Jack Houghton's Betting Challenge Week 48: Revenge of the data monkey

Internationals / Jack Houghton / 06 July 2010 / Leave a Comment

Plenty of monkey business resulted in Jack being back to business in the Betting Challenge

"It wasn’t until late last year that I revisited football as a betting proposition. A few Christmas train journeys playing with a spreadsheet resulted in a nascent, untested ratings’ system for international football. It’s debuted in this World Cup, in this Betting Challenge. The result? 11 bets. £470 invested. £102.20 profit."

Jack Houghton tells us how he proved plenty of people wrong when it came to the World Cup, none more so than his mate Paul who thought spreadsheets of data only worked for four-legged animals....

There is a truth professional gamblers hold to be self-evident: to be profitable, you must specialise. Losers gorge themselves of all that the great buffet of betting has to offer; winners only ever eat the cheese and pineapple sticks. Who knows what might be lurking in that couscous salad? Therein lies uncertainty, and winners have no truck with uncertainty.

Jack Houghton was a long-time follower of the specialisation theory. Many learned academics credit him with its invention. But now he's turned his back. August 2009. Armed with a £1,000 bank and oodles of likely misplaced confidence, he sets out to prove that, in a year, betting on everything Betfair has to offer, he can turn a profit.

* * *

Margins are too tight, he said. And anyway, what's the point in betting on a sport where everyone knows everything? Where's the edge? What you need is a sport where everyone thinks they know everything, but it turns out they really know s***.

As Paul's diatribes went, this one was fairly short, but, as we sat in the serene confines of the River Cafe, surrounded by the understated primness of West London's lunching business elite, it nonetheless drew attention to our table: one diner sat back, recovering from another tirade; the other, a behemoth, leant forward, ready to launch into the next.

The idea seemed attractive. Paul had money, connections, and a desire to bring them all to bear in an effort to "set a f****** tornado ripping through the betting world". I didn't care for the analogy much - a tornado is indiscriminate, uncontrollable; we needed precision, restraint - but most of all I disliked the disapproving stares directed my way each time Paul bellowed it.

My job was to manage the "data monkeys" (his words, not mine): to set the parameters of analysis; to make sure they were crunching the right numbers, in the right way; to bet on the basis of what they were churning out.

It was perfect, really. I had planned to take some time off work anyway. And here was someone offering me a portion of a business in which I had to invest nothing; in which I would spend my time directing manpower to answer - through numbers - questions I'd always wanted answering.

This was a couple of months before what happened in Hong Kong; three months before the awkward phone-calls from the data monkeys; four months before I realised the aptness of the tornado analogy.

That would all come later. Right now I was trying to figure out Paul's rationale for vetoing football as a betting vehicle for the new venture. He'd already ruled out tennis ("game for toffs"); snooker ("boring since Davis retired") and darts ("I can't stand that Sid Waddell"). Suggestions that these objections weren't data-driven; weren't rationale; were dismissed with a wave of a hand. Racing's where it's at Stato Jacko, he'd said.

Maybe he was right, I thought. If the Betfair market is the ultimate aggregator of information, as I knew it was, then it made sense that, in the most information-rich sport in the world, it would be very difficult to find any kind of betting advantage. Decision made. Racing it was. For three months at least.

It wasn't until late last year that I revisited football as a betting proposition. A few Christmas train journeys playing with a spreadsheet resulted in a nascent, untested ratings' system for international football. It's debuted in this World Cup, in this Betting Challenge. The result? 11 bets. £470 invested. £102.20 profit. Three bets, as yet unsettled, on Uruguay, Germany and the Netherlands to win the thing outright. In a doomed Betting Challenge year, it's been a rare success story. By the next World Cup, I'll be a millionaire. Just like Paul said he was.

For the time being though, I'll settle for a small profit backing Germany for £20 at [2.06] to qualify for the final.

This week's bets:

£20 BACK Germany at [2.06] to qualify for World Cup final.

Already recommended:
£20 BACK Netherlands at [10.0] to win World Cup - 10/06/10.
£20 BACK Germany at [15.5] to win World Cup - 10/06/10.
£10 BACK Uruguay at [15.0] to win World Cup - 26/06/10.