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.
Champions league goal ratings
Champions league ratings for this evening, forecast variation to long term average. Basically are we expecting more or less goals than average. Looks like a nice for overs, I’ve shared out 22 goals this evening.
Most to least goals: –
- Arsenal Vs. Dortmund – 118%
- Austria Vienna Vs. Atl Madrid – 110%
- Schalke Vs. Chelsea – 108%
- AC Milan Vs. Barcelona – 108%
- Steaua Bucharest Vs. FC Basel – 106%
- Porto Vs. Zenit St Petersburg – 101%
- Celtic Vs. Ajax
End of flat season nears – Trading advice
Nice to see Cheltenham on the card again, but with the first two races containing a total of nine runners, I’m not getting that excited about the jumps just yet.
Traditionally the end of the flat season is the November handicap at Doncaster. This falls on the 9th of November this year. But tomorrow being champions day at Ascot, will more or less be a celebration of the flat season.
The forecast for tomorrow is better than I expected …
Ladbrokes ready exchange for launch
Activity picking up on Ladbrokes on what appears to be a launch, ahead of schedule, of the exchange that was touted at their results as I documented a little while ago.
A quick browse of the Ladbrokes website shows that the tab has already been added to the site ahead of the launch. So what do we expect to see?
Well, you may or not know, that Betdaq is actually intertwined with the ‘Global betting exchange’. The concept being …
Betfair set to launch in New Jersey
My industry antennae picked up this new website recently: –
Betfair appear to be readying for a launch in New Jersey, but unfortunately it’s just casino and gaming. Hardly ground breaking stuff. But interesting nonetheless.
The choice of imagery just above the subscription form is interesting. A London backdrop?
Anyhow, I’ll keep you updated when things mature a bit.
Home advantage for Poland
England at at short odds to win and get to Rio, I hope they do. I was too young to remember the legendary 1973 performance, but it seems everybody is drawing parallels with that. The simple fact is that life is best understood backwards but you have to live it forwards, so most forecasters will not be examining that chapter of England’s history and the price reflects that.
England also failed to qualify for the 1978 finals and I do …
England Expects – Another draw?
I’ll be watching but not trading tonight for the world cup qualifiers. As a rule of thumb I can’t trade something when I am emotionally attached to it. Tonight I’ll shall no doubt be shouting, moaning, directing and heading the ball at various points. I think I’d class that as an emotional attachment!
I’ll still do some stuff before the off and will probably carry that in play, but it terms of ‘hard core’ trading that can take a back …
Does scalping still work?
I’m doing a course today at the office where, amongst many things, I will talk about scalping and answer this question. The answer is ‘Yes’ by the way.
Qualifying the ‘yes’
For every market, there is a strategy and every strategy a market. Your mission is to join the two up. If you deploy the wrong strategy in the wrong market then you will get bad results. So underlying this ‘Yes’ is some depth and qualification, it takes a bit …
Traders of the Prix De L’Arc
Once a year I will taste some French racing like a connoisseur tastes French wine, with a sense of appreciation but with the gusto of a true enthusiast.
I don’t tend to trade on Sunday’s, or on French racing; but the richest race in Europe always draws my attention as it and the companion races are nearly always an opportunity. Most of the surrounding card in the UK is not the greatest quality, so I’ll tend to do some other …
Early kick off – Match preview
Many thanks to our friends over at Football Form Labs for this guest post.
Man City v Everton
While David Moyes’ first Manchester derby at The Etihad turned into a nightmare, his Everton team always had an excellent record here. With Roberto Martinez having good memories of playing City from last season’s FA Cup final, can The Toffees maintain their unbeaten start?
Everton are the only unbeaten side in the Premier League but City have comfortably won all three of …
Goals, Goals, Goals….
If you search the blog for ‘Europa league ratings’ you should find a bundle of comments on previous Europe leagues . I don’t tend to post them much now as I never really got much feedback. I’m happy to post them regularly again if people want, I use them and it should be of use to others.
