Cheltenham – Post-mortem
OK, it’s been a little while since Cheltenham finished, but I’ve been very busy on other projects and I have also been having a bit of a break before the start of the flat season proper.
Lets start from a top level. Measuring the activity to post time in the markets, a total of 26 races generated matched bet turnover on Betfair of £84.3m this year. In 2009 it generated £83m, so overall the matched bet turnover was up about 1.5% on the year. 49% of this turnover was matched on the 26 favourite’s. The remaining 51% was matched on the remaining 463 runners. Last year 53% of the money was matched on the favourites. £41.4m was traded on the favourites this year vs. £44.5m last year, so matched bets on favourites was down.
While there was top line growth of 1.5%, you have to take account for the types of races that were involved. This year there were four races where the favourite went of at odds on, last year there were just two. These races get a significant boost in turnover due to their pricing. So you could say that you would have expected this year to generate more in turnover. There are many ways to cut this data but the long and short of it is that turnover hasn’t risen much, if at all, this year. It felt like that in the market. I imagine there are more people doing similar things to me, especially as I talk openly about it, so it’s no surprise that some markets felt weak.
From a personal perspective I did OK, but not as well as last year. But it was better than the prior year so I can’t be dissatisfied with that. It was my 12th best week overall since I started all this, so I expect to get better weeks during the year. The biggest problem I had was getting orders filled, a lot of the time it was quite tricky to get orders filled in a reasonable time and that adds to the risk you take in a market. At some points it felt like I could have got changed, run around the block, had a shower and still returned to see an unmatched bet.
I didn’t really learn anything this year which is disappointing, but it was noteworthy that a strategy that I would have recommended a few years ago failed miserably this year. Just goes to show you how the market is constantly adapting and changing shape. Next up, the Grand National!
Category: Using Bet Angel
