Football Alchemy 2014

Contents
Football Alchemy 2014 ........................................................................................................................... 1 Overview ............................................................................................................................................. 2 Pricing.................................................................................................................................................. 3 Early Bird promotion: ...................................................................................................................... 3 Performance View and Betting Simulator .............................................................................................. 4 Updating Records ................................................................................................................................ 4 Calculators .......................................................................................................................................... 4 Betting Simulator ................................................................................................................................ 6 The Email Forecasts ................................................................................................................................ 8 The Football Alchemy System ............................................................................................................... 10 Finding Value Bets............................................................................................................................. 10 Choosing the Bet Size........................................................................................................................ 11 Bank Growth ..................................................................................................................................... 11

Overview
Football Alchemy is designed to give you the best opportunity to make the best investment returns and we will be doing this again in the 2013/14 season. We have made a few changes, all of which we believe will bring added value to you. 1) There will be 2 systems, Alpha & Beta. Alpha is the traditional system featuring: Value bets selected for best bank growth Match bets (1X2) from the major European leagues High likelihood bets (50%+, average ~65% win expectancy) Reinvestment of profits

Beta is the new system: High value bets on outsiders Average win expectancy ~35% Smaller stake sizes Match bets (1X2) from the major European leagues

2) Competition changes: The Champions & Europa Leagues have been removed because of differences such as the away goals rule and higher percentage of uncompetitive games (for instance, when one team has already qualified from the group stage) Dutch, Turkish and Portuguese games will be monitored and included when they present better value than the core competitions Core competitions will be: o English Premier League o Spanish La Liga o German Bundesliga o Italian Serie A o French Ligue 1 o Scottish Premier League

3) Additional pricing information In addition to the regular Lay prices used in Forecasts, we will be giving the equivalent Asian Handicap prices used at online bookmakers. This will make it easier to get your bet matched by avoiding liquidity issues and save time in converting the prices yourself.

Pricing
The Alpha system is 25 per calendar month on a subscription basis with discount available for paying for the season in advance (see below). The stand-alone Beta system is 15 per calendar month on a subscription basis, again with discount available for prepayment. Please Note: subscribers to the Alpha system get the Beta system for free! Early Bird promotion: The Alpha system (includes Beta) is available with 10% discount when prepaid for the season (10 months). If you are a current subscriber (or have been a paying subscriber at any point, including previous seasons) then you get a fantastic 20% discount as a Thank You for your custom. The same discounts apply for the stand-alone Beta system. Payment Links: Football Alchemy 2014 - Alpha system (includes Beta) - 225 for the season Football Alchemy 2014 Beta (stand-alone): 135 for the season

Performance View and Betting Simulator

(Available to download from the Football Alchemy website) The Performance View spreadsheets primary purpose is to keep track of your betting records so you can see how your investment is performing.

There are 3 tabs: the first 2 for the records of Alpha & Beta systems and the 3rd is the Simulator.

Updating Records
The first 6 columns (Date Price) are filled manually as are the Commission, Stake %, Stake and Win/Lose columns the others are calculated from these. The Bk. Adj column will adjust a Lay price into the Back equivalent this makes it easier to compare the prices youre getting. The Likelihood and Stake % columns contain the numbers given in the email forecasts. Stake is the actual sum you place (and get matched) on the bet this is updated manually because we often have bets placed at the same time and so a calculated percentage x bank figure would be inaccurate. You may find differences of a few pence in your actual return compared to the figure calculated due to numbers being rounded off by either the spreadsheet or the bookmaker but this can be overwritten if needed. To copy the formulae in the Bk. Adj. and last 3 columns to subsequent rows, select the cell(s) and the bottom right corner will change to a square. Click this and drag it down to the next row to copy.

The spreadsheet picks up on the words Lay and Win (without ) so these need to be entered where appropriate.

Calculators
There are a number of calculators on the right hand side. The first, Performance, is an overview of the betting performance and is updated from the records. It shows the number of wins/bets, the actual win % and the expected win % along with the total staked, the return on investment and bank growth figures. The Win % and Expected % figures are useful for seeing if the system is currently over/underperforming. Over time we would expect these

figures to be very close so if the actual win % is higher than expected it could be a sign that you have had favourable results recently. Position Size will tell you how much to place on a bet when given the stake size as a percentage and the current bank. Bank Growth returns the profit as a percentage between 2 values and can be used to quickly work out daily, weekly or monthly bank growth figures. Enter a price in the green box in the Back/Lay Convertor and it will give the implied percentage likelihoods on the left, the commission adjusted prices on the right and the back or lay equivalent to the price entered below. Proportional Betting is for those that wish to limit their exposure when there are many bets on a particular matchday. Enter the percentage of bank that you are willing to place across the bets (underneath Given %) and the bet sizes for each bet from the email forecast. This will change the bet sizes so that they equal your exposure limit. Enter your current bank figure at the top and it will give you the stake size too. It is important to enter text for each bet in the left-hand column (the one with team names in the picture below although what the text is doesnt matter) as this updates the green figure for the number of bets. This green figure must equal the number of bets being placed else the values given will be incorrect.

