Recent Articles
International football friendlies
I wont be actively trading the international friendlies this evening. There are many things I can predict about how a football match will pan out but doing this on friendlies is much harder and a bit more random. Basically I don’t know if I have an edge.
I also have this issue that I don’t have enough data to these types of matches to make a confident judgement. So I will pass on the opportunity to do so.
This is …
Bank building
February is the quietest month of the year for me. I do around 1/3rd of what I can during the busiest time of the year. So I tend to take some time off during February. A few years ago I was forced to take time off because of a death in the family and I’ve pretty much stuck to that since. The time off that is!
For me this period is about getting some relaxtion in and planning for the …
Carling cup final – Please read the rules!
Whenever the Carling Cup final comes around I am always reminded of the importance of reading the rules in a market. Certain positive positions, things that seem too good to be true can suddenly be exposed as your worst nightmare! But as always with betting exchanges there are two sides to the coin, you can profit from understanding the rules better than others.
Before we get to the main point, I can give you a more recent example; the next …
Creative football trading
The great thing about football markets is that they are very predictable, in an unpredictable way!
Goals are few and far between and occur randomly but with bias throughout the match. But because there are so few goals on average, that makes it easy to figure out what you should do when one goes in. There are only a small number of combinations to work with.
Lots of people focus on just one match, research it to death and try …
Back to the desk
Back behind my trading desk today after a few days trying to recover from this illness. Still nowhere near 100% but I just hate doing nothing. I’d rather be distracted by something other than the sight of a sick bowl! I actually find trading quite fun, so I can still do it and mess around with the numbers, even when I’m not on form. It’s definitely the challenge I enjoy more than the result, though that helps!
The Wolves next …
Is inability to trade a genetic trait?
When you look at any market that follows a random walk, upside and downside is created in equal proportion. So it’s impossible, if you participate at random, to lose money, apart from the cost of transacting in that market.
On the stock market it’s even more favourable as the underlying investment is net accretive, so it should be even less possible to lose money. But still people lose!
Having studied the markets for so long I now have a very …
Are people in the UK less enterprising?
I did a course at our offices yesterday where I talked all day about how the markets work and why. I followed this up with showing that in action.
That’s fairly normal, but the unusual thing about yesterday is that only a couple of people in the room were from the UK. This seems to be a trend that is constantly developing in everything I do. On Friday I am meeting somebody at Heathrow whom I am going to work …
Profiting from next manager markets
Just a couple of weeks ago had a change in the England manager job with Capello walking out. A week later and we had another ‘next manager’ market to deal when Wolves sacked Mick McCarthy. Then Lee Clark is sacked from Huddersfield, Warnock joins Leeds. It sometimes feels like the managerial merry go round will never stop. I’ve actually studied what effect sacking a manager has, but that’s for another post. I think I may have written about it already …
My curious liquidity poll
I recently asked on the bl0g poll, top right of the blog in case you hadn’t noticed, about what constitutes ‘good’ liquidity in a market. I think there are quite a few considerations you could take account of when assessing what ‘good’ liquidity is. But it was sparked by another poll which asked ‘What would make you move to Betdaq’. The answer came back ‘better liquidity’.
We are all aware of the chicken and egg syndrome that exists in the …
Performance anxiety – Why players lose form
Lovely piece on psychology in the weekend FT. It examines why players of a sport often inexplicably lose their form. I’ve been studying this specifically in a few sports to come up with predictors of decline. My research was sparked by the collapse in form David Duval after he won the British Open golf and I started to dig around deeper and deeper for events that can lead to a decline. I’ve found it useful in Golf and Tennis which …
FA Cup Fifth round
Rather predictably we reach the fifth round of the FA Cup today with 99% of the market made up from Premiership teams. In round three that figure was 94.7% and round four 96.10%. What’s the betting we reach the final with 100%?
The fifth round is more likely to make that happen as there is only one clash this weekend where two premiership teams meet up. I think this looks the most interesting, Sunderland vs Arsenal, as it has the …
Black Caviar makes it 19/19
Black Caviar the wonder from down under, put in another good performance early this morning 05:10 UK time, to get win number 19 out of 19 and move within a whisker of an all time record.
She went off at 1.15 but traded as low as 1.12 pre-off. The race was a bit closer than other recent efforts and she traded out to 1.49 in play. 99.2% of all money wagered was on this horse, amazing!
Free Bet Angel Workshop
Just a short note to let you know we still have a couple of places on the Bet Angel workshop at our offices next Monday.
https://www.bettingexchangeacademy.com/courses/academy-courses/bet-angel-workshop
The morning session is free but for a small supplement you can attend the whole day which also includes a buffet lunch.
Please contact the academy for full details if you are interested is this or future workshops.
Bet Angel sponsorship – Win a copy
We are pleased to announce we are sponsoring the entire days racing at Southwell today. Racing starts at 13:20 and finishes at 16:50 with eight races on the card.
For once there is a full days racing in the UK and Ireland. It seems to have been ages since that was last the case, we hope it is a good day for everybody!
We have set up a competition to win a copy of Bet Angel. Just enter your name …
Champions league is back
Yippee! Tonight we have the first leg of the knockout phase of the champions league. I am positively moist with excitement! What a horrible clash though, with valentines day! I fear that valentines day will win tonight but the football will win tomorrow.
