With the BeatTheBookieDataService in place it’s also time to provide some new models. This post will take a look at possible models using the team statistics provided for each match by understat.com. Therefor I will compare 3 of the most used machine learning algorithms. Beside this, it’s also time to test again some basics for predictiv modeling for football: “To differ between home/away performance or not to differ”? For my Poisson models I always differed between home and away performance. But is this also needed, when using ML algorithms?
Continue reading “Using xG & advanced stats to predict football matches”The predictive power of xG
“Goals are the only statistic, which decide a match” – sentences like this appeared not only once, while reading discussion about the latest xG statistics of single matches on Twitter. Even if the statistic xG is more and more used by sport journalists and during broadcasts, the meaning and importance of the statistic is not yet widely understood. This might be caused by the usage of xG for single matches or single shots. The final result of a match and the corresponding xG values might differ a lot. But over the long-term xG is a statistic, which tells us way more about a football team than goals and shots alone. To prove this, this post will take a look at the predictive power of xG in comparison to goals. The more information a statistic contains the more it should help us to predict the result of future matches.
Continue reading “The predictive power of xG”Running Exasol on AWS
Automating data pipelines in AWS was just the first step of moving my betting models into the cloud. Nearly all my calculations were done in a Exasol database and I also want to keep them in a database. So I need to host one in my AWS account. For such use-cases AWS offers virtual EC2 instances. This blog will explain the single steps how to install an Exasol DB in AWS.
Continue reading “Running Exasol on AWS”Automate your betting models with AWS
How does my typical betting weekend looks like, when I start ckecking, whether there are some interesting matches? I start my laptop, open the browser, start my Python program, start the database and after some minutes, I am able to start my data prcoessing, which collects all the data and calculates the predictions. That’s already great, but wouldn’t it be even better to have all predictions always already up-to-date? This blog will show you how to setup and run a small automated data pipeline in AWS, which extracts all stats from Understat.com.
Continue reading “Automate your betting models with AWS”Why every data scientist should learn SQL
It’s been quite a long time since my last post for my blog. But that has been because of a specific reason: I participated at the 2nd DFB Hackathon, which consumed a huge amount of my freetime, which I normally spent creating some content for my blog. The Hackathon was again a great experience as all this deep data science stuff is still a challenge for me. But there’s again on big question on my side: Why are data scientist often just using Python (or R) and don’t know, how and when to use SQL.
Continue reading “Why every data scientist should learn SQL”Migrating Exasol Community Edition
In one of my older posts I described the data architecture, I am using for all my examples. As the database I use the Exasol Community Edition. From time to time it is necessary to update your software to the current version because of new features. This post will describe, how to migrate a Exasol community edition to anther one. These steps can also be used, to migrate nearly every database to an Exasol.
Continue reading “Migrating Exasol Community Edition”xG data journey – the raise of M. Gladbach
After getting all this expected goals data, it’s of course most obvious to take a look at the insights such data can produce and in which way xG can be interpreted. I have decided to take a look at the current development of Borussia Moenchengladbach in the Bundesliga . Even if RB Leipzig took over now the first place, the development of Gladbach in comparison to the last seasons is impressive. And now I just want to know: Does xG data reveals the secret of Marco Rose?
Continue reading “xG data journey – the raise of M. Gladbach”From Business Analytics to Sports Analytics
Before I started analyzing data for sports betting I have worked as a Business Intelligence (BI) consultant in different industries. During this time I learned how Business Analytics helps you to improve your business performance by analyzing data. This also helped me to understand, what’s needed to improve the performance of a sports team or the betting performance of a punter with the help of data.
Continue reading “From Business Analytics to Sports Analytics”xG data journey – scrapping dynamic webpages
In the first part of this data journey, I took a look at the general definition of expected goals (xG) and the usage of this metric. In the next step in the process of testing the predictive power of xG, I need to get some data. This part will focus on getting the team expected goals statistics. In one of the following parts, I will also take a look on getting the player expected goals statistics as this of course offers even deeper insights.
Continue reading “xG data journey – scrapping dynamic webpages”
xG data journey – What are ExpectedGoals?
After I realized my available data is definitely not enough to beat the bookie, I decided to start a new data journey and take a look at some more advanced statistics. And what could be better suited as Expected Goals (xG). This statistic is used more and more to explain this specific luck / bad luck factor, you feel, when watching a football match. In the first part of this journey I will explain, what are xG and what they tell you about a football match. Continue reading “xG data journey – What are ExpectedGoals?”
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