Improve Your Soccer Betting Using The Score Prediction Method

Improve Your Soccer Betting is a series of articles that describe some well known and well used statistical techniques that will help the soccer punter make more informed bets. Each of the techniques has its own advantages and disadvantages and using them in isolation will improve your chances of winning. However, together they will prove invaluable in your battle with the bookies. In each article we will describe in detail how a particular method works giving you enough information for you to go ahead and create your own forecasts. We will also give you information as to where you can already find websites that use this technique in comprising their weekly soccer betting forecasts.

The statistical methods described in this set of articles will help you to arrive at a better decision about the match, or matches, that you are betting on.

In this article we will be describing the well known Score Prediction method. The Score Prediction method uses a teams goal performances over a specified period of time in order to predict the score of the game concerned.

Here are the basic rules…

As an example of the Score Prediction method this is how Footyforecast and 1X2Monster handle this method. This is an example of a match and each teams respective goal count for the last five games:

home team 3-3 1-0 4-1 0-2 2-1
away team 0-1 2-2 0-3 6-0 1-3

We can work out some figures from this as follows:

home teams goals scored for = HGF = 3 + 1 + 4 + 0 + 2 = 10

away teams goals scored for = AGF = 1 + 2 + 3 + 0 + 3 = 9

home teams goals against = HGA = 3 + 0 + 1 + 2 + 1 = 7

away teams goals against = AGA = 0 + 2 + 0 + 6 + 1 = 9

Now we can work out points for each team based on the goals they have scored and the goals they have had scored against them as follows:

home goal points = HGP = HGF + AGA = 10 + 9 = 19

away goals points = AGP = HGA + AGF = 7 + 9 = 16

And now we can get a difference:

goal points difference = GPD = HGP - AGP = 19 - 16 = 3

Now we could classify this as follows:

GPD => +2 then home win,
GPD =< -2 then away win
GPD -2 then draw.

These parameters are obviously fairly arbitrary but experience should allow you to tune them more carefully.
Now we must use the GPD and one of three tables.
Here are the tables...

Home WIn Score Prediction
HOME AWAY
HGSP GOALS AGSP >0 >11 >17 >26

>49 6 0 1 2 3
>43 5 0 1 2 3
>37 4 0 1 2 3
>30 3 0 1 2
>23 2 0 1
>0 1 0

Away WIn Score Prediction
AWAY HOME
AGSP GOALS HGSP >23 >18 >13 >0

>34 5 3 2 1 0
>29 4 3 2 1 0
>24 3 2 1 0
>18 2 2 1 0
>0 1 2 1 0

Draw Score Prediction
HOME + AWAY SCORE

>44 3-3
>34 2-2
>24 1-1
>0 0-0

Since our match has generated a home win prediction then we must use the HOME WIN SCORE PREDICTION table to obtain our score prediction. To do this we need to calculate another parameter, that of home goal score points as follows:

HGSP = HGP + all goals scored by home team of 3 or more in a match + all goals against the away side of 3 or more.

therefore HGSP = 19 + 7 + 6 = 32

Now do the same for the away team:

AGSP = AGP + all goals scored by away team of 3 or more in a match + all goals against the home side of 3 or more.

therefore AGSP = 16 + 6 + 3 = 25

So, in the home win score prediction table we go to HOME > 30 which gives us 3 goals for the home team and go to AWAY > 17 giving us two goals for the away team therefore the result is predicted as a 3-2 home win.

Now it’s your turn…

Of course you may choose to use different values to those shown above and by experimenting you may come up with better values to use.

If you have the necessary skills you could go away and build your own spreadsheet of data or even write a piece of software to take in results and fixtures and apply the Score Prediction method to your data. Or, if you’re lazy like me, you could grab some free software that already does this for you. 1X2Monster and Footyforecast have been providing this kind of facility since 1999. A total of seven different statistical methods are used to determine the outcome of each game played in each league, and a comprehensive record of how each method in each game performed is kept. Apart from how each tip performed within its respective league 1X2Monster also provides the league tables of how each league has performed in successfully predicting outcomes of games. The league tables of prediction performance are produced for home win predictions, draw predictions, away win predictions, and for overall predictions and are invaluable tools to the soccer punter when deciding where to target their European soccer betting predictions.

Here is a list of all the articles in this series…

How To Make A Profit From FREE 1X2 Soccer Picks
Improve Your Soccer Betting Using The Rateform Method
Improve Your Soccer Betting Using The Footyforecast Method
Improve Your Soccer Betting Using The Win Draw Loss Method
Improve Your Soccer Betting Using The Simple Sequence Method
Improve Your Soccer Betting Using The Score Prediction Method
Improve Your Soccer Betting Using The Superiority Method