Recent Articles
Barney Curley
Always an interesting card when there are Barney Curley runners on it, today we have two. You can follow all the shenanigans and trading opportunties thrown up by Curley runners by reading this thread on the forum.
You may have to wait till 21:00 to see the best opportunity of the day it seems!
For some additional background view this You Tube video: –
Betfair International Stakes
Couldn’t resist posting up this P&L on this race from yesterday. OK I got more on Betfair, a bit, but nowhere near the same when if deduct a 60% commission.
You should always do what is best for you, especially in a trading market, but look at my circumstances. It’s a strange feeling to only be able to earn 40% what others can earn by doing exactly the same thing. I can teach people how to do similar things and …
Football is back (almost)
Scottish league football restarts today and it’s a useful reminder that at the start of season it’s easier to find value than at any other time of the year, bar the relegation dogfight perhaps.
It’s often difficult to see how transfers and all the other summer shenanigans will play out, but that can show itself in some of the earlier matches. Keep an eye open at the start of the season for a few fast starters. Any one of the …
Betfair – Cross matching
Cross matching has slowly been implemented across many sports markets on Betfair and earlier this year on the big one, horse racing.
There are still some odd things with cross matching. Prices for the API and for the Betfair web site are different. This is because cross matching is not exposed via the API. We put the cross matching algorithm into Bet Angel, but quite a large number of API applications still show the ‘wrong’ prices. Betfair also never tell …
IG Index vs Betfair
IG Index released year end results yesterday and they make interesting reading when compared to Betfair. I quite like comparing IG Index and Betfair as they are both spread betting companies, moreso now than ever. Now they are both listed companies, its possible to draw some rough lines around both businesses. Comparisons to IG helped me decide that Betfair was way overvalued when they listed.
Revenues are fairly similar across both businesses but margins at IG are much higher and …
Botfair
I read some comments yesterday evening from some ‘traditional’ punters about how they were pleased Betfair’s new charges were going to get rid of the bots. Unfortunately for these posters, the opposite is almost certainly likely to be true. There is some pretty simple logic behind it.
Say you have a winning bot that makes money on a market and you suddenly face higher charges. At this level you would most likely work more aggressively to make more to offset …
Betdaq boost
Yesterday saw a fairly big boost on trading volume on the horse racing markets on Betdaq, which was more or less running at double last weeks numbers on average. It’s too early to say if this is a sustained increase or just a blip, but it’s encouraging.
I’m not going to tell you to use one exchange or the other or both, that’s your decision, not mine. Everybody is at different stages of their trading. But there are obvious benefits …
60% Premium charge
On the first day of trading on 22nd October 2010 Betfair shares closed at 1550p. At the time of writing this post the shares are trading at 627p or down nearly 60% from that closing high. How ironic!
I don’t want to feed that hand that bites me, to reverse the common metaphor. So, for me at least, action speak louder than words. Whether volume decreases or increases on the Betfair exchange, why will be the most pressing question. Volume …
Open Source
Continuing my theme of getting more involved in sports rather than just trading them I am headed of to Royal St’ Georges today for the final day of the open golf. I’ll be able to see what it looks like at source. I hope it doesn’t rain too much.
No mobile phones or PDA’s allowed on the course, so no greensiding possible! I’ll just have to enjoy the day.
Betfair down, again!
Just two days before Betfair are due to impose massive increases in costs on their users, they face yet another major outage on their site.
You just can’t really believe it’s possible to get much worse PR for Betfair, but somehow they manage to pull another shocker out of the hat. It’s really quite incredible. You think the least they could do was quickly put a message up on their service page.
Open golf – Best trades
For a full list and other lists, visit the forum.
The Open has been brilliant so far. The highlight today was the hole in one by Tom Watson, amazing. When my shoulder is better I’m getting out there again to reduce my handicap. It’s inspiring to see a 61 year old holding his own against the worlds top golfers.
This is the last list now as we turn our attention to specific golfers for the remaining two days. The …
Big moves
I thought the first day of the Open Golf at Sandwich would be interesting and that’s exactly how it has proved. For a full list of movers visit the thread on the forum.
Golf has really grown on me as a trading sport and the small gap between the leader-board and oblivion creates some fantastic opportunities. With a £10 stake this is what you could have greened up for on the top movers at the end of day one. …
Repeating patterns
Sometimes the markets surprise me, but more often than not they don’t. After 11 years of doing this, even the surprises don’t seem surprising any more. But yesterday I got a surprise.
Yesterday, last year, I traded a race at Catterick and got a really cracking result from it. A year later at the same course, on the same day and on the exact same race I got the same result. You would think it impossible that such a thing …
Open Golf – McIlroy drift continues
Now the Open championship market is firming up, I’m interested to see the drift on McIlroy is still continuing. I had factored in a bit of a drift but it’s interesting to see how strong and maintainted it is. At the moment the market and likely conditions are perfectly set up for a good trading market.
