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I doubt the promo is exploitable...

Posted By: John May
Date: 29 Sep 03, 1:06 pm

In Response To: I also looked at the same promo but didnt come to any conclusion. (Uk nfl fan)

I doubt this promotion is exploitable. These bets have a ridiculous overround, never less than about 160%. The rebate scarcely compensates.

In the above case the typical sucker thinks Anelka scored in 21 of his last 44 matches for Man City ie 47.7%. You get 2.5 goals in a match so multiply that figure by .4 to get the probability of scoring the first goal, a respectable 19%. Shade that down to 15% because Anelka could get ill and not start or get injured during the match. For roughly 30% of the remainder of the time he'll score a goal after the first.

The logic breaks down when you consider that Anelka's chance of scoring a goal after the first goal is scored is less than implied by his average stats. Assuming his goals are normally distributed, which is close enough to the truth for our purposes, he will sometimes score more than one goal after the first. These goals are useless to us for rebate purposes.
That skews his average, the chance he will get more than goal is .3*.3.... From this you can see the chance of him scoring after the first goal is less than 20%. This bet has a negative expectation of at least 5% if you do a pure stats analysis.

Moreover, its dangerous just looking at the leading goal scorers for value in goal scorer bets. The leading goal scorers are there because they experienced good or at best average fluctuations around their actual goal scoring ability, they can't be there if they are unlucky. This is like betting red at roulette because it came up six times in a row. At the moment, the stats suggest Anelka is the best striker in England, which I doubt any one would agree with. The implication is that he's on the right side of the bell curve.

You could argue that the average goals scored in this match was likely to be higher or that Tottenham were a weak team-though I very much doubt this was likely to offset the above factors. But, even then you'd be better off using your assessment, if correct, to make a bet on the o/u or win/lose/draw, bets which don't have double-digit vig.

Better still, tell the bookmaker where to stick their propositon bets.

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Messages In This Thread

Are these promos Pos EV? -- Stingray -- 27 Sep 03, 1:52 pm
my impression is... -- SoccerMan -- 27 Sep 03, 10:40 pm
I also looked at the same promo but didnt come to any conclusion. -- Uk nfl fan -- 29 Sep 03, 3:12 am
Hard to know ... -- Stingray -- 29 Sep 03, 6:59 am
I doubt the promo is exploitable... -- John May -- 29 Sep 03, 1:06 pm

 


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