Diary of a Commonsensical Gambler

[Dice Man]

Introduction

Yo. Sup all. In this thread I will, for the next two weeks, probably on Fridays, check the odds that William Hill give for various matches in the Premiership at the following weekend. I will then give what I consider to be my best picks for each game, both a win/lose/draw pick and an actual score pick (for the next two weekends this amounts to 20 bets each week). I will do this for two weeks (because I'm impatient). Each week I will offer £50 of bets, and then at the end of the weekend count up how much I would have won or lost.

Method

Challenge 1: For the first two weeks I won't bet anything. I will simply make selections and count up my hypothetical winnings/losses. If I have made a hypothetical profit I proceed to Challenge 2. If not, I repeat until I do make a hypothetical profit.

Challenge 2: For the next two weeks I will bet £25 per week on real matches. If I have made a real profit I proceed to Challenge 3. If not I return to Challenge 1.

Challenge 3: If I reach this point I allocate £100 of my poker bankroll to a football betting bankroll, plus whatever profits/losses I have made from repeated attempts at Challenge 2. I then bet £50 per week on real matches, either indefinitely, until I need to up the stakes, or most probably until I go bust.


Hypothesis

I suspect that I will not make good picks because I might be a bad predictor of Premiership action, and I am unlucky. If I do proceed to Challenge 2 (surely I'm bound to at some point if I get to repeat Challenge 1) I suspect that I will fail to make a profit and quit. If I get to Challenge 3 I suspect I will blow the £100 bankroll within 6 weeks.

I do intend to make decent picks but against me I have the football experts at William Hill, who I suspect it is hard to find an edge against, especially as they have rigged the odds to be universally in favour of the bookmaker. Plus I'm only using one bookmaker so I won't have the advantage of looking around for the best odds.

In the past I have only made a handful of bets, and never won, probably losing about £20. If I recall I only bet on international, mostly England games, on who would score first, and IMO these were not well thought-out bets, and they all occurred about 5 years ago.

I am an avid follower of Premiership football, and I am moreorless neutral (I may have slight inclinations towards Villa and Liverpool), but I will concentrate all my energies on being as clinically objective as possible. I will also compare my results with those of Mark Lawrenson to see who would win more: him or me.1 I am also a commonsensical person, reasonably intelligent, have several qualifications and awards in mathematics and statistics, independently research related areas like decision theory, bayesian epistemology, psychology and game theory, and have consistent poker profits.

Discussion

Can I beat William Hill? How many attempts will I require to get to Challenge 2? How many attempts will I require to get to Challenge 3? (You can answer that I'll give up first) How likely is it I'll be in profit by Christmas? Will I beat Mark Lawrenson? If I can't do it, can anybody?

1 Remember though, that I'm not giving my actual predictions as much as I'm giving my best picks, i.e. the bets at which I think have the best odds. Lawrenson is choosing what he considers to be the most likely result, so it's quite likely that he will make conservative choices and break even or make a small profit, and I will either make big profits or big losses (I think), i.e. my variance should be higher than his.

[CitrusSR]

Good challenge. This'll be interesting to follow.

I suspect that I will not make good picks because I might be a bad predictor of Premiership action, and I am unlucky. If I do proceed to Challenge 2 (surely I'm bound to at some point if I get to repeat Challenge 1) I suspect that I will fail to make a profit and quit. If I get to Challenge 3 I suspect I will blow the £100 bankroll within 6 weeks.

lol Positive thinking is the first step to success.


