The Match Engine and Real Life

Let me start by saying the Match Engine is not perfect and anyone who reads this blog will know I do not hold back if I think something is wrong with the game.

Reading the forum I suspect there is something up with red cards although I have not experienced this myself and corner exploits need to be kept on top of. However I think the ME (apart from a spell after reset where physical stats were overpowered) largely delivers realistic results. I'm not talking here about events but the end results.

However a lot of forum posters seem to think that this is not true because they have the wrong view of how random a game football is in reality.

So today for example a poster who is top of a league goes away from home gets a draw and says this is unrealistic claiming that in real life 1 in 40 games is a shock.

That is factually incorrect. How can I substantiate this well.....



Decimal Odds and Implied Probability
Lets start with something simple a tennis game, there are two players A and B equally matched so the decimal odds on both of these will be 2. You can work out the probability of this using the following formula:-

1 / Decimal Odds

So in this case 1/2 = 0.5, 50%. So in the tennis game the implied probability is 50%.

Now lets move on to football at the time of writing this was going on:-

So with 81 minutes gone and Villarreal leading 1-0 you can bet at 1.18.

1/1.18 = 84.7%, Draw 15%, Esponyol 1.3%.

Now if you are keeping up you will notice that that comes to more than 100%, which would suggest to me one of those odds is wrong can you guess which one?

Espanyol is too low at 75, they should be higher, the 101.2% denoted in the market total, you should only bet when this is close to 100%, 101.2 is pretty close.