Category: General
Is Betfair no longer the arbiter of true value?
Big headline, what does it mean?
OK, for years the exchange mechanism has provided a very useful pricing mechanism. An careful aggregation of demand between people competing on a level playing field and it has provided a beautiful insight into the way free markets can work to mysteriously, accurately, price an event – in this case the prediction that something will win a sports event.
But we have been watching closely as the market appears to be decoupling from it’s …
Betfair Trader Scam – Please circulate
If you have been affected by this, or know anybody that has, please get them to contact us as we want to put an end to this scam. Send us as much information as you have.
1st warning sign – Unsolicited contact
You will have no doubt become familiar with online scams and phone text ‘phishing’ messages. Basically messages designed to dupe you into parting with your username, password, access to key services or sometimes your cash.
Usually, these are …
A month in the life of
Following on from the popular a day and a week in the life of, I thought I’d give you some perspective on what a month looks like. I wanted to focus on the structure rather than the results, which I am sure you can extrapolate from information I have previously provided.
Biggest month of the year
June presented lots of Tennis and, of course, Royal Ascot, so June is traditionally one of my biggest months of the year. The first …
My Betfair birthday
I celebrated my ‘Betfair Birthday’ this week, I am now a Betfair teenager! It’s been just over thirteen years since I opened my account and started betting.
What better way to ‘celebrate’ than to look back at the moment I took the big jump? If you would have told me that thirteen years ago what I do now, I just wouldn’t have believed it remotely possible. Therefore, I suggest you always use the word impossible with the greatness of caution.…
A week in the life…
I penned a post earlier in the week about a day in the life. It was a bit off the cuff and I was surprised to get some feedback on it, blogging can be a lonely pastime, so thanks for your messages! Getting some feedback had prompted me to talk about a week in my life.
Seasonal variation
First thing to note is that my week changes throughout the year. I’m guided by the sporting calendar. In the summer this …
A day in the life
A slightly philosophical post for today.
So, it’s 20:20 and I just picked up £200 or so from the last four races. Was rather hoping there would be some Tennis around as well, but such is life.
Here is a snapshot of my life for the day: –
Up at 06:30, read emails and stuff, picked up data from the day before and did some analysis on it. Made some notes to follow up on later in the afternoon in-between …
Peak trading season nears
58 races on the card, Tennis in Madrid, players championship golf, this is all good stuff.
We are well and truly embedded in the flat turf season now. 58 races greet us on the card today and there must be at least a dozen really decent opportunities in there. I’d love to tell you what they are, but my trading style means I wont know until we are much nearer the start. But it’s all good stuff out there.
The …
A fool and his money are soon parted
‘A fool and his money’ It’s a classic phrase, but it always seems to ring endlessly true and never shall it be any different it seems.
This post is about the case at Southwark Crown Court this week, involving the now infamous Elliot Short. I see others have picked up on this before I had the chance to write about it, but here is the link to the original article which was posted up on the forum at the start …
Nasty security issue with text betting?
I’ve been messing around with SMS recently.
When you are running automation you can’t help but think, as you are guzzling down that drink at a party, how did I do on the 20:50? So I thought it may be neat to look at SMS as a solution. I thought it may technically difficult to do, but it turns out SMS is a quite easy, if not an inexpensive option. That was when I discovered something else.
I quickly realised, …
Nice finish to a tricky day
Wasn’t sure what to expect from today as it’s the first time the Lincoln has been shifted by a week since I have been trading it.
Last week we had virtually no racing at all and today we ended up with the chaos of 50 races, even excluding the big meeting at Meydan. To be honest I’d prefer neither. A nice progression from one race to another, no clashes, but lots of racing is my ideal set up. Didn’t really …
My Sports trading journey – Part four
Links to Part one, Part two & part three
The leap into the unknown
So I was in my early 30’s, had a desire to work for myself, but was in a well-paid job and travelling all over the place; which I quite enjoyed. Some things had always niggled me though.
If you work for somebody else, you feel you never truly control your own destiny. As you rise to more senior roles, you realise you are pretty much …
Eating your own lasagne
I thought I would make this post topical!
I had a decent day on Saturday. The racing wasn’t anything amazing, though I put in a solid performance, but the football gave me a rare day with no losses and that result netted far more than the racing. At least this was the case on Saturday, on Sunday football was slightly negative, it all balances out over time.
Each sport I work on I tend to use different tactics and it …
Lots of ICE
Just completing a busy week. It was one of more research, a fair bit of trading and a ton of meetings with people in the industry.
This week there have been a number of industry events on in London, the main one is called ICE. I am at the last one this morning, before heading back to the office this afternoon. These events take place each year and it’s where all the glitterati from the world of gambling come together …
Premier league darts
Premier league darts starts again this evening. Volumes have been growing on the darts for some time and it’s got my attention.
I’ve been quietly expanding my knowledge and strategies in two player markets over the last couple of years and have slowly begun to get a grip on more effective ways of trading them. Darts is on my rader.
Darts is useful because the scoring system isn’t radically different from Tennis when you break it down. You have games …
Betfair go back to the future
Some of you may have missed this, but at the turn of the month Betfair quietly slipped in a new home page.
