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ATP World tour finals
The ATP World tour finals have already started, in case you hadn’t noticed, and tonight we were treated to a Djokovic vs Federer rematch. Today Murray vs Nadal.
I like this tournament. I’ve been a couple of times now and it’s such a different feel from the slightly stuffy and exclusive Wimbledon. It was great to hear that London will continue to host this series until at least 2018. It’s much more vibrant than Wimbledon and you WILL get …
I think I’ve spotted a trend!
I must admit, the Melbourne Cup Carnival has got off to a slow start for me this year. So I thought I’d better check on whether I was underperforming, or whether there was something else going on.
Something else in going on.
I took the first two days of the Carnival from my records and analysed total turnover in the markets for those two days. Obviously it started from a lower base some time ago, but the peak was in …
Derby Day is almost here
Isn’t the Derby in June? Yes and no….
If you are in Australia, early tomorrow morning (UK Time) is Derby Day at Flemington in Victoria. This kicks off the Melbourne Cup carnival and a week of top class Australian action. On Tuesday we have the race that stops a nation, the Melbourne Cup. It’s a busy period full stop on the horse racing front, as we also have the Breeders Cup on as well.
Typically the Friday on Breeders Cup …
An elegantly timed Betfair outage
Ok, so no Betfair outage is elegantly timed in reality, but as you may have noticed, I’ve been quite this week. That’s because I find myself in San Francisco at the moment. So the outage was ‘handy’ as I wasn’t going to be trading this morning, but also the ‘why’ bit of my location explains why the outage came at a good time.
Silicon Valley
I’m always interested in tech startups and of course Silicon Valley is home to an …
Saturday Soccer Stats
These stats are brought to your by our friends over at Football Form Labs. Check out their site and the powerful software that sits behind these comments. Football form labs is on offer at the moment, big savings available during August.
Editorial notes: –
A couple of interesting bits this week, the match preview of Spurs vs Liverpool (I do wonder whether we will see the new manager effect come to the fore here) and some interesting analysis …
Surrealism
I’m having a bit of a surreal moment…
Clear thoughts
I remember clearly when I decided that I was going to try and make a go of this Betfair thing, it seemed a little crazy. Nobody really knew what I was going on about and absolutely nobody, nobody, thought that what I was doing was remotely sensible.
That was many years ago now and it seemed obvious to me at the time that it was going to be difficult to …
Spreadsheets alone can’t win games
When John Henry took over Liverpool football club I was intrigued to see how things would pan out.
I had known for a number of years that Liverpool had net underspent in comparison to their peer group in the Premier league. This meant that they were likely to start slipping down the league as their competitors had much more fire-power when it came to the transfer market. I often detail this knowledge at the start of each season and you …
Traders of the Prix De L’Arc
Once a year I will taste some French racing like a connoisseur tastes French wine, with a sense of appreciation but with the gusto of a true enthusiast.
I don’t tend to trade on Sunday’s, or on French racing; but the richest race in Europe always draws my attention as it and the companion races are nearly always an opportunity.
Today starts the two day meeting at Longchamp. Saturdays are intermingled with some quality in the UK, so don’t tend …
Why trading horse racing works so well!
We had a glorious example earlier this week as to why trading is definitely a better way to earn money on Racing than traditional punting! The great thing about this trade, is that I did it office when we had somebody in for training; so it was great to pull of such a trade while they were here.
If somebody from a traditional punting background doesn’t understand why they should trade, show them this post!
The set up
We have …
Betdaq up the ante
First off, get FREE fully featured Betdaq software at www.betdaqangel.com – Don’t worry if you don’t have a Betdaq account as you can get one when you first log in.
Volumes have been inching up on Betdaq’s horse racing markets for some time and they are encouraging even more activity with some new offers and a completely new commission system.
The firs thing that should catch your interest is that Betdaq are commission free at Ascot and Newmarket on Saturday. …
Newmarket Cambridgeshire meeting
I missed typed this headline when I first wrote it, a hasty re-write was in order! It’s amazing how a misplaced ‘t’ instead of an ‘r’ can change a headline.
