Recent Articles
Betfair create Olympic market without winner
I’ve been interested in what the Olympics couldn’t bring on the trading front for Bet Angel users. Athletics markets are pretty quiet in general, but are often full of surprises. Nothing is guaranteed in sport, especially where markets are tricky to price.
I watched the Men’s Cycling race today with half a eye on whether Mark Cavendish was to get his just reward, alas it was not to be. As the competitors re-entered the streets of London I started collecting …
Betfair implement new turnover charge
News from Australia this morning that Betfair are to implement a turnover charge on customers, full details: –
https://betfair.com.au/turnovercharge/
In case you were not aware, a high court ruling this year in Australia has switched the law from a gross profits tax to a turnover based revenue fee for racing. This doesn’t affect the well established and politically well oiledl, but slightly ancient and backward thinking, incumbents in Australia; but does have a significant impact on the new entrants like …
Home advantage when trading the Olympics
So it’s here, never thought it would be possible but I’ll be going to the Olympics on home soil. At 08:12 this morning bells rang out across the country, which woke me up, and announced that the Olympics games has officially started.
When I was young, I was very sporty and dreamt of being in the Olympics. That never happened but I did join at Athletics club when I was older where some of the members were Olympians and we …
Good old Barney Curley
Flicking through the racing today I noticed three Barney Curley runners on the card. Whenever a Curley runner is on the card it’s interesting; when there are three, even more so.
Barney Curley has a long history of landing a gamble. One of hte most famour was the the Yellow Sam betting coup and more recently another in May 2010.
Because of this Curley runners usually attract a lot of attention in the market. People fear they may be …
Open Golf – The cut
Only fifteen players continued to be positives as we reached the cut. But the biggy was a big biggy with Brandt Snedeker coming in from 300 to just 6. This would have netted you a whopping profit of £490 for a £10 stake. Of course your other option was to lay any of the other players outside of this 15 for a profit, your choice. I prefer to find the former.
I was headed for a nice profit till Woods …
The Open – Start of day two
Negative movers outnumbered positive movers by 82 to 30. Full list of positive and negative movers on the forum: –
https://www.betangel.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=6420&p=50704#p50704
Generally a lacklustre day from a trading perspective. I like some fireworks, but generally we have had some movers up, some down, but generally a firming at the front of the field. Which is exactly what I don’t like!
Most of this was caused by two key factors. The weather was better than forecast and the conditions for links …
Judicial Review rules in favour of Betfair
Full press release here: –
https://corporate.betfair.com/media/press-releases/2012.aspx
Basically William Hill have lost their case, which was arguing that an undefined group of Betfair customers should paying levy on profits. This premise carefully ignored the fact that Betfair customers already pay levy via Betfair by proxy and brushed over a number of other contradictory issues. From my view point and that of the friend of mine who is in the legal profession, it looked more like a competitive action than a legal …
The Open Championship golf
It took me a while to see the appeal of Golf as a betting sport. But over time I’ve learnt to enjoy getting stuck into the big Golf tournaments. This week we have the grand daddy of the lot, the Open Championship, being held this year at Royal Lytham and St Annes Golf club.
The thing that really caught my eye was the large price of winners on a lot of tournaments, especially the highly competitive and tricky majors. The …
Are Celtic better than a savings account?
When news came out that Rangers will start the Scottish season in divisions three, my head started spinning at all the permutations for next season. I always remember the fantastic Gretna, who rose from obscurity to become the punter and traders best friend, then promptly vanished as fast as they had risen.
In this case it’s almost the opposite. Rangers have been unceremoniously dumped from their elite status to the lower ranks of Scottish football. If Rangers can keep …
Echo’s of 2008, only worse…
I was browsing the latest list of abandoned meetings and thinking about whether we have ever had a worse summer? When I was driving back from Heathrow this morning it rained so hard that all the traffic stopped on the motorway, not encouraging. It’s really disappointing that so many sports, not just racing, are falling by the wayside. But At least it means I can get some rest after a manic start to the summer.
