How I Use StatStrike And GoalLab Together

Two tools working as one.

StatStrike and GoalLab can be used independently, clearly, but they can also be used to inform each other.

First, a quick overview of the two app's backends.

StatStrike's forecasts are produced by an engine which calls the next day's fixtures from the API service, just before midnight, filters by a blocklist - unreachable markets, overly chaotic leagues that defy statistical forecast (crystal balls for those ones!), and regional European leagues that only have sporadic coverage from major bookmakers. Think the Spanish tercera leagues...they go on forever in the fixture lists, but your bookmaker will only offer you a changing smattering, so I filter most out (not all).

After the fixture list is settled the forecasting engine fetches the available statists by criteria for each match.

Several algorithms are at work - a Machine Learning forecaster trained on three full years of global football (a work of months that was!), my original 11 criteria algorithm, a rules based algorithm (weights and measures) and before upload, a handoff from a separate forecaster which gives out only its very best for upload. Those fixtures are reconciled against what StatStrike's uploader has decided, and missing ones added.

Next the filters, archived derived rules, and barriers to get through and over. An example of which is hysteresis - leagues need to get over a high bar for inclusion and are blocked if their accuracy drops beneath a slightly lower bar. This is to stop leagues ping-ponging in and out of upload, as you can be sure you'll catch their bad days and miss their good if they don't have a W/L range to operate in.

And that's the list that appears each day in StatStrike.

GoalLab is a different beast. Its backend produces a firehose. It has a slimmer blocklist (only genuinely unreachable markets). It wants it all and it wants it now, well, daily. Then it also fetches a range of criteria for each fixture and does its magic.

It'll give you a forecast on anything not in the blocklist. If it can only get one criteria for a fixture, say average concession rates, it will forecast and display its confidence appropriately. If it can get all that it wants, all the merrier, high confidence.

But there's another layer. Just because a forecast confidence maybe lower doesn't necessarily mean it's not valuable. It's the signals, the criteria, that matter, and sometimes a handful can interact in a way that is more revealing than the full set for a fixture.

GoalLab's forecaster keeps a memory of all. The archive is 10's of 1,000's of games large and ever growing. Each goal band mix and its confidence is tracked by its performance and the W/L value constantly updated and displayed with the forecasts in GoalLab's daily fixture list.

And this is the key to using the two apps together.

The most valuable forecasts in StatStrike are the "Best Performing" category. To be in this a fixture must be from a league with a minimum of 70% success by the forecasting engine. I use that as a strong signal when selecting my personal daily list. And to be clear I use StatStrike like I used to use any other tipster that I trusted - as a research signal. I don't blindly take the whole list. I check the odds (very short can be a sign a fixture should be skipped - it's now due a fail. That's can be...I have success with accumulators with the short odds when choosing carefully - I also take each bet as a single. You can't have many fails with short odds of course, but on a bad day I might lose a pound or two. The good days should more than cover.).

And this is where GoalLab comes in. For each forecast in the "Best Performing" that's caught my eye I will go to GoalLab's "Today's Fixtures" list and search for it. Then I will check the win rate of the confidence value for that fixture. If it's high too I will feel confident that it's a very good selection.

The next step is to check if the match is being offered by the market. If it's in StatStrike it is, 99% of the time (I don't control what the bookmakers offer of course, so sometimes a match is not available), and then I look at the odds and decide if it's worth it.

And then I wait, like we all do, and hope to see that goal count grow over 90', or not, if it's an Under 2.5. Ah, the thrill of wanting nothing to happen, it grows on you.

I don't promise success with this method, except to say it works for me more often than not. The key is consistency. A bad day shouldn't cause a change of method anymore than a good day does. But if you have a system that gives you an edge, and you adhere to it, you'll likely reap the benefits.