Our 7th generation of HDAFU tables introduces the HO/AO quotient as a selection criterion which has the effect of making your systems less volatile and your portfolio of systems more viable.
Furthermore, the HO/AO Quotient removes the need to stay in front of the computer in the last hour before kick-off and allows you to compile your portfolio of bets well in advance, hence reducing the stress factor and possible human error.
Image: StockLite (Shutterstock)What is a HO/AO Quotient?
The division of HO (Home Odds) by AO (AO Odds) reflects the “strength” of the teams. This makes upcoming games comparable with past matches, of which the results are known.
When building the quotient, we’re not asking ourselves questions like “Are these teams really equal?” or, “Is the favourite priced correctly?” We do not recalculate 1X2 odds; we simply use market prices and assume that the bookmakers have taken statistics into account and reflected public opinion (market pressures) as well as they possibly could do when setting their odds.
The HO/AO quotient is therefore an ideal device for comparing an upcoming match with the nearest batch of equivalent games against teams of a similar perceived strength to the opponent under analysis.
If for example, Liverpool are 1.34 to beat West Ham and West Ham are 11.0 to beat Liverpool, it makes sense to look at comparable matches where other teams carried similar prices in their respective home and away games in the past.
How to Calculate the HO/AO Quotient
As an example we will use the match Arsenal against Liverpool on 22/12/2017.
The evening before the match, the home win (Arsenal) was priced at 2.60, and the away win (Liverpool) at 2.95.
For the HO/AO quotient you simply divide the home odds (HO) by the away odds (AO).
2.60 divided by 2.95 = 0.881
That’s it!
Of course, if you would use the odds at kick-off then your quotient will be different, the home win (Arsenal) was then priced at 2.68, and the away win (Chelsea) at 2.95.
2.68 divided by 2.95 = 0.908
We will have closer look at these difference in the course of this article and explore if they actually matter and how much they matter.
What does the HO/AO Quotient Tell Us About the Comparative Strength of Teams?
When looking at the 2013-18 EPL HDAFU table, the following classifications become apparent when dividing games into ‘perceived strength’:
- HO/AO: up to 0.225
The home team is the clear favourite with a very good chance of winning (the home team is the overwhelming favourite)
For example, Liverpool vs. Brighton on the 13/5/2018 - HO/AO: 0.226 to 0.499
The home team is definitely stronger than the away team, but there is also a good chance of a draw in the game (fluctuating opinion between home or draw)
For example, Swansea vs. Stoke on the 13/5/2018 - HO/AO: 0.500 to 0.788
It is not really clear in which direction the game will develop (no overwhelming favourite)
For example, West Ham vs. Everton on the 13/5/2018 - HO/AO: 0.789 to 1.751
The chance of a draw is quite high as both teams are perceived to be of equal strength (no overwhelming favourite)
For example, Stoke vs. Crystal Palace on the 05/05/2018 - HO/AO: over 1.752
The home team is perceived as being much weaker than the away team; the public feels that it could be an away win (the perceived favourite is the away team)
For example, Southampton vs. Man City on the 13/5/2018
If you are in the possession of the 2013-18 EPL HDAFU table then go to the data tab and check a few matches and their HO/AO quotients and see if you agree with the games being in the above classifications.
Alternatively, calculate the HO/AO quotients using before kick-off odds that you can retrieve from any odds comparison site.
Now, continue with the exercise and check against the actual distribution of results. You will quickly see that they hardly distribute according to the expectations (HO/AO clusters). That’s what makes 1X2 betting so very tricky and the HO/AO quotient so handy.
Finding a System Using the HO/AO Quotient
We now come to the practical part of this article. If you have not yet downloaded our HDAFU Show Table, then you can do it now here; all the following examples are being carried out using this show table.
It is a fully functional table and its only limitation is that it is an expired table and cannot be used for the forthcoming season. Of course, it can be used for backtesting its functionality against the previous season (2017-18).
The size of this Excel .XLSX workbook is 4.2 MB
(1) Find an HO/AO Cluster in the ‘IP’s by HOAO’ tab in which the Curve Goes Steadily Upwards
Image 1: P/L Simulation of ‘Backing the Draw’ in the first halfAbove screenshot shows you ‘Backing the Draw’ in the first half.
It is a nice, steady upwards curve and stretched over almost a third of the whole graph. This is why we are going to look at this HO/AO cluster for this article.
(2) Check in the ‘System Picker’ tab what to Expect
Image 2: System Picker example- The expected number of matches to bet on the following season: 53
To diversify your portfolio, you are looking ideally for at least 500 bets in one season but you certainly want to avoid having too many small individual systems in your portfolio. Just remember, the more restrictive your selection criteria the higher the risk of deviation from the expectations.
