Knowledge of statistics

Stats are one way in - combined with sound money management and discipline ............. thats about it

Won't do any harm. When you look at a few profit probability distributions at various methods you will realise that zero risk betting is the way to go for long term profits from gambling.

How important is no knowledge of statistics ?

fatal.

imo.
GL.

Knowledge of statistics without good knowledge of horse racing would be of limited help at best, dangerous at worst, i would have thought, tho there may well be people on here who would disagree with me (and indeed be in a good position to disagree with me). A positive if combined with good knowledge of horse racing though.

If you had a in depth understanding of statistics then you would probably be a fool to gamble....
Because you would then understand what the statistic: "97 % of gamblers lose in the long term" really means.

You just need to know these statistics:

10% of Betfair users make a profit

100% of forum posters make a profit

Therefore all you need to do is post on here regularly and you wil make your fortune.

€

If you cover normal distribution, log(e) distribution, Monte Carlo, chi squared and regression (linear, multinomial and logistic) then that will take you a long way into variance, longest losing runs, value oddslines etc.

The worst thing about statistics is that unless you define the problem exactly you will get the wrong answer and not know why. For example the Monte Hall problem - the correct answer depends on the exact wording of the question.

The medical and legal profession just don't understand statistics at all. You need the right kind of mind to reduce real life to numbers.

Statistics not necessary if you are a good paddock judge and know how to read form properly.

Arithmetic is probably more useful.

thanks guys, interesting views.

Knowledge of statistics for sports betting is about as essential as it is to look left and right when crossing the road. If you don't look you may make it, but you have a much better chance when you look first.

I am a pro punter and I do not use statistics. Understanding the market dynamics can be enough to succeed in betting.

I think a knowledge of stats is very useful in football betting, not essential, but helpful. For instance if you are satisfied that Team A are a sound 5/4 chance, it's useful to know what price that same team would become if taking the lead after, say, 30 mins.

No single method will provide a solution to anything in life.
There are variations of everything.

You often see results from research but they will normally take into account what the originator is seeking to prove.
Medical research is an example. Most days you will read in the newspaper that something will benefit and a week or so later someone will say it's harmful or of no benefit.

I'm still not sure about red wine. Will it do my heart any good? Will it harm my liver? or will it give a high blood pressure reading.
The answer is probably all of those.

So back to statistics - they are a very useful tool but you must take other things into account.
Put stats (race, course,distance, class & trainer) with,form, speed, breeding, going and you might have a good strike rate of win bets.

Having a PHd in stats is not a licence to be a professional gambler. I know many who have and aren't simply becausew they lack what is probably the most important ingredient .... temperement. This word wraps up quite a few ingredients eg - stomach for wagering money, discipline to stick with a game plan regardless of good and bad times, ability to get up each day and grind out another day win or lose.

Can you be a successful punter with a limited knowledge of stats .. yes if by limited one understands odds and how they relate to chance and with that the implications for losing runs etc. It is not essential to have the undergrad stuff eg an understanding of Poisson distributions. I am not saying these tools cannot be useful all I am saying is you can be a winner without them.

kenilworth, that's exactly what I want to find out how to calculate. would you or anyone care to share how you work out what the odds in play should be if a team X takes a 1-0 lead, given that you know pre-match odds and time of goal?

It is subjective ...only opinion and cannot be "accurate" as such.

Pascal, ''The definitive guide to Betting Exchanges'', published by the Racing Post, has samples for some prices, and time of goal. Obviously not possible to publish prices for every situation, but helpful IMO.

Stats could give you betting edge......but you got to have sound understanding of sport before you start looking in right areas before you might find an "edge" .

Some stats are usefull others are not,... some usefull stats are useless cause you apply them to the wrong problem....

In horse racing stats are essential to identify Longshots,... cause form wont tell you that they win.... if you only look at Form you will come to the same conclusion as the market -- that would be that the 33/1 Horse probably wont win cause its form sucks.

With stats on the other hand you might come to the conclusion that the 80/1 Horse probably has a 50/50 Chance of winning.

Your done than.... there is no need of overcomplicating stuff.....

Hope that helps

P.S.: There is still a lot of work involved in compiling the right stats ratings (which can be highly automized by the use of Computers and basic Spreadsheets).

Its boring as fook (thats what making money out of gambling is essentially)

A bit of additional knowledege about Using Natural Logarithm to calculate Losing sequences is a nice gimmick too,.. but essentialy useless cause you only want to bet to a LEVEL STAKE EVERYTHING ELSE IS DANGEROUS AND IN MOST CASES SIMPLY IDIOTIC.

If that all sounds weary and boring and tedious,... well there is always the next 10 times all in on even money comp somewhere in the footy Forum ya know.

Cheers

Happy Boredom.....

Thanks kenilworth, that's very helpful.

@ kenilworth

So how is the inventor of infamous "Impossible to lose 8 in row Football System doing"

(No harm intended but it still give me the Chuckles after all that time...:) ;) )

Mathematicians are certainly over represented amongst the winners on Betfair, particularly at the higher levels. Statistics is only part of it though.

If you know a great deal about statistics, probability theory and mathematics in general, this will obviously be a tremendous help in becoming profitable.

The only downside is that you risk getting bogged down in theory. There are very simple ways to make money on betfair. I'm not saying it's easy to profit (the hard part is discovering what works), but that many profitable strategies are not mathematically complex.

Someone with a solid background in mathematics starting out on betfair would be better off looking for simple patterns rather than studying bivariate poisson models. Any papers that you read are only useful as a starting point for your own creative processes. If you implement something you read about in a widely available paper or article, chances are that even if it works, others are already doing it.

Creative thinking is required to generate profitable ideas. Perhaps someone will tell you about something, you test it and it works. You could make money for a while in this way, but when it stops working what do you do?

All the statistical data in the world is insufficient alone and for me the necessity of knowing fundamentally why something works is the real key with any statistical stuff just an added support , I know logical reasons why both my systems work over any reasonable length of time but the fact I can go some way to proving it with historical data has given me the confidence to be more aggressive with my staking plan.

In my view statistics alone don't answer questions they just provoke more questions.

Some wise old sage once told me "If you make a decision based solely on statistics, you will make the wrong decision"
Lots of good replies on this thread, all of which should be digested.
I've found the one statistic that can never be found is 'was that horse really trying last time?', 'did that football team really need to win that match?'

The average person has got less than 2 arms

Anna1943 19 Feb 00:32


@ kenilworth

So how is the inventor of infamous "Impossible to lose 8 in row Football System doing"

(No harm intended but it still give me the Chuckles after all that time...:) )

Anna, I'm not sure what you are referring to. Could you please clarify ?

^ think it's a case of mistaken identity

So do I.

joshuag - well said.

you might come to the conclusion that the 80/1 Horse probably has a 50/50 Chance of winning

In your dreams!

"Statistics is the science of making effective use of numerical data relating to groups of individuals or experiments."

- effective use being the critical point ...
GL all.

The key to making money in betting is to exploit weaknesses in the thinking of other punters (ie the market). Statistics are very limited in what they can do in this regard, and will be more so in the future as more people on here use them.