November 5, 2021by Betaminic in Betting Strategies, Blog

Betting System Over 2.5 goals: Bet against the trend

The over / under 2.5 market is very popular among bettors for many reasons.  Its odds are usually around evens and it is easy to follow matches hoping for goals from either side. In this article, we show how Betaminic has found a winning strategy for this market with excellent results. Do you want to discover how to get the best out of over 2.5 bets? Find out below.

 

What is Betaminic?

Betaminic is a website that has a free online tool called the Betamin Builder for analysing soccer statistics and historical bookmaker odds. By analysing the past data of over 200,000 matches, winning patterns can be found. For example, there are some leagues where backing over 2.5 goals in certain conditions leads to profit long term. Betaminic’s tool, the Betamin Builder, allows you to find those value patterns. There is also a way to have future picks from those profitable trends emailed to you so that you can bet on them. Basically, if you can find what betting system would have made profit in the past, it gives you a promising strategy to follow in the future. You can sign up for free here and see for yourself.

 

Summary of the Strategy Results:

These are the results obtained after analysing the strategy “Over 2.5 against the trend / Más 2.5 contra tendencia (Updated 2021-10-21)” using historical data between April 2012 to October 2021.

 

Start now -> You can follow this strategy easily by using this simple guide.

 

Understanding the Over/Under 2.5 goals market odds and beating the bookmaker margin

Betting on “Over 2.5 goals” in a match means that if 3 or more goals are scored, you win the bet. If 2 or less goals are scored, you lose the bet. If a bookmaker had no information about a football game, they would probably price up the market as 50-50 with odds of 2.00 for both “Over 2.5 goals” and “Under 2.5 goals” bet selections. Then, they would artificially lower the odds to 1.9 (for example) on both outcomes to make sure they get profit, their bookmaker margin. In fact, this is the easiest way to see how big your bookmaker’s margin is. Here are the real Over 2.5 Goals odds from 4 major bookmakers for a 50-50 market.

 

Pinnacle has the smallest margin. We can see this in their odds of 1.952 for these coin toss matches. The largest margin is Betfair sportsbook with 1.82! Pinnacle is well known or its low bookmaker margin. They aim to make profit by high volume betting and do not ban winners. It is for this reason that we use their odds data in our historical database. The bookmaker margin to be overcome is lower than any other bookmaker.

The above example is in a 50-50 case where the available form data does not indicate if the match is likely to be over or under 2.5 goals. But in reality, the short term, medium term and long term form statistics of teams give an indication of the probability of 3 or more goals being scored in a match. Bookmakers create their own market models based on these and offer odds from them. A very simplified example of this would be, if 2 teams are playing, and both of them have been involved in games that had 3 goals or more in their last 3 games, then the bookmaker would logically reduce the odds they offer on that game being over 2.5 goals. In contrast, if both teams have not been in involved in games that had 3 goals or more in their last 3 games, then the bookmaker would want to increase the odds of the “Over 2.5 goals” bet and reduce the odds on the “Under 2.5 goals” bet. The big problem for the bookmaker is how much to adjust their odds based on the historical statistics and recent form. If their model is wrong, then we can find the inefficiencies in their model and can bet on value odds that will beat the bookmaker margin over the long term. Very simply put, we want to bet on matches where bookmaker odds are being offered above their true value.

Betaminic has a tool, the Betamin Builder, that helps find those inefficiencies in bookmaker models (trends of value odds) that can make profit if followed long term. You can beat the house if the house odds are wrong.

 

Description of the Over 2.5 Goals Against the Trend Strategy

This “Over 2.5 against the trend / Más 2.5 contra tendencia (Updated 2021-10-21)” strategy is based on the historical odds data which suggests that their market model is wrong in the case of matches whose teams’ short term form (their last 3 matches home or away) have had no over 2.5 goals matches. If you bet on every game in certain leagues where both teams have not played in games with 3 or more goals in their last 3 home or away matches, then the next fixture is likely to have upwardly adjusted odds which become value odds above their true value. This strategy wants to take advantage of those odds (Read more about this concept by clicking here)

Basically, the recent streak suggests an under 2.5 goals game is likely, but we bet against that trend, thus the name “against the trend”.

Here is an example of a game that would be qualifying fixture for this:

Sporting Gijon’s last 3 games were 1-1, 1-0 and 1-0. Real Valladolid’s last 3 games were 1-1, 0-2 and 1-1. None of either team’s last 3 games home or away were over 2.5 goals (3 goals or more scored by both teams combined). The odds for the next game being over 2.5 goals would have been adjusted upward by the Bookmaker model in anticipation of another low scoring game coming. But we are betting against the short term trend and the next game was indeed a 1-2 away win for Real Valladolid with 3 goals scored in the game, so the over 2.5 goals bet was a winner.

