Something For The Weekend?

Nebraska won easily last night, so a couple of decent College Football results after last week's poor NFL run.

Another international break this weekend and to be honest there's not much looking at in terms of league football. Having said that, there are a couple of games worth looking at in the lower divisions in England, so without further ado...

nPower League 1:
I've mentioned Brighton a couple of times this season and the Seagulls are the form team in League 1 at the moment, showing a big improvement from last season. Peterborough, Bournemouth and Rochdale - none of whom were in this division last year - are also performing well. At the other end of the table Walsall and Brentford have gone backwards and I'm going to recommend Walsall for relegation.
Brighton kick off the weekend - they're playing Bournemouth on Saturday lunchtime, the game is live on Sky Sports 2 (12.15pm). Brighton haven't lost at home this season and haven't been behind at half time either but there's no value in applying the strategy with no name here. Not only that, laying Bournemouth could be expensive if the game is a draw. So I'm just going to recommend backing Brighton for promotion.


nPower League 2:
Port Vale are the form team, but Chesterfield, Shrewsbury, Rotherham and Accrington are all looking good too. At the bottom, Bradford and Hereford are struggling and considering they reached the playoffs last season, Morecambe are also doing badly, possibly due to New Stadium Syndrome. I'm backing Port Vale for promotion and Hereford to be relegated: by sheer coincidence they play each other at Edgar Street on Saturday afternoon.
Hereford's home form this season is terrible - they've not been ahead at half time and haven't won yet and I think half time is where the opportunity lies as Port Vale haven't been behind after 45 minutes. Unfortunately there's no value in it; so I'm recommending under 2.5 goals instead as Hereford are having trouble scoring.

And that's it. I'm not going to be able to monitor College Football on Saturday but I'll be posting some NFL tips at some point during the weekend, so for now - good hunting!

Thursday Night Football

UCF 42, UAB 7. That'll do.

Right, a big game in the Big12 tonight featuring one of the teams I'm following this season as Nebraska travel to Kansas State. Bit of a strange matchup for me: this will be the fifth straight home game KSU has played this season. As a 'sakkah' fan, I can honestly say that this type of scheduling wouldn't happen in the round ball game.

The stats that matter: although KSU is 15-5 at home over the last 20 home games, they're only 1-5 against opponents ranked in the top ten (Nebraska is currently seventh); Nebraska is currently on a five game winning streak on the road and has won of ten of their last fourteen away games against unranked opposition.

Nebraska has won the last two meetings in Manhattan, KSU but lost the previous four games there. Could be a lot of points but I'm leaving that market alone. I'm recommending laying KSU.

Wednesday Night College Football

Well, Thursday morning for me anyway.

Monday night's prediction was totally hopelessly wrong, although looking back at the preview I pointed out that if New England won the game there was more of a chance of the total points being higher - and that's exactly what happened. Still, the only rewards for being correct after the event are a lot of experience points.

Conference USA
UAB at UCF (kick off 1am GMT Thursday morning)
Central Florida are 2-2 so far this season and have won 14 of their last 20 at the Bright House Networks Stadium in Orlando by an average of 14 points; UAB (University of Alabama at Birmingham) are 1-3 so far and have lost 16 of their last 20 road trips although one of those wins was an upset win at UCF in the last game of the 2008 season. No value in backing a straight UCF win, so I'm recommending laying UAB.

Monday Round Up

A mixed weekend, the only real disaster was Coventry's home defeat to Preston, but once again I imagine I wasn't the only punter who got that wrong. Here's the round up.

Spot On:
Alabama 24, Arkansas 20
Birmingham 0, Wigan 0
Fulham 0, Everton 0

OK, I recommended straight bets for Birmingham and Fulham wins but both of them would have been good value if they'd won and dutching Fulham/draw produced a nice result. The Alabama/Arkansas game was a good one too.

Mixed:
Notre Dame 14, Stanford 37
Morecambe 2, Barnet 2

Morecambe had to come from behind twice to earn a point. Almost a disaster, but thanks to a goal from veteran Morecambe midfielder Paul Mullen it wasn't; may have to keep an eye on backing Morecambe at their new stadium as they haven't won there yet.
Stanford look like the real deal though - they've got a massive game at Oregon on Saturday that I might get involved with.

Wrong, But Worth A Small Punt:
Rutgers 13, North Carolina 17

Lost:
Coventry 1, Preston 2

No Harm Done:
Albion Rovers 3, Elgin 1
East Stirling 0, Berwick 0
The enigma of the Scottish 3rd Division continues.

