They say that the proof of the pudding is always in the eating.
Here is how a straightforward backing system made up of a portfolio of nine leagues from our Summer League HDAFU tables made over £10,000 in 178 match days from £100 level stakes during 2016.
2016 Campaign Odds RangeFREE Download!
2016 Summer League Campaign Workbook:
Full details of the 2016 Summer League portfolio are included in a dedicated Excel workbook, which you can download here for free. This workbook details every bet placed in all nine leagues, together with a chronological summary, the winning and losing streaks, and the parameters of each system employed.
It’s a must-have simply as a monitoring sheet template, and you will need it to understand much of what we talk about below.
Click on the following link to receive your free download via email:
Just click on the button above and then on “Continue Checkout” in the pop-up box. Enter your name and e-mail address and our store will then deliver the file to you via e-mail, free of charge. The size of the Excel file is 278KB. (Warning: Please do not apply these systems to future seasons – the parameters will certainly have changed, with each league requiring a complete re-analysis).
Note: When downloading this spreadsheet you will also receive a coupon code offering a discount of £5.00 GBP, redeemable against the purchase of any individual HDAFU Table. This allows you the opportunity to experiment and explore your first HDAFU Table without paying the full price for it and before you commit to buying more. Test drive and formulate strategies for any current season ‘on the cheap’!
Overview of the Monitoring Workbook
Summary Tab
Here you will see the 15 separate systems derived from the HDAFU tables that were pooled together as a single campaign; a well-balanced mixture of backing home wins and favourites (six systems: low risk/low return) and away wins and underdogs (nine systems: higher risk/higher return).
At the time of analysis, although there were viable systems for the draw apparent, other systems took preference. (However, several draw systems were employed in the subsequent Winter League portfolio).
You will also see that in certain leagues, we different systems were run in the first and second halves of their seasons. In other leagues, the system chosen was a better fit for the whole of the season (U.S.A., Finland and Japan).
Analysing the HDAFU tables is now a much faster exercise than ever before despite the fact that each league now comes with three separate workbooks: one to demonstrate the five full seasons approach; one limited to games in the first half of each season; one limited to games in the second half of each season.
As frequently happens, there is more than one opportunity to analyse in each of the three workbooks, but only the most promising system per league is considered for inclusion, or two if the league is split into half seasons. Read more about this approach here.
Running more than one system per league in the same market (in this case, the 1×2 market) causes confusion with conflicting betting decisions. It also means relying on something that is not the most promising in that league to help support the portfolio as a whole. With portfolio betting it is essential to field the strongest team from the start without involving any also-rans.
To mix the best performing systems with lesser ones would be like mixing apples with pears. The sweet tasting apple pie we hoped to bake would be contaminated. Always better to compare and match apples with apples.
On the whole, the time taken to analyse and then decide upon which system to support was no more than a couple of hours per league, sometimes a little more, sometimes less.
For the nine leagues represented, less than 20 hours was spent coming up with the 15 systems.
(1) Expectations Prior to 2016 Season
In columns F-P, you will see a complete breakdown of the figures the 15 systems forecasted for the 2016 season in each league.
You will also see a box entitled Possible Yield Range (Row 30). The Average Yield and Lowest Yield expected are highlighted: between 23.86% and 1.58%. This is the more realistic threshold the final result was expected to occupy.
The Highest Yield expected of 46.05% is an arbitrary figure. It is virtually impossible to achieve for the following reasons:
- It represents a cherry-picking exercise because the 46.05% figure is a synthesis of each league’s single highest profit season from the five analysed. Which season is the ‘best’ is also unlikely to be the same one in different leagues. For example, it might be the 2015 season in Japan and 2016 in Sweden.
Although there is a tiny possibility that all nine of our leagues simultaneously experience their best season in the last six in the bet types we are targeting, the statistical chance is negligible.
- The HDAFU tables are based on highest market odds at the close of the ante post market and it is extremely unlikely that you will obtain the highest odds available with every bet you place. The more realistic expectation is therefore always going to be less than the Highest Yield forecast.
- Some of the 15 systems were bound to fail although guessing which ones would was impossible to answer. This was known before the campaign began. There are several reasons for this:
- Systems were chosen which showed a historical profit in at least four of the five seasons analysed. Even with a system based on five seasons’ profit, there would still be chance of it failing in the sixth season.
- The league may experience a lower than average hit-rate in the new season. In fact, the coming season may be an anomalous one altogether. For example, it records the worst hit-rate for home wins in the last 10 seasons. Without the need for a complicated mathematical calculation it can be said right away that there is a basic one in 10 chance of this occurring, and 10% is 10%, not zero.
