Recent Articles
Betfair confirms CEO to quit
“After ten years with Betfair, and nearly six as CEO, David Yu has informed the Board that he believes it is now the right time for the company to start looking for his successor. He does not intend to renew his current contract (which expires in October 2012) and therefore the Board will now begin a search process for a new CEO. During the process of identifying his successor, David will remain fully committed to the Company and to delivering …
A week full of opportunities
We are now just beyond the half way point in the year. So double what you have made so far and you end up around your annual total!
Glad I am sat here and not half drunk on some beach. OK I lied, but any regret at not getting sun burnt has been tempered by some fantastic results in the market this week. I’ve really picked up speed in June and I am heading for a great month overall. Despite …
Betfair poised to replace chief executive
Interesting report in the Telegraph which popped up late last night.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/
Back to earth with a bump
In line with my objective to take more time off this year, I had a well timed break after after Royal Ascot to head off for a BIG wedding abroad. What a fantastic experience it was and how I wish I could have extended the trip to the post wedding bash on the edge of the mediterranean. Wimbledon was calling though, so I had to make do with what was a fantastic few days instead. We packed so much in …
Tennis – Grass vs Clay
What statistical evidence is there to support the differences between grass and clay court Tennis?
Yesterday we highlighted some ATP data that told you the difference in how much shorter a point is on grass. Winning a point on grass is an average of 1/3rd the time on clay. My first instinct on reading this statistic was that a match on grass must be shorter than on clay.
Ever curious, I downloaded and analysed ten years worth of grand slam …
Grass is for cows
Wimbledon is the only grand slam on grass, but it wasn’t always that way. Two other tournaments were played on grass on the grand slam circuit. The US Open, was played on grass until 1974, and the Australian Open, was played on grass until 1988.
Very few players would not admit that a win at Wimbledon would be a career defining moment. But it’s not through trying that players fail; it’s generally down to how each surface plays. Research by …
Bounce
As this post got buried on the blog the last time I posted it, I have reposted.
I’ve been reading this book recently and it resonates with me. Of all the things I have done in life I have maintained most wasn’t talent, just hard work and lots of practice; but maybe that is how you acquire talent? I’m learning to play the piano at the moment. I’m rubbish, but getting more ‘talented’ everyday.
If your desire is strong …
Final day of a busy week
Well done to Rory McIlroy who continued to rip through the US Open. Unfortunately this scuppered my trade which needs a competitive field to work. At 1.40ish this leaves only one possible strategy, to back or lay McIlroy. I reckon most people will lay McIlroy given his blow up in the US Masters. It’s a clear fact however, that the error most people make is to take past trends and extrapolate them into the future. Rather than go on gut …
Royal Ascot / Open Golf Thursday
Another good day in the bag for Royal Ascot, but I left it late today. I didn’t get a real blockbuster race till near the end of the card. I had to work much harder than yesterday and I took my foot of Betdaq, as working harder meant I couldn’t keep focus on two exchanges effectively. I did broaden my activity out on Betdaq though to other races and they worked well. So after Ascot I’m going to continue my …
US Open golf
I love the majors as they very often throw up some excellent opportunties. So while things are very busy at the moment, I will be taking time out today to open up with some positions on the US open.
The Blue Course at Congressional is longer than when previous majors were held there and the par has been reduced to 71. That is almost certaintly going to make the scoring much more competitive and the scores lower. Should be interesting.…
Royal Ascot – Day two
That went well! I have to give myself a 10/10 for yesterday. After a quiet start with a few errors in my P&L I slowly got into stride and managed to really hit top speed by the end of the day. In the end I managed to achieve my best ever daily result at Ascot which was incredibly satisfying. I can’t pretend today will be a repeat performance, but I will try hard.
It’s difficult to pick any highlights out …
Ascot – Day one summary
I thought that went quite well. I struggled last year but this year was ok and I could have done better if I was a bit more aggressive. In hindsight I was too passive yesterday, didn’t take on board enough risk. So I’ll give myself an 8/10 as it was good, but I could have done better.
Frankel made a bit of a mess of the feature race of the day and the market on Frankel was so strong that …
Royal Ascot day one
An intriguing day one at Ascot. After all, what colour hat will the Queen be wearing. LOL!
I’ll be all guns on the first day to work out what feel the market brings this year. I’ve paid a lot of attention to Ascot over the years and each year we see the market shift subtly in one direction or the other. I didn’t do a very good job of it last year, comparatively speaking, so I’ll want to put in …
It’s a trick…
Shot.
Great value entertainment and trading fodder today at Queens, in the traditional warm up for Wimbledon. I thought Murray did a great battling job in Paris and his display against Roddick the other day was just awesome. Today, after an early wobble, he closed out against Tsonga and did some headline making shots as well, but in a different manner to the Roddick match. Hold onto your hats as Wimbledon fever is almost here. Can’t wait!
Canadian entertainment
Not often you see a formula 1 race like that! I lost count of the number of times Jenson Button pitted, then he goes on to win the race! Vettel lost it on the last lap and was turned over at 1.04, Button was backed at very big odds. I wasn’t trading it but perhaps should have been given the weather conditions. Sometimes it’s just nice to watch the sport, especially when it’s this entertaining.
