It is too early to make any definitive calls around the data gathered in our Currie Cup Spreads experiment but after 26 games there is every indication that cheering for collapsed scrums and kick and chase tactics could be far more profitable than shouting for tries.

BACKGROUND

As a fixed odds and spreads punter for many years I am always looking for ways to gain an edge on the bookmakers. Like every fan though I love watching an entertaining game and historically I have gone high or bought in markets such as Total Points and Match Shirt Numbers.

For those who are totally new to spreads I will use the Match Shirts Numbers example relevant to this experiment to give you a feel for what I mean.

Let’s say the Sharks are playing Western Province in a Currie Cup match.

The bookmaker sets the Match Shirt Numbers spread at 56-61.

Match Shirt Numbers is the sum total of the shirt numbers of all of the try scorers in the match so if for example Kockott (9) gets the opener before Province hit back through Watson (8) and Pietersen (15) only for Sharks sub McLeod (20) to snatch the game at the death the make up (or sum total of shirt numbers) for calculation purposes would be 52 (9+8+15+20).

Had you gone high at 61 you would lose 9 points (61-52) multiplied by whatever your betting unit was. In the experiment we are using R10 so your loss would be R90.

Had you gone low at 56 your profit would be 4 points or R40 (56-52)

Now my theory is that the majority of punters are just like me and want to see an exciting game with plenty of tries. Their tendency then is to go high in a market like this and I can vouch for the fact that there is no greater thrill than being out of your seat as no 22 sprints over in the dying seconds of the game to deliver great profits or even get you out of jail.

With that thought in mind I began wondering a few years back whether the opening spreads are not perhaps weighted to take advantage of this fact? I am not suggesting that the bookmakers do this consciously (although it is possible) but that this might well have become built into the system over the years.

In 2007 I tried selling points in every Super 14 game with brilliant results and in the 2007 World Cup I went low on Match Shirt Numbers in every match netting a 400 point profit over the course of the tournament.

Despite this evidence suggesting I would be better off as a seller than a buyer in the long term I continued to fall into old traps and heading into this years Currie Cup I was handing back plenty of cash to the bookmakers going high on Match Shirts and Individual Team Shirts.

I decided to try and break the pattern by conducting an experiment in the remaining Currie Cup matches (I started halfway through week 3) and started selling shirt numbers in every match tracking progress on this thread in our Forum. My unit was R10 as I did not want to do damage and was more interested in the findings than the weekly ups and downs.

FINDINGS TO DATE

We have sold shirts in 26 matches and are 136 points or R1360 up. Had you been doing the same at say R100 a point you would be a very healthy R13600 to the good.

On average we have made 5.2 points per match

We have lost on 11 matches and won on 15 with the maximum loss of 40 points occurring 3 times and the maximum win of 40 points also occurring 3 times.

Interestingly 7 of the 11 losses have featured Boland and the Leopards. These are matches where the spread is set high but in most cases not high enough or so it seems.

Cheetahs games have been either very good or very bad to us with 3 matches turning a profit (i.e. low scoring) and 3 matches resulting in losses. The 3 wins have realised 113 points profit (the max would be 120) while the 3 losses have seen us give back 99 points – no middle ground with these guys and a strategy of going low when they play the big unions and high when they take on the smaller guys would have been very profitable indeed.

CONCLUSIONS

A sample of 26 matches is far too few to make any solid judgments but there are certainly indications that fighting your instincts and hoping for collapsed scrums and plenty of kicking could be more profitable in the long term than chasing tries. Had we been buying in every match we would be in the region of 200 points down.

Despite evidence supporting the route we are taking in this experiment I have on a personal front not been able to resist buying shirts on occasions and am actually down for the Currie Cup further evidence perhaps that going high is instinctive and a very hard habit to break.

The experiment continues this weekend and one way or another we should have some very interesting data come the end of the Currie Cup.

You can track this experiment in our Forum by clicking here

Brent Graham is a betting blogger on www.goodforthegame.co.za

You can get his Best and Value Bets each week by sending him an e-mail titled “Best Bets” to brent@goodforthegame.co.za or follow him at http://www.twitter.com/brentgraham and Goodforthegame at http://www.twitter.com/goodforthegame