Dan's Tipping Game

[Dan+]

Leganes 3 up at Cartagena. I remain totally mystified at how they were considered outsiders. Shame I never went with it in here - although I landed neither of my picks.

[Dan+]

Just now, RandoEFC said:

Should have just gone for this as my tip @Dan .

Midtjylland won 4-1 as well. Hate it when a red card ruins a bet.

Timing  

[RandoEFC+]

35 minutes ago, Dan said:

Leganes 3 up at Cartagena. I remain totally mystified at how they were considered outsiders. Shame I never went with it in here - although I landed neither of my picks.

Cartagena dominated the first half to be fair. 8 shots vs 2 for Leganes. They crumbled though after the first goal.

[Dan+]

On 31/10/2023 at 01:55, Dan said:

WEEK 13 - LUCKY FOR SOME

Halloween has arrived on the supposedly unlucky numbered week, but you wouldn't know it looking at the league table here as we post our best week of the season, a third straight profit on the board overall, the first week where four players bag a win and remarkably, even both people called Dan winning.

It didn't quite start off so luckily though. @Pyfish came close to making it a hattrick of brilliant wins after landing a very impressive pick of Dortmund to win at Newcastle, but he couldn't overcome the Brendan Rodgers juju in the supposedly easier leg of the bet as Atletico Madrid falter on the road in the Champions League yet again.

@Machado back to winning ways with his latest in what looks a carefully selected pair of stats based picks, although the Benfica pick can only possibly be due to some cynicism at his end on his own team. He was correct to have it though. I paid the price on an accumulator for trusting Benfica to win myself as I had them with under 4.5 goals - but they couldn't even hold on late on. @Stan also paid the price as this let down his bet, after correctly landing Bayern to win and over 3.5 goals in a hilarious game that saw 3 first half red cards and Bayern hitting 8 goals in the second half.

@CaaC (John) should be donating his winnings to a certain somebody who reminded him to get a bet in for this week as his Italian double paid out to continue his relative hot streak. Atalanta smacking a woeful Empoli 0-3 but Lazio needing a 95th minute penalty to beat Fiorentina, to put him back into profit for the season.

@Lucas is let down by Accrington who lost 0-1 to Colchester after correctly backing Chesterfield to win for an 11th time in 12 games (they're very generous odds considering in my opinion).

@RandoEFC's usual asian handicap falls down this week. Juventus left it until the 97th minute to beat Verona to push all responsibility onto Brighton who didn't even beat Fulham, so it's a loss this time around.

You have to feel here for @...Dan who gets his first win of the season at the tenth time of asking yet is still sent to the bottom of the table for the first time all season. He played safe this week and Manchester City made no mistake.

Stop the world though. I've finally, finally won a bet. About pissing time too. I was wondering after how utterly perfectly my Hoffenheim pick landed that Manchester City would find a way to fuck it up, or somehow rack up the goals in injury time, but no, persistence pays off and I'm off the mark with what is the second biggest win of the entire season. I bet a lot and I think that's pretty obvious by now, and I'm back in hot form in the real thing too, so I did believe it would arrive here eventually. I'm hoping we won't have to wait the same amount of time for another - as that would take me all the way to the end of January, for some context.

It's a very strong week on the whole though, and while a big win in each of the last three weeks has helped prop things up, the numbers are starting to really shift in favour of the forum now. The last three weeks have been the best three of the season, so October has been a hot streak collectively.

 

WEEK 13 STATS
Winning bets: 4/8
Winning selections: 10/14
Weekly forum position: +£67.48 (Ranked 1/13)

 

OVERALL STATS
Winning bets: 25/94
Winning selections: 84/176
Total forum position: -£131.25

WEEK 14 - STAN HOLDS THE FORT IN A POOR WEEK

The end of our good form as this time out just one of the eight players manage to post a win, although it's one of the better ones and it's saved us from catastrophe.

@Pyfish retains his comfortable lead but loses for a second week running after neither selection, both ambitious and on paper safer, pay out. Under 4.5 is an angle I like but it's always a bit risky with a fixture like that I think. Fernandes avoids a yellow this week.

