Football spread betting

by Harry

Football has now become the most bet on sport in the world. This is basically down to the excitement and action it brings which has given rise to it's popularity in almost every, if not all countries across the globe.
When they think of betting, most people think of traditional fixed odds betting where you bet your stake on the odds given for a particular market and then your winnings are calculate from the stake multiplied by these odds.

For example, if Manchester United are listed to win against Everton at 1.5 to 1, then for every £1 you bet you will get £1.5 back. Manchester United are favourites here with Everton listed at 5.5 to 1 for the win. Because United are favourites the odds are low and you don't get much back if they win.

Spread betting acts to make each site of the market more equal. When you spread bet you will see a set of two numbers like this: SELL 60 - 65 BUY. You are basically betting on if you think you think the actual result will fall higher or lower than this 'spread'. For every point/unit the actual result move away from the spread number that you bet on you will win your stake multiplied by the amount the spread moves.

We can use an example with football spread betting. For a football match you might see a spread for total goals in a match like this: SELL 2.8 - 3 BUY.

If you think there will be more than 3 goals in the match then you should BUY. Lets say £10 per goal for this example.

If the match then finishes with 5 goals you would have won £20.

Here are the calculations: 5 goals - 3 that you bought at = 2 goals. 2 goals multiplied by £10 per goal = £20 profit.

If the match only finished with 1 goal then you would lose £20

Here are the calculations: 1 goal - 3 that you bought at = -2 goals -2 goals multiplied by £10 per goal = -£20

If you thought before the match that there would be less than 3 goals, the you would have selected SELL at 2.8. The same calculations apply to work out the winnings/loses.

About the Author
We specialise in football spread betting and are here to help as much as possible.

Improve Your Soccer Betting Using The Superiority Method

by Malcolm Nossiter

Improve Your Soccer Betting is a series of articles that describe some well known and well used statistical techniques that will help the soccer punter make more informed bets. Each of the techniques has its own advantages and disadvantages and using them in isolation will improve your chances of winning. However, together they will prove invaluable in your battle with the bookies. In each article we will describe in detail how a particular method works giving you enough information for you to go ahead and create your own forecasts. We will also give you information as to where you can already find websites that use this technique in comprising their weekly soccer betting forecasts.

The statistical methods described in this set of articles will help you to arrive at a better decision about the match, or matches, that you are betting on.

In this article we will be describing the well known Superiority method. The Superiority method is based on goal difference (superiority) for both teams in a fixture over the past set number of games.

Here are the basic rules...

Get goal difference for each team. This could be either;

a) All home games only for the home team and all away games only for the away team over the last N games.

Or

b) All games for each team over the last N games.

Next we need to count each occurrence of a particular goal difference. We need to do this for both the home side and the away side. We create a table which holds the counts and in our case we have chosen to have thirteen rows in our table that represent the following goal differences:

INDEX GOAL DIFF 1..........>-5 2..........-5 3..........-4 4..........-3 5..........-2 6..........-1 7..........0 8..........1 9..........2 10........3 11........4 12........5 13........>5

So for our N matches we will add one to the content of each index whenever that goal difference is encountered. This may be a little confusing so let's look at an example.

Arsenal v West Ham

ARSENAL 2 -1 0 0 3 -2 1 1 1 5 1 0 0 -2 WEST HAM 0 0 -2 -3 -1 3 1 -1 -1 2 1 3 0 1

The above shows the goal differences for the last fourteen matches for Arsenal and West Ham, now let's add these to our goal difference table:

INDEX GOAL DIFF ARSENAL WEST HAM 1..........>-5.......0..........0 2..........-5.........0..........0

3..........-4.........0..........0 4..........-3.........0..........1 5..........-2.........2..........1 6..........-1.........1..........3

7..........0..........4..........3 8..........1..........4..........3 9..........2..........1..........1 10........3..........1..........2

11........4..........0..........0 12........5..........1..........0 13........>5........0..........0

Now each home team array count is added to the opposite array count for the away side. So, the home teams' array index 13 is added to the away teams' array index 1, the home teams array index 12 is added to the away teams array index 2, etc. In our example this gives us;

