Finnish Veikkausliiga 23-24/6

The game between KooTeePee and Lahti is at thursday but 2 other matches at wednesday = 23/6.

FF Jaro – FC Haka: 22% - 28% - 50%
This one is a clear one in preview – bottom table team Jaro face top class Haka. Jaro are not among the 2-3 weakest teams in the Veikkausliiga but not quite midtable team either. They’ve had few difficult absences during the past weeks when top striker Ilja Venäläinen and top midfielder Jimmy Wargh have been ruled out. Today both of those guys are playing. Jaro will need those guys because their results have been poor whole season and 0-0-5 away record is abysmal. At home Jaro have had pretty easy opponents which is why the results are better but in this game they face the toughest away team around in Finland. Haka have 17 away games without a loss in a row now and they are greatly pissed off because of the Sunday’s home loss to TPS. Haka were all over their visitors but just could not score enough goals and now they are again in great danger of @#%$ up the season with home games: exactly what happened last year. Haka got 0 away losses but lost 5 out of 13 home games which was awfully big amount. It’s just not acceptable to lose to Jaro after what happened at Sunday. Haka have still their long term injuries Kauppila, Karjalainen and Pasoja but no fresh injuries which would have any effect.

FC Inter – AC Allianssi: 38% - 27% - 35%
There we should have the most overish game when Inter face league leaders Allianssi at Veritas stadium. The last games of Inter have been disastrous to their defence; first bottom able team Jazz scored 3 against them even when playing 1 men down and then 1st division team MP won Inter 3-1 at home in the Cup. The coach hasn’t been happy that I can tell and Inter need to get a grip. Leading team Allianssi are running smoothly now even they didn’t see Hämeenlinna off that greatly – despite the numbers 3-1 the game was very even and all statistics point to Hämeenlinna. Both teams can score goals and especially Inter at home games. Inter have a good roster and actually first time of the season they got every possible guy out from the injury box. Allianssi are missing their attacking midfielder Cleaver who is a loss but doesn’t matter that much. Inter are in basic ranks weaker team than Allianssi and belong to upper mid table when Allianssi can be put among the top3-top5 teams. That’s why I think Inter should not get 40% in any circumstances here. Interesting to see how this one ends and one would not be surprised of any kinda result.

FC KooTeePee – FC Lahti: 36% - 28% - 36%
Pretty similar game than the previous one: lower mid table ranked KooTeePee get visitors from Lahti who can be ranked to midtable team. I know people who have given over 40% to KooTeePee and I might be wrong here but I think KooTeePee have performed a bit too well and won’t win this game. First of all the team has its limits and they were close to @#%$ it up against TP47 already. Home team can’t continue their run forever and Lahti have the weapons to shut their mouths. Secondly, the curse of “manager of the month” hits! Hehe, I’m kidding now of course but the coach of Kotka, Janne Hyppönen, was selected as a coach of the June. The game system of Lahti is to keep the ball on the ground and control the game with short passing. I think they’ll put KooTeePee into big troubles even at their home field with this kinda play. Secondly, Lahti got one of the best goalies in the league and tight defence, which can keep the top marksman of Kotka, Kim Liljeqvist, in leash. Only problem of Lahti is still the lack of a good attacker, which is the reason they didn’t beat the top team HJK at Sunday: those sods just can’t score. I expect there to be nice odds against KooTeePee = LAY the home team and that’s why we don’t need Lahti to score 1 goal – just to keep their net empty Neither of the teams got any significant injuries that would not have existed already in the previous weeks.

I post m picks soon.

BP

[Rumlesen]

Nice write up as always BP
Sorry for brinning in a 1. div game, but i would like to hear your view on this one, and team news if available.
IFK Mariehamn - VPS Homewin

IFK has a solid record, 7-1-1 overall, and 5 homewins in a row i belive. I feel 1.90 is a good price or???

Thanks rumlesen, I post my Veikkausliiga picks in a bit too. Been very busy but the games start at 18.30 (FIN) = after 3hrs, so still plenty of time.

IFK Mariehamn is located in Åland which is a smallish island on a coast of Finland. It's part of Finland yes and the visitors must travel there by ferry and they have overly bigger home advantage than other teams. VPS should be about as strong team as MiFK but if I remember correctly they've had some inner troubles too.

I can't really say because 1st division is the league I follow least in Finland There're so good picks in lower divisions and I just don't have time to follow all series (following Veikkausliiga already + other work) so I don't know much about it. And 1st division is a bit poo overly because I have no friends who know it well either and there's very little information available at the club webpages. It's so different here compared to English 1st division which is 10 times bigger in all indicators than our top league, Veikkausliiga. And due the fact MiFK are located in Åland their website is also in swedish and I'm not good at that darned language hehe

To put it all together: I'm not saying it's a bad pick or good because I don't have more knowledge than the league table. The rosters change much even in the 1st division due farm deals = 1st division teams get players all the time from Veikkausliiga teams. So you'd have very good sources to know all team news.

