Sports Ratings

About Us

Sports Ratings are an adaptation on the Elo rating system developed by Dr Arpad Elo and used by the international chess federation to rate chess players by calculating the relative skills of the players. This system has been taken up by the computer gaming industry as a means to match players of similar ability in competition and is nothing new in the world of sport where ratings systems have been used to rank international football teams, American college football, American college basketball and Major League Baseball among others.

The founding tipsters at Sports Ratings are a group of enthustiastic punters who have collaborated to develop ratings for a number of different sports with the intention of producing ratings which can be used to gain an edge in their ongoing battle with bookmakers. Although there is an abundance of statistical information available for most major sports and each sport has its own rating systems to determine its champions, sifting through the information to identify a betting opportunity that gives the punter an edge over the bookmaker can be time consuming to say the least and fraught with distractions.

The notion of a having a single number with which to begin making comparisons in relative performance is a very attractive one for a disciplined gambler who likes to work to a system, after all it works very well in horse racing where rating systems are used to measure performance. Ratings provide the means for handicap systems which produce competitive racing all around the world and many professional gamblers use ratings systems as the basis of their selection processes.

We use our Sports Ratings in a similar way, they are not the 'be all and end all' to making our selections but allow us to evaluate the relative strengths of the competitors. The degree of superiority is the key factor in other calculations we use to determine expected match odds, ante-post (futures) odds, handicap margins and other sports betting markets.

The formula we use to calculate each rating varies depending upon the sport, but follows similar fundamentals to those developed by Dr Elo. The ratings are re-evaluated after every match and a new rating is determined when the actual result varies from the expected result with weightings applied for the level or standard of the event in which the opponents have competed. For example, Manchester United v Barcelona in the UEFA Champions League final has a higher weighting than Manchester United v Aldershot in the Carling Cup fourth round. The ratings also take account of the margin of victory as well as the win, lose and draw outcome and the expected result carries a weighting where the venue gives an advantage to one competitor over another.

Sports Ratings tipsters have enjoyed success applying the base sports ratings to their individual and more subjective analyses of a variety of sports, with the inevitable result of having accounts closed by some of the major bookmakers. Thankfully, betting exchanges provide access to betting opportunities without too much concern about losing out on the best odds available.

Our aim is to produce and test ratings for a wider range of sports. System punters can download the sports ratings, which are updated after every round of fixtures, to use in their own analysis and to identify betting opportunities based on their own systems and theories. We welcome feedback and comparison of the methods employed to beat the bookie and will publish our tips to allow comparison and promote challenges between other tipsters using sports ratings or other methods of making their selections.