Drawing With the Bookies

[footnotes]

I'm not much of a gambler, but I did manage to break even with the bookies using the system I'll describe below.  If you are a gambler, then you could make better use of it and do the unthinkable...

Goals are the most fundamental thing in football, so you take:

1) the home team's home goals for, and divide by the number of home games they've played so far.

2) the away team's away goals against, and divide by their number of away games.

Multiply 1 and 2 together, to give the home team's most likely number of 'goals for' in the scheduled match between them.

 

3) the away team's away goals for, and divide by their number of away games so far.

4) the home team's home goals against, and divide by their number of home games so far.

Multiply 3 and 4 together to give the away team's most likely number of 'goals for' in the match between them.

 

Then just compare the likely number of goals for the home team (1*2) against the likely number of goals for the away team (3*4), and choose the likely result (W/D/L) accordingly.  

 

All you're doing here is comparing the strength of the home team's attack (1) to the strength of the away team's defence (2); and then the strength of the away team's attack (3) with the strength of the home team's defence (4).

 

I found this forecasted the correct result 48.0% of the time, which is quite good considering that there are 3 possible outcomes (i.e. football is a three-sided coin toss in terms of results). 

I have read that 46% of games are home wins, 26% draws, 26% away wins, so there may be value in considering that, too.

Some of the scores that it predicts do seem a little extreme, but it's quite good with identifying draws and you can use the handicap bets available to take advantage of any extreme scorelines.

I actually made £18.70 from £40 of free bets using the system.  I used the system to break even with Bet365 and Ladbrokes, which then released the free bets with each of them.  Note that you don't need to bet more than pennies at a time in order to release the free bets: the sums that you bet just accumulate until you reach the stipulated free-bet threshold.

With Ladbrokes you receive 4 x £5 free bets, which I eventually realised the best way to use was to place on the Old Firm's opponents, at long odds, and simply cash out before the game begins.

I never actually bet on any Old Firm games, so the system is a slight underestimate of its capabilities.

Also, I only used it mid-season once teams had played each other many times already.

Edited June 4 by footnotes