There is no doubt that historical results are important, however how important depends on various factors.
Take a game like Tennis where you have two players against each other.
Looking back at this matchup and the win ratio of Player A vs Player B is obviously important for making a betting decision.
If Player A, for example, has always beaten Player B it would make no sense to bet on the underdog unless there was great potential.
However, in games with a lot of players, this simple analysis becomes a lot more complex! Players performance changes and teams change and evolve all the time.
Therefore it can be a mistake to focus on historical data, looking at the number of times Manchester has come on top of Liverpool over the past 20 years is almost irrelevant due to there being different footballers within that team 20 years ago!
Instead, it would probably be better to reduce the number of years you’re looking back or assess the current football form to give you clues to finding opportunity.
Too much emphasis on Historical Results?
If there has been changes in form over a few months for Team A and it has now signed deals with some of the best players alive whilst Team B is relatively the same, would the historical results even matter anymore?
Whilst an extreme case, any wins Team B has over Team A would be irrelevant, as they’re essentially against a new formation of players in that team.
We cannot compare teams anymore if Liverpool hasn’t won against Manchester in the last 5 games, it doesn’t mean they will win again unless the form is the same which is highly unlikely due to footballers typically changing teams.
Looking too far back?
Historical Results do have their place and should be considered when making a betting decision. But you should also look at the present relevant data and that should also probably outweigh any of your older historical data.
Even if you reduce your historical data back to 3 years there is a lot of data that could be analysed. With any betting decision, you don’t want to dive too deep otherwise you’ll be spending hours on end looking through data for a single bet!
I would suggest sticking to data within 12 months and only taking a quick flashback at anything further if you feel it is necessary. You essentially want to be spending your time formulating a decision on current data and any recent previous results as they will be much more important and relevant.
Following Historics religiously
There are often many ways you can perceive data, for example, you might discover that Team A has never won a match at the Old Trafford Stadium and so they have no chance of winning at all.
Or maybe it is an away match and they are playing in a different country than they’ve never played in.
These sorts of datasets are practically irrelevant and only have a relationship with performance out of coincidence. As a punter, you want to avoid this sort of data as you don’t want to be placing a bet on false hope.
Look for real statistics, analytics and data sets that make sense and actually impact a game, if you can’t find any that provide you with opportunity, move on, there is no need to force yourself to find opportunity by looking deeper and deeper into data!
Historical Results have their place in a betting decision, but how important depends on the data you’re looking at. If you’re looking at team matchups, consider only looking back in the past few months or even look at current form instead.
Instead of taking statistics at face value, consider there are various factors that could’ve impacted a win that data just doesn’t consider, for example, psychological advantages, the teams morale on that day, the pressure to perform and so on.
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