But despite my initial slip, which could have been freudian in nature, this meeting at Newmarket isn’t too bad. We start today and build to a climax on Saturday. I’ve picked off some good results from the meeting in the past and I’m hoping to repeat that this year.
Today …
Why trading works so well – On football
With the champions league football starting up again, I thought I’d take a look at football at a simple level and explain why trading works so well, using football as an example.
First off a simple maths lesson.
Finding value
When you look at odds on Betfair, they refer to the implied chance of that event occurring. If we saw Manchester United priced at 2.00, we simply divide one by those odds and it produces the implied probability of that …
The distorting impact of XM on Tennis
I was trying to think of a better headline, but that will have to do!
XM means ‘cross matching’ and while I was trading some of the activity in the pre-off markets this evening on the US Open Tennis men’s final I switched it on and off to have a look underneath the main market. Cross matching is the complicated, in most cases unnecessary, process that Betfair uses to offer bets on both sides of the market. On Tennis, being …
A Corbyn coup
I started getting into political markets a few years ago. The first market I seriously played was the US presidential market in 2004. For the last election over there, I was actually present in the country, which was quite interesting. Since then I’ve spent a fair amount of time looking at political markets. The most recent is the next Labour leader. Whether you make or lose money you always learn something from your participation in the market amd the same …
Laytown races – Laying on the beach
The races
Since 1868 Laytown has hosted the annual race meeting like no other. With no formal race course to host the equine competitors, these horses are raced on the beach. Laytown catches the attention of wide range of racing and non-racing goers each year.
Quite a few years ago I was captivated by the sight of horses running on the beach. It just seemed a bit different and interesting. So I set my sights on visiting this very unique …
Free money
With today’s incredibly short priced international football mismatches, I thought I’d review just what has happened in the past on matches where the odds are incredibly short. The results may surprise you.
First I looked at the real shorties in our database. We found 19 matches with decent data that went off at 1.01 for the home win, all 19 ended up as home wins. Indeed you needed to head out to 1.04 to find Luxembourg’s shock win in Switzerland …
US Open Tennis – Scoreline statistics
US Open Tennis – The statistics behind the scorelines
Advice from Dan from tennisratings.co.uk .…
I thought I’d look at the US Open on a historical basis and look at the statistics behind the scorelines. An angle I wanted to look at for this blog post was laying players in-play when either a set up, or two sets up. As an introduction, the table below shows the percentages each correct scoreline occurred in Grand Slams since 2011:-
| Scoreline | 2011 |
US Open Tennis – Arm yourself to the teeth this year!
While the summer evening racing markets have finished, thanks to the US Open tennis there is still plenty to do in the evenings at the moment.
With Bet Angel you get the benefit of specialist Tennis trading tools, namely: –
- The unique Tennis modelling and profiling tool – Tennis trader
- Live scores on each match
- A handy watch list so you can look at all matches and scores all at once
- The ability to trade on live scores via a
Saturday Soccer Stats
These stats are brought to your by our friends over at Football Form Labs. Check out their site and the powerful software that sits behind these comments. Football form labs is on offer at the moment, big savings available during August.
Arsenal v Newcastle, Sat 12:45
Newcastle picked up a point at Old Trafford last weekend but while they had a chance to win the match late on they conceded several great chances and against an Arsenal team that …
Betfair shock market with Paddy Power merger
It’s not often you get a full blown WTF moment, but we got one this morning with news that former Paddy Power COO, Breon Corcoran, who is now Betfair CEO. Has agreed to a takeover / merger with Paddy Power.
It is being positioned as a merger, but the simple fact is that Betfair will be a minority in the new partnership only holding a 48% stake of the company, Paddy Power would hold a 52% stake. Paddy Power are …
Football is getting more boring
I’ve been doing a lot of work on football markets recently. Once the evening horse racing is out of the way, I’ll start turning my attention to football properly. At the moment I am dabbling and revisiting old material and updating new stuff for the season ahead. I’ll miss the odd opportunity, but I always feel the need to improve on prior years.
