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Football Alchemy 2014

Contents

Football Alchemy 2014 ........................................................................................................................... 1

Overview ............................................................................................................................................. 2

Pricing.................................................................................................................................................. 3

Early Bird promotion: ...................................................................................................................... 3

Performance View and Betting Simulator .............................................................................................. 4

Updating Records ................................................................................................................................ 4

Calculators .......................................................................................................................................... 4

Betting Simulator ................................................................................................................................ 6

The Email Forecasts ................................................................................................................................ 8

The Football Alchemy System ............................................................................................................... 10

Finding Value Bets ............................................................................................................................. 10

Choosing the Bet Size ........................................................................................................................ 11

Bank Growth ..................................................................................................................................... 11

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Overview Football Alchemy is designed to give you the best opportunity to make the best investment returns

and we will be doing this again in the 2013/14 season.

We have made a few changes, all of which we believe will bring added value to you.

1) There will be 2 systems, Alpha & Beta.

Alpha is the traditional system featuring:

Value bets selected for best bank growth

Match bets (1X2) from the major European leagues

High likelihood bets (50%+, average ~65% win expectancy)

Reinvestment of profits

Beta is the new system:

High value bets on outsiders

Average win expectancy ~35%

Smaller stake sizes

Match bets (1X2) from the major European leagues

2) Competition changes:

The Champions & Europa Leagues have been removed because of differences such as the

away goals rule and higher percentage of uncompetitive games (for instance, when one

team has already qualified from the group stage)

Dutch, Turkish and Portuguese games will be monitored and included when they present

better value than the core competitions

Core competitions will be:

o English Premier League

o Spanish La Liga

o German Bundesliga

o Italian Serie A

o French Ligue 1

o Scottish Premier League

3) Additional pricing information

In addition to the regular ‘Lay’ prices used in Forecasts, we will be giving the equivalent Asian

Handicap prices used at online bookmakers. This will make it easier to get your bet matched by

avoiding liquidity issues and save time in converting the prices yourself.

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Pricing

The Alpha system is £25 per calendar month on a subscription basis with discount available for

paying for the season in advance (see below).

The stand-alone Beta system is £15 per calendar month on a subscription basis, again with discount

available for prepayment.

Please Note: subscribers to the Alpha system get the Beta system for free!

Early Bird promotion:

The Alpha system (includes Beta) is available with 10% discount when prepaid for the season (10

months).

If you are a current subscriber (or have been a paying subscriber at any point, including previous

seasons) then you get a fantastic 20% discount as a “Thank You” for your custom.

The same discounts apply for the stand-alone Beta system.

Payment Links:

Football Alchemy 2014 - Alpha system (includes Beta) - £225 for the season

Football Alchemy 2014 – Beta (stand-alone): £135 for the season

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Performance View and Betting Simulator

(Available to download from the Football Alchemy website)

The Performance View spreadsheet’s primary purpose is to keep track of your betting records so you

can see how your investment is performing.

There are 3 tabs: the first 2 for the records of Alpha & Beta systems and the 3rd is the Simulator.

Updating Records The first 6 columns (Date → Price) are filled manually as are the ‘Commission’, ‘Stake %’, ‘Stake £’

and ‘Win/Lose’ columns – the others are calculated from these.

The ‘Bk. Adj’ column will adjust a ‘Lay’ price into the ‘Back’ equivalent – this makes it easier to

compare the prices you’re getting.

The ‘Likelihood’ and ‘Stake %’ columns contain the numbers given in the email forecasts. ‘Stake £’ is

the actual sum you place (and get matched) on the bet – this is updated manually because we often

have bets placed at the same time and so a calculated ‘percentage x bank’ figure would be

inaccurate.

You may find differences of a few pence in your actual return compared to the figure calculated due

to numbers being rounded off by either the spreadsheet or the bookmaker but this can be

overwritten if needed.