Number of goals
The thing I like about the Europe league at this stage is that it allows you to aggregate risk significantly. …
Relegation & promotion markets and over reaction
I’ve been active in the promotion and relegation market for a few years now, but this year is a good example of why.
I’m always amazed at how volatile the market can be throughout the season. This year looks like an interesting year at the top, but I hadn’t imagined just how much prices would fluctuate so early in the season. I’m mean it’s only just started and yet people are heavily discounting something that won’t happen till next May.…
What’s a Mata with Chelsea?
Kindly brought to your by our friends over at Football Form Labs.
Spurs v Chelsea
Spurs have conceded just one goal this season to sit second in the table behind arch rivals Arsenal . However, they lost their only major test so far, in the North London derby, so if they want to prove they are genuine title contenders they will look to make full use of home advantage here against Chelsea.
Four of the last six meetings between …
Good days, bad days and risk management
I have good and bad trades, good and bad days but generally I don’t have bad weeks and, in fact, as time progresses my chance of a loss decreases. Why, because of the way I manage risk.
Approach to risk
The way I approach risk is pretty much the same on a trade by trade basis or on a day by day basis. One major advantage you have in sports markets, is the large number of events taking place, so …
Will 1.01 be gubbed tonight?
Must admit that I hadn’t paid that much attention to the America’s cup yachting and even less as a trading event, but the remarkable turnaround by team USA has set up a fascinating finale this evening.
New Zealand raced to a 8-1 lead and it was seemingly impossible that they could loose the cup, but tonight could be set for one of those remarkable sporting comebacks. Certain the momentum is with Team USA.
New Zealand have already been matched at …
Original Betfair investor cashes out
News today that Balderton Capital ‘cashed out’ it’s remaining investment in Betfair.
An RNS notice appeared today showing that Balderton had sold 4,227,170 shares bringing their holding from 4.04% to 0%.
The significance of this is that Balderton were one of the original investors. To quote their website: –
“Balderton’s original investment in Betfair was made in 2000 and it remains one of the largest institutional shareholders post the listing. The partners have been actively involved in the development …
New version of Bet Angel available
We were pleased launch the latest version of Bet Angel over the weekend, version 1.35. You can read more about it and watch some videos in the newsletter that was sent at the weekend: –
https://www.betangel.com/newsletter/
Key improvement is more customisation of the ladder interface and the new ability to be able to spawn multiple ladders on multiple markets from the most common market selection tools in Bet Angel.
If you are an existing Bet Angel subscriber just download …
Fiery Italians Produce Dirty Derbies
Many thanks to our friends over at Football Form Labs for this guest post. Football Form Lab is software that I use to help me spot patterns or trends in football matches. It can help you identify thousands of opportunities every week across over 40 different leagues. It’s very detailed and that’s why I like it, so much information.
Form Labs is currently on offer and you can save 66% on a Form Labs subscription.
Fiery Italians Produce Dirty …
Manchester Derby – Match preview
Many thanks to our friends over at Football Form Labs for this guest post, E&OE and all that. Football Form Lab is software that I use to help me spot patterns or trends in football matches. It can help you identify thousands of opportunities every week across over 40 different leagues. It’s very detailed and that’s why I like it, so much information. Form Labs is currently on offer and you can save 66% on a Form Labs subscription.…
Betfair reaffirm the importance of their exchange
You may remember our campaign a little while ago where we encouraged everybody to provide some feedback to Betfair, you can read the original post by clicking here.
Well it seems they are listening as they posted a full response this morning and re-opened the thread again. I’ve extracted some of the response here to highlight some key elements in it: –
Thanks to everyone who voted, your opinion counts and we recognise that introduction of the Sportsbook may …
Authorities close in on match fixing king
News this morning of many arrests in Singapore and the possibility that the leader of a global fixing ring, Dan Tan, is in custody.
