Topic: Is statistical analysis enough to make an informed prediction in soccer betting? (Read 446 times)

The answer to this question is yes, you can make a well detailed and informed prediction with statistical betting but you can't always get an accurate result. Some people that are into sports betting don't really take out time to understand and get acquainted with the betting system, they prefer to just get their predictions from paid sites which isn't always a bad idea, but how sure are you that those experts are analysing those games properly? It's would be of more benefit to you as a gambler if you can analyze your games so you won't end up having a double loss.

Statistical analysis is quite important in soccer betting, before making your selections it's very mandatory to check some vital informations in order to be quite confident of your picks. Analysis doesn't give you a hundred percent guarantee of a definite win but it's capable of mitigating your losses. Although luck plays a huge role in gambling as a whole but some people have found a way to minimize their losses in sports betting, it doesn't work everytime but it's going to give you a little leverage over the market, as long as your stakes are moderate

This is like trading where the individual trader is competing against high frequency trading algorithms.

If you are going to do it by hand you are a fool. Very early on it made sense but you are betting against the odds given by the bookmakers who use very tight statistics programs for it. Probably nowadays they are also helped by AI. Finding a niche that is profitable in the long term will be more and more difficult.

You may have good knowledge about stats but you also need to make sure you cover other angles such as their current performance, injuries of athletes, their coaching strategies and other last minute change of lineup. You may only know these information if you are closely following their respective social media channels.

Also, their stats of their previous performance may help in choosing which odds is best to bet, but as I said earlier, current happenings surrounding the team is also important as it will give you another insight to consider.

For an event that stats have no control over, not only would you need statistics analysis to predict outcomes more reliably than random predictions, you would also need an algorithm to counteract the odds and lookout for chances where odds are good due to popular picks vs actual chances to win.

It's not like this has never been done before, there might be several people that try this right now. But most will fail and those that succeed also never say it publicly. Surely you can try too. All the days you need is out there. But it's very unlikely you'll manage much. Creating an algorithm to find gaps in collective intelligence has proved very hard in the past and until now.

I kind look at this from the perspective that I do as a financial guy when I'm analyzing a stock.  There's two main things that you've got to focus on.  One is of course the topic at hand, statistical analysis, and then there is fundamental analysis. 

One could sit and look at charts all day and that certainly is an important part, but there's more to it than just charts.  The nuts and bolts of a team/company need to be examined as well ( the fundamental side of things).

I think for the most part, yeah. At the end of the day, these games are base 50/50 chances and provided that you have enough sample population you'd easily be able to win half of your games just by betting alone, now, when you put in the research and start thinking about more complex factors that play into each team's odds of winning, you're basically giving yourself enough of a chance to win a good amount of your games above the standard 50/50 odds at betting.

Even more so when it comes to soccer, cause in most games where it's anybody's chance to win the cup, in soccer the chances of winning are most of the time pooled towards those with good players and good coordination, which you can discern from statisticaly analysis alone.

What do you mean by "enough" to make a prediction? Because statistical analysis is as a good way as any. Some could even say it's giving mathematically best probability, and with that, making it a best method. But it's not "enough" to be certain that you would make profit with it.

On your other question, "how can you collect those news daily", doesn't have one simple answer, but in short; if you know how to code, you could build a bot that collects the previous data and builds your own database with relevant info. Then just utilize that data. There can be countless to ways how to utilize, compare and cross-refer that data. like you pointed out that there's lots of data to choose from, and weighing what's relevant from each data point is a matter of perspective, and it's ultimately about your preferences. There's no one correct way to do that.

I don't think any gambler uses such data to make predictions because I don't and I believe that if a coach actually knows that he has a bad player in his team, he will not featured such a player in serious matches. The other stats which you first mentioned are what I think to be mostly used by bettors to make their predictions and despite using those information to make predictions, results will not not be accurate all the time.

That's true. If we're talking about a key player such as Ronaldo, you can make assumptions depending on the incident that may or may not hinder his performance. That doesn't mean it's okay to go around snooping on the player's personal lives. I wouldn't bother to go into such details to place a bet on a football match; these aren't accurate measures of predicting the outcome of a game. We all know that even statistical analysis cannot predict the outcome of a game, let alone a player's personal issues.

The personal life of players can affect their performance. There was a case when the national team of players was involved in night parties, and it affected their performance since they were not actively engaged in training due to hangovers. Lawsuits and sandals can affect players psychologically and will influence their training and concentration. Sometimes, the fans will not support the player; they can even be insulted or assaulted. Without encouragement, the player will play less than expected. I will bet against any club that is experiencing infighting between players or coaches. A team that is not united will not be productive. Players will not cooperate to win games because of disagreements and this will lead to low productivity. I solely believe that the personal lives of players and even the coach are viable statistical data to predict games.


