Archive for February, 2010
Mercedes unlikely to win first GP
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on February 28th, 2010
Anybody who can remember my ‘We are not competitive’ tip for formula one last year may be interested in the following article coming out of the Mercedes camp at the moment. Full story here: -
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/motorsport/formula_one/8539826.stm
Europa league matches
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on February 27th, 2010
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 is about.
Basically I was trying a variation on the strategy I detailed here. Football is one of few sports available where you have multiple ways to hedge risk. All football markets are very tightly integrated and that allows you to offset risk across a variety of markets if you wish. This shifts your focus, less to managing downside and more to looking for upside opportunities. Even if you place positions at random, as long as you think about your hedged bet it’s difficult to lose substantially. Use Soccer Mystic to work out your counter positions in secondary markets.
Because football matches all go off at the same time you can use the guardian tool on Bet Angel to skip between markets in a flash. It also allows you to place orders quickly with automated trading functions which are managed in the background as you skip around the different markets. This allows you to easily trade many markets at once without fear of losing control of things.
For my experiment I used £10 stakes with a maximum risk of £30. I took positions before the off and hedged positions when a goal was scored or at half time. It was a fairly painless strategy but yielded some useful information and a profit to! It’s always useful to play around with these types of hedging strategy, even if you don’t make much you learn a lot and the commission generated across multiple markets is a useful way to offset the premium charge.
Portsmouth go into administration
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on February 26th, 2010
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. LBO’s put a huge burden on clubs and drain resources as people borrow money from the future to pay for success today. The problem is that while money does, generally, buy success. In an effort to keep up new teams join in card game and up the ante. This makes the return on investment and general economics decline overall. It’s not a viable path long term.
I remember watching my local team when I was young and the feeling then was that, on their day, your team could beat anybody. The feeling now is if your team isn’t £10bn in debt then they have no hope of challenging for any honours. I also would see local players on the pitch that had come through the youth system, this fuelled the dream that maybe one day I could be out there as well. I don’t believe that is remotely realistic nowadays. I think both points have taken the soul out of football as a grass roots level, that’s not the best way to encourage future generations.
Will it change? I doubt it!
Murray suffers shock defeat
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on February 25th, 2010
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 to a tie break in the first set. After wining that, the maths and Tennis gods were always working against Murray.
The percentage difference of one server winning a point against another is typically quite small. So, thanks to the unique scoring system that tennis has, tiny errors can result in large end results. But this is especially so when there are fewer sets to be played.
Greyhound racing in step decline
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on February 22nd, 2010
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
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on February 20th, 2010
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 is how you learn, by making mistakes.
I’ve done some research and listened to some of the legends like Franz Klammer for tips on who’s in form. I traded a fair amount on Brode Miller but he has just missed out on top spot twice with a silver and bronze. But it’s been quite fun and he has provided something good to trade off.
I’ll look again when the next big winter event comes around. Hoepfully I won’t have to wait for another four years as I think there is a lot of potential in these sports which are highly variable.
Second bite at the cherry
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on February 18th, 2010
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
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on February 18th, 2010
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 £239m. Overall Labrokes gross win is still significantly bigger than Betfair’s at £1.15bn.
Champions league trading
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on February 17th, 2010
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 market.
League football is where I perform best and where I have most of my data, so I am always quite likely to build a lot more margin of safety into these matches. I suggest you do the same. First legs of the knockout round in this competition tend to be dominated by teams playing safe for the first leg and trying to sneak a goal. Home teams are usually desperate not to concede an away goal. We didn’t see that last night in Italy where Man Utd are in a dominant position for the return leg. When I saw the odds for the match I didn’t really believe that they were so favourble for a Man Utd win, but the market was right.
Don’t forget that in these big games it is quite easy to trade before the off. There is so much money passing through the markets that you can trade quite casually and still manage to get a positive result. When you have done that, you will have some free cash to throw at an outside chance in-play. A good tactic even if you are not into football much. Little risk, plenty of upside.
If you want to view some videos on trading on Soccer / Football. We have a number here. Soccer Mystic is free when you have a subscription to Bet Angel.
Only a few seconds..
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on February 15th, 2010
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 and witnessed Denman just trotting around the Newbury circuit with ease. We still continued our discussions as the race was underway. At which point I piped up and said, “I’m going to lay him”. I already had a reasonable, though not spectacular, profit on the race and just fancied my chances. No sooner had I said that than he stumbled, I never got filled at 1.05. Then he clattered into the next and it was all over. A few seconds early and I could have possibly had my biggest ever single daily total! Isn’t hindsight a wonderful thing.
I switched quickly to the gold cup market but it seems many others had already and his price had already drifted enough.
FA CUP fifth round
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on February 13th, 2010
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 general picture if you are going to have a play today. With Chelsea and Man City at home it would be a shock to see an upset there, but you may want to be with Stoke if you are looking for one. They have nothing to lose and Man City seem a little fragile. Backing Chelsea at 1.16 is more of a punt than a trade, so look to secondary markets for an opportunity. Cardiff will probably fight a rearguard action and hope to nick something on the break.
Derby, Reading and Southampton are all matches with similar traits. Weaker team playing at home with strong away teams. Both Reading and Southampton will fancy their chances but I’m not so sure about Derby. These matches will probably be played with caution by the stronger away team who don’t want to concede and give the home side an advantage. So I suspect not making mistakes will be the order of the day for the away sides. The longer the match goes on the more the quality should show. An early goal by either side will upset the apple cart.