INDEX GOAL DIFF COMBINED 1..........>-5.........0 2..........-5...........0 3..........-4...........0 4..........-

3...........2 5..........-2...........3 6..........-1...........4 7..........0............7 8..........1............7 9..........2............2

10........3............2 11........4............0 12........5............1 13........>5..........0

The forecast can now be determined. If we assume that a draw is represented by array index 7 then array indexes 1 to 6 represent an away win, and array indexes 8 to 13 represent a home win. So, the home win counts are totalled and so are the away win counts. In our example this gives us;

AWAY WIN9 DRAW7 HOME WIN12

The total number of counts = 28 Therefore, Away win possibility = 32% Draw possibility = 25% Home win possibility = 43%.

Now it's your turn...

Of course you may choose to use different values to those shown above and by experimenting you may come up with better values to use.

If you have the necessary skills you could go away and build your own spreadsheet of data or even write a piece of software to take in results and fixtures and apply the Superiority method to your data. Or, if you're lazy like me, you could grab some free software that already does this for you. If this last option is for you then visit 1X2Monster where you can download a FREE copy of the Footyforecast 2.0 soccer betting software which utilises all of the statistical methods described in this series of articles. You will also be able to download FREE weekly database updates for your software, how cool is that?

Here is a list of all the articles in this series...

Improve Your Soccer Betting Using The Rateform Method Improve Your Soccer Betting Using The Footyforecast Method Improve Your Soccer Betting Using The Win Draw Loss Method Improve Your Soccer Betting Using The Simple Sequence Method Improve Your Soccer Betting Using The Score Prediction Method Improve Your Soccer Betting Using The Superiority Method

About the Author
Malcolm Nossiter is the owner of 1x2monster.com and footyforecast.com. He has been providing hundreds of 1X2 tips every week since 1999. Please visit 1x2monster.com for a fountain of information on soccer betting.

Improve Your Soccer Betting Using The Score Prediction Method

by Malcolm Nossiter

Improve Your Soccer Betting is a series of articles that describe some well known and well used statistical techniques that will help the soccer punter make more informed bets. Each of the techniques has its own advantages and disadvantages and using them in isolation will improve your chances of winning. However, together they will prove invaluable in your battle with the bookies. In each article we will describe in detail how a particular method works giving you enough information for you to go ahead and create your own forecasts. We will also give you information as to where you can already find websites that use this technique in comprising their weekly soccer betting forecasts.

The statistical methods described in this set of articles will help you to arrive at a better decision about the match, or matches, that you are betting on.

In this article we will be describing the well known Score Prediction method. The Score Prediction method uses a teams goal performances over a specified period of time in order to predict the score of the game concerned.

Here are the basic rules...

As an example of the Score Prediction method this is how Footyforecast and 1X2Monster handle this method. This is an example of a match and each teams respective goal count for the last five games:

home team 3-3 1-0 4-1 0-2 2-1 away team 0-1 2-2 0-3 6-0 1-3

We can work out some figures from this as follows:

home teams goals scored for = HGF = 3 + 1 + 4 + 0 + 2 = 10

away teams goals scored for = AGF = 1 + 2 + 3 + 0 + 3 = 9

home teams goals against = HGA = 3 + 0 + 1 + 2 + 1 = 7

away teams goals against = AGA = 0 + 2 + 0 + 6 + 1 = 9

Now we can work out points for each team based on the goals they have scored and the goals they have had scored against them as follows:

home goal points = HGP = HGF + AGA = 10 + 9 = 19

away goals points = AGP = HGA + AGF = 7 + 9 = 16

And now we can get a difference:

goal points difference = GPD = HGP - AGP = 19 - 16 = 3

Now we could classify this as follows:

GPD => +2 then home win, GPD =< -2 then away win GPD -2 then draw.

These parameters are obviously fairly arbitrary but experience should allow you to tune them more carefully. Now we must use the GPD and one of three tables. Here are the tables...

