Recent Articles
Flat racing falls at the first hurdle, but…
Hopefully the start of the flat season isn’t a portent to the rest of the season!
I always enjoy the Lincoln handicap this Saturday as it can be a pretty useful day and a kick start to the season proper. But not this year, yet. Hopefully things can return to normal and by next weekend we can really get moving.
While we are missing what would be a normal card, opportunity is always in the market if you look at …
Bet Angel hints and tips – Column sorting
The one-click screen in Bet Angel has many features that you may not be aware of. From custom columns, column chooser, drag and drop columns to automatic column sort.
In this post we are looking at the column sort feature and some of its hidden features.
Firstly, take a look at the column headers:
Now click on the one at the top of the ‘Back’ price column. You will see it will now has an up arrow next …
Lessons from England vs San Marino
When England played San Marino at Wembley last time I captured a bunch of data. I was aiming to try and understand the best way to approach matches at such short odds.
In hindsight, most of it was obvious but it was worth examining; after-all there are lots of very short prices out there this evening.
There isn’t much to say about matches like this, England should completely pummel San Marino, but England are England aren’t they?
At Wembley, despite …
Money buying
Lots of money buying going on today with the World Cup 2014 qualification matches taking place. Some pretty uncompetitive affairs in there, here is a list of key matches listed by decimal odds, from the least competitive to the most competitive: –
1.01 – San Marino vs. England
1.07 – Netherlands vs. Estonia
1.08 – Spain vs. Finland
1.09 – Kazakhstan vs. Germany
1.09 – Andorra vs. Turkey
1.13 – Egypt vs. Swaziland
1.14 – Austria vs. Faroe Islands
1.15 …
Caviar, served on a plate
Tomorrow sees the return of Black Caviar to the racing track.
She will be running in the Group 1 William Reid Stakes at Moonee Valley tonight / tomorrow morning depending on your location on the planet.
Nice little quote from the Adelaide now: –
“”If anybody has backed Black Caviar every start they are obviously a long, long way in front,” TAB’s Matt Jenkins said. “If they had the foresight to put $100 on Black Caviar at her first …
Too much ‘not enough’ racing
It wasn’t really a surprise this morning to hear Newcastle had been abandoned. It seems over the last year they have only had a handful of meetings there. Winter hasn’t been great this year for sure, but it hasn’t been terrible and it’s amazing to see how many meetings have been lost.
But worse than that the number of runners at a lot of these meetings is miserable. Today we have only two races on the afternoon card that have …
From feast to famine
That was a really nice finish to the Festival, I can therefore declare Cheltenham 2013 as a success. Now its back to the grindstone trying to sort the wheat from the chaff; I am findingb lost of chaff.
Cheltenham went well and it was really nice to do that because you tend to measure yourself on prior years and hope you are still moving in the right direction. So it’s reassuring to know you can still do it and in …
Short note on the Australian F1 Grand Prix
Last year I had a couple of thoughts about Formula one and motor-sport in general, so I embarked on a research project. Still a lot of work to be done and conclusions to be reached.
I’m still not finished on the research and I don’t have a complete data set but one I started the research, sensibly, at the start of the season and started working through each race going back ten years or as far as I could go. …
The massive gamble that wasn’t
Credit to BETDAQ tips that highlighted the rather unusual situation that developed at Wolverhampton this evening.
Irish trainer, William Murphy, sent four horses to Wolverhampton that hadn’t run for many ages, the least was 832 days ago. All four were backed very heavily causing the bookmakers to run for cover and offer SP only in the races.
Come the races however all four horses performed badly and all finished stone dead last, some by quite a margin. Anybody following the …
Cheltenham – Finishing post is almost in sight!
Gold Cup day is upon us and that means all this weeks fun and games at Cheltenham are almost over.
Yesterday continued the trend of a decline in turnover that we have seen this year. Yesterday was 12% lower than previous years. We also got to add back in the XC chase to the mix and rebasing that back to Tuesday indicated that day declined 7%.
