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.
SPOTY
Trading BBC sports personality of the year
Are you getting a duff price?
Had an interesting conversation with somebody recently about how they can’t use the exchange any longer because the prices on the sports book were much better.
Here is why he realised he had made a mistake: –
Industry pricing for football
The first thing to note is that industry prices on football are much tighter than they used to be. I’ll have to dig out some very old prices to see what they were in the distant past, but typically …
Incentive to score and how it benefits your trading
That one word is how I would describe the next two evenings worth champions league matches.
Some teams will have a big incentive to score, others to not lose and others no incentive to do anything at all. If a team needs a goal, as the clock ticks to the end of the match all hell could be let loose as they chase it. It’s my favourite stage of a any competition!
Difficult and easy
This often makes it difficult …
Finding value in Football matches
Yesterday I posted the following:-
There were a number of reasons I said I was looking for some upsets, far too complex for one blog post. But one of the things was confidence. Not confidence in my ability, that’s not a problem :), but more confidence within the teams playing each other. It looked fairly ripe for an upset or two. Therefore I was looking to lay (and / or trade) with that in mind. I was opposing the …
New version of Bet Angel – 1.42
I was searching the Blog this evening to point somebody to the additions we made in the most recent version of Bet Angel and realised I hadn’t posted it. It was posted on the forum, but not here. So it seemed logical to post it here as well!
Download the latest version of Bet Angel from here: –
https://www.betangel.com/download/?product=BetAngelPro
Watch a video about it here: –
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=21wYOdX0PJM
The long and short of the latest version of Bet Angel is that …
Tingle Creek meeting
For some reason, I know it’s named after a horse, the Tingle Creek meeting at Sandown sounds Christmassy to me, but for sure is an early highpoint in December .
The meeting is joined by Aintree and the Welsh Grand National trial on Saturday to make a decent card. It should make up for the dross we have had during the week!
At this time of the year it’s easy to slip into some gloom. Like the weather, the markets …
Hennessy Gold Cup – One of my favourite races
I have fond memories of the Hennessy Gold Cup. I’ve traditionally done well at this race and its the race I traded live at the IX Investor show for Betfair in 2006. I know I’ve posted this summary, or something similar, before. But it’s definitely one of the highlights of my trading career so far so it’s worth a reprise for those that haven’t seen it before.
Betfair at a financial market expo
Seeing a betting company at a financial …
Help me, help you
Over the last 15 years I’ve researched roughly a million markets, traded somewhere approaching 175,000 and recorded thousands of videos. I often record myself trading so I can look back and understand how I could do better, I’d recommend it!
The problem
It would be nice to publish a lot of those videos, unfortunately I don’t tend to have the time to do that. We keep a small team here and there are only 24 hours in a day! That’s …
OLBG trading censorship
A little while ago I saw a comment on OLBG’s site that I knew wasn’t true. So, as is my right, I made a comment to clear up any confusion. The author responded positively and kindly to my clarification and all was good. A generally positive experience, I think I’ll come back again.
Faffing about
A few months later I checked back and noticed the counter comment was gone, so I tried to log into my account and post again. …
Free Tennis trading guide worth £19.99
Interested in trading on Tennis? Why not combine some knowledge with the best Tennis trading software around!
[If you are finding this via an outdated link this promotion was run in 2015 and is no longer available]
The offer
Order a copy of Bet Angel Professional (excluding one day access) and get a copy of Dan Weston’s – ‘Mastering Tennis trading’ completely free of charge. Click here for an overview of the book, we are giving away the full version…
ATP World tour finals
The ATP World tour finals have already started, in case you hadn’t noticed, and tonight we were treated to a Djokovic vs Federer rematch. Today Murray vs Nadal.
I like this tournament. I’ve been a couple of times now and it’s such a different feel from the slightly stuffy and exclusive Wimbledon. It was great to hear that London will continue to host this series until at least 2018. It’s much more vibrant than Wimbledon and you WILL get …
I think I’ve spotted a trend!
I must admit, the Melbourne Cup Carnival has got off to a slow start for me this year. So I thought I’d better check on whether I was underperforming, or whether there was something else going on.
Something else in going on.
I took the first two days of the Carnival from my records and analysed total turnover in the markets for those two days. Obviously it started from a lower base some time ago, but the peak was in …
Derby Day is almost here
Isn’t the Derby in June? Yes and no….
If you are in Australia, early tomorrow morning (UK Time) is Derby Day at Flemington in Victoria. This kicks off the Melbourne Cup carnival and a week of top class Australian action. On Tuesday we have the race that stops a nation, the Melbourne Cup. It’s a busy period full stop on the horse racing front, as we also have the Breeders Cup on as well.
Typically the Friday on Breeders Cup …
An elegantly timed Betfair outage
Ok, so no Betfair outage is elegantly timed in reality, but as you may have noticed, I’ve been quite this week. That’s because I find myself in San Francisco at the moment. So the outage was ‘handy’ as I wasn’t going to be trading this morning, but also the ‘why’ bit of my location explains why the outage came at a good time.
Silicon Valley
I’m always interested in tech startups and of course Silicon Valley is home to an …
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. Football form labs is on offer at the moment, big savings available during August.