This match was indeed selected by our strategy and had odds of 2.49 on Pinnacle at Kick Off. We can see how the opening odds were 2.33 and the under 2.5 goal bet had been so heavily backed that the over 2.5 goal odds were pushed higher to 2.49. Many punters must have seen the recent form and decided that this game was likely to be an under 2.5 goal match. Indeed, that may be the case since the odds for over 2.5 goals were above 2.00, but the odds for an over 2.5 goals results were above their true probability, so they were “value”. By value, we mean that consistently betting on such matches long term, we have a chance for profit since the odds are above their actual probability.

Start Now > Do you want to follow this Over 2.5 Goals strategy? You can follow this strategy easily with this simple guide.

Opening and Closing Odds

Betaminic uses the opening odds to filter matches as strategy selections or not. We then use the closing odds to calculate the profit and loss. The reason for this is because the opening odds are the best reflection of the bookmaker model before it gets pushed around by open market forces. The opening odds often change quite quickly and it is unlikely that users will be able to get these odds after they have been published for a few hours. We use the closing odds to calculate profit and loss for a strategy since these are likely to be closer to the actual market odds available at most bookmakers close to Kick Off. This means you can place the bets at almost any bookmaker and the strategy will still work since the closing odds are likely to be close to the open market average odds near Kick Off. It is of course best betting practice to search for the highest odds available to the time you place your bet. This could be Pinnacle, Betfair Exchange, Bet365 or any other bookmaker that happens to be offering the best odds at the time you place your bet. Shopping around for the best odds, even if they are better by just one decimal point, can have a huge impact on system results over the long term. See our article about opening and closing odds here.

System Parameters

These are the filters used for this system:

Leagues. We have tested this strategy with 111 leagues. 90 were selected.

Odds. Odds are taken from Pinnacle Sports, opening odds to select the games and closing odds to calculate the P/L.

Seasons. From season 2012/2013 to the current one 2021/2022.

Date range. From April 2012 to October 2021.

P/L Calculation method. To bet one unit on Over 2.5 goals, when the conditions are fulfilled.

Home Team conditions. The last three games played home or away finished with a total of 2 goals or less.

Away Team conditions.  The last three games played home or away finished with a total of 2 goals or less.

Odds for Over 2.5 goals. Opening odds must be included in the interval 2.01 – 2.70.

The Trigger of the system. If those conditions are fulfilled, the system places an Over 2.5 bet on the fourth match.

Yield. The Yield obtained in the system: 6.25% after 2,441 bets matched in the strategy.

Yield % = Net Profit or Loss / Total Stake * 100%

Results of this Strategy

 

Strategy Results by Year

Here you can see a breakdown of the results by year.

 

 (Data from 2021-10-19)

Note: “2012” means the 2012 summer season leagues and the 2012/2013 winter season leagues.

The results show a long term pattern of this trend continuing. The bookmaker seems unable to eliminate this inefficiency in their odds model or it may be that the open market forces that consistently push the odds of this kind of bet higher than its true value as punters see the short term under 2.5 goals trend and back that selection. In fact, 60% of opening odds ended up getting pushed higher by Kick-Off. There is one year that makes a loss (2015), but this comes after 2 years of +14% ROI results (2013 % 2014). The trend then returns to near its long term average ROI of 6%. Again, in 2020 we see a lower ROI of +1.25%, and this also comes after a year of significantly higher ROI of 10% in 2019. 2021 has shown an ROI of +6.55% which is close to the long term average of +6.25%. The historical trend of this strategy suggests this is a good time to follow this strategy. In 2012 we had an ROI of +6.94% which was followed by 2 more years of above average yields (+14.29% & +14.19% ROI) before a market model adjustment. Again, 2016 and 2017 showed yields near the average trend line, then another 2 years of above average ROI (+8.14% & +10.32%) before a market model correction. If such a cycle repeats again we could hypothesise another 2 years of above average yields may by coming.

 

Following Big Data Strategies Long Term

A key aspect of big data betting on value odds is the need to follow strategies long term. Giving up on a well-researched strategy after 2 losing months is exactly why most punters lose out when trying this method of betting. Looking at the long term results will make this easier to see.

(Data from 2021-10-26)

The long term profits of the strategy are obvious; a slow and bumpy ride upwards. There are periods with 5 months of consecutive profit and a few months of big wins and large profits. But the monthly results also show a number of times when the strategy made losses for 2 months in a row and two occasions where it made losses for 3 months in a row. Most short-term betters will give up here. The loss making year of 2015 is also a time when many might say the strategy does not work, but the long term results are clear. 9 out of the 10 years, it made a profit with an average ROI of +6.29% and +15.4 points per year. These level stakes profits can be multiplied by applying the right staking plan to the strategy.

