swedish u21 is fine, bet365 are just muppets.

Here are my thoughts on Unirea game which I wrote up for a few people nearly a week ago. On thing is for certain, their financial troubles are well documented and factored into the price for the most part.

FC Unirea Urziceni vs FC Steaua Bucureşti match on 11/09/2010 Pick: Unirea +1.25. Basic write up and although Steau are worthy faves, +1.25 is nice. I have seen them play this year and they are nowhere near as bad as the financial troubles lack of players would suggest.

Unirea Urziceni are in serious financial trouble and have been opposed almost every week as players have not been paid. However, their results have been ok considering..They are unbeaten in three matches and their last league loss was again Cluj only 0:1. Their home record was excellent last year and considering the odds atm, we could get a large AHC. FC Steaua Bucureşti are an excellent team no doubt although their away form last year was not stellar - they are running above expectation this year although their signings have improved things somewhat. In fact, due to the financial troubles, the league itself has deteriorated, shown for example by Timisaora's total lack of anything decent during the City match. Sponsorships have dropped (leading to less expensive signings) and the quality of the league has suffered..-1.25 away from home is too big a handicap imo.

my bundesliga picks for today:
Wolfsburg +0.25 @ ~2.1
Hamburg -1.25 @ ~1.85
Leverkusen -0.5 @ ~2
Frankfurt +0.25 @ ~2.1

holy **** man don't let steaua equalize now, 1-0 in the 85th mintue and i decided to just bet the 10.0 odds on unirea straight up for a full unit bet...!!!!!!!!!!!!

god suspense is killing me, i wish i hadnt checked standing before the game was over

90+

CALL IT U POLACK ****S

**** yeahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

I had the goal line estimated at 1.21, but decided to be a nit and not f**k about, so just lmao and took a very big chunk of the UNDER 3.0/3.5 line available on Pinny for some straight raping.

Also had an even bigger chunk on Bremen +0.75 on the h'caps as this easily qualified for a "very high" edge in this spot (imo of course). Was a bit annoyed with myself to miss the line drift out to Bremen +1 for the same price, but meh.................still easy monies!!

Gazo,

you expect anyone to believe you had the goal line for Bayern Munich at 1.21 and 0.75 for St Pauli? Lol?

last thoughts on the unirea match.unirea played with young players from steaua II team(for real,2 defenders and one midfielder were borowed from steaua second team).the goalscoarer(semedo) was "dumped" from steaua,because they did not consider he was good enough for the team.no goalkeeper was outfield.
considering it wasn't fixed(these things hapen in the romanian championship) the surprize was much higher then the 10 odds!!!
fortunately i did not bet.

I couldn't care less if anyone believes me or not. Sometimes I just can't help but chirp in when people are on the complete opposite side of the line to myself and use fairly terrible justification (imo) to explain how they arrived at that bet.

As for the lol?.............No I'm not kidding, St.Pauli was just for my normal wager, both the Bremen h'cap and goal lines yesterday were for much larger amounts since they had significantly greater edges.

If/when I feel like it, I'll try and remember to post all my lines for future Bundesliga fixtures.

Incase you are interested, my full list of Bundesliga AH/GL bets for this current weekend were as follows:-

Hoffenheim 0 (2u) WIN
Dortmund -0.25 (1u) WIN
Gladbach -0.25 (1u) Lose (lolz I know )
Hannover +0.5 (3u) WIN
Freiburg +0.5 (2u) WIN
Bremen +0.75 (3u) WIN, and Under 3.25 GL (2u) WIN

to bring me back to reality France Ligue 1 was very meh..............

Auxerre -0.5 (1u) Lose
Sochaux +1 (1u) Push
Montpellier -0.5 (1u) Lose
Valenciennes +1 (1u) WIN
Monaco +1 (3u) Still playing
Arles +1.25 (1u) Lose (lolz again )

A bit crazy how I find 2u worth of a bet on the Bremen GL but can't even find an edge worth 1u anywhere else in these leagues, but it is what it is!

Ok so not really a reality check at all, Monaco game finished up 2-2 FT

Werder Bremen at 2.25 vs. Tottenham for tomorrow night looks great value, and I'm a Spurs fan. With Defoe injured, Spurs lack any kind of potency going forward, as was painfully obvious in our 1-1 draw vs. West Brom on saturday. Under 2.5 goals looks good value too.

Bremen have Pizarro almost certainly out + Mertesacker, Naldo out as well.

Their remaining lineup looks spectacularly average.

does anyone have an idea on the over/under for stoke-villa today? 2.5 isn't many goals, but they've only scored six combined this year.

