| Fastest | Price | Fastest Saturday Practice | Price | Fastest Qualifying | Price |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fernando Alonso | 20/1 | Lewis Hamilton | 13/8 | Nico Rosberg | 8/13 |
| Amount won/lost on a £1 bet | -£1 | Amount won/lost on a £1 bet | -£1 | Amount won/lost on a £1 bet | £1.62 |
| Amount won/lost on a £10 bet | -£10 | Amount won/lost on a £10 bet | -£10 | Amount won/lost on a £10 bet | £16.15 |
| Season Total £1 bets | £1.70 | Season Total £1 bets | £4.73 | Season Total £1 bets | £4.18 |
| Season Total £10 bets | £16.98 | Season Total £10 bets | £47.30 | Season Total £10 bets | £41.78 |
Sunday, 25 May 2014
Monaco Grand Prix
Sunday, 11 May 2014
Spanish Grand Prix
Once again, the values for Saturday practice and qualifying will be late (I'm fencing all day Saturday) so may not be accurate.
| Fastest Friday Practice | Price | Fastest Saturday Practice | Price | Fastest Qualifying | Price |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lewis Hamilton | 2/5 | Nico Rosberg | 3/1 | Lewis Hamilton | 2/7 |
| Amount won/lost on a £1 bet | £1.40 | Amount won/lost on a £1 bet | -£1 | Amount won/lost on a £1 bet | £1.29 |
| Amount won/lost on a £10 bet | £14 | Amount won/lost on a £10 bet | -£10 | Amount won/lost on a £10 bet | £12.86 |
| Season Total £1 bets | £2.70 | Season Total £1 bets | £5.73 | Season Total £1 bets | £2.56 |
| Season Total £10 bets | £26.98 | Season Total £10 bets | £57.30 | Season Total £10 bets | £25.63 |
Wednesday, 7 May 2014
World Cup Predictions
Because it's getting close to the World Cup time, and because @Tiberius_Jolly and I were bored, have our entirely unlikely to be accurate World Cup predictions:
Group A
Brazil & Cameroon
Brazil & Cameroon
Group B
Spain & Chile
Spain & Chile
Group C
Colombia & Ivory Coast
Colombia & Ivory Coast
Group D
England & Uruguay (Don't look at me, I got out-shouted by a maniac who thinks England are likely to go through on goal difference.)
England & Uruguay (Don't look at me, I got out-shouted by a maniac who thinks England are likely to go through on goal difference.)
Group E
France & Switzerland
France & Switzerland
Group F
Argentina & Nigeria (I'm backing Bosnia & Herzogovina as possible dark horses in this group.)
Argentina & Nigeria (I'm backing Bosnia & Herzogovina as possible dark horses in this group.)
Group G
Germany & Portugal
Germany & Portugal
Group H
Belgium & Russia (this relies on Russia not pulling a Euro 2012 and actually performing as well as they can.)
Belgium & Russia (this relies on Russia not pulling a Euro 2012 and actually performing as well as they can.)
Then:
Brazil beats Chile
Uruguay beats Colombia
France beats Nigeria
Germany beats Russia
Spain beats Cameroon
England beats Ivory Coast
Argentina beats Switzerland
Portugal beats Belgium
Then:
Brazil beat Uruguay
Germany beats France
Spain beat England
Argentina beat Portugal (unless Ronaldo is Maradona)
Then:
Brazil beat Germany
Argentina/Portugal beats Spain
Then:
A final of Brazil vs either Argentina (oooh) or Portugal
And if Portugal get to final, nevermind winning the thing, we have to actually start asking the Pele, Maradona or Ronaldo question.
