The Road to Riches: Weekend 29th-30th November

The Road to Riches: Weekend 22nd-23rd November

Coming Up this weekend

-  NFL Week 12.  For all Neil's Sunday analysis and selections (including Monday night football) £25 Sign Up Here

- The Premier League returns from an International break, with Arsenal playing Manchester United the big game of the weekend

- Formula One, the final Grand Prix of the season in Abu Dhabi with Lewis Hamilton needing to finish second to ensure his second drivers title

- Racing, jumps meetings at Haydock including the Betfair chase, Ascot and Huntingdon

- Golf the World Tour Championship takes place in Dubai

- Tennis the final two days of the Davis Cup final in Lille between France and Switzerland

- Rugby Union the Autumn Internationals continue with highlights Wales v the All Blacks and Ireland v Australia

Free Tip of the Week    

The Road to Riches features regular free tips from Betting Emporium writers. Today Neil Channing previews the Grade 3 Handicap Hurdle at Haydock (2.25 Haydock):

"So when Richard asked me to come up with a great horse bet this week I thought it would probably run in the Betfair Chase. My angle was going to be to oppose a few of the short ones and bet Harry Topper who loves the ground. The stable is flying and because the horse didn't jump at all well last season there is a lazy assumption that it will not do this year. It's as if the media feel that Kim Bailey may not have noticed that the horse needed to work on his jumping and he'll have done nothing about that in the mere twelve months he's had. I'm going to avoid tipping the animal now as the 25/1 of Monday became the 16/1 of Wednesday and the 12/1 of today without anything much changing. I think we missed this boat.

The other race that I love is the fixed brush hurdle at Haydock (2.25pm). This one was on my radar as the safety limit is 17-runners and we all love each-way 1,2,3,4 in 16+ runner handicaps. In the conditions though I really worry about late non-runners ruining our bets. I'm going to just bet one horse each-way and pray that they all run.

People are mean about Lizzie Kelly who rides Aubusson. I do love the horse though. This horse has run just four times and won two. The races were on heavy, soft, soft and good/soft and the two he got beaten in were at Cheltenham and Chepstow both left-handed courses where he finished 2nd and 3rd, and exactly the same two courses where he won. I think he'll love it round here, on this flat galloping left-handed track and he stays the trip well. Connections have talked about how he won't like it too heavy, I just don't agree and I think they are being overly worried for nothing. It's impossible to see how he won't be in the four I reckon. My only worry would be the race going down to 15-runners.

 Bookmaker reviews and advice

Getting the best price available is very important for all those who take their betting seriously.

Please open an account with all those bookmakers on the page on this link that you do not already have an account with using the links provided.

Sign up to Brodders' tips by December 1st and save 40% for life:

All Brodders bets for 2014 are currently showing a ROI of +6.63% (over 600 bets) with 8 out of 11 winning months. Betting £10 a point would be showing a profit of +£4675.60.

• From 1^st December 2014 subscription to Brodders write ups, analysis and bets will be £50 a month
• Special Offer for Early Subscribers, who sign up by December 1st 2014: £30 per month. Subscribe here.
• For subscribers to the specuial offer, your subscription price will never increase.
• After December 1st all new subscriptions to Brodders write ups will be £50 per month
   

A couple of weeks ago i asked for Betting Emporium reader experiences of the UK bookmaking industry. Martin sent me a reply as follows

"Having read your recent article on Betting Emporium, I thought I would share my recent bizarre experience with Boylesports.

If anyone else wants to contribute, please email rich.prew@btinternet.com and i will put your experiences up.

What's on Betting Emporium?

Football by Brodders - across European leagues, and including Champions League analysis, is available here free until December 1st.

