Archive for September, 2010
Ryder Cup winner already settled
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on September 30th, 2010
Another great publicity stunt by Paddy Power who have already settled Europe as the 2010 Ryder Cup winners.
http://blog.paddypower.com/blog/index.php/2010/09/27/europe-win-the-ryder-cup-we-reckon/
They would have already known their liability so it’s effectively booked as a marketing expense. Of course they will get loads of publicity on it, such as people like me posting it on their blog! This is also something that Betfair would find difficult to do. Very imaginative folks over at PP.
Ryder cup preview
Posted by Peter Webb in Golf on September 28th, 2010
If you are looking for an authoritative preview for this high profile event look no further than GX Magazine this month.
I’ve written a six page peice for the magazine which includes some indepth analysis of the tournament and players. Looking at the weather forecast this morning, it looks like it will be an event that won’t favour fair weather golfers, so that should make things interesting this week. Make sure you take this into account as we approach the start.
It's mine!
Betfair 1/3 for float failure
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on September 27th, 2010
Credit to the forum poster who found this on the Internet but it’s either a wonderful peice of PR or people are actually betting against the float being a success. An interesting read anyhow. Until I see the price and / or the offer document it’s difficult to make a true judgement as to whether it’s too expensive or not.
A lot of hot air or will a good float?
Spain will win
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on September 26th, 2010
While browsing the other night I found this really interesting peice: -
http://kn.theiet.org/magazine/issues/1008/predicting-football-1008.cfm
It’s quite rare to find some decent stuff on the Internet. It’s amazing how many experts are out there, despite there actually being very few people who can claim to be true experts. My definition, somebody who is willing to back up their rhetoric with hard cash!
Anyhow, this is an interesting peice and would have made an even better read before the world cup!
Cockchafer!
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on September 25th, 2010
A year to the day that Epsom had to abandoned some races because of the larvae of the cockchafer, it’s happened again. My lawn suffers from these and they eat the roots of growing plants, including grass. I guess Epsom need to do some pest control if it’s happened two years in a row.
At the off, apparently
2011 UK Racing fixtures released
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on September 24th, 2010
And to be honest, after all the rhetoric, it looks better than I expected.
There is a nice summary on the BBC website: -
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/other_sports/horse_racing/9029038.stm
Levy row heats up
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on September 24th, 2010
Lots of rhetoric coming from the big bookmakers about the levy and trying to blame it’s decline on betting exchanges. Perhaps they are forgetting that most of them have moved a lot of their operations offshore to avoid paying the levy. This has obviously had a significant impact on levy funding and unless that is addressed immediately, it looks a little foolish of them to point the finger elsewhere, after all the first bookmaker to go offshore did so in 1999 a full year before Betfair was ever lauched.
Liverpool loan deal falls through
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on September 23rd, 2010
These are troubling times for Liverpool….
Liverpool Football Club’s financial turmoil took another turn for the worse after it was reported that the asset management and financial services company Blackstone Group had backed out of a deal with Liverpool co-owner Tom Hicks.
It was widely reported earlier in the week that GSO Capital Partners, a subsidiary of Blackstone, was close to finalising a two-year US$437 million loan with the Liverpool owner, which would’ve allowed Hicks to repay US$370 million owed to the Royal Bank of Scotland, purchase Gillett’s shares of the club and delay the sale of Liverpool until 2012.
However, the Financial Times has since revealed that Blackstone chairman and chief executive officer, Stephen A. Schwarzman, has decided to back away from any deal.
Too hard
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on September 22nd, 2010
There are many thousands of markets that will come under your eyes each year. So which ones should you do? The hard ones or the easy ones. Not a difficult question is it? So why do so many people pick situations that are likely to fall into the too hard category? I’ll explain on another post, but before that, let me explain how I approach each opportunity.
When I approach a market, I will label it easy, not sure or too hard. Tonght we had some Carling cup football matches on and I filed this in the too hard category. Teams with little incentive, unusual team line ups, it’s all a bit too tough to make a sound judgement on, so I will pass. Perhaps worth a speculative postion, but not much else.