If you are logged into your account on a computer you have previously used all appears normal. But if you log into Betfair on a new computer you are presented with an entirely different look. It’s a strange place……. The main URL appears to be www.befair.com/sport/
It has amazing new innovative features, such as fixed odds betting and …
The depths of winter
So here we are at the start of February, in the depths of winter.
Australian Open tennis has just finished, Cheltenham isn’t too far away but for now the immediate outlook is a little weak for me.
It can be pretty tough, especially on the racing front, at this time of year. So it’s only with experience that you learn not to worry, it’s just part of the annual cycle. In the summer opportunities come thick and fast and you …
Volatility friend or foe?
Volatile markets can be like rollercoasters, one minute the price is here, then it’s there, then it’s back to where it started.
There are two prevailing views on volatility, one is that it’s great because it creates opportunity and the other one that it’s a nightmare because a volatile market means more potential losses, which one is true?
I’m going to give you the first shot of an opinion. I’ve added a poll onto the main blog page where you …
My motivation
As you know I have been around for some time. I’ve really enjoyed my journey through sports markets and the key for me has been the challenge of actually doing it.
There is hardly ever a moment when I am not thinking about or actually probing some aspect of the markets. I’m always challenging myself to either find something new, explain what I’ve found or examine what is happening. Sometimes you can find things that seem radically unintuitive, so the …
My Sports trading journey – Part two
Click here for part one
Financial markets
My early forays into the gambling world had taught me two things. People very often don’t make rational decisions and that making money by gambling was incredibly hard. I didn’t need to learn the latter point as that was obvious, but I thought it was worth a try. It was a dream that maybe somehow, someday, I could find a way overcome all the issues and achieve the impossible of making gambling pay. …
My Sports Trading Journey – Part one
Some of you already know my story, but here is it for those that don’t know and for those who are looking for some inspiration at the start of the new year!
The start
To understand where I am today, you need to wind the clock back to my childhood and the spark that created everything.
When I was young I loved playing sport. That was about all I enjoyed really and didn’t particularly excel academically. As a result I …
Farewell 2012
Sat down today to have a go at the last day of 2012 with a view to signing off with a half decent result. I pretty much got that, nothing stunning but a decent result for a tricky day.
It was somewhat flattered by the last race where I pushed the boat out a bit in the hope of finishing 2012 on a high and that’s pretty much what happened. So now I can look forward to a decent evening …
2012 – The year I got a bit lazy
Actually, that is an unfair headline, as nobody who knows me would stick the lazy label on me!
But, 2012 is the year where I didn’t feel compelled to trade every day , or every market on everyday. I was determined that 2012 would be the year where I would not spent as much time as previous years stuck behind my desk. As they say, you can’t take it with you, so you may as well enjoy it while you …
Boxing day bonanza?
Hope you had a good Christmas, we are back with a bang today.
It’s a another boxing day holiday in the UK and the sports schedule will be stuffed full of fixtures, meetings and all manner of sporting events. On racing, even with one meeting abandoned there will be 80 race in the UK and Ireland today.
That’s sounds like heaven to sports traders, but it can be a bit of a nightmare. So many things happening at once often …
Book your Betfair points holiday today
For the larger commission payers amongst you, this is a reminder to make sure you examine whether its worth booking your Betfair holiday next week.
When you generate commission you get credited with Betfair points. The more points you have the lower commission you pay. But each week Betfair decay a big chunk of your points which you would then top up with more activity.
Next week is a short week, especially if you are into horse racing, so it …
Newton would have used exchanges
Newton’s Third Law states that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Sometimes people are perplexed at how you can correctly call price action on an exchange, but sometimes it’s quite easy; thanks to referancing Newton’s third law.
Every betting market must add up to 100%. It’s impossible for it to exceed that value in either direction for any prolonged period of time. So if something is coming in, in one direction, this means something else, either …
Interesting week ahead
We have a really decent week ahead of us on the markets. Lots of sporting and non sporting action ahead and some interesting markets.
The ATP World tour finals start this week in London and volumes will be high. If you get the chance book a ticket and go and watch it. It is very entertaining. Nothing like the stuffy experience of Wimbledon, where you can’t even get a ticket anyhow! Be aware of the different scoring system at this …
‘Webbinar’ thanks
Many thanks for the huge turnout at last nights Webinar. It’s been a while since we last did one so we were expecting to be busy, but I hadn’t anticipated just how busy it would be!
So a big thank you for your attendance and for the huge numbers of questions submitted. I’m sorry we couldn’t answer them all and I’m also sorry we couldn’t directly answer queries specifically on the software during the session.
In conclusion, I think we …
The folly of protectionist legislation
If there is one certainty about the world, uncertainty. Disruptive moments and technologies have been a way of life since time immemorial, in fact it seems the universe is built on constant change. Without it we wouldn’t be here. Change can be difficult, but only if you don’t embrace it.
As an example, I found an interesting piece on the how the internet has transformed over a decade, have a look: –
https://mashable.com/2012/08/22/the-internet-a-decade-later/
Back when man decided to discard the …
How to post comments on our blog
I have to admit most of the chatter on Bet Angel takes place on our forum rather than the blog. Some of the benefits of this are that comments are threaded, categorised and have many contributors.
I’ve replied to the odd comment that comes through on the blog so I know people can reply, but it seems some people are confused as to how to post comments. So here is a guide to that that very topic: –
(1) …