Author Archive: Peter Webb
I left a good job in the consumer technology industry to go a trade on Betfair for a living way back in June 2000.
I've been here ever since pushing very boundaries of what's possible on betting exchanges and loved every minute of it.
Luck of the draw
The FA Cup fifth round is upon us and unlike previous years the competition has been very interesting so far.
A raft of premiership clubs have already been dumped out of the competition and that’s changed the shape a bit. In the fifth round this year the premier league clubs account for 96% of the market. This is lower than previous years which have been 98.76%, 98.36% and 99.30%.
So for the first time in a few years that percentage …
Why Tiger isn’t roaring anymore
You must have noticed the news this morning that Tiger Woods is taking an indefinite break from Golf to rebuild his game. He had better hurry as he is now 39 and as in other sports age is an important factor in Golf.
Typically you have to look at a sport along two lines to determine where a player is in there career. One is age, as this is defining characteristic of strength and agility. The other experience, this tells …
Saturday soccer stats – Local derby special
These stats are brought to your by our friends over at Football Form Labs. Check out their site and the powerful software that sits behind these comments
The North London Derby kicks off the Premier League weekend and both sides come into this game on the back of impressive results. Arsenal thumped Villa 5-0 at the Emirates while Spurs won convincingly away against a rejuvenated West Brom following the appointment of Tony Pulis. …
Testing times? Profit from them
Trading on Formula One racing may seem unusual and starting to trade even before the season has even started even more unusual, but it can often present some really good opportunities.
At the start of each year after a winter break, I watch preparations for the new Formula 1 season with interest. The various teams are testing new cars and configurations and it generally leads to a mixed bunch of results. But typically that’s what testing is all about. It’s …
Profit graphs – Visualising data on Bet Angel
One ‘trick’ I use with Bet Angel uses two ‘hidden’ features. It has help me improve my trading no end, especially on unfamiliar sports.
The two features I use are the Excel link and the automation. They both work in the background for me while I trade, or even on another machine to collect data on a market I may or may not be trading.
What they are doing is pulling in data from the market I am trading which …
Saturday Soccer Stats
These stats are brought to your by our friends over at Football Form Labs. Check out their site and the powerful software that sits behind these comments
PREVIEW: Chelsea v Man City (Sat, 17:30)
This week’s Saturday Night Football sees reigning champions Man City travel to league leaders Chelsea. Following their shock 4-2 defeat at home to Bradford in the FA Cup, Chelsea needed extra-time to see off Liverpool in the League Cup in midweek, but the talking-point from …
Major upgrade for BETDAQangel
We are pleased to announce a new version of Bet Angel for Betdaq.
Bet Angel for Betdaq is completely free of charge, so there is no reason why you shouldn’t download and try a copy. If you don’t have a Betdaq account we can set one up for you when you install the software.
This is a major upgrade and brings with it many features that people have previously requested and brings Betdaq up in line with features that …
Bet Angel version 1.38
We are pleased to release version 1.38 of Bet Angel Professional for Betfair. It contains a significant enhancement to Advanced Automation and also fulfills a couple of common customer requests.
You can download the latest version from – https://www.betangel.com/download/
Betfair’s new API
Since our successful transition to the new Betfair API in November we have been keen to start adding new features. The new Betfair API allows you to make more calls to the API. The previous API capped data …
Trading Relegation markets
I recently did a piece of relegation markets, concerning manager sackings which often occur at Christmas and new player arrivals / departures in the new year.
I have written a short piece for Betfair and a longer one for Racing Ahead magazine, but I think the video I did on You Tube is probably the best overall summary. You can view it here, or I have embedded it at the end of this video.
To supplement this video you may …
Not courtsiders this year, but pitchsiders
Last year we had a lot of fuss at the Australian open when a courtsider was arrested and it created a huge amount of publicity. But this year the focus seems to have turned to the Cricket.
To put the story into context you should realise that in-play betting is illegal in Australia. This seems odd, but it’s a corruption led thing. You can sort of understand how spot fixing can cause authorities to jump with alarm at in-play …
Bleak Mid winter?
So here we are in the bleak mid-winter, but you perhaps may not know it but for one sport it always feels that way.
For racing, this is a time of year when things are a little quiet. It gets worse next month traditionally, but so far we haven’t lost that many meetings to the weather. So its an opportunity to analyse, prepare and research. Cheltenham is just around the corner so that’s always at the front of my mind.…
Sunday Soccer Stats
These stats are brought to your by our friends over at Football Form Labs. Check out their site and the powerful software that sits behind these comments
PREVIEW: Man City v Arsenal (Sun, 16:00)
This week’s Super Sunday clash sees Arsenal travel to reigning champions Man City. Both teams currently sit one place behind where they finished last term and neither will be happy if they end the campaign in their respective fifth and second spots.
Sergio Aguero’s name …
Swiss squeeze busts West Ham sponsor
As I speculated yesterday, there was bound to be some companies that couldn’t absorb the losses from the decision by Swiss to suddenly free float their currency.
The first victim to come to the fore is Alpari, they posted a rather sombre statement on their web site: –
https://www.alpari.com/company-news/posts/2015/january/important-announcement/
The key part reads: –
The recent move on the Swiss franc caused by the Swiss National Bank’s unexpected policy reversal of capping the Swiss franc against the euro has resulted …
How to lose £30m in seconds
Over the last year I’ve been speaking to a lot of organisations, in sports and non sports markets, that hedge or don’t hedge their positions.
I think I can do a job for people who don’t hedge, but curiously, the general message that’s been coming back is that there is no need to hedge. Margin is lost by hedging and gained by decent management of positions. I think that the prevailing view, despite losing margin in the process, is that …
The new kid on the block
It’s not often you get a new kid on the block but this week we have.
