
Show HN: Football Prediction API - boggio
https://boggio-analytics.com/fp-api/
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rorygreig
This seems too good to be true. If they could actually predict football
results with better-than-random accuracy, then why wouldn't they just use this
themselves to make loads of money on betting markets?

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notahacker
I don't think they're claiming their statistics-based predictions are
necessarily more accurate than the bookmakers' odds

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rorygreig
Good point, I suppose "69%" accuracy doesn't actually mean that much unless
you consider the odds.

I'm pretty sure I could predict Real Madrid vs. my local home town team with
better than 69% accuracy, but that doesn't mean much

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boggio
Well sure, but there are over 2200 games per month and less than 3-5% are the
kind of games you are talking about. Super good team vs terrible team
(assuming your local home town team is not Barcelona)

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crispyporkbites
Neat! What is it's past performance / accuracy like?

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boggio
There is an endpoint that measures accuracy.

Long-term accuracy is 69%.

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edf13
Over what period and how far have you back-tested?

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boggio
1 year and a couple of months.

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Giorgi
No Champions league? or UEFA cup? Just local leagues?

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boggio
No.. maybe in the future.

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joncrane
I think you should call it "soccer" or at least "association football" in this
context.

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crispyporkbites
Why?

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bostonpete
Because most native English speakers call it soccer.

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CJefferson
Really? Everyone I know calls the sport football. The second F in FIFA is
football.

I know Americans call it soccer, but that is I assume because of American
football, a sport no other country seems to play, or care about.

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geofftrojans
[https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/06/wh...](https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/06/why-
we-call-soccer-soccer/372771/)

The name soccer came from Britain, not the US. It was used to differentiate
Association Football (soccer) from Rugby Football (rugby). Ireland, South
Africa, Australia and New Zealand all still call the sport soccer. Even in
England, it continued to be a popular name for the sport until the 1950s.

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finnci
Pretty mixed in Ireland to be honest, and we have our own sport Gaelic
Football which gets confusing.

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kefir_cultist
Interesting but football is such a terrible sport to predict statistically
outside of a few teams (the outliers) in each league. Kind of hope there would
me tools out there to mess with play patterns and tendencies more than the
actual result, I think that it would be actually useful plus such a resource
paired with a decent analyst would net a way better prediction rate. But
betting.jpg

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jxub
>mess with play patterns and tendencies

Maybe you should get involved with Data Science, this field is all about
playing with patterns (and _hopefully_ finding a result), and even thinks like
SVM's, random forests and genetic algorithms aren't really hard to grok and
apply in that area.

There are some scientists involved with betting, but this field has really low
profit margins IMHO. Personally, I view algorithmic trading as more
interesting but YMMV.

