How to solve such a problem as the problem of efficiency. Probably every bettor who wants to find out if his predictions are accurate enough to systematically make a profit in the betting market knows about the possibility of using final odds. Good bookmakers have a mobile app, find out more at
Sports betting in South Africa. How efficient are the odds and how to model market efficiency? Read the article and find out the answer to this question.
As the trading director of the company explains. Marco B lum, one reliable indicator that a player's actions have a positive long-term mathematical expectation (in other words, that a player is shrewd) is their ability to place winning bets at the final odds.
Usually, people assume that the final market prices are the most efficient (or accurate) of all the prices because the final prices reflect the maximum amount of information available about the match. If the final odds, including margin, reflect the “true” value of the probability of a certain outcome, the amount of profit, whatever it may be, is a measure of the expected advantage of the player.
A player who has made a 10% return on a bet can expect the same long-term return. Be that as it may, some people believe that the ability to make winning bets with the final odds is an important sign of skill, but not a guarantee of success. At the same time, it should be assumed that the final coefficients may not always be absolutely effective.
In this article I will try to bring together the described points of view. To develop a common position, I will again consider the concept of efficiency, in particular the effectiveness of the final coefficients. My article is intended for strong-willed people, as it takes a digression into the thought experiment I conducted in the field of statistics.
I didn't know how this experiment would end. And even after its completion, I have some doubts about my conclusions, but still I invite you to follow me. The experiment may not be as fun as a walk through Willy Wonka's chocolate factory, but I hope it will equip anyone who aspires to be an astute player with knowledge.
What is Market Efficiency?
In recent years, I have talked a lot about the concept of market efficiency. In the context of betting, an efficient market is one where the odds of betting accurately reflect the likelihood of a certain outcome of a certain event. For example, if the “true” odds of Manchester City beating Manchester United is 70%, then the effective odds are 1.429 without taking into account the bookmaker's margin.
Keep in mind that betting markets are quite efficient at Bayesian processing: they are constantly refining, updating, and refining opinions about the likelihood of an event.
Of course, a certain match ends with one result or another, and the bet on Manchester City will either win or lose. After placing many hundreds or thousands of bets, the probabilities of winning and losing bets on the outcome of a particular match will be approximately the same (the law of large numbers). Based on this, it still makes sense to talk about the “true” value of the probability of a particular result, even if in practice it is impossible to find out this value. Here's what the odds reflect.
Market efficiency is an interesting concept that applies to large samples. If we cannot find out the “true” value of the probability of the outcome of a particular event, how can we find out the effectiveness of the odds of betting on this outcome?
Of course, we can test a large sample of bets, say at a "clean" odds of 2.00 (no margin). If 50% of the bets win, this would mean that, in the aggregate, the average probability of winning these bets was probably 50%, and therefore, on average, the odds of these bets adequately reflected the probability of winning. However, winning 50% of the bets tells us nothing about the probability of winning each bet that contributed to the respective overall average. The market may be efficient overall, but the effectiveness of each bet remains unclear.
How effective are the final odds?
In July 2016, the company published an article of mine that showed how effective (or accurate) the football betting odds offered by the company, and in particular the closing line odds, the final odds published before the start of the match, were.
In this article, I have eliminated the bookmaker's margin and have shown that bets at odds of 2.00 win 50% of the time, bets at odds of 3.00 win 33% of the time, bets at odds of 4.00 win 25% of the time, etc. Of course, as explained above, all this does not tell us anything about the “true” value of the probability of a particular outcome of a particular match, and only indicates that, on average, the offered odds were very accurate.
Moreover, I have shown that the ratio of opening to closing ratios is an extremely reliable indicator of profitability, and this indicates that the closing ratios are highly effective. For example, teams with an opening price of 2.20 (excluding margin) and a closing price of 2.00 have won about 50% of the time and have profited from turnover at the same 10% stakes for the opening price (or 2.20 / 2.00 - 1) and 0% for the final coefficient.
with friend On the other hand, teams with an opening price of 1.80 and a closing price of 2.00 won about 50% of the time and lost 10% for the opening price (or 1.80 / 2.00 - 1) and 0% for the final price. . I repeated this analysis using a larger sample of 158,092 matches and 474,278 odds for home win, away win and draw, and got roughly the same results and came to the same conclusions. The results and conclusions are presented in the graph below.
Each point on the graph reflects the actual income at rates (with an interval of 1%) at a certain ratio of the initial and final odds. The blue dots represent the income from betting at the opening odds, and the red dots represent the income from the bets at the final odds. Of course, there is some underlying variability in the results, but the generalized trends are clear. I have shown the trend lines by choosing their intersection point as zero (which can be considered a reasonable assumption after the margin has been eliminated) and given the corresponding equations.
The trends presented almost completely confirm my initial hypothesis that the ratio of opening and closing odds (x on the chart) is an excellent predictor of the profitability of opening odds (y on the chart) and (more generally) that, on average, closing odds are highly effective.
The coefficient (C) of proportionality P of the ratio (R) of the initial (O) and final (C) coefficients (−1) and profitability (or profitability - Y) is the value of the gradient of the trend line. A value of 1 means perfect proportionality. For brevity in this article, I will abbreviate this coefficient as OCRYCOP.
I emphasize once again that we can speak of "truth" only in relation to the totality of meanings. We never learned anything about the effectiveness of each final coefficient. At the heart of each point on the graph are several thousand matches.
