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.
Judicial Review rules in favour of Betfair
Full press release here: –
https://corporate.betfair.com/media/press-releases/2012.aspx
Basically William Hill have lost their case, which was arguing that an undefined group of Betfair customers should paying levy on profits. This premise carefully ignored the fact that Betfair customers already pay levy via Betfair by proxy and brushed over a number of other contradictory issues. From my view point and that of the friend of mine who is in the legal profession, it looked more like a competitive action than a legal …
The Open Championship golf
It took me a while to see the appeal of Golf as a betting sport. But over time I’ve learnt to enjoy getting stuck into the big Golf tournaments. This week we have the grand daddy of the lot, the Open Championship, being held this year at Royal Lytham and St Annes Golf club.
The thing that really caught my eye was the large price of winners on a lot of tournaments, especially the highly competitive and tricky majors. The …
Are Celtic better than a savings account?
When news came out that Rangers will start the Scottish season in divisions three, my head started spinning at all the permutations for next season. I always remember the fantastic Gretna, who rose from obscurity to become the punter and traders best friend, then promptly vanished as fast as they had risen.
In this case it’s almost the opposite. Rangers have been unceremoniously dumped from their elite status to the lower ranks of Scottish football. If Rangers can keep …
Echo’s of 2008, only worse…
I was browsing the latest list of abandoned meetings and thinking about whether we have ever had a worse summer? When I was driving back from Heathrow this morning it rained so hard that all the traffic stopped on the motorway, not encouraging. It’s really disappointing that so many sports, not just racing, are falling by the wayside. But At least it means I can get some rest after a manic start to the summer.
Euro 2012, Wimbledon, & Royal …
Cyprus legislates against Betfair
The Cypriot government announced on Friday legislation that aims to restricts products that gambling operators can offer in the country. Product restrictions included processes that are “designed to facilitate the receipt or acceptance of bets between players”.
Betfair announced this morning that they intended to challenge the decision as “the company believes that the legislation contains serious flaws and, in certain areas, is inconsistent with European Union law. “
Betfair also announced that Cyprus “generated approximately 4% of revenue from …
Marray, Murray, Wimbledon,Tennis and Fish
Really looking forward to the Wimbledon mens final today, when history will be made one way or another. Maybe we will see a Marray / Murray double, how funny would that be?
Unfortunately I will not be able to witness it first hand as I will stuck in mud / traffic at the British Grand Prix. I didn’t figure Nadal would go out of the tournament so early and that Murray would make it to the final. It’s also a …
British Grand Prix
I’m off to see the British Grand Prix this weekend. Just my luck that the race day should coincide with the moment the first Briton in 74 years is going to be playing the men’s final at Wimbledon, I’d quite like to watch that. But I can’t renege on the offer to take my son to Silverstone, even if it means trudging through what is likely to be very boggy ground.
The weather forecast looks mixed at best and this …
Darwin would have been proud
I try and actively monitor everything I am doing in the market, often this can pay dividends in unusual ways.
As a general approach I would recommend storing as much information about what you do as possible, even if you don’t need it right now. I’ve collected loads of data recently from Wimbledon and Euro 2012 but I have no practical purpose for it at the moment. At some point in the future I may revisit it, or find a …
The camera never lies?
I stumbled upon an interesting article about the Euro 2012 championships: –
How TV Lied To You During Euro 2012 – https://deadspin.com/5923264/sorry-mario-balotelli-didnt-really-make-this-german-fan-cry-how-tv-lied-to-you-during-euro-2012
I’ve always had a healthy mistrust of what you see on TV. It spawned from some very odd results and betting on Reality TV shows many years ago. Careful editing and production can show up a story that isn’t, in reality, being played out. The real scandal followed though when it turned out insiders where betting on the …
Spain vs Italy
An interesting set up for the final. I’ve had a really busy week, again, so I’ll be taking it easy and will trade pre-off, but sit down and watch the match.
The match is priced for just over two goals with an extra 0.40 going to Spain. It’s basically saying you have two even teams but Spain are effectively at ‘home’.