Editorial notes: –
A couple of interesting bits this week, the match preview of Spurs vs Liverpool (I do wonder whether we will see the new manager effect come to the fore here) and some interesting analysis …
Surrealism
I’m having a bit of a surreal moment…
Clear thoughts
I remember clearly when I decided that I was going to try and make a go of this Betfair thing, it seemed a little crazy. Nobody really knew what I was going on about and absolutely nobody, nobody, thought that what I was doing was remotely sensible.
That was many years ago now and it seemed obvious to me at the time that it was going to be difficult to …
Spreadsheets alone can’t win games
When John Henry took over Liverpool football club I was intrigued to see how things would pan out.
I had known for a number of years that Liverpool had net underspent in comparison to their peer group in the Premier league. This meant that they were likely to start slipping down the league as their competitors had much more fire-power when it came to the transfer market. I often detail this knowledge at the start of each season and you …
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.
Today starts the two day meeting at Longchamp. Saturdays are intermingled with some quality in the UK, so don’t tend …
Why trading horse racing works so well!
We had a glorious example earlier this week as to why trading is definitely a better way to earn money on Racing than traditional punting! The great thing about this trade, is that I did it office when we had somebody in for training; so it was great to pull of such a trade while they were here.
If somebody from a traditional punting background doesn’t understand why they should trade, show them this post!
The set up
We have …
Betdaq up the ante
First off, get FREE fully featured Betdaq software at www.betdaqangel.com – Don’t worry if you don’t have a Betdaq account as you can get one when you first log in.
Volumes have been inching up on Betdaq’s horse racing markets for some time and they are encouraging even more activity with some new offers and a completely new commission system.
The firs thing that should catch your interest is that Betdaq are commission free at Ascot and Newmarket on Saturday. …
Newmarket Cambridgeshire meeting
I missed typed this headline when I first wrote it, a hasty re-write was in order! It’s amazing how a misplaced ‘t’ instead of an ‘r’ can change a headline.
But despite my initial slip, which could have been freudian in nature, this meeting at Newmarket isn’t too bad. We start today and build to a climax on Saturday. I’ve picked off some good results from the meeting in the past and I’m hoping to repeat that this year.
Today …
Why trading works so well – On football
With the champions league football starting up again, I thought I’d take a look at football at a simple level and explain why trading works so well, using football as an example.
First off a simple maths lesson.
Finding value
When you look at odds on Betfair, they refer to the implied chance of that event occurring. If we saw Manchester United priced at 2.00, we simply divide one by those odds and it produces the implied probability of that …
The distorting impact of XM on Tennis
I was trying to think of a better headline, but that will have to do!
XM means ‘cross matching’ and while I was trading some of the activity in the pre-off markets this evening on the US Open Tennis men’s final I switched it on and off to have a look underneath the main market. Cross matching is the complicated, in most cases unnecessary, process that Betfair uses to offer bets on both sides of the market. On Tennis, being …
A Corbyn coup
I started getting into political markets a few years ago. The first market I seriously played was the US presidential market in 2004. For the last election over there, I was actually present in the country, which was quite interesting. Since then I’ve spent a fair amount of time looking at political markets. The most recent is the next Labour leader. Whether you make or lose money you always learn something from your participation in the market amd the same …
Laytown races – Laying on the beach
The races
Since 1868 Laytown has hosted the annual race meeting like no other. With no formal race course to host the equine competitors, these horses are raced on the beach. Laytown catches the attention of wide range of racing and non-racing goers each year.
Quite a few years ago I was captivated by the sight of horses running on the beach. It just seemed a bit different and interesting. So I set my sights on visiting this very unique …
Free money
With today’s incredibly short priced international football mismatches, I thought I’d review just what has happened in the past on matches where the odds are incredibly short. The results may surprise you.
First I looked at the real shorties in our database. We found 19 matches with decent data that went off at 1.01 for the home win, all 19 ended up as home wins. Indeed you needed to head out to 1.04 to find Luxembourg’s shock win in Switzerland …
US Open Tennis – Scoreline statistics
US Open Tennis – The statistics behind the scorelines
Advice from Dan from tennisratings.co.uk .…
I thought I’d look at the US Open on a historical basis and look at the statistics behind the scorelines. An angle I wanted to look at for this blog post was laying players in-play when either a set up, or two sets up. As an introduction, the table below shows the percentages each correct scoreline occurred in Grand Slams since 2011:-
| Scoreline | 2011 |
US Open Tennis – Arm yourself to the teeth this year!
While the summer evening racing markets have finished, thanks to the US Open tennis there is still plenty to do in the evenings at the moment.
With Bet Angel you get the benefit of specialist Tennis trading tools, namely: –
- The unique Tennis modelling and profiling tool – Tennis trader
- Live scores on each match
- A handy watch list so you can look at all matches and scores all at once
- The ability to trade on live scores via 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. Football form labs is on offer at the moment, big savings available during August.
Arsenal v Newcastle, Sat 12:45
Newcastle picked up a point at Old Trafford last weekend but while they had a chance to win the match late on they conceded several great chances and against an Arsenal team that …
Betfair shock market with Paddy Power merger
It’s not often you get a full blown WTF moment, but we got one this morning with news that former Paddy Power COO, Breon Corcoran, who is now Betfair CEO. Has agreed to a takeover / merger with Paddy Power.
It is being positioned as a merger, but the simple fact is that Betfair will be a minority in the new partnership only holding a 48% stake of the company, Paddy Power would hold a 52% stake. Paddy Power are …
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