Archive for May, 2011
Two card monte
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on May 31st, 2011
We have reached the time of year when Monday and Tuesday racing drops to two cards in the afternoon. It’s an important time of year as this changes the characteristic of these cards to the negative, but also it allows you to do a few other things and skip these cards if needed.
Racing tends to be lower quality on a Monday and Tuesday and that combined with the 15 minute gaps in-between the cards leads to much poorer market conditions overall. I’ll be taking some time out in the summer on these days in line with my objective of getting some more balance into my life this year. We also plan a few new things for Bet Angel users to do during these quieter days, so please keep your eyes open for this announcement.
Bank Holiday Moo-nday
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on May 30th, 2011
Had to laugh at this great peice of camera work today from Carlisle. It seems it just wasn’t the punters that were interested in the Racing.
Champions League
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on May 28th, 2011
Everybody else will be posting about it so I thought I would add my two penneth worth.
An intriguing clash, for once I think I will watch this than trade it.
A neutral venue but Man Utd will practically be at home, so you would have to favour Barca but discount some of the neutrality. I think this is the weakest Man Utd team for a while. Other teams really should have put in a stronger challenge for the premier league this season, but we all know the stories behind that.
These sort of matches are difficult to price, so I would suggest it’s the sort of match where you could find some value once a pattern develops in the match. It’s so delicately balanced and both teams have a huge incentive to win tactics will play an important role.
The market is saying 2.40 goals, slightly above normal for this type of match, with a 0.40 advantage to Barcelona. This is effectively saying this is a very even match but Barcelona are at ‘at home’, they have the equivalent of home advantage. I think it’s more uneven than that, but a lot will depending on whether there is an early goal. That will really set the agenda. I’ve had a delve through my database for similar matches, but they are all a bit inconclusive to be honest.
I would recommend seeing how the opening exchanges are playing out and getting involved from there. It’s difficult to make any firm judgements before the off, but I’m leaning on the side of Barcelona. I am hoping for an entertaining match!
Murray Worry
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on May 28th, 2011
The sign of a true champion is the ability to overcome the impossible. While I’m not suggesting that Murray will win the title at Roland Garros, he certainly showed today that he’s got the guts. After turning over his ankle during the match, his price shot out after people started fearing a retirement. He had already traded at 1.01 adding to the pressure to push the price out.
Murray had his ankle strapped, Dug down deep and got on to close out the match well. An excellent job when he was obviously struggling. This graph is a good illustration of the difficulty of using Betfair grafts to accurately plot trends. On the far left as the price approaches 1.01. This is halfway through the match, the second half of the match as the remaining 90% of the graph!
Here’s a tip: -
If you load matches of interest into Guardian, Bet Angel will store and plot information for each of these matches in real-time. You can then use the advanced charting to look at an accurate graph of historic data. You can do this on any sport.
Looking forward to the second week of Tennis in France.
Half price sale underway
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on May 27th, 2011
When Betfair floated I got some stick for saying they were overvalued and they were not a buy. This wasn’t a statement on Betfair’s business or business model, more the price it was selling at.
I first started taking an interest in the stock market in the mid 80′s and five or so years later I started investing. One thing I learnt is that if a company IPO’s and sells some of it’s stock it will do so at the highest possible price. This usually represents poor value for people buying immediately after the IPO. In Betfair’s case there was selling pressure as well as employee share options, that people had held for a very long period of time, suddenly could be cashed in. This behaviour was self re-inforcing, because if the price fell people were more likely to find a way to hedge their hard earned paper profits. If the price had risen sharply then that selling pressure wouldn’t have existed.
Of course the market can overshoot in both directions so as the price falls, just like a loaf of bread in the supermarket, as the price gets lower it gets better value. Eventually the selling will stop and it will find it’s true floor. But for now you can pick up the worlds largest betting exchange at half price. Is it value? I’ll have to run the numbers again to answer that question, but it’s much better value than it was post flotation for sure. I will be interested to see the next set of results.
