Looking for something new in strategies I read a bit here and a bit there, before I decided to try something I’d never considered before, betting on the result etc at HALF-TIME. sO I got out some scrap paper and a couple of pens and found a suitable site on the net and away I went.
The stats I found were to say the least, interesting. For instance as few as 34 games were drawn at half-time in season 2007/08. Games which are level 1 – 1 at the interval are less likely to end in a HOME win. Well that’s what the stats tell me.
Look at these figures.
Half Time draw/Full Time Home Win
| Saison | Half time draws | FT - Home | FT - Draws | FT - Aways | % FT - Home |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2012/13 | 44 | 13 | 19 | 12 | 29.5 % |
| 2011/12 | 43 | 15 | 11 | 17 | 35.8 % |
| 2010/11 | 53 | 19 | 26 | 8 | 35.8 % |
| 2009/10 | 42 | 18 | 13 | 11 | 42.8 % |
| 2008/09 | 34 | 14 | 10 | 10 | 41.1 % |
| 2007/08 | 32 | 13 | 17 | 2 | 40.6 % |
| 2006/07 | 37 | 12 | 15 | 10 | 32.4 % |
| 2005/06 | 39 | 14 | 14 | 11 | 35.9 % |
| 2004/05 | 49 | 19 | 16 | 14 | 38.7 % |
| 2003/04 | 43 | 19 | 12 | 13 | 44:1 5 |
Now how to use these figures to our advantage? The most obvious would be to LAY the HOME side before the second half starts. The thing here would be to be rather discerning. If the home side is still the most fancied then it should be easier to get a reasonable price to LAY it. If the AWAY side is more fancied then it will be a little costlier to LAY home side. This is where experience will count. Probably a good time to check the historic results and also the recent form.
A second strategy would be to back 0 – 0 at half-time and also LAY the DRAW at half-time. Unfortunately odds offered will be a little on the tight side. Here, again experience will come into play. You need to be able to juggle with your figures to get a decent return for your money, but it can be done. A slight drawback with this strategy is the approximately 1 in 10 chance of the score being 1-1 or even 2-2 at half-time. From the stats above it will be seen that there were only 416 1-1 half-time draws in TEN seasons. Less than 11% overall or one every weekend.
Latest results show that this strategy would have been very profitable with the latest round of Champions League and Europa League games. The difficulty with this strategy is that it would be suicide to back every game played. The margins are too tight. So some kind of filter needs to be applied. One that comes to mind is only to consider games in which BOTH teams occupy a league placing between 6th and 15th in a 20 team league.(i.e. Disregard teams in the TOP and BOTTOM quarter of their league table). This should help keep out the “coupon busters” which have been prevalent this season.
The more the season progresses, the more I find Half-Time stats to be of added interest. There must be other strategies just waiting to be unearthed. At least I hope so.
