Euro 08 betting strategy

(Written a few weeks' ago when I was still basking in the success of my betting strategy)

OK I'm going to take a break from taking a break from blogging.

Today I will outline my strategy of betting in football tournaments.

First, put your money on low risk outcomes. The strategy is not to gun for a high payoff. The idea is that you must maximise your chances of winning. As long as you win, you're doing fine, even though the payoff might be unattractive.

The main idea is to put down what I consider to be 90% certainty bets. Predictions that will come true 90% of the time. Here's a hypothetical example: consider betting that event A will happen 90% of the time. The odds given you are 1.2. Do you take it?

9 times out of 10 you will win, on average. Let's say you bet on this 10 times, and you win 9 times. You paid $100 on 10 X $10 bets, and you takings are 9 X $12 = $108. You win, and you come out ahead. That's great. It's a good way of making money. (But of course the money is meagre, and for me there is greater satisfaction in being right.)

When the bookies at s pool make the odds, they are usually tilted against you in this manner. There is no way to make money by dividing your money on the different outcomes, such that whatever the outcome, you will certainly win. For example, the odds for win, lose and draw are such that you can't divide $100 between them such that all 3 outcomes will result in you making back more than your $100.

No matter. The fact is that on the low end of the riskiness, sometimes the bookmakers will jack up the odds of an event such that it will entice more people to buy them. Let's say that Germany will beat Poland 9 times out of 10, but they can't quote you 1.1 because if they did, too few people would buy the bet. They need a certain number of people to bet on that, because they need to be guaranteed a certain amount of money in the event that Germany does not beat Poland. So what's happening here? In effect, you are selling insurance to the bookies, and they will pay you a premium for that insurance.

So for me, as in telling jokes, so it is with my risk profile. I like to aim low. I like to identify outcomes which are fairly certain.

How do I identify outcomes which are fairly certain?

1. A very strong team meets a very weak team.

When Portsmouth got into the semifinals of the FA cup, I decided that they were going to win it. They were the only premiership side in the semifinals. True, one of their opponents was West Bromwich Albion, who were League Champions, will play in the premiership next season, and probably will not get relegated. But Portsmouth are just a little weaker than the big four, and have great African players and must be considered a vastly stronger side. The odds were 1.75 for them to beat 2 lower division teams and claim the cup. It was the bargain I was looking for. Sure, both victories were close 1-0 victories. Sure, Portsmouth had a poor league form towards the end of the seasons (but I think it was Redknapp telling them to take it easy and save it for the FA cup). But they delivered.

If you bet on a team to lose, make sure that it's not one of those teams with very tight defences and who know how to squeeze the life out of a game and force a draw. The main reason why football is such an unpredictable game is because defence is so much easier than offense. It requires a high level of tactical awareness but comparatively little technical skill. The qualities of a good defender are more nebulous than of other types of players and more difficult to assess.

The last 2 teams which caused major upsets in the Euro championships are also those with good defences. Denmark had an all time great goalkeeper at the top of his form, Schmeichel. Greece had a defence so tight you couldn't pour water through it. Weak teams with good defences perform well in cup competitions because they make the other side nervous. France and Portugal must have been thinking, "oh no what would happen if I were to lose against this lousy side?" when they were playing the Greeks. Then they panic and run out of ideas, when running out of ideas is one of the worst things you can do when you're playing a tight defence.

2. There is the motivation to achieve a certain outcome.

Some matches don't matter. Suppose you were to bet on a match between 2 mid table teams at the end of the season? You couldn't predict the outcome. A group match between 2 teams which have qualified? I wonder if you remember the first time Singapore won the Tiger Cup, also the last time they won it with a team that you could really call Singaporean. Thailand and Malaysia had already qualified for the group, and they saw that Singapore had won its group, whereas Vietnam, the hosts, were second. Because both teams wanted to be second, it was a ridiculous situation where both teams wanted to lose. One of the defenders scored an own goal in that match. As you may recall, both teams were knocked out in the semis and they deserved it.

Or you could be 10 points clear at the top of a league table, and you've already won the title. Who would bet on a match like that? Of course you'd play for pride, but this takes away some of the certainty.

3. Align your objectives with the team.

There are plenty of statistics that don't matter, and in fact all of them don't matter except whether you score more than the other team. That is why I don't like to bet on peripheral things like the half time score, the number of corners, total number of goals, whether the number of goals is even or odd. These things don't count.

What matters is that both teams will want to win, or maybe they will play for a draw, which is why I only bother with the end of the match scores. Who cares about the half time score? Let's say I want to go home from work. You can say with certainty that 1 hour from now I will be home. But since I have 10 different ways to go home, which particular path I take is at my whim and fancy.

Coaches will devise strategies and ration the effort required from their team carefully. Is the opponent a slightly weaker side? Then throw everything at them in the first 20 minutes, try to put 1 or 2 past them, and then sit back and defend for the rest of the match. A slightly older side? Grind them down for 70 minutes, then use your superior stamina to kill off the match in the end. It's harder to guess whether they want the goals to come at the beginning or the end.

