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.
Did Betfair have a good World Cup?
Now the fuss has died down and the rioting taken place, it’s time to reflect on the World Cup.
From a footy perspective it was great. Much more entertaining than the previous world cups and plenty of talking points. England somehow managed to surpass even their supporters low expectations.
I managed to do a record amount on the World Cup, but that’s surprising as I spent most of last footy season carefully pulling together a number of things to deploy …
World Cup Final 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.
First off, kudos to Football Form Labs for picking the winner of the World Cup. But hold your horses the match hasn’t started yet? Well it doesn’t matter because they nominated both Argentina and Germany, boom! Well done. So here are their thoughts on the final
Much like when these sides met …
Newmarket July meeting
Felt I should comment on the meeting that is taking place at Newmarket this week.
After a fairly long spell of indifferent racing we are treated to some quality for the next three days. So that should bring some focus to your trading. It’s not an amazing meeting but you should be able to dig out a few opportunities. The higher quality stuff should bring some much needed liquidity to the markets.
I’m off to a decent start, so hope …
Das erste Halbfinale
I couldn’t talk about the Rio 2014 semi finals without paying homage to Germany’s remarkable record. Forget all the England coaches we have had in the past, why don’t we get a German in charge?
Die BBC hat eine schone Zusammenfassung: –
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/28202397
Der letzte “normale” Arbeit, die ich gemeint hatte, arbeitete ich für drei Jahre in Deutschland. So habe ich ein bisschen Deutsch in mir.
Onto the match however. It’s, not surprisingly, being priced as a tight affair with …
British F1 Grand Prix
I thought I would be on again for my annual trip with my son to the F1 this weekend. Curiously as I sat in Hospital with him this week, I pondered on the irony of being IN ward F1 instead! Thankfully Luke is back home now.
If you are regular reader of the blog you will know that last year I won a Z4 for the weekend last year to go to Silverstone. I enjoyed driving it so much I …
Sweet spots
Every market has a sweet sport. Odds that will be reached more often than others, a score.
This also applies to trading. Depending on how you chose to enter and exit, there is a sweet spot in terms of when it’s best to trade in and out.
When I model a market I’m looking for sweet spots. Optimal places where it makes ‘sense’ to open, close to trade to in a market. At first you can’t do this going forward …
Neymar out Germany in
It’s interesting to reflect on my post yesterday when I indicated that backing the winner of the first quarter final may prove fruitful ahead of the second match.
As it turned out there was another reason why this may be the case, but it came from an unexpected source. With Neymar now out of the world cup, Brazil’s chances have been re-assessed. After touching 2.90 they have drifted back to 3.80 and the Germans are into 3.45 from 3.80 …
World Cup Quarter finals
What have we learnt so far from the tournament?
Well Brazil are still favourites and Argentina and still second favourites. Germany has moved up a place thanks to the elimination of Spain.
At the start of the tournament the top 16 made up 99.1% of the book. The remaining teams now make up 99.9%, that’s not surprising considering the only remaining bottom half team are the ‘whipping boys’ Costa Rica. It’s amazing to think that Costa Rica were 1000 to …
Tennis trading
In my journey to understand Tennis I had to work out how and why the market moved, so it was with that in mind that we created Tennis trader. It allowed us to probe the deepest detail of any Tennis match and set up strategies that would allow us to profit from that. Using Tennis trader you can get an idea of what is required for any strategy to pay off, what risk you are taking and when this will …
It’s not just about the big stuff
OK, we are in the thick of some major sporting action at the moment. I’m soooo busy it’s difficult to know which way to look at times, but it’s great fun. I apologise if I’ve been a bit quieter recently, but I simply haven’t had the time to devote to updating the blog etc. I’ll be back soon, most likely after Wimbledon has completed.
But it’s important to reflect that it’s not all about the big stuff. Ascot is gone …
Winning and ‘luck’
Once you get the winning mentality, it enters your bloodstream and doesn’t leave. But winning and luck isn’t random or down to chance, it is an art that is learned through endless painting of poor pictures, then through rubbing out mistakes and constant revision and practice. A winning mentality and ‘luck’ can be learnt…
This weekend I was invited to a charity ball. People like inviting me because I bid on things!
At the end of the evening I was …
Betfair exhibit sense of humour
Just took this screen shot to use at the course I’m presenting on Tuesday. Take a look at the top left of the screen!
The (cold hard cash) winners so far in the World Cup
OK we know who’s through and who is out, but how has that translated into a profitable strategy so far in the World Cup?
Listed below are the returns to £10 stakes on each team that has qualified for the knock-out part of the tournament. Of course, the best bet of the tournament again was to lay England to do anything reasonably useful. But in reality, we should have all been on Costa Rica instead. But the returns here show …
Bournemouth Bonus
News today that Southampton are having a summer sale and have raided the silver in the cupboard to let another two players leave. Though it was to be said, for good money.
Players come and go and one season doesn’t make a star. But Lallana has been with Saints for ages and is worthy of a rating. Lambert deserves to join him at Liverpool and is getting on a bit, but well respected.
Practical upshot of this news: –
(1) …
The trading dead zone
It doesn’t happen often, but now and again all things conspire to produce a dead zone in the markets. We are currently in that dead zone.
First off, this relates to the racing markets. Racing markets are seasonal and peak and trough around major meetings. The last was, obviously, Ascot. So you can get a trough before a major meeting, but you almost certainly get one after it.
Summer racing can be a bit weak as there are more meetings …
Pre match volume at the World Cup
Just cut some data on the pre-match volume at the world cup and thought I would share it with you.
