Sportpunter

A few pictures showing here what a great day it was:

It’s coming around to Australia Day once again which is one of my favourite days of the year! Why? Not because I love all things Australian – which I almost do – but because I especially love alternative music.

Now I know that this is a gambling website, and I do intend on having some gambling tips in this article, but what I am really talking about is the Triple J Hottest 100.

For those who don’t live on this sunbaked island, Triple J is an alternative youth based radio station that holds the most famous countdown of the best songs of the year. You can read all about the hottest 100 here: http://www.abc.net.au/triplej/hottest100/09/ and you can even get a vote in (which helps when you are betting on the best song as well!)

In the past, I’ve done pretty good out of the hottest 100. Last year I bet strongly on Kings of Leon’s Sex on Fire which started around odds of 1.75 only to drift to 2.00. In 2007 Muse’s Knights of Cydonia only defeated favourite Silverchair’s Sraight Lines by 8 votes, and I lost a small amount on that bet.

But its been good for me in the past. In 2006, I hit on the “all others” option, believing that it was crazy the Augie March’s One Crowded Hour wasn’t listed and picked up odds of 17 to 1.

Previous years to this showed that in order to make it to the number one position, it is all about timing and commercial radio play. In 1998 when the Offspring released Pretty Fly for a White Guy (ahh-haa, ahh-haa), the song got more than twice the amount of votes as the song in second position. The song was released on November 9^th, only a month before the Hottest 100 voting began and was an instant success.

Some things die hard though, and about another month later and it was the most hated song on the radio.

Timing is everything.

Which brings me to this years list. If the voting had started and finished at the start of the year, then Lilly Allen’s Not Fair (17.00) would have easily won. Such classic lyrics and catchy tune would have won the hottest 100 by a country mile. But Allen is old hat now, and several other tunes are fresher on people’s minds. You can get 41.00 on the Gossips Heavy Cross, which would have also won had the vote been mid year. Every channel was playing this song non stop. At least 10 remixes from DJ’s wanting to jump on the wagon helped them gain more and more radio airplay. So overplayed they were that the song is virtually not played on radio today.

Similarly, everyone has forgotten that Eskimo Joe’s song Foreign land is actually votable. It was released in April and since then has long been forgotten. Sportingbet haven’t even priced them up, but the song would have been top 5 if the vote count was mid year.

Phoenix was voted by Triple J voters as the best album of the year, and despite having a few big hits from the album, all sound quite similar and don’t exactly stand out. They could well get three top 20 listings, but it is hard to see them get the number 1 spot.

Muse is second favourite (4.00) with their song Uprising. It’s their best song off the album and has had significant airplay. Muse, my favourite band of all time, released this song in early September. But interestingly, in 2007, they hit the number 1 position in the hottest 100 with Knights of Cydonia that was released at prime time – mid/late November. Arguably, Knights of Cydonia is a better song than Uprising (although not as commercially played), so Muse is not a bet for me.

Favourite to hit the number one spot is Mumford & Suns Little Lion Man which has come in massively from odds of 2.80 to 1.50. I wouldn’t have listed this song in my top 3, so a bet on them is in my opinion of little value.

So who has released their song late, that is catchy and that everybody loves? Probably the song Home by Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zero’s. Although the album with the song was released mid year, Home has only been played in the last few weeks. So much has this caught bookies by surprise in that bookmakers failed to price up the song, which meant that odds of 126.00 would have been available. Since then it is available at odds of 17.00 or even as short as third place favourite 6.50 at spotingbet. That is some odds movement!

I’m not sure how much commercial airplay it has received, but for me, in a no real standout Hottest 100 list, it provides the best value.

Go for The Gossip as an outsider at 41.00 and hit on Home. Two big outsiders. Don’t forget the prawns on the barbie (or my Australian speciality – Dim-sims cut in half), and don’t go easy on the beverages.

As for my top 10 songs of the year 2009? Here they are:

1. Röyksopp – The Girl and the Robot
2. Karnivool – Set Fire to the Hive
3. Silversun Pickups – Panic Switch
4. Manchester Orchestra – I’ve Got Friends
5. Doves – Kingdom of Rust
6. Muse – Uprising
7. Lilly Allen – Not Fair
8. Eskimo Joe – Foreign Land
9. La Roux – Tigerlily
10. Edward Sharpe & Magnetic Zeros – Home

Apologies to Sarah Blasko’s All I want, Dead Letter Circus’s Space on the Wall,  every song by Karnivool and Röyksopp and how Phoenix didn’t get on the list I’ve no idea.

Odds are available at Sportingbet, Centrebet and Betchoice.

Many people know about the favourite/longshot bias that occurs in most sports, but little is talked about the overs/unders bias. Is there in fact a bias at all? We shall investigate.

Using data going back to the 2005/06 season, we have calculated the returns should one have simply bet $100 on either of the over or under in the total goals for the match. Which one will come up better? The results are shown below with the first table being the over bets, the second being the unders:

Clearly, this shows that had one bet $100 on each bet on the over, you would have lost around 4.9% ROI from nearly 5,500 bets. Alternatively, had you bet $100 on the unders, you would have made over $5,000 from nearly 5,500 bets. The bias is definetly there, that unders betting is if anything, the way to go.

Is it possible that this difference is purely due to random variation? Quite possibly, however there is a reason why the bias is there. No-one wants to see a low scoring game, everyone likes plenty of goals and will generally bet with what they want to see. Also, punters will generally remember the high scoring games, the great goals of the year and the best goalscoring players. This in turn biases them towards betting the overs. The fact that in NHL, if the scores are level at end time, we have a playoff, then this I believe, adds more fuel to the fire to say that the bias is there. Because even if the scores are level, there still will be one more goal scored.

For those statistically inclined, the difference is in fact statistically significant. A simple one sample p test shows that the probability of such a result happening due to random variation is less than 1 in a thousand.

So the bias is there, and we have good reason to suggest why it occurs.

Equally interesting, is how the bias works amongst different goal lines. Shown below is the results should one have bet $100 on the overs and unders for different goal lines. Once again, the top table is the over bets, the bottom table is the unders (that makes sense!)

Most of the bets have a goal line of 5.5 or 6, but the overs for a run line of 5 and below made a nice profit. 736 bets were made for a 4% ROI. I have little doubt, that this is because of an over adjustment by the bookies to a smaller runline due to perhaps several previous low scoring games by the teams involved. Once again, this difference is statistically significant and not due to random variation. Similarly, betting unders with run lines of 7 or above resulted in a 16.7% ROI profit from 84 bets. And once again, this is statistically significant and not due to random variation.

Such over-exaggeration from recent matches has forced the lines to move, and this is where we as punters can pick up on and make several value bets. In this short article, we haven’t even studied the teams and we are already picking up value bets that are statistically significant. I see no reason why this trend should not continue.

What will be interesting, is how the overs and unders work with soccer, basketball and many other sports. Will there constantly be value in all these sports? Let me know with you comments below.

Happy New year for 2010!

And what do sportpunter have in store?

Well tennis has just started, so check out the subscriptions for 2010 to join in the rewards.

AFL/NRL and Super 14s will be back. NHL continues along its way, as does NBA and NCAA Basketball.

Golf will continue along with Soccer, and we will be releasing odds for netball as well, a sport in which we cleaned up last year.

Baseball will be completly re-evaluated, and we will have a NBA model. There is also a possibility of having European Basketball and well as European Ice Hockey. Horse Racing is on the agenda, and isn’t far off completion.

Either way, there are plenty of opportunities for Sportpunter in 2010, which should be our biggest and busiest year for a while!

Happy New Year!