The more leagues and systems used, the more times this chance is faced and 10-year record highs and lows have to be set sometime. Of course, if we narrow things down and say that the league records its worst set of home wins in the next season (the sixth: the one after our five seasons’ analysis), the chance of the new season being the worst of the last six is a basic one in six (16.67%).
Likewise, for a bet type to record its best results for 10 seasons, the chance is again 10%, and 16.67% in the last six seasons.
Of course, the reality of the overall performance is likely to be somewhere in the middle (a standard distribution bell curve). Not all systems will fail and not all will over-achieve but by picking the sweet spots in the historical results, the chances of overall success are enhanced.
- Bookmaker odds across the board may be slightly lower than usual in response to repeating trends in the match results. There are definitely some seasons where the odds setting for a particular bet type is markedly different from previous seasons. It’s not often, but it does happen. This may not influence whether a profit is made, but it will affect the size of it.
(2) Results of 2016 Season
The forecasts and the results achieved were very close.
The average forecast suggested a scenario of 849 bets with a hit-rate of 44.99%. The total eventually recorded was 825 bets (without missing a single betting opportunity) at a hit-rate of 43.52%.
But even with these fractional shortfalls, a yield of 12.17% (cell V28) equated to a profit of £10,038, with all four bet types in profit – The higher risk/higher return away wins were the star performers with a profit of £7,097 (cell Y25).
A yield of more than 12% is an excellent return. Anything over 5-6% is good. There are no savings plans that we are aware of that deliver such a large return in such a short space of time.
And if you need reminding, the money in betting is not in perennially backing home wins and favourites.
Only four of the 15 systems achieved yields in excess of their average expectations (V column cells filled in green). Three of these (plus another two) achieved hit-rates in excess of the five season average (T column cells filled in green).
Overall, it was not an exceptional performance (it didn’t need to be), but it was a carefully planned one. It flew the mission, hit the objective and came back in one piece. The system avoided the bookmakers’ radars with a relatively small stake of £100 per bet. (Limited by the size of our initial bankroll).
A 10k return and a bankroll which was luckily in profit from bet number 1 (and remained so until the end – see Chrono tab), was immensely satisfying, and when all was totted-up the earnings came to around £70 tax-free per hour of time invested in the project. Everything will be quicker and slicker next time…
Aftermath – Why did Some Systems Fail?
Going back and trying to figure out why things went wrong is an integral part of any betting system. It helps allay fears that perhaps you did something wrong – if you did, hopefully you’ll find the error. It’s not about creating excuses for failure; it’s more about peace of mind and learning lessons for the future. Life is all about continuing to learn.
Getting the calculations correct when formulating the systems is fundamental. If theories are based on misleading information to begin with, you are sunk before you start betting.
Here is the post-mortem:
Brazil – Série A
It was a strange season in Brazil.
The crowd plays a hugely important role in football matches. We’ve all heard of ‘partisan atmospheres’, especially during local derbies.
Following the undoubted rise in popularity in the game caused by hosting the World Cup in 2014, average attendances rose to a six year high of 17,160 per match in 2015 and then instantly fell by almost 10% to 15,809 in 2016. Increasing crowd violence and rising admission prices were held to blame.
It is difficult to say how much of an influence the crowd effect has on a season, but it was certainly an anomaly in 2016.
On top of this, results were also skew-whiff. The 2016 season saw 53.30% home wins. During 2011-13, this figure was around 48%; 2014 = 51.84%; 2015 = 52.63%. The differences between these figures do not seem great, but in 2016 there were 202 home wins, almost 20 more than in any of the seasons 2011-13.
Whilst the first half season system based on home wins brought a profit, the home win anomaly detrimentally affected the underdog system in the second half of the season. The away win percentage (mostly underdogs) only hit 21.9% in the second half of the season, a six season low.
However, the fact remains that the second half season underdog system was only one win away from turning a profit. If any one of the 21 lost bets had come in, there would have been profits across the board in Brazil.
Instead, it was just a case of bad luck. The majority of expected home wins were in the second half of the season, when the preference was for the other way around.
Norway – Tippeligaen
The second half of the season was miserable. It was tempting to pull the plug on this system at one stage, especially when it became obvious that this system would fail.
But, the point of all of these systems is to hold firm and play them through to the end. Compare what happened in Norway with the last round of games in Japan where all five bets won. This is another example of synergy – the Norway losses were recovered elsewhere in the grand scheme of things.
Norway recorded its lowest home win rate for six seasons and by more than 2%. This equates to six wins short of the lowest total in any of the previous five seasons, which in a 240 game season, is a big deviation.