I think there is more money to be made on betting on the lower leagues than the Premiership, you can find some good odds if you know your stuff (I don't really) as I don't think they put as much resource into researching them as most people bet on the Premiership + Championship. (Disclaimer: This could be bollocks but I'm sure I've read it somewhere)

One tip I will give you is to bet on draws as you will get much better odds. For example, I just picked out these random three games that could easily be draws:


Blackburn v West Ham (Sat Aug 29th - 15:00)

Stoke v Sunderland (Sat Aug 29th - 15:00)

Man. Utd v Arsenal (Sat Aug 29th - 17:15)

You will get about 33/1 on that, whereas all home wins would be about 10/1. (normally would be less than that but the Man U v Arsenal game makes them higher as its harded to predict)

I only bet on the footy occasionally and normally just do games in threes. Yesterday I had 3 away wins, Chelsea, Everton and Spurs to win at just over 8/1 which I thought was good value but Everton cocked that up.

[Dice Man]

Yeah I've also heard that betting on the lower leagues is more +EV, but that would take a lot of research IMO, and I'm hoping to pit my judgement against somebody decent. I don't see how betting on draws is that +EV though, since hardly any games are draws nowadays. Only 1/25 games have been drawn so far this season.

[CitrusSR]

I don't see how betting on draws is that +EV though, since hardly any games are draws nowadays. Only 1/25 games have been drawn so far this season.

I just find it the easiest way to make anything, you need to bet on a lot more games if you were to go for home wins to get the same sort of odds, then there is more chance of one of them not winning.

You only need to win once in about 30 bets to break even. I suppose it's easier to pick out potential draws when you have the whole league to choose from though

[Gus Mango Fish]

I don't want to hijack the thread, but this sounds like this could make quite an interesting forum challenge. Maybe start a thread and give each player £100 of 'Fantasy Money'. Who could make the most over a 3 week period?. Maybe a prize for the best pundit.

[Dice Man]

I don't want to hijack the thread, but this sounds like this could make quite an interesting forum challenge. Maybe start a thread and give each player £100 of 'Fantasy Money'. Who could make the most over a 3 week period?. Maybe a prize for the best pundit.

Yes I would want to encourage this. It seems to me that if you got 100 people and got them to make these fake bets for however long, then you could get the best 2 pundits and everybody could make those bets. And you could stop the guy who's best from getting cocky or lazy by e-mailing to everybody the picks of the no. 1 pundit, and e-mailing to him the picks of the no. 2 pundit, so everybody would receive different picks than the ones they choose. But they would all know that these picks were objectively excellent. Plus every week, because everybody gives their picks every week and receives new ones, you could monitor and update who was actually the best over a long term and so more accurately determine who actually was the best.

The only person who loses out is the person who actually does have the best picks, but only just, and anyway IMO I think knowing that you were receiving either the no.1 or no.2 objectively best picks would outweigh the chance that you actually are the best picker, which is something that because everybody believes it about themselves, nobody actually has any reason to believe it, (i.e. most of the people who believe it are wrong, so if you believe it you're probably wrong).

[CitrusSR]

Predictably, I am up for doing this challenge

[fishboy1983]

I went to Chester races with 2 mates on Sat and on the way we stopped in laddies to put a bet on the footie. We each put a fiver in and chose 10 teams for home wins. We chose some obvious big favs but then some lower league teams for the better odds. So the stake was £15 and the return was just short of £900. The teams we support are Man U, Stoke and Bury for myself, so i have got a good knowledge of lower league football.

Well long story short, we were 1 team away from collecting a very nice pay day, with morcambe letting us down!!!

I think you really should take a look at the lower leagues as there is a lot greater value to be had, i think the bookies concentrate hard on the prem and therefore some good value can be taken the lower down you go.

Incidently for the first time ever i didnt win a single race, had 3 seconds but i had them all on the nose!!! Oh and Bury got beat, my mate had a good chunk of change on Aus winning the ashes and finally my other mate had laid 3 horses, the night before for the days racings, with all of them winning!!! Not the best of weekend!

[easychips]

Good luck with this. I quite often bet sports, but usually just the odd bet. Never tried to pick 20 bets a go, so will be interesting to see how you get on. There's usually a few good bets on the card, but you will probably end up sticking in a lot of extra, not so good bets, just to make up the numbers.

[Gus Mango Fish]

Dice, are you going to post up your predictions for tomorrow?