Tag: football
Football – And so the hard work begins…
I failed in the ballot in my attempt to get tickets for the European Champions league final at Wembley today, such is life. I thought I may slip into some hospitality somewhere, till I saw the cost! It’s funny really, because I thought going to watch the Monaco Grand Prix would cost an arm and a leg. But on researching that, it seems I can still do that cheaper than the hour journey to Wembley! So Monaco will be on …
Today’s crop of dodgy football matches
The football season is pretty much over, but the fun and games are not it seems. With a few things to be decided in Italy there is still time for some unusual odds, volume and perhaps results? I have attached an image for posterity. At 09:00 this morning the matched bet volume on Verona vs Empoli was the leading traded volume on the football for the entire day for all matches!
Novara vs Lanciano – £15k matched, £11k on the …
My season long shot
May day is pay day for me, on a number of football markets. Season long bets mature and pay out months of hard work.
Relegation and promotion markets are something I play in each year and they can be quite fertile territory, if you have the patience.
Where to look
The new manager effect is a well understood phenomena in football. The old manager is given the boot and existing players suddenly have somebody new to impress. It’s a little …
How do the Italians get away with it?
I know I’ve posted a few times on this, but it’s really difficult to fathom in an age of close scrutiny and elevated morality in sport how matches like this occur. Today – Bari vs Cesena
I just downloaded todays football for analysis and on this match £30k has been match and all but a minor amount has been matched on the draw, which is going off odds on! Amazing, or it would be, if it wasn’t so predictable!
You …
End of season Italian football – I predict a draw
As I have pointed out in prior years at the same time, end of season Italian football can throw up some strange situations and odds. Here are the ‘top’ eight matches with the lowest price for the draw today.
Spezia Vs. Lanciano – Draw odds – 2.08
Cesena Vs. Juve Stabia – Draw odds – 2.1
Chievo Vs. Cagliari – Draw odds – 2.3
Cittadella Vs. Reggina – Draw odds – 3.1
Crotone Vs. Modena – Draw odds – 3.3…
What’s Messi worth to Barcelona?
I recently asked a similar question of Gareth Bale and last night made me feel a move for Mr Bale is almost certain this summer when Spurs fail to qualify for the champions league.
But back to last night.
I must admit I was anticipating that Barcelona would ‘go for it’ from the off in an attempt to get an early goal and put pressure on Bayern early on, but it never came. Bad tactics, poor motivation? It seemed something …
My favourite football trading set up
We had a couple of wonderful matches in the champions league last night, I am hoping for some more tonight.
If you want to qualify the comments on this post, simply browse the football related posts I’ve made over the years on here and you will see why last night was a really nice set up for a possible bumper result.
Both matches last night were good trading fodder as they had a really strong incentive to score in both …
A look under Betfair’s football markets
As you may know I’m bit of a stats man, but it’s a useful discipline. Monitoring your own activity can give you a useful insight into the markets and your activity on them. I spend at least a couple of hours a day either analysing what I did yesterday, or some aspect of the market or a strategy.
The champions league matches give me a chance really get under the skin of the market. This is because the liquidity is …
Friendless friendlies
Just scanned through the list of international friendlies today.
As you may know, through the profiling tools available in Bet Angel, I like to roughly model an event before it has started. Ths is so I can work out my rough risk and payoff on an event.
The problem I have with friendlies is that I find it difficult to make broadly correct assumptions, so these are matches I am much less likely to be active on. You can see …
Seeded vs non-Seeded tournaments
We have a couple of classic divergences being display in full glory in the markets at the moment.
In Melbourne we have the Australian open Tennis where, in a seeded tournament, the semi finals look like they will be played out amongst the top four seeds. Seeded tournaments are basically there to ensure the top competitors have every chance of meeting in the latter stages.
In the UK, I just watched Bradford City complete a remarkable cup run to make …
Goal fest
More amazing score lines in the premier league yesterday, but an interesting peice of psychology appears to be at hand.
A friend of mine sent me a text last night to exclaim just how many goals there had been this season, to which I replied, ‘It feels like it doesn’t it’. There-in ensued an argument about whether there actually had been more goals or not.
Yesterday we had a 3-4 and a 7-3, on boxing day an 8-0. Both very …
Is the Queen a West Brom supporter?
While watching MOTD 2 the other day, I noticed that the Queen has been pretty busy.
Not only did she manage to visit the prime ministers cabinet meeting this week, but at the weekend I seem to have caught her watching West Brom vs West Ham. See picture: –
Clever ways to trade and visualise football data
Market data can be boring in it’s flat form format. By re-interpreting this data you can not only get a bit of depth in a market but perhaps see things you haven’t seen before. I tend to visualise data, because this allows you to look at the data in a much more intuitive manner and this means you can spot opportunties easier as it significantly aids your reading of a market.
In the embedded video we use the multi market …
Are traders really the dominant force on Betfair?
You often read about traditional backers (or layers) moaning how traders ‘mess up’ the market.
I’ve posted elsewhere on the blog that I actually think trading creates a range of new opportunities for traditional strategies because they often chase prices into value territory, without actually realising it. So much so that I’ve started taking advantage of outlier prices. But that point aside, I do often wonder just how much trading goes on and on what scale? We already know you …
Fergie time
Here is an interesting piece from the BBC website about Manchester United and extra time. I did an article for a magazine around four years ago on exactly the same subject, I think I may have blogged on it as well at some point. Unfortunately the BBC didn’t pick up on that, but hey I’m not bitter about it!
However this is well constructed and a good summary of the situation relating to whether teams get additional time when they …
Tactical football trading
As is well publicised, I started my odyssey in sports when I was very young, analysing footy matches looking for draws.
