Australia Sports Betting

After topping the time sheets in first day of the final pre-season test, Webber looks to be a good value bet to win the 2010 F1 Championship. Webber himself is optimistic, saying he believes that the Red Bull team is in better shape than other teams.

Jenson Button won the championship last year, but he did most of the work in the first half of the season, winning six of the first seven races, and failing to win a race after that. Webber won two races in the second half of the season and ended fourth in the championship. Below are the race results and final standings last season.

2009 Race Results

2009 Driver Standings

Webber’s teammate Vettel is one of the favourites to win the title, with 6-1 odds on Sportsbet. While I think he has a better chance of winning than Webber, I feel the available odds on Webber provide better value. For anyone with a Betfair account, you may be able back Webber now and lay a bet against him at lower odds at a later date if he has a good start to the season.

Sportsbet currently offers the best odds on Webber at 15-1. At the time of writing, Betfair has 12.5-1 odds and Bet365 is offering 11-1 odds. It just goes to show that it pays to shop around!

I’m trying to recall the largest possible payout I have ever experienced as a sports better. It is probably around the $5,000 mark. Well, I have now been put to shame by a Sportsbet punter who has placed a $700 bet on Tom Scully to win the Brownlow Medal at 1501-1 odds. If this punter is right he/she will pocket $1,050,000!

You could call this sheer lunacy, with the punter facing a 0.99933% chance of losing $700, presuming the odds are correct. Having said that, the odds of a million dollar windfall are much better than if you spent $750 on Lottery tickets. Ignoring the time value of money, this bet is equivalent to spending $14.42 per week on the Lotteries for one year.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with the AFL, Tom Scully is the number one draft pick this year. The Brownlow Medal is awarded to the “fairest and best” player in the AFL during the regular season.

In an earlier post regarding 0-0 draw refunds with Bet365, I raised the question of what proportion of football fixtures end 0-0. I have now found a more reliable figure, based on English Premier League fixtures between 1993 and 2010. At the same time, I have determined the historical frequencies for a range of other scorelines. Hopefully you will find this data useful when making correct score bets.

The data set

I have used raw results data from Football-data.co.uk. I’ve used the English Premier League results as my data set because I presume this is the most popular for Australian punters. I have included everything from the first week of the 1993-94 season through to last weekend’s fixtures in the 2009-10 season.

Methodology

I first pooled every fixture into one large data set and calculated the scoreline statistics over the past 16 1/2 seasons. I then calculated the corresponding statistics for each season individually to see if there are any trends over time. For example, are 0-0 draws becoming more or less frequent over time? Or are they relatively constant?

Results

The first observation I made was that the scoreline statistics fluctuate over time, but with few discernible trends. For example, 7% of fixtures ended 0-1 in 1993-04, and 6% in 2009-10. There was little variation over the seasons in-between. This result justifies the use of older data to create a larger data set.

If I had to find and point out one trend, it appears that the odds of the home team winning have increased over time, but this trend is modest.

The tables below provide my results along with some comments. Table 1 provides win/draw/loss statistics, while Tables 2A and 2B provide scoreline statistics. For each table the top row provides the overall statistics covering all seasons, while the row below it provides the corresponding “fair” betting odds. These odds have been calculated as the reciprocal of the frequency.

Table 1 – Win/draw/loss statistics

The probability of a home win is currently equal to the combined probabilities of a draw and a home loss. There appears to be a modest upward trend in the frequency of a home win, suggesting that home advantage is playing a larger role over time.

Table 2A – Scoreline statistics

Table 2B – Scoreline statistics continued

I have graphed the above figures and can’t discern any clear trends in the frequencies of individual scorelines. Having said that, based on the upward trend concerning home victories one can conclude that the combined probabilities of the home win scorelines will have increased.

One other point to mention is that the combined probabilities of all of the above scorelines (0-0 to 3-3) is 89.3%.