@CaaC (John) makes the best pick of the week in Newcastle but is let down by Leicester's defeat to Leeds. I backed a Leicester win myself, thinking that a side with 13 wins in 14 are worth a go at evens in nearly any situation, but not paying off this time.

Cartagena's game with Leganes with subject to a lot of discussion in here and as I suspected, the league leaders Leganes, the bizarrely priced underdogs, ran out 0-3 winners meaning that @Machado lands his pick of Cartagena not getting to two goals. Boavista however, a team I backed elsewhere, didn't get the goal needed against bottom of the table Rio Ave, so he loses this time out.

@Stan ends his losing run and climbs two places with a good double in the FA Cup, landing two of the stronger outfits to deliver comfortable wins against vastly inferior non-league sides. With 7-2 and 5-1 wins respectively, this was as comfortable as it gets.

@Lucas lands neither shot on target pick in the surprise Sunday results that saw neither favourite win. @RandoEFC's Midtjylland tip paid off with a 1-4 win at a dreadful Hvidovre (I think I'm going to back them to lose basically weekly) but Glentoran fell to a shock defeat at home to Carrick Rangers meaning there is no win at all here.

I couldn't make it two wins on the bounce, both of my away picks had the better of their games but both could only draw. @...Dan probably the closest of all losers to a winner this week as Zwolle won comfortably and Hamburg did too, but too comfortably, as they didn't concede - seemingly out of character for them.

It's no surprise to see a poor week here, in a week where the FPL average was as low as I've ever seen it, where Liverpool didn't beat Luton, Tottenham lost, Arsenal lost, Milan lost at home to Udinese, Porto lost at home to Estoril, Real Madrid drew at home to Rayo, Atletico lost at Las Palmas, to put it short there were absolutely loads of surprise results all over the place this weekend and I highly doubt many people collected winners so well done to Stan for managing to do it. I certainly had a relative shitter this time after a pretty brilliant weekend last time out. But we move on. It wasn't our hardest hit, but a hit nontheless.

WEEK 14 STATS
Winning bets: 1/8
Winning selections: 6/16
Weekly forum position: -£35.90 (Ranked 9/14)

 

OVERALL STATS
Winning bets: 26/102
Winning selections: 90/192
Total forum position: -£167.15

[Lucas]

I'm going to get on early incase the price changes but Leicester are 13/10 with Skybet to win at Middlesbrough. 

Tough place to go but I reckon they'll want to bounce back. 

Also pairing that with Stockport to win at Swindon at 21/20.

£10 wins £47.15.

[Dan+]

3 hours ago, Lucas said:

I'm going to get on early incase the price changes but Leicester are 13/10 with Skybet to win at Middlesbrough. 

Tough place to go but I reckon they'll want to bounce back. 

Also pairing that with Stockport to win at Swindon at 21/20.

£10 wins £47.15.

Yeah I think we're very overpriced as well personally. We're playing better football away from home and while you do at some point expect us to drop points I think there's probably a fair tactical reason for why it's happening. Simply I think teams are giving us more space to hit them. We have wobbled in our last three games but I still think we're quite a bit better than Middlesbrough.

We've not lost there in 7 games either.

[RandoEFC+]

Nothing particularly inventive for me this week. 

Juventus have won their last 4 home games in a row while Cagliari have picked up 2 points in 5 on the road, scoring just 3 goals, two of which were at hapless Salernitana the other week.

I think Arsenal vs Burnley speaks for itself. A very low price for that leg but just trying to get a winner this weekend.

[Machado]

Sporting Lisbon or Draw

Over 1.5 match goals

[Stan]

 

German double. Leverkusen score loads. Union are crap. Bayern score loads. 

[...Dan]

Paris FC (1.95) v Bastia

Pau v Angers (2.10)

£10 returns £40.95

[Dan+]

Aston Villa v Fulham - Aston Villa win and over 1.5 goals @ 1.80

Rennes v Lyon - Rennes win and over 1.5 goals @ 1.86

I think these two are both very likely to win and the over 1.5 angle just rules out the 1-0 win yet boosts the odds no end. I actually think both of these are riskier to go under 4.5 than over 1.5 although Villa Fulham did actually end 1-0 last season.