Good day all round
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on May 27th, 2011
While the afternoon racing yesterday was a complete farce – shame on you racing, the evening card was much more interesting, enjoyable and full of opportunity. On the horses I managed more than double yesterday, which was a good result.
At Roland Garros the tennis was proving brilliant yesterday as well. With the wind howling around the courts it threw up lots of oppotunity. Some high profile slip ups generated some excellent opportunties. Congratulations to the person who backed Rus at 980 on her way to defeating Clijsters!! My back at 23 is piddling in comparison.
I am experimenting with a new strategy at Roland Garros on top of my normal activity and that is proving very insightful. I am using Tennis trader to look up odds offset from the starting price but at scorelines that are not unreasonable to expect. I am then asking for those odds before the match has started, meaning I am in front of the queue when the time comes. I am hitting around a 70% strike rate at the moment and achieving pretty reasonable trading results. It’s looking promising.
Quieter day
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on May 26th, 2011
It was a quiet day yesterday at Roland Garros. Only five matches really caught my attention compared to nine the day before. With the wind blowing around a lot today I feel we could see some unexpected results today.
I had a more productive day on the horse racing and I am looking forward to the meeting at Sandown tonight, but the afternoon card looks a bit of a farce to be honest! Only ten runners in total in the the first three races?!?!?
Buying a toss of a coin
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on May 25th, 2011
Apart from the wild volatility, the thing I love about Tennis is the binary nature of the market. Like the toss of a coin there is only one decision to be made, heads or tails, will they wont they. Your decision making process is much easier and can be focused on some key points.
Yesterday I backed Isner at 160, he traded as low as 3.30 before going on to lose. At his ‘worst’ he traded at 200′s. It would have been a massive win had he gone on to get past the first round. He didn’t, but Nadal will need an easier match next time around to settle any nerves. On this post is a list of the odds at which I managed to catch the winner in other matches. These are not the highest odds they traded at, just the odds I backed them at before they went on to win. Not bad for a coin toss! Of course that’s not entirely true, most of these matches were not at evens before the off and there are others I back they just drifted away and out of the tournament but you don’t need many trades at big odds to make it worthwhile overall. Also if you back at big prices you can still trade out for a profit or smaller loss if they can’t close out the match.
Yesterday was a good day, but I’d be lucky to catch as many today. Fingers crossed!
Tennis / Mladenovic v Morita : Match Odds – 3.20
Tennis / Soler Espinosa v Vesnina : Match Odds – 10.00
Tennis / Larsson v Ivanovic : Match Odds – 13.00
Tennis / Querrey v Kohlschreiber : Match Odds – 7.00
Tennis / Clement v Volandri : Match Odds – 8.06
Tennis / Cibulkova v King : Match Odds – 14.00
Tennis / Almagro v Kubot : Match Odds – 27.00
Tennis / Erakovic v Rus : Match Odds – 4.60
Tennis / Roger Vasselin v Rosol : Match Odds – 4.20
French Open Tennis
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on May 24th, 2011
If the tournament continues like this it could be very memorable indeed. On Monday we saw the seeded Berdych crash out against a french qualifier. Andy Murray didn’t repeat the mistake today, but plenty of other big priced winners are coming in today.
Even if you oppose short priced favourites, thanks to the volatility in Tennis, the results can be excellent. Don’t forget to fire up Tennis Trader to check out your potential up or downside in each match before you trade.
French Open Tennis
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on May 23rd, 2011
Looking forward to getting stuck into the Tennis this week, especially with the football season now behind us.
Nadal has an easier draw potentially than Djokovic so Djokovic is right up against it if he is going to maintain his amazing start to 2011.
Don’t forget to use Tennis trader to frame your upside (or downside) when trading a tennis match.
