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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 …
Using Bet Angel to autotrade score-lines in football
Last season I knocked up a spreadsheet that did something interesting.
I didn’t realise at the time, but it turned out to be one of my more popular posts and videos. Basically it used Guardian and our spreadsheet integration to create an imaginative overview on an underlying football match.
I do this sort of stuff all the time to examine all manner of markets. Stepping back from the just the numbers and looking at another representation of the market can …
How to buy success
As the new season is upon us all football fans up and down the country will no doubt have fresh hopes about what the season will bring. Transfers will have been done and hopes raised. But what is it that makes a team successful? What is the most defining characteristic?
The defining characteristic
As is well known, a lot of club revenue gets spent on wages to attract top players. This is in the hope that buying talent buys performances. …
Why the Rickie Lambert story is so rare
I remember being a small boy watching my local team, smoke wafting in my face, pie in hand until a crowd surge would dump it unceremoniously on the terrace! But hey, I’m showing my age.
I couldn’t help but let out a cheer when Lambert scored on his England debut as it’s a great story and it’s also something that gives people hope. When I stood on the terraces all those years ago I felt that if I tried hard …
Your vote is needed now
I’m repeating this post as we head towards the 1000 vote mark, well done everybody so far! Plenty more to go!
I logged onto Betfair the other morning and saw a graphic saying ‘Have your say’. I clicked on it and it linked to an area I hadn’t seen before asking opinions on various aspects of Betfair.
One enterprising soul had put forward the suggestion: –
“Make the exchange the homepage and not the sportsbook”
I think that’s a …
Betdaq go commission free on football
Casually glancing through my Facebook page and up pops a post by Betdaq. Looks like their push to attract customers has extended itself from Racing into Football.
For some time now the first race of the day has been commission free and that has encouraged an increase in activity on the racing markets. Now football traders will get the chance to earn money without paying any commission.
Basically Betdaq will let you trade the the early kick off in the …
Adding multiple soccer markets using Guardian
Bet Angel has so many useful features that many of them are hidden away and not immediately obvious.
For example, did you know you can quickly add all ‘Match odds’ markets for football (soccer) games happening on a particular date in the Guardian tool? And if you only want to bet on the premiership games, these are easy to add too.
Multi market trading is in high demand and the Guardian tool within Bet Angel is a great way of …
US PGA Golf – The cut & schadenfreude
Full list of movers available on the forum, best return to a £10 stake, back to lay, was £466.19 on Robert Garrigus. He started at odds of 1000 and is now down to 85 after trading as low as 21 when battling for a share of the lead. Even at his cut price of 85 you would have returned £107.65.
For two tournaments in a row I have been too pessimistic, I need to find my positive thinking self …
US PGA end of day one
I have posted a full list of positive and negative movers to £10 stakes on the forum.
A fairly normal day as far as the market was concerned, but the weather did play a hand and that wasn’t expected.
It was ‘nice’ to see Woods slip out of favouritism fairly quickly and that gave me hope that I will get something decent out of the tournament. At the end of the day one I’m up £258 on the tournament, …
Ladbrokes exchange to launch early 2014
Ladbrokes interim results were out early this morning. A little lacklustre TBH after their recent restructuring. But the thing that catches the eye is: –
“In February we completed the acquisition of the Betdaq betting exchange and are making good progress in developing it as a standalone business. We are on track to introduce a Ladbrokes exchange product to run alongside our existing fixed odds sportsbook early in 2014, creating a more comprehensive and strategically differentiated sports betting offer for …
Can an Englishman win the US PGA?
If they can they are going to have to perform exceptionally well!
I had a nose at the last 55 championships and there is an ever so slight bias to the American players. Of the 55 championships I looked at, 42 winners were American. We also had three Australian wins, two South African, two Fijian (Vijay Singh of course) but also a South Korean, German, Irish and N.Ireland in there. Just no English. The dominance spills over to top ten …
EU upsets the gambling industry
Industry bodies are up in arms at EU proposals for the introduction of the fourth EU anti-money laundering directive.
Basically the thrust of the proposal is that anybody placing (or winning it seems) bets of €2000 or more will come under the new directive.