50 bets in an individual system is a very good number (that means that you only have to identify 10 different systems to populate a portfolio with 500 bets in total), and even better if it has been achieved over all five previous seasons.
- The expected hit rate: 39.62%
Please keep in mind that the lower the hit rate the more volatile a system is to longer losing streaks. Here’s an article on that topic: The Science of Calculating Winning and Losing Streaks
If your system has a probability of 40% to win then the maximum length of a losing streak may be as long as 8 bets in a row.
Keep that in mind and try to avoid too many low hit rate systems in your portfolio.
As a side note, you will be expecting with this system a hit rate of 39.62%. However, it is very unlikely that it will be absolutely spot on. Compared with the hit rates of the previous five seasons the average fluctuation (deviation) expected is 2.55% but it may be even as high as the maximum deviation which in this case was 5.48%.
This is a risk measurement and I will address and explain the calculations and their interpretations in another article about ‘How to Construct a Portfolio’.
- The Zero Odds: 2.49
This is actually the most important figure when using the HDAFU Tables to determine if you take the system in your portfolio of bets or not.
Taking the expected deviation (2.55%) into account you are looking at ‘Zero’ odds between 2.34 and 2.65; even taking the max. deviation (5.48%) into account, the ‘Zero’ odds are still as low as 2.88.
In this example, everything above the ‘Zero’ odds of 2.49 was a value bet! If you would have aimed constantly for odds above 2.88, you would have been playing on the absolutely safe side.
As you are looking at a system with average odds of 3.44 (the figure below the ‘Zero odds’ in the above screenshot) the timing of your bet would hardly have mattered. Even if you don’t always have access to the highest odds in the market, e.g. because of territorial restrictions, then it would have been safe to include this system in your portfolio because of the likelihood of achieving draw odds above 2.49 (or even 2.88) ‘Zero’ odds.
Again, as previously mentioned, the calculations and their interpretations will be addressed in detail in another article.
(3) Decide if to Include the System in your Portfolio
Our example above was definitely a system worthy of inclusion in the 2017-18 portfolio. It had everything you would be looking for:
- 50 bets minimum per annum
- an acceptable hit rate and
- delightfully low ‘Zero’ odds for the draw
Feel free to check yourself how this system would have performed for you during the 2017-18 season.
Here’s the answer: In the end 55 bets were played, of which 21 won (38.18% hit rate) with a profit of over 1,500 units using 100 unit flat stakes.
Why does the HO/AO Quotient Make an Analysis Less Volatile?
Here’s a close up screenshot from the Inflection Point graph above (image 1) and the odds seem to be disorganised and unordered:
Image 3: Inflection Point graph – corresponding draw odds
The HO/AO Quotient is a device for grouping matches into ‘comparable strengths’ of the teams involved (home odds divided by away odds), with the draw variable removed.
If you would be picking your system by odds then draw odds up to 3.54 could be draws odds for all kind of matches; matches between a strong favourite at home, equally matched teams, or the favourite being the away team, and so on.
With the HO/AO Quotient in our example: 0.603 to 1.396 we are only targeting teams in group 3 ≫ It is not really clear in which direction the game will develop (no overwhelming favourite) and group 4 ≫ The chance of a draw is quite high as both teams are perceived to be of equal strength (no overwhelming favourite)
For example, if there is a strong favourite involved in the game then the HO/AO Quotient approach filters these games out, even if the draw odds may be lower than 3.54.
Using the HO/AO Quotient slims down the number of available bets to an average of 53 bets with an expected hit rate of 39.62%. The expected profit is: 2,046.60 units per annum when staking 100 units flat.
Would you have used the ‘IP’s by Odds’ instead you would have likely chosen the odds cluster from 3.30 to 3.65. This would have provided you with a higher number bets per annum (87) but with only a 33.33% expected hit rate and a lower profit expectation of 1,322.40 units. Furthermore, the system would have been more volatile: an expected deviation of 2.78% (as compared with 2.55%) with a maximum deviation of 6.66% (as compared with 5.48%).
By slimming down the number of bet candidates and targeting bet selection via the HO/AO quotient taking the strength of the teams into account, the system becomes less volatile.
Draw systems especially benefit from the HO/AO Quotient, but others as well.