In the first half of the season, the incidence of home wins was 50.51%, with only 26.26% away wins. In the second half, when home wins were targeted, the rate dropped to a miserly 41.13%, whilst away wins were 31.21%. Like Brazil’s two systems, Norway’s results were precisely the wrong way around again.
Norway was certainly anomalous as it produced the lowest home win rate in 2016 of any season since 2004. That 10% chance mentioned earlier came in here.
You’ll see from the HDAFU tables (if you buy them!) that the Norwegian mid-season break (like Sweden) is around a third of the way into each season. The fact is that the season halves are disproportionate. Most of our bets were in the larger second half programme.
Perhaps in future it will be a better idea to use a whole season analysis (i.e. dispense with the split season approach) in all leagues where the season halves are disproportionate.
Singapore – S-League
This was a lesson in gut-feeling. This system was taken on board largely due to previous successes in this league.
The 2015 S-League had turned-in a yield of 37% and profits of £4,659. It was almost in homage to this result that underdogs were chosen again in both halves of the 2016 season.
The league format in Singapore has changed dramatically recently. 2015 saw only 9 teams take part in the league, which was repeated in 2016. There were 13 teams in 2013.
The statistics used to formulate the systems here were therefore disparate. In splitting the league into halves for the first time, a mixture of apples and pears was unwittingly analysed.
The tiny loss incurred across the board was therefore a matter of luck. Okay, it was only 26 bets in total during 2016, but a small negative result wasted time that could easily have been avoided. Greed probably got in the way of the decision-making process as did the feel-good factor of winning well in previous seasons.
2017 will probably see a return to the whole season approach in this league too.
Next Page: Other Workbook Tabs and Conclusion
Hi Right Winger,
If you place bets always within the last hour before kick-off, your night sleep must get interrupted multiple times when you bet on MLS, Brazil, Japan, especially MLS! Whole round of matches can be kicking off all night long, every 1 or 2 hours over there. And when the next day breaks it’s time for Europe, no time to sleep normally again, weekends must be crazy for you. No normal sleep for 48 hours on weekends, is it really true for you? Yes, you can still assist each other with Soccerwidow, but still… omg.
And in this article you say:
“Days of the week or months of the year – We have never had any need to feel superstitious. It really doesn’t matter which days you bet on. The key is to bet on every match which fulfils the requirements of each system without missing any (which is an achievement in itself).”
You still decided to be superstitious for the best fruits. Is it ok to bet earlier than 1 hour before kick-off, did you try to run any analysis what happens when you bet earlier than 1 hour before kick-off? At the time of the match day let’s say. Usulally 6-8 hours before kick off. Not everyone has somebody to share this activity to do with.
Hi Jo,
Okay, I think you need a little more background information to put your mind at rest.
Firstly, there are two of us involved with the betting side of Soccerwidow. I am the night owl and Soccerwidow is the early bird.
I have to admit that we’ve never had any problems covering the kick-off times together, although Japan did cause a few headaches in 2016.
Secondly, many of the prices for games within our inflection points are deep in the middle of those parameters. It won’t matter what team news or other factors sway these odds – they will always be within our parameters.
If the times of some of our matches are inconvenient, and the odds are in the middle of our inflection points, we always have the option of placing the bets when more convenient to us. If the odds of the inconvenient games are above our filtered zero odds then they can probably be placed immediately. We did this with no more than a handful of bets last year and we are still figuring out whether it is something we can employ on a wider scale.
Until we reach a conclusion here (probably at the end of the 2016-17 Winter Leagues), then I will still advise people to follow what we did, rather than modifying it based on an unproven idea.
Thirdly, I am physically disabled. I have a problem with my mobility and don’t get out much, which is why the time of day is not so important to me as it might be to you.
I can’t claim benefits from the state, and therefore the Soccerwidow website plus our betting activities is the only source of income we have. On top of this, Soccerwidow herself suffered a serious head injury in 2013, so you could say that together we make one good, whole person – but neither of us is 100%. If we didn’t put ourselves out and make the sacrifices we need to make in order to stay above water then I don’t know where we would be. Desperation has a funny habit of forcing you to succeed sometimes.
Therefore, yes, I believe it was a real achievement last year and an experience that we learned an awful amount from. The Winter League 2016-17 campaign is much slicker as a result of practising with a smaller portfolio. We only had a small bankroll to begin with and the decision to risk what little money we had was not taken lightly.
Jo, I’m again not sure what you mean when you say “You still decided to be superstitious for the best fruits”?
All I can say is that we are not superstitious at all. We work with hard facts and numbers only. And we work very, very hard. No-one should say gambling is easy. It isn’t at all. It’s something that requires a huge amount of knowledge like any profession, and my personal experience in the field of risk management is now just a month shy of 30 whole years.