English Football - Premier League Games  Stuart analyses the week's games in the Premier League, free to access here

English Football - Championship Games  Stuart analyses the week's games in the Championship, free to access here

Premier League Statistical Analysis – You can read this here still FREE to all registered users

Betting Emporium results

The detailed results page has been updated as have the spreadsheets with the detailed bets. They can be found by clicking RESULTS 

There is also a Frequently Asked Questions Section

The Road to Riches: Weekend 15th-16th November

Coming Up this weekend

-  It is NFL Week 11.  For all Neil's Sunday analysis and selections (including Monday night football) £25 Sign Up Here

-  The Premier League is on an International break with Euro 2016 qualifiers taking place. England play Slovenia in Euro 2016 qualifying at Wembley on Saturday evening

-  Racing, the National Hunt season is in full swing, with Saturday meeting's at Cheltenham featuring the Paddy Power Chase, Uttoxeter and Wetherby

- In Golf the USPGA Tour is in Mexico for the OHL Classic and the European Tour in Turkey for the Turkish Airlines Open

- In Tennis the Barclays ATP World Tour Finals conclude at the O2 Arena, London

- In Rugby Union the Autumn Internationals continue with England hosting South Africa, Scotland against New Zealand and Wales against Fiji

- The Grand Slam of Darts concludes in Wolverhampton.

Free Tip of the Week    

The Road to Riches features regular free tips from Betting Emporium writers. Today a look at a player prop in tomorrow night's NFL action

The San Francisco 49ers travel to New York this weekend with a 5-4 record knowing they are in a real dog-fight for an NFC play off spot, to play a Giants team out of contention for the play offs

The Giants are allowing an NFL-worst 144.7 rush yards per game--their highest since 1980 (the year before they drafted the great linebacker Lawrence Taylor).

Over the last 4 games, following the loss of key run defender linebacker Jon Beason to injured reserve, the Giants Run "D" has been gutted for 680 yards & 6 TDs on 115 carries (5.91 Yards per carry) by opposing Running backs. This poor performance was highlighed in the fgame at Seattle last weekend where Marshawn Lynch ran all over them.

Afterwards one commentator said "I still can't think of a game where more guys made "business decisions" than the Giants vs. Marshawn", meaning Giants players not tackling, not playing at 100% or for their coach, giving up on the season etc.

The 49ers have Frank Gore, one of the most punishing and durable backs in the NFL, behind one of the best offensive lines. It has to make sense that Gore is going to have a big night, and the offense will be confident of punching the ball in via the run in any red zone possessions

The 49ers returned to their run-game roots in last week's overtime upset of New Orleans, finishing with a 32:32 run-pass ratio and feeding Gore 23 carries, his second highest total of the season. Gore played 73% of San Francisco's offensive snaps and piled up 84 yards with a touchdown on 24 touches

Ladbrokes and Coral offer us 8/1 Gore to be first touchdown scorer for this game (which starts 6pm UK time Sunday evening). Coupled with him is back up Carlos Hyde. Gore is beginning to hand over some workload to rookie Hyde, who is going to be a star when he has some experience. He has rushed for three touchdowns this season and is a useful saver here, 12-1 with Ladbrokes, should he be the man in the backfield on the key drive.

12 points Frank Gore first touchdown scorer 8-1 Ladbrokes or Coral

4 points Carlos Hyde first touchdown scorer 12-1 Ladbrokes

 Bookmaker reviews and advice

Getting the best price available is very important for all those who take their betting seriously.

Please open an account with all those bookmakers on the page on this link that you do not already have an account with using the links provided.

Please note:

-Upon reviewing the terms and conditions for account users at Betway we have today removed them from our website and do not recommend them to our users

- Also we have removed Winner from our website as our experience, & that of our users, shows they are not really interested in laying any proper bets

If you have any questions or concerns about these changes, please contact support@bettingemporium.com

We often hear about betting systems that are hot. “This system has been 9-1 since last week”

Does this mean anything? What if a system is in profit over 100 games? Is this likely to be statistically significant? And what does that phrase mean, anyway?

A long long time ago i managed investment portfolios for 15 years and financial traders often talk about last year’s returns – or "statistically significant" results over the past three or five years. Investors review long-term stock and fund performance but the industry markets over a far shorter timeframe perspective, and often which may not be statistically significant.