Well sort of new. In April 2008 a new racecourse opened, the first completely new racecourse sine Taunton in 1927! It didn’t last long however and the following January it went into administration. It is now being re-incarnated as Chelmsford City and it’s first races are today.
Having another all weather course will probably help the industry, especially as this is in the south, …
Saturday Soccer Stats
These stats are brought to your by our friends over at Football Form Labs. Check out their site and the powerful software that sits behind these comments
PREVIEW: Everton v Man City (Sat, 15:00)
Everton’s injury-time equaliser against West Ham in Tuesday’s FA Cup game provided some much-needed respite following four straight league defeats. Things don’t seem to be getting any easier for Everton though, with Champions Manchester City probably close to the bottom of Roberto Martinez’s list of …
Shocking moments
The romance bit comes from a non league team coming up against a major club and beating them. But the evidence for regular giant killings is getting a little thin on the ground.
Last year we had Sheffield United getting all the way to the semi finals and of course in 2013 Wigan ensured the demise of Mancini’s tenure at Man City by winning the Cup. But since the start of the Premier League no team from outside the it …
2014
Well that was an interesting year, It always is.
2014 vs 2013
From a broad perspective I’ve just repeated last year again. I’ve ended on almost exactly the same total as 2013 on a like for like market basis (Excluding one offs like the world cup), I’m slightly lower by a small percentage but that’s not bad considering I’ve cut back the amount of markets I’ve traded. This is a concious decision to add some balance back into my life.…
Ghost of Christmas past
One thing I’ve always been very good at is keeping records, I’d recommend it. You can look back and recall what you did previously and improve on it. Or just use it as a point of reference. I tend to archive a lot of trading records and make notes against them so I can remember how the markets traded, what I did and what I was thinking.
I was browsing my records from previous years this evening and came across …
The day somebody with £1k caused a £600m error
Three years ago today we were treated to a day of spectacular proportions. It seems to have slipped into the history books a bit so I thought I would reprise it for your enjoyment and delight.
On this this day at the Christmas hurdle at Leopardstown something went very, very wrong. Voler La Vedette ran home to take that race, but for most of the race £21m was available to back at good odds. Nobody it seemed was able to …
Boxing day
So we are at Christmas and the sports schedule in the UK thinned out into the run up to Christmas day. Everything, apart from your wallet probably, took a break. Now it’s back with a bang on Boxing day.
Last year, even with two meetings abandoned there were still a total of 11 race meetings in the UK and Ireland and a total of 720 runners over 72 races! This year we face a total of 79 races, 24 of …
Regulator gets tough on Spoofing
It would be nice if this were a statement related to Betfair, but hey, such is life.
This actually is a statement from regulators in financial markets. Spoofing there is consider a form of market manipulation and therefore is illegal. The deal in financial markets is if you manipulate a market to profit it’s wrong. The rationale behind this is that you are tricking people out of their money. This doesn’t add any value to the market and is a …
Saturday Soccer Stats
These stats are brought to your by our friends over at Football Form Labs. Check out their site and the powerful software that sits behind these comments
PREVIEW: Roma v AC Milan (Sat, 19:45)
Roma keep grinding out results to keep the pressure on Juventus at the top of Serie A, with a 1-0 success at in-form Genoa their latest success. Milan, also, come into this came on the up after a 2-0 win over Napoli, which has brought …
Time to book your Betfair holiday
For the larger commission payers amongst you, this is a reminder to make sure you examine whether its worth booking your Betfair holiday before Sunday for the next week or two
When you generate commission you get credited with Betfair points. The more points you have the lower commission you pay. But each week Betfair decay a big chunk of your points which you would then top up with more activity.
Next week is a short week, especially if you …
Betfair Australia to focus on exchange business
Many thanks to posted on this thread on the forum for pointing out the news that is coming from Australia.
Basically Betfair sold their operations to Crown and Crown has done a deal to split off the Sportsbook business to BetEasy and retain the Exchange as a brand in its own right and to allow that to gain it’s own focus. It’s a complete volta-face from the situation in the Uk and is worth watching. You couldn’t have two more …
Carling cup quarter-finals
I put this video up on You Tube yesterday and thought it was worth documenting on the blog as well for people that haven’t seen it. But basically there are a couple of nice set-ups in the quarter finals.
Sunday Soccer Stats
These stats are brought to your by our friends over at Football Form Labs. Check out their site and the powerful software that sits behind these comments
PREVIEW: Man Utd v Liverpool (Sun, 13:30)
Man Utd are up to third after a five-game winning streak while Liverpool’s season continues to fall apart after another poor European display in midweek. Despite United’s recent resurgence, however, they’ve been far from impressive as both Southampton and Arsenal outplayed them and without Angel …
Is NBA the new WTA?
During my recent travels in the US I sat down at a bar one evening and watched some Basketball. It was an entertaining experience. Fellow bar attendees proffered their opinion and curiosity overwhelmed me, so I reached into my pocket fired up the Betfair app and had a look at the market.
Here is something you may not know. You CAN’T actually log in and place a bet from the US, but you CAN actively look up a market and …
Incentive to score
Incentive to score is a key element of a football match.
This can be present in any football match, but is typically dominant in knockout tournament or where a particular result is required. So it could also apply to matches where a result is needed be to avoid relegation, to reach fourth spot in the league or qualify for the next round of a tournament or something similar.
Some teams will have a big incentive to score, others to not …
How Betfair’s new API is an opportunity
Nobody seems to like change, but I’ve learnt over many years that change tends to bring opportunity along with it. Change is a fact of life and therefore opportunity is too!
API NG
Just over a year ago Betfair announced the cut off date for API 6 and the switch over took place in early November this year. When Bet Angel was first developed there wasn’t even an API, the fact the old API was called API 6 tells you …
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