While the bookies constantly improve their soccer prediction methods and attempt to avoid paying out, we can still find holes within their predictions. The question is how. There is absolutely no one million-dollar answer. Even so, you can find two ways which will allow you to beat the bookies. One way is to analyze non-measurable match information. Another way is to improve on statistical prediction models used by bookmakers.

The very first method requires you to analyze data such as match type or priority, which isn’t used in statistical models. Among the most prominent factors that may influence the outcome of a soccer match are:

Match type which may be an international/national league, a cup, or possibly a friendly game. Especially profitable for you are the cup finals, where the media selects favorites and also the better informed punter can cash in on betting on the highly priced underdog teams.

Match priority. Each team has to define its priority for the forthcoming matches, since team resources are limited. European national cups are good examples for the top teams of low priority games.

Match time is essential, since trusted soccer predictions are often inaccurate at the beginning and by the end of the season.

Players’ injuries, illnesses and transfers especially within the cases of key players. Bookmakers’ odds tend to be calculated before this information is accessible.

European Leagues – predictable and unpredictable. The Italian, Norwegian, French and Spanish leagues will be considered predictable. The unpredictable will be the English and German leagues, especially at the beginning as well as the end of the season.

Other factors are pitch conditions, team managers, match attendance, weather conditions and, bear in mind, 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? For starters, when analyzing bookies’ predictions carefully, it’s easy to notice that their models are determined by average statistics. Low odds usually correspond to teams with high table positions and vice versa. It’s clear that the accuracy of their models suffers when team skills change. Thus, by taking into consideration team skill dynamics, you can increase your profit by placing a bet on highly priced underdogs.

Second, the bookmakers’ models do not distinguish between the attacking and defensive strengths of soccer teams and don’t remember that soccer teams choose different strategies when playing at home or away. As soon as you discover ways to distinguish between attacking and defensive strengths, you can easily forecast the total number of goals and beat the bookies at under/over bets.

Statistical models which were developed over the past number of years explain historical match results with regards to changing skills and strategy. Bookmakers do not use such advanced models. Properly designed and optimized time-dependent models can predict as much as 70% of matches, outperforming the bookies’ predictions whose accuracy is much lower.