Monday, 21 April 2014
Chinese Grand Prix
The values for Saturday practice will be late (I'm fencing all day Saturday) so may not be accurate.
| Fastest Friday Practice | Price | Fastest Saturday Practice | Price | Fastest Qualifying | Price |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lewis Hamilton | 8/11 | Lewis Hamilton | 4/9 | Lewis Hamilton | 4/9 |
| Amount won/lost on a £1 bet | £1.73 | Amount won/lost on a £1 bet | £1.44 | Amount won/lost on a £1 bet | £1.44 |
| Amount won/lost on a £10 bet | £17.27 | Amount won/lost on a £10 bet | £14.44 | Amount won/lost on a £10 bet | £14.44 |
| Season Total £1 bets | £1.30 | Season Total £1 bets | £6.73 | Season Total £1 bets | £1.27 |
| Season Total £10 bets | £12.98 | Season Total £10 bets | £67.30 | Season Total £10 bets | £12.77 |
Sunday, 6 April 2014
Bahrain Grand Prix
| Fastest Friday Practice | Price | Fastest Saturday Practice | Price | Fastest Qualifying | Price |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lewis Hamilton | 4/7 | Lewis Hamilton | 2/7 | Nico Rosberg | 10/11 |
| Amount won/lost on a £1 bet | £1.57 | Amount won/lost on a £1 bet | £1.29 | Amount won/lost on a £1 bet | -£1 |
| Amount won/lost on a £10 bet | £15.71 | Amount won/lost on a £10 bet | £12.86 | Amount won/lost on a £10 bet | -£10 |
| Season Total £1 bets | -£0.43 | Season Total £1 bets | £5.29 | Season Total £1 bets | -£0.17 |
| Season Total £10 bets | -£4.29 | Season Total £10 bets | £52.86 | Season Total £10 bets | -£1.67 |
This is interesting. At this point, admittedly only 3 races into a 19 Grand Prix season, only one of these betting strategies is in profit. Possibly this is both because of Mercedes's dominance (and therefore the poor odds offered by the bookies) and the small size of the difference in performance between the two Mercedes. If Nico Rosberg had beaten Hamilton in qualifying at Malaysia, the last column would look very different. Obviously, the old 'if ifs and ands were pots and pans' applies, but I think the table would be very different in a team with a clear number 1 and number 2 driver.
Tuesday, 1 April 2014
Malaysian Grand Prix
| Fastest Friday Practice | Price | Fastest Saturday Practice | Price | Fastest Qualifying | Price |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nico Rosberg | 2/1 | Nico Rosberg | 7/2 | Hamilton | 5/6 |
| Amount won/lost on a £1 bet | -£1 | Amount won/lost on a £1 bet | -£1 | Amount won/lost on a £1 bet | £1.83 |
| Amount won/lost on a £10 bet | -£10 | Amount won/lost on a £10 bet | -£10 | Amount won/lost on a £10 bet | £18.33 |
| Season Total £1 bets | -£2 | Season Total £1 bets | £4 | Season Total £1 bets | £0.83 |
| Season Total £10 bets | -£20 | Season Total £10 bets | £40 | Season Total £10 bets | £8.33 |
Sunday, 16 March 2014
Australian Grand Prix
The betting pool is back. In my continuing quest to earn @Tiberius_Jolly some easy money, I'm still trying to see what the best F1 betting strategy is. Last season, betting on the racer who was fastest in Saturday practice came out ahead, slightly, from betting on the winner of qualifying (work on whether it was statistically significant or not is on-going).
The results of this for this season could be less clear cut, because of the changes in technical regulations. For the last few seasons, it's been "who can challenge Red Bull?" while this season no-one knows what's going to happen, especially given Renault's engine troubles and the way something about the Red Bull (and Lotus) aero designs seems to exacerbate them.
That being said, Vettel was still 4th on Friday practice, even if he was nowhere in practice 2 or qualifying.
I'm also going to start using the William Hill betting calculator (http://form.williamhill.com/betcalc/EN/calc.html) to work out the winnings.
The price for the Saturday practice may be slightly less than it could have been as I was only able to get it after qualifying had finished due to time zone difference.
Obviously, it's too early to draw any firm conclusions, but so far (1 race within what is likely to be a crazy season), it looks likely to be like last year where the fastest guy after Saturday practise is a good bet.
