Betting Tip of the Week: Laying Home Dogs

Welcome to the new and improved 7500 betting league, in which each week we will adopt a betting tip and see if we can manage to place bets that actually, you know, win some money. Without further ado...

This week's strategy: Laying Home Dogs.

What this means, is backing the home team who happens to be an underdog, and generally would have fairly steep odds (5/2 or greater).
This is a pretty basic strategy, and while I have not experimented with it before, it looks like it can be successful just by glancing at it. How many times have you seen teams who should have no chance to win against a (seemingly) much superior team take all three points at home. The only flaws I can see here, is that the favorite usually wins, or that the match will end in a draw. Games in recent memory where this would have been a good strategy are: Villa to beat Man City, Newcastle to beat Chelsea, Fiorentina to beat Juventus, and Braunschweig to beat Leverkusen. In all of these games backing the home team would have returned at least 3 times your stake.

A way to circumvent this is to bet on the Double Chance, which means whichever team you pick only has to win or draw for you to win money. Obviously this means lower odds, but you would think a better chance to convert on your bet. To find this without seeing it listed on a betting site, all you have to do is multiply the teams odds to win by their odds to draw, and divide that by the teams odds to win plus their odds to draw. Example: the odds on West Ham vs Chelsea this weekend (Bet365) are Home Win: 9/2, Draw: 29/10, Away Win 8/13. To calculate the odds for West Ham to win or draw (Double Chance) would be (9/2 * 29/10) ÷ (9/2 + 29/10) = 32/25 or 2.28 in decimal form. Checking back on Bet365's odds, the Double Chance for West Ham is 13/10 or 2.3 so about the same.

Sorry for the maths, but back to the point, laying home dogs can be profitable. However, if you are putting these types of wagers on your coupon, you may have to get quite lucky. Therefore I recommend taking these as a single or double, but you could use the Double Chance on an acca.

Aaron
available: €19.83
possible return: €15.75

€2 on Everton to beat Liverpool, return of €8
There's a part of me that thinks Everton is actually the better of these two sides, and those seem like pretty friendly odds to me.

€1 on Stoke to beat Sunderland, return of €3.15
The return here is crap, but Sunderland is so bad and Stoke seem at least moderately competent, so it's worth a buck.

€1 on Borussia Dortmund to beat Bayern Munich, return of €4.60
Why am I doing this? This is so, so, stupid. Why am I so stupid?

Jack
available: €31.76
possible return: €22.95

€1 on each of the following...

Cardiff to beat Manchester United (19/4)
Livorno to beat Juventus (15/2)
Nantes to beat Monaco (12/5)
Hertha Berlin to beat Bayer Leverkusen (2/1)
West Ham v Chelsea: Home Win/Draw Double Chance (13/10)

Kirsten
available: €17.46
possible return: €18.08

€1 on each of the following...

Sampdoria to beat Lazio (2/1)
Dortmund to beat Bayern (13/5)
West Ham to beat Chelsea (5/1)

€1 double chance accumulator -- home team to win or draw (return €5.48)

Everton vs. Liverpool (8/15)
Sassuolo vs. Atalanta (1/3)
Levante vs. Villarreal (3/4)
Eintracht Frankfurt vs. Schalke (8/15)

Robert
available: €12.32
possible return: €7.8

€1 on each of the following...

Fulham to beat Swansea (11/5)
Alright, if I'm straight-up betting home underdogs, this one seems the most likely in the EPL to happen. And I know next to nothing about other leagues, so I'm sticking to the EPL.

Double Chance on West Ham against Chelsea (13/10)
Well, Chelsea are just maddeningly weird this year, so I could see them blowing the win.

Double Chance on Cardiff against Manchester United (13/10)
Yeah, I sort of doubt this one pulls through, since Manchester United have apparently remembered that they are, in fact, Manchester United. But it'd be fun if it did!