how i would price up the Sunday EPL games...

What sort of margin are you running to in the Chelsea game ffs???

In the Stoke game no outcome over 3.00

Wish I could lay all these prices, make a fortune.

I'd back Liverpool if you're offering 2.6, they'll probably be closer to evens on here come KO once the far eastern guys get involved

This is probably the best post ive ever seen on the forum. I'm literally in tears here

Arsenal at 2.4 - far too high

WTF is going on here?
Spurs  1.60 Draw 2.40 Fulham 4.00

Draw at 2.4? Is this Serie B?!

all of your draws are under-priced for starters

Chelsea  1.40 Draw 3.20  Blackburn 4.00



How can you have the home side at 1.4, then have the away side at 4s! They'd probably be 9-10.

He's just running a healthy overround! Better that way than the other way round!

Might be worth having a look at how overrounds work at some point, Paul, but fair dos for having a go.  My take on the games at the moment (discounting team news obviously):

Chelsea - a back.  Blackburn are horrendous.  Expected 1.3 maximum.
Man C - a back.  Can't see how QPR can hurt them or keep them out.
Swansea - a back.  Don't expect them to win necessarily, but at the prices they're the play.
Arsenal - a lay.  West Brom no mugs and can't see a justification for Arsenal being so short.

Can't see owt of huge interest in the other games.  Ordinarily I'd say Man U are too short but Sunderland seem to have checked out weeks ago, so I'd just avoid.

the over round is massive on the chelsea and spurs games

hey i did say i'm a mug noob so go easy. what tickles ya snake?

thanks Rob. i just did it off top of my swede

bob

If you're going to price things up and can't do overrounds in your head, post them as percentages. That way your book will always be 100% (unless you can't count) and you'll avoid the inevitable ridicule.

I did have to chuckle at the Spurs prices all the same.

I think the really interesting one on Sunday is the Man Utd price because if Man City go a couple up early then Man Utd could lose interest.

If every outcome was as likely as every other and there was no margin then it would be

home team 2/1 draw 2/1 away team 2/1 or 3.0, 3.0, 3.0

so you cant have all 3 outcomes under 3.0 like you have in the Stoke game.

first time ever done it like that Bayes. let me google a couple of things hang on.

marychain1

so you cant have all 3 outcomes under 3.0 like you have in the Stoke game.

An outfit like Sky probably would, so you can't blame him for trying .

rtb I've never ever seen anyone dare to have three outcomes under 2/1. You always see stuff like Evens and 4/6 in a two horse race, which is bad enough.

Spurs     1.60 Draw 2.40 Fulham 4.00

how would that come out as a percentage of a book someone please?

Spurs 38.46%
Draw 27.78%
Fulham 20%

right so i'm 14% under a full book. hmm i see

hang on a sec i've got that well wrong

how you get that bizzo.

yep this is blagging my swede

Spurs 62.5%
Draw 38.46&
Fulham 25%

So roughly 125%

If you decimal odds are x1, x2, x3 then 1/x1+1/x2+1/x3 should be 1.

A job at Ladbrokes awaits Bob....they would be proud of a book like that

Are you going to use it as a guide? If a team is a bigger price than you have them ,then they are a back?

Thats what i do,i'll price up a League just from looking on Soccerway at recent form.....sometimes i'm miles out so dont be dis-heartened.....doing it can only help...theres no real downside to it.

i forgot to take off the 1 on the decimals odds on the 1st lot of percentages

oh so in actual fact the Spurs prices are unrealistically staked in the bookies favour?

*stacked

If you decimal odds are x1, x2, x3 then 1/x1+1/x2+1/x3 should be 1.

Spurs 1.60 Draw 2.40 Fulham 4.00

1/1.6 + 1/2.4 + 1/4 should = 1 ?

For me:

Spurs 67%
Fulham 13%
Draw 20%

100/67 gives Spurs 1.49
100/13 gives Fulham 7.69
100/20 gives Draw 5.00

Man City 1.10 Draw 4.00 QPR 20.00



Using this an example bob, if you have City at 1.1 you're saying they're 90% likely to win (fair enough)
QPR at 20s means a 5% chance to win (again not far off).
But then you have the draw at 4s which is 25% chance so therefore your book is 20% over

Making sense?

41.6% Draw Bizzo

Spurs 38.46%
Draw 27.78%
Fulham 20%

my draw is (1/2.4) x 100% no?

ignore that post bob, i then corrected it to this:


Spurs 62.5%
Draw 38.46&
Fulham 25%

Draw at 2.40 = 41.6% though doesn't it?

not 38.46

sorry yes it does, i thought you'd put 2.6 as the draw odds. My mistake.

2.4 is even worse odds though!!

yeah this all helps.

so what total percentage would a bookie aim for and what is it on Betfair?

Bookie - as high as it can get away with.

Betfair - have a look for yourself.  It's on the left of the word Back on the match odds market.

a bookie would go for about 107% these days (used to be 112.5)

well this has been fun i have to say. straight up. thanks all

this thread actually epitomises what i always dreamed the betfair forums would be before ever using them

your over round on that Chelsea game is 27%!!

Robbing b*stard!!!

what percentage of normal everyday punters understand the overround? i would price that at maybe 30%

Depends who you class your every day punter as?