Betting Simulator

The Simulator generates random results based on expected win rates and shows how the luck of the draw can impact performance. Using this you can get an idea of the potential upside and downsides from systems, along with what sort of sequences can occur. The data changes anytime a cell value is changed so to run a new set of results just enter anything in an empty cell and press Enter. Delete and press Enter again and youll get another load of results. The figures in the top left box for Expected Win %, Stake % and Average Odds are taken from Football Alchemy 2013s averages. These values can be changed to whatever you wish to test. BE Win% is the Break-Even Win % and is just the implied percentage taken from the Average Odds. The box on the right shows the generated results and returns after x bets ranging from 50 to 1000. The numbers above the blue Bet # bar give the actual win rate generated and the values below give the Bank value at that point. Alpha In shows the Bank value using percentage stakes of the Initial Bank and Alpha Re gives the returns when profits are Reinvested these are in place for comparison purposes. Using these, the advantages of reinvesting profits from a system with an edge can be seen both in terms of higher upside and lower downside. The charts map out these results over 250 and 1000 bet sequences with 250 being used as an approximation of 1 season and 1000 showing a longer-term performance, ironing out volatility to some degree. In the screenshot above, it can be seen that the Beta system outperforms Alpha in this instance with the generated results having a higher win rate than expected. Also, Alpha Re starts off with less wins than expected before recovering, then shows more or less flat returns between 200 and 250 bets but really takes off after 250 bets when the number of wins comes close to expectations. These simulations can put perspective on shorter and longer term results and expectations.

You can have a look at the kind of winning and losing runs that are possible by scrolling down below the charts to find the simulated results.

The Email Forecasts

Our betting recommendations are usually sent out the night before each matchday and look something like this:

Each selection includes: The kick-off time and match The selection, bet type and price to bet at The percentage of current bank to risk on the bet The likelihood of the bet being a winner Each bet is listed in order of predicted Bank Growth with highest first

For 2014, the Football Alchemy forecasts include the Asian Handicap equivalent for Lay bets. The above example would look like this:

The Lay bet prices are taken from Betfair, and are the actual prices available at the time (with money ready to be matched). Our value calculation assumes commission at 2% which is available at Smarkets whose prices match Betfairs. If you can get a higher price (or the same price at a bookmaker with no commission) then even better. The A(sian)H(andicap) price is that available at Pinnacle Sports who have very low margins, equivalent to 2%. Note that the Back Juventus price in the 2014 example is lower, 1.43 instead of 1.44. Only Lay bets will allow for 2% commission to be charged, Back and Asian Handicap prices will be given net. The price tools on your Performance View spreadsheet can be used to find the pre-commission price if you need this. As can be seen, we are very precise with the information that we give. The likelihood figure is provided so that you know how confident to feel about each bet plenty have equal chance of winning/losing and so you can monitor the accuracy of our system.

The Football Alchemy System

Football Alchemy is designed to generate the very best returns for investors, whilst managing risk. There are several components to this: 1. We find the best value bets, those where the price offered is generous considering the chance of the bet winning 2. We find the bet size that gives us the best risk/reward balance 3. We reinvest profits to benefit from accelerated gains

Finding Value Bets

In many ways this is the original advantage of Football Alchemy. We use statistical data to evaluate each teams chances in a football match. How? Around 2006, I (SW) had the idea of testing different sets of results and statistics, making predictions from them and then monitoring the actual results to see which statistics were most useful for this purpose. I wrote a computer program called Football Alchemy which then gave a different weighting to each method based on its effectiveness. The Football Alchemy engine would adjust the weighting formula as more results were added with the idea that it would produce increasingly accurate predictions.

An early incarnation of the Football Alchemy engine Over time patterns emerged and the pricing formula used was both improved and simplified. Now we mainly use a combination of statistics for team strength and form over different periods. There are advantages and disadvantages of solely using statistics. On the plus side, it gets rid of emotion and bias and uses information that reflects what actually has occurred in similar situations.

10

On the other hand, there are a huge number of variables in football and we cannot calculate all of them. The effect of a new manager, new signing or injury to a key player will have an effect on the true likelihood of a team winning that wont be reflected in our data. Thankfully, time has shown that the market often overestimates this too!

Choosing the Bet Size

Finding value is the first step to profitable betting, exploiting it is the next. Selecting a suitable stake size is how this is done. Much depends on your goal and attitude to risk/reward. At Football Alchemy, we wish to get the best balance between very high returns and low risk to the initial capital. As extreme examples, a very safe approach might involve placing 0.5% of the initial bank on each bet and a very high risk/reward bet size might be 20% of the current bank on every bet. Even with a definite edge on the prices and getting the same results there will be wildly different returns. We use a % of the current bank. This scales up our stake when were in profit and scales it down if we dip below our initial investment. The actual percentages that we give in our recommendations are perhaps higher than some professional gamblers go for (with an average of 5.6% in 2012/13) but suit our goal of maximum returns. Our stake sizes take into account the level of value in the price, the more value there is to be had, the more aggressively we pursue it. Similarly, we take into account the likelihood of us winning the bet, increasing our stake as the safety of the bet goes up. Our stake sizes, then, are calculated to balance the risk (likelihood) and reward (value).

Bank Growth
We often talk about Bank Growth and list our bets in order of predicted Bank Growth in our Forecasts with the highest first. Bank Growth differs from value in that it takes into account our bet size. So a bet might have lower value than others but the high likelihood of it winning makes it worth placing a large bet on it. If the high likelihood of the win and the bigger stake size mean that we will make more money from placing this bet than others in the long-term then we speak about it offering better Bank Growth.

11