I stayed up far too late on Saturday night/Sunday morning, so I didn't post any NFL picks yesterday. Of the games I followed, I won two and lost one (I picked Houston over Dallas) but one of the wins was down to Oakland missing a last second field goal that would have won their game at Arizona. Classic Raiders.

Lessons Learned:
* Adding the home win/draw percentages was a really good idea - there was an 80% chance of winning by dutching home win/draw for every Premiership game, but this weekend's results have reduced that to 76.7%. Food for thought.

* The college football game selection policy is a good one and I'll keep that going.

* Always bet against Oakland in the NFL. Much as I hate doing that, it seems to be profitable.

College Football Picks 25/9/10

I've picked three games this weekend using the following criteria:

* The kick off time has to be accessible to a UK audience
* The exchanges have markets available (not always the case)

Strangely, I've ended up with three games where the visiting team is the favourite - but I think that there are cases to be made for backing the home in two of them. I'm going to start with the game where I think the away team will win.

Alabama at Arkansas (Saturday 8:30pm, live on ESPN America)
Arkansas' record at home isn't that bad (four loses in the last 20) but home games against teams ranked in the Top 10 have been few and far between - three in the last five seasons and the Razorbacks have lost all of them by an average of 25.3 points. Those games include a 49-19 thrashing by Alabama in 2008.
Alabama have won their last three road games against teams ranked in the Top 20 (Arkansas are currently 10th in the Associated Press Poll) by a margin of 12 points so although this will be a cracking game it's highly unlikely that Arkansas will win it.
Recommendation: Back Alabama but keep an eye on the exchanges to find a decent price for laying Arkansas. 

Stanford at Notre Dame (Saturday 8:30pm)
One thing to keep in mind about this game: although Notre Dame have lost exactly half of their last ten home games, five of those defeats came in overtime so there's plenty of potential for this game to be a close one. Stanford haven't won three consecutive road games since the beginning of the 2005 season and haven't won in South Bend since 1992; Notre Dame have won the last five meetings between these two at home by an average of two touchdowns and although I don't think that will be the case, I can smell an upset here. Back Notre Dame by all means, but a I'd also recommend an insurance bet on Stanford just in case.

Keep An Eye On:
North Carolina at Rutgers (Saturday 8:30pm)
After losing two straight home games by the same score (24-30) the Tar Heels travel to New Jersey in search of their first win of the season. There's an immediate problem with this game, which is that these two programmes have only met each other twice and each time the home team has lost, so there really isn't enough data to take this forward.
Having said that...I think the bookies may have got this one arse backwards. So I'm recommending either taking no action or having a small punt on Rutgers: they've had three shut outs in their last five home games including one against a ranked opponent (23-0 v USF at the end of last season).

Something For The Weekend Part II

Only a couple today as I'm a bit pushed for time (I'm off to a game later on), but I'll have some thoughts on Sunday's action either later on or early tomorrow.

Barclays Premiership

Stoke City v West Ham United (ko 12:45pm GMT)
It would be a major surprise if West Ham won at the Britannia Stadium - although give the Hammers poor away record in the Premiership it's unlikely. Last draw between these two at Stoke was a goalless game in April 1972.


German Bundesliga
Wolfsburg v Hannover 96 (ko 2:30pm GMT)
Back over 2.5 goals - last 19 at the VW Arena have been over and in eight of their last ten games when Hannover have visited

College Football
Avoid Arkansas @ Georgia, even the Vegas oddsmakers are having trouble with this one although it should be a pretty good game. Otherwise today's schedule seems to be bereft of any value so I'll leave it there.

NFL Picks For 2010

The NFL season starts tomorrow and although I'm probably going to be more interested in individual games until the playoffs start, I've got a couple of divisional recommendations to make.

Dallas Cowboys to win the NFC East: the Cowboys were the team of the 90s in this division, winning it six times in ten seasons before going into an eight year slump. They've won two of the last three titles and look a good proposition to win another. I'd leave them alone from a Superbowl point of view though - the game is being played at the new Cowboys stadium and no team has ever won the Vince Lombardi trophy in their own stadium.

There's also a case for laying current champions New Orleans as there hasn't been a back to back Superbowl winner for a while (same with the Champions League but more of that in another post) - I don't think that they're as good as the San Francisco 49ers were back in the day and also because I think the New England Patriots will not only win the AFC East but also look a decent punt for the whole thing. The bookies have the Patriots similarly priced to New York Jets, but I think Jets QB Mark Sanchez might have a difficult second year at the helm of the Jets offense.

