There are many “get rich quick” schemes flying around and to many staking plans are typical of these and to others the holy grail of betting. In this feature I am going to look at and back test just some of the miriad of plans that are available, some you may have heard of and some you most definitely haven’t.
As with any thing that is potentially damaging to your bank balance rigorous testing should be undertaken before risking your money with the bookies. In this series of posts I will be using the “Staking Machine” website software to analyse the results from a set study of Premiership teams taken from last seasons finishing positions of top (Man City) 5th Place (Tottenham) and 10th Place (Crystal Palace)
What are staking plans? Essentially staking plans are a tool where you can use a pre determined equation to set your stake for the next bet in a sequence that you have chosen beforehand you would like to bet on. This could be following a racing tipster in your favourite newspaper to betting on a set trap number in greyhound racing. This post will focus on football and backing your favourite team through the season.
So which staking plan would you choose? The list is quite extensive and I will be analysing all of the plans that are on the staking machines website but to name just a few there is level, percentage, 1326, Fibonacci, Parley and the list goes on.
There are some basic things that you would need to input into the software for some of the plans and one of them is that it needs the average winning odds. This means the average of the odds where the selection won.
There is a section on the main software screen that shows strike rates, average winning odds average odds losing sequences and winning sequences a snap shot of which is shown below.
With last years football results this is easy as all the data can be downloaded from http://www.football-data.co.uk, which provides downloadable raw data from most leagues from around the world but in so much detail as regards to the domestic leagues you need to slim the excel sheets down a bit. What I will be using is the spreadsheet available below and filtering out the home and away results of the teams mentioned above to glean the average winning odds.
The screenshot above shows Man City’s home wins and the average home win odds provided by http://www.football-data.co.uk
The screenshot below shows the matches where Man City were playing away from home and the average odds for an away win.
As you can see I have used the power of excel to determine the average of the average home win odds when they won and the average of the away odds when they won away from home and these are – Average winning Home odds 1.21 and the average winning away odds are 1.39 giving an over all average winning odds last season of 1.21 + 1.39 = 2.6
2.6/ 2 = 1.30
We can now enter this figure into the staking machine software. The rule for this is that you take the decimal odds of the average win odds and subtract 1 so the figure we enter into the winning odds box is 0.3
You can click the image above to open it in a new tab to make things clearer. Once this has been saved we can start entering the data from the spreadsheet. It should be noted at this point that the bank box is pre populated with £100 – you don’t physically need a £100 bank this is virtual all you need in your bookmaker account is the funds to make the next bet which is usually 1% of this i.e. £1.00. The demo mode of the software only allows you to input 10 results but I have subscribed so I can show you the full seasons bets.
Manchester city won 28 of their 38 league games last season (23/24) and subsequently finished league champions and everything that goes with this title but how did the devoted fan, who backs his team to win for £2.00 per week, fair? – Not too well to be honest. He would have lost £3.96 over the season. How can this be?
For a staking plan to work you need winners we all agree on that, but if the winners are at such a short price as Man City’s were then you need more winners. You may recall that the average “Winning Odds” for Man City last season was 1.3 this means that you would need a 76.8% strike rate to call a profit. Man City’s actual strike rate for last season was 73.7%. So Man City won the league and the bookies won the money- again!!!
This is just one instance where the advocates of level stake betting won’t turn a profit even though the strike rate is over 70%. There are however staking plans that will net you a profit but they are not life changing. I will explore these in more detail as time goes on but for now I will outline what would have happened if you had backed Tottenham throughout the season to win.
So again we first determine the winning odds for Tottenham by finding the average home winning odds and adding them to the away winning odds and dividing by 2. We can easily do this by filtering the data in excel as we did for Man City.
Tottenham won 13 of their home games producing an average of 1.79 winning odds.
When playing away their strike rate was very much reduced and their winning odds averaged 1.83
If we add these together and divide by 2 we get : 1.79 +1.83 = 3.62 / 2 = 1.81
Plagued by bad luck or just better teams Tottenham achieved a winning strike rate of just 52.6% where in weeks 11 – 15 saw their longest losing streak. Average winning odds of 1.8 require a winning strike rate of 55.5%. So Again the bookies win and the fans wonder why when their team did so well in coming 5th in the table have, to a level stake of £2.00 on each game £5.00 less than when they started.
As you can see from the graph above when the odds were below 1.5 (7 in total) Tottenham won all of their games – as the odds suggest that they should have. the plan all starts to go pear shaped when the odds rise above 2.0 and more research might reveal that not backing Tottenham at these odds could improve the profit figure. The table below shows the ranges of odds and the profit/loss and a return on investment (ROI) had you just backed tottenham within these ranges. It should be noted that these figures are to a £1.00 level stake not £2.00
Finally on this post the results from 10th placed Crystal Palace. Crystal Palace had a total of 13 wins out of their 38 league matches giving a strike rate of 34.2%. Their average winning odds for these 13 games was 3.36 which required a strike rate of just 29.7% for all games over the season. This team would have made their fans a profit of £8.39 over the season if they had backed them to win with a level stake profit of £2.00
The following graphs and tables show in more detail the figures quoted above for Crystal Palace and the 23/24 season
Backing matches at “Bread and Butter” odds (1.5 – 3.0) would have shown a profit and 2 wins, one at odds between 5.5 and 6.0 and another at odds of above 10.0 and this can be better seen in the table below Again these figures show profit/loss to a £1.00 level stake.
These are back tested results and show what would have happened if you had backed your team to level stakes and while not entirely picked at random for this study it does show that care needs to be taken when blindly backing at level stakes. Manchester city might have won nearly 3/4 of there league games but it was not enough to turn a profit
In the posts that follow I will be analysing the same 3 teams using a variety of staking plans to determine if there was a greater profit or a reduced loss to be made and still keep the betting enjoyable.
There is one more point I would like to make on the subject of strike rates and winning odds averages. The bookies know that if they are offering odds that are below the average winning odds then they are going to win. If you know about odds movement when a match is in play then you will realise that there are many times that you can back a team in play when the win odds of the team will rise above the average winning odds giving you the edge instead of them – There is of course the distinct possiblity that they may score early in the game!! These are all things that have to be considered and a risk assessment taken. Don’t be in such a hurry to lose your money!
The staking plans I will be using will be taken in the order listed on the staking machines software and after Level stakes the next plan is called “Percentage”. Below is a list of all the staking plans used which, when I have written the post will have a link attached so you can easily go straight to the post. Some of the plans I have never heard of and further reading on his site reveals that he himself has invented them.
Percentage
Fibonacci
Dalembert
Parlay
Pro
Secure
Fixed
Kelly
Square Root
Labouchere
Retirement
Bookies Bank
Bookies Bank v2
XYZ
Up X Down Y
LP 28
Recovery
Recovery Type 2
Recovery Type 3
SAW
Rolling Doubles
Coup Master
1 Point
i-TSM Plan
Betornot 
1 Comment