As for the number of goals, it is a dangerous proposition. Football matches are like battles, and like battles, everything happens in the heat of the moment. You could have 2 defensive teams playing and suddenly something snaps. An error is made, and the defenders get nervous and make mistakes.

Maradona scored 2 goals against England in a famous World Cup match. For the second goal, he dribbled through the defence and scored, and that is rightly regarded as one of the greatest goals of all time. But if he didn't score with his hand for the first goal, would 4 different defenders make a succession of mistakes that would allow the second goal to happen?

That much being said, if the teams are boring, like Liverpool and Chelsea, you can certainly bet on there being 2 goals or less. It's a good bet.

In the end, though, most of the time a team with greater ability and better organisation will win out. How they win out is not important. Usually you will just want to score 1 more goal than the other team and get all 3 points, and save up yourself for the next match. Even if you could beat the guy by 3 more goals, just do enough to win and look forward to the next match.

4. Cover a lot of event space

I like buying "eat balls". Suppose you think that a certain team was going to win or to at least draw, and even if it loses, will not do so by more than 2 goals, "eat ball" is certainly the thing for you. The bookie will offer the "eat ball" to the supposedly weaker team. But sometimes there are no really weaker teams in the match.

Take the recent Holland - Italy match. I thought that both teams were evenly matched. Both had great pedigree, relatively inexperienced coaches, and fairly troubled qualifying campaigns. I thought that Holland eat ball was a good idea and the game was headed for a draw.

I was wrong. Holland won by 3-0, in a spectacular display of the art of counterattacking. (A feat repeated in the 4-1 demolition of France). That was a little scary: I was dead wrong and something really unexpected happened. But I covered my bases.

Another bet came up for Croatia to eat ball against Germany. The prevailing wisdom was that Croatia was the weaker side but I didn't know - England had underestimated Croatia, so were the rest of the world going to do the same? Yes, they had a lousy first match but the coach seemed confident of himself and even had to remind his dejected players that after all it was a bloody victory what are you worked up about? That reminded me of Brian Clough who, on the night before an European Cup final took all his players to a pub to "loosen them up", and thereafter they won. I had confidence in Croatia because they had a good coach. Good coaches allow their players to relax and keep their mind on the game because they would have done all of the thinking properly. So I took Croatia to eat ball against Germany.
Seems like the handicap was not necessary - Croatia won the match.

Sometimes bookies will offer handicaps that don't really make sense. Buy those things, they are bargains.

5. There is little noise surrounding the outcome.

Sometimes you have a good team which has to perform well but in the end, due to fatigue, doesn't perform. Teams at the top of the table are usually tired after an European midweek. Don't bet on them to win after that, unless it's puny opposition. In a match at a major tournament, one team could be weaker, but they are the hosts with home advantage. That will cloud the outcome and make the bet less likely.

6. The bookie's judgement is clouded by a previous freak outcome.

Betting is like buying stocks, in that if you're not doing it to manage your risk profile, you're taking on somebody else's profit or loss that would otherwise be his if he didn't sell you his stock. If you make money, it's money that could have been his. Betting is a game where your adversary is the bookie. If you are looking to buy shares cheap and sell them high, you are hoping for the person you buy them from to make a mistake, and the person you sell them to to make a second mistake. So fundamentally the tactic is to search for bookie mistake and pounce on them.

Unfortunately bookies don't make many mistakes. Pls note: I said the bookie has to make a mistake, not just offer attractive odds. Only then will it be safe enough to buy. The corollary is that very few bets are ever worth making.

Sometimes bookies will look at histories between teams. That's good for us because history is such a bad indicator of what's going to happen. Did they quote the Portsmouth winning the FA cup at 1.75 because Portsmouth hadn't won a trophy in more than 50 years? Possibly. But I thought that was a mistake, Portsmouth were, to me, 80% going to win. Cardiff was quoted at 5.X to win. Even that would be a waste of money because it wasn't ever going to happen. There was a less than 10% chance it was going to happen and you don't bet on something with a 10% chance unless the odds are 10.

Or a match between Liverpool and Fulham recently. In the previous season, Fulham beat Liverpool to escape relegation. The odds for Liverpool to beat Fulham were quite high, like 1.7 or something. I dithered on buying it, and it was a mistake. Liverpool beat them this time around, and the Fulham team was weaker. (Although Fulham would become a better team as the season went on and eventually escape relegation.)

Then again, Liverpool had just had an European midweek, so it would be against my principles to bet on them.