 

Multiply Profits with the Right Staking Plan

One of the big advantages of betting strategies researched with historical data is that we already have a lot of past data that can be analysed with staking software such as The Staking Machine. (Read more about the best staking plans here.) Many punters only have a few hundred bets of data to analyse, but with this strategy we have 2,452 bets worth of data we can run a variety of tests on. You can easily download all the historical data of Betaminic strategies by clicking on the “Download” button for a strategy.

Staking Analysis for “Over 2.5 against the trend / Más 2.5 contra tendencia (Updated 2021-10-21)” strategy

Recommended Staking Plan: Target Profit Staking to win 3% of the bank from each bet.

The following table shows the results of various staking plans* applied to the strategy results. Target Profit staking plans increase the Level Stakes profits from +155 to +2,140, increasing profits by over +1300%. That is an average annual profit of +210 points! This is why having the right staking plan is very important to getting the most out of Betaminic strategies.

Staking – Total Profit Analysis

The “Cumulative Profit” column shows the total profit of the actual results. The “MCS Ave. Total” column shows the average profit gained if the order of the results was shuffled 1,000 times. This kind of analysis is called a Monte Carlo Simulation (MCS). The point of this is that we want to be sure that the profits did not come as part of the “luck” of the fixture list. By shuffling the results, we can get a better image of how the staking plan would perform if the fixture list had been different.

 

*The settings of each staking plan are the “Best Settings” taken from the extensively researched “The Staking Plans Book”. Whitaker2 and Secure2 are customized versions of those staking plans especially created for Betaminic strategies that often have a high volume simultaneous bets. The settings of these are available to active Betaminic subscribers by emailing su*****@be*******.com.

Staking – Profit Taking Analysis

The above table shows the results if you started following the strategy from 2012 and never withdrew profits over the next 10 years. This is unrealistic. Also, it does not show us how the strategy fares if we started at different times in its history, and also if we joined the system after a good run, which is often the case. People usually follow strategies just after good winning runs, not losing runs. In this next table we apply “Profit Taking” to the staking plan tests.  With Profit Taking, the bank is reset to its starting level each time it doubles. So if it started on 100 points, and doubled to 200 points, then 100 points profit was removed and the staking plan continues. Now, if we look at the “Cumulative Profit” column for Whitaker2 Staking we can see +474.81 points instead of +2,115.15 points. These are the SAME profits, except the +474.81 number means that the bank doubled FOUR times, and is currently +74.81 points up in its current cycle. (100 profit taken + 100 profit taken + 100 profit taken + 100 profit taken + 74.81 current profit) This means that on four occasions it doubled its bank, then had its bank reset to 100 and started again. If we had joined the strategy after that winning run of doubling its bank, it would have had another winning run again. This is a much better way to test staking plans. And then we can run Monte Carlo Simulations with Profit Taking and find test out that method in 1,000 simulated shuffles of the data.

After this analysis, Whitaker2 staking comes out on top, but Target Profit (3%) staking is also very good and has a better “lowest bank trough” than Whitaker2 staking. This means that in a bad run, its lowest bank level was 70.5% of the original bank, but Whitaker2 went down as far as 53.4% of the original bank. Neither went bankrupt, but Target Profit (3%) staking made it an easier system to follow and with similar results.

 

Results Analysis

 

The bar chart shows that most bets fall in the 2.0 to 2.5 odds range. Even though the opening odds were all in the 2.01 to 2.70 range, it is still possible for the closing odds to be outside those ranges after market forces drive the prices higher or lower. So there are a number of odds that end up above and below the 2.01-2.70 range. The opening odds trigger the bets and the closing odds are what we bet on and calculate the strategy profit and loss from.

The lower odds bets show higher yields, but the 2.0-2.5 core range still shows a healthy ROI. The “edge” in the chart means the same as” yield” or “ROI”. It is interesting how the lower odds that have had their prices driven down still have much higher yields.

The Staking Machine software provides very useful information about the data set.

It shows an Expected Losing Sequence (E.L.S.) of 12.7 and an actual longest losing sequence of 13. The ELS is calculated based on the strike rate and the number of bets. From this it can calculate the statistically expected longest losing sequence. We can see that these results did indeed reach that longest losing run. So this also suggests the profits are not a result of unusual positive variance (luck).