Any two from five
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on May 22nd, 2011
Calculating combinations was the first place I started when I went on this long journey from a very young age. The intention back then was to win the football pools and combinations were an important part of spreading risk around my selections. Today, any two from five teams could be relegated and that means that they are ten different ways for this to happen, see the following ‘any two from five’ list. You would list the teams in ascending order and allocate them a number and voila, you have all the possible combinations.
1 2, 1 3, 1 4, 1 5, 2 3, 2 4, 2 5, 3 4, 3 5, 4 5
OK, what can you do to make some money from it? At 4pm today I will have Bet Angel fired up and I will ‘auto-bind’ the matches using Guardian and the multiple spreadsheet capability. This means I will have a live view of the markets estimate of each result as it happens. Joined up to the combinations I will have an great view on how unfolding results are affecting the relegation markets and any opportunities that occur between markets. It takes a bit of effort to patch them together but it provides great insight. You can also do the same on ‘to qualify’ markets in cup competitions. Give it a try.
Open letter to Betfair
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on May 21st, 2011
Dear Betfair Support,
As you may be aware the world is due to end to at 6pm local time in the UK. In case you are not aware I would like to point you to the following news article that explains the detail behind this prediction: -
http://fostercity.patch.com/articles/will-the-world-end-today
Obviously this is of great concern!
Putting aside a key concern about whether you are I will be raptured. I would like to raise a few points with you?
If the world ends between the race at Lingfield and Newbury can you clarify: -
Will bets be void or still stand in the event of the world ending?
If I have an order in the market at SP will this be reconciled after the world ends or just voided?
Are there back up plans in place at Betfair in the event that the world ends?
I love the Keep and SP bet modes, is there any chance of a ‘World ending’ bet similar to SP but that voids all bets in the event that the world ends?
I’d be grateful for a response before 6pm this evening.
Many thanks,
Peter
The big backer
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on May 21st, 2011
If you are active on the markets, then I am sure you may have seen this character around. If not then they appear fairly regularly recently, either trying to get filled at a certain price or just deliberately trying to stop the price from moving. I think it’s an odd strategy, as dipping in and around the markets is like playing poker. You don’t want to show your hand!
When somebody shows their hand like this then it’s an open invitation to oppose them, make their life difficult or work on other selections in the market on the basis or what they are doing on that runner. It all seems a bit odd to me, as by showing their hand they are presenting clear opportunites. So, whoever you are, thank you!
BHA announces serious charges
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on May 20th, 2011
Following an investigation into suspicious betting activity on a number of races, the British Horseracing Authority has charged 13 individuals with serious breaches of the Rules of Racing. The allegations focus on horses being laid to lose on betting exchanges in 10 races that took place between 17 January 2009 and 15 August 2009.
Each of the jockeys is additionally charged with a breach of Rule 243 of the old Rules of Racing in that it is alleged they communicated directly or indirectly to one or more betting exchange account holders, for material reward, gift, favour or benefit in kind, information relating to the prospects of the named horse.
Full press release here: -
How to play the play offs
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on May 18th, 2011
I was asked for an opinion recently on the championship play offs. I tipped a Reading vs Swansea final with Reading likely to edge it. So far so good, as both Swansea and Reading are through, so how did I get it right?
It’s quite simple really, “Form” is the answer. When you look at play off success over the years then form stands out as the key determinate. Form teams do well in the play offs on average and teams that are on the slide at the end of the season tend to fluff it at this stage. My picks were based around the recent form of all the teams and Swansea and Reading were stand out candidates. Last year Cardiff were on better form but a late surge from Blackpool made them stand out candidates. It’s a pattern that repeats year after year and explains the oddity of teams how do not finish third but go on to get promoted.
I personally think play offs are a bit unfair. You play well all season only to suffer some injuries which mean you are not automatically promoted, then lose in a knock out competition. I would feel aggrieved at this. I really feel sorry for long suffering Cardiff fans, I am sure their time will come.