Home WIn Score Prediction HOME AWAY HGSP GOALS AGSP >0 >11 >17 >26
>49 6 0 1 2 3 >43 5 0 1 2 3 >37 4 0 1 2 3 >30 3 0 1 2 >23 2 0 1 >0 1 0

Away WIn Score Prediction AWAY HOME AGSP GOALS HGSP >23 >18 >13 >0
>34 5 3 2 1 0 >29 4 3 2 1 0 >24 3 2 1 0 >18 2 2 1 0 >0 1 2 1 0

Draw Score Prediction HOME + AWAY SCORE
>44 3-3 >34 2-2 >24 1-1 >0 0-0

Since our match has generated a home win prediction then we must use the HOME WIN SCORE PREDICTION table to obtain our score prediction. To do this we need to calculate another parameter, that of home goal score points as follows:

HGSP = HGP + all goals scored by home team of 3 or more in a match + all goals against the away side of 3 or more.

therefore HGSP = 19 + 7 + 6 = 32

Now do the same for the away team:

AGSP = AGP + all goals scored by away team of 3 or more in a match + all goals against the home side of 3 or more.

therefore AGSP = 16 + 6 + 3 = 25

So, in the home win score prediction table we go to HOME > 30 which gives us 3 goals for the home team and go to AWAY > 17 giving us two goals for the away team therefore the result is predicted as a 3-2 home win.

Now it's your turn...

Of course you may choose to use different values to those shown above and by experimenting you may come up with better values to use.

If you have the necessary skills you could go away and build your own spreadsheet of data or even write a piece of software to take in results and fixtures and apply the Score Prediction method to your data. Or, if you're lazy like me, you could grab some free software that already does this for you. 1X2Monster and Footyforecast have been providing this kind of facility since 1999. A total of seven different statistical methods are used to determine the outcome of each game played in each league, and a comprehensive record of how each method in each game performed is kept. Apart from how each tip performed within its respective league 1X2Monster also provides the league tables of how each league has performed in successfully predicting outcomes of games. The league tables of prediction performance are produced for home win predictions, draw predictions, away win predictions, and for overall predictions and are invaluable tools to the soccer punter when deciding where to target their European soccer betting predictions.

Here is a list of all the articles in this series...

How To Make A Profit From FREE 1X2 Soccer Picks Improve Your Soccer Betting Using The Rateform Method Improve Your Soccer Betting Using The Footyforecast Method Improve Your Soccer Betting Using The Win Draw Loss Method Improve Your Soccer Betting Using The Simple Sequence Method Improve Your Soccer Betting Using The Score Prediction Method Improve Your Soccer Betting Using The Superiority Method

About the Author

Malcolm Nossiter is the owner of 1x2monster.com and footyforecast.com. He has been providing hundreds of 1X2 tips every week since 1999. Please visit 1x2monster.com for a fountain of information on soccer betting.

Improve Your Soccer Betting Using The Win Draw Loss Method

by Malcolm Nossiter

Improve Your Soccer Betting is a series of articles that describe some well known and well used statistical techniques that will help the soccer punter make more informed bets. Each of the techniques has its own advantages and disadvantages and using them in isolation will improve your chances of winning. However, together they will prove invaluable in your battle with the bookies. In each article we will describe in detail how a particular method works giving you enough information for you to go ahead and create your own forecasts. We will also give you information as to where you can already find websites that use this technique in comprising their weekly soccer betting forecasts.

The statistical methods described in this set of articles will help you to arrive at a better decision about the match, or matches, that you are betting on.

In this article we will be describing the well known Win Draw Loss method.

Here are the basic rules...

The Win, Draw, Loss method is very simple and takes into account the proportion of past wins, draws, and losses over a specified period of time. By calculating the number of wins, draws and losses for both the home and away sides and then combining them it is possible to produce a statistical probability of the possible outcome of the game.

Here is how a typical calculation is made...

1. For a specified period of time the number of wins, losses, and draws are counted for each side. This could be for a whole season or you may wish to have a rolling time period, say the last six months for example.

2. The percentage probabilities for home wins, draws, and away wins are then made. For example, the home win percentage is calculated as follows:

(( HW + AL) * 100) / total number of matches

Where,

HW = number of home wins by home team AL = number of away losses by away team Once you have a percentage probability for each outcome a decision can be made on the most likely outcome.