It can often be the same in sports betting, and of course many sports and betting on them lends itself to statistical analysis in many ways.

What does “Statistical Significance” Mean?

To the layman, “significant” means important. To statisticians however, “significant” means “probably true.” If something is “statistically significant” at the 95% level (think back to normal distributions and bell curves!), it means that there is a 95% probability that a hypothesis is true.

Applications to Sports Betting

How can we use this? Statistics can help us determine if an approach is likely to be profitable. They can also give us some guidelines on how long we might stick with a system.

Depending on the “juice” we pay, we need to win around 51% to 52.5% of our bets. Let’s say we want to test how viable a system is at the 55% winning percentage level.

Proving Statistical Significance

Let’s do that with some thoughts on imaginary sports betting systems.

• A system is producing better than 57% over a million games. We’d agree that was pretty good, and statistically significant.
• What if, instead of a million games, this 57% was based on 100,000 games? Same thing: good results and statistically significant.
• What does maths tell us? It says that if a system is producing a better than 57% winning percentage, the cut-off is around 2,000 bets to prove statistical significance (that the results will beat the 55% winning percentage we chose above).

That is, if a system produces a 57% winning percentage over 2,000 games, mathematicians say that there is a 95% chance that the results are true (results will be better than 55% in the long-run). Please see the graph below.  Below 2,000 games, the results are good, but statisticians wouldn’t say that results are “significant” enough.

Graph: Statistical Significance (95% Level) — 55% Winning Percentage
Winning Percentage to prove “Statistical Significance” versus Sample Size

• Some mathematicians label results as “mildly” significant or “highly” statistically significant.
• From the graph we can see that at a sample size of 20, you would need to hit around 80% to prove statistical significance. If a decent system is connecting at 67%, it doesn’t mean that it’s “no good.” It just means that there is too much randomness in the small sample size and that the system should be tested over more bets (a longer time period or larger sample size).
• At the 200 bet sample size, you would need a winning percentage in the low 60% range to prove statistical significance.
• Over time, we know that various systems and approaches will have ups and downs. A sample size as small as 50-100 can start to tell us a story (10-20 is too small a sample size, unless results are extraordinary) – but 200-500 is even better.

What's on Betting Emporium?

Football by Brodders - across European leagues, and including Champions League analysis, is available here . Following Brodders' football bets since January 2014 and betting £10 a point you would now have £4069 profit.

English Non League Football -   Alan looks at games in the Conference National, North and South, free to access here

Betting Emporium results

The detailed results page has been updated this week as have the spreadsheets with the detailed bets. They can be found by clicking RESULTS 

 £10 a point would be winning £10,878 with +5.58% ROI across all sports (as at 12/11/14)

There is also a Frequently Asked Questions Section

The Road to Riches: Weekend 8th-9th November

Coming Up this weekend

-  It is NFL Week 10.  This includes the final 2014 Wembley game, Dallas Cowboys v Jacksonville Jaguars. For all Neil's Sunday analysis and selections (including Monday night football) £25 Sign Up Here

-  The Premier League continues with Liverpool v Chelsea on Saturday lunchtime, and its the first round of the FA Cup this weekend

- The Brazilian Grand Prix in Sao Paolo, the penultimate race of the season. Lewis Hamilton has won the last five races in a row

- Racing includes the last big meeting of the flat season at Doncaster and national hunt fixtures at Sandown, Wincanton and Kelso

- In Golf the WGC- HSBC Champions at the Sheshan International GC in Shanghai.

- In Tennis the ATP Tour Finals in London

- In Rugby Union the Autumn Internationals begin with all the six nations counties in action including England v the All Blacks, Ireland v South Africa and Wales v Australia

- The Grand Slam of Darts starts in Wolverhampton.

- In Snooker the Champion of Champions tournament at the Ricoh Arena concludes

Free Tip of the Week    

The Road to Riches features regular free tips from Betting Emporium writers.

Tomorrow, at Twickenham, England play the All Blacks in a game that starts the Autumn international rugby season and marks a year until the 2015 Rugby World Cup,  and is England’s last game against the All Blacks until the competition.