I was browsing goal data today and thought I’d have a look at how goals have changed …
Predicting chaotic markets
Took one look at the racing card this morning and was a bit frustrated. Yes, lots of racing on which is great, but just too much. My spreadsheet gave me the following dialogue: –
“There are 587 runners today over 61 races, an average of 9 runners per race.Based upon long term averages today’s racing is likely to exhibit much less volatility against what we would typically expect to see.If all races start on time, then there will be 11 …
The curious story behind Brentford & Midtjylland
Midtjylland meet Southampton this evening in the Europa league. When Saints drew Vitesse in the last round I wasn’t pleased they had drawn the top seeded side. As the draw came out for the next round I had have an eye on Midtjylland. Sods law dictated that they were immediately paired with Southampton. Why my interested in this club? For that you need to look to Matthew Benham.
Benham is an Oxford gradute turned pro gambler. He has fingers …
Ebor, Ebore or Ffast Loss?
Summer racing isn’t over quite yet and today kicks of the Ebor meeting at York. I’ve traditionally done OK at this festival each year so I am looking for something above average this week.
The Ebor meeting can yield some good results, but nothing is ever guaranteed and this meeting can be a bit random at times so it’s probably not going to be all plain sailing. It should be better than what we have been seeing recently though.
Traditionally …
Sunday Soccer Stats
These stats are brought to your by our friends over at Football Form Labs. Check out their site and the powerful software that sits behind these comments. Football form labs is on offer at the moment, big savings available during August.
Man City v Chelsea, Sun 16:00
Man City have been made favourites for the title after their comfy win in the opening round while Chelsea could only pick up a point at home. While City looked impressive against …
Life on the trading desk of a bookmaker – Pt. 3
This episode, how bookmakers trade their markets….
Click on the text for Part one and Part two.
The model
For all sports, a model kicks out the updated prices so there is no extra work involved, it’s just a case of keeping an eye on your position.
Everybody trades differently, some like to keep the liabilities very small and will tend to adjust prices regularly to balance the books, some like to take larger risks and are comfortable with …
Dustin Johnson is most likely a lay
First off here are the positive movers from yesterday’s play at the US PGA golf championship, the “fourth” major. Returns from trading £10 level stakes.
Jason Day – 14 to 7 : £10.00
Rory McIlroy – 13.5 to 10.5 : £2.86
Dustin Johnson – 17.5 to 5.7 : £20.70
Justin Rose – 22 to 14.5 : £5.17
Matt Kuchar – 70 to 25 : £18.00
Martin Kaymer – 85 to 65 : £3.08
Paul Casey – 100 to 80 : …
Knee jerk reaction to new football season
Not a trick question, but how many games are there in the season?
Well there are 38 in the premier league and 46 in the other three tiers. So if you win the first match of the season what impact would that have on your chances? Not much you would think. Three points divided by 38 isn’t exactly a large number, but last weekend we saw quite a large reaction to some mundane first day results.
Chelsea’s difficulty in breaking …
Will models like Augur replace Betfair?
Back during the dot-com boom in the year 2000 disintermediation was a keyword that was floating around.
If you used word disintermediation in a sentence along with the words dot-com, it was highly likely that you’d be able to secure funding for your project the matter how much money you asked for, or how stupid the idea was. Disintermediation was the posh word for what is now known to become as peer-to-peer engagement. Basically two people trading services or goods …
My job as a football data scout
When you look on Betfair you will see a graphic, this graphic is telling you things like ‘Dangerous attack’. Corner, substitution or goal. Lots of bookmakers use this service now and a lot of them, including Betfair, use it to manage markets automatically. If you ever wondered where this info comes from, or why a match ‘losses its feed’ or experiences ‘technical difficulties’ read on…..
How I got a job as a scout
In the couple of years when I …
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