How To Improve Your Soccer Bets Using The Simple Sequence Method

How To Improve Your Soccer Bets is a series of articles that describe some well known and well used statistical techniques that will help the soccer punter make more informed bets. Each of the techniques has its own advantages and disadvantages and using them in isolation will improve your chances of winning. However, together they will prove invaluable in your battle with the bookies. In each article we will describe in detail how a particular method works giving you enough information for you to go ahead and create your own forecasts. We will also give you information as to where you can already find websites that use this technique in comprising their weekly forecasts.

The statistical methods described in this set of articles will help you to arrive at a better decision about the match, or matches, that you are betting on.

In this article we will be describing the well known Simple Sequence method. The Simple Sequence method is not just a single method, there are many ways of devising a simple sequence method, and you could probably devise one of your own. The way the Simple Sequence method is implemented in the Footyforecast 2.0 software and on the 1X2Monster website is to use a weighting factor on each of a series of games.

Here are the basic rules...

A number of matches are used to look back at from the forecast date. So let's say our team has the following results (most recent on the right hand side):

W D L L W

This would give them the following points: 3 + 1 + 0 + 0 + 3 = 7

Now to take into account current form each is given a weighting factor, so the oldest match is multiplied by 1 up to the most recent match being multiplied by 5. Of course this will vary depending upon the number of matches you use, but for this example it gives us the following:

3*1 + 1*2 + 0*3 + 0*4 + 3*5 = 20 points

Now let's say the away team playing against the team above have the following record:

W W D D D

They will have: 3*1 + 3*2 + 1*3 + 1*4 + 1*5 = 21 points.

The points difference HOME v AWAY = 20 - 21 = -1.

Now, depending how you classify this it could represent an away win, i.e. all matches below a points difference of 0 = away win, or it could be classed as a draw.

Let's look at a simple example...

For our example we will use the last ten games played for each team. That's the last ten home games for the home side, and the last ten away games for the away side. The match is between Middlesbrough and Bolton Wanderers in the English Premiership played on 20th Jan 2007.

Middlesbrough

L L W W W D L D W W

This gives 0*1 + 0*2 + 3*3 + 3*4 + 3*5 + 1*6 + 0*7 + 1*8 + 3*9 + 3*10

This equals 0+0+9+12+15+6+0+8+27+30 = 107

Bolton

L W W W D L L W W L

This gives 0*1 + 3*2 + 3*3 + 3*4 + 1*5 + 0*6 + 0*7 + 3*8 + 3*9 + 0*10

this equals 0+6+9+12+5+0+0+24+27+0 = 83

Therefore the difference is

107 - 83 = +24

This could be determined as a home win but depending on your chosen threshold levels could be classed as a draw.

Now it's your turn...

Of course you may choose to use different values to those shown above and by experimenting you may come up with better values to use. You may also choose to use all home and away games played by each team in your calculations instead of just home games for the home team and away games for the away team. You may choose to have different thresholds than those shown above. You may also find it beneficial to plot actual results against the Simple Sequence method predictions to see how many actual draws fall in the away win, draw, and home win prediction zones.

If you have the necessary skills you could go away and build your own spreadsheet of data or even write a piece of software to take in results and fixtures and apply the Simple Sequence method to your data. Or, if you're lazy like me, you could grab some free software that already does this for you. If this last option is for you then visit 1X2Monster where you can download a FREE copy of the Footyforecast 2.0 software which utilises all of the statistical methods described in this series of articles. You will also be able to download FREE weekly database updates for your software, how cool is that?

Here is a list of all the articles in this series...

How To Improve Your Soccer Bets Using The Rateform Method How To Improve Your Soccer Bets Using The Footyforecast Method How To Improve Your Soccer Bets Using The Win Draw Loss Method How To Improve Your Soccer Bets Using The Simple Sequence Method How To Improve Your Soccer Bets Using The Score Prediction Method How To Improve Your Soccer Bets Using The Superiority Method

Malcolm Nossiter is the owner of 1x2monster.com and footyforecast.com. He has been providing hundreds of 1X2 tips every week since 1999. Please visit 1x2monster.com for a fountain of information on soccer betting.

3 Effective Soccer Passing Drills

Soccer passing drills are an important component of a soccer training session. There are various games and techniques that can effectively help improve the passing skills of your players.

Teaching The Fundamental Of Passing

In order to teach the players the basic passing, you can start with splitting the team into pairs. Each pair must have a ball. Now, you have to evaluate their passing skills by having them pass and trap the ball. After your evaluation of their skills, you can go for the touch control passing lessons.

