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.
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.
Milan and Juventus head into week three occupying the top two spots in the table but they’ve won their matches in highly contrasting fashions. Milan followed an opening 3-1 win over Lazio by beating Parma 5-4 last time out. Juventus, meanwhile, are yet to concede …
Part timer
I’m back onto Betfair markets properly today. I’m currently taking the opportunity to enjoy the late summer sun. I had my first round of golf for a few years this morning! Having worked hard during the busier periods of the year, I can skip the quieter days at the moment without remotely denting my yearly performance much. Though I did take a look at the champions league last night.
I also nipped in on Sunday to have a pop at …
Millions by the minute
It seems every now and again a trading documentary pops up now and again on the TV. The most recent one aired last night, click on this link to watch it: –
Traders : Millions by the minute
I thought it was entertaining but quite lightweight in the scheme of things. It was curiously positioned as new and exciting but online trading in financial markets has been around for ages. I liked the way they focused on the psychological side …
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.
Arsenal have gone 19 games without defeat at home but this Saturday they face the ultimate test as they host the champions, who have won 10 of their last 16 away games with just one defeat.
It’s matches like these that have proven to be
Trading news flow
The importance of liquidity
One of the most important aspects of a successful trading market is liquidity. You can enter any market at any price, but sometimes you will want to get out quickly as well. That is why liquidity is important when trading, it gives you control over your position.
Sometimes you can find liquidity markets in the most unusual places, hunting them has become something I enjoy doing. We’re less than a week away from the Scottish vote …
St Leger Meeting
For some background to this meeting have a read of this wiki link.
I must admit, from a trading perspective, I haven’t got a great deal out of this meeting in the past. So I tend to not set high expectations only be disappointed. I tend to treat it as a decent meeting, but not something I expect to get anything stunning from.
My only advice, given the prior years, is to take things a little more gently. If …
Laying on the beach
Laytown – Sounds like a small town where people favour only one side of the book. But its actually a racecourse in Ireland. Since 1876 Laytown has hosted a single annual horse racing meeting on its beach – one of only a couple on sand (held on the beach) race meetings run under official rules of racing in Europe.
The BBC have made it the subject of a documentary, titled Racing the Tide, and have included passages in their …
US Open Tennis – Trading short priced favourites
I was chatting with a few fellow traders on Skype during day three of the US Open this week and we commented that there seems to be a lot of surprise results in the WTA tournament, and in particular that both the ‘big name’ players appeared to be very short for starting prices in Grand Slams, and that they were losing the first set much more than they should be – allowing some profitable lay to back trades.
[Editor – …
All weather, all change
It’s the 1st of September and Monday evenings at Windsor and a thing of the past for another year. I mourn the passing of the summer, but it’s not all bad news on the racing front.
In the summer you will find that with so many races on the liquidity dilutes itself across many races. Therefore you can have days were the entire card is weak from a punting and trading perspective. Contrary to BHA opinion, more races doesn’t equal …
Sometimes trading can take a back seat
No trading for me this afternoon as I’m am off to the funeral. An old school friend has lost his father and, to cut a very long story short, I wasn’t lucky enough to have a conventional upbringing but his family and that of another friend filled in the gaps for me. So it’s the least I can do to offer him my support at a time like this. But as they say, his Dad had a good innings, so …
Two horse races
Here are three two horse races for you: –
(1) A two horse race yesterday at Epsom, utterly depressing. Difficult to trade, I made a loss.
(2) A Tennis match, a joy of uncertainty and volatility. Currently occurring daily in NY at the US Open Tennis at the moment. Lovely to trade.
(3) The ensuing premier league battle. Two horse race? I hear you say, but the market is speaking loudly about the prospects of the key teams already.
Chelsea …
Marmite Monday
It’s that day of the year that you either love or hate. The August bank holiday in the UK brings a whole bunch of racing, all on the same day.
There will be lots of meetings on today and about a billion races. This may seem like heaven for some, but it’s a nightmare for others. Quite a few races will attract little liquidity, a lot isn’t of quality and many races will clash meaning that you can’t do much …
How to buy success
As the new season is upon us all football fans up and down the country will no doubt have fresh hopes about what the season will bring. Transfers have been done and hopes raised. But what is it that makes a team successful? What is the most defining characteristic?
The defining characteristic
As is well known, a lot of club revenue gets spent on wages to attract top players. This is in the hope that buying talent buys performances. Quite …
York Ebor meeting
Summer racing isn’t over quite yet and today kicks of the Ebor meeting at York. I’ve traditionally done OK at this festival each year so I am looking for something above average this week. Liquidity is usually quite good at York and I suspect I can get something decent out of some of these races.
Some decent races, some decent horses and a decent meeting should add up to a decent opportunity this week if you are trading.
Anyhow, Good …
Summer has almost gone
Seeing Wolverhampton on the card again made me realise another summer has almost passed into the spreadsheet of history.
One of the realities of sports trading is that summer is peak season across a number of sports for me, so it’s a valuable time to get into top gear. I mourn it’s passing. But my attention will now turn to Tennis for the US Open and back to Football for the winter months. Racing, of course, is an all year …
When to use form and when not
Each day I flick through the available sports on offer and have a quick look for anything interesting.
On the racing today something jumped out immediately, Battle group in the 16:00 at Kempton.
