Football Value bets

[Benaldo]

If there's one thing I've learned since joining this site it's that finding value in bets appears to be the way forward. I wondered if a group of us would be interested in trying to do this when it comes to football.
What I'm proposing is a number of us (who know their stuff when it comes to footy) predict the percentage chance each team has of winning each game in the top four or five divisions. I take the average, run it through the value finder sheet - email out the results and boom there's your tips. To begin with we can just watch and see how the tips fair and then who knows?

I've started having a little play with the spreadsheet on my own but six/ten/twenty heads are much better than one and we'd get a much better idea of what a value bet is if there's more data.

Of course this would take up a bit of time but it'd be a bit of a laugh if nothing else and I don't mind collating it all over email.

I know the Bet Monkey does a similar thing very successfully, but I'm sure he wouldn't mind a bit of friendly competition and if we find another profitable system I'm not going to complain!

If no-one's willing I'll carry on regardless but even if there's only one of two of you interested it would (in theory) improve the accuracy of finding that value.

Let me know if you fancy it!

[thewolf]

a very small percentage difference can have a dramatic effect on whether it is value or not, different people will make such difference estimates. I think you need the same system, There are loads of websites that your find statistical percentages find one your happy with adjust these as you see fit, team news etc.

[Brian]

This is an excellent idea Benaldo and funnily enough is very similar to an idea we have for next season. As I found myself when using the value finder for premier league selections, it can be quite time consuming and difficult to keep tabs on all teams. What if we just focussed on the one each however?!...

Basically we were going to look at letting people choose the team they support or know best and give predictions for the main markets e.g. Win, Over 2.5 goals, half time and correct score maybe (any others?).

In theory the people who follow/watch their teams each week should be able to predict better. I hadn't thought however of including the value finder element and I think this an excellent idea because is a more unbiased way of finding out whether the odds are value and not just trying to make the most likely prediction. These are not the same! We could maybe input predictions and percentage estimates and see how the results compare.

So, eventually we could have some sort of Tipster Table style records for these predictions/estimates and we can see who knows their team the best and who is worth following. To do well in betting focusing on an area where you have more information and an edge is key and so trying to do this with your own team makes perfect sense. It'll also help people to stay interested with what's happening with their team even when the chips are down.

What do you reckon? I'd like to hear more from you about exactly how you think we could make this work and we can put something together, even if it's something simple to get started with.

[Vinnyvagus]

Hiya, did anything come of this?

thx.