I’m not expecting to break any records this year, to do that needs everything …
Improving conditions at Cheltenham
After a bumpy start on the first day at Cheltenham, day two proved more predictable and productive.
Overall turnover on Betfair was down 10% year on year, which was a surprise. Especially given the incredibly, and completely justified, short price on Sprinter Sacre. It was one hell of a performance and fully justified the price. I wasn’t sure what to the make of the market at first other than it would be almost impossible to trade. But I went for …
Conclusions from Cheltenham day one
And they are off. Sort off, after a delay then a cancelled race.
Hmm, that was a bit of a messy start to Cheltenham but that’s never stopped me in the past and it didn’t yesterday. When I heard that race times were to be put back I wasn’t sure what I would see. Would we get a double surge in volume? No was the in-direct answer to that question, but it obviously did lead to an increase but also …
Ready for the roar?
So here we are, after deleting countless emails in your inbox about the bloody thing, the Cheltenahm festival is right on our doorstep.
The first day looks like it could be a little tricky. Only two cards on today and Cheltenham is being put back one race after a very cold spell overnight. Sometimes this can work quite well as the volumes will be higher come the actual start of the race. But each year has always been slightly different …
Calm before the storm
Just had a glance at the racing card today and it’s a predictably poor one for Cheltenham week. On this day for my entire exchange career I’ve only had one really good result, back in 2009. All the rest have been very ‘missable’.
So today I am tidying up loose ends and checking everything is in order before the ‘Roar’ meets us tomorrow. Again this year I have been offered hospitality, but I’ve had to decline as the opportunity to …
Bet Angel Connection Modes
Connection mode
Bet Angel has a unique advantage when it comes to connecting to Betfair: A Dynamic Connection Mode.
To understand what this does we need to understand the different methods of connecting to the Betfair exchange. There are two methods:
- Full-API
- Non-API
API stands for ‘Application Programming Interface’ and is a special connection available to Betfair users providing advanced features such jockey silks, full depth of market, bet persistance (Keep Bet, Take SP) and Last Traded Price (LTP). In …
The Betdaq Manifesto!
You heard it here first! Appearing in the Racing Post this morning is the following, view it in it’s full glory by clicking on this link.
Basically, Betdaq have come out and publicly made some pledges, the first since their acquisition by Ladbrokes. Some of the pledges are:-
- Commission will stay low
- NO premium charge
- More liquidity, events and markets
- Winners are welcome
- Incentives for new joiners
- First race of EVERY day free of charge
A really interesting pledge …
Betfair rumours
News from the betting industry today that Betfair is alledgedy closing in on an attempt to buy Blue Square.
Little detailed information available at the moment but it is reported that ‘Initial upfront sum will be paid with fee understood to be worth as much as £35m if loss-making sportsbook hits certain targets.’
It’s been an interesting start to the year.
Betfair Q3 results
Betfair announced their Q3 results this morning. Basically flat overall, you can read the full announcement here: –
https://corporate.betfair.com/media/press-releases/2013/07-03-2013.aspx
As normal I participated in the conference call, but there wasn’t much given away at all during the call and very little insight given into the inner workings and trends within Betfair. The introduction took a couple of minutes and the Q&A about twenty.
They were keen to point out that the sportsbook was up 39%, but that was only £7.5m …
Real problems for Man Utd?
My favourite champions league memory comes from a Man Utd vs Juventus match back in 1999, before the dawn of betting exchanges.
A friend phoned me and told me he had a spare ticket for the match and “Did I want to go?”. I immediately dropped everything and headed up to Manchester. I needed a hotel, so picked a reasonable one on a late booking and headed straight there. Remarkably I’d managed to pick the hotel where the Juventus were …
Ladbrokes complete Betdaq purchase
Haven’t they already I hear you say? No, that was an offer to buy, from there follows due diligence and various other bits and bobs.
Here is the offical announcement – https://otp.investis.com/clients/uk/ladbrokes/rns/regulatory-story.aspx?cid=262&newsid=324294
So from 1st March Betdaq officially became part of Ladbrokes. Let the fun and games commence!
