SoccerPAT Selection Strategy

1. What We Look For:

At the start of each new season we only have historic betting data available to us in the form of the SoccerPAT Research Outputs for the previous three or more seasons to show us how different Bet Types could have made money for us. We therefore prefer to move cautiously in our Bet Type selections for the opening few weeks of a season, because the list of teams within each of the Divisions will have been impacted significantly by the number of relegations and promotions. If we do decide to bet right from the start of the season, we look for good past betting outcomes and then bet on matches in the first few weeks where only the Staying Teams are playing.

Once we feel that the season is properly under way and that the majority of teams have settled down, we search to find the Bet Types that satisfy as many of the following criteria as possible:

• The Bet Type was successful last season and, ideally, the season before that too.
• The maximum number of consecutive losing weeks last season must have been 3, except that if the loss for any given week is less than half the value of the winnings for that week and the overall return for the whole season was good, we would tend not to count that week as a full loss. Having said that, we would monitor such apparent errant Bet Types very closely.
• The Odds per match for a winning call were at least 2.00 (and will be in the current season), although this is not a hard and fast rule if accumulator betting is being applied (in which case, we would follow the advice in point (ii) above).
• The percentage of winners last season must have been 10% more than the value derived by dividing the number “1” by the average Odds. For example, if the average Odds on offer (say for the Draw call) were 3.30, then the percentage of last season’s winners must have been 33.33% (i.e., (1+1/10)x(1÷3.3)x100). This is more tricky to calculate if accumulator betting is being applied.
• Ideally, for any given Bet Type where ‘reverse calling’ is to be used, there should be a minimum of 6 matches each week in the current season, although we do not apply that as a fixed rule; it depends on how good the past returns have been.

We ignore all those betting scenarios where the percentage returns were very high but minimal numbers of selections occurred. This is because the statistical population is too low to be able to place any reliance on those previous stunning outcomes. So what we look for instead are the betting scenarios that have a high population and show that a good return had been achieved.

2. What We Ourselves Do:

Because relying on the past data for betting on the Staying Teams only in the new season is far from fool-proof, and also because the early season results sometimes bring big shocks, we tend not to do any extensive betting for the first 3 weeks of a new season. Similarly, we tend not to lay out too much in the last few weeks of a season, because many shock results can occur there too, especially where the top-of-the table positions in a Division have already been determined regardless of what the actual results for the last couple of matches turn out to be.

The following shows what our particular betting strategy is:

1. At the start of the season we settle on 6 different Bet Types that we feel offer good opportunities for making money, and we allocate a fixed Base Bank to each such Bet Type. This aim of this is to spread the risk so that a poor week for one or more Bet Types can hopefully be compensated for by the good performance of the other Bet Types in the betting pool.
2. If less than 4 matches are identified for a specific Bet Type, then we tend not to bet on the lesser number of matches..
3. If a specific Bet Type loses more than three times in a row in the current season, then we will usually drop it from our preferred list of Bet Types for the rest of the season, since there will always be other more successful Bet Types that can replace it..
4. The amount we lay out each week on each Bet Type depends on the level of confidence we have regarding the ‘betting advantage’. If our advantage does not seem so high, then we will not generally lay out more than 5% maximum of the remaining Betting Bank each week. On the other hand, if we are confident that our betting advantage is high, we sometimes apply the Kelly Criterion to decide what percentage of the Base Bank we should lay out.

Anyway, please do not make the mistake of blindly copying our betting strategy. You must decide for yourself what your own particular betting strategy will be, and which we shall not be held responsible or accountable for if it goes wrong for you. Betting of any sort is very risky, and you need to be sensible at all times and not go for reckless catch-up plans when losing. In particular, if you make a decision to go for increasing stakes on losing Bet Types, try as much as possible to keep to within your weekly overall staking limit. And never at any time bet more money than you can afford to lose! Whatever betting strategy you decide to employ, we wish you good luck!