It’s a nervous weekend of games after last week’s losses.  Although 2 losing weeks on the trot is not an unknown for the model it is a remote event and one I do not want to see played out this weekend.  Therefore I have more than my fingers crossed that we get back on track with this weekend’s selections.

I have made some changes to the algorithm, albeit minor.  It was just a bit of tweaking of the input variables which has resulted in improved performance over all seasons and more importantly, this season. 

The best value today is backing Birmingham away offering 90% value at Bolton whereas the closest odds produced by our model versus the market is Arsenal with just 4% value.   One point of interest is the model lays Portsmouth which is the first time in recent times the market odds have been priced too short to offer value in backing Pompey.  This is likely due to Portsmouth’s loss last week combined with the very high rating the model has for Liverpool.

DATE HOME AB Odds Ex Odds Value  AWAY AB Odds Ex Odds Value
22/12/07 Arsenal 1.49 1.55 4%  Tottenham 6.44 7.80 21%
22/12/07 Aston Villa 1.31 2.04 56%  Man City 9.71 4.80 -51%
22/12/07 Bolton 3.55 1.88 -47%  Birmingham 2.64 5.00 90%
22/12/07 Fulham 1.46 2.22 52%  Wigan 6.73 3.90 -42%
22/12/07 Liverpool 1.33 1.58 19%  Portsmouth 9.12 7.80 -14%
22/12/07 Middlesbrough 2.01 2.30 14%  West Ham 3.91 3.50 -10%
22/12/07 Reading 1.32 1.88 42%  Sunderland 9.29 5.20 -44%

The 2 Premier League funds diverged this weekend.  Whilst the Alpha Fund took a slight loss, the Beta Fund managed a moderate gain.   As the Beta fund is an enhanced version of the Alpha fund it was good to see the Beta fund continuing to outperform.   See the stats below for relative performance of the 2 funds.

It was actually a very pleasing result for the Beta fund as it overcame the setback of laying Bolton v Man U (Bolton winning 1-0).  At market odds of 8.4 the win for Bolton was a rare event; even rarer at the Algorithm’s price of 11.85.  Of course, these rare events are by definition expected and therefore cannot be excluded as ‘unlucky’ or ‘one-offs’.  It’s just good to see the other match bets more than offsetting the loss in the same week.  The weekly gain is however easy to comprehend once you note the Algorithm backed all 5 winning away teams this week. View the detailed Beta fund results here.

PERFORMANCE OF ALGORITHM BETTING PREMIER LEAGUE FUNDS:

Weekly gain/loss in the fund (movement in the fund since last week): Alpha -2.9%, Beta +4.8%

Winning weeks (number of weeks showing gains/ total number of weeks since fund started): Alpha 12/14, Beta 7/7

% gain to date (% increase since the fund started): Alpha 37.2%, Beta +121.6%

Risk (max weekly gain/max weekly loss, insufficient data for standard deviations): Alpha 6.9%/-2.9%, Beta +49.6%/+4.8%