But I’m not bullish enough to say I know it all. I never will. All I can do is continue to learn, and with a 23-year career in high-end corporate insurance behind me, I am a very risk averse person.
Thanks again for your points. I hope I’ve answered them adequately enough.
Hi Right Winger,
thank you for your long answer. I’m sorry for your disability, I had the “chance” to feel this myself once and hopefully the last time in my life.
Saying superstitious I meant the time when you place your bets. In your reply to Daniele it’s clear you’re quite strict about it. And in the article you wrote “It really doesn’t matter which days you bet on.” So, i wanted more clarification about it. I do this on paper for more than a year now and I feel how hard and time consuming it is. And I didn’t feel all of it yet. And you even manage to run this site, publish new articles, it’s incredible.
Since we talk about bets placement time, maybe I can ask would it be wise to use some betting bots or trading software of betting exchanges at times when you simply can’t place bets on your own? It probably won’t be the best odds compared with bookmakers, but maybe better than nothing? There might be many reasons why you can’t bet for days and they happen from time to time. To be taken out for I don’t know how long from this activity can cause more or less damage to your betting results. Is it viable to have automation ready to go when needed or better leave it and continue once you can do it on your own again?
No problem Jo.
Thanks for the clarification. I see what has confused you now. When I said “It really doesn’t matter which days you bet on”, it was in reference to the 2016 Campaign Excel workbook (the free download in this article), where, in the Chrono tab you can see it doesn’t matter which days of the week the bets fall on.
Some people will remember the (in)famous Maria’s Laying System, which was news around 10 years ago now. It was apparently a hugely successful horse racing lay-betting system (on paper), and ran as a blog thread showcasing Maria turning a modest starting bankroll into £100k in less than a year.
He or she (it was never clear whether Maria was a real person or a female avatar of the male blog owner), constantly pointed out that bets on a Saturday were always avoided because they tended to create a hole in the profits.
Personally speaking, I have investigated that system in full and found it was full of flaws. I didn’t agree at the time about Maria’s “Saturday superstition”.
Anyway, I digress. Yes, we use exchanges occasionally and leave prices as long as we can to get matched. The only bots I am aware of are tuned into Betfair (Market Feeder, Bet Angel, etc.), and with Betfair’s huge commission rate of 5%, it is even harder to find best price than it is with the bookmakers.
We prefer bookmakers as it is a cleaner process (no calculations required to establish the net of commission odds), and with fewer fears of getting a bet only partially matched.
I understand your concerns with a situation arising that takes you away for a period of time from continuing the portfolio. I would fill-in the monitoring spreadsheet with the absent bets and see what state each system was in before making the decision whether or not to continue.
It really depends on the size of your portfolio and the length of the gap. A larger portfolio should withstand a larger gap but I’m afraid I do not have any exact numbers or parameters to back-up this comment.
We use Soccerstand.com (owned by the Oddsportal family of comapnies) to act as our diary of events, so that we know in advance exactly when the games are coming up. There, you can select the leagues you are interested in and manage just the games you are looking at in a dedicated window.
We therefore have a safety net of a few days to sort out relief if we know in advance that something is coming up where we won’t be able to attend to the portfolio, but this hasn’t happened to us yet.
Thanks again for your questions, which I am sure help others to understand a complicated situation much better.
Hi, one question. You’ve based your portfolio on odds clusters only. Was that on purpose to begin with or weren’t there any viable strategies in betting on teams and/or ratios?
Hi Shomen,
Personally speaking, we have certainly moved away from betting on individual teams, although this analysis is still included in the current format of the HDAFU tables.
Ratios are still viable, but trying to convey the message to the wider audience is difficult. With odds clusters, it is far easier to understand and explain.
If the concept of odds clusters is something that we enable our readers to grasp, then I am sure they will also be able to extend their thinking to odds ratios or any other method of clustering results to identify where the areas of perennial profits are.
Thanks for your question.
Hi right winger, wouldn’t say you took a gamble with The Japan pick? 3 out of 5 seasons were either meager or negative, which might have caused a bumpy ride. In the end 20% of your profits came from this ‘gamble’.
Not quite sure what you mean there, Shomen.
After filtering the data, Japan was in profit in all five previous seasons – perhaps check the 2016 Campaign spreadsheet again.
This was one of our ‘perfect’ systems built on five consecutive profitable seasons. No gamble there.
Away wins has been a target for us in Japan for 2-3 seasons now.
Hi Right Winger!
