Welcome to Playing the Long Game

This blog is a bit of an experiment. An attempt to create something from nothing, an attempt to achieve something many of us fail to achieve on a regular basis: to beat the bookie.

The tragedy of your weekly accumulator…

We’ve all been there before. You’ve researched the form, you’ve eliminated the derbies, the bogey teams and the home advantage…. your £5 is about to turn into £150 from your 5 match acca. Until some herbert playing for, I dunno, Rotherham, knocks in a corner in the 94th minute, busting your acca and leaving you red faced and foolish. Until next week! When, more often than not, a familiar tale shall unfold.

What if….. ?

Ok, so that is a familiar story. I think that, looking at my returns from these tempting betting delicacies over the last season or so, I probably have a win rate of 1/40. It’s rubbish. Sure, that 1 in every 40 feels great, but where am I going wrong? One thing I have noticed is just how badly wrong I go… and it’s not that bad. For sake of argument let’s look at 5 match accumulators. I would say that of these 5 match accumulators I get at least one result correct 100% of the time and it’s usually the first match I choose. So, if I have a good chance of picking ONE winner from all the European leagues every week, why don’t I engineer a season-long accumulator…?

The Bet

So, here’s the crux of it. I am going to place a £50 bet on the result of a single football match in Europe on the first weekend of the Premier League season, 2018-2019. I shall use the PL game weeks to guide me through the season, placing just one bet a week. If (when) I win the first week’s bet I shall place the entire winnings on the next week’s match. I shall repeat until either I lose or I get to the end of the season.

Odds

 

“Gambling is a way of buying hope on credit.” – Alan Wykes