£20,000 Challenge Betting

[TonyG]

Just got back in the UK again after my latest backgammon jaunt. While away I made a bet of £1000 @ 4/1 that I could win £20,000 off of Sporting Index between now & the end of the World Cup. The terms of the bet are :-

Only bets placed on my Spin account are valid
Only football bets count
Only bets settled on the day count. No long term bets are valid eg season points or tournament performance indexes. Indexes settled on the day are valid.
My profits are capped @ £2500 on any individual bet & £4000 on any individual match. My losses are not capped.
If at the end of any days trading I am £3000 or more down overall I lose the bet.
If at the end of any days trading I am £20,000 or more up overall I win the bet.
If I fail to win £20,000 by the end of the World Cup Final I lose the bet.

At the time I placed the bet I was under the impression that I was getting great odds as I would have won this bet 3 times out of the last 5 years. The memory however plays tricks (especially under the influence of alcohol) & closer inspection of the records show that I would have only won twice overall on the football bet & if the conditions regarding no long term bets & the capped winnings applied then I wouldn't have won at all! In fact even my best year would have fallen more than £2700 short.

I am going to post all my valid bets on this thread (with analysis when I have the time). It might all be over pretty fast if I have a bad start but should provide some amusement. Any ideas regarding staking or where i'm going wrong would be much appreciated.

 

[TonyG]

Ok - I've decided not to increase my normal stakes.

Norwich v Plymouth - With Leon McKenzie & Darren Huckerby unavailable & Dean Ashton carrying a hamstring injury Argyle's aging defence may have most to worry about from Charlton's on-loan Kevin Lisbie. I'm hoping that Norwich can score before Ashton limps off so that Plymouth are forced to chase the game. They have just sacked their manager after 4 consecutive league defeats & may put in more effort for their caretaker. Effort & ability however are two different things so I have taken a punt on buying Plymouth's multi-corners @ 5.5 for £40. In 3 home games this season Norwich have conceded 8 corners to Crewe, 11 to Leeds & 16 to Crystal Palace. Argyle are poor but the price is low enough to hope the trend continues.

Bolton v Blackburn - I expect most people looking at this match will be drooling over the bookings market & there is certainly potential for a bloodbath here but the bookies are well aware of this & have adjusted their prices accordingly. I've gone for a sell of the offsides @ 6.5 for £100. The downside looks small - in 8 matches this season involving these sides the maximum offsides make up has been 7; the average 5.6 but the bare statistics can be misleading. The fact is that there are rarely a lot of offsides unless one side or the other play the offside trap & neither of these do. I've also sold Bolton's corner supremacy @ 1 for £70. There are some direct comparisons available already this season. Both have visited West Ham where Blackburn got 6 corners to the Hammers 2 despite going down to 10 men. Bolton were outcornered 5 to 7. They have also both visited Villa where Bolton prevailed 8-7 on corners as did Blackburn by the more impressive margin of 11-4. Despite home advantage i'm backing Blackburn's greater width.

 

[TonyG]

After 3 days of my monopolising the TV watching football my girlfriend is understandably getting a bit snarly so tonight's betting has to be a surreptitious affair with extremely limited TV & computer access i.e. I get to watch the crappy little B&W TV in the kitchen while cooking her dinner & she gets to watch chick-flicks & paint her toenails while hopefully losing her desire to stab me in my sleep. Bearing this in mind I have limited my investments to those requiring minimal supervision -

Championship Hotshots - normally I look at these markets intending to sell but tonight's selection of Kabba, Nugent, Healy, Cort & Johnson have scored 24 goals in 32 games this season. SPIN have the market @ 63-68 with 25 pts per goal & 12 pts per NR. Obviously it's a small sample & adjustments need to be made for the teams actually being played but the raw data suggests that we can expect a return of 3.75 goals which equates to 93.75 pts. Not one to put your shirt on but there does seem to be some value there so I have bought @ 68 for £6.

Chelsea v Anderlecht - I really don't like Chelsea but that didn't stop me backing them to win the premiership last year & i've done it again this season. The simple fact is Chelsea have more resources than anybody else & if I have to watch them win at least i'm going to make some money out of it. They haven't looked good in any match this year but have still won all their games. Anderlecht travel worse than Greek wine & with Vincent Kompany missing from their defence look ready to ship a few. Chelsea however are clinical. Heaven forbid that they should ever actually attempt to entertain the people (I refuse to call them fans) who fork out £60 a ticket to watch them. Winning is what they do best & winning is all they care about. It really is a sensible (& dull) policy. I have bought Chelsea performance @ 84 for £10 but (& this is important!) I will be closing the bet or even going the other way after Chelsea get a goal or two.