England face a tough task at the weekend, they lost 3-0 to the All Blacks away in the summer, and go into the match with over 10 players out injured. Alex Corbisiero, Tom Youngs, Dan Cole, Joe Launchbury, Geoff Parling, Manu Tuilagi (the one player the All Blacks really respect as an English attacking force)  Luther Burrell, Mako Vunipola, Tom Johnson and Tom Croft are all out. English rugby has strength in depth, but you would be hard pushed not to describe 7 or 8 of the above as first choice, and six played when England won the comparable fixture two years ago

One of the consequences of these injuries is that there are 437 caps in England's match-day 23 for Twickenham. There are 1,029 caps in New Zealand's match-day 23.

The All Blacks had another successful season and come to the game “match ready”, which is not always the case for Northern Hemisphere tours where fatigue can be a factor at the end of the Southern Hemisphere season. This time they broke their journey beating the USA 74-6 in Chicago. The cohesiveness that comes from a series of Internationals during our summer/autumn can prove vital against an England team playing its first test in four months with a very altered line-up.

Since Steve Hansen took over, the All Blacks have lost just two of 38 Test matches. They are the best side in the world, playing against a side patched together and playing from scratch

I was surprised to see New Zealand only -7 on the handicap (10/11 generally). This is a team that not only has become used to winning the tight matches but if it is on top it piles on scores. Bet365 offer 17/10 New Zealand to win by more than 13 points too

The New Zealand team will have to face down the English side’s strength, a strong pack of forwards and wear down the aspect of England's game that is most World Cup ready, its defence under the tutelage of rugby league legend Andy Farrell which is organised and hits hard. It is particularly effective in the narrow channels so the most likely tactic for the All Blacks, which is their style anyway, is to go wide and stretch the play

In Israel Dagg, Conrad Smith, Sonny Bill Williams and especially the fantastic winger Julian Savea, New Zealand have match-winners.

It is Savea that I am particularly interested in here. He has 29 tries in 30 tests, 8 in 4 games against England, 4 in this summer's Southern Hemisphere Rgby Championship and warmed up with two against the US last weekend. A great finisher the match up here appeals for a couple of reasons

- Savea is up against debutant winger Semesa Rokoduguni. Bath's Rokoduguni,a former Scots Dragoon tank driver, is the form English wing, quick and defensively sound but its a tough task one on one with Savea, if he is presented the ball in space

- England's backs line up is simply patchwork. Starting at inside centre is Kyle Eastmond alongside Brad Barritt. Barritt is a unit, will tackle all day but Eastmond's strengths are different. 5 foot 7 and under 13 stone he has the challenge of stopping the returning Sonny Bill Williams (6 foot 4 and 18 stone) from crossing the gain line and creating space.When New Zealand beat England 36-13 in Hamilton in the third test in June Eastmond was dragged off at half-time, bluntly described as “off the pace” defensively by Farrell. Here he is again, injuries forcing England's hand to give him the challenge again

So, the first try-scorer market, and Savea is available at 7-1 in a number of places. I have him as no more than a 5-1 chance here for a team that will create far more than its opponent, with mismatches in midfield to benefit from

10 points Julian Savea first try-scorer England v New Zealand 7/1 available at William Hill, Betfair Sportsbook

 Bookmaker reviews and advice

Getting the best price available is very important for all those who take their betting seriously.

Please open an account with all those bookmakers on the page on this link that you do not already have an account with using the links provided.

In the letters column of an edition of the Racing Post last week was a letter from a punter. A reasonably typical letter these days and it soon went viral on social media.

A gentleman had half an hour to kill, it was raining, and he walked into a London betting shop.

He had a 4-1 winner and, in time honoured fashion, fancied the spin up. Walking past the shop habituees punting £50-100 a time on roulette FOBT's, he attempted to have £30 each way on a 28-1 shot in a midweek handicap. Over the course of the next few minutes he witnessed frantic conversations behind the counter, phone calls to head office and furrowed brows before his bet was accepted, but only in part. The horse placed.

