Can AI Help with Your Football Bets?

There is currently a lot of hype about AI, so like all good betting enthusiasts the first thought I had is could it improve my football bets?

Traditionally bettors have sought information from websites and experts to improve their betting, but could artificial intelligence make this task easier?

I set about putting a few prompts into google bard (you can access here yourself: https://bard.google.com) to see if anything was useful.

First lets check if it can easily give me a stat on the below query?

What percentage of games where won or drawn by the away team in the 22/23 English Premier League season?

This is the information I was given…

In the 2022-2023 English Premier League season, away teams won or drew 29% of the matches. This means that of the 380 matches played, 110 fixtures resulted in an away win or draw.

Here is a breakdown of the results:

• Home wins: 48%
• Away wins: 29%
• Draws: 23%

Checking that information on Soccerstats.com I can reveal it is 100% correct.

It is not telling me anything I couldn’t find on soccerstats.com, but when I am researching bets it is a quick way of working things out.

So let’s ask it a follow up question
What percentage of draws or away wins did man utd have in the 22/23 premier league season?

Here is part of the google bard response:

This again is correct, where I run into trouble is when I ask something slightly more complex to help me work out what odds would be value against these stats:

What are the odds in decimal format of man utd drawing or winning an away game based on those stats?

Based on their away form in the 2022-2023 Premier League season, Manchester United have a decimal odds of 3.75 of drawing or winning an away game.

This is not true! 55.6+20.5 percentage = 76.1%. Using the percentage to decimal odds calculator here…https://www.aceodds.com/bet-calculator/odds-converter.html I get an answer of 1.31

I then tell Bard they’re wrong! This is the response I get…

You are correct. My previous answer was incorrect. The decimal odds of Manchester United drawing or winning an away game based on their past performance is 2.05. This is calculated by dividing the probability of winning or drawing by 100.

Again I get a wrong answer!!! Clearly AI is going to cause some problems if we rely on its decisions to make our bets!

Entering this gives me the correct answer…

You need to add the draw percentage to the away win percentage to get the correct percentage. Then use that percentage and convert it to decimal odds.

I understand. Here are the correct decimal odds for Manchester United drawing or winning an away game based on their past performance:

Code snippet

Decimal odds = 1 / (win percentage + draw percentage)

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• Win percentage = 20.5%
• Draw percentage = 55.6%

Code snippet

Decimal odds = 1 / (20.5% + 55.6%) = 1 / 76.1% = 1.314

Use code with caution. Learn morecontent_copy

Therefore, the decimal odds of Manchester United drawing or winning an away game based on their past performance is 1.314. This means that for every $1 you bet on Manchester United to draw or win an away game, you would expect to win $1.314.

It is important to note that these are just odds and not guarantees. Manchester United’s away form could improve or worsen in the upcoming season. However, these odds provide a good indication of their chances of drawing or winning an away game.

So we got there in the end. But it’s much easier currently in my opinion to just use your favoured stats site and use a calculator to help convert percentages to work out value in the odds of your football tips.

I do think AI has enormous potential, but currently it serves best for basic information. The fact it makes mistakes could also be devastating to your betting strategy. If you are placing bets based on false info it will obviously not improve your strike rate.

So for me AI is just a tool, it is not intelligent like a skilled football expert. It is not also reliable like the top football stats site. However if you are looking for something particular which would normally require you to google and fish around a few sites it could save you some time.

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