And how exactly did you come up with a goal line of 1.21 which completely contradicts everything the bookmakers had priced up? I mean we're not talking about a small difference in decimal places here.

Apologies,
It should have read..........."I had the total goals estimated at 1.21"

I'm not prepared to go into the reasons why, but what I use to determine the total goals and handicaps advantages in the elite european leagues is pretty much the same as I used when posting my picks in the World Cup thread on here several months ago.

Obviously if I never contradicted the bookmakers then I would have no value edges to bet on!!

You also claim Betfair has better lines (even with commission) than pinnacle.

Nothing wrong with that, though.

I have no idea if the unders for Bayern/Bremen was actually value but if you're making total goals 1.21 you've got something massively massively wrong. There's a difference between thinking the market is possibly wrong and a really efficient market with 100s of £1000s bet on it being THAT wrong.

Market I'm guessing was 2.9ish...the market for a top league is not going to get a goals line so drastically wrong and I think I've only ever seen a goal expectation below 2 once or twice (1.8-1.9ish)...there is no way, bar a fix, that a goals expectation is going to be anywhere near 1.21.

^^^obv agree.

There haven't been too many examples of close to 100% efficient markets offering crazy odds at kick-off. England vs Germany springs to mind with England at 2.6 ----> and yet a few days later Spain were 2.7 against Germany. This was a massive pricing error based on tens of millions of pounds of fan money outweighing professional money (england have the most passionate betting fans).

There is simply no chance a game can ever have a 1.21 goal expectancy in a regular market in a top flight league. This would actually make the draw odds on (which does happen but NOT in a regular market). You may say that some teams have a tendency to just win 1:0 and therefore the draw does not have to be odds on as a team's goal expectancy is 1.0 against Team B's .21. However, Inter were the paradigm example of this and there was still never a line below 2.0. To give you some idea, the league yielding one of the fewest goals in the world is the Moroccan Premier League. Even then the line is 1.5.

I could probably write an essay and prove beyond reasonable doubt that this game could never have a 1.21 goal expectancy but if you can't realise it now (no matter how shrewd you are) it is a waste of time.

...



And yes obviously the said game doesn't have the goal expectancy he claims.

With 2% commision you have a 101% market. Not even SBO and Pinnacle can compete with that...

Asian handicaps and the like are not what you use Betfair for (unless you really pay the lowest commision), though. But in smaller markets or markets with more than 3 runners you are very likely to get the best price at Betfair even with 5% commision.

Out of interest what did you think the supremacy should've been in the Spain game?

Was talking to people at the time and we all thought it was basically the most 'difficult game to call' of the entire World Cup taking into account Spain's potential quality + their up till then poor performances and Germany's great start + possible overachievements against poor sides.

In the end I think we settled on about 0.

Seriously, this is a bit of whacky answer but I believe it to be true. Usually when capping, you'd need a solid grasp of odds and good analysis of the factors that go into pricing up the matches as well as knowledge about the teams. However, when it comes to a match with this much information and so much analysis I'd personally take the advice of someone who just knows sht loads about football - sometimes this is just a nutty fan who speaks rationally if that makes sense. The price was about correct for the Germany match (although it was clearly too big with respect to spain when the line first came out as it was subsequently backed in). It was that close but if they had a truly informed opinion due to experience of watching x amount of matches with a good track record their opinion would be worth more than an odds compilation from scratch using stats + subjectivity.

A detailed comparison of the respected lineups and battles between each of the players would have yielded some interesting results. Here we had half the barcelona + real team playing against Bayern Munich who had reached the champs league final. From there we could then compare the spanish and german leagues etc etc. However, when it really came down to it, the spaniards are just a clutch team with players who were not necessarily improving as the tournament went on but just 'getting the job done'. Using previous matches for spain including their poor performances against Switzerland was misleading. I mean, they had villa, casillas, iniesta and xavi who regularly turn it on etc. Stats such as not scoring, or lack of assists are more random when taken in the context of four/five games. In fact Villa was creating a huge number of chances but failing to convert as many as he could have. As a general rule, the more shots the player has or is having in previous matches, the more likely he is to score WHEN he is at an elite level. In amongst all that we had players for germany who were being overrated (ozil) and underrated (in part) Mueller (who was suspended affecting the price - or not affecting it as much initially).

I'm not sure what I'm trying to say other than the price was correct at kick-off. Spain slight favourites.

As for the betfair question..A friend and I ran the closing betfair prices for the prem and they are 99%+ accurate..i.e a £1 of every selection would lose to comission over time, they are that good. Although my friend reliably informs me he has a system for prem betting - 'lay the underdog at home if they score'..it is working a treat