How to interpret these figures

Obviously, every game is different, and these figures and corresponding odds are for all previous English Premier League fixtures. One wouldn’t expect 2.15 odds on Manchester United to beat Burnley at home, for example. Having said that, I feel these figures are useful for providing benchmarks based on which to adjust your perceived odds. For example, if you anticipate a low scoring affair for a particular fixture, you can take the 8.97 odds for a 1-0 home victory and adjust them downwards. If you foresee a 0-0 draw as being less likely than average, you could adjust the 11.38 odds for a 0-0 draw upward accordingly.

If you have any suggestions or requests for other football data analysis let me know.

For those of you who enjoy the convenience of shopping online, Oz Lotteries is an excellent means of buying lottery tickets from home. They offer a wide range games, including OZ Lotto, Powerball, and the Saturday Lotto. In addition to this, they offer syndicate options and repeat purchase facilities. The primary downside of Oz Lotteries is that their standard ticket prices are more expensive than what you would pay at a newsagent. For example, a Saturday Lotto ticket costs $0.80 per line while newsagent prices start at $0.6125 per line. Oz Lotteries do offer periodic bonus offers, however, that can make ticket purchases cheaper than those in newsagents.

Below is an overview of Oz Lotteries and my experience with them thus far.

Why Lotteries?

Any ‘rational’ sports better will ask the question, “why buy a lottery ticket?” The odds are stacked against you… The chances of a 1st division win are next to none… Well, these statements are true, and classical economics fails to explain why consumers do choose to take on outrageous odds for the chance to win big. A number of new economic theories have been presented, and Prospect Theory, pioneered by Kahneman and Tversky, is one of the best regarded. You can read more about it on Wikipedia, but essentially:

Personally, when I buy a Lotto ticket I feel I am paying for the “what will I do if I win” fantasy I get to play out in my head before the draw. Ironically, I am a net winner with Lottery tickets after picking up $3,000 a number of years ago. My second best haul was about $40, and I’ve had numerous $12.50 – $30 wins.

Services

Oz Lotteries offers pretty much everything except Instant Scratchies. They offer the following games:

• 6 from 38 pools – learn more
• Saturday Lotto – learn more
• Monday Lotto – learn more
• OZ Lotto – learn more
• Wednesday Lotto – learn more
• Powerball – learn more
• $2 Jackpot Lottery
  • Just like a raffle, each $2 Jackpot Lottery has a set number of ticket numbers to be sold (225,000). Once all are sold the draw for that particular lottery takes place. You may choose to be allocated either random (to a maximum of 5) or sequential ticket numbers – but you can’t select your own numbers.
  • For each draw 9,646 prizes are available; 3,217 win cash and 6,429 win free tickets
  • The odds are 1:24 of winning a prize
• $5 Jackpot Lottery
  • Just like a raffle, each $5 Jackpot Lottery has a set number of ticket numbers to be sold (180,000). Once all are sold the draw for that particular lottery takes place. You may choose to be allocated either random (to a maximum of 5) or sequential ticket numbers – but you can’t select your own numbers.
  • For each draw 11,425 prizes are available; 3,810 win cash and 7,615 win free tickets
  • The odds are 1:16 of winning a prize

Sign Up Bonuses & Specials

New customers can enjoy one of two signup bonuses.

• One free Oz Lotto game – $1.20 value
• Two free Powerball games – $1.50 value

Oz Lotteries also offers periodic specials. For example at the moment all members receive 18 free games when they purchase 30 games of ’6 From 38 Pools’ (offer expires February 20th). As I alluded to earlier, this makes your purchase cheaper than what is available at newsagents.

My Experience & Conclusions

Oz Lotteries provides a fantastic service, although you often pay more for a ticket than you would at a newsagent. The price premium is for the convenience of buying from home. The syndicate options also make Oz Lotteries worth checking out.

In terms of functionality, you can’t fault them. The website is easy to use, and they accept credit card and Paypal as payment methods. You can withdraw winning funds to a designated bank account.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t think you don’t need to deposit funds to qualify for a free game. You have little to lose by signing up, checking out the site, and receiving a free ticket.

