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With the Denver Nuggets tying up their playoff series against the Utah Jazz last night, we have our first Game 7 of the 2019-20 NBA season. With data going back to 2002, the Home team wins 74% of these games, and covers 57% of the time, but with Home and Away merely an administrative technicality in the play-offs this season, we can probably ignore this statistic. For the record, Denver are the "Home" team tomorrow.  In 'normal' playoff games, Home teams win 64.4% of games, but this season that percentage is down to 55%. In the First Round of playoffs, the numbers are 65% and 56.4%. The percentage declines from the early rounds to the finals as does the difference between the teams. When looking at covering the spread, First Round games see the Home team cover 51% of the time, which is not too exciting, but the Totals markets in Game 7s show a tendency for the Overs to be 'over'-valued with Unders the result more than 60% of the time.   Some of you may know th...

A winning start to the 2020-21 football season, although laying the 4-1 outsider isn't likely to excite too many readers because, to quote Warren Buffett (who turns 90 today), " nobody wants to get rich slow ."  Unfortunately, barring an unlikely lottery win, for most of us getting rich slowly is the only way we are going to get rich, but the good news is that so long as you don't leave it too late to start, it's something that anyone can do. "Personal finance is just math mixed with discipline and self control." - Steve Burns In fact, birthday boy Warren Buffett has made nearly 90% of his estimated $82 billion after reaching the age of 65.  "Investing well is important, but investing well for a long time matters even more." Of course that means he had about $8 billion to his name when he reached 65, and I for one am behind schedule on reaching that goal (unless Tesla keeps up its run) but we don't all need to be Warren Buffett to be wealth...

Going back to 2005, Liverpool are the second shortest price (using Pinnacle) to win the season opening FA Community Shield today against Arsenal. Only Manchester United at 1.49 v Wigan Athletic in 2013 have been shorter. Previous results, with the favourite listed as the Home team: Odds-on favourites don't have a great record, with three of the six previous such teams failing to win. Once again a sample size of 16 isn't enough data, but certainly backing underdogs doesn't appear to be the best bet in these games.  In matches between Big 6 clubs, well, that's basically all of them... Of the three non-Big 6 clubs to have competed, two (Wigan and Portsmouth) will play each other in League One this season, with Portsmouth still waiting for their Wembley date for the EFL Trophy Final of last season against Salford City. 

The NHL, and better late than never, did finally decide to join the protests against racial injustice in the US. The NHL drew criticism for not joining the NBA, WNBA, MLS and some MLB teams in suspending competitions or practices on Wednesday, before the player-led Hockey Diversity Alliance asked the NHL to push pause on games Thursday. Play-off games were postponed last night and tonight while seven MLB games were also called off, as were all the NBA play-off games and WNBA games, but some semblance of normality may return tonight. The spare time has not been totally wasted, as I've been working through some data from the Europa League, a competition I've never been too interested in before, at least not until it reaches the final stages. Matches between the likes of FK Anzi Makhackala and Metalist Kharkiv don't really set my pulse racing but  I'm interested in seeing if some of the trends from the Champions League in the earlier knock-out stages are visible here too, ...

If the 2019-20 NBA season wasn't already strange enough, three game 5 matches were last night postponed after players refused to play in protest at the latest police shooting of a 29 year old black man. Seven times. In the back. The victim, Jacob Blake, survived, but is paralysed from the waist down. The postponements were triggered by the Milwaukee Bucks (from Wisconsin where the shooting occurred) who refused to come out of the locker room for their game against the Orlando Magic. To their credit, the Magic said they would not accept a walkover, and the league quickly postponed all three games scheduled, the other two being the Oklahoma City Thunder v Houston Rockets and the Portland Trail Blazers v Los Angeles Lakers games. Both Los Angeles teams (Lakers and Clippers) have now "voted" to stop the season, but other teams are not aligned, so how this will play out remains to be seen. Voted is in quotes because some reports consider this to have been a "poll" ra...