Circle Games

Most of the circle games are effective enough to optimize the passing skills of the soccer players. For example, one simple way is to place two players in the middle of the circle and both of them have to intercept passes attempted by the players on the outside. When one of the players inside the circle successfully intercepts a pass made by a player on the outside, that outside-standing player will replace his position with the one in the middle who intercepted his pass.

Practicing Passing With Three Soccer Balls

In this method, three soccer balls and two teams with equal number is required. When the coach says, ?Go?, all the players have to try to steal as many ball as possible. When the coach says, ?STOP?, the game gets a pause and the team with the possession of two or three balls wins.

This is a simple method, but in order to get positive outcomes of the same, this process must be repeated several times. Since, there are three balls and two teams, in order to keep possession of two or more balls is not an easy cake for any team and the team that wins surely have players with better passing skills. This game teaches various aspects associated with passing of the ball, such as:

? Players are able to decide their position that where they should run when they do not have the ball so that they could get the possession of the same.

? They learn to make instant decisions regarding passing and dribbling the ball

? They also have to make instant decision which player of the team they want to pass the ball.

Overall, soccer is all about practice, practice, and practice. Whichever method you use to practice soccer passing drills, make sure that you practice the same several times in order to sharpen your passing skills.

Andre Botelho is a recognized authority on the subject of soccer passing drills. His web site, Youth Soccer Drills, provides a wealth of informative soccer articles, resources and tips for soccer coaches, parents and players.

Soccer - All What Happens On The Ground

Soccer is widely known as football around the world and it is extremely popular game . This game is a big turn on for soccer lovers. The best part about this game is, it puts everyone on his toes in just 45 minutes. This game has so much of thrill and excitement that turns a soccer lover to a soccer freak.

This game is played between two teams, each consists 11 players with a ball. The soccer ground is rectangular in shape and consists a goal at each end.

The target for each team is to maneuver the ball into the rival team?s goal and thus making a 'goal'. A player that stops the maneuver at goal is called a goalkeeper. At the end of the game the team that hits more goals is declared winner.But in case the numbers of goals are same for each team the game becomes draw.

In such a case the game timings can be extended or even a penalty shootout can resolve the problem. It all depends upon the situation.The game is played in two halves, each half is a period of 45 minutes.

There are several rules in soccer game. The common one is that no player of team should hit the soccer with the hands or arms except the goalkeeper. Any part of body can be used to propel the ball except hands and arms.

F?d?ration Internationale de Football Association also known as FIFA governs the soccer all over the world. The most exciting event that is organized is called 'World Cup' by FIFA at regular intervals of four years. Some 190 teams around the world participate in this game from all over the world to make it to final and finally win the world cup.

All You Need To Know About Soccer - Crazy Soccer Fan

Teaching Soccer - What Coaches Need to Know

There are several factors that a coach must take into careful consideration while teaching soccer tactics, especially while training young players.

Simple Soccer Tactics

The expert coach always starts with teaching the players about the simple soccer tactics. You should teach the tactics that the players can use with the skills they possess. Once you start seeing the improvement in their game, it is only then you should offer them more advanced tactics.

Appropriate To The Players' Age

This is again one of the most important things that the coaches must keep in mind. This is something that many soccer coaches overlook and they start teaching the same tactics to everybody irrespective of their ages.

This is something that can bring adverse effect to your team?s performance. Therefore, make sure that you teach them the basic soccer tactics that are appropriate to the players' age and match.

Simple Language

The language and the way in which you give instructions to the players must be simple, direct, and unambiguous.

Brief Instructions

True that you need to make your descriptions easy to understand, but it does not mean that you should tell them everything in such detail that it should eat up most of your training time.

It is equally important for you to keep in mind the time factor and be as brief as possible. However, you should not compromise on clarity just because you need to brief in your instructions.

It is not at all a good idea to use long lectures in the training session. Furthermore, many coaches use sarcasm in their instructions. Always remember that is not good for the health of the game and for your team?s performance.

Therefore, make sure that you are not using any sarcasm that could be misinterpreted. It is better to avoid jargon as well. You should try your best to speak carefully and be specific and brief.

Always remember that seeing is better than hearing and Doing is better than seeing. Therefore, when it comes to teaching soccer, an expert coach should introduce his topic, show it, and get the kids doing it quickly.

Andre Botelho is a recognized authority on the subject of teaching soccer. His web site, Youth Soccer Drills, provides a wealth of informative soccer articles, resources and tips for soccer coaches, parents and players.