A short thread with some insights in H2H data in the early part of the season. I have bored you repeatedly that consistently betting high odds in races that logically return a higher amount of unexpected results (early season races, first stages of stage races, …) is profitable.

Today I’ve looked at all H2Hs from January to June in the years 2018-2020 (Bet365 and stages only). I have analysed the data only per month and per “odds group” (e.g. 2.50+, 3.00+). Meaning that there is still room for better results when filtering on stage types, ...

This is the hard data per month.

A few conclusions: While you can see positive results in the 2.50+ and 2.75+ groups, it is more beneficial to focus on the 3.00+ and 3.25+ categories (both in terms of total return and ROI). The dataset for 3.50+ H2Hs is small and could explain the spikes.

Positive ROI and return is consistent for 3.00+ and 3.25+ groups from Jan to Mar, with a spike in March (P-N, TA, Catalunya), which might be a bit surprising. April (Itzulia, Romandie) must be one of the worst months for high odds strategy.

May is positive, but this is mainly because of the results in small races (e.g. Yorkshire). ROI for the 3.00+ group in the Giro alone sits at only 5.10%.

Even though the trend is clear, this analysis is basic, as I didn't distinguish between type of stage, number of stage, ...

Higher odds tend to land more frequently in flat stages and in the first stages of a race. On the other end of the spectrum there are the TTs and the stages in the latter part of the stage race.

Final note: This should be needless to say but please remember that these are results over a large data set. This doesn't say anything about the chances of one specific H2H landing.