BP

[Rumlesen]

Thanks BP
I think i leave it then. Good luck with your finnish picks

Some great bets for today, especially the straight win of Allianssi! All with normal stakes.

BET - ODDS - (NEEDED) - BOOKIE

AC ALLIANSSI (0 & +0,5) - 1.98 - (1.82) - BETFAIR* * * * * * * *
AC ALLIANSSI - 3.50 - (2.86) - BETFAIR* * * * * * * *
FC INTER - AC ALLIANSSI*U2.5*- 2.16 - (2.04)*- BETFAIR* * * * * * * *
FF JARO - FC HAKA*O2.5*- 2.02 - (2.00) - BETFAIR
FC LAHTI*- 3.00 - (2.78 ) - BETFAIR

U2.5 odds required to KooTeePee-Lahti ~1.85 and I had max 1.80 so I wait till tomorrow and play the U2.5 then. It's again a TV match so over odds will go up.

BP

Re Bet pope said on the game: Inter - Allianssi:

There we should have the most overish game

And now you're betting on the UNDER 2.5..I don't believe in this way of thinking only if the price is good or not. If you believe this game is likely to go over then why the hell is that not your bet (or maybe just left alone)!?!?

I appreciate that you're sharing your thoughts with us here at the PL but this kind of logic that you have is just beyond me..

Agreed.

No disrespect Bet Pope and they are great analysis' but you seem to always tip under 2.5 when most matches are going over. The last round is an ideal illustration with all matches bar one (which was 1-1) having over 2 goals in. Allianssi today looks a very oversish sort of game and hence odds dont matter.

Jedd25: I was supposed to say most overish game of this round but forgot the bolded words. Most overish means in plain english: the percentage for Over2.5 to occur is higher than in any other game this round. In Jaro-Haka it's 50%, in KooTeePee-Lahti it was 45% and to Allianssi-Inter it was 51% I think. When I wrote the estimations I did not know the exact numbers for Over/Under, I thought Jaro-Haka would have been clearly more underish than this one. But they were actually pretty close.

I've said it before and I've said it again: we play what's worth betting 51% for over means 49% for Under and if you get odds of 2.16 it means: worth playing. It doesn't matter if this would be the world's most overish game ever if you get odds big enough for the Under-option.

BP

deancreus wrote: "Allianssi today looks a very oversish sort of game and hence odds dont matter"

BP replies: If it was flaming then you failed, if you really meant to say that then I have one advice to you: you are reading a very wrong topic. I can show you other topics in other forums too where people advice you to play what they think it's going to happen. But guess what? Those are the people who are at betting exchanges now giving me all my profits. You can of course join them if you want, it's always more money to me.

I could write a long story here how much I've multiplied my profits only because of Over/Under bets and how much money I've made in European champs this year playing ALWAYS against what people think it's going to happen. But I got more important things to do.

BP

What Im saying essentially is every time a new round comes around you seem to tip unders when most matches are going over which I dont understand. The stats are there to see and I really dont understand how you are making these big profits because Im fairly sure if I took all your U/O predictions the return percentage wouldnt be high at all, most likely a severe loss.

To clear up in the confusion:

When this condition is met:

 

probability*odds > 1

you have a value bet on your hands, and you would be wise to play it. It doesn't matter what the probabilities are; when you find odds that give a bet value, you play.

Extreme example: Say you have estimated 54% probability for OVER and 46 for UNDER and get odds 1.70 for OVER and 2.3 for UNDER. Which one do you play?

The value in these bets are

 

OVER: 0.54*1.70 =  0.92 (no value)

UNDER: 0.46*2.3 ) = 1.06 (value)

Even if OVER is more probable, the odds are to small to give you expected profit (you'll loose 8% on average by playinig that bet), while the UNDER has an expected payout of 6% on average. If your probability estimates are accurate, playing value games will pay off in the long run. If you play the most probable results, you will most likely lose in the long run, since your bets will lack value most of the time. The most probable (and therefore most popular) bets are most often slashed below value by the bookmakers and you if you don't pursue the value when betting, you will see your money trickle away.

If you want to play OVER/UNDER's you need probability estimates to go by, or you're lost.

What I was trying to say is that if you have confidence in an OVER bet then you shouldnt then think twice simply because the odds are lower than you hoped for. If you have the confidence it will happen you will play anyway because no-one ever went skint making small profits.