Djokovic the destroyer
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on May 17th, 2011
What an interesting summer we could be in for on the Tennis front.
It’s a quite remarkable start to the season for Djokovic. I wrote a detailed magazine article where I had tipped him up as the next #1, but didn’t expect that to be happening near the end of May. His run is taking on truly historic proportions.
Here is a top ten for Djokovic: -
http://espn.go.com/blog/statsinfo/post/_/id/19913/top-10-of-djokovics-record-run
I don’t usually trade or watch much sport on a Sunday but couldn’t resist tuning in to watch the final in Rome of Nadal vs Djokovic. It was just too tantalising to miss. I was also looking for clues ahead of the French Open. Nadal looked a bit stunned as Djokovic delivered answers to all questions. It was an impressive performance after a tiring semi final.
Bad Luck
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on May 16th, 2011
I talked last week about my jinx and you witnessed my efforts to demolish it. You should never forget to put things into perspective. My battle was a personal one against an arbitrary target. Some people face much worse luck and much bigger battles. It’s a credit to them that they persevere in spite of much hardship.
So the next time you feel unlucky, or you have lost a few quid, take a read of the following: -
Bet Angel in the FT
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on May 15th, 2011
Have several people in my inbox saying we are in the FT this weekend. Thanks for the tip off, it’s nice to get some recognition after 11 years of hard work!
You can view the article here: -
http://www.howtospendit.com/#/articles/4599-the-smart-money-a-winning-psychology
Eurovision
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on May 14th, 2011
Even if you are not watching it, you should take a look at Eurovision this evening.
I’ve done well backing outsiders that shorten during the contest in the past and early voting patterns can often give you the ability to dutch a range of long odds into shorter prices. Don’t leave it too late to get out though, as winners can become apparent very quickly and will shorten fast.
My biggest ever success came from backing Lordi a few years ago to win. Finland was embarrassed by the entry till they realised the performance struck a chord with the voters and their price shot in from 65′s. Jedward appear to be the following a similar path this year, but lets not pre-judge anything. Azerbaijan appear to be attracting a lot of support as well. Eearly voting patterns are usually the key. I don’t think England will win because we have tried too hard. I doubt we will get votes for that, probably the opposite.
I’ll skip the singing and tune in for the voting. Hopefully I will get more then ‘null point’ in profit terms.
FA CUP final
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on May 14th, 2011
Is it just me or does the FA Cup feel like it’s losing is significance? Maybe it’s the dominance by big teams, maybe it’s the fact that this season the premiership and the champions league have pushed it around a little? Anyhow that’s not to detract too much from this famous competition. I am sure either supporters will be rightly proud if their team pull of a win.
The market is pricing in 2.50 goals with an advantage of 0.50 to City, that seems about right. Regardless of the odds past FA Cup finals tell us the matches are very tight affairs with few or no goals and this is especially so in the first half. So my strategy will be based on a low scoring match with any goals likely to occur late on.
Black Caviar
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on May 14th, 2011
Just got up early to have another look at Black Caviar who was running at Doomben this morning. As expected, she delivered her 13th win out of 13. Quite a feat and she is causing a significant amount of interest in the racing world and also from a betting perspective. Went off at 1.22 this morning with £1.7m out of £1.8m was matched on just one runner.
Jinx buried?
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on May 13th, 2011
Day 4/6 and the seas are still calm. Well I say calm they are a little becalmed to be honest, but that’s sort of ok even if it is making for a tough week. I managed a decent day yesterday though, no thanks to York.
York has been quite tough this week and I haven’t enjoyed it, but other traders have done OK. So today I will dump all other activity and just try to be really focused today. I’ll give myself a 2/10 on my York performance this week. Could be worse, but could be a whole lot better. I note others have struggled as well, so it does seems like its generally tough.