(1) Source: “Prospect Theory”, Wikipedia, URL: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prospect_theory, accessed Feb 20th, 2010.

Like many sports punters, I have my preferred bookmakers depending on the event type. For example I prefer Betfair for financial betting and Sports Alive for multibets. Now bet365 is emerging as my favourite bookmaker for football betting, thanks to its refund feature in the event of a 0-0 draw.

With bet365 all pre-match Correct Score, Half-Time/Full-Time and Scorecast bets on a soccer match are refunded if you have a losing bet and the match ends 0-0.

So what are the odds of a 0-0 draw? I’ve tried to dig up some statistics on how many matches end 0-0, but I’ve struggled to find anything. Looking at this season’s English Championship league, 23 of the last 300 matches ended 0-0. This is roughly 7.7% of the fixtures. For the English Premier League I found 15 draws in the last 200 matches, which equates to 7.5% of the fixtures. Having said all this a lot more data is required to ascertain the actual odds of a 0-0 draw. Looking at Betfair, the typical odds for a 0-0 draw are 10.5, implying a 9.5% probability of occurring.

I have compared the bet365 odds to those of other bookmakers and they appear to be very similar. The odds don’t appear to be adjusted downward to compensate bet365 for the refund feature. For this reason the 0-0 refund policy makes bet365 great value for football betting.

With the 2010 Winter Olympics being held in Vancouver, Canada there is no doubt that the Ice Hockey event will be the most popular event in this year’s Winter Olympics. Ice Hockey is known as Canada’s pastime, and is extremely popular across North America. This year’s Ice Hockey event is special as it may be the last time that National Hockey League or professional hockey players can participate in the Olympic Games.

Did you know that you can Bet on Winter Olympic events? Online betting sites such as Bet365 allow you to place wagers on Winter Olympic events, including the Ice Hockey event of course. Odds are given for almost all of the Olympic events, with some underdogs listed at a very generous price. Betting on the Olympics can make the games even more exciting than they already are!

Betting on the Ice Hockey event may actually be the event with the best value for betting. Because there are so many Canadian fans betting on the event, the sports betting sites have reflected that in the low odds given to team Canada. Teams such as Russia and Sweden have almost just as good of a shot at winning the event, but have much higher odds. We recommend placing a bet on a team other than the Canadians for good value.

Russia would be our top choice with Super Star players such as Alexander Ovechkin, Ilya Kovalchuk, Pavel Datsyuk and Evgeni Malkin, not to mention star goaltender Evgeni Nabokov between the pipes. On paper Russia matches up with the Canadians, but the Winter Olympic betting odds do not. Russia is listed at +250, while the Canadians sit at -125. A $100 bet on the Russians would payout $250 in winnings, or a small $10 bet would payout a generous $25 in winnings.

If you really want to go off the board with a Olympic Hockey bet you could place your money on Team USA, which is paying out +800. The US team has gone with youth in this years a Olympic, a trend that is picking up in the NHL. With star players such as Zach Parise, Patrick Kane, Phil Kessel, and goalie Ryan Miller, they are worth a good look as an underdog. A fun $10 bet on the US team would pay out $80 in winnings if they capture the Gold.

Betting on Olympic Hockey can add even more excitement to an already thrilling event. The great thing about betting on the Ice Hockey event is that it runs throughout the Olympics, meaning you can cheer for your team for at least three games! The best place to bet on Hockey in the Olympics is Bet365, so what are you waiting for!

As a follow up to an earlier post, Winter Olympics: Overall Medals Betting, I thought you may be interested in the predictions of economist Daniel Johnson. Johnson is well known for his accurate medals forecasts. Below are his recent performances:

Accuracy of predictions for total medals won by a country:

2008 Beijing Summer Games: 93%
2006 Torino Winter Games: 93%
2004 Athens Summer Games: 94%
2002 Salt Lake City Winter Games: 94%
2000 Sydney Summer Games: 95%

Accuracy of predictions for gold medals won by a country:

2008 Beijing Summer Games: 92%
2006 Torino Winter Games: 89%
2004 Athens Summer Games: 86%
2002 Salt Lake City Winter Games: 85%
2000 Sydney Summer Games: 84%

Contrary to what you may expect, Daniel Johnson doesn’t analyze individual athletes or events. Instead, he bases his forecasts on a handful of economic variables, including per-capita income, population, climate and the location of the games.

