everything in life, success in sports betting is largely determined by hard work.You must be persistent. You can never stop learning, keeping an open mind
So, in a losing run, what to do?
“Never risk money you can't afford to lose” As everyone in the betting business knows, losing runs come without warning.The second golden rule is discipline. If you feel that the danger for another losing run is too high, just take a break until you regain your confidence. It doesn’t matter how long or short such a break lasts.
The better option of self-discipline is to see the bigger picture. Long-term is the crucial word in betting.
To sum up, money management, discipline, persistence, sensible expectations and remaining on an even keel are golden rules for successful betting in the long term.Losing runs included..
The Ashes
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Betting £10 a point would be showing a profit of +£6650.30
May 2015 was Brodders' 3rd best month on record
May 2015 points bet 1468 profit 202.29 ROI +13.78%
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Please open an account with all those bookmakers on the page on this link that you do not already have an account with using the links provided.
Betting Emporium results
The detailed results page has been updated as have the spreadsheets with the detailed bets. They can be found by clicking RESULTS
£10 per point on every recommended bet since launch in Feb 2013 would be winning £11,733.10 (as at 24-06-15)
All bets have an ROI +3.22% and Horse Racing has an ROI +9.43%
There is also a Frequently Asked Questions Section
The Road to Riches: Weekend 11th-12th July
Coming Up this weekend
- Tennis, The final weekend of Wimbledon. Serena Williams v Garbine Muguruza in the Womens Singles final on Saturday and Jamie Murray in the Mens doubles final
- Cricket, The conclusion of the first Ashes Test between England and Australia in Cardiff.
- Cycling, the second weekend of the 2015 Tour de France taking in stages 8 and 9. Stage 9 is the team time trial.
- Racing, Saturday meetings at Ascot, Chester, Newmarket, York, Salisbury and Hamilton
- Golf, in the run up to the Open at St Andrews, on the European Tour the Scottish Open at Gullane, East Lothian. On the USPGA Tour the John Deere Classic in Illinois.
Free Tip of the Week :
Ahead of Neil's coverage of the St Andrews Open championship next week, an early selection.
While big-priced outsiders have been winning regularly on the PGA Tour they are rare in recent major championships. The last four have gone to either the favourite, Rory McIlroy at the last Open and USPGA, or Jordan Spieth, who was second favourite at the US Open and among the leading four in the market before the Masters.
Opens played at St Andrews have been fruitful for leading plaers. Nicklaus in 1978, Ballesteros in 1984, Faldo in 1990 and Woods in 2000 and 2005 were all world number ones who won at St Andrews. Winner John Daly was an outsider due to erratic form, but did already have a major title. 2010 winner Louis Oosthuizen has since gone close in both the Masters and US Open.
As well as top ranked golfers winning at St Andrews the last four Opens held there produced three big-hitting winners in Oosthuizen, Woods and Daly.
Driveable par-fours on this old links course and long complicated putts will again be the staple of the Open. The fairways are so wide that the big-hitters enjoy an enormous advantage especially on the the par-fours while, on the longer holes, their power enables a conservative approach with irons to avoid the hazards and still reach the green with long second shots. Woods famously won in 2000 without finding a single bunker.
Big hitting well fancied golfers for St Andrews for the short-list then? That would certainly have included 2014 Open champion Rory McIlroy, but the news that he will miss the Open with ankle ligament damage meant a market shake up as he was 9/2 favourite prior to the injury.
In his likely absence clearly you have to take a long look at the new favourite, Jordan Spieth, available at the time of writing at 6/1. In fact he probably should have been favourite before, after winning both the Masters and US Open.
Looking at the importance of driving distance, that must point towards Dustin Johnson, whose unfortunate three-putt on the 72nd hole at Chambers Bay blew a chance to win his first major. Nevertheless, after personal bests in the Masters and US Open, finishing sixth and second, he is very close to a major title. Johnson could overpower the Old Course and is available at 14-1 if you think he has overcome his dramas in the US Open.