Battle group famously refused to race at the Grand National and caused a false start. They restarted, but it didn’t make it past the first fence. Today it is running over 1m4f at Kempton. One look at it’s form and it’s a miserable recent record, three refused …
It’s all kicked off – Saturday soccer stats
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As an opening season offer, Football Form Labs are offering discounts of up to 33% or £100 off on our Form Lab products. Scroll down the page to learn more…
The Premier League kicks off with two teams facing several question marks after their performances …
Betfair exits Australia, but doesn’t
After months of speculation and a ducked question on the last conference call, Betfair confirmed this morning that they have exited Australia, but not entirely.
In a press release issued first thing this morning Betfair stated: –
BETFAIR GROUP PLC (“Betfair”) today announces that it has sold its 50% stake in Betfair Australasia Pty Limited (“Betfair Australia”) to joint-venture partner Crown Resorts Limited (“Crown”, ASX: CWN).
Betfair has concurrently entered into an agreement with Crown to continue to provide its …
US PGA Day one
As predicted Rory got off to a steady start and is only one behind the leaders at Valhalla. But the surprise of the day came from Lee Westwood. If past performance is anything to go by then Westwood will not see this through. I’ve forgotten how many times he has been in contention early on for his first major only for it to slip away. He’s the modern Montgomerie.
Another surprise was the unexpected withdrawal of Matt Kuchar and Jason …
Valhalla beckons, will Rory roar?
Some of the stats I’ve used here have come from the excellent Golf Stats website.
The golfing world’s attention now swings, excuse the pun, to Kentucky and to two golfers in particular.
I like competitive golf tournaments where the winner is uncertain but currently, despite Rory McIlroy’s comments, we do appear to be entering a new era in golf. Tiger Woods dominated for a number of years and each tournament would start with him as a clear leader. Thanks …
Peter’s laying system
Slightly tongue in cheek title – If there’s one mistake I’ve made in my time in the markets it’s not sticking my name on a concept. As a consequence there are a lot of phrases out there that most probably originated from this camp but are now in general use. Therefore I’m probably the ‘hoover’ of the Betfair trading world, the ‘biro’ the ‘sellotape’. To be fair this happens to everybody who is a pioneer so a also tip my …
Little and often
This is a phrase I’ll often quote when advising people on how to trade. I posted up a full list of results from yesterday and it got a fair amount of commentary because it illustrated exactly that point. More information further down this post.
It’s really nice to bang in some massive results now and again, but generally, that’s not what trading is about. Well. not 80% of the time on racing.
Most of the time I’m in a market …
Southampton agree fee for tea lady
Quite a few jokes doing the rounds at the unprecedented sale of Southampton players which is attracting a lot of press. But inside the humour and horror (for Southampton fans) some serious lessons for traders. You can profit from the mayhem. But first, anecdotal reflection and another trading lesson.
In 2003 I sat in the Millenium stadium and crowed at how Southampton had finally made it. Seventh in the premier league, FA Cup final and a crop of talented …
Goodway
So Goodwood is underway and it’s performing more or less as I expected and, hopefully, set your expectations at.
In the first two days the biggest race reached £2.2m but the lowest was waaaaaaaaaay off that. Mainly thanks to clashing with other races. Attention is very firmly focused on the feature races and that’s producing the majority of the matched bet turnover so far, helping all markets reach £16m so over the two days. But curiously it doesn’t feel like …
Trading Goodwood
From a trading perspective I like multi day high quality meetings. They usually throw up some good opportunities and are a welcome addition to the month.
As you may know these higher quality meetings produce extra volume and that can change the characteristics significantly. But don’t let Goodwood fool you into thinking it’s the same as a Royal Ascot or Cheltenham, it behaves very differently. Goodwood benefits from decent volume but it’s not as much as some major meetings. Therefore …
Gearing up for Goodwood
I’ve been having a quiet week as you can probably tell from various social media bits. After fourteen years on the markets a really busy summer requires an effort to not completely burn out so I’ve been taking it a bit easier. Also my twins turned to teenagers this week, so that’s worth celebrating. You may have noticed that I still can’t resist a rock solid opportunity however!
In the Summer it’s possible to skip some sessions as you know …
Wonder weather you should trade?
Nice example today of how weather can play a important part in sport.
I’ve mentioned before that Rain in F1 can play an important part in a race. Turning a predictable victory into an unpredictable melee of circumstances.
Today we were presented with that and say the winner market dump odds of 1.51, 1.12 and 2.10. Daniel Ricciardo, who is having a great season, won the race but traded widely at 40’s. Throw into the mix a fast, but …
Pre-season football
Interested to see the result from Man Utd’s first result under new management!
But….. not much to be read into pre season friendlies TBH. As a manager you are looking at new players, either acquired or coming up through the ranks and assessing things for the next season. Results are not paramount, but injuries are and when I looked into pre-season friendlies a few years ago there seemed to be little correlation to the start of the new season.
What …
Open Golf – Day two
Two clear leaders at the end of day one. McIlroy’s second round collapse is due to start at 14:27 today!
I’ve posted a list of movers on the forum.
There can be a really complex correlation between tee times and the effect on players who have yet to step onto the course, but this near.y always presents an opportunity. It’s much safer to trade somebody who isn’t playing or who has finished, than somebody that just sent the ball …
Open Golf
Curiously, Golf was one of the first markets I bet on Betfair way back in June 2000. But I quickly moved onto other sports before I returned with a vengeance a few years later.
The British Open is different from other majors in that it is played on rotation schedule across a number of ‘links’ courses in the UK. Links courses are traditionally near the sea, are near or on dunes, have an uneven surface and a sandy soil. This …
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