£174m
The Deloitte football report is out and makes continued interesting reading. The current austerity in the western world doesn’t seem to have affected football. Their finances are as bad as ever but the players get paid more in a week than a group of the fans could reasonably expected to earn in a year. The clamour for ‘talent’ continues unabated.
There are some very interesting bits in the report. Manchester United spent 46% of its revenue on pay, but rivals …
Free money
Bets are being taken on the end of the world on the 29th October. You can get 1/100 on the world not ending.
If the world does end then, of course, you will not be around to have to pay out the liability. Click here to see the latest odds: –
https://www.victorchandler.com/vcbet/en- … 1200/22889
In fact, this is a neat way of generating low cost cash flow. Offering very short odds at some point in the future and you get …
Betfair files complaint over Greek ban
Betfair has filed a complaint with the European Commission over the ban on betting exchanges contained within the Greek draft egaming law.
https://www.reuters.com/article/2011/06/08/betfair-greece-idUKLDE7571AL20110608?type=companyNews
Levy board statement
The HBLB made a statement yesterday which you can read here: –
https://www.hblb.org.uk/document.php?id=411&search=
Betfair’s response is here: –
https://corporate.betfair.com/media/press-releases/2011/2011-06-08.aspx
Morning workshop
Bet Angel has a ton of different functions in it. To help Bet Angel users get the most from our product. We have decided to start running some morning workshop sessions. We are doing them in the morning on quieter days when there is the least impact on the trading day and also to give you time to return to your own desks.
If you are interested in attending, you can get more information by clicking here.
A comedy of errors!
This could easily describe my sub standard activities yesterday, but instead it relates to an incident yesterday evening.
I started trading a race with the urge to visit the loo. The race was a little late getting off, so with the position in reasonable shape I thought I would do a quick sprint to the loo. I promptly kicked the door on my sprint out of the study and smashed my toe against the corner. So instead of some relief, …
Federer loses French Open final
I’ve deliberately titled this post in a manner that is completely dissimilar to the current headlines out there. Well done to Nadal winning the French open; but if you look at the flow of the match from a statistical viewpoint, it was more like Federer who actually lost it in my opinion.
It was a fairly tight match, till the last set at least, 7-5, 7-6, 5-7, 6-1. You would expect the younger player of the two to do better …
Derby result
A satisfactory result. Not my best, but not my worst either. The market seemed pretty boyant today and volumes were much better than last year. Racing should be thankful that the Queen will bring so much attention to next years Derby. Can’t only help can’t it?
I’m taking tomorrow off from an activity perspective. I had hoped to trade the mens final at the French Open tennis, but I’ve been going downhill the last few days with a heavy cold …
Derby Day
An interesting day yesterday. The two Tennis semi finals were good, but not perfect trading fodder. I could have done with Murray coming back into the match a bit. Nadal / Murray had matched bet volume of £30m, the other semi was almost exactly the same amount. The Oaks had matched bet turnover of £2.6m.
Turnover on the Oaks was up on last year, but that can be accounted for by the way the field manifests itself. I will be …
Fab Friday
Today, we have a decent looking day ahead of us on the sporting front.
The Epsom derby meeting kicks off today and the Oaks is always a reminder of the first race that Betfair took bets on back in June 2000. To be honest I haven’t really ripped through this Friday for a few years. So I’ll be taking things careful until I get a feel for the day.
At the French Open the top four men in the world …
May
Another month has gone and I’m feeling more optimistic about the year as it wears on.
Each year I’m deliberately pessimistic at my chances. I’d rather have low expectations and exceed them, than high ones that force my hand. God knows I spend so much of my life tied up in numbers and so on, I swear I’m going mad some times. However, I’m much more relaxed this year about and have spent a lot of time doing new things; …
New balls please
One of the key stories going into the French open was the fact they were going to use a new ball type. I sort of guessed this may lead to a few suprises, but it realistically is going to take the whole tournament to work out if it really made much difference. It’s certainly added a few variables to things. This is an interesting article discussing this very point: –
https://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304520804576341380613199152.html
Two card monte
We have reached the time of year when Monday and Tuesday racing drops to two cards in the afternoon. It’s an important time of year as this changes the characteristic of these cards to the negative, but also it allows you to do a few other things and skip these cards if needed.
Racing tends to be lower quality on a Monday and Tuesday and that combined with the 15 minute gaps in-between the cards leads to much poorer market …
Bank Holiday Moo-nday
Had to laugh at this great peice of camera work today from Carlisle. It seems it just wasn’t the punters that were interested in the Racing.
A bit of a messicre!
Fairly early on last night, apart form the opening exchanges, you could see this match wasn’t going Man Utd’s way last night. The stats said it all. Possession was heavily skewed to Barca and by the end of the match Barca had 13 shots on target to Man Utd’s 1! Over 2.5 goals looked almost certain by half time, as did the Barca win. Barcelona really cemented their status as best club in Europe last night and probably the world.…
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