Category: Horse Racing
A grand grand
Well that is one Grand National that will stick in the memory for a while. McCoy finally landed the one race that had eluded him and I tipped it up! There’s a first and it will probably be the last national tip I’ll ever land. As it is, I think I just created a problem for next year, when all those I told this year return for next years winner. Despite warning them, I am sure they will think there …
Grand National
It’s that once day a year when everybody, even if they don’t like horse racing, has a little flutter on it.
Before I started my career on betting exchanges the Grand National was the only race I really knew anything about. I was aware of the Derby and the St Leger and some of the big meetings, but it was always the Grand National that caught everybody’s attention, including mine. I distinctly remember several successful bets that my mum placed. …
Anniversary
It’s was a year ago today that thanks to an unfortunate accident I couldn’t sleep and rose early. In an early morning blur I thought I would give Aussie racing a hack and in one of those great twists of fate, I discovered another new market to trade.
While it’s not as rewarding as UK racing and involves an early rise if you want to participate, it has certainly produced rewards over the last year. I had tried Aussie racing …
Richest race in the world
Today sees the worlds richest horse race take place at Meydan, the Dubai world cup.
I’ve dabbled on the Meydan markets this year and they have been just fine. A very useful addition to the P&L during the tough winter months. Therefore I’d recommend a dabble in these markets if the volume is holding up and there is no clashing with other races. The world cup stands out on it’s own as a race later in the day so that …
Greener grass?
For some time I’ve watched the Aussie horse racing and admired that they seem to often do a better job than the UK. Then of course the weather, it’s just so much better down under. It’s enough to tempt me to head out to Aus during the winter and work from there for a little while. I had thought about doing that this year, but circumstances dictated otherwise.
This week has been a little different and three meetings have been …
At the adverts
Hmm, since Monday At The Races has not been showing extended coverage behind the red button. This is a real pain as the coverage from ATR is sketchy at the best of times, hence the title of this post. If they have decided to stop this coverage then ATR will be useless for a lot of people. As most people who are involved in racing know, getting a good look at a horse before it runs is a damn good …
Day of the drifter
Sounds like a documentary of some sort, but this was the predominant feature in Monday’s horse racing markets.
In our etenral quest for knowledge, we run strategies in the back ground all the time. These can be to test new ideas or simply to explore certain aspects in the market. One of the strategies we often run is to test how ‘swingy’ the markets are. It’s simple, every minute from four minutes out we pop an order in the market …
Snow fun anymore
We all love a bit of snow, especially if you have children. But this morning I woke up to yet another dumping of the white stuff on the lawn and my heart sank. I also had to laugh as yesterday the local authority finally cleared our road and we were able to use the car again, albeit for one evening!! Today the road is treacherous again.
I fired up my iPhone racing post app and sure enough, what looked a …
Oil
I applied some Oil to my horse trading fingers yesterday in an attempt to stop them from going rusty. With all the cancellations recently, I’ve traded other sports and also spent a lot of time testing a new version of Bet Angel. I’m always constantly pushing forward with more research, analysis and work on the market as well. However, I was really keen to do something on horse racing front. I tend to dislike just one meeting during the day, …
No……………
In the thick of battle today, pushing in orders, moving them around, getting filled on some, not on others. Ducking in and around the market, taking some risk. Phew, great total on one race, great job. Celebrate by taking five minutes out and getting a drink before sitting back down to my PC.
Race void!
Doesn’t happen very often and it’s an unfortnate circumstance that has brought it around, but trust it to happen on one of the best results …
The 300k trader
There has been a lot of discussion on the forum about a person who often appears in a number of the horse racing markets each day. Their presence in the market is getting quite common and also quite easy to spot. Today there was nothing of note, but yesterday was different.
In the 15:50 at Taunton the price had started to drift and this initiated a response. The response was a back bet of a whopping £300k, probably to try …
Channel 4 cut racing coverage
CHANNEL 4 has revealed it is slashing at least £800,000 a year from its racing budget and using the cuts to carry out “a vigorous makeover” of its coverage.
Full story here: –
Curious
There seems to be an increasing trend for very low matched bet volume on Betfair on a Saturday.
Some of the early races today had much less money matched on them than their significantly inferior midweek counterparts, it’s a curious but persistent trend. In general, I would guess there is less money being matched on horse racing than in previous years, but I’ll have to do some more work on this before I can confirm one way or the other. …
So close for Kauto
Well, what a race that was. I really though Kauto Star had lost it, but it was always going to be a bob of the head that got it ultimately. The market got the photo finish wrong for once, but I must admit I also thought Kauto Star had lost it.
Benefit of form and horse related knowledge made this a good trade opportunity today. This morning I phoned around a couple of horse racing types and talked to them …
Horse genome unlocked
Link to the full article below. So this begs the question, could we be on the verge of extra nighttime racing when scientists produce horses that glow in the dark?
https://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8345578.stm
A clear cut trading signal
I’m often asked what is a good trading signal. In fact, many factors make up a potential signal and your tolerance to risk and mindset make up another factor that contributes to whether you can act on what you see or not. I quite like manic markets that seem out of control, but that’s because I can often see order in disorder, I’m tuned to that. Some people just can’t stand those markets. But there are some clear cut trading …
Racing wants more cash
Really very interesting piece on the racing industry yesterday on the BBC web site. You can view the article here: –
https://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/8280227.stm
You can download the entire Deloitte report by clicking this text, it’s a 7Mb file.