I kid you not, I nearly had QPR 0-0 Bristol City as a single. I thought it reeked of it - two new managers who will be happy to not lose, Cifuentes' Hammarby and Manning's Oxford were also both very low chance creating but high chance prevention teams as well. Flash scores reckons there were a combined 5 shots all game  

 

£10 returns £33.65

[Stan]

FFS. Knew I should have gone for Bayern & over 3.5.

[...Dan]

22 hours ago, ...Dan said:

Paris FC (1.95) v Bastia

Pau v Angers (2.10)

£10 returns £40.95

95th minute equaliser for Pau lol

[RandoEFC+]

On 10/11/2023 at 15:51, RandoEFC said:

Nothing particularly inventive for me this week. 

Juventus have won their last 4 home games in a row while Cagliari have picked up 2 points in 5 on the road, scoring just 3 goals, two of which were at hapless Salernitana the other week.

I think Arsenal vs Burnley speaks for itself. A very low price for that leg but just trying to get a winner this weekend.

Arsenal got their eventually. Juventus managed to get their two goal lead and then conceded one so that leg gets a push.

£10 > £12.40 in what will surely be the smallest win of the season . But instead of focusing on the £2.40 element I'm going to choose to focus on that being £12.40 better than another -£10 would have been.

[Lucas]

Not only did Leicester cost me in this, but they also cost me an an Acca where Ipswich, Bolton, Stockport, Chesterfield and PSG won.

Over £230 that was. Pretty fuming.

Edited November 12, 2023 by Lucas

[Dan+]

On 10/11/2023 at 23:11, Dan said:

Aston Villa v Fulham - Aston Villa win and over 1.5 goals @ 1.80

Rennes v Lyon - Rennes win and over 1.5 goals @ 1.86

I think these two are both very likely to win and the over 1.5 angle just rules out the 1-0 win yet boosts the odds no end. I actually think both of these are riskier to go under 4.5 than over 1.5 although Villa Fulham did actually end 1-0 last season.

I kid you not, I nearly had QPR 0-0 Bristol City as a single. I thought it reeked of it - two new managers who will be happy to not lose, Cifuentes' Hammarby and Manning's Oxford were also both very low chance creating but high chance prevention teams as well. Flash scores reckons there were a combined 5 shots all game  

 

£10 returns £33.65

Covering my arse here on the off chance Fulham do come back (which they're extremely unlikely to), the top one pays out as I did it on Bet365 as a bet builder so the 2-0 payout has already come in.

[Dan+]

Rennes red card after 6 minutes  can forget about this then.

[Dan+]

On 07/11/2023 at 02:06, Dan said:

WEEK 14 - STAN HOLDS THE FORT IN A POOR WEEK

The end of our good form as this time out just one of the eight players manage to post a win, although it's one of the better ones and it's saved us from catastrophe.

@Pyfish retains his comfortable lead but loses for a second week running after neither selection, both ambitious and on paper safer, pay out. Under 4.5 is an angle I like but it's always a bit risky with a fixture like that I think. Fernandes avoids a yellow this week.

@CaaC (John) makes the best pick of the week in Newcastle but is let down by Leicester's defeat to Leeds. I backed a Leicester win myself, thinking that a side with 13 wins in 14 are worth a go at evens in nearly any situation, but not paying off this time.

Cartagena's game with Leganes with subject to a lot of discussion in here and as I suspected, the league leaders Leganes, the bizarrely priced underdogs, ran out 0-3 winners meaning that @Machado lands his pick of Cartagena not getting to two goals. Boavista however, a team I backed elsewhere, didn't get the goal needed against bottom of the table Rio Ave, so he loses this time out.

@Stan ends his losing run and climbs two places with a good double in the FA Cup, landing two of the stronger outfits to deliver comfortable wins against vastly inferior non-league sides. With 7-2 and 5-1 wins respectively, this was as comfortable as it gets.

@Lucas lands neither shot on target pick in the surprise Sunday results that saw neither favourite win. @RandoEFC's Midtjylland tip paid off with a 1-4 win at a dreadful Hvidovre (I think I'm going to back them to lose basically weekly) but Glentoran fell to a shock defeat at home to Carrick Rangers meaning there is no win at all here.

I couldn't make it two wins on the bounce, both of my away picks had the better of their games but both could only draw. @...Dan probably the closest of all losers to a winner this week as Zwolle won comfortably and Hamburg did too, but too comfortably, as they didn't concede - seemingly out of character for them.