The results of this for this season could be less clear cut, because of the changes in technical regulations. For the last few seasons, it's been "who can challenge Red Bull?" while this season no-one knows what's going to happen, especially given Renault's engine troubles and the way something about the Red Bull (and Lotus) aero designs seems to exacerbate them.
That being said, Vettel was still 4th on Friday practice, even if he was nowhere in practice 2 or qualifying.
I'm also going to start using the William Hill betting calculator (http://form.williamhill.com/betcalc/EN/calc.html) to work out the winnings.
| Fastest Friday Practice | Price | Fastest Saturday Practice | Price | Fastest Qualifying | Price |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hamilton | 15/8 | Nico Rosberg | 4/1 | Hamilton | 5/6 |
| Amount won/lost on a £1 bet | -£1 | Amount won/lost on a £1 bet | £5 | Amount won/lost on a £1 bet | -£1 |
| Amount won/lost on a £10 bet | -£10 | Amount won/lost on a £10 bet | £50 | Amount won/lost on a £10 bet | -£10 |
| Season Total £1 bets | -£1 | Season Total £1 bets | £5 | Season Total £1 bets | -£1 |
| Season Total £10 bets | -£10 | Season Total £10 bets | £50 | Season Total £10 bets | -£10 |
The price for the Saturday practice may be slightly less than it could have been as I was only able to get it after qualifying had finished due to time zone difference.
Obviously, it's too early to draw any firm conclusions, but so far (1 race within what is likely to be a crazy season), it looks likely to be like last year where the fastest guy after Saturday practise is a good bet.
Sunday, 23 February 2014
Euro 2016
I really can't complain about the results of the draw (full results here) because Austria's pool is reasonable. They're in group G so that's Russia, Sweden, Austria, Montenegro, Moldova and Liechtenstein. Third should be do-able.
But I wondered what the the groups would look like if they'd gone by the FIFA rankings.
| Group A | Group B | Group C | Group D | Group E | Group F | Group G | Group H | Group I |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Spain | Germany | Portugal | Switzerland | Italy | Netherlands | Belgium | Greece | England |
| Serbia | Slovenia | Sweden | Russia | Denmark | France | Ukraine | Bosnia-Herzegovina | Croatia |
| Armenia | Czech Republic | Romania | Scotland | Turkey | Austria | Hungary | Iceland | Wales |
| Bulgaria | Poland | Republic of Ireland | Finland | Norway | Israel | Albania | Slovakia | Montenegro |
| Belarus | Macedonia | Northern Ireland | Estonia | Azerbaijan | Lithuania | Georgia | Moldova | Latvia |
| Gibraltar | San Marino | Andorra | Faroe Islands | Lichtenstein | Malta | Kazakhstan | Cyprus | Luxembourg |
I, personally, prefer the random draw :) I couldn't imagine why. (Also I appear to have added a country somewhere)
Friday, 6 December 2013
The World Cup Draw Palaver
Providing the BBC aren't lying to me, apparently, the World Cup draw can now cost up to £10 million. Which might go some way to explaining why these things are so damned expensive.
I understand the purpose of the draw, it's to add a bit of excitement to the proceedings and to make sure Italy fans suffer*. But at the same time, it does seem like a lot of fuss.
I fence, and the draws for our group stages are done from the rankings. If there were eight groups, the top ranked fencer attending would go into group 1, the second into group 2 and so on, then the ninth ranked fencer would go into group 8, 10th into group 7 again with the so on, until the 17th ranked fencer goes into group 1, 18th into group to and so on and so on.
Doing this with the October FIFA rankings (here if anyone wants to check my maths) gives the following groups (respecting the max. 2 European teams in a group, max. 1 team from another region. This was done by skipping teams until they fitted and then putting them in.)
Okay, I had to swap Cameroon and Australia for it to work, but you've got 8 reasonably solid groups, and even the apparently expected horrible group for Italy.
Even if you change it around so that Brazil are automatically Group A team 1, you instead get:
I've had to swap Cameroon and Australia again, but we once again end up with some nice balanced groups, although less balanced IMO than previously, and Italy still end up with a horrible group.
