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It
is the common belief of many betting office punters that placing bets on
high priced long shots is a far better bet than backing the favourites.
In other words, you get better value with the higher odds. In truth the
evidence backs the opposite. In horse betting bookies have customarily imposed
a pricing bias, known as a favourite-long shot bias, to insure them against
the possibility of inside information on a long shot. Whilst inside information
doesn’t much play a part in football betting odds, bookmakers may
opt for similar management of liabilities. Basically, any mistakes made
on them estimating a result will be greater at the outsider’s odds
end of the market than the favourites, since the betting odds are a reflection
of the expected result.
The Best Football Betting Odds
Football-Data has established this suggestion by analysis of three years
of fixed football betting odds. As a general rule, someone who is blindly
backing prices at less than 1.5 will see a return of 95% of his betting
stakes. At the same time, someone placing bets only on teams at greater
than 5, would have returned only 70% of his stake. Of course, no serious
better will randomly bet on matches, but will back teams that they think
will win. Nevertheless, such information, when combined with details of
the bookmaker ensures that the man placing the bets is aware of the odds
he is up against. |
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