Betting the Super 14

I'll be putting up previews of Week 1 games sometime late this afternoon (NZT), but here's a quick note on betting the winners market.

Normally I don't tie up money in a market where settlement date is a few months away, but Super 14 is an exception. Partly because the liquidity on Betfair is OK for this market and sometimes the liquidity for individual games is piss poor, and I don't often bet at the NZ TAB as the 15% over-round (the cut the bookies take) usually makes the prices unattractive.

Even Nostradamus would have trouble predicting who is going to win the Super 14, especially this year where the NZ teams are weakened (to what extent is $64 question No.1), and we also have one new scrum law and a few other things refs are going to clamp down on - these things also tend to have an effect on early games. And injuries always have a role to play.

But as with all forms on punting, you can form a view on the possibility that so-and-so will win it, and the trick is to form your own prices and then compare yours with what's on offer. An easy way to set your own prices is as follows:

There are 14 teams in the comp. If all teams were exactly equal, they'd be priced at 13/1 - $14 to win. But they're not are they - so let's get the also-rans out of the way and make them $100. Only $100 because this is a fairly even competition and no-one deserves to be longer - if this was the Rugby World Cup we'd be slapping $1000 on the likes of Namibia and Uruguay.

S0, using the round-robin predictions I've detailed earlier I'd slap $100 on the Reds and $80 on the Cheetahs, Lions and Highlanders. Next worst team for me is the Force and I'd have them around $40, while the predicted mid-table finishers should be only slightly worse than that average $14, so lets' chuck $18 on the Hurricanes, Sharks and Stormers.

When setting a book, make sure the percentages add up to 100% (otherwise your numbers, literally, won't add up), so already we've allocated 1%, 3 lots of 1.25%, a 2.5% and 3 lots of 5.55%, so that's 21.5% in total - leaving 78.5% for the 6 remaining teams.

Now go to the other end - what price should the favourites be? If this was 2006, I'd be slapping $3 on the Crusaders and working out the rest, but this is 2007 and some uncertainty how the NZ teams will perform, so the market for the real contenders should be a lot more even. Again using that $14 average, is there any team that deserves to be half the average price in this case? Probably not, but I will make my favoured teams $6 - slightly under half the average, the next line $8 which leaves about 20% to be allocated and so the two teams on the third line should be $10. I'm quite happy about the closeness of the prices for these teams as it's not a competition with a dominant favourite and at the top end prices shouldn't be too far apart.

Now take off 10% - covers half the cut the bookie take, and leaves about 10% (depending on what the actual bookie cut is) as a margin for the lack of your own ability (!).

So I've set my prices - don't argue with them - it's the method I'm highlighting so you can set your own:

Blues, Brumbies $5.40
Chiefs, Bulls $7.20
Crusaders, Waratahs $9.10
Hurricanes, Sharks, Stormers $16.20
Force $36
Cheetahs, Lions, Highlanders $72
Reds $90

So you now have a set of prices you can compare with what's on offer - and can guide you what teams you should consider backing in the winner's market - and just as importantly what teams not to. A similar exercise can be done for making the top 4 (except the percentage your market needs to add up to is 400%), and a trusted friend has already pointed out the NZ TAB has the Sharks at $4.25 and the Stormers at $10 in this market, both of which I agree are a little-overpriced and worth a speculative punt.