One win for the favourite and a rare win for an underdog in the two European football finals from the weekend but no large profits. Depending on when you backed Bayern Munich, you may even have made a small loss with the price on Bayern Munich shortening to odds-on in some places, although Pinnacle closed at around 2.02 and 2.14 was the price I took on Betfair. Here are the numbers updated, and not a pretty sight for those who prefer the underdog in finals: There were 76 knock-out round matches, fewer than the usual 90 owing to the change in format to single elimination in later rounds due to the pandemic.  In the Champions League since 2004, the ROI when backing the favourite is  3.6%  which increases to  7.8%  in Big-5 matches.   Backing the favourite in every knock-out match this season (Champions League and Europa League) had an ROI of 20.2% , and in Big-5 matches, of 40% . (Big-5 in this context means matches featuring clubs from England, France, ...

Another look back into the past, and here are a couple of systems for all you horse racing enthusiasts. Unfortunately, it doesn't appear that either of the two was actually profitable, and the first was one that I thought I had invented myself when I was ten years old as I wrote when setting up this blog many years ago.  From the "About Me" section: The first system I came up with was a simple one - back the favourite and double up after a loss until a winner. Simple enough in theory, and I told my Dad about it. Not being a betting man himself, he ran it by some of his colleagues, and came home to tell me that it wouldn�t work because a long losing run would mean that the bank would be empty. Then there was always the possibility that the winner would be returned at odds-on, meaning that the total returns would not match the outlay. Not what a ten year old wants to hear! Far from inventing it, the idea (Martingale) had been around since 18th century France and probably pr...

Although I have every confidence in the rationale behind Longsight's 1964 revelation about " the tendency for clubs to draw several matches after ending a long run without a draw " just in case this method fails me, I've been continuing my research which of course knows no bounds. Next up is this little nugget from the Aberdeen Evening Express of February 22nd, 1956 which reveals " the extraordinary way drawn matches cluster together on the [football pools] coupon ". Describing this phenomenon to be " almost as catching as the measles ", Paul Burden finds it curious " the way one drawn game seems to affect several others immediately below it ". This is top-notch research, and if Paul Burden is still alive 64 years later, he must be a very wealthy man. If he has passed away, presumably his family are enjoying the fruits of his ground-breaking research. I'm not sure how I've missed this, since I've always considered matches to b...

The Daily Mirror's Pools 'expert' Longsight had an article in the paper on April 8th, 1964 with the headline "Draws all come out in the long run", noting "the tendency for clubs to draw several matches after ending a long run without a draw." Further examples were given including Aston Villa (6 in 11 after a run of 16), Wolverhampton Wanderers (8 in 16 after 13), Huddersfield Town (6 in 12 after 15), Plymouth Argyle (5 in 8 after 11), Bristol City (4 in 7 after 10), Colchester United (5 in 12 after 11), Hull City (6 in 12 after 12), Shrewsbury Town (6 in 13 after 13), Gillingham (5 in 6 after 18) and Oxford United (5 in 12 after 10).  And then the reason is explained: The explanation is, of course, that the general average of draws is about one in five games.  Clubs which run up long sequences without a draw can be expected to restore the balance to some degree once the run is ended. So now we know, and it's all been out there in the public domain fo...

The Vanguard Group, the company that came up with the first index fund, revealed yesterday that fewer than 0.5% of investors "pulled the ripcord and moved entirely to cash" during the " Corona Crash ." The average age of these "panickers" was 56, so one can assume they have retirement on their minds, but with the indexes now at, or close to, new highs, they might be regretting their decisions. The S&P 500 dropped 33.33% from its February high, and then bounced back over 50% to end up almost exactly where it was.  Readers will be aware that I bought into Tesla a little over two years ago  at a little under $315 and yesterday it closed at $1,845, a record high. Why? Well that's helpful. Fortunately the writers of the above headline may have missed the vote of confidence from one analyst: Shares of Tesla Inc. TSLA, +11.20% shot up 9.8% in afternoon trading, to propel them above the $1,800 mark for the first time, after an upbeat call from Wedbush anal...

Slow starts are somewhat magnified this season with just 60 games in total, but finally some signs of life for MLB's Hot Favourites and the systems in total are actually in profit for the season! In the NHL, the trend I mentioned for Unders in empty stadiums has continued with a 40-26-4 record. The books are adjusting the total as might be expected, but for now Unders is the play. With no Home advantage, these playoffs are unique, but I've been looking at the records of Favourites and Underdogs since the league re-structured while ignoring the venue. Historically, backing the Favourite in an NHL play-off game is not a great idea, and actually one that is getting worse by the season. This season appears to be following the same pattern, with 'Dogs currently showing a 15.1%  ROI. I think I've mentioned before that accounting for time zones in this sport can be helpful, with the Eastern Conference often quite different to the Western Conference (teams are geographically c...