Imagine you are batting at a cricket crease, but there is no wicket. You can let the bowler chuck balls at you all day long without getting out. All you need to do is wait for an easy delivery. When you see it, hit it. You should look to do exactly the same when you are looking for an opportunity in a market. If you don’t like the current one, another will be along in a minute. Try and hit everyone and you will probably do a poorer job overall.
Doing nothing can, rather curiously, be doing something.
Betfair flotation WILL go ahead
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on September 21st, 2010
Read full details here: -
http://corporate.betfair.com/investors.asp
As an active private investor I’ve been valuing companies for years. When a company IPO’s to fund expansion this is usually seen as a good sign, raising low cost captial to expand. When a company IPO’s to acquire, there is some risk but the rationale can be justified. The final type of IPO is an exit strategy, a chance for shareholders to cash in at the highest price and to sell some of their shares and pass risk on to new investors. Betfair don’t need any new funds, so this IPO appears to fall into the last catefory.
Until the offer document is out I can’t really comment on valuation but I already suspect this will be at the very top end of expectations given the nature of the IPO and justified on future growth prospects. The trouble will very highly valued shares is that it doesn’t take much to send them crashing to earth. But lets wait till the offer document is published and see what comes out of that. One thing that will change is, if you are a shareholder, you will have the right to turn up at the AGM and ask questions. Betfair will also have to publish more detail and be more open about their business. I’ve met many a director of a public company that dislikes the scrutiny that occurs at that level but it’s all part of being a public company.
Having been an investor for such a long time and also one of Betfair’s longest serving customers this is going to be a fastinating period.
There is a thread on the forum, where we shall be discussing matters for sure.
A bit of a eureka moment..
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on September 20th, 2010
For some time I’ve been working on a modelling spreadsheet. On and off I’ve dabbled with it for a few years when time permitted. The aim is to produce a better tool for forecasting value. Predicting the future is always tough and I’ve been searching for a solution to a complicated forecasting problem. I’ve got close, but not enough for a clear ‘victory’.
Sat in bed on Saturday evening with my iPad, I was getting a bit bored of the book I was reading. So I just randomly searched, again, for a solution to my problem. After bouncing from one site to another I suddenly found an article. For some reason, after reading the article, the solution just suddenly popped into my head and I could see it with crystal clarity. I jumped out of bed grabbed a notebook and jotted down some thoughts.
On Sunday morning I got up and immediately put my thoughts to work on a spreadsheet. Soon after out popped the final solution, right in front of my eyes. It was obvious when I looked at it, but for some reason the solution has escaped me for ages. It was a huge moment having struggled for years to nail it. It’s beyond the scope of the blog to explain what I found in simple terms, but essentially I have been searching for some key fundemantal factors on which to base the start of the forcast. Now I’ve done that, I need to understand it a bit more.
It may make the basis of a future product, if it proves useful. But that will be a least a year away. The moral of this story, never give up searching for a solution. Whatever you are searching for.
An archimedes moment
Busy, busy, busy..
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on September 19th, 2010
With the end of the turf evening racing you would think things would have quietened up a bit. But no, first the US Open Tennis and then this week loads and loads of football. I’m expecting this month to be a little quieter than late, but I did surprise myself last week with my second biggest one day total of the year.
Both the Champions league and Europa league are quite nice markets to get involved in. Plenty of different types of matches, goals and loads of matches in quick succession. In the case of the Europa league, the matches are generally split into two evening sessions. That gives you plenty of matches to play in and if the first batch don’t work out too well, another will be along in a minute.
I’m using this busy period to run a number of tests and sample strategies. The thing you notice is how quickly things even out when there are so many matches, so now is a good time to be active. You can employ a number of different strategies on different markets at the same time and where one will fail, another will make up the difference. Its a good ground for experimentation.
If you are active across many markets at once, then it’s worth you checking out how to use Guardian, our multi market feature. This contains specific tools for football markets, here are a couple of videos demonstrating its use: -
Trading multiple markets at the same time – Part one and Part two
My wife knows everything
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on September 14th, 2010
One of the best joke commentaries I’ve seen in horse racing, apart from it’s actually a real race! You have to watch this race to believe it: -
Well done Nadal
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on September 14th, 2010
Well done to Rafa Nadal who completed a career grand slam this morning, UK time, at the US Open. He looked good value for the win, though I only stayed up till 11pm to watch it, but at that point the rain stopped play. I looked at the recording and spreadsheet data this morning for the part I missed. It didn’t appear to restart till 1am this morning.
