Category: Horse Racing
Bank Building
So, not long till Cheltenham.
I don’t have a specific target for Cheltenham, I just want to line up everything as best as possible. I’ll review previous years data, check my understanding of the markets and make sure I am as ready as I can be.
One of those aspects is building up a bank big enough to use at Cheltenham. If the markets are suitable I’ll really go for it and you need a stack of cash to do …
Sprinter Sacre misses Cheltenham
Cheltenham not far away and the big news is that Sprinter Sacre will not be there.
Nightmare for Antepost backers but a dream for layers as it traded as low as 1.37 on Betfair.
I note that Henderson is just saying that Sprinter Sacre is ‘missing 10%’ so not injured, just feeling the timing isn’t right for the horse. This brings back memories of Kicking King which traded at 1000 on Betfair before going on to win the Gold Cup …
Another classic betting coup
Barney Curley may have retired but his presence was felt yet again as four heavily gambled horses romped home in style for a big accumulator today. This brought back memories of May 2010.
Eye of the Tiger came in at 13:30 at Lingfield, Seven Summits at the 13:40 at Catterick then Indus Valley and Low Key in the evening at Kempton.
The link? All the horses involved were previously associated with Barney Curley. Winning trainer John Butler, a former …
Mission not impossible
So, after a tough day yesterday we look forward to an easier task today. Some reasonable quality about and of course we have Sprinter Sacre on the card.There are also a sensible amount of races. Saturday looks promising on the racing front.
With hindsight, always a wonderful thing, yesterday didn’t go too badly for me. So as a matter of record I should blog that for a better reflection next year. But I think one thing that did trick for …
One of my favourite races of the year
The Hennessy Gold Cup was run at Newbury yesterday and I have fond memories of this race as this is the race I traded live at the IX Investor show for Betfair in 2006.
Seeing a betting company at an financial investment show was a shock for many people and lots couldn’t understand why we were there, so we had real trouble getting people to come near the stand.
This was when I rolled up my sleeves and traded live …
Racing post security breach
Just so I can send the message out to all channels as quickly as possible. It looks like Racing Post has suffered a security breach and people with accounts there may have had their details compromised. Racing post appear to be putting a message on their site this morning but it’s returning a 404 error at the moment. However I have had a couple of people send me this email. We are running a thread on the forum for people …
Market watching – Day of the drifter
I’m an avid market watcher. Every day for years I’ve collected data on what I’ve been doing and what the market is doing, where the odds are going, what’s happening etc. This allows me to ‘look under the bonnet’ of the market and understand what is going on. On occasion it throws up some real anomalies. On Monday we experienced some of that.
Monday was the ‘day of the drifter’. If you would have laid the favourite, the majority of …
Santa delivers early xmas present
No I haven’t finally got a Christmas card from Betfair, just a catch up on events at Santa Anita a couple of weeks ago.
I’ve had an on off relationship with the breeders cup over the years but this year turned out to be quite good in the scheme of things. It was marked by good and bad races but the good ones produced something and the bad ones didn’t really lose much. So I’d rank 2013 as one of …
Melbourne cup
Me and the Melbourne cup go back a few years now. Many moons ago I got interested in the ‘race that stops a nation’ and learned that it really did stop the nation, they have a national holiday today.
So, intrigued, I got up at 4am one dark winter Tuesday to see what all the fuss was about. Nothing really happened apart from a lack of sleep and I returned to bed disappointed. Back then I had converted have the …
Derby Day
Isn’t the Derby in June? Yes and no….
If you are in Australia, early tomorrow morning (UK Time) is Derby Day 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 in Santa Anita.
Typically the Friday on Breeders Cup day is …
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 …
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 …
Ebor or Ebore?
Summer racing isn’t over quite yet and today kicks of the Ebor meeting at York. I’ve traditionally done OK at this festival each year so I am looking for something above average this week.
The Ebor meeting can yield some good results, but nothing is ever guaranteed and this meeting can be a bit random at times so it’s probably not going to be all plain sailing. It should be better than what we have been seeing recently though.
Traditionally …
Goodwood so far
I think it has played out similar to what I imagined. People always over-hype Goodwood and as a consequence the markets often fill up with money that nobody takes.
If you look at the detail you can see this showing up in the stats. The average queue size at Goodwood is twice its normal size, but the fill rate is about normal. This adds up to taking a little more than twice as normal to fill. The longer something takes …
Trading Goodwood
From a trading perspective I like multi day high quality meetings. They usually throw up some good opportunities and are a welcome addition to the month.
As you may know these higher quality meetings produce extra volume and that can change the characteristics significantly. But don’t let Goodwood or anybody else fool you into thinking it’s the same as a Royal Ascot or Cheltenham, it behaves very differently. Goodwood benefits from decent volume but it’s not as much as some …
Making hay while the sun shines
An old phrase, but one that is equally applicable to trading at this time of year. Not only is the sun shining, but this year its so hot the grass has turned to hay! As we are now in peak trading season, it’s time to harvest.
At this time of year you have many opportunities, so I will stretch every sinew to do as much as I can. Everything else has to take a back seat, I’ll be a little …
Ascot so far
Sorry I didn’t provide an update yesterday, it’s just a very, very busy week!
