We decided not to remove this post from the site because of the many questions and answers in the comments section. For those of you with curious minds it may also be quite interesting to see how our HDAFU Tables have developed over the years.
Read about: The Power of the 7th Generation of The HDAFU Tables
Our HDAFU tables have evolved tremendously over the years. They are a complete statistical analysis of historical performance over the previous five seasons of the Home win, Draw, Away win, Favourite win and Underdog win (H-D-A-F-U). They serve to identify the most profitable odds ranges in each bet type.
To help you understand why we value this product so highly, here is our Definitive Guide for using the 5th Generation tables to their maximum potential.
It’s difficult for us to put into words how important the HDAFU tables are to us and our own betting adventures. But what we can say is that we have complete confidence in them to do their job. And from testing them in a live setting, we know that they are an extremely reliable method of building lucrative betting portfolios.
Quite simply, they are the best and most user-friendly tools available for nailing down value betting systems in every league you apply them to.
They reveal the DNA of a league, and provide a hidden level of detail that makes finding and exploiting the sweet spots so easy and so rewarding.
The next six steps will probably change the way you think about betting…
Step 1 – Observation
By default, the HDAFU tables open on the Data Tab showing the financial summary of each bet type. Here are the figures from an example league.
(Click on the image below to enlarge it in a new tab):
HDAFU Table Data Tab: Whole Season Results Summaries
The totals along the top row show the effects of betting on every match over five seasons. In our example league the totals are (from left to right) Home win (-7,329), Draw (-835), Away win (+8,236), Favourites (-2,594), and Underdogs (+3,501).
You can see from this graphic that away wins look the most promising backing system with a profit of 8,236 units from 100 unit stakes.
To customise the stake amount enter what you want in the Fixed Stake box at the top of each bet type in the Data Tab.
The image above shows the full five season cold analysis. If you enter a different stake amount the financial values will change, but the percentages will always remain the same. This being the case, we have fixed these percentages as a benchmark to better gauge the improvements we will make with our filtering exercise later.
The Odds Toggle is for testing the effects of the odds you are getting when playing the systems for real – you can ignore it during your analysis.
You can also leave the betting exchange commission rate at zero. Again, use it for backing system monitoring purposes when you start betting on or paper testing your systems of choice.
Okay, we fancy away wins in this particular league but let’s now have a look at the Inflection Points Tab to see if this backs-up our observation.
(Click on the image below to enlarge it in a new tab):
HDAFU Table Inflection Points Tab: Inflection Points Overview
Away wins are certainly financially the most profitable bet type but the profit curve doesn’t really begin rising until odds of 3.30 are reached. Overall profit at this point is 463 units and this rises to a peak of 13,502 units around odds of 8.60.
These two points on the graph would therefore be our two inflection points: Odds of 3.30 where the curve begins to rise; Odds of 8.60 at the pinnacle, the point at which profits begin to fall again.
However, notice there is a big portion of the away wins curve which is a zero-sum game. This ‘hole’ in our profit curve begins around odds of 3.75 (6,653 units). At this point, the curve falls away again, encounters what we call ‘statistical noise’, and only recovers at odds of around 6.52, when the profit figure surmounts its previous high at 7,184.
HDAFU Table Inflection Points Tab: Inflection Points Odds Intervals 3.75 – 6.52
In between these two points is the potential for a lot of wasted effort and not a lot of gain.
We can see the extent of this by scrolling down and looking at the inflection point intervals.
(Click on the right-hand image to enlarge it in a new tab):
This image shows the start of the 3.75 odds sector at the top and the end of the 6.52 odds sector at the bottom.
The yellow column indicates the running total of matches up to each cluster of matches.
We can see that our two odds of 3.75 and 6.52 encompass roughly 330 matches – the difference between 1,115 indicated at the 6.52 break-off point and 785 at the starting point of the 3.75 cluster.
That’s 330 bets over a five season period that are simply not worth making; or 66 bets in a season.
HDAFU Table Inflection Points Tab: Inflection Points Odds Intervals 3.30 – 8.60
We can see this clearer by looking at the same snapshot between our original inflection points of 3.30 and 8.60.
:(Click on the left-hand image to enlarge it in a new tab)
In this odds range, we have roughly 587 bets (1,221 minus 634). We now know that more than 56% of these (330 bets) are not worthwhile making.
This leaves only 257 bets but the away win profit sectors between the inflection points seem to be split into two areas of the curve: from odds of 3.30 to 3.75 (medium risk system, accounting for around 160 bets), and then from odds of 6.52 to 8.60 (high risk system; around 100 bets).
If we were to continue our analysis of away wins we would eventually see that the three elements (the medium risk sweet spot, the high risk sweet spot, and the statistical noise in-between) combine to give us a bumpy ride.