Euro 2012, Wimbledon, & Royal …
Cyprus legislates against Betfair
The Cypriot government announced on Friday legislation that aims to restricts products that gambling operators can offer in the country. Product restrictions included processes that are “designed to facilitate the receipt or acceptance of bets between players”.
Betfair announced this morning that they intended to challenge the decision as “the company believes that the legislation contains serious flaws and, in certain areas, is inconsistent with European Union law. “
Betfair also announced that Cyprus “generated approximately 4% of revenue from …
Marray, Murray, Wimbledon,Tennis and Fish
Really looking forward to the Wimbledon mens final today, when history will be made one way or another. Maybe we will see a Marray / Murray double, how funny would that be?
Unfortunately I will not be able to witness it first hand as I will stuck in mud / traffic at the British Grand Prix. I didn’t figure Nadal would go out of the tournament so early and that Murray would make it to the final. It’s also a …
British Grand Prix
I’m off to see the British Grand Prix this weekend. Just my luck that the race day should coincide with the moment the first Briton in 74 years is going to be playing the men’s final at Wimbledon, I’d quite like to watch that. But I can’t renege on the offer to take my son to Silverstone, even if it means trudging through what is likely to be very boggy ground.
The weather forecast looks mixed at best and this …
Darwin would have been proud
I try and actively monitor everything I am doing in the market, often this can pay dividends in unusual ways.
As a general approach I would recommend storing as much information about what you do as possible, even if you don’t need it right now. I’ve collected loads of data recently from Wimbledon and Euro 2012 but I have no practical purpose for it at the moment. At some point in the future I may revisit it, or find a …
The camera never lies?
I stumbled upon an interesting article about the Euro 2012 championships: –
How TV Lied To You During Euro 2012 – https://deadspin.com/5923264/sorry-mario-balotelli-didnt-really-make-this-german-fan-cry-how-tv-lied-to-you-during-euro-2012
I’ve always had a healthy mistrust of what you see on TV. It spawned from some very odd results and betting on Reality TV shows many years ago. Careful editing and production can show up a story that isn’t, in reality, being played out. The real scandal followed though when it turned out insiders where betting on the …
Spain vs Italy
An interesting set up for the final. I’ve had a really busy week, again, so I’ll be taking it easy and will trade pre-off, but sit down and watch the match.
The match is priced for just over two goals with an extra 0.40 going to Spain. It’s basically saying you have two even teams but Spain are effectively at ‘home’.
I know I often post this sort of comments, but I’m not sure if people pay much attention to …
Best Wimbledon trading ever?
This has been a great Wimbledon so far. Lots of seeds faltering and some outright fails in the mix already. The biggest coming last night when the second seed, Nadal, spectacularly crashed out despite starting at decimal odds of 1.01. It could be my imagination but it’s difficult to remember so many opportunities to turn over such short odds when trading, even for a small number of ticks.
It prompted me to look back at previous Wimbledon tournaments to see …
Betfair revenue down, profits up
Betfair have released their FY12 results this morning and it shows top line revenue down 1% but underlying earnings up 46%. ‘Underlying’ figures are a bit different though, but until we see the presentation it’s difficult to know the exact detail behind the figures or how it was generated. Full result annoucement here: –
https://corporate.betfair.com/media/press-releases/2012/29-06-2012.aspx
Generally speaking, ‘Revenue’ is commision earned from customers, so that appears to have fallen or on an ‘underlying basis’ not grown much. From what I …
Extra time and the ‘to qualify’ market
At last this week, I have finally got the chance to have a play around in the ‘to qualify’ markets in extra time.
These are some of my favourite in-play markets on footy because you can, to a certain extent, frame your upside and downside risk. The downside will always be a goal, but the upside is relatively neat and frequent on both teams.
As the teams play out extra time, if the match remains level, the odds on either …
Good start for traders at Wimbledon
There are three main surface types that Tennis matches are played on. Hard, Grass and Clay. Over time I’ve got to understand just how important each surface type is and how it affects matches.
Which surface do you think throws up the most competitive matches? I’ll answer later in the week.