Both Derby and Southampton’s matches are priced in as low scoring affairs, with little advantage to either side. Usually these matches turn out to scrappy draws. I think the price on the draw should be a little shorter.
Whatever happens, I’ll be on the lookout for late goals, as that is the key characteristic of knockout competitions.
Ratings: -
Chelsea vs. Cardiff Goals: 3.4 Supremacy: 2.8
Man City vs. Stoke Goals: 2.8 Supremacy: 1.8
Reading vs. West Brom Goals: 2.7 Supremacy: -0.1
Southampton vs. Portsmouth Goals: 2.5 Supremacy: -0.1
Derby vs. Birmingham Goals: 2.4 Supremacy: -0.2
Are sports markets like financial markets?
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on February 10th, 2010
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 this.
Sports markets are very reliant on underlying activity, there is a definite cause and effect on odds. While sentiment can drive prices higher or lower, too high or too low creates an arbitrage opportunity for anybody who has studied or analysed the markets well enough. Sentiment can only go so far in pushing the prices around before arbitrage against well established models limit certain types of price movement. One of the biggest differences though, is that in a betting market all prices are directly related. The same can’t be said of the financial markets which rise or fall based upon their mood that day. Ice cream sellers and umbrella manufacturers can rise and fall together in the short term even if the weather is sunny, on sports markets that’s impossible.
All prices are related on a sports market so you can’t get a permanently rising price without something adjusting elsewhere. No technical indicator will tell you that a horse has bolted to the start, is refusing to load or is being gambled. Using technical indicators in-play is a complete nonsense as in-play odds are determined by the underlying event and the time left to finish. What would I recommend? Lots of things, but keeping an eye on general market activity is one of the most useful indicators. Keeping an eye on non techincal indicators is a definite advantage, staring at some complex indicator that is designed for a different market and can’t possibly work on a sport, not so helpful.
This is one of the reason we introduced the market overview screen. It allows you to see market wide activity at a glance and quickly spot anything that could be having an effect on your current position. Something that’s critically important given the characteristics of a modern sports market.
Losing money
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on February 9th, 2010
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 to give that a very firm “No.” Whether you win or lose money with a strategy is not important, it’s what you learn when you do it.
When I first started on Betfair my first objective was not to lose to much money. I knew when I was experimenting that losing money was almost inevitable, so first on my list was not to lose to much of it. Second on my list was minimising the losses by striking out errors. Because of the way the market is constructed, before commission, its net level if you are a complete fool, especially when trading. So all you are doing is looking for a strategty to tip things slightly in your favour. Striking out errors is the path to tipping that balance.
If there is one thing I have learnt in life, it’s not to be afriad to make mistakes. But this only works if you are prepared to learn from them. This is why I have a slush account, an account where I can lose money but ‘pay’ for the experiance without upsetting my normal activity. I accept that I will make mistakes and lose money on this account, but I know that I am effectively paying for that knowledge. That is always a good way to view any loss, as long as you learn from it.
Trading from the beach
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on February 6th, 2010
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 where ever you are. Currently I’ve had to sling pictures over wireless when I reach a location but over 3G would be very useful, even if it is a little delayed. I’ve been using a VPS for some years now as the bandwidth requirements are tiny but the consistency of connection excellent and the speed very high when trading remotely. It’s made trading via 3G very possible, but lack of pictures have always been a nuisance.
Now we are moving forward with slinging over 3g and with products like the MiFi from three the possibility of trading from the beach is definitely looking a reality!
January etc.
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on February 5th, 2010
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 bucks.
I managed to end up about 5% on last year, but the number of races was well down on last year. So on a like for like basis I actually performed pretty well. The number of races I completed was less than half that in the summer. Therefore, I use the winter months for experimenting, chilling out, research and trying new things.
I did a lot of work in January putting into practice some research from did last year which trailed into this year. It confirmed the old adage that the harder you look at the something the more and more youlearn. I think this is the thing I enjoy most if I am honest. It’s like being a child again and walking down an untrodden route through a forest. Most routes fade out and lead to nothing, but every now and again you head down a path with leads to a new way forward. You look back and think, hmm, I wonder why I didn’t see that before? But, as always life is best understood backwards but you have to live it forwards.
I hope you survived January, unfortunately February usually isn’t much better. After taking February off last year I am very relaxed about what I want to achieve this year and will be taking the time to pick up and start some projects for later this year. After ten years in the market, I am very focused on preparing the ground for my next adventure. When I start that depends on how the market shapes up. I’ve run out of space and need to see some real growth or else things start to become self limiting by default. Maybe I’ll post up more on this at some other point.
Till then, good luck whatever you do and however you do it!
Custom designed trading
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on February 3rd, 2010
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 as much or as little on the screen as you wish. This means you can drop features you find unnecessary and add ones you do! You now also have the ability to have custom columns which will inherit characteristics you define in advance. A clever feature that adds even more flexibility to your trading.
Also, if you trading pre-off and then in-play you can quickly switch between two different layouts and trading styles with a couple of clicks. These features are just the first of a number we have planned for 2010. Watch the video for an overview: -
Six more weeks of winter?
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on February 2nd, 2010
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.
Quiet transfer deadline day
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on February 1st, 2010
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 profit, I suspect it will get healthier after today.
Connection modes on Bet Angel
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on February 1st, 2010
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.