In terms of my jinx, I finally cottoned onto why it is likely to occur this week. That’s useful as it helps me come to terms with why. It was a throw away comment last night that suddenly resonated with me and lead me to the answer. Unfortunately there isn’t a great deal I can do about avoiding it, so I’ll just have to ride it out each year around this time. This year the luck is with me, not against, at the moment. A better day yesterday and this along with my epiphany has answered my calling to the jinx this week. Long live the jinx!
Important Information
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on May 12th, 2011
Well day 3/6 on jinx week has passed without catastrophe. Yesterday wasn’t a great day by any means and I really fouled up on one race, but I’m still moving ahead on the week and hope for a better day today.
I’m always experimenting and there is no better way of doing that than directly in the market itself. I will always recommend this, as it’s the best way to really know what is really happening and how your actions shape the market. That’s important. You can back test and practice as much as you like but I can assure you actually doing it will always be different for one reason or another. This is why I recommend you get your hands dirty as quickly as you can.
I recently looked at a new strategy, gathered some data, tested it and then wrote a spreadsheet to put it to use. Spreadsheets are fantastic tools for trying out things with little effort. The end results can either confirm, confound or point you in a new direction. You can put some simple commands in and let Bet Angel do the rest throughout the day (or night) automatically. Some of the best ideas and understanding I have had, come from doing this. I was sure my new strategy would be net positive with a bit of tweaking. So I unleashed it on the market and promptly did my nuts, though my nuts were done in a very controlled manner. You may think that’s bad news, but for each negative on the exchange you will always find a positive.
I was a little perplexed, but not surprised, as it’s tricky to nail something on the first attempt. I carefully re-examined the data and checked my assumptions, they were OK. To eliminate confirmation bias, I handed the data to a third party and asked them to check it without telling them what they were looking for, that was OK. So, I had to dig around to learn what was different; eventually I found an answer.
In the data, I was measuring the strategy from a certain time forward; this time was variable. In the market I was using a fixed time. I had to do this as I wanted to carry on my ordinary activity while the spreadsheet pursued the new idea. It took a while to understand but the conclusion was inevitable, the time between the two fixed points contained important, predictive, information about the future of the market. This is something I hadn’t noticed before or had been quick to discount.
So, while one path is blocked, while heading down it I have noticed a gap in hedge I hadn’t spotted before. This leads to a new path and one I shall now enjoy exploring instead!
York
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on May 11th, 2011
Looking forward to some quality at York today. It seems racing is lacking a lot of quality this recently, volumes are not great and underlying liquidity poor, so I am keen to get stuck into some decent stuff.
There are a few threads on the forum about York in previous years. We have noticed that patterns often repeat in racing meetings so it will be interesting to see if the same happens again. I navigated yesterday without any errors, but it was generally unexciting, so fingers crossed today. 2/6th’s of way through jinx week!
Good luck at the Dante meeting.
Jinx week
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on May 9th, 2011
For some reason this week each year is the week where errors creep in, unexpected things happen and bad luck gets called in. I’ve netted some of my most spectacular failure in week 20 for some reason, year after year. I can’t explain why and despite attempts in previous years to be super cautious during this week, something always trips me up. It could be anything, a system crash, broadband failure, Betfair crash, highly unusual event, anything.
So you can understand my nervousness at heading into this week. I had a decent Sunday out at relatives and was fairly buoyant heading into the office this morning. Got on with some work, made a few phone calls and everything was good. Got set up for the first race and then “boom”, a major power outage and the office plunges into darkness. Not a problem as I can re-locate to my home and work from there. Everybody ups sticks and leaves the office. When I get home it seems the outage is a large one as it has affected my home as well. But not a problem as I have a third backup, I can trade from the car. In the boot I have a power inverter and various plugs in case of emergency. I can just go outside and use a 3G connection, the car acts as a backup generator providing endless power. I have a choice of iPad, tablet or normal laptop to use and I have a permanent copy of Bet Angel running as a back up on a VPS. This means I can remote to the server make full use of the low bandwidth over 3G and hit the get out button or switch locations in literally seconds. So…….. I nip into the car log onto Betfair and oh… Betfair is down! Good start to the week!
