If you read any book about sports betting or any kind of article about sports betting,

what will you learn? Bet the underdogs! Every book, website, tout, service, you name
it, are always telling you to bet the dogs. If everyone is betting the dogs, are the odds
for favourites too high?

European football leagues are starting soon and to prepare myself for them, I did a
small study using the data from the last two seasons from Premier League,
Bundesleague, Serie A and La Liga Primera.

Premier League

Dogs 760 / 542 / 0.71 / -21.8k

Fav. 760 / 728 / 0.96 / -3.2k

Bundesleague

Dogs 612 / 578 / 0.94 / -3.4k

Fav. 612 / 563 / 0.92 / -4.9k

Serie A

Dogs 760 / 551 / 0.73 / -20.9k

Fav. 760 / 717 / 0.94 / -4.3k

La Liga Premier

Dogs 760 / 748 / 0.98 / -1.2k

Fav. 760 / 704 / 0.93 / -5.6k

How do you read that table? Let’s take Premier League for example. In the past 2
seasons you have had 760 games. If you had played every dog, your total odds would
have been 542 (btw, I am using the European style odds, 1.35 etc.), return 0.71
(542/760) and for a $100 bet on every dog, you would have lost $21800.
What is interesting is that playing the favourites is a much better tactic in general,
IF(!) you play every game. Only in Spain, your best tactic is to play every dog and
almost break even.

Well, nobody plays every game. That would be insane. The question now is: can we
use some very simple methods to find an edge from either the dogs or the favourites?
I know for a fact that you can find an edge using sophisticated probability models and
shopping for the best odds BUT for this article we would like to find simple methods
for the average punter, who likes to bet for fun and TV-games, and not just for profit.

How about playing only home dogs, home favourites, away dogs, away favourites?

Premier League Bundesleague Serie A La Liga Premier

home fav 0.98 0.91 0.94 0.93
home dogs 0.84 0.94 0.77 1.03

away fav 0.91 0.96 0.95 0.93

away dogs 0.66 0.94 0.71 0.97

home fav < 1.55 0.99 0.92 1.05 0.95

home fav > 1.55 0.98 0.91 0.90 0.92

away fav < 1.55 1.06 1.04 1.02 1.00

away fav > 1.55 0.85 0.95 0.95 0.92

Home dogs in La Liga, home favourites under 1.55 in Serie A and away favourites
under 1.55 in Premier- and Bundesleague and Serie A would have been a winning bet.
Other possible good bets were home favourites in general in Premier, away fav < 1.55
in La Liga.

Btw, the odds that I used in that small study were the average odds from different
bookmakers. This means that you will always find better (and worse) odds. From the
table below you can find the return IF you always chose the best odd from the 7
bookmakers I had in my database.
 Premier League Bundesleague Serie A La Liga Premier
home fav 1.02 0.95 0.98 0.97
home dogs 0.93 1.03 0.84 1.11

away fav 0.94 1.00 1.00 0.97

away dogs 0.72 1.04 0.79 1.07

home fav <

1.55 1.02 0.95 1.09 0.98
home fav >
1.55 1.02 0.95 0.95 0.96

away fav <

1.55 1.09 1.09 1.06 1.05
away fav >
1.55 0.89 0.99 0.99 0.96

So, in Premier League, play every home favourite and big away favourite, dogs in
Bundesleague and big away favourites, big favourites in Serie A and dogs and big
away favourites in Spain, and pick the highest odd possible, and you will be just fine!

In the future I will go through more powerful, mathematical methods for finding an
overlay in sports betting.

See more info about sports betting and investing from:

http://findtheedge.blogsome.com