How to Select 3 Draws or 5 Aways in Football Betting Part 2

The Treble Chance is the game of picking winning lines of 8 score draws from  49 matches on a coupon. Some punters prefer to lay stakes on 3 draws or 5 aways. This article briefly describes how the most likely candidate draws or aways can be identified from a ranked match list.

Match Ratings/Probabilities

In a previous article I wrote about how to prepare a list of match assessments. This is a list of the matches on the coupon, with a rating against each one. The rating is just a number which reflects the probability of the match being a home win, a draw or an away win.

Sorted List

We sort the list in order of ascending probability (match rating is the term I use). Those matches with the lowest match rating we mark as aways, and those at the other end as homes. The matches with the mid range assessments we mark as likely draws.

With 49 matches on a coupon, knowing where to ‘draw the line’ between away/draw/home probabilities is crucial.

Analysis of coupon results shows that approximately 45% of matches were home wins over the season, with 26% being aways and 27% score or non-score draws in recent seasons.

On the face of it, this would suggest that we just divide up our ranked match assessments in line with these numbers. But, we do know that not everything goes to form, we get - even some matches which look like certain home wins can end up with away results. Also of course, no forecasting system is perfect even if every result came out in line with team form.

Where are our Nuggets?

So, the borders between home/draw/away are not clearcut and we need to  cover more matches (in the treble chance). For 3 draw or 5 away forecasts though, the problem is harder – we have to pay much more attention to individual matches, team changes, injuries and other factors.

The 3 draws we need will lie in the list of 20 potential draws we have selected. How do we find them? We don’t! We simply design our coverage so that we are ‘perming’ any 3 from 20. That’s a lot of lines – 1140 separate bets in fact. At just 20 pence a line that’s over £200 in total, way too much for most punters. And of course the odds from the bookie may not cover this with one winning line. If we are looking for a 3 to 1 return (£600), then we would need fixed odds of 3000/1.

We can make this work if we trim the number of lines – that is, reduce the coverage. We would need to shorten the list to say 12 selections. Any 3 from 12 would be 220 lines - over £40 at 20 pence a line, and we would need fixed odds of 600/1 for a target return of 3 to 1 (£120).

To shorten the list would mean eliminating selections – this can be done by analysis in detail of the matches and teams. Or, simply by taking the higher/lower rated matches off the ranked list, some from the Home Win end, and some from the Away win end, and in proportion to the usual results percentages (45% homes, 26% aways). Roughly, this is 6 homes and 2 aways removed to reduce the coverage from 20 matches to 12 matches.

© 2010 Phil Marks