I think that we think pretty much alike Deancreus, when it comes to lower odds than expected and that means shorter than you like on a certain bet, here I often take the bet anyway, but then there's obviuously a fair good reasoning behind leaving the bet alone if the price is to poor but for me it also means I don't take the 'other' bet that I didn't fancy in the first place just because there seems to be value in it...this is what I don't get, because here you go aga. what your gut feeling tells ya or what your reasoning over a game has brought forward..:b

That's just an example how my thinking is apart from the one of the Bet Pope nothing bad to say about that, probably just means that we can't agree on a generel betting strategy.

[nightwatcher]

Just want to say smthing here.
BatPope's way of betting is some kind of upgrade of normal betting like all of us do at the start. It is just "thing" that can help you to earn more money.
I also bet on some of BetPopes pick, not all of them, but i wisely choose few of them also amlong with my point of wiew. For example, on Sunday i took only Lahti under, and also small amount on draw. And guess what?!
It was the only pick that went through as under. But i won't be angry also if sometimes i choose wrong pick. That is the way it is in soccer. U just never know. And that is also why this value pick are sometimes good.

BetPope, u just keep up perfect work... !

For those who doubt... simply don't take this pick. Simple as that.

Good luck to all.

yes he is doing a great job - no doubt about that - ..I don't fully agree on the betting strategy but his previews are always good and can be used to whatever you fancy.

.

What I was trying to say is that if you have confidence in an OVER bet then you shouldnt then think twice simply because the odds are lower than you hoped for. If you have the confidence it will happen you will play anyway because no-one ever went skint making small profits.

This is wrong on many levels. This kind of thinking made the bookies cash in big on matches like Greece vs Portugal (Greece won) and Germany vs Latvia (draw), because both Portugal and Germany were bankers, right?

Wrong!

If you'd paid attention to probabilities, you'd have seen that Greece (+1) and Latvia (+1.5) were high-valued bets while there was no value whatsoever on Portugal and Germany in those two games. Some punters (me included) followed the numbers, took Greece (+1) and Latvia (+1.5) and won. Millions of others played the favourites and lost. Because their "feel" was wrong.

Do you get my point?

I make one more reply to this topic before the games have started. Because if the Inter-Allianssi game ends in U2.5 this would look like "hahaa told you" kind of reply.

I sense two different ideology here: seems like most of the people who read this forums want to bet how they feel the game ends. When Portugal faces Greece they bet Portugal because Portugal is stronger and "IMO they'd win". Alright, I understand that because I know many people who do so and there's a simple explanation for it: when you get the pick right it makes you feel like you can predict things, kinda like better than everyone else. "I knew they would win!". I think it's being written that 95% of the people go into this category. When we take 1 year or 500 bets or any kind of bigger amount of bets we see these are the guys who make bookies happy. They are the people which is why the remaining 5% make big amounts of cash. They pay the whole fun. But usually this kind of people don't keep a track of their bets so if they use fixed stakes and win 2 games in a row with odds of 1.30 and lose one they still think they're winning. "I got 2 out of 3 and darn we were lucky not to win the 3rd one too".

But like I said it's ok, I accept it and nothing wrong there. Everyone can use their money as they wish.

But when people like this come to write that they think "your betting strategy is strange" it kinda makes me angry. First of all this is not some kinda voodoo strategy, this is the only way you can even think of getting close to a profitable betting. You can't make profit if you do not know which bet is profitable to make. You can always guess and say "Well I think this game is overish so over has definitely a value here." If you guess you lose. People put a lot of effort making this kind of analysis me included, the numbers are not thrown from a hat. For example I've calculated I have to do about 2-3 weeks of work to get sharp power numbers to Premiership. It requires a lot of pre-season work and good understanding of what you're doing. And yes, don't worry, I'll not post my "crazy under picks" to premiership topics. I can do that to finnish Veikkausliiga because so little people know anything about it.

So if a person who plays-by-what-he-thinks comes to judge this crazy way of betting he's (from my point of view) making a complete idiot out of himself. Like I said I don't care how you play and how much money you lose but don't come to judge this kind of work because you have no idea how much information and work is done to get these estimations. Hopefully one day you understand the difference between winning often and winning money. Maybe I wait till that day before I post these crazy numbers.

BP

[Osesame]

Hi Bet Pope

I think your last sentence sums up the difference between thinking punters and those that I would call predicting punters.

I think and choose my bets with the aid of some form analysis but always look for where the best value bet type is,very often it is not straight 12X,but may be a lay, O/U,or A/hcap.
I think this may be what you are trying to explain,also I think that a little part of the misunderstanding of "overish" could have implied at first that the best bet was over,even though you said that you would post picks later on.

Was gonna post something similar but you've beaten me to it, guys.

Simple example (imo) is:

I think Boca will win @ home against Once in the Copa 1st leg but the odds available are too low to be worth the risk. Boca is a prediction but the low odds mean it isn't going to be a bet.