Spurs 4 Arsenal 5
Browsing my archives this morning I was reminded of this extraordinary match back in November 2004. I have attached the chart for the draw on this match.
Local derbies are quite likely to throw up unlikely results, but this was way out there. Typically matches between two local teams are more likely to throw up much more level results over time. Local pride, bragging rights & historical encounters tend to make the underdog up it’s game in an effort not …
US States agree online gambling bills
News this week that first Nevada then New Jersey have agree bills that legalise online gambling. Hurrah I hear you shout!
But wait, what’s this? Read through the detail and you find that actually both bills are a bit restrictive in terms of the fine detail.
In terms of the latter, the bill only allows Atlantic City casino companies to take online bets. Furthermore, the bill will only allow bettors from other states to gamble online, as long as regulators …
Finding value in football matches
Value is created where the odds on offer don’t reflect the true reality of the underlying event. If you back when you think value is high and lay when it is low you should, over long periods of time, profit from this discrepancy. The key question of course is, what is value and how do you spot it?
Let me give you some scenarios: –
Match one description
-
The home team is ranked 1st in the division and is
Ladbrokes Betdaq play becomes clearer
I know it wouldn’t have been on many of your calendars, but when my iPhone made an annoying noise this morning it was to remind me that Ladbrokes results were out this morning.
I listen to, attend and read a lot of results. It’s a hobby of mine that pays well. But on this occasion I was more interested in what Ladbrokes would say about their acquisition of Betdaq. Not a great deal was the completely honest answer, but Ladbrokes …
Are Bayern Munich the new Barcelona?
This doesn’t seem a realistic proposition but if you look at the Arsenal champions league match this evening that’s what the market is saying.
Tonight Arsenal are 4.50 to beat their opponents and their opponents are odds on to beat Arsenal but the only similar match I can see in my recent database is when Arsenal met Barcelona on 16/2/2011. Arsenal won that 2-1, Wegner must be praying for a similar result this evening!
Betfair wields the axe
Lots of news stories floating around last week about redundancies at Betfair. Most reports quoted redundancies in the ‘hundreds’. The news first came to light when GamblingCompliance revealed that around 80 jobs had been cut from Betfair’s London headquarters. eGamingReview went on to announce that the total number of redundancies could top 650.
This appears to be part of CEO Breon Corcoran’s attempts to ‘rejuvenate’ the business by cutting £20m in annual expenses as stated in their December analyst call. …
FA Cup fifth round
So the FA Cup trundles on.
No real surprises so far in terms of how the tournament is playing out. I’ve pointed out in previous blog posts that from a tournament trading perspective it’s dominated by the top teams. So far this year premiership teams have dominated the book% in all rounds and that doesn’t look like it’s going to change.
Volumes on FA Cup matches are lower than higher profile so I’m starting to find it a bit annoying! …
Black Caviar – 23 out of 23
Black Caviar returned to action today after a long break since her narrow victory at Royal Ascot.
Running in the self named, ‘Black Caviar’ Lightning Stakes at Flemington, she started well eased to the front and romped away from the field to win easily with a course record.
The underlying market was really interesting. From a very short price early on she drifted out gently before a bit of panic set in pushing the price right out. It settled back …
A look under Betfair’s football markets
As you may know I’m bit of a stats man, but it’s a useful discipline. Monitoring your own activity can give you a useful insight into the markets and your activity on them. I spend at least a couple of hours a day either analysing what I did yesterday, or some aspect of the market or a strategy.
The champions league matches give me a chance really get under the skin of the market. This is because the liquidity is …
Champions league knock out stages
We are at the stage of the champions league that I enjoy the most. There is nothing like ‘incentive to score’ to throw up some nice trading opportunities. Hopefully we will get a few over the next couple of weeks.
With the away goal rule you have one team desperate not to concede and another desperate to score and according to my stats this throws up the largest amount of variability on football matches. Basically any cup competition is more …
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