Soccer Late Line-Movement Continuation
Late closing-line momentum
Rejected — PF 0.96 and −2.30% ROI across 3,337 bets; the chronological holdout fell to PF 0.94 and −3.52%. Chasing the closing move did not retain an edge.
- Category
- Sports betting
- Window
- 2015-08-08 → 2025-05-25
- Instruments
- European soccer 1X2
- Timeframe
- Opening to closing odds
- Tested
- 2025-05-25
Measured equity history
Recorded directly from the chronological test ledger.
Shown in the backtest's native equity or cumulative P&L units. It is not scaled to an investment amount because the published artifact does not provide a defensible capital denominator.
How it works
BackfillingThe bet
What market behavior this strategy is wagering on.
Plain-English explainer is backfilling — check back tomorrow. We publish the explanation only once it's written and reviewed, never auto-filled.
How it decides
What makes it enter, size, and exit a position.
Plain-English explainer is backfilling — check back tomorrow. We publish the explanation only once it's written and reviewed, never auto-filled.
How it can break
The regimes and failure modes that turn the edge negative.
Plain-English explainer is backfilling — check back tomorrow. We publish the explanation only once it's written and reviewed, never auto-filled.
Gate scorecard — 1 / 5
auto-imported from results.json| # | Gate | Result | Pass |
|---|---|---|---|
| 01 | Minimum sample | n=3337 | ✓ |
| 02 | Profit factor ≥ 1.20 | PF=0.959 | ✗ |
| 04 | Max drawdown ≤ 12% | Max DD=-77.4% | ✗ |
| 06 | Bootstrap LB Sharpe > 0 | 95% mean-PnL CI=[-0.06251423434222356, 0.015516931375486962] | ✗ |
| 11 | Walk-forward OOS ≥ 0.9× IS | Holdout ROI=-3.52% | ✗ |
VERDICT: REJECTED
Following late odds movement did not work. When Pinnacle’s no-vig implied probability rose by at least three percentage points from opening to closing, buying that outcome at the closing price produced PF 0.96 and −2.30% ROI across 3,337 matches. The untouched holdout deteriorated to PF 0.94 and −3.52% ROI with −77.4% max drawdown.
Rule
- Five major European soccer leagues, completed seasons 2015/16–2024/25.
- Convert Pinnacle opening and closing 1X2 prices to no-vig probabilities.
- Select the outcome with the largest probability increase when that increase is at least three percentage points.
- Require closing odds between 1.50 and 4.00 and risk 1% of current bankroll.
- Keep the final 30% of qualifying matches as a chronological holdout.
Results
| Sample | Bets | Win rate | PF | ROI per bet |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Full | 3,337 | 44.2% | 0.959 | −2.30% |
| Holdout | 1,002 | 44.5% | 0.937 | −3.52% |
The closing market appears to have incorporated the information already. Chasing the move at the new price paid the spread without retaining an edge. This threshold family is retired.
Data limits
Only opening and closing snapshots are available. The test cannot determine whether an earlier stage of the move was tradable, but it does reject continuation bought at the closing quote.
Frequently asked
Is Soccer Late Line-Movement Continuation profitable in 2026?
In this pre-registered backtest (2015-08-08 → 2025-05-25), Soccer Late Line-Movement Continuation returned a profit factor of 0.96 and passed 1/5 validation gates (placebo N/A). Verdict: REJECTED. Every result is published, pass or fail.
Has Soccer Late Line-Movement Continuation been backtested honestly?
Yes — through The Validation Gauntlet, a pre-registered 11-gate framework (profit factor, deflated Sharpe, a random-permutation placebo, cost-stress and walk-forward) with the specification locked before any out-of-sample metric is computed. It failed and is published anyway.
Methodology: 11-gate validation — pre-registered spec, 5-gate battery, real market data. Full reproducible report: backtests/sports_line_momentum/REPORT.md in the source repository.Author: Validated Research Team (Methodology v1.0 — 11-gate validation). Backtests are not investment advice.