Trying his luck somewhat, it has to be said, he then tried to use the proceeds for a £200 double on two of that evening's Euro2016 qualifiers. He was offered £100 and was told by the cashier that it was felt he was likely to be an unprofitable customer (for them), hence the restriction. Our plucky punter then writes to the Racing Post

Everywhere you look (well, everywhere i look) there are articles on how tough life has become for punters, how the industry has changed, and the typical reasons put forward are as follows:

- Firms have given up trading markets and now make sure they manage and control accounts strictly and ruthlessly. It seems virtually impossible to maintain an account with any firm if you win consistently on any scale, or even just beating the prices/SP over a short space of time.

- Traders now justify their position in the company by monitoring, checking IP addresses for matched accounts, speaking to other layers to check the credentials of punters, and immediately factoring customers. The firms where you can still get a win bet offer prices that are very uncompetitive and a long way beneath the exchange price.

- The introduction of the UK Point of Consumption tax and more regulation over licensing has made life particularly difficult for punters and bookmakers alike.  Pinnacle's UK Market exit is hopefully temporarily bad news for those who rely on betting for a living. Pinnacle bet to their traders honed opinions rather than being dictated to by every tick movement on the exchanges, and actively welcoming good judges to have accounts (and arbers for that matter). They offered very low margin betting into liquid markets and their absence is of course a blow to those often shut down by the bigger, more established bookmakers in the UK.

- There is a general loss of confidence in horse racing as a product within the bookmaking industry. Early morning markets are small and trading has taken second place to accountancy

- Bookmakers, who for many years tolerated and managed some winners on their books as a mark or a guide, are seen by some as just arcades, making massive profits from risk free games and no longer needing the expensive business of trading complex events.

- The complete change of business plan in the past decade has made life very tough for the shrewd punter.. Some have become more innovative in how they "get on", and try to get past the barrier to betting that is now in place across the industry, perhaps by employing a small army of  helpers to get bets on. Indeed one up-and-coming bookmaking firm based in the South-East recently tried to recruit such people, as they bid to get with the right horses at the right prices in the early lists.

- Clearly while the online revolution opened up a huge world of opportunities for punters, it has also made their business extremely easy to track and restrict. It has become a game of survival of the fittest.

At the risk of being inundated, I thought would throw the floor open to you, the reader. Let me know your experiences of the difficulties in the industry these days and what you are doing to combat it. E-mail me on Rich.Prew@btinternet.com and i will publish a selection of responses, anonymously if you would prefer.

What's on Betting Emporium?

Football by Brodders - across European leagues, and including Champions League analysis, is available here . After 5 out of 6 winners for Brodders in the Champions League in midweek followed up by 5 out of 6 in Thursday night's Europa League action, placing all the selections at £10 a point since inception in February 2013 you would be +£2792

English Football - Premier League Games  Stuart analyses the week's games in the Premier League, free to access here

English Football - Championship Games  Stuart analyses the week's games in the Championship, free to access here

English Non League Football -  - Alan looks at games in this weekend's FA Cup 1st Round, free to access here

Premier League Statistical Analysis – You can read this here still FREE to all registered users

Betting Emporium results

The detailed results page has been updated as have the spreadsheets with the detailed bets. They can be found by clicking RESULTS 

There is also a Frequently Asked Questions Section

The Road to Riches: Weekend 1st-2nd November

Coming Up this weekend

-  It is NFL Week 9.  After his Thursday night NFL winner, for all Neil's Sunday analysis and selections (including Monday night football) £25 Sign Up Here

-  The Premier League continues with the Manchester Derby on Sunday lunchtime a feature. As well as his usual weekly selections, this week Stuart Doyle has written some new Premier league Ante-post tips here

- The US Grand Prix in Austin, Texas this weekend. The third last race of the season with the drivers championship being fought over by the two Mercedes drivers

- Racing includes the Breeders Cup at Santa Anita (see below for Neil Channing's thoughts) and in the UK, Newmarket on the flat and Ascot, Wetherby and Ayr over jumps

- In Golf the European tour heads to China for the BMW Masters.