However, I’m not worried about all the things that happened this morning, they are know unknowns (to quote Donald Rumsfeld). What I am always worried about in the unknown unknowns. I’ll let you know if any happen again this week. As it is, when the day got going it was a reasonable one, so the initial problems of today are firmly parked in the history bucket. I am 1/6 of the way to not repeating history so far in week 20.
Match of the season
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on May 8th, 2011
A tantalising match this afternoon between Man Utd and Chelsea and the market is being cautious by pricing up Man Utd at 2.34 for the win. I would have priced Chelsea near 4.00 for a win here, but with so much at stake; its probably right for the price to be a bit shorter. The market is priced for 2.50 goals with 1.30 going to Man Utd.
Home advantage is historically 0.40 goals so if you take that out, the market is saying Man Utd are 0.90 goals better than Chelsea. If you think that is too high then you should back Chelsea. Away teams typically score first around 40% of the time in matches like this, so there are several strategic options available for you. I am visiting relatives for the day so no chance for me to trade unfortunately. But, thanks to the wonders of modern technology, I should be able to watch it.
If you want to do something with more certainty then look no further than the Italian league. The volume leader in all matches for whole of today, when I did my analysis this morning, was Bolonga vs Parma with over £600k traded already. Nearly all that is on the draw, which is priced at the astoundingly low price of 1.41. I wonder how that match will pan out 
Busy day
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on May 7th, 2011
Looking forward to a busy day today.
Promotion and relegation battles will be settled on the football pitches today, that always throws up opportunities. There is nothing like career death to focus the mind of a highly paid footballer. I’m looking for an outside chance today. I’ll probably spread around my options to even things out. Did you know that Bet Angel can monitor and fire in bets across multiple markets almost simultaneously? This is ideal for football where matches go off all at once. If you want to you can get bets triggered at X minutes before the off or something similar. You can do this using Guardian and the Excel functions.
In Tennis at the Madrid open we have an intriguing match with Nadal at a very short price on his favourite surface to beat Federer. Perhaps there is an opportunity here or at least a clue to the rest of the season?
Plenty of of racing to hand as well but I doubt I will be doing the Kentucky Derby. I have tried and failed to get anything substantive for quite a few years on this. I’ll have another look today but I doubt it will yield much. In previous matched bet turnover has been pretty poor and that’s been the key problem.
Good luck whatever you are doing today!
April
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on May 6th, 2011
Well the met office has just confirmed it was the hottest April since records began in the UK and while the weather was great, trading conditions could be described as good as well. Despite my pessimism at the start of the month I did pretty well. I was just short of last years total, but considering I have decided to ease back on activity this year this was a fine result. The problem I have with this is that is raises expectations that maybe I can achieve the same a last year while doing less. I don’t think that’s realistic.
I spent a lot of time last month examining some new areas including liquidity generation and structure to that liquidity. This gave me some valuable insights and a light-bulb moment half way through the month. I am now busy working on the results of that. I really enjoy this sort of stuff. I’m going to include my findings in my next course on the 23rd May.
I’m hopeful of pulling in a decent result in May, but as last month ended on a weekend; that slightly flatters last month and dents this month. As the football season closes my attention will return to Tennis towards the middle of the month. Over the summer I will be working on football data collected last year in anticipation of producing some new work at the start of next season.
Best trade ever?
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on May 6th, 2011
It was a couple of years ago I said this and I’m hoping for a repeat again this year, but then again I was hoping last year would see a repeat and that didn’t happen either! Here’s hoping! You can never predict where a really big opportunity, but as long as you are focused you will always be able to jump on the back of one when the inevitable occurs.
Part of trick is being available and alert to opportunties. Keep looking and one will eventually occur.