I know I often post this sort of comments, but I’m not sure if people pay much attention to …
Best Wimbledon trading ever?
This has been a great Wimbledon so far. Lots of seeds faltering and some outright fails in the mix already. The biggest coming last night when the second seed, Nadal, spectacularly crashed out despite starting at decimal odds of 1.01. It could be my imagination but it’s difficult to remember so many opportunities to turn over such short odds when trading, even for a small number of ticks.
It prompted me to look back at previous Wimbledon tournaments to see …
Betfair revenue down, profits up
Betfair have released their FY12 results this morning and it shows top line revenue down 1% but underlying earnings up 46%. ‘Underlying’ figures are a bit different though, but until we see the presentation it’s difficult to know the exact detail behind the figures or how it was generated. Full result annoucement here: –
https://corporate.betfair.com/media/press-releases/2012/29-06-2012.aspx
Generally speaking, ‘Revenue’ is commision earned from customers, so that appears to have fallen or on an ‘underlying basis’ not grown much. From what I …
Extra time and the ‘to qualify’ market
At last this week, I have finally got the chance to have a play around in the ‘to qualify’ markets in extra time.
These are some of my favourite in-play markets on footy because you can, to a certain extent, frame your upside and downside risk. The downside will always be a goal, but the upside is relatively neat and frequent on both teams.
As the teams play out extra time, if the match remains level, the odds on either …
Good start for traders at Wimbledon
There are three main surface types that Tennis matches are played on. Hard, Grass and Clay. Over time I’ve got to understand just how important each surface type is and how it affects matches.
Which surface do you think throws up the most competitive matches? I’ll answer later in the week.
Yesterday saw several good chances to profit from a range of matches. Red hot favourites struggled to break down stubborn opponents, see Nadal’s match, and good starts by rising …
Royal Ascot trading review
This was an interesting year at Royal Ascot. The obvious highlights were Frankel’s win and Black Caviar’s close call. I thought the Duke of Edinburgh presenting his wife with a trophy was also a moment to remember, surprised to see no caption competitions on that!
Overall, according to Betfair’s statistics, £92.6m was traded before the off, up from £73m the year before. However, that included to races at incredibly short prices. If you strip those out and add back average …
Italy vs Italy
I looked long and hard at this evening’s match in Kiev and I, like the market, am finding it difficult to split the result.
I think the main reason for this is that I think both sides will cancel each other out. We have become used to Italian football being based around defense counter attacking play. Now England seems to have adopted this style as well. That seems to position the match for a low scoring nail-biter. Cue, a dramatic …
Black Caviar to romp home carrying the Aussie flag?
Ascot trundles on this week and all is well.
I feel a bit like I am going through the motions this year. Yes it’s nice to get a really good week, but year on year there isn’t the sort of growth in the underlying market I would like, I’ll explain more in my final ‘a question of scale’ post at some point.
It’s been a manic couple of weeks so I’m looking forward to getting a break in the near …
A different way to profit from Euro 2012
As you know Euro 2012 is a seeded tournament. When the little balls came out of the bag it was designed so that the higher ranked teams would progress to the latter stages of the tournament and make UEFA more money, sorry, make the tournament more entertaining.
To be fair to UEFA, it is the same in most modern tournaments, the big teams and big audiences fund the sport and therefore want to be favoured. Tennis grand slams are …
Royal Ascot so far
A blockbuster start to day one with Frankel opening proceedings and promptly romping home by an astonishing distance.
Matched bet turnover was up on last year, but that’s no surprise on the basis of Frankel’s very short price. Overall pre-off volumes are ahead of last year, £35.3m has been matched on the races of the first two days. Curiously in-running matched bet volumes are down £3m on last year.
Tuesday is the day when I try and work out what …
Royal Ascot – First up Frankel
So it’s finally here, Royal Ascot starts today and I can’t wait!
I’m going to have an easy morning each day this week so I can prepare and feel relaxed for the on-coming challenge of the busy Ascot markets. Yesterday I did a dry run of all my set-ups, back up positions, automation, settings etc. and then went out for a bike ride with my youngest daughter. So I’m relaxed and about as ready as I can be.