And that's it. The San Diego Chargers will probably run away with the AFC West but don't really represent any value; three of the four teams in the NFC West stand a chance of winning it and the southern divisions in both conferences only go back eight seasons, which isn't really enough data...having said that, the Indianapolis Colts will probably win the AFC South.

Bumper post coming on Friday as I've found some opportunities in England and Scotland (and possibly Germany) this weekend but I need to make sure that they're profitable ones. If there's time I'll include some College and NFL picks too.

The Good Run Continues...For How Long?

It's an understatement to say that at about 5:00pm GMT yesterday I was very pleased indeed.

Everything came in; even the two games I decided to leave alone, which on the one hand is annoying, but on the other is a very positive indication that the voodoo I use is currently working very well indeed. In case you're worried, it's not actually voodoo and I also don't have a copy of Biff Tannen's sports almanac from 'Back To The Future' - it's a statistically based system that's always evolving and involves a number of failsafes, which is why some events are part of a watching brief.

Only one soccer game of any note today - it's been a while since I got involved in a game in Brazil's Serie A and the game between Avai and Atletico Paranaense (kick off 8:00pm GMT) looks like it might be worth considering. However, I'm going to exercise some caution here as Avai lost at Santos on Thursday evening, which is a similar kind of turnaround to a Premier team playing in the Europa League and then turning out for a Sunday afternoon game. There's also a minor problem with the fact that these two have only played each other once in the Campeonato in Florianopolis (Avai won 2-0 last October) but to be honest Atletico's recent away record in the league is so poor that probably doesn't matter.

The Strategy With No Name is going to make yet another appearance here - Avai or draw at half time is worth dutching (83% of games in the Campeonato at half time have been home/draw at half time), but I'm recommending laying Atletico - even though they won their last away game, they haven't won back to back away games in the league since August 2009. Avai haven't lost consecutive home games since July 2009, I'm going to have a small punt on a straight Avai win.

Couple of college football games later on, my advice is to lay SMU in their game at Texas Tech - Texas Tech has won the last six games between these two and have won the last three in Lubbock by an average of 38 points.

'It isn't necessary to see a good tackle. You can hear it.'

The title is a quote from legendary college cootball coach Knute Rockne and the NCAA Football season kicks off tonight (or tomorrow morning if you're me) and I've struck some season long bets on some of the conferencnes. I am really looking forward to both the college and the NFL seasons starting and I'll have some NFL recommendations posted over the next week or so.


To be fair to most of the online bookies, they've now worked out that there are a lot of American Football fans based in Europe who follow NCAA Football as well as the NFL version and so there are a much wider range of markets than there were even a couple of years ago. And as with almost every other sport, it definitely pays to shop around for the best odds - I've opened two new accounts in the past week. Trading can be a bit of a problem with late kick offs though, especially when Hawaii are at home; it's a bit like the LA baseball teams - I've actually watched extra innings games from the West Coast while I've been eating breakfast before now.


Without further ado, here are the selections I've already made:


Big 12 North: Nebraska
Big East: Pittsburgh
PAC 10: Oregon
Sun Belt: Middle Tennessee State


(Pitt and Middle TN games are on the calendar, the rest will be up ASAP)


I've still got to place bets on the ACC, Big 10 and the SEC but that'll probably be on Saturday morning and even then I might leave the Big 10 alone - if Ohio State pummels Marshall tonight then they won't be worth backing for the Big 10 at all.


There are a couple of Week 1 games worth a look: ESPN America kicks off their coverage of the 2010 season with the South Carolina/Southern Mississippi game (back South Carolina, even though the price is rubbish) and I'm backing Iowa State to beat Northern Illinois. I've had a quick look at Saturday's programme and there are three games that look promising but more of them tomorrow.


I'm leaving the Euro 2012 qualifiers alone - England don't have any value at all, I'm expecting them not to lose. However, there is a really outstanding opportunity to implement the Strategy Without A Name in the Airtricity Premiership on Friday evening. Shamrock Rovers haven't lost at home to Sligo Rovers since January 1996 and there's an astonishing  60% chance of a draw at half time - so dutching Shamrock/draw for both the first half and the final score is what I'm recommending. I've not taken a detailed look at the goal expectation in this game but I expect it to be low.


There are a number of games in League 1 and League 2 this weekend that also look promising but I'll only post those that are worth looking at when I've run the numbers. I've also decided to double my Betfair stake from £2 to £4 so now I can think of any profits as pints rather than the weekend edition of the Racing Post ;-)


Final August Betfair figures: profit £27.54 (baseball £1.90, horse racing £7.60, soccer £18.52, tennis -0.48p)


Must do better at tennis in September then!