About the Football Prophets
And their football betting tips
You can see football as a random game. 25 individuals affect the outcome directly. Thousands more (biased supporters) try to exert indirect influence. Every action can affect the outcome: so how do we presume to forecast football results? On this page you can find out more about us.
Prophet-in-chief: Tom de Selby
“I am a forty three year old married man with three children under six years of age. In 2007, I migrated to the west of Ireland and became a house husband.
My first football bet
The first bet that I placed which I remember was in 1994, at the age of twenty seven. I placed a single match odds bet on Ireland to beat Italy in the opening group game of the World Cup. The stake was twenty Irish punts. My reward, thanks to the great Ray Houghton, was in Dublin rhyming slang, a ‘Ballymun’ (a ton or one hundred units). In betting, as in many other areas, I was a late starter.
I used to bet like every casual punter.
Although my subsequent betting experiences generally failed to replicate the magical feeling of the Ballymun, they were small toe-dipping exercises into the choppy waters of the gaming world. Until three years ago, when I found myself with enough time to properly analyse the potential of online betting, my punting was just that, shots in the dark, made in hope or anger, based on hunches or whims or worse still, reactions to the outcome of the previous bet. I often found myself suffering sickening losses when betting behaviour became reckless as above. Without a career to provide income, however, I was reluctant to reject this potential source of tax free income too hastily.
The light-bulb moment
It was at this point that I embraced the concept of risk management. A friend of a friend, 
Benny the broker, was discussing, over a pint, his attitude to managing his clients' exposure in financial markets. He spoke of a preference, when advising clients, for highlighting situations where ‘the risk/reward ratio was skewed’ in the clients' favour. I had always loved long shot value bets but this was my light-bulb moment. Why would you risk your stake betting on an outcome that is priced at odds-on? The beauty of football, and a main driver of audience figures, is that it is unpredictable. If you can find a situation where the favourite has a potential weakness and the outsider has a potential strength, why not oppose the odds-on team?”
The other prophets
Once upon a time there were three young male singletons living in Dublin. Regularly, they would meet in the local pub and sit around one of the high tables known as “the barrels.” They would meet here quite late in the evening, maybe an hour before closing time. They would ‘slaughter’ several pints of stout in that short time. This came to be known as ‘pigging it.’ The young men came to refer to their group as “the three little pigs.”
They were indeed, carefree times. Frequently, the topic under discussion amongst the three pigs was betting practices. It was here, many years ago, that the idea for Football Prophets began. The little pigs funded a betfair account granting access to all three. The arrangement developed so that each pig had his turn to spend 2% of the betting bank in his week in the hot seat. Any pig earned the right to prolong his stay in the chair if, before the week was out, he managed to add a given target to the original balance. This motivation proved to be the incentive to bring deeper thought and analysis to each pigs’ approach. And so it was that each little pig developed his own style of betting.
The first little pig was very greedy and would spend his allowance all in one shot. When his chance came he rushed to the trough and hoovered up anything that caught his eye. He showed no calm and put no thought into his behaviour. He frustrated the other two, since they could clearly see the error of his ways.
The second little pig would steadily place 5% of his allowance on odds-on home bankers. With a return of 30-35% of the stake, this strategy would slowly grow the balance if a winning streak was established. Unfortunately, the downside was that just one loss would wipe out three previous wins. A losing run proved too common and too painful to bear financially.
The third little pig had big dreams of life-changing wins. His strategy was based on multiple outcomes, in order to build the odds to stunning levels. Colossal wins for small stakes on eight-folds and yankees were the target. He also, very soon, became frustrated.
Despite some financial pain over the years, the revolving system that the pigs established spawned many new strategies. It evolved and grew, following many regular meetings and analysis of the various attempted strategies, so that a bank of plans built up. Each individual betting strategy has been tried and tested and proven to stand on its own over time. The underlying sentiment behind Football Prophets is to bring together some of these strategies in multiple bets with a view to avoiding what seem to be very obvious predictions.