Yesterday saw several good chances to profit from a range of matches. Red hot favourites struggled to break down stubborn opponents, see Nadal’s match, and good starts by rising …
Royal Ascot trading review
This was an interesting year at Royal Ascot. The obvious highlights were Frankel’s win and Black Caviar’s close call. I thought the Duke of Edinburgh presenting his wife with a trophy was also a moment to remember, surprised to see no caption competitions on that!
Overall, according to Betfair’s statistics, £92.6m was traded before the off, up from £73m the year before. However, that included to races at incredibly short prices. If you strip those out and add back average …
Italy vs Italy
I looked long and hard at this evening’s match in Kiev and I, like the market, am finding it difficult to split the result.
I think the main reason for this is that I think both sides will cancel each other out. We have become used to Italian football being based around defense counter attacking play. Now England seems to have adopted this style as well. That seems to position the match for a low scoring nail-biter. Cue, a dramatic …
Black Caviar to romp home carrying the Aussie flag?
Ascot trundles on this week and all is well.
I feel a bit like I am going through the motions this year. Yes it’s nice to get a really good week, but year on year there isn’t the sort of growth in the underlying market I would like, I’ll explain more in my final ‘a question of scale’ post at some point.
It’s been a manic couple of weeks so I’m looking forward to getting a break in the near …
A different way to profit from Euro 2012
As you know Euro 2012 is a seeded tournament. When the little balls came out of the bag it was designed so that the higher ranked teams would progress to the latter stages of the tournament and make UEFA more money, sorry, make the tournament more entertaining.
To be fair to UEFA, it is the same in most modern tournaments, the big teams and big audiences fund the sport and therefore want to be favoured. Tennis grand slams are …
Royal Ascot so far
A blockbuster start to day one with Frankel opening proceedings and promptly romping home by an astonishing distance.
Matched bet turnover was up on last year, but that’s no surprise on the basis of Frankel’s very short price. Overall pre-off volumes are ahead of last year, £35.3m has been matched on the races of the first two days. Curiously in-running matched bet volumes are down £3m on last year.
Tuesday is the day when I try and work out what …
England v Ukraine
Since 1990 England have won 5/9 final group games while they are unbeaten since 1996 in nine matches against teams ranked 20-40 with six wins and eight of the nine matches finished with fewer than three goals. In group game three there have been 43 matches where a team has been ranked 11-30 places higher and that side has won 27 (63%) times. Moreover, this improves to a W15-D3-L4 record when they have won their previous match.
Information provided by …
Royal Ascot – First up Frankel
So it’s finally here, Royal Ascot starts today and I can’t wait!
I’m going to have an easy morning each day this week so I can prepare and feel relaxed for the on-coming challenge of the busy Ascot markets. Yesterday I did a dry run of all my set-ups, back up positions, automation, settings etc. and then went out for a bike ride with my youngest daughter. So I’m relaxed and about as ready as I can be.
The only …
Croatia 2 Spain 2 ?
Some of you with long memories may recognise this scenario from Euro 2004. Back then Denmark and Sweden need a 2-2 draw to ensure they progress to the knockout phase of the tournament at the expense of Italy. Remarkably the game ended 2-2 to howls of protests from the Italians.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UEFA_Euro_2004_Group_C#Denmark_vs_Sweden
Wind forward to 2012 and we have a similar situation. However, Croatia and Spain have tried to quash conspiracy theorists who suggest the two sides would settle for a …
Bizarre end to Queens Club Tennis final
In the last twelve years I’ve seen a lot of weird things in sport. Unexpected endings or remarkable twists and turns. Today I learnt something new about Tennis, Injuring an official will cost you the match, no matter how important the match.
David Nalbandian has done well at Queens this week and was doing well in the final. He vented his frustration on an advertising hoarding after losing a game and injured a line judge. The result was disqualification. Never …
Sweden v England
Sweden’s defeat against Ukraine means a result here is essential and they will probably need a significant improvement. Lower ranked teams that have lost their previous match and are playing a side coming off a draw have lost 7/11 Euro group stage matches with 6/11 having -2.5 goals including all five second group games.
11 of Sweden’s 19 tournament matches since 2000 have had -2.5 goals while they’ve drawn six of their last eight group matches against higher ranked teams …
Connect
Connect with us on the following social media platforms.