Recent Articles
How to win at rock, paper, scissors
I posted this on the forum some time ago.
It’s actually a good analogy for the sort of though process you need to go through when trying to out-think others and one that I think is equally applicable in any market. Sometimes people don’t choose the most logical progression in a sequence of events. Even then is seems that people peoples decisions are often forced by an ‘invisible hand’. Anyhow, an interesting article I think: –
https://games.yahoo.com/blogs/plugged-in/win-rock-paper-scissors-215511514.html
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Two card Mondays
Not a new card game, but a statement on the Racing so far this year.
By and large the racing is at levels that are normal at this time of year. A bit erratic, low quality, poor betting markets. But the transition from predominantly three cards on a Monday last year to just two this year is making things just that little more difficult this year around. In the Summer I will often take the Monday afternoons off, or do …
I lost £288k in one night spread-betting
On the ‘mad bomber’ thread on the forum there has been some jocular suggestions about who could be the person being such erratic and irregular betting activity. Some have joked it could be a wealthy footballer, after reading this story suddenly that doesn’t look so far fetched!
“FORMER LIVERPOOL AND Manchester City midfielder Dietmar Hamann has revealed how he slipped into problems with drinking and gambling during his final season at Eastlands.”
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport
Betfair exits South Africa
With regulatory tangles ongoing in many territories Betfair has hit another bump in South Africa. This is a real shame as South Africa is on the same time zone as the UK. Betfair has already sent out emails to affected customers. Here is an extract of the key elements of the email: –
“We’re writing to inform you that following the recent ruling by the South African Supreme Court of Appeal, Betfair has decided that as of 00:01 GMT on …
Caught-siding
Courtsiding is the method used by people betting on Tennis to beat the in-play delay. The in-play delay is put on matches, such as the Australian open tennis, to stop people from placing bets before other people get to see what happened. It doesn’t work!
Because of the incentive of low risk profit, people will go to great lengths to beat the clock and this has become a feature of many in-play markets, not just Tennis. Like Biff in back …
Murray Matrix
Looking forward to seeing Andy Murray in action tonight.
Last night I bagged 25 decent winning trades from the overnight matches. I use Tennis Trader to work out key points in a match and what odds are likely to be traded around key points. By looking up these key points in advance I can set up a trade that will trigger at or around those points and offset to a value that will lock in a profit. All markets exhibit …
Aussie open – open!
Just about to head off to bed, but in half an hour the Australian open tennis will kick into gear. It’s a great opportunity to get stuck into the Tennis, even if you are not into Tennis, as a lot of matches will appear in the UK early in the morning when not much else is going on.
I have set up Bet Angel to do some simple automation in the early rounds of the tournament as I know where …
BDO Darts final tonight
Dart’s is a good trading sport and tonight sees the world final live on the BBC. This and previous tournaments have thrown up some great opportunties and matches: –
https://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/other_sports/darts/8425631.stm
You sense that the future of darts in the UK is sliding towards the more regular, better funded PDC. If that means more coverage then great! I quite like darts, as it is a ‘pure’ sport. You against an opponent, it’s difficult to cheat and you win or lose on …
In the wrong Kompany!
There are many cases for backing or laying at 1.02. But last Sunday we had a great example of why you just wouldn’t back at such short odds.
First off lets look at the odds: –
At 1.02 you would return £2 for every £100 staked. If you laid, then the opposing situation is true; you would earn £100 for every £2 lost. At odds of 1.02 the market is telling you there is a 98% of this situation occurring. …
Friday 13th unlucky for Betfair
Just days after their latest ‘upgrade’, the Betfair site crashed again. How incredibly frustrating! I’ve lost count of how many times the site has been down over the last year and each time the site is upgraded it seem almost certain now that a major crash follows.
If you want to trade today, why not give Betdaq at go. BetDaqAngel is the same Bet Angel platform you are familiar with but it’s compatible with Betdaq. Best of all its 100% …
Betfair market anomalies
An interesting couple of days so far this week in the markets. Interesting for an anomaly that we have seen. It’s only a couple of days old, so I can’t draw any conclusions just yet, but it is unusual so I thought I’d post about it.
We monitor the markets cloesly and ‘felt’ that matched bet volume on occasion was much higher than we would expect. We noticed this because, in the latter stages of a racing market just before …
Betfair to compensate Leopardstown losers
Hot off the press, just received this email from Betfair: –
“Dear Peter,
Since the 2.00pm race at Leopardstown on 28 December 2011, we’ve looked in detail at all the circumstances surrounding the technology failure and the anomaly it created. In addition, we provided our Gibraltar regulator, the Gibraltar Gambling Commissioner (GGC), with a detailed technical and operational report on the incident and the GGC made a number of recommendations. We have also consulted with customers and taken their feedback …
Massive winner at Taunton
One of those great racing moments today when ‘Lights of Broadway’ romped home at Taunton at odds of 810-1000 depending on when you backed it. It SP’d at 810!! Second and third placed horses came in at big odds too meaning it was a monster forecast, but I can’t imagine anybody got it?
Ladbrokes in talks with Betdaq
Not as dramatic as it first seems when you read the headline, but interesting nonetheless: –
For the full story click on the following URL: –
If you fancy giving Betdaq a try download BetDaqAngel. It’s top notch trading software for Betdaq and it’s free. It received a major upgrade last year. Lots of clever features including an Excel link that allows you to trade multiple markets simultaneously from a spreadsheet.
Shocking news
That’s what the lower league clubs will be hoping for today when they step out for the FA Cup third round today.
