Just thought I would stick this up while I remember and before I go to bed - will add to it later this week.
Been reading quite a lot on 'The Wisdom of Crowds' and related studies recently, stimulated by what I observed having looked pretty closely at the markets on
Betfair. From what I can see, the markets on
Betfair(i'm talking primarily about the liquid ones here) are very strong - based on the widely available information the prices are not significantly different to 'true' %age chance.
I think this has developed over the last few years - an example being in Head to head stats - a few years ago data suggested teams with a strong H2H record v another team were consistently overpriced - recently this value appears to have been eroded, if not eliminated completely.
This is not strictly related to the Wisdom of crowds theory(which obviously has its own flaws too) as its dealing with informed participants, but that's where the interest stemmed from.
Nevertheless, there will always be edges to be found in any market - which is the subject I'm getting at here - where is it?
IMO, given what I've said above, based on the widely available information and liquid markets(or large 'crowd' as it were), I'd suggest that to attempt to find this edge by form/team news/H2H alone - ie all the information that is very widely available and well published - is not impossible, but requires such an effort for such a small edge as to make it hardly worthwhile.
So I've been thinking about where it might be - and from my own experience of playing football, of how I can be playing with good players one week and somehow nothing works, to average ones the next where we are playing really effective football, I'm currently thinking a lot about what you could call 'player interaction.'
Every week i play 5s games and 11s games, and before hand will be having chats with others about the teams and how they think it will go, and many times the far better side on paper, for whatever reason, completely fails to function.
Obviously, professional football teams have far greater continuity, but the point remains IMO - interaction between players on a team, or indeed between players on opposite teams, is IMO one of the fundamental points of football.
You can look at this in a broader sense in terms of a teams style of play, and how this interacts with another particular style. Seen touched on something like this a while ago(or it may have been a slightly more psycholoical approach) and picked out a Middlesborough win v Chelsea. And of course, turning a notion of 'player interaction' into a measurable format and useable system is no easy task.
I'm rambling a bit now, but that's just some musings. I'm looking to virtually chuck the form book out the window, and focus elsewhere.
In a nutshell - 2 things...1) the theory - information that 95% of punters are basing their decisions on in liquid markets is so widely available that if you interpret it correctly you will simply end up with prices not significantly different to those on offer in a 100% market.
2) The proposal - Therefore, look elsewhere(such as something like player interaction.)