Seven (of 30) MLB teams have already played one-third of their scheduled 60 fixtures for this season, although the St Louis Cardinals have played just five, which leads me to believe that not all matches will be completed, and placings will be determined based on win percentage. Had they won 3 of the 5 matches played rather than just two, the Cardinals would be in good shape for a play-off spot, but presumably a "minimum games played" rule would be in play to avoid this type of situation. Big favourites, at least on the Money Line, are still struggling to recover from early losses, although the Run Line bets are slightly positive.  One reason may be the general decline in Hits this season, a key metric in baseball, and no surprise that with the Designated Hitter rule being applied in both leagues, the National League is leading the American league in this category as well as in Runs per Game for the first time since the two leagues were realigned to have the same number of te...

Brentford's 73 years of hurt will, unfortunately, be extended by another year at least after losing out yet again (no promotions in nine attempts) in promotion Play-Offs.  For the matches I have betting data, backing Brentford over the years would have been costly: One win in twelve matches, and that in the one match they were odds-on (versus Swansea City this season.) Of course, as soon as I mention that the Draw isn't generally a good bet in Play-Off Finals, along comes a perfect one.  Here are the updated numbers for Play-Off Finals on neutral grounds: In Baseball, MLB continues to have issues with COVID-19, with one team (St Louis Cardinals) having played as few as 5 games, while others have played the scheduled 16 matches. If you follow big favourites, a strategy that has been profitable in 17 of the last 18 "months" (I combine the few games at the start and end of the season with the appropriate full month adjoining it, i.e. March with April and October with Sep...

Back in April, I wrote about the 1946-47 season and how the topic of voiding it came up after a spell of bad weather, a decision that would have cost Liverpool the First Division title.  What I didn't mention was that at the other end of the table, such a decision would have saved Leeds United and Brentford from relegation.  The season was ultimately completed and while Leeds have since returned on four occasions and achieved some success, Brentford haven't, spending most of their time since at the third level.  If they win the Championship Playoff Final today, they will end a 73 year absence from the top flight, breaking the record gap of 70 seasons currently held by Bradford City. Brentford haven't won a top tier game since beating Leeds 2:1 on 5th April 1947 (with two goals from former Crystal Palace players, in case you didn't know).  Here are the results for the Championship Play-Offs since 2004: And below are the outcomes from backing Favourites, Underdogs and...

A win for Draw followers in the National League Regional play-offs where the sequence of at least one of the Finals ending all-square since 2013 was extended with Weymouth and Dartford playing out a scoreless draw in the South. Weymouth were promoted to the National League after winning on penalties. In the North, Altrincham won 1:0 at Boston United, the first win for an Away team in a Final since 2015, to make it eleven Under 2.5 goals in the last 14 finals.  I think someone must be reading this blog, because the Draw price in both matches shortened following Friday's post . In the National League Play-Off, while backing the Draw is historically not a profitable strategy, I backed the wrong horse opting for Notts County, when laying the Draw would have been a better option perhaps, but Harrogate Town won the game and become the 20th 'Town' to play in the Football League, and the seventh in the last quarter of a century. They've come a long way in 40 years! For those w...

Don't believe everything you read  about the FA Cup Final today. Whoever wrote the above somehow missed out on the Finals of 1975 West Ham United v Fulham, 1980 West Ham United v Arsenal, 1982 Tottenham Hotspur v Queens Park Rangers, plus the two Arsenal v Chelsea finals already this millennium. Other than that, sure, it's been 53 years...   London clubs have actually dominated the FA Cup in the Premier League era with only seven of the 29 Finals not featuring a London club. Three Finals have been all-London matches, and 16 Cup wins have gone to London (Arsenal 9, Chelsea 7).  While Crystal Palace and West Ham United have both made an appearance, (both with Alan Pardew as manager), it's rather an oddity that Tottenham Hotspur haven't appeared in a Final since 1991. It's the third Arsenal v Chelsea Final today following those of 2002 and 2017 both of which were won by Arsenal but it's Chelsea who are favourites this time, although that status didn't help them...