I quite like the FA CUP as it means more to teams. This means motivation is at a high and it is also non seeded. This means that the big guys can meet in the early rounds and knock each other out leaving some minion to an improbable appearance in the latter stages. It feels like the days …
Will Betdaq take off this year?
What an open question that is! I’ve stuck up a poll on the right that you can give me your answer on.
For years Betdaq has been a much weaker market than Betfair. In 2008 it got a boost when Betfair increased charges. A few vendors, including Bet Angel, rushed to make their applications Betdaq compatible. But the majority didn’t however. This rush to Betdaq was short lived and things very soon, sort of, carried on as normal. I say …
Losers needed!
Over the years I’ve studied the markets and a number of strategies, but all of these have been focused on winning.
Late last year I turned my attention to why people lose, the psychology behind that, but also what fundamental flaws they have with their approaches in the market.
If you mess around at random you should, over long periods, break even less the spread or commission that you pay to the service provider. However, when I look at a …
Big over-reaction
Sometimes I just want to roll Gael Monfils up in a bundle and kiss him.
One of my biggest ever wins came on a match with Monfils in it. He overstretched himself and called for the trainer. I had just backed his opponent and his priced rocketed in and netted me a very lucky big profit, so I greened up. After a brief spell with the trainer Monfils carried on and looked like he had never been trouble and went …
Is Darts the new Tennis?
Some great matches again at the PDC world darts championship this week. Dramatic comebacks from impossible positions, turnarounds, low odds turned over, high odds coming in, big matched bet turnover. Darts certainly has the characteristics of a great trading market. It’s popularity is picking up now as well.
Its scoring and ‘feel’ is similar to Tennis, you also have familiar concepts such as a break of throw / serve. But a big advantage of Darts is that the games are …
Hello 2012
Greetings to the year 2012, or if you are Assyrian the year 6762 or if you are 2556 in Buddism or…, well you catch my drift.
2012 is going to be a very busy year on the sports front, if the Mayan apocalypse doesn’t mature, so I look forward to what should be a very interesting year. I spent a lot of the second half of last year looking at new things so I look forward to doing some of …
Farewell 2011
No time to summarise the year on this post, hopefully I’ll get the chance in the new year. But just wanted to say goodbye 2011 and thanks for everybody’s support and custom through out the year. It turned out to be a really interesting year, right to the final days!
I managed to bag a four figure race yesterday and did well on the darts in the evening so it’s likely to be a nice sign off for the year.…
£1k account caused £600m Betfair error
Betfair have issued a statement this afternoon outlining the error that caused the exchange to misfire. The full statement is here: –
But here are some bullet points:-
“This bet was placed by one of our UK customers trading the race via our API or Application Programming Interface (bdp.betfair.com/) using an automated program (a “bot”). Their bot had developed a fault causing it to try and place a very large number of bets on the Exchange. These bets were …
How to lay £600m worth of bets on Betfair?
That has to be the #1 question after yesterdays debacle in one of the feature races at Leopardstown.
To summarise, a mysterious lay bet appeared and stayed on the winning favourite at 29’s right up to the finish of the race. The ‘layer’ offered up £21m at 29’s creating a £600m liability. Betfair voided the in-running market.
Betfair have come out officially and ruled out that it was them or any account controlled by them or that they had a …
Biggest ever loss on Betfair?
One of those remarkable events happened today on Betfair when, in the Christmas hurdle at Leopardstown, Voler La Vedette was offered up in-running for massive money at massive prices despite the fact it won.
Seemingly, over £21m was offered and held in-running to get filled at HUGE prices. £1,642,094 was matched at 29’s meaning the loser would have to pay out £44.8m on their bet at 29’s. In order to be able to just place the bet the user would …
Looking for the luck of the Irish
Their economy may been in the dumps, but then that’s no shock in the western world economies; but the racing is top notch this week at Leopardstown.
The holiday racing cards are packed with races which can cause some problems at times, but outside of that the feature races where-ever they are, are often worth a look.
Today at Leopardstown it’s the Lexus chase and then tomorrow, the Festival hurdle. If you are around, don’t rule out anything on the …
Satisfying chaos
OK, yesterday didn’t seem that chaotic in the end, just a bit frustrating. I had to wait ages to find races that really set themselves up nicely, but eventually I did and they were OK. But it was a little dull overall.
Kauto Star lit up the day when I took a few races off to watch the King George VI produce a bit of history. What a great horse we have been treated to and it looks like we …
Full blown all out chaos
There you go, that’s my prediction for today’s racing markets.
A total of twelve racing cards are unleashed on the markets today and that means that it will be clash city. No sooner has one race started than another starts, while another one will complete. It’s going to be chaotic. There are a total of 78 races on the card, but 34 have scheduled off times the same as another race. As if that’s not enough you can throw in …
Signing off..
Right, it’s time to do some last minute stuff for Christmas. A full house tomorrow means we have lots of food to prepare and I’m looking forward to doing anything but sports related stuff for a few days.
I had a reasonable day yesterday, which was a nice way to start the break for Christmas. I’ll be back at my desk on boxing day!
Shortest day of the year
Today marks that critical point in the northern hemisphere where the sun rises above the horizon for the shortest time. From here it gets better and better, SAD sufferers can look forward to better times.
We still have a lot of winter to go and we haven’t plumbed it’s depths from a sporting perspective, but I welcome this turning point in the year as we can start looking forward to longer days. Aside from disruption to sporting schedules, of which …
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