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Interesting question

Posted By: John May
Date: 3 Jun 02, 12:52 pm

In Response To: UK Spread Betting and Poisson Distribution (John Butterworth)

How can I work out player advantage from a spread of 2.6 – 2.9?

That is a bit like saying "how can I work out advantage on who is going to win the match." You'd need to handicap the teams respective goal-scoring abilities, ie create a mathematical model to determine the true likelihood of a given number of goals being scored.

2.6 is the average number of goals scored in a premiership match. It is rare the true mathematically expected goal distribution will be significantly different from this. On the rare occassions when this does happen and the spread firms don't pick up on it you will find it is almost always because the spread firms know their customers will want to bet on a high scoring outcome regardless of what opinion they might have about the actual result.

You can determine when these occassions arise either by simply knowing your football and attempting to assess the true mathematically expected goal distribution through observation and data collection, or more simply by borrowing the expertise of the fixed odds bookmakers. You can do the latter by adding up all the "correct score" bets of 2 goals or less with a number of different bookmakers and adjusting for the bookies vigorish. Any serious discrepancy between the fixed odds bookmakers assessment and that of the spread firms may indicate a positive expectation on the wager.

Also because of the spread you can never have a push bet or breakeven bet unless the buy or sell was a whole number and they never are. Can anyone confirm this to be correct?

That is right.

I would be very grateful if anyone can answer this. Or put me in contact with someone who can.

You need to read Jacques Black's books "Spread betting to win" and "Football betting to win". Incidentally going long and going short are almost never adviseable, since you are paying two sets of vigorish for no increase in profit, just a reduction in risk.

Be extremely careful with spread betting. It is a very powerful weapon in the hands of an expert who understands how to manage volatility and exploit pricing inefficiencies, offering much more profit potential than any other form of gambling, but it can be incredibly dangerous to the uniniated.

Green Baize Vampire's Archive

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Messages In This Thread

UK Spread Betting and Poisson Distribution -- John Butterworth -- 3 Jun 02, 12:12 pm
Interesting question -- John May -- 3 Jun 02, 12:52 pm
Re: UK Spread Betting Poisson Distribution -- John Butterworth -- 4 Jun 02, 4:21 am
volatility -- ricky -- 4 Jun 02, 5:15 am
Re: Curious -- John Butterworth -- 4 Jun 02, 5:41 am
Some answers -- John May -- 4 Jun 02, 4:37 pm
You need to test whether total goals is distributed as a Poisson -- Math Boy -- 3 Jun 02, 3:37 pm
Underlying distribution -- John May -- 4 Jun 02, 4:25 am
Was this written by John May? -- Math Boy -- 4 Jun 02, 7:54 am
A guess -- Rusty Starfish -- 4 Jun 02, 8:03 am
hockey totals -- ricky -- 4 Jun 02, 5:17 am
soccer vs hockey -- Math Boy -- 4 Jun 02, 7:59 am

 


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