At What Time Should the HO/AO Quotient be Calculated and Which Odds should be Used
All Summer and Winter League HDAFU Tables use 1X2 odds recorded at or close to the end of the ante-post market. In other words, just prior to kick-off in all games. In the majority of cases, these odds are courtesy of Pinnacle, the most popular low-margin bookmaker around. In all other cases, the 1X2 odds used are the highest bookmaker odds at www.Oddsportal.com from a selected panel of their bookmakers according to our own personal settings.
Ideally, the closer to kick-off you calculate the HO/AO quotients for your system(s), the closer you are going to be to the HO/AO quotients calculated and used in the HDAFU simulations. Preferably, you should wait until team news is released before relying on where the odds settle thereafter.
Calculating the HO/AO Quotient at another Time
If you are for some reason unable to calculate the HO/AO quotient close to kick-off on match days then please, don’t worry too much.
Here’s an example weekend from the first half of the 2017-18 EPL season:
Image 4: Calculating HO/AO Quotients at different timesAs you can see all four matches that would have fitted the criteria of being in the HO/AO 0.603 to 1.396 quotient cluster would still have been in the group of betting candidates even when using odds at the close of the match.
Only the Swansea vs. Crystal Palace match may have drifted out of the cluster. The other three games remained solidly within their clusters so that it didn’t matter at all how their odds changed during the ante-post market.
I hope this article has cleared up any confusion caused by the introduction of the HO/AO Quotient to our 7th generation HDAFU tables. However, if you are still not sure, then please feel free to ask any questions via the comment section below.
Dear Soccerwidow,
since I bought your book and started to study seriously, I meanwhile gathered a lot of data from Oddsportal.com included the odds which are a sort of mean of odds offered from three or four Bookmakers. After finished the book I have been intrigued by your HDAFU system which is a fantastic statistical model, but now I am a bit scared because of the odds I gathered are too close to the KO time, do you have any suggestion on how to use them compared to the current ones? could they lead me to make errors?
Hi Giampietro, odds fluctuate before kick-off but they don’t change hugely. So, it doesn’t really matter when you check the odds. A former favourite doesn’t suddenly become the underdog and vice versa (unless the favourite and underdog prices were close, to begin with).
I understand that you’ve got the course book so you then know what I mean when I speak of ‘fair odds’ ranges. Please do a little exercise…
Pick any game, ideally, one with good liquidity. Find the Over/Under odds for that game 48 hours before kick-off (unfortunately, we can only do that exercise with O/U odds as I haven’t published anything yet on how to calculate HDA odds, sorry!). Get them all! O 0.5, O 1.5, O 2.5, and so on
Calculate the expected ‘Zero’ odds for that match as well as the expected odds range.
24 Hours later… Get the changed odds… Compare them with your calculations as well as with the odds you gathered the day earlier.
Now, approximately 3 hours before kick-off, gather the odds every half hour.
Can you see in which direction they are changing, if at all?
It is very likely that the odds that already were within the ‘fair odds’ range will remain in that range and that the odds that were outside the ‘fair odds’ range have moved closer to it; often they will end up within the range just before kick-off.
The market is relatively ‘fair’ as there are thousands of people that carry out calculations like you. If there is any huge discrepancy between the prices (odds) in the market and the probabilities, this is spotted immediately and taken advantage off. The bookmakers are aware of that and try their best not to allow for arbitrage situations.
This applies to the Over/Under odds and of course, to the HDA odds as well. It’s just that with the HDA odds they may be a little bit distorted just before kick-off when the team news is published.
For example, a favourite ‘fairly’ priced at say, 1.5. Prior to kick-off, it may suddenly drop to 1.45 or 1.4 purely because of a higher demand by the punters. This happening doesn’t change the probability of that team winning – it’s just a reaction to the higher demand.
But anyway, there are never any ‘massive’ odds changes and these changes don’t have a massive effect on the HO/AO quotient.
And always thank you for all your fantastic work…
Hello soccerwidow, amazing resources and website, thank you! Question – for quite a few systems that I found (and back tested to 2013..) it looks like the ‘edge’ or profitable months are gone by second half of 2017.. Do you think this might be due to you 😉 Just thinking – if your approach helps me to find a system, everyone else could do the same and the edge will be gone sooner than later… 🙁 ?!?!
Hi Chris, have you read the article 2017-18 Winter League Report – 35k in 138 Days? From the 10 monitored systems 8 underperformed and 2 overperformed but in the end, the portfolio hit the target. The 2 systems that overperformed were whole-season systems.
However, this isn’t actually the reason.
The main reason for the good performance was that these two systems contained the largest number of expected bets; Germany 57 and Italy 116.
There were two other systems with over 50 bets in the portfolio (Austria and the EPL) that didn’t do so badly but the systems with fewer bets were far too volatile to deliver reliable results.