You said you use the highest closed odds. Its Ok, but my question is: Which bookmakers’ odds? Because on the page Oddsportal there are many soft and small bookmakers for example 1xbet, Marathonbet, Tempobet etc.. who give the highest odds on the market. Why?
Because the are very slow and they can not follow quickly the oddsmoving.
Also I would like to know, from which bookmakers odds do you choose when you make the HDAFU tables?
Thank you!
Hi Attila,
Thanks for your comment.
Yes, we use Oddsportal odds but we are also aware of the technical glitches they have.
Indeed, all sites using API’s to record odds at specific times have problems.
Certain bookmakers on Oddsportal do not update properly. This can create a situation where a firm’s opening odds never update and end up appearing as their closing odds too. They then stick out like a sore thumb in comparison to the closing odds of others around them.
Because of this, Oddsportal highest odds at close of the ante post market need to be checked for accuracy. When recording them we use over-round calculations as an indicator of anything that needs to be double-checked.
Getting accurate odds representative of any one moment in time during the ante post market is the biggest challenge for anyone when compiling data for analysis.
We have no choice but to use Oddsportal’s compulsory set of 20 bookmakers or so, added to which, are another 10 of the larger, more reliable firms. Our personal portfolio is therefore around 30 bookmakers.
Many of the problems are caused by Oddsportal’s compulsory list. Problem bookmakers here include Tempobet, Marathonbet, Titanbet, Boylesports, William Hill, to name but a few.
Contrary to your point about odds moving slowly, I would disagree as no bookmaker wishes to remain with the highest odds on any outcome for any great length of time. They need to keep their books balanced and will dip in and out of the market according to the weight of money they receive from the punters.
If any one bookmaker were to offer best price some way ahead of its rivals, then it would see a lot of money placed on that outcome as punters shop for the highest price. Receiving a flood of money on one outcome leads to more difficulty balancing the other outcomes.
Low margin bookmakers (e.g. Pinnacle, Marathonbet) rarely offer best price on the favourites – more usual practice is bigger prices on the more unlikely outcomes.
It is always educational to watch a site like Pinnacle and see how often their prices move – sometimes several times a minute on the more popular games. Compare this with betting exchanges where prices also fluctuate from minute to minute. Of course, betting exchange prices are influenced and led by the bookmaker prices – if this was not the case, we would all be rich, successful and professional arbitrageurs!
Thank you
Just wondering what would happen next season in terms of updates, do you provide instructions on how to update the tables or would I be required to buy new updated tables?
Hi Jamie,
Updating the tables each season is a major task. You also need reliable historical odds representative of a certain period in time in order to use the tables most effectively.
We also upgrade the tables each season with improvements or extra features.
We are therefore sorry that we cannot provide a user manual for people to upgrade the tables themselves. Besides, in terms of the the time it would take to perform such an exercise, it is probably cheaper for our customers to buy the newest versions.
The updated Winter League tables will be available in late May, early June, when the 2016-17 seasons have ended.
Hi Right winger,
I encountered one problem with Marathonbet a few times and will probably have it in the future. The problem is: I check odds in the Oddsportal on the outcomes having potential to bet on, 1 hour before kick off time odds are quite above my top (or below) inflection point I have to bet on across all bookmakers Oddsportal provides. But less than an hour before kick off time odds dropped significantly across all bookmakers except Marathonbet. Odds provided by all remaining bookmakers dropped within my inflection points with an exception of Marathonbet (and sometimes 1xbet is also slow to follow the market). They lower their odds just 0.2 or so during the last hour, while others move their odds down 0.5-0.6 or so. And if odds at Marathonbet are 4.3 and the rest of the bookmakers have 3.8-3.9. I would say Marathonbet is quite off line and what confuses me the most, these odds are available in their site to bet on, so it’s not Oddsportal fault. If my inflection points are between 3-4 should I care about Marahonbet odds or remaining bookmaker odds considering are the odds within my inflection points or not?
Hello Jo,
Marathonbet and 1x2bet seem to be so similar in their odds setting that it is difficult to see that they are not connected in some way. There must be some common denominator connecting both bookmakers (apart from the fact they are both Russian).
My advice regarding the fluctuations in prices between these two and the rest of the market is to trust the majority as your guide. If the indication of the majority is within your inflection points, but you can get a higher price with Marathonbet or 1x2bet, then place the bet at best price with either of these two.
But be careful, we have experienced situations where, although the prices on their sites are indeed well above the crowd, stakes are sometimes limited.
This is just a method of attracting ‘quick’ money to help them balance their books, which is essential practise for low margin bookmakers of this nature.
I am preparing a paper on odds movements throughout the ante post market, which should be available later this year. It will be a vital addition to your knowledge.