East Stirling v Montrose (continued)

Hahaha,

Update: see http://blog.chrishayuk.com/2012/01/east-stirling-v-montrose-part-3.html

For some reason, I got confused. I was a little more focused on what was going on in Cyprus. Let me reword what I should have written.

East Stirling is at home. Montrose is away.

We know that in general there is statistical home advantage in football. In general, i.e. home teams win more often than away teams. There is an advantage to playing at home.

Now East Stirling (home) is bottom of the league (10th position) on ten points.

Montrose is 7th in the league on 22 points.

East Stirling home record is LDWDLD and recent record for all mathces is LLLLDL

It's not great they are on 10 points after all.

Montrose's away record is DWLDDL and recent record for all matches is WLDWLD. Now this is a significantly better record but they are not exactly strong finishers.

I haven't done the math on the odds but there seemed to have been value there.

East Stirling - 1.73

Montrose - 4.8

Draw - 4.1

For a home-team sitting at the bottom of the league. The odds seems to be hugely in East Stirlings favour. They look like the favourites. Clearly they are not. Home advantage is just not that good. I would be hugely tempted to Lay East Stirling.

Now on Betfair for this game, 25,556 has been matched. A little high for a Scottish Division 3 game. I don't think this is match-fixing but severe value in odds.

Of that 25,556. 23,461 is bet on Montrose. Leaving 1,400 matched on East Stirling and 695 on the draw.

Quite simply, I believe this a a very high number of bets because the Montrose odds present huge value. East Stirling cannot be 1.73 favourites to win. Just ridiculous odds. As I said haven't done the math but that just seems mental.

You know what the really weird thing is though. East Stirling won 3-1.

This means the vast majority who saw value and bet on Montrose lost their bet. No big deal, if the game had been played x amount of times then the betters would be up (in a world of fair odds).

The question I have though is this. Why the heck were East Stirling's odds at 1.73. It still makes no sense. I have lost my data so I can't check that I didn't misread it. I will double check that in a few weeks time though. I will need to sit-down and do the math though.

Even so, the odds said an East Stirling win, the crowd said a montrose win. In the end the odds were right. But I'm still left wondering.

I will follow up some more at later date

One more thought. If East-Stirling lost. Would the bookies have claimed a data-error and voided bets. I do wonder.