Let's look at a simple example of how you could apply this...

First of all you would collect the data for a specified period of time and for each of the three possible outcomes, i.e.

HW = number of home wins for home team HD = number of draws for home team HL = number of home losses for home team AW = number of away wins for away team AD = number of draws for away team AL = number of away losses for away team

TOTALGAMES = HW + HD + HL + AW + AD + AL

HOMEWIN = ((HW + AL)*100)/TOTALGAMES DRAW = ((HD+AD)*100)/TOTALGAMES

AWAYWIN = ((HL + AW)*100)/TOTALGAMES

This gives you a percentage probability for each of the three possible outcomes.

Now let's extend this to provide 1, X, 2, 1X, and X2 predictions...

To do this we can employ a simple voting system, here is how it works:

First we set three thresholds;

DRAWTHRESHOLD = 35% AWAYTHRESHOLD = 45% HOMETHRESHOLD = 55%

Then we initialise our voting counts for each method;

DRAWP = 0 HOMEP = 0 AWAYP = 0

Now we compare each of the calculated probabilities against our thresholds to arrive at a vote count for each outcome;

IF DRAW > DRAWTHRESHOLD THEN DRAWP = DRAWP + 3 ELSE HOMEP = HOMEP + 1

AWAYP = AWAYP + 1 END IF

IF AWAYWIN > AWAYTHRESHOLD THEN AWAYP = AWAYP + 3 ELSE HOMEP = HOMEP + 1 DRAWP = DRAWP + 1 END IF

IF HOMEWIN > HOMETHRESHOLD THEN HOMEP = HOMEP + 3 ELSE DRAWP = DRAWP + 1 AWAYP = AWAYP + 1 END IF

This means we now have a total vote count for each of the three possible outcomes. Next we can deduce our final 1, X, 2, 1X, and X2 predictions based on the voting as follows;

IF HOMEP > AWAYP AND HOMEP > DRAWP THEN PREDICTION = "1" ELSEIF AWAYP >
HOMEP AND AWAYP > DRAWP THEN PREDICTION = "2" ELSEIF DRAWP > HOMEP AND DRAWP > AWAYP THEN PREDICTION = "3" ELSEIF HOMEP = DRAWP AND HOMEP > AWAYP THEN PREDICTION = "1X" ELSEIF AWAYP = DRAWP AND AWAYP > HOMEP THEN PREDICTION = "X2" ELSEIF HOMEP = DRAWP AND HOMEP = AWAYP THEN PREDICTION = "X"

Now it's your turn...

Of course you may choose to use different values to those shown above and by experimenting you may come up with better values to use. So, you could create better threshold values and decide to collect data over any period of time you like. Experimenting with threshold values and durations will let you home in on the best settings for you.

If you have the necessary skills you could go away and build your own spreadsheet of data or even write a piece of software to take in results and fixtures and apply the Win Draw Loss method to your data. Or, if you're lazy like me, you could grab some free software that already does this for you. 1X2Monster and Footyforecast have been providing this kind of facility since 1999. A total of seven different statistical methods are used to determine the outcome of each game played in each league, and a comprehensive record of how each method in each game performed is kept. Apart from how each tip performed within its respective league 1X2Monster also provides the league tables of how each league has performed in successfully predicting outcomes of games. The league tables of prediction performance are produced for home win predictions, draw predictions, away win predictions, and for overall predictions and are invaluable tools to the soccer punter when deciding where to target their European soccer betting predictions.

Here is a list of all the articles in this series...

How To Make A Profit From FREE 1X2 Soccer Picks Improve Your Soccer Betting Using The Rateform Method Improve Your Soccer Betting Using The Footyforecast Method Improve Your Soccer Betting Using The Win Draw Loss Method Improve Your Soccer Betting Using The Simple Sequence Method Improve Your Soccer Betting Using The Score Prediction Method Improve Your Soccer Betting Using The Superiority Method

About the Author

Malcolm Nossiter is the owner of 1x2monster.com and footyforecast.com. He has been providing hundreds of 1X2 tips every week since 1999. Please visit 1x2monster.com for a fountain of information on soccer betting.