Say you are on course and want to place a large bet or collect on a fortunate win. The bookie won’t be able to pay you out unless you bring your passport and he sets …
Using Automation to drip feed bets into Betfair
Occasionally, there is a message sent to support that gives us the opportunity to showcase a particular feature of Bet Angel.
One such case recently was a request to help someone configure a drip feed system.
A drip feed is a system you might use if you wish to place large bets in the exchange but do not wish to ‘spook’ the system by placing it all in one go. For example, you may wish to place a bet of …
The footy season – My approach
Now the football is about to start again, here is an insight into how I approach the whole season.
Off-season
During off season I am most active on research and new information for the next season. I gather a huge amount of data during the season and during the off season I analyse it to take ideas forward to the next season. Same story this year.
I started analysing football matches in the 80’s, so I tend to focus on …
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 …
Two Steps – One Giant Leap
For some time now, there has been a chorus of appeals for Betfair to beef-up their security measures.
If you visit the forum there have been lots of anecdotal stories in the past regarding unauthorised access to Betfair accounts. Even though IP addresses and locations can be traced, actually getting anyone to do anything about a hacked account was and remains difficult. Things took a big twist when it was revealed Betfair had suffer a security breach and failed to …
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 …
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 …
What does value look like, on a bigger scale
I did a post some time ago called, ‘What value looks like’. Here is the same effect but on a much grander scale, though you should not the familiarity between the two. Finding value is one of the hardest things to do in any betting market because usually the market is hyper efficient. But probably the biggest issue is the wild swings you can get and how they affect your psychology.
In the graph you can see we start …
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 …
Pre-Season Football
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, 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 I do look for though is new transfers, which does give a clue to performances …
Open Golf – What happens to the leaders?
You know me, I can’t look at a sport without trying to understand the structure behind it. So I’ve been looking at how various Open courses play and the dynamics of leader on different rounds. I’ve gone back to 1957 to be thorough.
First thing to note is that the average winning score at Muirfield is six under, there’s your target! But that hides a wide range of winning values. The lowest was par and the best 13 under, we …
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 …
Open Golf – The cut
If the contenders thought the first day was tough then day two was tougher. Only ten players out of 156 starters managed to get to the cut at par or better.
My favourite was Jimenez, it would be great if a Cigar smoking, wine swilling 49 year old won a top level sports event! I made something so far, but not a great deal. When Woods is at short odds and getting shorter it limits what you can get from …
Open Golf – End of day one
Day one went a bit better than I expected TBH. The weather was great but we had quite a few golfers complaining about the pin set up on greens that were described as ‘Glass’. This meant the course was as tough as ever, even without the weather playing a hand. The early starters seemed to get the rub of the green and the later starters were the most vocal complainers. It would seem sensible to use that knowledge today.
Surprise …
Open Golf stats
Fair weather greets us for the Open this year, that’s unusual! But this may make the course a little less random this year.
Therefore, from a trading perspective, I’m less inclined to find a big priced winner this year. Links golf on a difficult course can be notoriously difficult, but when the weather is sweet and the wind calm, skill comes more to the forefront.
Winning a major requires a bit of luck however and also requires a very different
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 …
The rise and rise of Cricket trading
So it’s the Ashes and English expectations are high and liquidity is expected to be so as well. There have been some blockbusting markets on the Ashes in the past so I’m quite interested in keeping an eye on it this time around.
I have to admit though that I’m not a big cricket trader, yet. There are only 24 hours in a day and therefore I have to pick where to put my focus and all my time is …
My longest prediction yet
Phew, what a busy period that was and the appropriate climax to much action came on to a head at Wimbledon on Sunday. I’m taking a short break now before returning to the full fold later in the week.
I’m having some R&R, not rest and relaxation, but rest and research. I’m taking a break from the trading to go over things like Royal Ascot and Wimbledon. I’ve collected a massive amount of data over Wimbledon, so I need to …
High expectations
Expectations are high for today’s men final and I think for once I’ll just watch and enjoy it, though I will gather data. It’s been a very busy two weeks at Wimbledon and it’s throwing off above average trading characteristics, so time for a well deserved rest.
I watched last years final from Silverstone but this year the diary has lined up a bit better, but I may end up watching it at the beach because the weather is so …
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