It’s been a good trading tournament and I took forward my Wimbledon experiance by testing the market further using Tennis Trader. As a consequence, I’ve uncovered some new ideas I hadn’t thought of before. I’ll look to take those forward in the remainder of the Tennis season.
Last night Tennis trader highlighted a wonderful opportunity with Nadal serving at 1-2 in the second set. It pointed out a possible 12 tick move for laying Nadal, with only a two tick loss if he held. Nadal promptly lost his serve and the price moved out 12 ticks. I have a lot more confidence now when I am on a Tennis match, which fits in with my general approach to modelling a market thoroughly before participation. I am currently working on new models for new sports at the moment. Bear in mind, no matter what you model, you still have to anticipate and that’s a useful skill too!
Lucky unluckiness
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on September 13th, 2010
Was really looking forward to watching the US open final Tennis on Sunday when………….. boom! All the power goes in the house.
I think SSE have done a bad job on the electrics around here as once a year the same thing happens. I knew what would be coming next, a few hours later a van would arrive dig up the road and replace the underground cabling. After chasing for a few hours I got a positive answer that this would happen, but the van didn’t arrive till the early hours. So last night I suffered major roadworks all night outside the house.
While the power outage was unlucky it was more frustrating not being able to watch the Tennis. However, it wasn’t long before I started to get messages through that the final was unlikely to get a go ahead due to rain. Looks like I will get the chance after all!
Note the drift on Nadal because of the delay. No doubt caused by the fact that Djokovic will now have an extra day to recover from his epic win against the fading Federer. £9.5m matched already, £8.4m on Nadal.
Don’t come back till St Leger day
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on September 11th, 2010
Today we can all buy shares again thanks to the oldest classic horse race in the world. There is this ‘theory’ that during the summer stocks languish and only when everybody is back to their desk does the market perk up. Here is one link, from many, that discuss this: -
http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/investing/article.html?in_article_id=484982&in_page_id=166
I’ve never managed to pull anything spectacular out of hte St Leger for some reason and the Doncaster meeting seems to have been particulary tough this week. Let’s hope it produces something today.
Trading Tennis
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on September 9th, 2010
The US open has provided some excellent trading opportunities so far and there are probably many more to come as we reach the more competitive stages of the tournament. Tonight the Wawrinka v Youzhny match looks particularly interesting, especially with the way Wawrinka has been playing.
If you get the right set up, trading a service game is a particularly good strategy. With Tennis Trader you will also know what chance the server has of winning the game and your up and downside expectancy as well. This is a significant improvement on guess work! Video embedded below….
European Court rejects gambling restrictions
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on September 8th, 2010
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-11234128
The European Court of Justice (ECJ) said German laws that protect state monopolies for gambling were “unjustifiable”.
The ruling could open the way for foreign betting companies to establish a presence in Germany.
John Higgins cleared of match-fixing
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on September 8th, 2010
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/other_sports/snooker/8973869.stm
It increasingly looks to me like newspapers are trying to get stories out of sportsmen by setting them up to talk about match fixing. Despite the fact Higgins never did fix anything, it did a lot of damage to him and snooker. His guilt it appears, is not to report the incident.
I suppose the decent thing to come out of this is that sports men and women will be very nervous about meeting strangers or even contemplating meeting them. Maybe they will also report with more frequency these sorts of occurrences. My guess is that finding himself a long way from home and in uncomfortable circumstances Higgins felt he needed to be a yes man to ensure a trip home. I think it may say more about journalists than it does Higgins.
Laying on the sand
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on September 7th, 2010
Today sees the annual return of the races on the beach at Laytown. When my work on the markets is complete I will definately visit this race course along with many others that I have on the list. I keep saying that ‘next year’ I will do Laytown, so I look forward to saying the same next year! In the meantime I’ll be looking to do a bit of laying at laytown.
Laying at Laytown
Just goes to show
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on September 5th, 2010
It aint over till the fat lady sings as they say. Trading the Murray v Wawrinka match well this evening and managed to lay some off some of the profit on Murray at very short odds, looking for a Wawrinka fight back. I got one and Murray really let his head drop when broken twice in the third set. He really looked on his way out of the third set and possibly the match. Murray called on the trainer during the next break.