I won’t attempt to summarise or make an opinion on the report but I do think they are slightly off with their figures. Amounts wagered and the levy amount can’t really be compared across such different markets, but I do concede that …
Iffy the comeback
I think I may have to buy this horse, I follow it’s fortunes so often. It ran, yes that’s right, it ran, this evening at Kempton. It has such a dodgy record for running I had my finger poised but it actually managed to race tonight. Maybe it’s something to do with longer races that it doesn’t like? Anyhow, for the record, here is its record: –
https://www.gg.com/racing/horseform.php/iffy-gb/3710.html
Early bird doesn’t catch the worm!
Hmmm, bit hacked off this morning. Up very early to look at the Aussie group racing. Did a nice trade at Caulfield only to see my profit wiped out in a manner I hadn’t seen in the UK.
As the race started two horses reared and one chucked it’s jockey in the stalls. In the UK that would have just been tough luck, but the stewards in Aus called one or both non runners, not quite sure what they have …
St. Leger so far
Things seem to be going OK this week, better than I expected. The Doncaster markets are a bit jumpy but by and large I am pulling in some steady but unspectacular results. My strike rate continues to improve and in the last 106 races I have lost in only 7.
Yesterday was fair, but acceptable and we still have the two biggest days coming up today and tomorrow, so that should help get to a good week. That said the …
St. Leger meeting
I must admit, from a trading perspective, I haven’t got a great deal out of this meeting in the past. I’m sort of hoping that this year will be different but I’m not setting high expectations to only be disappointed. This month has started well and my strike rate is still climbing so I’d like to hold onto that and see if I can get a good result.
My only advice, given the prior years, is to take things a …
Iffy start…. again!
Being a non horse racing type its always something interesting when I can identify a horse by name. I can’t understand how many chances this horse is going to get. It refused to race again today.
Make hay
Never was a phrase so true as in the horse racing markets than, ‘Make hay while the sun shines’ literally. During the summer we have wall to wall racing and a lot of quality then as we transition through to late August into September that just falls away.
The evening racing grinds to a halt and a card that could provide a top up to a good day or a serve you a get out of jail card, suddenly isn’t …
Where has all the money gone?
Can’t help but notice that volumes on the horse racing have often been very poor of late. This evening I was watching the ‘feature’ race of the evening a grade two race at Newmarket. Volume failed to reach £400k and most of that was on the favourite, that’s pretty poor, even for an evening race. There is also way too much bias on the favourites now in terms of volume. Volume on the favourites has always been dis-proportionate to the …
Silly scheduling
The card looks rotten today. From 14:00 we have a race every five minutes and I suspect we potentially have some clashing on the cards. With Perth now lost to the weather we could have another problem. Not an ideal scenario at all but surely one that could have been improved with some better scheduling. And the horse racing industry is wondering why the money from levy is falling?
Another meeting abandoned
Last week we had a meeting abandoned because they couldn’t get enough water on course. This week we appear to have too much. Uttoxeter has been abandoned this evening in another embarrassment for the racing industry. I’d understand the odd one but these ‘freak events’ do seem to occur with amazing regularity!
It’s been a really disjointed start to the week, I hope it gets better from here.
https://www.racingpost.com/news/horse-racing/waterlogged-uttoxeter-abandons-evening-card/605914/
Balls up at Bellewstown
Inbetween the two UK evenings races I tuned into the Irish racing. Saw a horse being led to the start. Suddenly the race is off, oh dear, it looks like they went without him. He was very heavily backed and there could be a lot of fall out from this one! I put a trade in but reversed it when I wasn’t sure what was going on. As I type, 40 minutes later, there still seems to be no decision …
How many racing traders are there?
I often get asked how many traders are on the exchanges, how much volume do they do etc? The honest answer is that I currently don’t know, but I can confirm roughly how many existed a few years ago.
Back in 2003 Betfair issued a document that actually clearly laid out what a market looked like. In the document they looked at a horse race and showed how many people placed back bets only, how many laid only and how …
Bet Angel on TV this evening
As we have previously undertaken, today we will be sponsoring an entire card of racing again. A large number of our customers owe it to the horse racing industry that they exist at all. So it seems a relatively straight forward gesture to return some of that money back into the sport. Obviously we will get some publicity as well!
Anyhow, enjoy the trading at our expense and if you get any decent trades in, send us a few screenshots …
1000-1 winners
Ok, maybe that should be 999-1 winners. Been using the quieter time this week to drift through some data. Over the last two years guess how many winners at 1000 in horse racing have come in?
The answer may surprise you, according to Betfair data its 102 winners. All but one of those drifted to odds of 1000 in running, only one was 1000 before the race started and went on to win. Fortunately I actually bagged that one, but …
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