I still endlessly search for new information, a quest to find something that hasn’t been found before. To give you some hope if you are doing the same, I am always finding new things. Sometimes by looking for something else.
I recently revisited how a football match unfolds and if there was information contain in the first half stats …
The comeback kings
When trading you are looking to lay at the shortest possible odds first then trade out at much higher odds, or vice versa. Doesn’t matter which, I’ll take either!
However you need something to happen for that opportunity to arise. In football there are many ways that this can happen but the main method to see a swing in odds is goals.
The perfect scenario is for a team to conceded a goal then comeback to win the match. This …
Interesting week ahead
We have a really decent week ahead of us on the markets. Lots of sporting and non sporting action ahead and some interesting markets.
The ATP World tour finals start this week in London and volumes will be high. If you get the chance book a ticket and go and watch it. It is very entertaining. Nothing like the stuffy experience of Wimbledon, where you can’t even get a ticket anyhow! Be aware of the different scoring system at this …
Trading the unexpected
Reading 5, Arsenal 7 – This was obvious the stand out football result from the last week. A most remarkable scoreline.
For so many goals to be scored in one match is rare, especially seven goals away from home; though Leeds fans may have more recent memories. But to win 7-5 from 4-0 down is remarkable. I’ve been scanning my records to see if I could find an example, but I can’t. 4-4 draw’s are rare, but I do …
A evening that’s overs before its started?
Not quite as uncompetitive as the recent International football but still some, theoretically, one sided matches this evening.
I’ve just ploughed through my spreadsheets and they seem to be forecasting around 24 goals this evening. On eight matches that averages out to just under three a game, hence the headline. Most goals are expected in the Barcelona, no surprise there, and least in the BATE v Valencia match, but most are towards the higher end of the scale. Curiously this …
Money buyers of the world unite!
World Cup qualifiers are the order of the day again and we have some highly uncompetitive matches on the card. So uncompetitive you would be sorely tempted to re-mortgage the house and lump it on a few on these matches. The Czech’s are 1.08 to beat the mighty Malta at home. If that’s not good enough, Netherlands at 1.01 to attack Andorra looks tempting. But the daddy of them all is England to beat San Marino at 1.01. Surely worth …
Mass aggregation
A rather opaque title for a football post.
This evening we have the Europa league football and I like this stage of the tournament because, as I mentioned in my other post recently, the mass of markets means I can make a hash of things and most likely still end in profit. Actually I didn’t say that, I said that you could improve your expectation of a profit by spreading your risk. But I hope you see what I …
Hedge your bets
Last night in the champions league we had a range of generally uncompetitive matches. Only Galatasaray vs Braga exhibited the characteristics of a match that could potentially be tight.
Of course you can never quite tell in Football. The average number of goals scored is quite low so results can be highly variable. A ball in the back of the net off a ‘wicked’ deflection, why are all deflections ‘wicked’?, could easily see a side take the lead unexpectedly. From …
Careful with your Europa league research
Looking forward to the slew of Europe league matches this evening. But anecdotally I have to remind myself to be careful with my early round research.
Could have been last year or the year before, but my wife confronted me with some words after she went to use Google and it showed the suggestion ‘Young boys’. Suspicions rose even more when I tried to explain by telling here ‘Young boys come from Wankdorf’, talk about digging yourself in a hole! …
A perfect start to the Champions League
Well that was just a fantastic start to the Champions league group stages! Let’s hope the remaining fixtures bring up a few similar results. It’s easy to use the oft quoted, and often misused, phrase ‘It was a traders dream’, but it was!
Both the Man City and Arsenal games, where there was the bulk of liquidity, ended up in situations where if you backed or laid either team or the draw before the off you could have traded out …
When to bet on your own team
I’m a strong advocate of not betting / trading on your own team when watching a sport. I like to have a reasoned logical approach to things and trying to place a position on a team that you follow can seriously mess up your head and result in taking positions in hope rather than for a profit. So therefore I don’t bet or trade on teams I follow.
However, there is one time though where I do tend to have …
Trading ‘to be relegated’ markets…
As the new season is upon us all football fans up and down the country will no doubt have fresh hopes about what the season will bring. Transfers will have been done and hopes raised. But what is it that makes a team successful? What is the most defining characteristic. That’s simple, it’s money!
Comparing the finishing positions of premier league teams over a number of seasons and several Deloitte reports, reveals a strong correlation each year between wage bill …
Has Athletics shown up football?
I’m still buzzing from all the Olympics action we have been privileged to see recently.
People stretching every sinew of their body for that elusive and hard fought honour, an Olympic medal. A chance to say there were the best in the world. Great honour in representing their country, whether they win or now. Years of training, pushing themselves to the limit of their bodies and stretching what is humanly possible.
Contrast that with the current state of professional football.…
Are Celtic better than a savings account?
When news came out that Rangers will start the Scottish season in divisions three, my head started spinning at all the permutations for next season. I always remember the fantastic Gretna, who rose from obscurity to become the punter and traders best friend, then promptly vanished as fast as they had risen.
In this case it’s almost the opposite. Rangers have been unceremoniously dumped from their elite status to the lower ranks of Scottish football. If Rangers can keep …
Spain vs Italy
An interesting set up for the final. I’ve had a really busy week, again, so I’ll be taking it easy and will trade pre-off, but sit down and watch the match.
The match is priced for just over two goals with an extra 0.40 going to Spain. It’s basically saying you have two even teams but Spain are effectively at ‘home’.
I know I often post this sort of comments, but I’m not sure if people pay much attention to …
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