While zipping around the net I found this good preview for the championship. A good overview and some food for thought: –
Life in the old dog yet
OK, So I know I said I wouldn’t post these any more as they will lose their relevance soon. But I couldn’t resist this one after a good day yesterday.
Mondays & Tuesdays in the summer can be really tough so it was a pleasure to do well yesterday. Today looks a bit better on the racing front. So if you had a stinker yesterday don’t worry, today does look better. I did get a bit lucky yesterday, so it’s …
The Open Championship
Had my first really detailed look at the Open today. McIlroy has drifted a bit since my first casual glance and that makes for a much more interesting market.
I tend to have a good go at the majors unless there is a very short priced favourite, so the drift on McIlroy is welcome. The weather forecast is mixed for later in the week so that increases my interest. I will probably be heading over to Kent on Sunday so …
British Grand Prix
By the time you read this I will be tucking into a Bacon Roll at Silverstone, home of the British Grand Prix.
I’ve been determined to get to more sporting events this year rather than just sit at my desk looking for an opportunity, so I am pleased to confirm I am fulfilling that obligation so far this year. I was going to the Open Golf, because it is in the south this year. But given recent events I think …
Practice makes perfect
I thought I would make this post to remind people to upgrade / try the latest version of Bet Angel. I’m motivated to highlight this by the fact that only a portion of our users base have upgraded at the moment according to last months figures.
As a reminder, we recently introduced a very comprehensive practice mode in the latest release of Bet Angel, version 1.28. You can see more about it here: –
The practice / training / …
A year after leaving
A very interesting post from Ex Betfair man Mark Davis has appeared on his blog this evening, worth a read: –
https://www.markxdavies.com/2011/07/04/a-year-after-leaving/
7/7
Not much to add above the post I made a couple of years ago.
https://www.betangel.com/blog_wp/2009/07/07/
Lack of liquidity
Low matched bet turnover, gappy prices, lack of depth in the market. Yes, I am sure you are familiar with these problems. But I’m not talking about Betdaq, I am talking about Betfair.
Back when Betfair started the markets were pretty thin, but I still saw opportunity in them. As people began to develop techniques to squeak a few quid out of these markets things improved. As traders joined the market and improved liquidity, bigger backers and layers started to …
Jelly
A long time ago I worked for a company where the MD had a great idea. A quick way to boost profits was to levy a new charge for delivery. He asked for comments.
“Jelly” I responded. Everybody thought it was an insult not piece of insight. But my point was that like squashing Jelly, new charges wouldn’t lead to the problem being stamped on, it would just lead to the problem oozing out elsewhere in the business.
Imposing the …
June
June turned out to be a very good month in the end and much better than I expected. It was the best June I’ve had for a few years. How useful to have a decent send off as it were, given the news from last week.
The highlight was obviously Royal Ascot and that contributed the bulk of things for the month. As I have done for a little while, I used both exchanges during Ascot week and this has …
Well done Djokovic
Well played and and excellent job so far this year. A remarkable season so far, I wonder what heights he will reach this year?
I managed to call the final just right as it was easy to read and conformed to most entry and exit points. Wimbledon has been great this year. It’s probably the best tournament I have traded in terms of results and very few mistakes. This is rare, as you expect a few howlers through a grand …
Wimbledon 2004
I’ll never forget the Womans final of 2004 when Sharapova defeated defending champion Serena Williams. It was really the first big win I had on Tennis, which I had traded infrequently up to that point, so it was a bit of a watershed moment. Would be nice to get a result like that today but I’m not going to bet on it! Should be an interesting final though. Kvitova was tipped up to me early on in the tournament but …
Meanwhile
OK, I’m still digesting the news a bit. But while I do that, there is still some great sport on.
The two Wimbledon semi finals are priced around the same level, 1.58 for the favourite, but we have two different contests IMHO.
The head-to-heads tell a different tale: –
Djokovic should be favourite, sure, but Tsonga leads Djokovic 5-2 in head to heads. Though this is the first time they’ve met on grass.
Nadal should also easily be the favourite …
Betfair premium charge & earnings soar
As we are all aware now, Betfair pleaded poverty and an imbalanced business model again yesterday, when announcing another new charge. This time hitting consistent earners for up to 60% of their profits. We heard the similar stories for data charges, transaction charges and the premium charge part one and all the other various amendments over the years to their charge structure.
This didn’t stop them from announcing record revenue and earnings a few hours later. Earnings per share are …
Good end to the month
A surprisingly strong end to the month continues with good performance on Saturday. Unless I mess up on the final few days it should be a good month. Wimbledon continues its great run of throwing up wonderful opportunities. I think this could be the best grand slam I have seen for opportunities. Maybe I have just been in the right place more often than not?
Mondays and Tuesday can be weak in the summer, poor quality racing, only two cards …
Feast or farce
Not difficult to choose what to do this afternoon. Yes there was some racing on but when end up with 15 minute gaps and one race at Pontefract had just two runners, though curiously this was the best race of the day for me.
Over at Wimbledon there were quite a few decent matches and opportunties so it was this that held the main interest for me today. As a point of interest, if you want evidence that people are …
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