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US PGA Day one
As predicted Rory got off to a steady start and is only one behind the leaders at Valhalla. But the surprise of the day came from Lee Westwood. If past performance is anything to go by then Westwood will not see this through. I’ve forgotten how many times he has been in contention early on for his first major only for it to slip away. He’s the modern Montgomerie.
Another surprise was the unexpected withdrawal of Matt Kuchar and Jason …
Valhalla beckons, will Rory roar?
Some of the stats I’ve used here have come from the excellent Golf Stats website.
The golfing world’s attention now swings, excuse the pun, to Kentucky and to two golfers in particular.
I like competitive golf tournaments where the winner is uncertain but currently, despite Rory McIlroy’s comments, we do appear to be entering a new era in golf. Tiger Woods dominated for a number of years and each tournament would start with him as a clear leader. Thanks …
Peter’s laying system
Slightly tongue in cheek title – If there’s one mistake I’ve made in my time in the markets it’s not sticking my name on a concept. As a consequence there are a lot of phrases out there that most probably originated from this camp but are now in general use. Therefore I’m probably the ‘hoover’ of the Betfair trading world, the ‘biro’ the ‘sellotape’. To be fair this happens to everybody who is a pioneer so a also tip my …
Little and often
This is a phrase I’ll often quote when advising people on how to trade. I posted up a full list of results from yesterday and it got a fair amount of commentary because it illustrated exactly that point. More information further down this post.
It’s really nice to bang in some massive results now and again, but generally, that’s not what trading is about. Well. not 80% of the time on racing.
Most of the time I’m in a market …
Southampton agree fee for tea lady
Quite a few jokes doing the rounds at the unprecedented sale of Southampton players which is attracting a lot of press. But inside the humour and horror (for Southampton fans) some serious lessons for traders. You can profit from the mayhem. But first, anecdotal reflection and another trading lesson.
In 2003 I sat in the Millenium stadium and crowed at how Southampton had finally made it. Seventh in the premier league, FA Cup final and a crop of talented …
Goodway
So Goodwood is underway and it’s performing more or less as I expected and, hopefully, set your expectations at.
In the first two days the biggest race reached £2.2m but the lowest was waaaaaaaaaay off that. Mainly thanks to clashing with other races. Attention is very firmly focused on the feature races and that’s producing the majority of the matched bet turnover so far, helping all markets reach £16m so over the two days. But curiously it doesn’t feel like …
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 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 major meetings. Therefore …
Gearing up for Goodwood
I’ve been having a quiet week as you can probably tell from various social media bits. After fourteen years on the markets a really busy summer requires an effort to not completely burn out so I’ve been taking it a bit easier. Also my twins turned to teenagers this week, so that’s worth celebrating. You may have noticed that I still can’t resist a rock solid opportunity however!
In the Summer it’s possible to skip some sessions as you know …
Wonder weather you should trade?
Nice example today of how weather can play a important part in sport.
I’ve mentioned before that Rain in F1 can play an important part in a race. Turning a predictable victory into an unpredictable melee of circumstances.
Today we were presented with that and say the winner market dump odds of 1.51, 1.12 and 2.10. Daniel Ricciardo, who is having a great season, won the race but traded widely at 40’s. Throw into the mix a fast, but …
Pre-season football
Interested to see the result from Man Utd’s first result under new management!
But….. not much to be read into pre season friendlies TBH. As a manager you are looking at new players, either acquired or coming up through the ranks and assessing things for the next season. Results are not paramount, but injuries are and when I looked into pre-season friendlies a few years ago there seemed to be little correlation to the start of the new season.
What …
Open Golf – Day two
Two clear leaders at the end of day one. McIlroy’s second round collapse is due to start at 14:27 today!
I’ve posted a list of movers on the forum.
There can be a really complex correlation between tee times and the effect on players who have yet to step onto the course, but this near.y always presents an opportunity. It’s much safer to trade somebody who isn’t playing or who has finished, than somebody that just sent the ball …
Open Golf
Curiously, Golf was one of the first markets I bet on Betfair way back in June 2000. But I quickly moved onto other sports before I returned with a vengeance a few years later.
The British Open is different from other majors in that it is played on rotation schedule across a number of ‘links’ courses in the UK. Links courses are traditionally near the sea, are near or on dunes, have an uneven surface and a sandy soil. This …
Did Betfair have a good World Cup?
Now the fuss has died down and the rioting taken place, it’s time to reflect on the World Cup.
From a footy perspective it was great. Much more entertaining than the previous world cups and plenty of talking points. England somehow managed to surpass even their supporters low expectations.
I managed to do a record amount on the World Cup, but that’s surprising as I spent most of last footy season carefully pulling together a number of things to deploy …
World Cup Final 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.
First off, kudos to Football Form Labs for picking the winner of the World Cup. But hold your horses the match hasn’t started yet? Well it doesn’t matter because they nominated both Argentina and Germany, boom! Well done. So here are their thoughts on the final
Much like when these sides met …
Newmarket July meeting
Felt I should comment on the meeting that is taking place at Newmarket this week.
After a fairly long spell of indifferent racing we are treated to some quality for the next three days. So that should bring some focus to your trading. It’s not an amazing meeting but you should be able to dig out a few opportunities. The higher quality stuff should bring some much needed liquidity to the markets.
I’m off to a decent start, so hope …
Das erste Halbfinale
I couldn’t talk about the Rio 2014 semi finals without paying homage to Germany’s remarkable record. Forget all the England coaches we have had in the past, why don’t we get a German in charge?