If you want to understand why sports betting often gets such a bad press then here is the story that should explain why for you: –
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/dan-tan-the-man-who-fixed-football-8554751.html
I find it frustrating that corruption exists in sport and I believe its one of the reasons why if you manage to make some money in this market then …
Will the premier league goal drought continue?
Many thanks to our friends over at Football Form Labs for this guest post. Football Form Lab is software that I use to help me spot patterns or trends in football matches. It can help you identify thousands of opportunities every week across over 40 different leagues. It’s very detailed and that’s why I like it, so much information.
Form Labs is currently on offer and you can save 66% on a Form Labs subscription.
ANALYSIS – WILL THE …
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. I see some people are talking it up, but that just shows they haven’t traded it …
Bert sells more Betfair shares
With Betfair shares now approaching £10.55, seemingly a bit ahead of current events. Andrew Black, founder of Betfair, sold another tranche of shares yesterday. The sale amounted to 600k of shares somewhere over £6m in total. This sales leaves Bert with just over 4m shares down from 10.5m back on 14th November 2011. So Bert has reduced his holding by over 60% in less than two years.
Shares hit a low of £6.50 this year before running up on a …
Betfair change home page (again)
Thanks to a machine I use that doesn’t allow cookies I was able to see that Betfair have changed their home page again.
I don’t know whether this was in response to the campaign I kicked off recently, I doubt that alone was responsible, but at least I was able to make your voices heard.
Anyhow the exchange now sits alongside the sports book. For those that are cookied up you can see the changes on the following link: …
Betfair re-invigorate Tradefair platform
Visting the Tradefair site this morning I noticed at announcement on the home page: –
“We are excited to announce that we are now partnering with GFT Global Markets UK Ltd (GFT Markets) to bring you a new service with enhanced tools, features and first class customer service that we believe will make your trading experience even better. Switch by no later than the 12th December 2013, as your existing Tradefair service will become inactive for new trades from that …
Predicting the winner of the US Open
It’s not just the players that are complaining about the scheduling of the US Open Tennis. I can’t trade the final tonight as it’s my wedding anniversary today. I’ve been married even longer than I’ve been on Betfair, but one benefit of that is the next generation of traders is following just behind me!
I saw this interesting BBC article this morning and it talks about the data collection that IBM do as part of their deal to these tournaments: …
The market can be bizzare sometimes
We were treated to a spectacular turn of events last night at the US Open Tennis.
By a coincidence, I have been carefully studying the way the market behaves before the off at the US Open this year. More or less it’s flat as a pancake, but there are subtle bits of information contained in the pre-off pricing. I’ve been more interested in how this changes over the rounds.
In the latter stages of the tournament as the amount pre-off …
The affect of the international break
First in a regular series of posts from our friends over at Football Form Labs. Endorsement follows….
Football Form Lab is software that I use to help me spot patterns or trends in football matches. It can help you identify thousands of opportunities every week across over 40 different leagues. It’s very detailed and that’s why I like it, so much information.
Form Labs is currently on offer and you can save 66% on a Form Labs subscription.…
Betfair paint a confusing picture
It’s the Betfair AGM today, I wont be going this year as I have sold my shares. But I know somebody who is, so I’ll let you know if anything interesting comes out of it. In line with this an interim management statement was issued this morning.
Generally the tone was bullish despite reporting a decline in revenue. Revenue was down 13% year on year but underlying earnings were up. Betfair wrote off a lot of expenses in the last …
Why we have a Federer fail
Lots of press this morning about the ‘shock’ exit of Roger Federer in the US Open. But, as I have posted before, Federer is definitely in the twilight of his career. As a middle aged man, much as I hate to admit it, 32 is old in sporting terms. In Tennis, players turn pro at an average age of 18 and retire at 32, Federer is 32.
I love analysing all sorts of things to spot, and more importantly, anticipate …
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