Our expected hit-rate will be tempered by that area of noise, and yield will be lower because of the size of the zero-sum area and the number of pointless bets within it.
This means a lot of unpaid work to perform, placing many bets that maintain the status quo and not much else. On top of this, the losing streaks will be greater.
Therefore, why not split into two systems in this league?
The synergy we have mentioned before about many systems supporting each other is what makes the HDAFU betting systems so viable.
However, we also mentioned that you should find the single best system in a league to play alongside the other best systems in the other leagues within your portfolio.
In our away win example, we would need to choose the better of the two systems we have identified. Either backing away wins at odds between 3.30 and 3.75, or between 6.52 and 8.60. Choose one or the other, not both.
We recommend never to play multiple systems in the same bet type. The synergy effect is diminished as ultimately, one of the two systems is not the best we can find.
Ideally, we are looking for synergy between the absolute single best systems in each league within our portfolio, without creating a situation where one system supports another within an individual league.
With different bet types in the same league (e.g. 1×2 market and over/under goals market) this is not an issue, but we would go as far as avoiding the conflict of interest between HT and FT 1×2 systems in the same league, for example.
Away wins initially looked great but is there something better?
Have a look once again at the Inflection Points graphs to try and see what it is.
As is typical of an underdog backing profile, the high risk/high return nature of this bet type produces a noisy curve, one full of jagged peaks and troughs. There are only small rising areas to analyse. Anything you can analyse into promising profits will contain few betting opportunities in a season, with long runs of losing bets to cope with.
Backing the favourite has one area between odds of 1.90 and 2.10 but we can see at these odds not a huge profit is created over five seasons (less than 3,500 units).
The home win is a misery for backing. Again, the sweet spot is between 1.90 and 2.10 but the profit is less than 2,000 units.
That leaves us with backing the draw. There is a large, rising area in the curve beginning at draw odds of 3.32 (-2,008 units), and peaking at 3.65 (7,170 units). It represents a potential profit chunk of 9,178 units over five seasons.
This is better illustrated by superimposing our inflection points onto our graph – We are interested in only the portion of the curve in-between the red arrows:
The shape of this curve is what you should be looking for when identifying the first system to analyse in your leagues of choice.
It is the classic, gently rising curve from bottom left to top right. It is relatively smooth, with a far smaller amount of statistical noise.
Therefore, this is the bet type we will analyse as our example.
Next Page: Step 2 – Hiding, Sorting & Filtering
Hi,
When will the 2018-19 winter league tables be available for purchase?
Thanks.
Hi Simon,
our deadline is to publish the tables for the 2018-19 season the next two weeks.
Hi – Just bought one of your tables to have a look at – looks great but I have a couple of questions about laying using these tables.
Looking at the inflection point charts there’s often area’s that look like they’d be great for laying so my questions are
– Would you ever have a backing and laying strategy in the same league (assuming the odds ranges were different for each).
– Have you ever found a laying strategy that was the best strategy in a given league? Perhaps my real question is – is it worth looking or would you stick to backing strategies
Many thanks
Bruce
Hi Bruce, you can do both: laying and/or backing.
Say, if the favorites in the particular league you’re looking at are vastly under-priced, then lay them. However, then the underdogs in that particular league will be over-priced… that would be a back bet strategy.
However, you cannot mix exactly these two together because in effect, you would be gambling on the same outcome… the favourite not to win.
Another thing to take into consideration is when deciding whether laying or backing that laying can only be done via exchanges and they charge a 5% commission whilst backing can be done via a huge range of bookmakers without any commission fee. Of course, that only works if you have access to the bookmakers that offer regular the highest prices, especially for underdogs.
You’ll need to do quite a bit of home work in that direction before you’ll be able to make an informed decision.
From what you say there’s no reason not to run laying and backing strategies in the same league – so long as they don’t directly conflict.
Some of what I was wondering about was that if one laid with a liability of 100 units then your returns would be lower and so backing strategies might always win out, while simply staking 100 units per lay might put pressure on one’s bank. Intuitively, and from the little homework I’ve done thus far, it seems for the same liability per bet a laying strategy would probably want more bets to generate a good return.
Hi Bruce,
regarding the best staking you’ll have to do some more homework and run some retroperspective simulations yourself. For that, identify the systems (strategies) you’d like to follow and then calculate various scenarios such as laying/backing with the same stakes or with the same liability or make the stakes dependant on the odds, and so on.
I personally prefer “Marias Staking Plan”. I don’t know if you ever heard of her. This was a thread, now over a decade ago, in which she published lay picks on horses and increased her original starting bank from £3000 within only one year to £100.000. Her stakes (risk) were interlinked with odds clusters. Here’s the original thread in the Webarchive: Marias Laying System. You can learn a lot from that thread.
