Gaelic Football

Butterflies and bookies colliding

March 31st, 2009 by Kevin Egan

Off the Ground believes in many things; among them, the butterfly effect. Not the appalling Ashton Kutcher movie lest readers begin to get concerned, but the question, as Philip Merilees put it to the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1972, of whether the flapping of a butterfly’s wings in Brazil cause a tornado in Texas.

The concept, to those unfamiliar, is that the tiniest of acts can have huge consequences once it plays out fully. To relate to a betting example, we will tell of the story of a man in Hammersmith who used to punt quite heavily on the day’s racing some twenty five years ago. This is back in the day of SP only betting and when hedging bets meant getting your bet off at the course rather than logging on to the internet.

This particular individual liked to place £200 yankees in the morning, an huge wager for that time. In many cases, he might only have two or three horses in his mind so he would apply any one of a number of random techniques to choose the last runner. Since bets could only be placed at SP, a couple of early winners could lead to a significant amount of running on money on to the later selections. Of course the maths favoured the betting shop here since they would pick up the phone and lay off at a ring price, thus shortening the SP if the layoff was sufficiently large. However the punter, who by now had returned to the shop, was watching as his chosen horse was shortening in price and thus inferred that it was “fancied” by those in the know.

Since shop punters, particularly those that hang around all day, are often keen to jump on board whatever bandwagon may pass by, many more would jump in and “follow the money”, often with the big punter coming in for a second cut himself, with this pattern no doubt reflected across the country.

Thus the situation came about where whatever random criteria this large punter chose for his fourth horse was often the key determinant in thousands of bettors choice in where to place their few bob.

The point of this story is to illustrate that even in the betting game, despite the continued evolution towards turning the whole thing into a lottery style game where skill and judgement are being marginalised, small events can have large consequences. This is usually not the case in GAA match betting, where the collective brains of a company generally apply their time and energy, but much more so in outright betting. Revising outright markets is one of the least sexy tasks that any compiler can engage in and in many cases, those who don’t have the time or the zeal to truly think about what they are doing simply look around at their competitors, keep it between the ditches and move on to the next item on their to-do list. After all, punters generally don’t like investing in outright markets since they don’t have the patience to leave their money aside for weeks or months at a time.

Of course that’s fine, but now our butterfly effect comes into play. If one compiler for a market leading company calls in sick and their cricket trader must step in and do the needful instead, then you can create a situation where outright markets all across the country are distorted. Likewise if one compiler makes an error of calculation in their contingent probabilities, the effect can be magnified. More often, a simple case of one compiler taking a strong view, or crucially, holding on to a strong view from earlier in the year despite subsequent events, can filter through to outright markets.

This (finally!) leads us to our betting recommendation for the day. This column, before a ball was kicked in anger in any league, tipped up Down and Limerick as the bets to have in NFL division three. Limerick need a miraculous sequence of results to secure their place in the knockout final, however Down appear to have done enough and if they can stave off a hiding against Roscommon next week, will take their place against Tipperary in the final. Overall, Off the Ground is obviously happy with this position.

While this column is generally not a believer in giving away value in order to lock in a profit, it’s another matter entirely when the market blithely ignores the evidence, as appears to be happening in this case. Outright odds of 2/5 Down and 7/4 Tipperary have been posted and these clearly reflect the views of compilers who have not seen any football in this division and who retain their opinions from week one pretty much intact. The fact that Off the Ground is aware that several traders in one of Ireland’s market leading companies hold a position on Down suggests that they are dictating the market to the rest of the country.

Let’s not forget that in week one of the league, Down played Tipperary in Thurles and were generally five point favourites on the handicap. That day pretty much panned out as expected, with Down winning by six in a very low key game. Since that day, Down have played very inconsistently, starting as favourites for every match and really only justifying that strength of favouritism once and only then against a team who have a famously appalling record under floodlights. In their other four games they struggled to impose their authority and came up short on two separate occasions.

Now compare that with Tipperary, who since the first round of the league have won five games out of five, their last three wins coming by an average margin of six points. They have also had to deal with an under 21 championship in that time and have been forced to rest players who would otherwise start while only Roscommon in the division had to deal with anything similar. Their under 21 team also defied expectation, going down so cruelly to Cork last weekend but illustrating the depth of strength in John Evans’ panel at the same time.

Consider all that evidence, consider how differently we view Tipperary and Down now as opposed to the run up to week one, and ask yourself if a move of two points in the handicap market is sufficient? (2/5 vs 7/4 suggests a three point match handicap, though perhaps closer to 2.75 in Asian terms). For this column, the answer is a resounding no. This is a one point game at most and anything bigger than 5/4 about Tipperary outright is huge value. Off the Ground recommends 4pts at 7/4 on Tipperary to win division 3, while hopefully this wager will be covered by an early season investment on Down.

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Categories: Gaelic Football

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