We see the Archie Score is 8.1, the T-Score is 2.698 and the P-Value is 0.004. All three of these are different ways of calculating the likelihood of the results being down to chance or real edge. An Archie Score of 8.1 suggests a 1% chance that the results are just luck. The T-Score of 2.698 and P-Value of 0.004 suggest there is a 0.04% chance that these results are down to luck. That is a 1 in 223 chance. These are really strong numbers that support the strategy results as having found a real trend, and not the result of data mining. The P-Value is the most advanced of the calculated probability (luck) quantifying methods and we often look at this number when judging strategies.

Odds Band Analysis

 

After removing leagues with over 100 bets and negative results, then separating into their odds bands, we see that the opening odds bands from 2.01 to 2.70 all show positive yields.  

 

Drawdown

The maximum drawdown for each year gives us an idea of the kind of bad runs the strategy can go on. This helps us judge the risk of this strategy.

 

It is interesting to see that the average percentage of bets won over 10 years was 46% and the biggest drawdown was -29 points. The one losing year, 2015 had a win rate of just 42%. This suggests that the problem was not the strategy, simply that a period of extreme negative variance occurred where more games than normal finished with 2 goals or less. Knowing the maximum drawdown can help us plan ahead for such natural variations.

 

Minimum Suggested Odds & Getting the Best Odds

We will send the picks by email with “minimum suggested odds”. These are also shown in your “Pending Picks” page. These minimum recommended odds mean you will have a reference point to place your bets. The calculations are performed to obtain a theoretical yield of 5% betting on the minimum odds, always based on past data. It means that if you had always bet using the minimum odds, you would have achieved a 5% yield with the historical data of the strategy. The displayed results of a strategy and the strategy results in this article include all bets made, including those under the recommended odds. But we feel yields can be improved by taking note of the minimum recommended odds. Some users do also bet on all the picks. The final choice is with you. We strongly advise opening accounts with different bookmakers to be able to select the highest odds available for each bet. Getting just a few ticks higher on each bet can have a big impact on long term profits.

 

Would you like to receive the picks of the strategy?

It’s very easy, you just have to follow some very simple steps:

1. Register on our website, click here to go directly.
2. Buy the package you want to receive the picks of the strategy. Click here to select a plan.
3. Access our Betamin Builder tool.
4. Go to “Public Strategies” in the Main Menu.
5. Activate the option to receive the Picks by clicking on the Follow icon, which you will find to the right of the strategy “Over 2.5 against the trend / Más 2.5 contra tendencia (Updated 2021-10-21)”.
6. You don’t have to do anything else. You will start receiving the picks in your email account as soon as the games fulfil the conditions of the strategy (check your SPAM folder). You can also see picks for matches due to kick-off within the next 48 hours in your “My Picks” > “Pending Picks” page.

If you have any doubts in the process, you can see the tutorial that we have prepared to follow the public strategies. Click here to access the tutorial.

 

Conclusions

As you can see, this system makes profit across 90 different leagues. That shows that this strategy is pretty solid, because the conditions and filters work for a large number of different football leagues. 

We think this strategy shows strong historical trends and can be profitable over the long term. But as you know, this strategy is based 100% on statistical data. As with any strategy based on historical data, it can give us a promising strategy to follow, but nobody can be sure this system will continue making profits in the future. So you should monitor the strategy for signs of it reaching your stop loss point.

It takes a lot of research to take an idea for a betting system, test it against historical data, carefully analyse by year, league and odds band to make sure we have a base strategy with level stakes profits over the long term. We check the Archie score, P-value, ELS and Max drawdowns to see how much we can trust the system and what risks we should plan for. We then analyse staking plans to find ways to get more value out of it. At the end we are confident to say that if you want to try out big data betting with the Betaminic method, then this strategy is the perfect way to start.

Looking at the bigger picture and turning individual Betaminic strategies into a full betting system, we advise and recommend you not to pull all your eggs in one basket. Spread risk by diversifying the strategies in your betting system portfolio. This can help hedge against natural statistical variance. You can choose more strategies from the Public Strategies page. You can take ideas from the Public Strategies to edit and adapt in your own way. You can also create your own private strategies based on your own gut feelings and ideas about football. We are here to help you build your betting system, by publishing more studies of this nature, by helping you follow or create strategies and by answering any questions you may have.

If you want to suggest a particular betting system to be analysed in more detail, please send us an email to su*****@be*******.com or using our contact form, we will be glad to help you.

If you are looking for somewhere to start, then following this strategy is a great way to get used to the Betaminic system and big data betting.

 

 

Sign up for Betaminic for free here.

Read the tutorial for using Betaminic.

Read more about value odds here.

Read more about staking plans here.

Read the latest Betaminic articles here.