In addition, on the German sister site Fussballwitwe.com, I published an article about this staking plan transferred to backbetting: Transferring Maria’s Laying System to Back Bets. Unfortunately, this article is not yet translated into English so you’ll need to use Google’s autotranslate option to read it in English.
Hope that helps and good luck!
Thanks for the reply – lots of work for me – I had heard of Maria but hadn’t paid much attention but now you’ve recomended her I’ll take a look.
Thanks again
Bruce
Many thanks for putting me onto this – looking at it, reading some more of your articles and playing around with excel it looks like it’s based on minimising the impact of longest losing streaks – I like this because I’m know I’m not good with drawdown – although I get better as I better understand the math.
So I have couple of things I’d like to ask – Maria was betting a single system on horses – so do you think her figures are too conservative if one is playing a few systems across a few leagues and can you point me to anything that would allow me to better quantify that – I realise that this could get very detailed and I’m not sure how detailed it needs to be but I can’t help being curious.
Hi Bruce,
I don’t really understand your question but I will try my best…
If you would like to replicate with football betting what Maria did with horse racing then you’ll have to search the inflection point graphs in the HDAFU Tables for curves that go permanently down and that have odds below 11.00. For example, betting on away wins in the German Bundesliga within the odds range from 1.67 to 3.00.
The next step is to look closer at this group (in the Data tab) and try to figure out a pattern with a promise of a positive return when laid. For that, split the bets into subsets and try to find for each subset, groups that have a lower hit rate than the odds suggest. These are your lay candidates.
This will reduce the number of available bets that are going to fit your criteria during the next season – in the German Bundesliga in this particular group to 25/30 matches each season.
In total you will need approximately 500 bets over the course of a full season. That means that you’ll have to identify this type of lay bet across perhaps 15 different leagues.
Say, in the Bundesliga the group you found had an average 55% hit rate for lay bets. To balance that low hit rate out you’ll need to find somewhere else a similar big group with a 95% prospective hit rate, and so on. In other words, try to balance the risk within your portfolio.
Once you have drawn up a list of candidates, then run a simulation using the previous season only (not 5 years) and see if you would have actually achieved the desired hit rate of 85% (like Maria achieved) and how your bank would have moved up and down. Remove the leagues that didn’t work or add more leagues/ groups for further diversification.
Really, this is a huge topic and as you say this could get very detailed.
The HDAFU Simulations are just a starting point to look into the right direction but they are really only the very first step.
You are right that the main purpose of Maria’s staking plan was to minimise the impact of long losing streaks.
By the way, all of her bets were value bets with an average mathematical advantage (yield) of 7%. This number may sound very low but she showed the betting community that it is better to concentrate on steady growth than on a high yield.
A high yield is a ‘synonym’ for high risk; the higher the yield you hope to achieve the higher the risk of a long losing streak, frayed nerves, desire to pull the plug on the system, etc. etc.
Just as a side note, could you please wait with any further questions until end of May? We are currently immensely busy in implementing the GDPR (European data protection law), which has to be in place by 25th May. Thanks for understanding! 😉
Many thanks for all your help – no more questions now – sorry if my last question was a bit vague – your answer gave me what I wanted to know – many thanks.
Bruce
Hi guys.
I just thought I’d go over a previous question just to make sure the information keeps up to date.
Regarding which bookies to tick at Oddsportal. This seems like a reasonably important point as we’d like to mirror the exact conditions you guys use when determining qualifying bets
Regarding Right Winger’s response to Tony on 10 May 2017 at 12:35 am
The bookmakers you guys tick at Oddsportal:
“188bet; 888Sport; Betclic; Betfred; BetVictor; Betway; BoyleSports; Comeon; Coral; Expekt; Island Casino; Ladbrokes; SBOBET; Sportingbet; Tipico; Titanbet”
I would’ve thought this info might’ve been a condition of the HDAFU tables themselves. Wouldn’t this info be of some importance in the pursuit of accuracy using your system (or maybe it has a marginal impact)?
Anyway I would just like to know if this info is still current and also why those particular bookmakers?
Keep up the great work you evil geniuses.
Sam.
Hi Sam,
The complete answer to your question can now be found in our article “Understanding the Settings in Oddsportal“.
You’ll find the bookmaker list on page 2.
Hope this helps!
Hi I’ve finally been able to go through your new table and explanation on Paraguay but I have 2 questions and I can’t seem to find the answers above. Firstly you mentioned that you should only choose the best option in each league. i.e. Away win has 2 odds clusters and you mentioned you should only choose one and not both. What about if say you had Draw and Underdog both meeting all parameters, would you include both or choose the best of the 2 so you’re only following one option per league?