It's no surprise to see a poor week here, in a week where the FPL average was as low as I've ever seen it, where Liverpool didn't beat Luton, Tottenham lost, Arsenal lost, Milan lost at home to Udinese, Porto lost at home to Estoril, Real Madrid drew at home to Rayo, Atletico lost at Las Palmas, to put it short there were absolutely loads of surprise results all over the place this weekend and I highly doubt many people collected winners so well done to Stan for managing to do it. I certainly had a relative shitter this time after a pretty brilliant weekend last time out. But we move on. It wasn't our hardest hit, but a hit nontheless.

WEEK 14 STATS
Winning bets: 1/8
Winning selections: 6/16
Weekly forum position: -£35.90 (Ranked 9/14)

 

OVERALL STATS
Winning bets: 26/102
Winning selections: 90/192
Total forum position: -£167.15

WEEK 15 - THE WRONG SIDE OF FINE MARGINS

I think a look through week 15 shows us we've encountered probably the collectively unluckiest weekend of the season so far, with every single person landing at least one of their selections, yet only the two claiming wins and of those, two of the smallest of the season (outside of @Machado).

@CaaC (John) is the winner of the week, calling on what is on the face of it a fairly safe double in Man Utd and Ipswich. Two truly predictable scorelines as well in my opinion, said as somebody who had a 1-0 home win on the prediction league, and has quite regularly pushed a theory that Ipswich win every home game 3-2. John doubles his money.

The luckiest player of the week however has to actually be Machado. Not based on the betting point of view by any stretch - he just happened to have exactly the same bet against his team in a derby that I had on the opening day of the season, and it produced an identical outcome. I had Leicester to not beat Coventry and we scored 77th and 87th minute goals to win the game 2-1. Machado backs against his team in the derby with Sporting and Benfica remarkably produce 94th and 97th minute goals to win 2-1. Is it the Gyokeres connection? I wouldn't wish to speak for him, but I'm quite safely going to assume he would take the Benfica euphoric victory over this weeks hypothetical £13.50 win - even though it would've been his biggest of the season.

Which brings me to the average odds column. I've not bothered to go back through this yet, but I will eventually be updating this to see who is shooting for the stars and who is playing safe, although I think we can guess this here!

Back to the bad luck. @Stan made an understandable choice in Bayern to slaughter Heidenheim but they produced a relatively conservative 4-2 win over a side who are averaging over 2 expected goals against per game - which are remarkably bad defensive numbers. Bayer Leverkusen's win was totally obvious, and frankly their odds were mental for me, it's their 10th win of 11 in the league so far, and Union Berlin remarkably have now lost 9 in a row in the league.

@RandoEFC claims the only other winner of the weekend but can probably feel a bit aggrieved that it wasn't a full win, particularly given it has paid out in the last six meetings in Turin. Cagliari's consolation goal means he takes the smallest win of the season.  Arsenal made no mistake beating a hapless Burnley.

@Lucas puts on the opposite of a brave face pretending that Leicester losing has upset him, a result that directly works in Leeds' favour and courtesy of a Leeds player scoring for Middlesbrough. Stockport seemed a completely obvious pick at extremely generous odds, remarkably their 11th league win in a row which is three off the all time record. Leicester failed to bounce back, although we did have the chances at Middlesbrough - it was our first loss against them in 15 games.

The really bad luck though I think is reserved for the bottom two, which is no surprise, we've seen this all play out before. I specifically avoid picking games that concern my own teams fortunes at this point because of how convinced I am of a curse, and after Aston Villa sailed in with a 3-1 win over Fulham, I can now add coaxing this dreadful Lyon team to their first win of a season to my list as they take three points at Rennes, in a performance seemingly totally unconvincing, and one that assures you they would've lost if Rennes hadn't picked up a red card after 'six' minutes. 

It was no better either for @...Dan who turned back to Ligue 2 this weekend, having landed the Paris win, he was robbed in the 94th minute by a Pau equaliser at Angers to draw 4-4. This would've put me back bottom though - so every cloud

A pretty dismal week on the whole, given the number of selected wins it's pretty incredible how little money we took in. But not to worry, we only have a limited selection of lower league games and a sift through which international games have something to play for to know what angle to hit the final international weekend of 2023 with. Speaking of which, there will be no week 16 table this week as I'm going to Cape Verde on Saturday for a week, so I will get it together along with week 17. Best of luck. This is going to be testing.

