British Treble Chance is the game of choosing winning lines from 8 draws from a list of 49 matches on a coupon. Some bettors prefer to bet, for example, on 3 draws or 5 games away. This article briefly describes how you can identify the most likely candidate to tie or walk away from a ranked match list.
ranked list
In a previous article I wrote about how to prepare a list of match evaluations. This is a list of the matches on the coupon, with a numerical evaluation against each one. Numerical evaluation is just a number that reflects the probability of the match being a home win, draw, or away win.
We then sort this list in order of ascending probability (match score is the term I use). Those with the lowest match rating I mark as away, and those at the other end I mark as home. Matches with mid-range ratings are marked as probable draws.
Now, with 49 games on a coupon, knowing where to ‘draw the line’ between away/draw/home odds is a key decision.
Analysis of recent coupon results shows that approximately 45% of games were home wins during the season, with 26% away from home and 27% tied with or without a score.
Choosing our candidates
Now, at first glance, this would suggest that we simply divide our ranked match evaluations according to these numbers. But we know that not everything goes smoothly, we get some amazing results and even some matches that look like home wins can end with away results. Also, of course, no forecasting system is perfect, even if all the results were to match team form.
Therefore, the boundaries between home/draw/away are not clear and we need to cast our net more widely and cover more matches (on triple chance). However, for 3 draws or 5 away forecasts, the problem is more difficult: we have to pay much more attention to individual matches, team changes, injuries and other factors.
The 3 draws we need will be somewhere in the list of 20 potential draws we have selected. So how do we find them? We do not! We simply set our hedge so that we are ‘permanently’ any 3 out of 20. That’s a lot of lines, 1140 separate bets in fact. Even at 20p the line is over £200 in total, too much for most punters. And of course, the bookie’s odds may not cover this. If we are looking for, say, a 3 to 1 return (£600), then we would need fixed odds of 3000/1.
cut list
One way we can make this work is to cut the number of lines, i.e. reduce the coverage. So we would need to shorten the list to say 12 selections. Any 3 out of 12 would be 220 lines, around £40 to 20p per line, and we would need fixed odds of 600/1 for a target return of 3 to 1 (£120).
Shortening the list would mean removing the selections; this is done by analyzing the matches and teams in detail, or by simply removing the matches with the highest or lowest rating from the qualifying list, some from the home win finish and some from the away win. final, and in proportion to the percentages of usual results (45% households, 26% outside). This is approximately 6 home and 2 away eliminated to reduce coverage from 20 matches to 12 matches.
It can be difficult to find an online bookmaker that offers these types of bets, and you may need to place such a bet in person at the bookmaker’s premises.
(c) Phil Marks 2010