We have finally reached the end of the season so for the last time in 2012-2013 here are the Eastwood Index’s (EI) probabilities for the English Premier League.
Once the season is over and done with I’ll be looking back at how the EI has performed and how well it’s predictions compare with the bookmakers so look out for that next week!
| Home Team | Away Team | Home (%) | Draw (%) | Away (%) |
| Chelsea | Everton | 52 | 28 | 20 |
| Liverpool | QPR | 71 | 18 | 11 |
| Man City | Norwich | 77 | 14 | 9 |
| Newcastle | Arsenal | 23 | 32 | 45 |
| Southampton | Stoke | 42 | 31 | 27 |
| Swansea | Fulham | 46 | 30 | 24 |
| Tottenham | Sunderland | 67 | 21 | 13 |
| West Brom | Man United | 13 | 30 | 57 |
| West Ham | Reading | 49 | 29 | 23 |
| Wigan | Aston Villa | 43 | 31 | 27 |
George - May 17, 2013
Cool website. I really enjoy making projections and football seems to be the more interesting sport to do this because of the variety of approaches (given the low scoring nature of it which makes it less predictable). I go the least squares way and assume error is normally distributed around predictions from a rating system (and its the only one I could do easily in Excel given my limited maths). I think the guys at DTech go the ordered probit/logistical regression route (which seems to be the way to go I think) and I haven’t figured out your method yet but it looks interesting. They all seem to have similar numbers though:
e.g.: for Chelsea/Everton (Home/Draw/Away)
Your way: 52/28/20
DTech: 55/23/22
Least Squares: 59/22/18
All of which are around the bookmaker odds for that game 60/24/19 (random bookmaker picked)
Out of interest, have you noticed any kind of preferred ratio of your projections to bookmakers odds along the lines of the Dixon/Coles paper into this kind of thing?
Keep up the good work.
Martin Eastwood - May 18, 2013
Thanks George! Once the season finishes I’m planning looking back at how I’ve done over the year compared with the bookmakers to see if there are any patterns to my projections versus theirs.
George - May 18, 2013
Thanks. Re: the bookmakers that’s what I’ve found, just because you can generate a number similar to theirs – what does it actually tell you (as we don’t know what their perspective is)? What biases is it accounting for? Don’t know if you saw the Steven Levitt paper in 2004 on this kind of thing (was on the NFL though), and the various papers done on football (e.g. Graham and Stott from DTech in 2008) and bookmaker efficiency. I know DTech have worked out they would make something like 10% when their number differed from bookmaker numbers over however many years they have been doing it. The Dixon/Coles paper also found that when the ratio of their probability against the bookmakers probability was about 1.2 it was optimum for generating profit. What this tells us though – I don’t know.
Good luck with everything and I look forward to reading it.
Martin Eastwood - May 21, 2013
Thanks George, I’ve not seen the Levitt paper before.
Jimmy - August 23, 2013
Very interesting, been trying myself to see how accurate the bookies have been with their odds. Scraping my data off Oddsportal, using a Java app to analyse it. And then generatinig my own rating based on form etc Only point of note I have noticed so far is that home teams with odds between 1.999 and 2.5 are the best to bet on. Consistently generating a % profit across all leagues. I assume these are games where bookies are loosest with their odds.
Martin Eastwood - August 23, 2013
yes the bookies are pretty good but they are certainly not perfect and there are situations where they can be beaten – the tricky bit is being able to do it consistently over a long period of time :)
Jimmy - August 23, 2013
I’d like to see you try your system against the Iranian pro league. Very obscure league to be betting on I know but I have found my own rating system giving me accuracy of 70% with average odds of over 2.2. I was raking it in last season. Not so much this time round as the bookies seem to have tightened their odds on that particular pony.
Martin Eastwood - August 23, 2013
cool, well done it’s always great to hear about people taking money off the bookies :)
I haven’t tried my system outside of Europe or MLS yet, now you have got me really interested in trying it out on more leagues!
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Thanks!