Recent Articles
Europa league matches
Had some fun last Thursday messing around on the Europa league matches. I like the Europa league as they break down the matches into two blocks. One going off at 18:00 UK time and the remainder at 20:05. This gives you two cracks at the whip at trading them. This week was also the second leg of a knockout competition, which I prefer. I also tried an experimental strategy to small stakes on Thursday and that is what this post …
Portsmouth go into administration
Further to my post some time ago Portsmouth officially went into administration this afternoon and almost certain relegation. Hopefully you jumped on board following my post a little while ago. One of the lowest risk trades of the season!
While it’s not pleasant to see clubs get into trouble, the economics of football are astonishing. It’s quite amazing to see how poor the economics of most clubs are, but even the top teams are not in a very good shape. …
Murray suffers shock defeat
1.12 turned over, in a shock defeat.
However, short odds turned over in these sorts of matches are not uncommon. If you limit a match to three sets then the propensity for an upsets shoots up. One break of serve, if you are serving first, wins you the set. A couple of errors in the next set and the match is over. If the prospect of a shock was high, then it was in space yesterday when Tipsy took Murray …
Greyhound racing in steep decline
Most people are familiar with how the levy raises money for horse racing, but this also applies to Greyhound racing. Both sets of funding are falling but the most recent decline in the Greyhound funding must be quite worrying for the sport.
Income from off course bookmakers to the British Greyhound Racing Fund is now expected to only reach £8.5m, compared to the 2009 budget of £10m, and £12m in 2008.
Full story here.
Downhill all the way
I’ve been having some fun trying to get my head around the winter Olympics when I can. I’ve picked on the the sports where a milliseconds lapse in concentration can hand the medal to somebody else. Basically just laying the current leader or red hot favourite in the hope that they make a mistake or somebody gets over the line a tenth of a second faster. I must admit I can’t quite get it right at the moment, but that …
Second bite at the cherry
Couldn’t resist the chance to lay Zaynar at Kelso this afternoon. Seeing it priced at 1.09 and having missed out on Denman recently at short odds, it seemed worth a shot. I waited for the opportunity in running and for a horse that didn’t seem to be responding it seemed just too good an opportunity. I laid at 1.10 and backed it back at 10’s for a nice profit. £1.13m was traded at 1.09!
Ladbrokes results
Not much time to comment on the Ladbroke results but here they are.
An interesting graph in the presentation on UK race meetings that have been abandoned which just seems to be headed in one direction only!!! Your average Ladbrokes punter slaps less than a £10 on the counter per bet. I think this goes to highlight why Betfair will always struggle to reach this type of customer. Ladbrokes e-gaming division had a gross win of £172m vs. Betfair’s …
Champions league trading
Porto vs. Arsenal
Priced at a lowly 2.30 goals, this is fairly typical construction for a match of this type. Porto are priced as having a slight edge but only just. The market is pretty much spot on in terms of pricing.
B.Munich vs. Fiorentina
A less competitive clash according to the market. Priced at 2.90 with Munich having a 1.30 goal advantage. Under 2.50 goals offers long term value, I would have priced at 2.14 vs. 2.22 in the …
Only a few seconds..
Amazing how a few seconds can make such a difference.
Ahead of the Eon chase we were speculating in the office at how short a price Denman was. In fact it was more like moaning, because we knew it would make getting anything out of the race pretty difficult. Our conclusion was that the incredibly skinny odds of 1.17 or thereabouts really represented the fact that Denman was going to win easy, except if he fell. We watched the race …
FA CUP fifth round
I like the later stages of knockout competitions. There is lots to play for and when a goal down and ten minutes are left , it’s all or nothing. These are the places you not only find value but plenty of opportunity and teams playing out of their skin, I love it! Wembley stadium is only a few games away today and anything can happen.
I’ve checked through the odds and nothing wierd has been thrown up. But consider the …
Are sports markets like financial markets?
Yes and no. There are some similarities, most certainly in a number of aspects. Forex markets are pretty similar in their appearance. But when it comes to trading certain types of markets, there are many differences.
When I first looked at the markets I thought there may be some commonalities, but I discovered that a number of popular technical indicators in financial markets just don’t wash as well in sports markets. Looking closer, there are some clear underlying reasons for …
Losing money
Today I went into some markets and deliberately lost money. Have I gone mad?
Over the weekend I was at my gym chilling in the outdoor hot tub when I had a crazy idea that I thought may just work if I threw enough money at it. When I put it into practice today it showed me that my initial thoughts were wrong, I lost money and quite heavily if I am honest. Was it a disastrous experiment? We have …
Trading from the beach
I’ve traded from many, many locations around the world. Next to swimming pools, at airport lounges, from hotels and in cars. But it seems we are slowly moving towards that ideal scenario of completely portable trading.
Thanks to Bet Angel user Rob for sending me the latest update on Slinging over 3G. It looks like, in America at least, Apple are going to allow slinging over 3G for the iPhone. This would be a decent leap forward to getting pictures …
January etc.
All things considered January went OK, but it was a very tough month.
The thing to remember if this is your first winter, is that the winter months can be punishing. This year was an even sterner test that usual though. With the weather conspiring against us you will have done well to survive the month with your mindset intact. Volumes were low, markets weak and the racing un-inspiring. I imagine that January cost the racing industry a fair few …
Custom designed trading
On version 1.23 and above on Bet Angel we now have one of the most customisable and flexible trading screens on the market. You can move elements around the screen and custom define your own columns and layouts. When you have done this, you can save your layouts to a custom profile for later recall.