 

[TonyG]

I just tend to look for what I think is value. Usually I just do my research & come up with a few opinions & then go looking at the spreads. If I find a price that's way out of line with my assessment i've got a bet. Then i've just got to judge whether the price is likely to move & when I should place the bet. High risk = low stakes. Low risk = high stakes. Note risk isn't the same as odds. If someone offered 100/1 against the sun coming up tomorrow it would still be a low risk bet (or perhaps a very high risk one as they are obviously mad & a likely payout risk!). Yesterday Olaf Mellberg was available @ 0.5-2 on the TGM's market. Last year he scored 3 goals in 33 games so a raw assessment is he is a 10/1 shot to score. If we take the time of the goals at a conservative average of 50 minutes then we see he should average over 4.5 goal minutes per game. Also Mellberg is only likely to be in position to score from corners or advanced set pieces so I judged how often I thought he would be in a position to score & how good the defence was. Overall I concluded that West Ham would concede more corners than most premiership defences (true as it happened as Villa won 11 corners) & that they would be worse than average at defending them. I thought that it was not unreasonable to assume that these factors would increase his expected goal minutes from 4.5 to 6. He was available to buy @ 2. It's not often you get 3 times the odds you would expect so I doubled my normal stake on this bet. As it happened he had 2 or 3 half chances but didn't convert so I ended up losing £20 which was the result I would expect 90% of the time. Even though it lost it was still the best value bet I had yesterday. I do sometimes protect a bet e.g. if I have bought a teams performance I might also buy that teams bookings, but for the most part I just try to find value & control my risk through the size of my stakes. I really don't get too hung up over whether I win or lose money on any particular event or day.

 

[TonyG]

After a good start with Cort scoring after 19mins & Johnson after 29 the Championship Hotshots fail to add to the tally & make up @ 50 for a £108 loss but at least Johnson got another goal for my long term bet.

Chelsea v Anderlecht - Dumb twat of the night award goes to Fatpiranha for not following his own advice & closing the Chelsea performance bet after they scored. I could have taken a £150 profit instead I hung on & ended up losing £180. No excuses - not following my own advice cost me £330.

The good news was that buying Makalele PPerf @ 60 made a nice £910 profit as he made up @ 151.

Lyon v Real Madrid - took £120 profit on the goals market & the offsides MU @ 4 for another £100 profit.

Rangers v Porto - Porto lose but I still make £120 on their performance + another £50 as the offsides MU @ 5.

Total profit on night = +£1012.

New running total = +£2272.

 

[TonyG]

Bolton v Lokomotiv Plovdiv - Big Sam will be wanting to make an impression on Bolton's European debut. Bolton may not be in the best form at the moment but they should have too much for the Bulgarians who have their own problems both on & off the pitch (the club president was shot dead recently) & will probably be more interested in a bit of shopping & some modern dentistry than causing an upset here (although visiting Bolton they are likely to disappointed). Bolton's array of multitalented old mercenaries - JJ Okocha on throw ins, Kevin Davies on backing in & El Haj Diouf on spitting & elbowing - should make this a thoroughly unpleasant 90 minutes for the plucky Plovdivians so i've bought Bolton's team performance @ 78 for £10. Obviously i'm taking a chance on the Eastern European ref (he's a Slov of some sort; not sure if it's an -ene or an -akian) but his record shows him to be a decent sort & anyway they generally hate each other more than they do us.

Dinamo Bucharest v Everton - Bought Arteta PPerf @ 42 for £10. He made up @ 77 when visiting the classier Villareal (admittedly Everton were chasing the game) & seems to be a bit of value here.

Bolton v Lokomotiv - sold offsides @ 6 for £70.

 

[TonyG]

I'm away at a backgammon tournament this weekend so I will not be able to monitor my bets or get late team news etc. With this in mind I shall be reducing both the number & stakes of my bets. I also must apologise as I simply do not have time to post explanations & reasoning etc. Normal service will be resumed next week

A couple i've placed already -
Liverpool v Man Utd - Sell offsides @ 6.5 for £80
Aston Villa v Spurs - Buy offsides @ 7.5 for £60