With Wawrinka dominant, Murray’s odds shot out from an almost certain win to 2.70′s. Wawrinka had a tricky moment and called a medical time out, cue a dramatic change in odds!
Automated trading
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on September 5th, 2010
Early on in the development of Bet Angel I decided we should be able to link to a spreadsheet. Doing this meant that I & other Bet Angel users could experiment to their hearts content, create new views of the market or new trading tools using the spreadsheet. Since the first primitive implementation we have worked hard to add additional features so if you haven’t used it recently give it a try
There are many useful things you can use a spreadsheet for including improving your trading, discipline or trading fully automatically all day if you wish! A Bet Angel user recently uploaded this really use spreadsheet that allows you to automate various trading functions. There are lots of things that you can do with it so it’s worth downloading and having a play with it. As with all automation though, please take care. There are several other useful spreadsheets on the forum as well.
If you have never used the spreadsheet functionality before, I’d recommend using it as will add another dimension to your trading.
August
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on September 4th, 2010
August turned out to be an interesting month.
I wasn’t sure what to expect, coming into it off the back of a record month, so I set my much expectations lower. It turned out to be a pretty good month anyhow and I was just short of my third best month of the year. I now tend to glance at prior years to figure what I should achieve and I was more or less on target based on years prior. I also managed to achieve my highest strike rate of the year, but the difference between months now is measured in just 10th’s of a percent so, while pleasing, that doesn’t mean much really.
The month started in excellent style when I traded from a completely different location as a bit of test. On my blog post I sort of positioned this as holiday where I traded, but it was really the the way around. More trading with lots of fun around it. It was the acid test of whether things had developed enough for me to work confidently from other locations and the test passed with flying colours. So from now on, I could be anywhere when I write this! I had worked from many locations before, but as my style has developed and my activity has risen, I wasn’t sure if I would feel comfortable enough away from my normal locations. But those fears were unfounded. After a really cracking start to the month, I wondered if I should have stay away from the office? My results dipped for the next two weeks but I came surging back in the final week of the month with some cracking results.
August sees the end of the summer turf evening racing. But other sports fill in gaps now until Novemberish when things just start to get tougher all around. I’m currently chasing down some very long term targets which I hope to achieve before the end of the year. Given how the year as a whole has gone I think I should achieve those. From that point on I am going to have to think about that critical question ‘What next?’. I’ll aim to give it some thought as we head towards the end of the year.
US Open tennis is a good opportunity at the start of September so make sure you have a dabble in the markets. Even if you have never tried to trade Tennis before it presents a good opportunity to try and because of the different time zone you should be able to do that without getting in the way of other stuff.
Good luck for the month ahead.
Fun in the sun
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on September 2nd, 2010
It’s hot in New York at the moment and that’s thrown up some decent markets in the US Open. Nobody seems sacred in the heat and several contenders are already out, but Murray put in a good performance.
I’ve traded the US Open a lot more this year, mainly thanks to being able to ultilise Tennis Trader. For some time I’ve wanted to trade Tennis more often, so it was an important tool to have before I could trade with increased confidence. My instinct has always been to model sports as best I can before I get heavily involved in them. When you model you can participate in a market based on facts, rather than ‘feel’. For a fair while I’ve used a spreadsheet for Tennis, but this was cumbersome and not fast enough. Now we have put Tennis Trader into Bet Angel its helped a lot!
At the end of the day you can sit and stare at a market for years to try and understand how odds move, but having some stats right in front of you is always going to be immensly helpful and it also cuts out a lot of experimentation. I’ve learnt a lot from being able to mess around with different scenarios endlessly. The main purpose I use it for is to see what the score needs to be to fulfilled to reach an upside target, but I’ll also look ahead before I enter the market to see what downside I could let myself in for! This has allowed me to trade with increased confidence and larger stakes. One interesting thing I have noticed is how, when the odds drift slightly from the forecast, you can see that the market is changing opinion on a player. I’d never really noicted that before and is often providing a good entry point to the market.
I’m really looking forward to the next few rounds!