Therefore, please have a look at the profitable systems you identified and check whether the groups are actually big enough to make any judgements.
Answering your question… It cannot be caused by ‘us’ that the market doesn’t have an edge anymore. Although there are a few punters that follow our advice and bet successfully the ones that see it through from the beginning to the end are just a handful not thousands. And just a few punters that find an edge and use it don’t change the market. There are hundreds of bookmakers and thousands of matches to play every month.
🙂
Thanks! Well, yea I suppose ‘we’ are not big enough. But look at this, ain’t this strange –
basically positive ROI every single month since 2013 and then negative since 10/2017.. 🙁
https://image.ibb.co/mBXRef/Capturesdsdsdsd.jpg
Hi Chris, I didn’t mean that you need to be ‘big’ enough; the systems in your portfolio though, have to be. In addition, you have to diversify between at least 5 (even better 10) leagues.
Here’s an article about diversification and risk management: Judging the Risk of a Football Betting Portfolio.
Do you know that article? Is your portfolio of bets compliant with the advice given in that article?
yea, I know what you mean and yes I have read it all.
I just wouldn’t consider a system if it has turned into red for the last 6 months despite it being overall, all things considered, a positive (+70% ROI!) and significant (+2k bets) system since 2013 – I would only put a single system into the portfolio if it has proven itself within the last 5 months as well – otherwise it might be a sign of a market characteristic that has simply changed by now.
Argh – it’s just sad for this particular case (have you seen that graph..), as this looked so promising haha..
I will find other ones though 🙂
Hi Chris,
when you search for systems you will hardly find any that performed positively five seasons in-a-row. There is often at least one year in the red and sometimes another year with a very low profit. But it’s the combination of the systems, in other words, their synergy that makes a portfolio strong.
I was trying to make a point in the many articles that I wrote that you must not judge each system individually but always look at the whole portfolio. If the graph shows one system only then it may be actually worthwhile to include it in the 2018/19 portfolio.
The problem is that with lower probabilities (higher odds), which make a 1X2 betting system viable, there will always be a substantial up and down within each individual system.
I hope this makes sense and I wish you good luck!
Hi
Just to double check this example. Are the odds referring to the First Half Odds market?
Is this data included in the sheet?
Thanks
Tony
Hi Tony,
everything in the HDAFU Tables refers to the full-time market.
With what oods should I calculate HO/AO quotient? Odds from pinnacle? Or should I use some site like http://www.oddsportal.com and take the avarege from there?
Great site btw.
Martin.
Thanks for your kind words, Martin.
Yes, use Oddsportal unless indicated otherwise in the Notes tab of each HDAFU table.
Set your list of bookmakers in Oddsportal to resemble ours and use the highest odds (according to the timestamps) when analysing games for inclusion.
Hope this is self-explanatory and thanks for your question.
Hi
Just wanted to touch base and find out whether anyone was able to make a profit this season – Winter Leagues.
Unfortunately, I had to bail out at the half way mark due to the terrible runs in all the systems. I was running quite a few, and all stacked up very well.
Not sure if it is VAR affecting things, and prices have certainly been adjusted.
I have a separate underdog system.that finished in profit, but not as high as expected.
Also the Jupiler odds were slashed this season compares to last!
Very frustrating.
Hi Mike,
Thanks for staying in touch and for sharing your experience.
Yes, the bookmakers are always one step ahead of the game and slashed the Belgian odds across the board in 2018-19 because they could see suspicious betting patterns. We’ve all suffered because of this and the corruption investigation into the Jupiler League continues as I write, with an outcome expected in early June.
Regarding the portfolios, again, smaller profits than expected, with some systems closed down before their scheduled finish. Summer Leagues have started well, so watch this space…
Hi Elena
It has been a while. I have been wanting to ask how the Tables are performing since VAR introduction as my portfolio suffered and from my communication with you last year, it was perhaps related or so Robert thought.
I have noticed some odds have been lowered across all the major leagues as well.
Is there an updated review that I can read, or perhaps you can comment on?
Thank you in advance
Hi Mike,
Whilst VAR has certainly affected the in-play trading process on betting exchanges, I haven’t really noticed its effect on full-time results.
To be honest, with the HDAFU systems we employ, I never bother following the matches. It is just a question of identifying and placing the bets and then rounding up the results at the end of the day or even later sometimes. I never even know whether VAR has played a part in any of the matches.
By coincidence, there is a full 2019 Summer League Campaign Report on the way, so watch this space over the next day or so for the summary.
Thanks for taking the time and trouble to contact us again.