Tag: horse racing
How to win every year on the Grand National
So the Grand National is upon us and that monumental task faces us again, picking a winner from 40 runners. Worse than that, all our friends will want a tip as well.
Picking the winner from this incomprehensible field is a bit of a nightmare. There are some common trends that are touted each year. Horses that haven’t won over three miles are generally not considered, as are horses with no experience of large fields. Positives are age, experience, proven …
Could the General election change racing forever?
A fair few years ago I started visiting the houses of parliament.
I wasn’t looking to be an MP I just wanted to follow the passage of the new Gambling Bill through parliament and the committee stage. I learnt a lot about politics, lobbying, MP’s, party whips and the legislative process. The biggest thing I learnt was it was largely a pointless exercise. All the discussion, cross checking and diligence went out the window when the bill was guillotined thanks …
Cheltenham festival – On the other side of the fence
Sometimes, enjoying the sport you normally trade can be just as must fun! Dave gives us an insight to his experience of a day at Cheltenham…..
As many of you know, my health has been an issue for many years now. I wake up every morning and within 30 seconds I know if it is going to be a struggle or if I can be okay. I rarely get a good, or what many call a normal day, so I …
A quick summary of Cheltenham
Well it’s a relief that the first big week of the year is over, but also a bit of disappointment. Today was the misery I expected and the adjustment back to run of the mill action is underway. But big meetings don’t come around that often, so love them or hate them there are not that many.
The meeting had a lot of volume, but don’t confuse volume with liquidity they are two different things. I need to do a …
Cheltenham update
A quick update on how the week is going so far. Today, Thursday, is trading well so far.
Cheltenham Beckons….
OK, we are almost there now. We are just a stones throw from Cheltenham and I’m deep into research how previous years traded, all the stats, videos, charts and anything that can refresh my mind on previous years.
I’ve produced this video for you to give you my initial thoughts ahead of the Festival. Another video will follow with more detailed analysis.
Cheltenham Open meeting
At last, some quality comes back into the jumps season!
With the Cheltenham open this weekend we can look forward to the fact that the festival is only four months away! Hey, you need something to look forward to during the, often bleak, winter season.
The Open is a useful meeting and volumes will be higher than normal so it’s an opportunity to get tucked into some decent markets. This isn’t like the Festival though so you shouldn’t get wildly …
York Dante meeting
After a successful Chester meeting last week we roll onto York for the Dante meeting this week.
The York card looks good, but the other stuff on the card is a bit testing’. I’ve never managed to consistently pull out any massive totals from this York meeting in the past, but today has got off to a good start so maybe this is the year!
As we move through the early part of the flat turf season the early part …
Chester draw Bias
Chester draw bias; an unbiased view by Proform
Given its idiosyncratic nature, a low draw at Chester provides a distinct advantage and with the Chester 3 day May meeting starting today, many race goers and punters will try to outsmart the general public’s perception of the draw bias and overlook the obvious to seek value elsewhere. Nevertheless, as shown by specialist tools like Proform siding against basic physics on this occasion may as fruitless as King Canute’s efforts in holding …
Chester May Festival
Chester May festival starts today and it’s a welcome addition to the card, but based upon previous years it’s nothing amazing from a trading viewpoint.
Obviously we all love some extra liquidity that the quality racing will bring, but it’s never been a meeting that I’ve got really good amounts from. By that I mean I’m not banging in three figure results a race. Just the odd one or two a day. The thing to note about Chester is its …
Win by backing the loser
An unusual strategy but one I documented in this recent post on the Betfair web site.
The dutching in Bet Angel contains a neat feature called the ‘margin maker’. This allows you to create a book with one price offset to a nominated value. This is useful for risk management when deploying a strategy in a market where you have some idea where the odds will go. Whether this is the time value in a football match or the price …
Craving Craven
I prefer to know whether I’m in a good market or a poor one, but the Craven often sits in-between that. I know there’s quality there, but in terms of liquidity it often hasn’t delivered in the past and as a betting heat it doesn’t have the same importance as other nearby events. But it is better than the dross that’s often between Cheltenham and the Grand National though, it has to be said!
Winter is generally pretty tough and …
Aintree Grand National meeting
I’ve prepared a couple of videos for you to do with the Grand National meeting, see below. To get videos as they are released click on this link.
This is a curious meeting for me each year. It’s not on the scale of some of the really large meetings, but is still a decent meeting in it’s own right. The problem I have here is that I never seem to pull off anything spectacular from it. On a race …
Excellent start to Cheltenham
We’ve teamed up with our friends at Proform to bring you one of their race cards at Cheltenham, for FREE! Download today’s racecard by clicking on this text.
Cheltenham day one summary
Well that went well.
Tuesday’s are always a day for experimenting and testing the market so I don’t usually get really stuck in, but I realised quickly today that the markets were behaving themselves so I got stuck in. I tried a number of strategies and they …
Seasonality in Horse Racing
Winter racing markets can be a struggle and traditionally produce less opportunity than at other times of the year. This video discusses this.
One of my favourite races of the year
The Hennessy Gold Cup was run at Newbury yesterday and I have fond memories of this race as this is the race I traded live at the IX Investor show for Betfair in 2006.