Below are Johnson’s 2010 predictions, along with the respective odds for each country having the highest total/gold medal tally.

 
Wow! These predictions are in huge conflict with those of punters and bookmakers. For the overall medal tally Johnson has Germany ranked 7th while the sports betting community predicts Germany to top the standings. For the gold medal tally Johnson’s top pick of Russia is currently available at 19.5-to-1 odds.

Whose predictions would you rely on? Daniel Johnson has a great track record, but punters will have taken into account a lot more information. I would be delighted for Canada if Johnson’s overall medal tally prediction is correct.

Notes

• The above information is sourced from Forbes.com.
• The odds data were sourced from Betfair at 8:35pm on February 12th, AEDT.

I’m not sure if it’s the only bookmaker to do this, but bet365 offers virtual sports betting.

The virtual sports each take 90 seconds to run, and are streamed live with nice quality video. The events run every three minutes, twenty-four hours a day, giving punters an endless source of gambling opportunities. The available sports are horse racing, greyhounds, speedway, grand prix motor racing, and soccer. Below are some screen shots of the available sports.

I won’t be spending too much time with these events. For me the main attraction of sports betting is the fact that the bookmakers guess, rather than know, the real odds. With craps, roulette, and other casino games the odds are fixed and known. The payouts are rigged to provide a house advantage that can’t be beaten in the long run. The virtual betting provided by bet365 is very similar in that in the long run the bookmaker will earn an exact house advantage, with the software set to ensure it.

Having said that, I’m sure some punters will love the fact that betting opportunities are available every three minutes. I have to give credit to bet365 for their ingenuity.

While I enjoy watching winter sports when they’re on TV, I’m not familiar with the individual competitors. For this reason I probably won’t bet on individual events during the upcoming Olympics. One bet I probably will participate in, however, is the country with the most medals. Some bookmakers offer bets on the most gold medals, while others offer bets on the highest overall medal tally. You can also find bets on the number of Australian and British medals. See my previous post for a selection of who is currently offering what for Winter Olympics betting.

For anyone else who is interested in medal tally betting, I’ve compiled below some recent medals tallies data. The data have been sourced from Wikipedia.

Gold Medals

The table below lists the gold medals tallies for selected countries over the past four Winter Olympics. I haven’t gone back further because of various country changes, namely USSR, Czechoslovakia and East/West Germany. The ‘Growth Ratio’ column represents the average of the tallies in 2006 and 2002 divided by the average of the tallies in 1998 and 1994. A figure greater than one indicates improvement.

 
Germany has historically been the standout performer, although the American, Canadian and Austrian tallies have been growing at a faster rate. Norway had a shocker of a games in 2006 when it came to gold medals. It will be interesting to see how they bounce back in 2010.

I would expect the 2010 winner to be either Germany, Russia, United States, Canada or Norway. Austria and South Korea would be outside chances. Of all the nations, I think Germany is your best bet, with odds of 2.96 on Betfair at the time of writing this post. Norway looks to be a good value as well at 7.60 odds.

Total Medals

The table below lists the total medal tallies for selected countries over the past four Winter Olympics.

 
Germany again has been the standout peformer, although Norway, United States, Russia, Canada and Austria look capable of taking the top spot in 2010. The United States and Sweden have been the standout performers in terms of growth.

Betfair currently has odds of 1.30 for Australia to win a medal, which looks reasonable.

With the 2010 Winter Olympics due to start in a matter of days I thought I’d take a look at the available betting options during the games.

Below is a table of some of the current bookmaker offerings. At this stage there doesn’t appear to be a bookmaker that is covering every event.