Greg Darling asked 1 month ago
While the bookies constantly improve their soccer prediction methods and try to avoid paying out, we can still find holes in their predictions. The question is how. There’s no one million-dollar answer. On the other hand, you will find two ways that may allow you to beat the bookies. One way is to analyze non-measurable match information. A different way is to improve on statistical prediction models utilized by bookmakers.
The very first method requires you to analyze data such as match type or priority, which isn’t employed in statistical models. Among-the most prominent factors that might influence the outcome of a soccer match are:
Match type which may be an international/national league, a cup, or perhaps a friendly game. Especially profitable for you are the cup finals, where the media selects favorites as well as the better informed punter can benefit from betting on the highly priced underdog teams.
Match priority. Each team has to define its priority for the forthcoming matches, since team resources are restricted. European national cups are good examples for the very best teams of low priority games.
Match time is very important, since soccer predictions tend to be inaccurate at the beginning and by the end of the season.
Players’ injuries, illnesses and transfers especially in the cases of key players. Bookmakers’ odds are often calculated before these facts is accessible.
European Leagues – predictable and unpredictable. The Italian, Norwegian, French and Spanish leagues are considered predictable. The unpredictable will be the English and German leagues, especially at the beginning as well as the end of the season.
Other reasons are pitch conditions, team managers, match attendance, weather conditions and, of course, pure chance.
To analyze all that information for every match will be a complicated and time-consuming task. The alternative is to use advanced statistical prediction methods, which constitute a marked improvement on bookies’ prediction models.
Why can their models be further improved? First, when analyzing bookies’ predictions carefully, it really is easy to notice that their models are according to average statistics. Low odds usually correspond to teams with high table positions and vice versa. It is clear that the accuracy of their models suffers when team skills change. Thus, by taking into consideration team skill dynamics, you may increase your profit by placing a bet on highly priced underdogs.
Statistical models which were developed over the past number of years explain historical match results in terms of changing skills and strategy. Bookmakers don’t use such advanced models. Properly designed and optimized time-dependent models can predict around 70% of matches, outperforming the bookies’ predictions whose accuracy will be much lower.
