Its all in the mind.

[Oddsfellow]

Betting strategies usually revolve around facts and figures. Shots on targets, goals for and against, distance won by, greens in regualtion all can be quantified. However the one big thing that all of these neglect is psychology. Because it is hard to put a value to it, more often than not its ignored.

The psychology of a sporting situation can be a factor before anything has happened or can of course change during an event. A football team having won six on the bounce will naturally have high confidence whereas a golfer who has missed 3 three putts in a row will not be relishing the next one he faces.

Would be interested to hear any thoughts on this subject but here are just a few theories on football i am currently testing out.

Mentally teams drop after playing a big side.
The theory behind this one is that a team prepares and gets itself up for a match against top opposition (their cup final is a term often used) but then underperform the following week against weaker teams. Examples being teams who play Manchester United and laying them the week after.

Going down to 10 men is not such a big deal
Difficult to get stats for this one but after going down to 10 men teams do not do that badly. I have made quite a bit of money betting in running this year where teams have gone down to 10 men and then they are very hard to break down. I dont know if its a perceived injustice thing, or that all the players give that bit extra but certainly teams finishing with 10 outperform on in-running betting.

Bouncebackability
Certain teams that lose heavily, in the next game are determinded to rectify things and do better than expected. From my initial scratchings on this it is only certain teams and am trying to find some correlation between teams who get back from going behind in games and also performing well in the next game after a defeat as i believe the psychology must be closely related.

I cant take the pressure
Particularly towards the end of season the term "must win game" is freely used. But its almost like the team with the pressure finds it too much too handle and the team with nothing to play at least gets a draw. Norwich on the last day is one example but the one that first got me thinking about it was when Man U and Blackburn were going head to head for the title on the last day and neither managed a win.

Have some data on all of these but not sure how best to use it. Any further areas or discussion fully welcomed.

[Doc]

Oddsfellow

interesting points.

1) Mental drop after playing a big side. I wouldn't be surprised, although I haven't looked for it myself - should be easy to test for though?
2) Agree. I think Gert Ridder looked at this
3) Again agree, but haven't studied it formally - again should be easy enough to test for?
4) not ceratain about this one?

[aliensyndm]

Some factors there which I do believe can make a difference. What do you think about the "star" player being injured/suspended factor ?
The first game a star player is out the team often plays out it's skin, A - to try and compensate for the star being out B - to try and show they can play without him.
But after the first game without him, the lack of talent/creativity begins to show and the team do not perform quite as well as if the star was playing.

Is any of that making sense ? I guess its kinda similar to a team being reduced to 10 men working harder to compensate and often winning.

[Oddsfellow]

Alien,

Steve Gerrard Captain fantastic for Liverpool apparently. So how come their results this year in the league have been better when he's missing. Your point exactly.

[tipstar]

why is this the only thread can get into

There seems to have been a slight problem with the thedailypunt.com Forums database.
Please try again by pressing the refresh button in your browser.

An E-Mail has been dispatched to our Technical Staff, who you can also contact if the problem persists.

We apologise for any inconvenience. :pat

[Silke]

Yeah, hope they're working on getting it fixed tipstar - must be some hackers or terrorists on the loose, I s'pose :tongue

[MickeyPaul]

When teams go down to 10 men do they not almost always adopt a very defensive formation? I would have thought there'd be a few draws. Sorry, I'll come back to this when I'm a bit refreshed as i'm interested in it. Good stuff Oddsfellow.

[ONEDUNME]

I'm not a fan of the "teams going down to 10 men" theory (although I'm pleased to hear that you're making money on it ). I have no stats on it but here is my perception.

It would depend entirely on when they were reduced to 10 men. If, as in yesterday's play off game, it was late on in the game, then it would not be a surprise to find that the opposition couldn't manage to break them down in the time remaining.

Also, it would depend which team was being reduced to ten men. You could argue that a ten man Chelsea game may well be cabable of holding a Southampton eleven at Stamford Bridge, whereas a ten man Southampton at Stamford Bridge would not be the same odds to survive.

Just to throw one more iron into the fire, we quite often see a team lose a player in the first half, only to see one of the opposition players sent off in the second half.

Given that a team remaining with 11 men were not the underdogs, did not have a man of their own subsequently sent off and had 45 minutes or more play after the sending off, I would expect any stats to show that they would break down the opposition over 80% of the time.

Anyone got those simple stats to hand

[Oddsfellow]

MickeyPaul,

They do and more often than not the policy becomes defend what we have, wether it be a lead or a draw. The beauty of Betfair and where i have been making money is on the next goalscorer market where you can back no goalscorer.

Onedunme,

It is as you point out reeliant upon the context but this would be accounted for in the odds available anyway. When i say outperform its realtive to the odds available.

[ONEDUNME]

The best way to analyse this is with some live examples, in running and we aren't going to get any meaningfull matches for a while.

[trickrick]

I am sure there is a certain trend for a 'bouncebackability' factor where a team that loses by 4 goals or more in a game don't tend to lose the next game...Of course I don't have the evidence or statistics to prove this, but it is always a factor I think about when I see a heavy defeat..