The chart is looking at what percentage of volume arrives when, represented as a percentage. So all matches ‘end’ with 100% of volume at the start of the match. Y axis is percentage, X axis time in minutes before the start of the match.
You can see both graphs are pretty similar but there is a lot more money earlier …
Pre match trading at the World Cup
You could be forgiven for thinking that trading on football is all about somehow anticipating something that’s going to happen in play. But if you follow my tweets you will see I’ve been banging some decent totals before the off.
I explained this in a previous post, but it’s worth noting again that if you are prepared to put the effort in and have a bit of patience, it’s perfectly possible to trade before the off successfully. I’ll be …
Gamble fail, trade win
A quiet end to Ascot week, but I’m relieved that I can now return to more ‘normal’ trading patterns.
I did OK on the day, but one trade stood out. The 17:00 at Ascot.
‘Absolutely So’ was gambled massively, more than any horses I think I’ve seen at Ascot. Widely tipped, It had a terrible race and finished 15th in the end. But it highlighted the beauty of trading. You could quite easily see it was being heavily backed, so …
Profiting from Lay the draw – before the off!
A curious episode in the annals of sports trading this week. No, not another England fail at a major tournament but an opportunity to profit, with a bit of foresight.
With Italy due to play Costa Rica and hold England hopes alive I was browsing the various scenarios in a similar manner to the way I did at the end of the EPL season.
I posted some comments on the forum where I was looking at the prospect of …
World Cup Winners – Trading returns so far
In summary the big gainers are Germany& the Netherlands. Big losers Spain and to an extent Portugal & Uruguay. But the latter two never had short odds to start. Here is the full overview though. Returns to £10 stakes: –
Postive – Germany – Started at 8 now at 5.8 – Returns £3.79
Postive – Netherlands – Started at 46 now at 14 – Returns £22.86
Postive – France – Started at 23 now at 19 – Returns £2.11
Postive …
Royal Ascot week
Thanks for the feedback on World Cup stats. Inspired, I’ve combined a general overview of Ascot with some data on previous years meetings.
Please see the embedded video further down this post.
It goes without saying that Ascot is big, but how big? What are the biggest days? That may surprise you if you are not into the detail of racing. The flow of the week is different at Ascot as well, so it’s worth being aware of that as …
Trading World Cup football
What an exciting start to the world cup so far! I was discounting a drab, dull and tight affair; but it’s not been too bad to be honest and the Spain / Netherlands match was amazing. What a special goal from Van Persie. Big winner from that match may actually turn out to be Man Utd I suspect!
I’m easing myself into the tournament from a trading perspective. After all it’s been four years since the last one. You also …
Chaos awaits!
OK, take a deep breath, we are about to descend into one the busiest periods in four years.
First up, the US Open Golf teed off this morning. A few hours later Racing starts and runs into the evening, when that’s over the World Cup starts. No pausing for breath before we delve deep into Royal Ascot then with the World Cup thick into its schedule Wimbledon upon us.
It’s going to be busy, but what great fun! What a …
US Open Golf – Interesting set up
An interesting set up seems to be on the cards for the US Open golf this week.
All majors tend to see tough course set ups, but the weather looks set to play a big part this week. Which is perfect for Golf traders. Tee times and existing scores could make this very tradable depending on how and when the weather arrives. But the current forecasts appear to point for a period of disruption throughout the week.
Check out the …
Betfair full year results in a nutshell
To save you from reading the entire report and listening to the hour long presentation here is a summary:-
Revenue up 2% to £393m, profit before tax up 61% to £61m
Sportsbook has grown as has customer acquisition to the sports book. Exchange is revenue is down. In the future guidance will not be given on the individual aspects so we will lose any insight as to how the exchange is performing vs. the sportsbook.
US business is performing well …
Derby Day
A traditionally good day for racing traders today with the Derby upon us. We had the Oaks yesterday and that proved OK, if a little tricky in places. The market was flowing over with money and that made it hard to get a decent fill at the right risk. The overall turnover was only £2m vs. £2.5m the year before so that was disappointing. Overall there were four races that exceeded £1m for a total of £7.5m traded at post …
The Oaks – Betfair’s first ever market
So today we reach the Oaks and tomorrow the Derby, when the summer racing really starts to step up a gear. The start of June means Royal Ascot is just around the corner.
If you are a Betfair newbie you may not know that the Oaks at Epsom was Betfair’s first market way back when they started in June 2000. But it was a little later that year, on June 11th. Mark Davis reminisced on his blog about it. I …
Inside the Shadowy World of Tennis Courtsiding
Interesting article on Court siding with contributions from Sporting Data, whose spotter was ejected from the Aussie open earlier this year, and also news of a book coming out about it! An interesting dialogue on the world of courtsiding.
You can read the full article on the fivethirtyfive web site.
Various quotes from various sources but in essence a summary of the courtsiding debate and some insight into what has been going on for quite a few years now.…
French open tennis – When it’s good to see red!
It’s great to see the start of the French open tennis and it’s one of those moments when the red clay surface will often mean green for traders.
Grand Slams often produce good matches and the slower surface at Roland Garros will bring shot making and athleticism to the fore.
Early rounds of grand slams often bring up very shot prices, but the odd shock. So I’m generally looking to oppose red hot favourites in the early rounds hoping for …
Monaco Grand Prix
Almost went to the Monaco Grand Prix this year., but the PGA Golf at Wentworth got in the way of it this year, so I’ll have to delayed my visit to this iconic race. I’m picking up some useful totals on Golf so the opportunity to make money rather than spend it, is still too tempting for me!
You could be forgiven for thinking that if you qualify on pole in Monaco you will win. The tight street circuit is …
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