HT – FT System
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I’m a Winner specialise in finding statistical and proven betting strategies based on previous performance as this is the greatest guide to the future. Whilst every effort is made to give the greatest chance of success “I’m a Winner” do not guarantee or endorse financially any choices made from this system. All bets placed are at the bettors risk.
First things first…
This system works using the rather tempting odds offered by HT/FT betting. The concept of the bet is that you predict the result at the end of the first half and at the end of the match. The shrewder readers may have noticed that we’re already dealing with an accumulator. We have two bets running that we need to get right. It’s a strange approach for I’m a winner to pursue as we generally steer people away from accumulators. It’s statistical fact that the more bets you put in a chain the less chance you have of getting the correct result. What’s more, you are extremely unlikely to return anywhere near the true odds of the risk you are taking from the bookmaker. Of course, there are exceptions to every rule and this system looks to capitalise on that. In this case, it’s that we can get a really stand out result from accumulators.
There are lots of people out there who play the HT/FT market because they offer some really great returns for correct predictions. The highest returns are usually paid out for games that change from one extreme to another, for example home team winning at half time and then the away team winning at full time. If we look at a fairly level game this weekend, Fulham (5/6) at home to Wigan (7/2) the odds on a H/A result are a tasty 40-1. If we look at a more one sided match, say Arsenal (1/6) against West Ham (14/1) then the H/A will attract 66-1.
So, are any of these odds any good? The price of 66-1 basically means that the bookmakers think that if the game was played over and over again for 66 renewals that result should come up once – although it’s impossible to prove accurately we think it could well come up more often than that.
These are the details of the total number of results over the last 3 seasons of the premiership; each season brings almost identical distributions:
It’s quite a surprising picture to look at. We’re all aware that the Home team wins between 40% and 50% of the time but most aren’t aware that 30% of the time they win the first and second half. We can of course see now why the odds on an H/A result are so long, 25 instances in 1140 games is a long enough time for anyone to wait! It’s also interesting to note that the home advantage makes no difference in the “complete reversal” market – Both A/H and H/A has managed 25 instances.
So, what odds are available on HH? This is the highest occurring statistically so it makes sense to start there. As I look at the Premiership games this weekend the odds on a H/H result are as follows:
Of course, with a chance of getting it right being 30% then things look a little more difficult. If we anticipate 3 games to go H/H then it would be fair to assume that the games of Arsenal, Everton and Manchester Utd are the ones the bookmakers think will end up that way judging by their odds. Of course, bookmakers can be wrong just as all of us can but it’s certainly difficult to find a good selection process for predicting H/H wins with odds over 3 (better than the true odds).
When we refer to the previous table however, what strikes us as a far more interesting statistic is that games that are drawn at half time constitute 41% of all games. That’s at odds to the 26% of games that finish that way. This implies that the games are more evenly pegged up until half time, at which point something changes. It could be conceivable that the superior team’s fitness comes into play for example.
What we find more interesting, and what this system will be based on is that the results D/H and D/D constitute basically 1/3rd of all games played in the premiership.
So, what happened before?...
The first process in working through any system, especially for football, is to compare our hunch over a period of time to ensure that our suspicions are accurate. This should also throw up some seasonal variances if the apply.
The first thing we checked was the percentage of games that ended in either a D/H or a D/D result throughout the course of 2009/2010, 2008/2009 and 2007/2008. It makes for some interesting reading.
Or in Graphical format:
This shows that although 32% is a good and accurate average over the course of a season it also shows that certain other trends appear every year.
• Every season starts slowly with August consistently showing lower than 30% occurances
• As the season progresses there is a consistent increase in these types of results • The strongest period each year are the month of December, January and February
In light of these details we decided that the system we built should be based around the three months over the end of the year.
Of course, although this is a higher than average period in time, we don’t know if this is even week by week or whether there are a few weeks that swing the overall statistics. Lets look at the same seasons from December to February on a “by week” basis.
Looking through this, it is fair to say that there is non consistent results on a week by week basis. The swings can be anywhere from 0 matching bets through to 10. So how can we take advantage of this? The main peice of data that catches my eye is that during each season there have been at least three examples during this period where there’s been at least 6 corresponding matches. Now please just bare in mind that week 4 is usually the week over Christmas when two sets of games are played.
We think that this phenomenom should then lend itself to placing six-fold bets, one per week. Looking through the available odds that should easily counteract the chance of losing 9 bets in every series of 12. We have to build a certain amount of flexibility into the selection process though so I suggest 6 ways from 8 selections combining two results (DH and DD).
Let’s just recap that section so that you’re all clear. Our bets will be six fold bets from eight matches covering each match for the DD and DH results.