Secondly, you have many tables available now. If you purchase all the leagues, what bank would you recommend? Above I noticed some people mention they’re betting 5% which converts to a 20-unit bank while you mentioned your study was with 2500 euros and betting 100 euro fixed bets (or a 25-unit bank). However you mentioned that you should look for an ELS of less than 20 in the historical results. That means you would blow your bank if you had a run of 20 losses and were betting 5% of your bank. I recall reading somewhere on your blog some time back that you should bet ELS x 5 which means in this case you should have a 100-unit bank. I think you actually showed it in a formula.
Anyway I hope I’ve made sense. Look forward to your response.
Hello again Rado,
I am glad you seem to have hit a rich vein of results at the very beginning of your campaign.
In contrary to your last paragraph, the HDAFU Tables are based on odds as near to the close of the ante post market as possible. In other words, within the last hour before kick-off, but mostly within the last five minutes before kick-off.
The optimum betting time is therefore within the last hour before the commencement of any match. Try and get it closer if you can (preferably within the last 15 minutes).
If you read the comments sections in all the HDAFU Tables’ articles, you will see that we do advocate the placement of some bets far longer in advance of the kick-off time, but only on games where we have a good idea of how the market is likely to move.
This is particularly the case with odds that are buried in the middle of the two inflection points, and are likely to remain so for the duration of the ante post period.
We can also take a chance with home teams/favourites that are likely to drift in (i.e. reduce in price). If they drift too far and outside the lower inflection point, we can always lay these situations with an exchange and achieve a second revenue stream in the form of arbitrage.
Attaining these special skills is all about knowing how and why the market prices move. To teach yourself this, you will need to observe price fluctuations in games over the whole of the ante post period.
With time, you will begin to see patterns – each league is slightly different according to its popularity and the weight of money placed by punters. Each bookmaker will follow one of three basic strategies in order to achieve its desired market share, and so on.
What I am saying is that it is possible to anticipate price movements in the market, and this is true of any ‘enclosed’ market with indentifiable boundaries such as football betting. It’s a small pond affected purely by supply and demand based around either two (e.g. yes or no) or three (e.g. 1-X-2) outcomes.
With bookmakers controlling the prices based on demand and their ability to supply, things are far easier to predict than something like the stock market where prices are determined by what people are prepared to pay for something at any given point in time.
Another big difference that makes bookmakers more predictable is the fact that the market is time limited (unlike stocks and shares, where only the IPO, the initial public offering of shares, has a limit – i.e. the length of time taken to fill the IPO).
The bookmaking industry is therefore more similar to the way insurance is transacted than to the vast ocean of unpredictable stocks and shares trading, which, I would also say, carries far greater risks and uncertainties.
Regarding your comment about odds jumping in extreme amounts, I would say that things tend to settle down more in the last 15 minutes before kick-off. Any bookmaker jumping around by 10 ticks or more (using your example), is likely to be desperate for market share in an attempt to address an imbalance in its book. Ignore these outliers as they are usually not representative of the market opinion at the time.
Whatever you decide to do, make sure you enforce the decision entirely. In other words, make a plan and stick to it. You are more likely to succeed doing this than treating every situation on its own merits.
The word ‘luck’ only comes into the equation when the end result turns out better (or worse!) than that to be expected from our own extensive set of skills.
When this happens, we can say that in spite of our skills-set and all the hard work and time that went into creating our understanding of the job, the end-result was better than expected – this is definitely ‘good luck’ in operation. However, you still need the cake in place before you can receive any icing that is likely to come your way…
Successful betting is all about hard work. It’s an evolutionary process, and if you are prepared never to give up learning, then you will become better and better at it. Learning is the key to life on earth. Once you give up learning and adpating to your situation, you become extinct.
Rado, I hope all of this helps in some small way! Thanks for your time and trouble in commenting again.
Time to report the results after my first week of betting 😀
It was an exceptionally good run of winning bets, probably it’s beginner’s luck, I don’t know, but the fact is that in only a week, I increased my starting bank by more than 50%! Let’s hope it continues like this from now on.
Probably I’m getting annoying, but can you please give me a piece of advice about betting times. All right, I now agree that placing ALL the bets on the previous evening is probably not a good idea, so I do my best to track the odds and place the bets in the last hour before kickoff (usually 40-50 mins before match start time).
Is it okay if I do that for all matches, because sometimes in the last hour before kickoff the odds are a true rollercoaster and can jump up or down by more than 10 hundreths in a matter of minutes? Well, I guess the effects will cancel each other out – sometimes I will bet and then the odds will become higher the next minute, but other times I will have luck and the odds will fall after I bet. So that’s probably not a problem. My worry is if the bet gets outside the inflection points. Then I guess I will simply leave it be.
Besides, the intro to your tables says something like “the odds in the HDAFU tables are based on the odds on the evening before kickoff of all matches”. So why then must we wait until the last hour before the game to place our bet, when all our data and inflection points are based on odds 24 hours earlier?