WEEK 15 STATS
Winning bets: 2/7
Winning selections: 8/14
Weekly forum position: -£37.60 (Ranked 10/15)

 

OVERALL STATS
Winning bets: 28/109
Winning selections: 98/206
Total forum position: -£204.75

[CaaC (John)+]

Week 16

European Championship - Saturday 18th November

Group D
Armenia v Wales

Group 1
Switzerland v Kosova

£10 on Wales & Switzerland winning

[Stan]

5 hours ago, Dan said:

I can now add coaxing this dreadful Lyon team to their first win of a season to my list as they take three points at Rennes, in a performance seemingly totally unconvincing, and one that assures you they would've lost if Rennes hadn't picked up a red card after 'six' minutes. 

I've only just seen this, in that Lyon won a game  

Of all games to pick you'd have thought that's a home banker all day long. And I'd argue that even with a red card after six minutes, Lyon are that crap I'd have still gone for Rennes to win. It's the equivalent or similar to everyone going for Rennes in Last Man Standing. The TF365 curse lives on  

[Dan+]

10 hours ago, Stan said:

I've only just seen this, in that Lyon won a game  

Of all games to pick you'd have thought that's a home banker all day long. And I'd argue that even with a red card after six minutes, Lyon are that crap I'd have still gone for Rennes to win. It's the equivalent or similar to everyone going for Rennes in Last Man Standing. The TF365 curse lives on  

I think the problem as well though is that I had Rennes to win and over 1.5 goals, so their likeliest win therefore becomes 1-0 as well. It's just more abysmal luck but it's pretty much all I've had in here all season so far.

I'm saving my shittest picks of the week for this thread almost exclusively it seems.

[RandoEFC+]

This week's offering.

Castellon vs Atletico Baleares takes us to the Spanish third tier. Castellon top the table with 10 wins from 12 this season. Their last eight victories in a row have been by 2+ goals. At home especially they have a 100% record with all but the first of their 6 wins being by 2+ goals. Baleares sit second from bottom with 1 point and 0 goals from their six away games, with four of their five defeats being by 2+ goals.

The second pick is slightly riskier. Dumbarton are 3rd in League Two and host second from bottom Elgin. Dumbarton have a decent home record but it's more about Elgin's away form. Five defeats in a row, three of them by 2+ goals including a 6-0 and a 5-1. If you look further back and include last season, Elgin actually have 11 defeats in their last 12 away games, 8 of which have been by 2+ goals.

Should be a good double at 2.25.

[Dan+]

I delve to the lower leagues of England for round 17.

Southend v Chesterfield - Chesterfield to win @ 17/20 (1.85) - With the greatest of fear given what seem on the face of it fairly generous odds I'm going for a Chestersfield win here. Chesterfield have won 14 of their last 15 in all competitions, including beating League One Portsmouth in the cup and also flying Barnet in their last two games. Southend have picked up somewhat after a pretty sketchy start to the season, but it's quite hard to not get on board with Chesterfield here.

Gillingham v Salford - Salford to win @11/4 (3.75) - What bodes well is they are the same odds as what Hoffenheim were the other week. I've very much stolen this one from Not The Top 20 podcast who have gotten on board with Salford here, something I did in preseason off the back of their knowledge and have been left disappointed up until recent weeks. Salford's season appears to be on the up while Gillingham's is very much going the other way, and the change in manager hasn't really done them any favours, it's a bit Rooney at Birmingham-esque with a pragmatic, yet clearly fairly effective manager being replaced with somebody here to bring more expansive and attacking football, but it isn't really working. Salford given what they were saying are a really decent price to win this in my opinion.

£10 returns £69.37.

[Stan]

I'm a million percent ready for no Mansfield goals given Clough's celebration comments, despite their very good form... 

[Lucas]

Slim pickings this week isnt it.

Stockport and over 2.5 (5/6)

Chesterfield and over 2.5 (13/8)

£10 wins £48.13