This is particularly handy if you want switch quickly between different markets and need some elements of the screen but not others. You can put …
Six more weeks of winter?
As legend would have it today is Groundhog day when a small(ish) furry animal predicts to residents if they are in for six more weeks of winter. While this is a north American tradition it seems to have its roots in Europe. Given the poor start to the year lets hope the various ceremonies around the world don’t see a shadow or if they do it’s a region forecast that won’t affect the UK.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groundhog_Day
Quiet transfer deadline day
Often the transfer deadline throws up a few opportunities, due to the high correlation between wages and league position. A buy or sell can translate to a corresponding improvement or decline between now and the end of the season. This year it was very quiet. The only thing of note was Portsmouth net sale which isn’t going to help their prospects of avoiding the drop. If you followed my advice of a little while ago you should have a healthy …
Connection modes on Bet Angel
We have had lots of questions emailed in about API and non API modes on Bet Angel.
Here is a very quick video I recorded back in September last year outlining what a connection mode is. This should enable you to understand how to set up Bet Angel to use connection modes and it also specifically refers to what you should do if you are unable, or unwilling, to connect to the Betfair’s standard API.
More Betfair problems today
Last night there was a significant site outage, followed by issues for international customers. At 11am this morning the API went offline again.
It’s been a terrible week for Betfair. I know that due to the measures Betfair have taken in recent years the stress on their servers much be much lower on a like for like basis than in years gone by. So I am not sure why these issues have been occurring on such a frequent basis this …
API not available this morning
I logged in this morning to find the API was not available again. It appears to have had a dodgy time overnight according to the Betfair forum. After problems on Monday & Tuesday its a bit disconcerting to find problems again, but especially on Cheltenham trials day!
I’d like to point out again that Bet Angel is the only API application that can work with or without the API. From a simple concept of API / non API it has …
Tennis trading lessons
A couple of neat lessons were served up by the Tennis yesterday and both showed that statistics don’t always give you the key to actually understanding what is going on in the underlying market.
First we had the Federer match. Struggling with a vibrant opponent you could have counted Federer out for the count, but a revealing post match interview revealed what was going through his head at 2-6 1-3 down. Federer commented on how the sun was bothering him …
No API? No Problem
After continued problems yesterday it appears things are not back to normal today at Betfair, currently the API is offline. But don’t worry, you can still trade with Bet Angel. One of the unique features of Bet Angel is that even if the API is down it can still connect to Betfair and allow you to trade as normal.
Also, if you want to try your hand elsewhere during the downtime. Bet Angel also had similar versions of the software …
Couldn’t make it up
One tie looks set to light up what otherwise appears to be a dull and predictable fifth round FA Cup draw.
I waited with baited breath knowing that there were a few ties that could produce a classic cup match, but was amazed when the one top of my list occurred, Southampton vs Porstmouth. I couldn’t believe it!
This should be a real classic fifth round tie. Local derby, quite a history behind this fixture and a perfect set up. …
FA CUP value
Where is the value in today’s FA Cup?
To be honest any recommendations would come with a large pinch of salt. While predicting matches in the same league is quite a straightford process, doing the same in a cup competition can be pretty tricky. If there are any matches I am likely to get caught out on, its quite likely to be a cup competition, especially in the early rounds. As such I’ll do some simple things when the screen …
Over / Under 10.5 goals
You don’t see that market very often, but you did last night. What a remarkable match, Aston Villa 6 Blackburn 4! At 0-2 down Villa were matched in volume at 10’s, this match was a trading bonanza! The market was just slightly out on this one forecasting just 2.60 goals. Excluding specifics of the match itself, I can only find three 6-4’s in my recent detailed database of 10,189 matches. So its around at least a 3400-1 shot. Great entertainment …
Best trading match of the tournament?
It’s not often you get such close matches so early on in a tournament, but massive credit to James Blake for almost pulling off a big shock today. It could be one of the best trading matches of the tournament; I think it will difficult to beat. In the last set you could have laid Del Petro at 1.06 only to see him reach break 2’s just minutes later. Fantastic stuff, great trading fodder and very entertaining too. Del Potro …
Portsmouth – To be relegated
I’ve had a lot of fun on this market in the past and there is another potential opportunity. Portsmouth already looked pretty doomed given their position at the bottom of the table at this time of year. On top of that you have players low on confidence and a financial position that is, at best, precarious. At 1.30’s that information seems to already be discounted into the market.
But, HMRC has now been given the go ahead for their winding …
Tennis trading advice
I was asked to write a primer on trading tennis markets last month. You can view the full article in this months ‘Gambling on line’ magazine. Unfortunately I can’t publish this article here just yet, but I thought I would point it out for you so you can read up in time for some action on the Australian open tennis in Melbourne. I have talked about Tennis trading quite a lot on this blog as well, so be sure to …
At last..
At last, a decent day to get stuck into. Saturday saw the return of jumps racing after a mind numbing break of 13 days and Kempton provided the highlight with the Lanzarote hurdle. I had a fairly consistent day and performed better overall than the equivalent races of last year.
I’m looking forward to a full week next week, but a lot of the quality thins out now as we head into, traditionally, the coldest month of the year, February. …
Trade of the week
One of my favourite types of trades appeared this week. The trade where you look at one market but actually trade another. These opportunities appear all the time but typically in knockout competitions and ante post markets where a result somewhere will definitely affect other prices in a same or similar market.
This week was a little more clear cut but unusual. ITV decided to cover the Liverpool vs Reading FA CUP match. It had all the signs of the …
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