What you should know about Staking Strategies for the Australian Football Pools

What you should know about Staking Strategies for the Australian Football Pools

Australian football is not at all like soccer, either in the purely physical sense, or in its organisation. It is generally accepted (and supported by statistics) that Australian football teams play closer to form than do teams in British soccer – for example, the range of playing standard between top and bottom teams in a league is quite wide leading to greater predictability.

First off, a basic fact about the statistics: Teams come and go (and change their names) very often in Australian football. A team may disappear for a season or two and then re-form. So, tracking teams in a statistics database can be quite a challenge.

Digging at the statistics shows that some leagues have much higher standards than others, and in particular some leagues have much higher draw percentages than others (for example South Australia), whereas other leagues have a much lower percentage of draws. So, if you are playing the treble chance (draw games) then you bias your selections towards the leagues with higher draw rates – that is forecasting more draws in the upper half of the coupon. Obviously, this depends on using a suitable performance rating system to assess likely match outcomes, before introducing bias.

Win/lose/draw sequences can appear to be very strange. It is not at all unusual for a team losing at home to go win their next match (if it is an away). The numbers bear this out, but the explanations can be a bit difficult to fathom. One view is that this is because of the range of playing standards within given leagues.

The reverse also applies too, with a good away win often being followed by a home defeat.

For a pools staking strategy then, sequences are important, much more so than in the British pools.

A staking strategy needs to be using higher coverage levels than would be the norm for the British pools. Because some of the value coupons (costing 1/10 p/line) do not publish during the Australian season, then staking plans are more important, balancing a lower guarantee level against higher coverage on the higher cost coupons (1p/line). Unless of course you have a big stanking bank or bet through a syndicate.

Full perms, even at the high cost of any 8 from 18, are not really the way to go.

With over 125 teams to monitor, Australian football pools can more work than the British pools. Dividends are smaller, but given that teams play closer to form and there are other tweaks which can help home in on draws (by eliminating home or away bankers), then it can be a more rewarding part of the pools calendar.