Now I haven't done this just to prove that Italy are cursed, or to show that it doesn't take £10 million to do a draw (really, FIFA, I'm very cheap). It's more I don't get why they don't do it this way. Surely it would be easier for the various federations and their fans to know where they're going about 2 weeks earlier, when the qualifiers finish.
I know the FIFA rankings are all kinds of crazy (see also, Italy's ranking dropping because they played a friendly against San Marino or Austria's ranking dropping despite beating the US in a friendly) but they might as well use them throughout and not just for the top teams.
* Austria are out, if Ireland are also out I default to Italy for footballing reasons.
I understand the purpose of the draw, it's to add a bit of excitement to the proceedings and to make sure Italy fans suffer*. But at the same time, it does seem like a lot of fuss.
I fence, and the draws for our group stages are done from the rankings. If there were eight groups, the top ranked fencer attending would go into group 1, the second into group 2 and so on, then the ninth ranked fencer would go into group 8, 10th into group 7 again with the so on, until the 17th ranked fencer goes into group 1, 18th into group to and so on and so on.
Doing this with the October FIFA rankings (here if anyone wants to check my maths) gives the following groups (respecting the max. 2 European teams in a group, max. 1 team from another region. This was done by skipping teams until they fitted and then putting them in.)
| Group A | Group B | Group C | Group D | Group E | Group F | Group G | Group H |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Spain | Germany | Argentina | Columbia | Belgium | Uruguay | Switzerland | Netherlands |
| Bosnia -Herzegovina | Chile | Greece | Portugal | Brazil | USA | England | Italy |
| Cote D'Ivoire | Croatia | Russia | France | Ghana | Algeria | Ecuador | Mexico |
| Australia | Cameroon | Korea | Iran | Honduras | Japan | Costa Rica | Nigeria |
Okay, I had to swap Cameroon and Australia for it to work, but you've got 8 reasonably solid groups, and even the apparently expected horrible group for Italy.
Even if you change it around so that Brazil are automatically Group A team 1, you instead get:
| Group A | Group B | Group C | Group D | Group E | Group F | Group G | Group H |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Brazil | Spain | Germany | Argentina | Columbia | Belgium | Uruguay | Switzerland |
| Bosnia -Herzegovina | Greece | Chile | Portugal | USA | England | Italy | Netherlands |
| Cote D'Ivoire | Ecuador | Croatia | Russia | France | Ghana | Mexico | Costa Rica |
| Australia | Cameroon | Korea | Iran | Japan | Honduras | Nigeria | Algeria |
I've had to swap Cameroon and Australia again, but we once again end up with some nice balanced groups, although less balanced IMO than previously, and Italy still end up with a horrible group.
Now I haven't done this just to prove that Italy are cursed, or to show that it doesn't take £10 million to do a draw (really, FIFA, I'm very cheap). It's more I don't get why they don't do it this way. Surely it would be easier for the various federations and their fans to know where they're going about 2 weeks earlier, when the qualifiers finish.
I know the FIFA rankings are all kinds of crazy (see also, Italy's ranking dropping because they played a friendly against San Marino or Austria's ranking dropping despite beating the US in a friendly) but they might as well use them throughout and not just for the top teams.
* Austria are out, if Ireland are also out I default to Italy for footballing reasons.
Brazilian Grand Prix
| Fastest Friday Practice | Price | Fastest Saturday Practice | Price | Fastest Qualifying | Price |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nico Rosberg | 18/1 | Vettel | 1/4 | Vettel | 1/4 |
| Amount won/lost on a £1 bet | -£1 | Amount won/lost on a £1 bet | £1.25 | Amount won/lost on a £1 bet | £1.25 |
| Amount won/lost on a £10 bet | -£10 | Amount won/lost on a £10 bet | £12.50 | Amount won/lost on a £10 bet | £12.50 |
| Season Total £1 bets | £6.24 | Season Total £1 bets | £17.46 | Season Total £1 bets | £15.82 |
| Season Total £10 bets | £62.59 | Season Total £10 bets | £174.61 | Season Total £10 bets | £158.29 |
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