I’ve been doing a lot of work on pre-off activity on the football recently, I thought I would take a fresh look at things. It’s surprisingly how you uncover new things when you return with fresh eyes. …
Administrators appointed at Portsmouth and Rangers
The state of football’s finances and excesses was put into the light again today when another two clubs applied for administration orders.
While it’s a difficult time for both clubs, administration is generally done as a last resort and gives the clubs a chance put their affairs into order.
For punters it can be an opportunity. Search for Porstmouth on the blog to see the fun and games I have had in the past with relegation and promotion markets when …
It’s 4:50am and -10c outside
But my day has been well and truly warmed up by witnessing Black Caviar complete a bloodless victory in the big race of the day at Caulfield, Melbourne. An effortless victory brought win number 18 out of 18 races. The crowds were packed deep to witness this equine miracle.
In total £2.9m of £2.91m was matched on this remarkable horse and it went off at an SP of just 1.08! I had to transfer funds equivalent to a small house …
Weather there is opportunity
Despite the poor weather and disruption to the sporting schedule there are still a lot of opportunities around. Yesterday seemed a surprisingly good day on the racing and Meydan helped a lot, no snow in Dubai! This morning there was some Aussie racing on first thing, so that’s set me up nicely for this afternoon.
I live not too far from Newbury and when I rose bright and early this morning I walked out to the nearest field, which was …
Grey bot
Messed around in the Greyhound markets yesterday with a surprisingly good results. I don’t know whether it was the weather, other participants or what, but it seemed OK.
Because of the lack of scale I can’t really participate in the greyhound markets much, they are just too small for me. But I wanted to have a play to see what they were like in comparison to the last time I did it. Not much has changed.
Average turnover was between …
Opportunity through adversity
OK, so it looks like there will be no ‘real’ racing in the UK for a while. But rather than bemoan your fortune use the opportunity to experiment, examine and look for new ideas or opportunities.
Quite a few years ago I got into the mode of taking time off in February. I learnt that it was the lowest yielding month of the year and part or all of it could easily be skipped without too much impact. So I …
On average.. The essense of value
Let’s start by proposing something simple. If you back or lay something it’s impossible to be right 100% of the time. I think most people will realise that it’s impossible to win every bet you ever placed. Therefore you have to accept that you will place losing bets. If you place losing bets you need your winning bets to cover your losses, that’s the only way to make money in the long term.
To get your an overall profit you …
Snow way
UK racing cancelled, a few football matches on. But just over that hill there, there is a ton of snow and some kids waiting for me to push them down it. Not a difficult choice of what to do this afternoon. Besides, we will be shattered after a few hours of this!
Enjoying little pleasures like this while you can.
A question of scale (part one)
I got a phone call from the Financial times the other week about the collapse of Centaur. They wanted to know how I knew it would collapse long before it did, they originally phoned me for an opinion when Centaur first started up and I told them then what I repeated recently.
When you looked at the proposition there were in fact many, many flaws in there; but the top one for me was one of scale. Mainly because I’ve …
Alternative racing today
With the UK racing looking like it is heading for a weekend white out, it’s worth looking at other alternatives at this time.
This morning in Australia we have a meeting at Moonee Valley that usually brings half decent liquidity. Over £200k was traded on the 10:15 which, while below normal UK volumes, isn’t half bad. You also have Meydan racing on today where volumes have been picking up nicely. That comes on line a little later in the morning.…
Betfair API problems
Only fair to balance posts out with a note that Betfair experianced API problems this morning!
This was particulary a pain as there are a number of events on this morning that were disrupted.
Betdaq API problems
Just sending this out in case anybody has any automated spreadsheets running on Betdaq Angel today.
The Beqdaq API has a problem this afternoon and things are not working as they should be. Please double check any thing you have running.
We altered Betdaq to the issue quickly and they are onto it.
[EDIT : Betdaq now have a fix for the issue and will be deploying it after today’s racing]
If you want to become aware of these sorts …
(N)Ice
Spent a lot of last week doing the industry rounds at a couple of trade shows, one of them was ‘ICE’.
I mentioned last year that my interest was raised when speaking to the non betting exchange part of the industry. It seems that the knowledge, research and ability I have acquired over the many years I have been doing this, is in demand from other parts of the industry; so last week was a check point on that progress.…
Underneath a legendary Tennis match
Not many words can describe the fantastic Men’s final at the Australian open tennis, so I wont try. But to say it was special, would definitely be an understatement. I started the match half dressed having not risen early enough to get changed properly, broke for a full Sunday lunch and still returned for a hour of excitement. Amazing stuff.
The great thing about these matches is that pretty much any trading strategy you adopt will win. If somebody goes …
FA Cup – Round four winners
Rather than a prediction this is a glance back. A look if the ‘romance’ of the FA Cup is still alive.
At the start of the third round, premier league teams made up 93.69% of the market. They now make up 80% of the market, the romance of an outsider winning the cup is still alive it would seem.
However, top flight four teams met each other in round three so we will have to delete these for the purposes …
Bumps and ripples
What can you tell about a Tennis match before it has started? Quite a lot actually.
The market is pretty accurate at discounting value into a match and assessing the relative strengths of different players, from that you can plot the most likely path through a match and its progression. You can also hunt for bumps and ripples in that path for odds that are most likely to be reached and how. If you do this, you will see that …
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