Die BBC hat eine schone Zusammenfassung: –
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/28202397
Der letzte “normale” Arbeit, die ich gemeint hatte, arbeitete ich für drei Jahre in Deutschland. So habe ich ein bisschen Deutsch in mir.
Onto the match however. It’s, not surprisingly, being priced as a tight affair with …
British F1 Grand Prix
I thought I would be on again for my annual trip with my son to the F1 this weekend. Curiously as I sat in Hospital with him this week, I pondered on the irony of being IN ward F1 instead! Thankfully Luke is back home now.
If you are regular reader of the blog you will know that last year I won a Z4 for the weekend last year to go to Silverstone. I enjoyed driving it so much I …
Sweet spots
Every market has a sweet sport. Odds that will be reached more often than others, a score.
This also applies to trading. Depending on how you chose to enter and exit, there is a sweet spot in terms of when it’s best to trade in and out.
When I model a market I’m looking for sweet spots. Optimal places where it makes ‘sense’ to open, close to trade to in a market. At first you can’t do this going forward …
Neymar out Germany in
It’s interesting to reflect on my post yesterday when I indicated that backing the winner of the first quarter final may prove fruitful ahead of the second match.
As it turned out there was another reason why this may be the case, but it came from an unexpected source. With Neymar now out of the world cup, Brazil’s chances have been re-assessed. After touching 2.90 they have drifted back to 3.80 and the Germans are into 3.45 from 3.80 …
World Cup Quarter finals
What have we learnt so far from the tournament?
Well Brazil are still favourites and Argentina and still second favourites. Germany has moved up a place thanks to the elimination of Spain.
At the start of the tournament the top 16 made up 99.1% of the book. The remaining teams now make up 99.9%, that’s not surprising considering the only remaining bottom half team are the ‘whipping boys’ Costa Rica. It’s amazing to think that Costa Rica were 1000 to …
Tennis trading
In my journey to understand Tennis I had to work out how and why the market moved, so it was with that in mind that we created Tennis trader. It allowed us to probe the deepest detail of any Tennis match and set up strategies that would allow us to profit from that. Using Tennis trader you can get an idea of what is required for any strategy to pay off, what risk you are taking and when this will …
It’s not just about the big stuff
OK, we are in the thick of some major sporting action at the moment. I’m soooo busy it’s difficult to know which way to look at times, but it’s great fun. I apologise if I’ve been a bit quieter recently, but I simply haven’t had the time to devote to updating the blog etc. I’ll be back soon, most likely after Wimbledon has completed.
But it’s important to reflect that it’s not all about the big stuff. Ascot is gone …
Winning and ‘luck’
Once you get the winning mentality, it enters your bloodstream and doesn’t leave. But winning and luck isn’t random or down to chance, it is an art that is learned through endless painting of poor pictures, then through rubbing out mistakes and constant revision and practice. A winning mentality and ‘luck’ can be learnt…
This weekend I was invited to a charity ball. People like inviting me because I bid on things!
At the end of the evening I was …
Betfair exhibit sense of humour
Just took this screen shot to use at the course I’m presenting on Tuesday. Take a look at the top left of the screen!
The (cold hard cash) winners so far in the World Cup
OK we know who’s through and who is out, but how has that translated into a profitable strategy so far in the World Cup?
Listed below are the returns to £10 stakes on each team that has qualified for the knock-out part of the tournament. Of course, the best bet of the tournament again was to lay England to do anything reasonably useful. But in reality, we should have all been on Costa Rica instead. But the returns here show …
Bournemouth Bonus
News today that Southampton are having a summer sale and have raided the silver in the cupboard to let another two players leave. Though it was to be said, for good money.
Players come and go and one season doesn’t make a star. But Lallana has been with Saints for ages and is worthy of a rating. Lambert deserves to join him at Liverpool and is getting on a bit, but well respected.
Practical upshot of this news: –
(1) …
The trading dead zone
It doesn’t happen often, but now and again all things conspire to produce a dead zone in the markets. We are currently in that dead zone.
First off, this relates to the racing markets. Racing markets are seasonal and peak and trough around major meetings. The last was, obviously, Ascot. So you can get a trough before a major meeting, but you almost certainly get one after it.
Summer racing can be a bit weak as there are more meetings …
Pre match volume at the World Cup
Just cut some data on the pre-match volume at the world cup and thought I would share it with you.
The chart is looking at what percentage of volume arrives when, represented as a percentage. So all matches ‘end’ with 100% of volume at the start of the match. Y axis is percentage, X axis time in minutes before the start of the match.
You can see both graphs are pretty similar but there is a lot more money earlier …
Pre match trading at the World Cup
You could be forgiven for thinking that trading on football is all about somehow anticipating something that’s going to happen in play. But if you follow my tweets you will see I’ve been banging some decent totals before the off.
I explained this in a previous post, but it’s worth noting again that if you are prepared to put the effort in and have a bit of patience, it’s perfectly possible to trade before the off successfully. I’ll be …
Automating your activity with Bet Angel
Bet Angel automation is quite simple. When you first fire it up though, you may not thing this but lets look at why a complicated looking interface is easy to understand once you look at each section in turn rather than as a whole.
Rules files
Firstly, let’s have an overview of the terminology. In Bet Angel we call the automation instructions ‘Rules’. These ‘Rules’ simply tell Bet Angel what to do and when to do it. You can …
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