Nobody shot anything close to Louis Oosthuizen over the final three rounds at Chambers Bay. The St Andrews winner from 2010 has since proved he's a frontline major contender with near-misses in both the Masters and US Open. After opening with a disastrous 77 at the US Open he went round in 66-66-67 (His 199 total over the final 54 holes was the lowest in U.S. Open history), including birdies on six of his final seven holes, tying the lowest nine-hole score in U.S. Open history, and finishing a shot behind Spieth. This was Oosthuizen's fifth top ten finish of this season
He is available at 25-1 (Ladbrokes/Coral) to repeat at St Andrews which understandably perhaps places him behind the likes of Rose, Scott and Stenson in the market but is interesting for a player with both recent and course form. Not only the winner of the Open here but last October he finished tied 6th in the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship at St Andrews. Included in that result was a third-round 62 that included five front-nine and five back-nine birdies.
Of course the run up to the championship will see lots of bookmaker offers, and no doubt Neil will talk more about these and the value they might offer next week. Already Betfair Sportsbook are each-way EIGHT places (maximum bet £25 per player) and PaddyPower and Skybet are SEVEN places, with plenty of six place books around
I'm going to use the 25-1 price for the "official" selection in the column this week but I would take the 22-1 Betfair Sportsbook eight places first for Oosthuizen if you are eligible for the enhanced terms
3 points each way Louis Oosthuizen at 25-1 (1/4 1,2,3,4,5) with Ladbrokes or Corals
What is value?
One of the hardest things to explain to people with only a casual understanding of betting is the concept of value.
Understanding value is a key to long term betting success. It might seem like common sense to a seasoned betting veteran but to the inexperienced, it can be a difficult concept to adjust to. Learning to bet on teams that nobody thinks have a chance to win can be tough.
The following may help to develop an intuitive sense of value you can have confidence in.
You don't need to be a maths wizard to be successful betting value long-term. However an understanding of probability is necessary.. Betting odds represent the probability of a particular outcome and I often see on sicial media people talking about their bets in point-blank black and white terms. For example you read that a team has no chance of winning or that there is no way another team is going to lose. The fact is, as far as professional sport is concerned, every team has a chance of winning and every team has a chance of losing. Identifying value is understanding what chance that is.
Pricing
This is key to developing an intuitive sense for value. You're not composing the odds you would like to see the bookmakers post, you are composing odds that you would not feel comfortable taking yourself. Doing this gets your head thinking in terms of probabilities and by checking the results of your own prices, it allows you to pit yourself against the bookmakers.
The Market
The pull and sway of general opinion is going to set the odds. Making this a habitual way of thinking is not only hard to do, but can at times reduce the sport you love so much,to a matter of mere economics.
You might perhaps watch a football match and wonder about how the outcome may impact next week's odds or how the overwhelming number of casual punters might back a side in for an upcoming match based on what they have seen in this match. Will that offer value in the opposite direction? Will the market over-react?
Review and analyse
Much of the work in developing a mindset for value is in reviewing how your previous assessments have performed. Where did you get it right? Where did you get it wrong? When you start out pricing up matches, you're prone to exhibit pre-conceived biases. Some may be accurate. Many will not.
The Ashes
Coverage of the 2015 Ashes series between England and Australia, FREE to read for registered users HERE
Sign up to Brodders' tips:
All Brodders bets since January 2014 are currently showing a ROI of +4.37% (1250 bets) (at 24th June 2015)
Betting £10 a point would be showing a profit of +£6650.30
May 2015 was Brodders' 3rd best month on record
May 2015 points bet 1468 profit 202.29 ROI +13.78%
Subscription to Brodders' write ups, analysis and bets is £50 a month. You can join at any time
Subscribe here
Bookmaker reviews and advice
Getting the best price available is very important for all those who take their betting seriously.
Please open an account with all those bookmakers on the page on this link that you do not already have an account with using the links provided.
Betting Emporium results
The detailed results page has been updated as have the spreadsheets with the detailed bets. They can be found by clicking RESULTS
£10 per point on every recommended bet since launch in Feb 2013 would be winning £11,733.10 (as at 24-06-15)
All bets have an ROI +3.22% and Horse Racing has an ROI +9.43%
There is also a Frequently Asked Questions Section
