If you've been following my betting activity via this blog, you would already know that I have shown interest in the season handicap betting markets that show up before each season.
I've gone one step further this year by looking at the other English leagues by adopting my own method to select which teams to pick in the handicap.
Before I get into detail with my methods, I feel it is once again important for me to explain what a season handicap is. To do this, I'll copy-and-paste an explanation I copied from a betting slip the other day:
Handicap betting works by adding every team's points head start (handicap) to their end of season total to calculate the final handicap result.
Method 1 - Picking a Premier League Team
When I applied the handicap points to each team's actual points from the 2010/11 Premier League season, I found that West Bromwich Albion won the handicap with Wolves and Blackpool finishing in second and third respectively. It got me thinking and made me reach the conclusion that 'the trick is to bet on teams near the bottom of the betting list'.
West Brom were the 2nd team to gain automatic promotion to the Premier League in the 2009/10 season so, in the hope of lightning striking twice, I'm going to pick the 2010/11 Championship runners-up Norwich as my pick this year.
Method 2 - Picking Championship, League 1 and League 2 Teams
I adopted a different approach when selecting the three other teams. I wanted to make use of the Racing & Football Outlook league supplement which came out this week.
This guide has a forecast for the three leagues so what I did was create a spreadsheet for each of these leagues and looked at the past seven seasons. I counted up the final points that each position got in the seven years and then averaged them out. I then used the forecasts available in this week's newspaper and placed the teams in the positions that they are predicted to finish. The points that each bookmaker offer a team were then added to the average. I then sorted the points in descending order to see which teams came out on top in the three divisions.
Birmingham were top of the Championship but - as was also mentioned in this week's edition of the RFO - it would be risky placing a bet on them at this moment in time due to the owner being in a lot of legal trouble. Bearing this uncertainty in mind, I've picked the second team on the list - Blackpool.
The League 1 and League 2 teams that showed atop their groups were Exeter and Accrington Stanley respectively.
Therefore, the four teams are:
Norwich +45
Blackpool +14
Exeter +23
Accrington Stanley +22
In earlier season handicap posts I called them 'crapshoots' and they still are. My methods may be way off so always take caution when gambling.
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