To copy the formulae in the ‘Bk. Adj.’ and last 3 columns to subsequent rows, select the cell(s) and

the bottom right corner will change to a square. Click this and drag it down to the next row to copy.

The spreadsheet picks up on the words ‘Lay’ and ‘Win’ (without ‘’) so these need to be entered

where appropriate.

Calculators There are a number of calculators on the right hand side.

The first, ‘Performance’, is an overview of the betting performance and is updated from the records.

It shows the number of wins/bets, the actual win % and the expected win % along with the total

staked, the return on investment and bank growth figures. The ‘Win %’ and ‘Expected %’ figures are

useful for seeing if the system is currently over/underperforming. Over time we would expect these

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figures to be very close so if the actual win % is higher than expected it could be a sign that you have

had favourable results recently.

‘Position Size’ will tell you how much to place on a bet when given the stake size as a percentage and

the current bank.

‘Bank Growth’ returns the profit as a percentage between 2 values and can be used to quickly work

out daily, weekly or monthly bank growth figures.

Enter a price in the green box in the ‘Back/Lay Convertor’ and it will give the implied percentage

likelihoods on the left, the commission adjusted prices on the right and the back or lay equivalent to

the price entered below.

‘Proportional Betting’ is for those that wish to limit their exposure when there are many bets on a

particular matchday. Enter the percentage of bank that you are willing to place across the bets

(underneath ‘Given %’) and the bet sizes for each bet from the email forecast. This will change the

bet sizes so that they equal your exposure limit. Enter your current bank figure at the top and it will

give you the stake size too.

It is important to enter text for each bet in the left-hand column (the one with team names in the

picture below although what the text is doesn’t matter) as this updates the green figure for the

number of bets. This green figure must equal the number of bets being placed else the values given

will be incorrect.

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Betting Simulator

The Simulator generates random results based on expected win rates and shows how ‘the luck of

the draw’ can impact performance.

Using this you can get an idea of the potential upside and downsides from systems, along with what

sort of sequences can occur.

The data changes anytime a cell value is changed so to run a new set of results just enter anything in

an empty cell and press ‘Enter’. Delete and press ‘Enter’ again and you’ll get another load of results.

The figures in the top left box for ‘Expected Win %’, ‘Stake %’ and ‘Average Odds’ are taken from

Football Alchemy 2013’s averages. These values can be changed to whatever you wish to test. ‘BE

Win%’ is the ‘Break-Even Win %’ and is just the implied percentage taken from the ‘Average Odds’.

The box on the right shows the generated results and returns after ‘x’ bets – ranging from 50 to

1000. The numbers above the blue ‘Bet #’ bar give the actual win rate generated and the values

below give the ‘Bank’ value at that point.

‘Alpha In’ shows the ‘Bank’ value using percentage stakes of the Initial Bank and ‘Alpha Re’ gives the

returns when profits are Reinvested – these are in place for comparison purposes.

Using these, the advantages of reinvesting profits from a system with an edge can be seen both in

terms of higher upside and lower downside.

The charts map out these results over 250 and 1000 bet sequences with 250 being used as an

approximation of 1 season and 1000 showing a longer-term performance, ironing out volatility to

some degree.

In the screenshot above, it can be seen that the Beta system outperforms Alpha in this instance with

the generated results having a higher win rate than expected. Also, ‘Alpha Re’ starts off with less

wins than expected before recovering, then shows more or less flat returns between 200 and 250

bets but really takes off after 250 bets when the number of wins comes close to expectations. These

simulations can put perspective on shorter and longer term results and expectations.

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You can have a look at the kind of winning and losing runs that are possible by scrolling down below

the charts to find the simulated results.

