話說我個郵箱裏面堆積左一堆呢幾個月各方好友寫比我既電郵; 拖左咁耐至處理真係萬二分歉意.  今日先係呢度答左三封信先.  原文唔再重覆, 三封信既大意都係一樣: 來信既人問我可唔可以講下一個波盤係點樣定出黎.

答呢個問題先既原因只得一個: 呢封信最容易處理.  我兩年前己經答過呢個問題.

早係08年, 袋鼠仔己經問過我一模一樣既問題.  好彩仲揾得番當年回覆佢果封信, 當時既原文如下(冇時間翻譯, 希望大家睇得明):

Dear Kangaroo Boy,

Sorry I was very busy in last 2 weeks so I have delayed answering your question.  Your question is not an easy one actually.

If your question is how did the bookies calculate soccer and sports odds, the simply answer is: actually, most bookies do not calculate them.  Most of the bookies do one of two things:

1. They hire an agent who do professional line setting, so they just use the agent’s odds with the trust and belief that their odds will truly reflect the winning chances of the teams, and the odds will distribute the betting money evenly among the outcomes.  For example, if you check the football odds of my boss and (name of rival firm) are always exactly the same.  This is because they share and hire the same agent.
2. If a bookie does not hire such an agent, most of the time they copy the odds of a rival bookie and adjust the odds a little bit.  It may sound weird but most of the time it makes sense for them to do it because they will leverage their risk by betting with rival firms, so using the rival bookies’ odds as a reference is a good starting point.

The obvious question then is: someone has to post an ‘initial odd’ so that the other bookies can follow.  Who post this odds and how is it done?

I do not know how English football is done, but I know a person who set lines for American casinos in Las Vegas.  He is well known to be one of the experts in this field.  He specializes in American sports like American football and NBA basketball.

The basic idea is actually just like studying the form of a horse.  He has huge databases which he works on everyday and from there he will identify crucial and critical factors which have a strong correlation with sports outcome.

For example, he will identify that the same team playing at home and playing away are very different.  A team that plays at home tends to play well, while the away team tends to play poorly because of the travelling.  So, for example, in his database, LA Lakers home and LA Lakers away are actually two different teams.  It is just like you treat the same horse running on turf and running on dirt as two different horses.

If your question is: so what are the crucial factors?  I am sorry but I do not know.  I will question whether he will expose them to public at all too.  You will need to search online for more info on this.  But the study will be very different from what is traditionally in newspaper.  For example, if the game is Liverpool vs Arsenal, I see that most newspaper will list out the results of the last 5 or 10 times these two teams meet and use that as a basis.  For true sports analysts, they will actually study for example the passing success rates of the teams’ players.  Such information is usually not in newspaper, and indeed if you need true and accurate data on these info you will need to pay for them.

Going back to my American sports friend, if he analyses a game, not only will he be able to give you his predicted score, but he will also be able to predict what happens during the whole game, for example, the shooting % of both teams, how many rebounds a player will get, etc.  It is very amazing but his statistics will be able to describe the whole game in this sense, describing what will happen in the game before the game is actually played.  Again, this is very similar to the speed map concept of horse racing: if a speed map is accurate, it should describe how the horse race is run before the race actually takes place.  Theoretically he will also be able to tell you the game result of e.g. LA Lakers home vs LA Lakers away.  You can now see why most bookies do not calculate the odds themselves.  It is actually cheaper and easier to hire an agent or just copy the odds from other bookies.

I know that Electronic Arts has hired him to use his expertise and data in the creation of various Electronic Arts games like NBA08 .  So the software game if done correctly actually can be used to predict outcomes of future games, that is if all the data are updated properly. 

I hope this will help to shed some light into the question you are pondering.  Please email me if further questions.

Regards,

Blue Bucket Cookies

睇番當年呢封信, 應該係足夠答到呢個問題, 我冇乜野要收改.

我地公司大約百幾個員工, 賽馬部門包括睇帶, 刨馬既分析員以至真係幫公司賭馬既友仔大約有五十個, 規模係同行中係我知道既公司中最大.  波既部門呢? 老板個細仔加埋幾個幫手既後生就攪掂, 一個分析員都冇.  公司以前試過做莊, 同D賭仔死過; 攪左一兩年都係輸錢.  後黎就同絶大部份既檔口一樣, 只係做中間人, 將手上既飛轉頭打比更大既檔口賺差價, 咁至開始賺錢.

我咁講法, 大家都明白我係賭波上面既立場.  我好鐘意睇波, 但係賭波我一D都唔認真; 我唔知道點樣去刨波.  如果外面真係有一D波神, 我係會好有興趣想知道佢地做D乜野可以打敗到檔口既.