- In Tennis the ATP BNP Paribas Masters, Paris and the WTA Qatar Airways Tournament of Champions, Sofia conclude

- In Rugby Union the southern hemisphere sides are beginning their autumn tours and the Barbarians play Australia on Saturday afternoon

Free Tip of the Week    

The Road to Riches features regular free tips from Betting Emporium writers. Today Neil Channing looks at one of tonight's Breeders Cup Races:

 Bookmaker reviews and advice

Getting the best price available is very important for all those who take their betting seriously.

Please open an account with all those bookmakers on the page on this link that you do not already have an account with using the links provided.

The terms “sharp” and “square” are two of the most commonly used words in a bettor’s vocabulary particularly in the US. Pros versus the Public is another way of expressing it. The underlying assumption, based on the very definition of the two words, is that a sharp opinion is more accurate than a square opinion.  In other words, the sharp side (or number) is considered to be more successful against the spread than the square side.  Many bettors attempt to identify sharp versus square sides and these days some books will identify these for you as part of their social media marketing exercises.

However one way for a novice bettor to help determine sharp versus square is to analyse line movements and bet percentages.  In general, a bookmaker wants to receive roughly the same amount of action on both sides of a game.  Thus, when significant amounts of money are wagered on a particular side, the line will tend to move in that direction. In many cases, however, the line will remain stagnant or even sometimes move in the opposite direction.  When the majority of bets that are coming in are heavily weighted towards a particular side, the line can still move against that action in a phenomenon known as reverse line movement.  This counter intuitive movement defies supply and demand but occurs because of a few factors:

1.      The money coming in on the minority (lesser bet) is coming from bettors whose opinions the bookmaker respects (i.e. sharp money)

2.      The book itself holds a contrarian view in favor of the minority side.  That is, despite the large amount of money being bet on team A, the book still feels confident that team B has a higher probability of winning, thus welcomes even more action on team A to create a position.

Opposite line movement appears to contradict basic economic principles, which state that as the demand for a product increases, so should its price. However, bear in mind; betting is not a truly efficient market because every amount of money bet isn’t created equally. If the bookmaker has good reason to believe that the general consensus is incorrect, he or she will gladly challenge anyone willing to jump on the bandwagon. In short, whether you want to deem the minority as sharp or not, savvy bettors like Neil are aware of opposite line movements and how to identify them.

The general theme in NFL betting, held over many years, is that Squares bet favourites and overs, and high profile teams like the Cowboys, 49ers tend to attract Public money too. Yet there has been an interesting trend this year. Neil explained in this extract from Monday night's column

"Sunday night's result saw big TV games go 19-4 to the OVER this year. The professional syndicates keep betting UNDER and the smaller, public bettors are all getting the lot. In general the bookies are getting killed as the higher volume of money is for the OVER. Tonight's game opened 50 and the professional groups have bet it down to 48.5. In the last 11 games between these two sides the total has gone UNDER 8 times"

Looking behind the numbers in these markets, and comparing them to likely gameflow, can pay off. Monday night's game went Under.. Thursday night's game, with a points total spread bid up by this year's experiences, went under too. As Neil identified "Although the primetime games are now 19-5 to the OVER this year the market has started to compensate and we are getting to play UNDER an inflated total"

Being ahead of the market, and knowing which side is sharp, pays off.

What's on Betting Emporium?

English Football - Premier League Games  Stuart analyses the week's games in the Premier League, free to access here

English Football - Championship Games  Stuart analyses the week's games in the Championship, free to access here

English Non League Football - Conference Games - Alan looks at Non-League games across Conference National, North and South, free to access here

Football by Brodders - across European leagues, and including Champions League analysis, is available here

Premier League Statistical Analysis – You can read this here still FREE to all registered users

Betting Emporium results

The detailed results page has been updated as have the spreadsheets with the detailed bets. They can be found by clicking RESULTS 

There is also a Frequently Asked Questions Section