Seeing a betting company at an financial investment show was a shock for many people and lots couldn’t understand why we were there, so we had real trouble getting people to come near the stand.
This was when I rolled up my sleeves and traded live …
Market watching – Day of the drifter
I’m an avid market watcher. Every day for years I’ve collected data on what I’ve been doing and what the market is doing, where the odds are going, what’s happening etc. This allows me to ‘look under the bonnet’ of the market and understand what is going on. On occasion it throws up some real anomalies. On Monday we experienced some of that.
Monday was the ‘day of the drifter’. If you would have laid the favourite, the majority of …
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. Most of the surrounding card in the UK is not the greatest quality, so I’ll tend to do some other …
Ascot so far
Sorry I didn’t provide an update yesterday, it’s just a very, very busy week!
The top line
On the top line turnover is down for Betfair and up for Betdaq. Betdaq numbers are harder to decipher than Betfair but you can see a persistent lift in turnover, however you view or cut the numbers.
On Betfair on the first three days produced £36.9m in matched bets vs £43.7m last year – £6.8m lower than last year. The current trend, turnover …
Australian racing invites back traders
Good news from the ever changing world of racing today as Betfair confirmed that the recent announcement from racing Victoria meant that conventional trading was going to be possible again, at least in the state of Victoria.
Previously a turnover charge was levied on activity and that killed the prospect of backing and laying in the same market. Now Victoria are saying they want the charge levied on net activity in the market. So they benefit from new revenue and …
Ascot day one trading review
Total matched bet turnover at post time was £13.9m vs £15.6m last year, down 11%. But some of this will be due to the fact we didn’t have a really short priced favourite in the field. Today should give us a more representative day.
Yesterday was a little erratic and no clear trading characteristics came out of it. The first day of big meetings I tend to ‘play around’ a little in the market to test things and that went …
The numbers behind Royal Ascot
And so here we are, another year, another Ascot. For me, another declined invitation to attend. While that pains me, in another couple of years it won’t be a problem. But for the moment, I’d still rather be on this side of the desk during one of the busiest weeks of the year.
Wall to wall, quality racing, from now till Saturday, I’m in trading heaven! Let’s see how it all adds up.
Last year Royal Ascot had matched bet …
Understanding UK Horse Racing
Most people understand most sports on the exchanges, but for some the terminology and structure behind racing can be a bit of a mystery. It took me some time fully graps what racing was all about and I’m no expert, but it helped how I trade the market. People attending my course will know I talk about it a fair bit. So I’ve invited forum racing favourite ‘JollyGreen’ to give you some broader background to racing. Here is the first …
Derby post mortem
An interesting Derby meeting this year. I don’t often post up analysis after the event but I thought it was worth a few notes this year.
I managed to pull a decent result out of the hat on Saturday, but I think I’d describe it as exactly that, ‘Out of the hat’. It was a bit of an erratic today, where I ended up with quite a bumpy P&L.
For some reason UK racing thought that putting on lots of …
Peak trading season nears
58 races on the card, Tennis in Madrid, players championship golf, this is all good stuff.
We are well and truly embedded in the flat turf season now. 58 races greet us on the card today and there must be at least a dozen really decent opportunities in there. I’d love to tell you what they are, but my trading style means I wont know until we are much nearer the start. But it’s all good stuff out there.
The …
Improving conditions at Cheltenham
After a bumpy start on the first day at Cheltenham, day two proved more predictable and productive.
Overall turnover on Betfair was down 10% year on year, which was a surprise. Especially given the incredibly, and completely justified, short price on Sprinter Sacre. It was one hell of a performance and fully justified the price. I wasn’t sure what to the make of the market at first other than it would be almost impossible to trade. But I went for …
Conclusions from Cheltenham day one
And they are off. Sort off, after a delay then a cancelled race.
Hmm, that was a bit of a messy start to Cheltenham but that’s never stopped me in the past and it didn’t yesterday. When I heard that race times were to be put back I wasn’t sure what I would see. Would we get a double surge in volume? No was the in-direct answer to that question, but it obviously did lead to an increase but also …
What a joy!
How wonderful to actually get some decent racing on Saturday, even it we didn’t have a full card. The Cheltenham trials is always a good practice ground for the festival in March and I was desperate for the meeting to go ahead, so was delighted to hear the optimism of the clerk of the course on Friday which proved correct come Saturday morning. Leopardstown was quite fun to trade as well.
Now we dodged that hurdle, the rain has arrived …
A strange sort of day…
Markets in the winter months are not known for their fluid liquidity, or solid nature. But yesterday was an odd day in the racing markets by any standard.
Probably the stand out moment was a massive divergence in price on the 16:30 race at Kempton, a very rare occurrence. While the on course market was pricing the favourite at odds on, Betfair’s market was showing it as a persistent drifter. It just shows you how incredibly thin the underlying …
Melbourne cup
I’ll be interested to see what the Melbourne cup does overnight this year.
This is the first time it has been run since the turnover tax was implemented in Australia which the objective of protecting the incumbent operators in the market. I think the outcome, so far, has shown that traders don’t dominate the market in the manner people previously assumed. Turnover, as far as I can see, on most big races is pretty much the same as before and …
Connect
Connect with us on the following social media platforms.