The only …
Croatia 2 Spain 2 ?
Some of you with long memories may recognise this scenario from Euro 2004. Back then Denmark and Sweden need a 2-2 draw to ensure they progress to the knockout phase of the tournament at the expense of Italy. Remarkably the game ended 2-2 to howls of protests from the Italians.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UEFA_Euro_2004_Group_C#Denmark_vs_Sweden
Wind forward to 2012 and we have a similar situation. However, Croatia and Spain have tried to quash conspiracy theorists who suggest the two sides would settle for a …
Bizarre end to Queens Club Tennis final
In the last twelve years I’ve seen a lot of weird things in sport. Unexpected endings or remarkable twists and turns. Today I learnt something new about Tennis, Injuring an official will cost you the match, no matter how important the match.
David Nalbandian has done well at Queens this week and was doing well in the final. He vented his frustration on an advertising hoarding after losing a game and injured a line judge. The result was disqualification. Never …
15th Major for Woods?
Tiger Woods got of to a steady start yesterday on the first day of the US Open in his quest for a 15th major. The market has been shortening Woods for tournaments recently and responded by pulling in his price from 9’s to 3.95. Surprise leader is Micheal Thomson who has come in from 690 to 30’s after posting a four under on the first round, don’t you just love golf! Conditions were described as ‘testing’ and this has caused …
What we learnt about England
It’s always worth looking at Statistics to tell you what really went on in a football match, rather than what you think you saw. So with that in mind here is a round up of some stats on the England match: –
First stop has to be be ‘fourfourtwo’ as it contains the most comprehensive and objective analysis of the match. Click here to read it in its full glory. There is an app you can download from iTunes which …
The science of choking
With England due into action today I thought this may be an appropriate topic.
I will be watching the England match with great interest. Primarly to see how the England players settle in against the French. Will the weight of expectation weigh on their shoulders, or will the lack of expectation relax them and allow them to perform to their full ability? If the latter happens then that could be quite interesting with England trading at larger odds than normal. …
Rain stops play, starts trade
After a generally uncompetitive end to the women’s Tennis at the French Open I was looking forward to a decent final in the men’s. Fresh from the Aussie open blockbuster I had hoped we could see some very competitive action, not forgoing Nadal’s dominance on clay.
The first set was a bit of a mish mash with five breaks in seven games before Nadal went on to go two sets up. Djokovic needed some something to turn it around and …
England expects….. Not very much
So here we are at the dawn of the Euro 2012 championships, full of hope optimism and … well, to be honest, if you are English you may be dreading it. So it reserve the optimism for other nationalities.
This must be the first tournament where universal optimism for England from English fans has vanished. Each tournament England fans generally go from skeptical to optimistic as the tournament approaches and the generally feeling on day one is ‘You know what, …
The Derby on BETDAQ
Last year I consciously decided to allocate a lot more of my time to learning and understanding how the markets on Betdaq work in great depth. No guess for what prompted this! In the past I’d tended to cherry pick markets as it was easy to find markets that were more suitable for my style, but I felt I really should make the effort to work harder on ALL markets.
A year on and I’m active on pretty much all …
A tale of two different tournaments
You couldn’t wish for two more different tournaments in the French open this year. On the men’s side Nadal is playing consistently and has eased through to the latter stages. His opponents meanwhile have stuttered and at times looked in real trouble. If you look at the men’s draw; all this has meant that Nadal, ‘the king of clay’, has shortened from 1.72 at the start of the tournament to just 1.58. All the other top seeds have drifted.
On …
The Royal Derby
Many thanks Ma’am for bringing some focus to racing on your Diamond Jubilee, it is much appreciated.
The Derby market is a funny one for me. Over the years I have flip flopped between good and bad results. Looking at today’s race, it looks a bit tricky. With Camelot going off at such a short price interest in the market will be high and I expected there will be significant volume in the market. That’s great, but it will squash …
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