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Monday, April 09, 2007

Do the maths before sending in abuse eh?

Arsenal and Manchester United failed on Saturday afternoon, with both sides losing despite dominating their respective games ... and once again I get a mailbag full of abuse from idiot punters who've bet big on these two games.

One of the things I read (although I just deleted most of them) was a rant asking how I can rate Arsenal at 76% or Man United at 66% and then still carry on with publishing the spreadsheet when they lose?

It's important understand probability - 76% is not a guaranteed winner - neither is 95% for that matter - and 76% favourites will still fail to win a quarter of the time.

If you bet big on one game then you risk taking a loss. If you spread the risk over several games then the calculations are more liekly to deliver profits.

On Friday/Saturday I recommended :

5 Likely winners.
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Everton / Chelsea and Boro won - while Arsenal and ManYoo lost. If you'd put 100 quid on each of them then you'd have returned £488 for a loss of just £12.

That's not too bad an a day of "shocks".

6 Value Bets.
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Chelsea, Boro, and Portsmouth (yes Pompey!!) won - while Sheff Utd, Arsenal, and Reading all lost.

Let's assume that you stake these smaller because they're riskier and put 50 quid on each of these then you lay out £300 and get £507.50 back !

That's around £200 up overall - albeit thanks largely to Portsmouth's shock win - but then it was part of the plan to take advantage of a good price.

SUMMARY :
You cannot expect all picks to come in. If you decide to take one or two games - then that's your decision but you need to accept that it's your choice whether you win or lose.

The favourites went 3-2 for a small loss, the value bets went 3-3 for a tidy profit ... and to me it backed up the real benefits of the spreadsheet to help to quantify risk.

Remember that gambling is a adults past-time - so if you do choose to bet and you lose - then take it on the chin and admit who had the final decision and stop firing of crappy emails eh?

Thanks for reading - now back to normal service.
:-)