The top line
On the top line turnover is down for Betfair and up for Betdaq. Betdaq numbers are harder to decipher than Betfair but you can see a persistent lift in turnover, however you view or cut the numbers.
On Betfair on the first three days produced £36.9m in matched bets vs £43.7m last year – £6.8m lower than last year. The current trend, turnover …
Australian racing invites back traders
Good news from the ever changing world of racing today as Betfair confirmed that the recent announcement from racing Victoria meant that conventional trading was going to be possible again, at least in the state of Victoria.
Previously a turnover charge was levied on activity and that killed the prospect of backing and laying in the same market. Now Victoria are saying they want the charge levied on net activity in the market. So they benefit from new revenue and …
Ascot day one trading review
Total matched bet turnover at post time was £13.9m vs £15.6m last year, down 11%. But some of this will be due to the fact we didn’t have a really short priced favourite in the field. Today should give us a more representative day.
Yesterday was a little erratic and no clear trading characteristics came out of it. The first day of big meetings I tend to ‘play around’ a little in the market to test things and that went …
The numbers behind Royal Ascot
And so here we are, another year, another Ascot. For me, another declined invitation to attend. While that pains me, in another couple of years it won’t be a problem. But for the moment, I’d still rather be on this side of the desk during one of the busiest weeks of the year.
Wall to wall, quality racing, from now till Saturday, I’m in trading heaven! Let’s see how it all adds up.
Last year Royal Ascot had matched bet …
Understanding UK Horse Racing
Most people understand most sports on the exchanges, but for some the terminology and structure behind racing can be a bit of a mystery. It took me some time fully graps what racing was all about and I’m no expert, but it helped how I trade the market. People attending my course will know I talk about it a fair bit. So I’ve invited forum racing favourite ‘JollyGreen’ to give you some broader background to racing. Here is the first …
Derby post mortem
An interesting Derby meeting this year. I don’t often post up analysis after the event but I thought it was worth a few notes this year.
I managed to pull a decent result out of the hat on Saturday, but I think I’d describe it as exactly that, ‘Out of the hat’. It was a bit of an erratic today, where I ended up with quite a bumpy P&L.
For some reason UK racing thought that putting on lots of …
Derby Day – Trading outlook
An OK week so far. Some of the racing hasn’t been great, but that’s given me more time to work on the French Open. A distinct lack of ‘shocks’ so far but slow and steady wins the race, as they say.
Looking forward to Derby day though and it can produce some big volumes. Last year Epsom produced £12.3m matched bet turnover for the day but that was a bit distorted by Camelot. Just that race alone accounted for around …
The Oaks – Betfair’s first ever market
So today we reach the Oaks and tomorrow the Derby, when the summer racing really starts to step up a gear. The start of June means Royal Ascot is just around the corner.
If you are a Betfair newbie you may not know that the Oaks at Epsom was Betfair’s first market way back when they started in June 2000. But it was a little later that year, on June 11th. Mark Davis reminisced on his blog about it. I …
Racing steps up a gear
Nice looking card today with Newbury, York and Newmarket then Aintree in the evening. So I’m rubbing my hands at the prospect of some more action today.
The better quality racing has been quite good this week, the other stuff in-between not so great. But I’ve managed to pull out the odd decent result while avoiding the worst of things. It’s noticeable recently though, particularly since mid April, that trying to get an order filled on the weaker betting markets …
York Dante meeting
After a successful Chester meeting last week we roll onto York for the Dante meeting this week.
The York card looks OK but the other stuff on the card today looks a little ‘testing’. I’ve never managed to consistently pull out any big totals from this York meeting in the past but I approach each market with a fresh set of eyes, so you never know.
As we move through the early part of the flat turf season the early …
Racing Victoria ups the ante
A statement from Racing Victoria this morning seems to up the ante of fees generated from bookmakers, any higher and you would think it would make sense for them to buy a bookmaker rather than going through the hassle of collecting it from them.
Despite seeing $44m, an increase of 25%, in the amount they are getting for racing, it seems that’s not enough so they are upping the rates again. It seems a dangerous tactic, but as with these …
All set for the Newmarket Guineas
The weather is looking great this weekend for the first real big trading market of the flat season, the Guineas. Good weather on a bank holiday weekend, I must be dreaming!
I’ve always enjoyed the Guineas meeting and have had some fun and game over the years on it. I’m really interested in how it will perform this year as we’ve spotted two major changes in the market between this year and last. So this weekend is turning into an …
Evening all
Tonight sees the return of the ‘I’m not interested in racing, I’m here for the concert’ season.
But seriously, flat turf evening racing starts up again tonight and as we shuffle through the weekend. We also can herald the start of Windsor in the evening, which means we things are about to step up a gear. At least in quantity.
This is a perfect time for part time traders or people who want to try trading but don’t have much …
Flat packed
Nice to see some flat turf racing underway and the weather improving. Things will get busier from here. In April the flat turf season really starts to kick in and the other meeting types decline, see the graphic. 
Aintree was the last chance of a decent total from a jumps meeting and it did oblige but in a grudging manner. I found Aintree much harder than in previous years, but that could have just been me. Markets shift subtly over …
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