Chap 2: The Home Advantage Chart

The main factor that bookmakers usually take into consideration in decision of handicap is the 'Class' of the teams that are playing. Class essentially symbolizes a team’s overall talent, ability and to a certain extent, their potential. The classier team is highly talented, motivated and appears to possess vast potential. A large proportion of the betting public also seem to favour classy teams, not aware that the factor they based their decisions on have already been factored into the odds of the bookmakers, nullifying its importance.

Class is measured statistically, based on a team’s historical performance. Data from the past season till the last 10 yrs can be used to measure a team’s Class. The most common way of calculating the Class of a team is by a system of 'Performance Factors'.

Performance Factor is relevant in the sense that it is important to know the quality of a team’s win. A victorious team must have their win qualified by whom they have beaten and by how much of a goal margin. A clear example is that it is much better to beat ManU than to beat say Sunderland last year. It is also a more convincing win when you beat Chelsea 3-0 rather than 3-2. The goal difference is also a major contributer to tis 'Performance Factors'.

The book- makers have data going back 10 years to access the 'Performance Factors' and thus their Class . This together with 'Form Factors' (later will explain in chap 3) , Diect/Indirect factors will all be battered together in a pot and decide the Asian Handicap in football from which the initial 1x2 will be derived, the only difference is that for different broking house the weightage is difference and hence comes the different Asian Handicap sometimes. This is however very seldom, the more apporiate picture will be different odds for the same Asian Handicap with respects to a particular match.

Any win will obtain the same 3 points in the league table and so it is necessary to devise another system for the clubs to recognize the quality of wins and predicts the results for subsequent fixtures. So thus it is the quality of the win and not the win itself that can uplift a weaker team status. This is the essense of the theortical portion with my charts are based on.

To create such a Performance reference for myself, i use the following perimeters:

- Every club is equal in ranking at the start of the season and is arbitrarily given same points at the start, my assumption is that all teams start with a fresh sheet at the begining as there is a rest period for teams and tiz regenerates all the run/lost previously held. Also there are players comin in and players going out/retired, and it will not be the same team as before. The fresh start approach (different from bookmakers) also can utilisied the satistical portion of analysis giving rise to clearner data and batter sampling.

- The Home Field Advantage is widely accepted as a 0.2 goal advantage and is used as such here as well. This is to accord for pitch and crowd factor for the home team. 2 of the most important indirect factors is already taken care here, others like weather is assume to be in playable conditions.- Adjustment = (Home Performace – Away Performance) + 0.2 (simple right)

- To adjust for huge goal differences, we use a multiplier (let yu decide) in order to get more realistic predictions. (The absolute value of the Home Margin can be large at times and could produce distorted predictions like 10-0 quite regularly and hence the use of the multiplier, can offset to a more relistic level). This multiplier of (0.1/0.01) is good when your initial aribitury Performance Factors are small, if you happen to use value that are 1000 or 10000 for each team, than this mutiplier is negligible.

- The adjustments are added to each home team points and deducted from each away team points when the results are available. This give rise to new Performance Factors.

The satistaical portion of the analysis is a more complicated affair, I try to break down as simple as possible. Based on data from Performance Factors, and the asian handicap issue by booking houses, i do the following steps;

- Capture the previous adjustment and results for the Performance Factors (PF) and note them down. Create a reference table to where the satistical frequency of adjustments (PF) and results are display.

- From the new handicap issued, and the new PF , compare the new handicap with the result wrt the nearest adjustment you find on the table and walla, a satistical prediction.

My predictions also include nearest of 3 predictions to give a better picture. The below are final prediction results over 1 year for the top 6 league in Europe. Namely English/German/Spain/Italy/ France/ Holland.

Nearest of 3/ Nearest

ENG 1 / -14.5
FRA 7.5 / 22.5
HOL -0.5 / 27.5
GER 2 / -7
ITA 11 / -15.5
SPL 2.5 /15.5

A major point I like to highlight is that when observing the occurance in tiz chart, once there is a swing, follow it deligently as this is when the statistical chart has highlighted a trend (+ or -). In placing a bet from the charts, the most fustrating thing is when you observe a trend, a swing in the opposite direction occur, such things are common as in stocks/shares. Thus, discipline is required and strongly believe in the charts and the final year end results that it can bring, never let a couple of weeks dishearten you, also I do notice such swingback occur very frequently, especially in winter months of Nov/Dec/Jan and the end season Apr/May. It may be a better idea to switch to the Form Chart during this periods as unsuspected weather/pitch conditions (indirect facors) come into play which is the charts biggest counter factors.

I know direct factors must also have a weightage but never 1 or 2 star player injuiry can lead to a team downfall, subsitutes are equally adept and more inspired to produce a winning performance, so team play counts and thats way I assume direct factor as null.

A simple point to take note, statistical systems like this are fairly reliable. However, it is a tedious process. When you are maintaining ranking tables like these for several different leagues, mistakes occur and it is time consuming to spot them. Any system works much better at least 5 games into the season, where there is a bigger sample of results to work with and where teams are more settled. Thats why I much perfer all of yu visit my blogsite and let me do all the work, I enjoy it anyway and like the attention will get.