It is only the news that is exposed that is open to the public. Sports clubs usually keep such personal information secret because it could ruin the reputation of the club. It could also be used to attack the club and players. The easiest means to get this information is through the social media. Some players sometimes don't pass through the formal communication of the club; they just express their anger or dissatisfaction on their social media platforms. So you would have to follow them on their platforms to get this information. Or you would have to employ a private investigator which will be very expensive.

For me, if you just have time to do this while better, this is better than nothing, like if  you just have basis or have some tool to support your instinct or bet, then go for it, nothing will be lost from your side.
Just remember it is still luck sometimes as this is still considered gambling.

It just depends who the player is. If the player is a key player and other teammates rely in the player and one of this is involved with the player it can affect the performance of the team.

In a team where we have 11 players and if one player is having an issue and the player is just playing a little role for the team, the issue of the player may not really affect the performance of the team and when their are other good players in the team it will be something that won't be noticed. That's is why when you check some teams when something is wrong with one player like injuries  or the player is no more in the team it can affect the performance of the team for the whole season. Sometimes gamblers looks into all these in making prediction to win bet.

Sports like football are made up of 11 players in a team so it requires team work to win, if 1 player were to miss out because of any of the reasons that is mentioned in the OP, it'll likely not affect their overall performance. Except it's a star player like Messi and Ronaldo, that their absence in the match can impact his team's performance, or if majority of the teammates have issues that will make them not to play, but it's very unlikely for that to happen.

As for statistical analysis, it's not enough to make informed decisions in sports betting although they are helpful in arriving at decisions. That is why it's best to bet with the amount that you can afford to loose because your statistical analysis might not work at the end of the match.

Using statistics of both teams to make predictions is believed to be the way most gamblers uses to place bets based on previous statistics but it doesn't guarantee winning because some gamblers can walk into a gambling office and just make random selections of the options they want to give each games and before you know it they can even win more than those that depends on using statistics to make predictions but however, it is good for a gambler to use statistics of both teams to make predictions of a match because it works in most cases and another thing a sports gambler should also use in making predictions is by watching live matches and also paying attention to football news because if a gambler watches those matches live, they can know teams that performs better than the other and will also be able to know key players that can feature in a match before they can be confident of winning because the unavailability of a particular player can affect the outcome of a match.

Injury is also another thing to check out for because a team that has too many injured players might not be able to perform well even when they are in good form. However, using statistics to make predictions is not 100% beneficial because if it was, then a lot of those gamblers that depends on using statistics to make predictions would have been recording winning most of the time.

It is beneficial yes but even mathematical analyses are not always 100% accurate especially in gambling with sports where there are a lot of factors to consider. Not everything will be perfectly in place so there are at least 5% or 10% chance that it will be wrong.
Definitely as these players are just humans too and their performance are just results of their own actions. I do not think personal lives will affect too much but injuries, lack of training or even sometimes contract negotiations can heavily affect one's performance. If a player is trying to impress some team they might perform better than usual to sign a contract.

My advice is to just stay close with the fancommunity because they usually are very updated with these kind of stuff

It can matter, but the level of actual effect is really subjective since only the person themselves know if it actually made their gameplays affected or not. You can try gathering it from past instances where a similar event happened and how they handled it but then again people change, so expecting the same thing to happen after some time (I expect it to have at least a few years gap between the happenings) is kind of underestimating the players.

And I'm pretty sure you can just go to any sports news and they'd have any live events that happen? Anything juicier than that you'd probably have to hire a professional investigator or do it yourself, which I doubt you (or any regular joe) actually can.

We can't get this kind of information unless we have an insider. Even if we did, we could only choose specific matches, which might make betting less exciting since we wouldn't be able to participate in the many markets available. I'd rather bet honestly, basing my decisions on publicly available information and news, and from there, analyzing which team to bet on. Sometimes, just looking at the betting line itself can give us an idea of which team to back, so it's not really hard to win the right and fair way.

Every gambler must analyze to win in betting. Normally whose analysis is rich have more chances of winning bets. Depending on the type of bet on a game, there may be changes in strategy. When it comes to soccer betting, a gambler needs to know many things, among them I give the most importance to their ranking and how they performed in the last matches. Head to head records are important. Moreover, I bet on soccer games by considering how the player has performed recently and whether any player is injured or not. I think if someone analyzes these things seriously, the ratio of winnings in his bets will increase.

I'd say there's somewhat of an impact on their performance whenever they're involved with good and bad news, but I doubt you can find some proof when most players are likely used to these situations and trained to handle these kinds of pressure while competing.

It doesn't take much effort to find this type of news, I always look on social media because you can find reliable sources there who frequently post updates and news about certain players.