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Thursday, September 13, 2007

International Football - Value punters haven?

Value betting discussion
Just a quick round-up of the last five days of European football betting - which of course has been all about the Euro2008 qualifiers.

Regular readers will know that I release a spreadsheet onto the forum with statistical picks and predictions - and you'll also know that despite this it's very hard to find a big edge.

Last Saturday we analysed the spreadsheet results and found that (as expected) there was little profit to be made in picking "bankers" but what we did find was a very tasty +35% yield if you followed the spreadsheet in betting on "value" teams between 100%-150%.

So when I released the Midweek International Spreadsheet on the forum we talked about the potential value in the thread

However even I was surprised with the results as the "likely winners" did pretty well HOME 9-2 / AWAY 2-1) but barely broke even - while the value bets went 10-9 for a very tasty +45% yield on turnover.

Put that another way - if you put $100 on each of the 19 value bets then you came out with a $866 profit !! That's VALUE BETTING !! And it doesn't include either Scotland or Moldova who we didn't think we value.

My quick thoughts as to why international betting might be slightly easier to find value bets could be as simple as punter patriotism. People will tend to bet with their own country thus pushing some prices way out ... and the bookmakers do not care - they will set prices with GOOD VALUE as long as they get a balanced book.

This means that there could be very good value indeed for the dispassionate value hunting punter - we will look out for it with the release of future international sheets.

(Note : Don't go blindly betting on the same system for domestic club games - it's not as simple to find value - the bookmakers and punters are far sharper in club football )