having become engrossed in sports betting recently, i find these statistical websites of great help in determining my wagers. they can also assist in tipping comps, predicting scores, and even be employed towards fantasy football selections.
i have actually found fink tank to be the most generous in their figures and haven't used it as much lately. some i prefer at the moment include..
sportspunter.com http://www.sportspunter.com/servlet/tip ... %202005/06
soccerstats.com http://www.soccerstats.com/predict.asp?league=England
and betinf.com http://www.betinf.com/england.htm
enjoy
and
all the best for xmas & new year

Have a great Xmas and New Year Viddleodge - and all those posting here.

Cheers viddleodge.. excellent information.... it would be nice to make this a sticky - especially if you shorten the links

I used to really value the Fink tank stats until the other week when i saw their predictive stats for the World Cup (click on the image to enlarge):

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0, ... 05,00.html

According to their stats:

- France are the favourites to win the world Cup
- Brazil should be 8-1 to win, not the 3-1 offered by the bookies.
- Holland and Germany have (almost) as good a chance of winning as Brazil and germany are actually more likley to reach the final.
- Argentina only have a 5% chance of winning, the same as Sweden
- Italy, Argentina and England are all expected to get knocked out before the quarter finals.

The worst thing is they actually had the nerve to publish this in the paper without any expanation for the results. I think stats are great, but this does show that there are instances where they are seriously flawed.

On the face of it, I do of course agree with you.

But imagine the profits if you trust it and finktank does come up correct...

France favourites? That's a mistake.

Brazil 8-1 to win: perfect. This is a knockout competition where anything can happen, not a round robin. 3-1 is probably too short.

Germany are the hosts and therefore likely to do quite well. Holland surely do have almost the same chance of winning as Brazil.

The one thing that seemed wrong with the stats was Sweden's high chance of winning the thing - in fact they have more chance of winning the group than England (but only just). But if you think about the latter fact it makes sense; Sweden are more consistent against teams like Paraguay and Trinidad and Tobago than England are, and they probably do have a very good chance provided they don't lose to England (what are the chances of that?)

Italy, Argentina and England out before the quarters: by expected you mean "greater than 50% chance" I assume. I don't see much wrong with this if you look at the teams they have to play (apart from England maybe).

I hope its ok for me to do this, but i've been trawling the archives (too much spare time on my hands!), and thought this thread by viddelodge might be worth a bump for the useful links it contains. sorry if you're all aware of them, but i wasn't and they look pretty useful to me!

PS. a belated thanks to vid for this!
PPS. That prediction about france winning the world cup didn't end up being too far wrong did it!

Happy Christmas!

Looking back, it shows how acurate it is (or isn't)

The problem with Fink Tank is they give a flat 1.4 weighting to all home sides, no matter how good or bad (relatively) their home record is.

But I'd be interested to hear an updated report from viddle on the other links - which if any has he found most reliable?

cheers nimbus.
great avatar.
i like a nice amble down pipsuite lane from time to time meself.

i did loads of small bets for a year or two but craze wore off for the time being, and my fantasy teams were suffering so eased off on that.
i remember mr smedley was a big fan of fink tank but i used the other sites more often. but never just one. all combined as a sort of toolbox as part of my review before laying bets.

sorry i can't give an updated report but if you're really keen i could put you onto a site that gives very detailed and insightful analysis.

what sites that then viddleodge?

Yeah, I've been there. It's full of mad ramblings by idiots.

i did have another forum in mind when i wrote that but haven't visited it for some time so i'm not sure how sharp the folks are there now but i think it was bettingadvice.com. they were pretty good for european games where i didn't know much about but they're lots of great value bets in some of the italian, dutch, spanish leagues, etc. nfl's arguably the best sport to gamble on though.

it also occurred to me fiso is that site too or that some of the bright sparks at b a are now here too.

cool - will take a look

... i sometimes scan over myteamtalk.info

Although its based on the yahoo game there are several people who gather match previews from various sites which most of us check anyway (bbc, skysports, etc etc) and post into a match previews section. There's also a thread for the best picks for each week based on votes - worth a look.

Oh, and there's a small area for FPL too .. but that parts hardly worth it