7. Choose events which are simple.

This is actually an extension of point 3, aligning your goals with that of the team. That is the first thing that any team wants, and what they're all playing for. You don't have to bet on extra, peripheral things happening. Predicting the winner of a tournament is not a simple event, because it is contingent on the strongest team going through a few rounds, when a simple mistake, or a simple off day, or a simple unlucky day could finish it off in any one round. I made the mistake, based on the fact that Ronaldinho, Kaka, Adriano and Ronaldo were playing in Brazil, to bet on them winning the World Cup. They flamed out, I don't know against who. I also made the mistake, based on Argentina's early form, to bet on them winning the World Cup. Neither of them did, so I lost money on that. There were too many strong sides still in the cup at that point. So that was 1 painful lesson for me.

The top scorer is also risky. Over a campaign, it is more predictable but still risky. Injuries or a loss of form could finish off that guy. He may have had a hat trick early on but maybe he won't score again but decide to create for other people instead.

Then again there are times when I break the rule of not betting on outcomes of tournaments, and that is when the winners are obvious. Portsmouth were obvious winners of the FA cup. The EPL will be won by one of the big 4 this season. (Or rather big 3, since you can rule out Liverpool.) In 1995, Blackburn won it. In 1992, Leeds won the old championship, and those were the days when the rich clubs weren't so rich and the poor clubs weren't so poor.

If there are fairly obvious reasons why any 1 of these three clubs - Arsenal, Man U and Chelsea - are not going to win, then you should go out and bet on 2 of them near the beginning of the season. I remember 1 season when Man U had a lot of injuries at the beginning of a season. For me that meant I could go and buy Chelsea and Arsenal to win it, and surely enough, Chelsea won. Similarly, as of now, I would rule out Arsenal for the title unless they get reinforcements. The league belongs to Man U or Chelsea and hopefully at the start of the season the odds are high enough for them to cover each other.

8. Cup competitions

I usually don't like to bet on cup competitions, especially the latter stages of cups. That's usually when you have 8 or 4 teams left and "any one of them could win". There will be exceptions, such as teams which have gotten far in the cup by meeting plenty of weak opposition. But be careful of what you meant by a weak team. Greece in 2004 was not a weak team, and definitely they were not a weak minded team.

By that time the bookies will have a better idea of who's more powerful and will not underestimate sides like Croatia and Holland (and give them handicaps). Also outcomes are more precarious because of a lack of whipping boys and because, late in the tournament, the mental strength (which is harder to gauge) comes into the picture.

Put it this way, I seldom bet on football. I don't like betting on the league because it is always possible for a team to have an off day when they are so many matches to be played. I don't like cup competitions because sometimes you have giant killings going on, and the teams are distracted by the leagues. I like competitions which are dominated by 1 or 2 teams so you can go out and bet on them.

For me, the matches with a high enough predictability are those which are played in group matches of major international tournaments. Possibly the bookies will be more generous in their odds because they want to encourage our hardworking citizenry to become problem gamblers.

Once this Euro championships gets to the knockout phase, it will be more difficult. Then I will have to bet on very strong teams versus very weak teams. And make sure that those weak teams are the ones with soft centres.

I'm not the sort of person who goes for the 50 yard lob. I'm the 6 yard box tap in sort of guy.

My perfect record of betting:

Holland to eat 1.5 against Italy. Won.
(The bookies underestimated Holland)
Romania to eat 1.5 against France. Won.
(The bookies overestimated France)
Portugal to beat the Czechs. Won.
(I felt that the Portugese are strong this year and the Czechs are fading)
Turkey to eat 1.5 against Switzerland. Won.
(Bookies underestimated Turkey, although this was a little risky because Switzerland were the home side. Still Switzerland lost their only decent forward and I consider them castrated.)
Croatia to eat 1.5 against Germany. Won.
(Bookies - and everybody else, it seems - underestimated Croatia, or were otherwise fooled by Croatia's lousy showing in the first match.)
Austria to eat 1.5 against Poland. Won.
(Austria showed they were a strong side (or at least a poison pill) against Croatia, and the bookies underestimated Austria.)
Spain to win against Sweden. Won.
(I was lucky I din catch this match. Spain was drawing until a last minute goal and I was saved by the skin of my teeth.)
Turkey to eat 1.5 against Czechs. Won.
(I have a lot of confidence in the Czechs don't I? I was saved when Turkey pulled 1 back from 0-2 down, although I could not have predicted that they were going to bang in 2 more.)
Austria to eat 1.5 against Germans. Won.
(I believed Austria when they said they were not going to wet their pants against Germany. This is not 1938, where Germany annexed Austria without Austria putting up a fight. But when Germany scored 1-0 and started bombarding the goal mouth this was going to be close. Luckily for me Germany are cock. Update - Germany upset Portugal)
Russia to win or draw vs Sweden. Won.
(I have a lot of confidence in the Swedes don't I? This was against the advise of ppl who told me that the Swedes are better. But Russia have a lot of the St Petersburg people who ass raped Bayern Munich in the UEFA cup final din they? They have Guus Hiddink who flicked England 1 side like a piece of pee sai. So dun pray pray. Update - Russia reached semi's)