This leads us to 1792 bets. That’s quite a considerable sum to be fair and at £0.05p bets it still adds up to a staggering £89.60. What would you win if you got 6 matching results? If we work on an average price of 4-1 then you would win £781.25 or at 5-1 you’d receive £2332.80. That is of course assuming a single six-fold coming off. If you managed to get 7 correct results from your eight you would have a lot more correct six folds and with 8 correct you would really hit the jackpot! I conservatively predict that you would return closer to £50,000 for all 8 correct responses in one go (to a £0.05p stake).
Of course, you can find certain bookmakers to take 0.01 pence bets and this brings the cost down to a far more reasonable £17.92 bet per week with the potential of approximately £10,000 returns.
So who do we back?
So if we can only cover 8 games and there are 10 each week in the premiership then how do we choose which two to drop?
A lot of information that we could use is just impossible to get hold of after the event so we have to use this seasons recent results to see if we can find any trends. To date (28th October 2010) there have been 90 games and 30 of those have finished as either DH or DD (33% sound familiar?). The breakdown of results are as follows:
As you can see, the season has started as anticipated with a very poor showing in August and then some more stable results as we head further into the season. It’s interesting to see that at least one of the weeks so far would have given us our 6 timer. The games that week that finished as we’d hope were:
Stoke vs Blackburn (DD)
Sunderland vs Man United (DD) Tottenham vs Aston Villa (DH) West Brom vs Bolton (DD) Wigan vs Wolves (DH) Man City vs Newcastle(DH)
The ones from that week that didn’t go to plan were: West Ham vs Fulham
Birmingham vs Everton Liverpool vs Blackpool Chelsea vs Arsenal
The difficulty is that for the six correct games, there are no stand out results. Nothing too weird or wonderful. Unfortunately, the same is also true of the ones that didn’t match. Although Chelsea have amazing form at the moment (they’ve won every home game as H/H) it would have been concievable that Arsenal would have held them until half time. The only benefit is that if we had to forfeit 2 games from the list then it would have been West
Ham at home (bottom of the league) and Liverpool at home (in absolutely awful form with 6 points from 8 games). This would have given us our six timer but can we make it anymore scientific?
Firstly we looked at the differences in league position to see what that produced.
It is clear that the extremes of the ranges don’t create an accurate result. For example, a far better away team playing a low level home team would create an an away win. Even if a draw does come through at half time the final result would ruin it. I would however have a 12 place difference as the minimum that would cause this result. Of course, should the same difference be in place for the home team then we’re far more likely to get a HH results so these should equally be avoided.
When we look at the games to date so far this premier league season there have been 30 occasions of DD and DH. Looking at them for clues as to the result becomes quite difficult. Of the 20 teams in the premiership, 14 of them have been the home team whilst 17 have been the away team. Of the 30 games, twenty were 0-0 draws at half time with ten of them 1-1 draws. Of the 30 games, 11 of them finished with the same score that they held at halftime. Of the remaining 19 games, 7 games went on to be higher scoring draws.
So if this doesn’t really give us much more of a clue then maybe we should look at the games that are actually coming up each week. Lets have a look at week 1
Well in our opinion it would take a rather pessemistic punter to not label Manchester Utd away to Blackpool as a good exclusion. Of course, even that has some doubt to it as Manchester United have managed one win and six draws away. Of course, Blackpool aren’t perfect especially off the back of a 0-0 draw with relegation headed West Ham so it would be fair to say that it’s unlikely. In addition, I would have to put Birmingham City as another exclusion – Tottenham are shaky but they’re also desperate to make sure they get 4th for more Champions league football so Birmingham could be the ones. Of course, some of those people out there will think that St. Andrews is a bit of a strong hold but believe me, it’s not against the top teams.
Week 4
You’ll have no doubt noticed that week 4 poses a unique opportunity. The week over Christmas contains two sets of premier league games. That’s a total of 20 games to choose the winners from. This is actually a fantastic opportunity as every year there have been at least 6 DD and DH results. It was during this period that the highest peak of 10 occured. Of course, there is the problem that you have more choices to make but this is a once a year opportunity. Depending on the decisions you are presented with every year it may well be advisable to select a couple of different bets as you will stand to recieve a extremely substantial reward for getting things right.
This system, it is fair to say, has two parts. The first is the opportunity, the discovery that these occurances aren’t as freak as we may first expect and the decision to use an accumulator to get the best possible return. The second is the choice of which teams to select. Throughout all of our investigations we haven’t managed to find a guaranteed way of
saying “if team A has this then don’t select them”. It’s a subjective decision and one that can only be compiled through in-depth analysis and a certain amount of good judgement. We hope that you can see the benefits of this approach and we hope that you will all be celebrating come the end of the season. Although we have found no scientific way of selecting the removal of teams we would center our approach around excluding teams where they are substantially better that there opposition both home and away. Then compare this with all of the standard tipsters – the racing post, sportinglife, skysports, bbc, and see which teams they all confirm won’t fit with our plan (namely away win).
Please remember that betting should be fun and I’m a winner supply this system entirely at your own risk. Do not gamble more than you can afford to lose and seek help if you feel you’re out of control.