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The Email Forecasts Our betting recommendations are usually sent out the night before each matchday and look

something like this:

Each selection includes:

The kick-off time and match

The selection, bet type and price to bet at

The percentage of current bank to risk on the bet

The likelihood of the bet being a winner

Each bet is listed in order of predicted Bank Growth with highest first

For 2014, the Football Alchemy forecasts include the Asian Handicap equivalent for Lay bets. The

above example would look like this:

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The ‘Lay’ bet prices are taken from Betfair, and are the actual prices available at the time (with

money ready to be matched). Our value calculation assumes commission at 2% which is available at

Smarkets whose prices match Betfair’s. If you can get a higher price (or the same price at a

bookmaker with no commission) then even better.

The A(sian)H(andicap) price is that available at Pinnacle Sports who have very low margins,

equivalent to 2%.

Note that the ‘Back Juventus’ price in the 2014 example is lower, 1.43 instead of 1.44. Only ‘Lay’

bets will allow for 2% commission to be charged, ‘Back’ and Asian Handicap prices will be given net.

The price tools on your ‘Performance View’ spreadsheet can be used to find the pre-commission

price if you need this.

As can be seen, we are very precise with the information that we give. The ‘likelihood’ figure is

provided so that you know how confident to feel about each bet – plenty have equal chance of

winning/losing – and so you can monitor the accuracy of our system.

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The Football Alchemy System

Football Alchemy is designed to generate the very best returns for investors, whilst managing risk.

There are several components to this:

1. We find the best ‘value bets’, those where the price offered is generous considering the

chance of the bet winning

2. We find the bet size that gives us the best risk/reward balance

3. We reinvest profits to benefit from accelerated gains

Finding Value Bets In many ways this is the original advantage of Football Alchemy. We use statistical data to evaluate

each team’s chances in a football match.

How?

Around 2006, I (SW) had the idea of testing different sets of results and statistics, making predictions

from them and then monitoring the actual results to see which statistics were most useful for this

purpose. I wrote a computer program called Football Alchemy which then gave a different weighting

to each method based on its effectiveness. The Football Alchemy engine would adjust the weighting

formula as more results were added with the idea that it would produce increasingly accurate

predictions.

An early incarnation of the Football Alchemy engine

Over time patterns emerged and the pricing formula used was both improved and simplified. Now

we mainly use a combination of statistics for team strength and form over different periods.

There are advantages and disadvantages of solely using statistics. On the plus side, it gets rid of

emotion and bias and uses information that reflects what actually has occurred in similar situations.

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On the other hand, there are a huge number of variables in football and we cannot calculate all of

them. The effect of a new manager, new signing or injury to a key player will have an effect on the

true likelihood of a team winning that won’t be reflected in our data. Thankfully, time has shown

that the market often overestimates this too!

Choosing the Bet Size Finding value is the first step to profitable betting, exploiting it is the next. Selecting a suitable stake

size is how this is done.

Much depends on your goal and attitude to risk/reward. At Football Alchemy, we wish to get the

best balance between very high returns and low risk to the initial capital.

As extreme examples, a very safe approach might involve placing 0.5% of the initial bank on each bet

and a very high risk/reward bet size might be 20% of the current bank on every bet. Even with a

definite edge on the prices and getting the same results there will be wildly different returns.

We use a % of the current bank. This scales up our stake when we’re in profit and scales it down if

we dip below our initial investment.

The actual percentages that we give in our recommendations are perhaps higher than some

professional gamblers go for (with an average of 5.6% in 2012/13) but suit our goal of maximum

returns.

Our stake sizes take into account the level of value in the price, the more value there is to be had,

the more aggressively we pursue it.

Similarly, we take into account the likelihood of us winning the bet, increasing our stake as the safety

of the bet goes up.

Our stake sizes, then, are calculated to balance the risk (likelihood) and reward (value).

Bank Growth We often talk about Bank Growth and list our bets in order of predicted Bank Growth in our

Forecasts with the highest first.

Bank Growth differs from value in that it takes into account our bet size. So a bet might have lower

‘value’ than others but the high likelihood of it winning makes it worth placing a large bet on it. If the

high likelihood of the win and the bigger stake size mean that we will make more money from

placing this bet than others in the long-term then we speak about it offering better Bank Growth.