Joe Bloggs who goes in Hills on a saturday lunchtime to place his acca probably hasn't got a scooby

But an every day punter on here would have a fair idea i think.

These are mine

.	Home		Draw	Away		.
1.39	Chelsea		5.38	Blackburn		10.75
2.26	Everton		3.64	Newcastle		3.52
1.30	Man City		6.29	QPR		14.50
2.32	Norwich		3.48	Aston Villa		3.52
2.06	Stoke		3.57	Bolton		4.34
5.07	Sunderland		3.85	Man United		1.85
4.06	Swansea		3.63	Liverpool		2.08
1.53	Tottenham		4.52	Fulham		8.15
4.34	West Brom		3.70	Arsenal		2.00
2.04	Wigan		3.66	Wolves		4.21

i don't give anything for 'need to win'

* bites tobermorys hand off for 1.3 on City *

is your spurs market a 100% book?

99.75%

they will all be close to 100% but can't be 100.000% with that few decimal places

right. you'd never get a job at Ladbrokes tobe

Bolton at 4.34? Yes please.

If you are pricing up to find value no point going over 100%, some people will price up to 95% to have a margin of error

If you are pricing to lay a book then go to 110% say, but you will rarely get every outcome matched ,often only 1 or none on here

Bolton are awful MaryC

Good read this thread for actual information, rather than just laughing at mug posts or arguments

yeah it is. glad you can get something from it mate.

Yeah I've learnt a few things, thanks for the original post

tobermory - that's interesting - I usually price my races up to 100% but use a 5-10% margin of error as a guide before I back anything. For example, I'll price everything to a total of 100% but will only back my 4.0 (25%) chance if I can get at least 5.0 (20%).

tobermory agreed but its a must win game for them..I'd prob take 100/30

Well done Bob. For the first time in your many many thousands of posts, you're actually doing something worthwhile - and something which throws up questions which you can then Google or think about or test. And that's exactly the way you amass knowledge on betting.

No, none of us were taught any of this at school. But we became intrigued and started doing our own research and setting up our own experiments. Some us realised it might be useful to know how to program, so we got ourselves some skills (limited in my case, but enough) in that area too.  Obviously not every successful Betfair punter bothers with programming - although it is an excellent way to quickly test a theory across huge amounts of data, or to create a tool that can price up a market quickly when you've got only seconds to spare before making a decision, to give a couple of examples.

I'd recommend you carry on with the pricing-up markets idea. You'll gradually learn what sorts of prices you should price things up at - the possible range of prices are, in reality, a lot more limited than you'd think.

It's a shame for you that the season is just ending. However, you can certainly fast-track your knowledge over the next few months if you want to.  My recommendation would be to go into that stats page I've told you about a few times (http://www.football-data.co.uk/englandm.php). That gives you season after season of results across many leagues and divisions. Pick a season, load it into Excel and make two copies of it. In one copy, delete FT and HT results, final odds, and anything else which might give away how the game went or how the professionals priced it up. Use this as your main spreadsheet. Only consult the copy with the full figures when you want to see what the result of a game was.

Now, start off with the 10th or 11th 'week' of matches. (Don't start at the beginning of the season, as you'll want some recent form to work with.) Every day, price up a 'week's-worth' of games. Calculate a current league table. Then look at the previous 5-10 matches played by each team. Focus on who they were playing and the attributes of their opposition (try to look more at form and goals scored/conceded rather than who has the bigger 'name'). Work out what you think the odds ought to be for each team.

When you've done that, compare your odds with those put up by the bookies. How far are you out?  Are there any games where your odds suggest you could have got value by taking the bookies' prices? How well would you have done if you had bet a £100 stake on these 'value' matches?  At first your prices will generally be significantly out and your assessment of value will be hit and miss. This is normal when you're just starting out - you wouldn't expect to play a computer game and win on the third go, would you?  However, the more times you price up markets, the more accurate you'll get.

Once you've got your skills up, you'll find that most of the matches don't present you with real value. One or two, however, will. And one or two good bets are all you need.  If you're backing evens shots at the bookies, the long-term win rate will actually be quite close to 50%. Not enough for you to win overall, but close. This applies generally to betting prices. If you bet on 10 matches where you think you're finding value, you only need to find the genuine value in a few of those cases. If the rest pretty much conform to their long-term average, you should make money. Most punters don't put much thought into what they're betting on - choosing instead to think 'Man U are going to win', for example, and then putting down their money without considering what Man U's actual chances of winning are. You don't need to be as good as Investor, Bayes etc.  If your judgement is better than that of the throngs of mug punters, that'll probably be enough to make you a winner. You can then go up from there.


The important thing is to price up as many games as you can. The more you do, the more accurate you'll get more quickly. I said do one week of games per day. In fact, if you're serious about this, you can do a lot more than that in a day. That stats site gives you thousands and thousands of games to try pricing up. You'll probably get as much out of this exercise as the effort you put in. It's up to you Bob...

Yeek. That was a long post... 

Man City 1.3...  Gosh. Being a Man U supporter, I hope Tobe's right!!

I wonder if Bob will stop trolling and harassing the forumites  on the p&l thread now?