Archive for July, 2011
Betfair sponsor Tuerkiyemspor
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on July 30th, 2011
If your reaction was “Who?”, you are not alone in thinking that. Visit this link for an interesting angle on why: -
Gooder Goodwood
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on July 29th, 2011
My old English tutor would have a heart attack with that title!
Had my best day of the week yesterday and should be headed for a great festival overall. The day didn’t start very well with a delayed start and then I got my bottom spanked at Nottingham when I failed to address an alarming drift on the horse I was trading. But from there in things just got better and better. I managed to pull in some really good results across the card on the day, not just at Goodwood. I’m not setting expectations for a repeat today but the card does look generally OK.
After collecting a ton of data on the way Betdaq markets manifest themselves, I had an epiphany last Saturday and I have managed to take that thought forward this week for a generally good performance all round. Previously I had only really used Betdaq at the bigger meetings but I am starting to pull out some decent results whatever the grade of race now. If you look at the last race of the day yesterday at Goodwood it wasn’t the best race by far, but I still got a reasonable result on that. The growing liquidity on Betdaq is helping me a lot. Should be a good week.
A bit of a ouch moment!
Phone call from Betfair
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on July 28th, 2011
A few weeks I got a phone call from a number I didn’t recognise. It was Betfair telling me I was now going to pay 60% of my profit to them. Or not as it turned out!
I tagged a name to that number so if they phoned again I would know who it was. Yesterday that number rang again, right in the middle of trading, thanks. What could Betfair be doing phoning me in the middle of Goodwood? Curious I shoved the phone under my shoulder, pressed it against my cheek and carried on trading. It turns out they were chasing payment on a negative balance.
A bit worried I qualified the conversation, “Negative balance, how much?”. It turns out they were chasing me for £19.46!! I’ve run up negative balances in the past but generally for large four figure numbers and never got chased hard for that. So very surprised to get a phone call and email for £19.46!
Anyhow, Goodwood went well yesterday and I had a good day overall which is reassuring. The drift on Canford Cliffs was amazing!! Been out early this morning with the kids and I’m fired up for a good session today.
Not so Good-wood
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on July 27th, 2011
A fairly lacklustre day yesterday started me off on the five day festival at Goodwood. I didn’t pull anything amazing out of the hat, but ended on a decent amount for the day. I think it ‘felt’ lacklustre because I had such a good start last year. On the same day last year I managed a clean sweep of the entire card, I didn’t manage that this year.
Today promises to be very interesting. The feature race stands out a mile with Frankel and Canford Cliffs going head to head in what promises to be an intriguing race. If you look at Canford Cliffs notes you can see he is often held up before been presented late on. Frankel’s performances have been a mixed bag so far, but has often led.
Just four runners doesn’t make for a great trading race but the betting interest and volume will be high so this should present some opportunties.
BTW, while looking for an image I came up with some interesting ones. If you want a laugh, just try googling ‘frankel’.
A Glorious week ahead
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on July 26th, 2011
After some quiet weeks it’s time to roll up your sleeves and get busy again. I have traditionally done well from Goodwood so I am looking for a repeat performance this year. Nothing is guaranteed however, so I’ll roll up my trousers and dip my toe in the water today to find out how warm it is. We targeted this very meeting last year for some really in-depth research and analysis so we will be doing the same this year for our first meeting where we have such quality in-depth data year on year. It should be interesting to see what has changed in a year.
Yesterday was an entertaining start to the week and the markets were pretty lively. Predictably the two Curley runners threw up some decent opportunities and had generally good and easy to define entry and exit points.
Betfair International Stakes
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on July 24th, 2011
Couldn’t resist posting up this P&L on this race from yesterday. OK I got more on Betfair, a bit, but nowhere near the same when if deduct a 60% commission.
You should always do what is best for you, especially in a trading market, but look at my circumstances. It’s a strange feeling to only be able to earn 40% what others can earn by doing exactly the same thing. I can teach people how to do similar things and with a bit of practice they could replicate it , but I can only possibly win 40% of what they can. I struggle to comprehend that. Is this issue a portent to new charges, or a mistake to be rescinded?
For me, the equivalent value of the win like this on Betfair translates to pre commission £317, which would have been an unlikely result on this race. Now I’ve had a lot more practice I am starting to pick up some decent results on Betdaq, not only on the bigger races but also on the smaller ones too and there seems to be few problems interacting with the market. Last year Betdaq was very quiet but with the increase in liquidity it’s really starting to look interesting. Still a very long way to go but, I’m really looking forward to Goodwood next week where we should see some good markets across both exchanges. It will be an interesting week for sure and I’ll report back what I find.
Bet Angel is available for Betfair or Betdaq so you can choose where you want to do business, or why not use both?
Football is back (almost)
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on July 23rd, 2011
Scottish league football restarts today and it’s a useful reminder that at the start of season it’s easier to find value than at any other time of the year, bar the relegation dogfight perhaps.
It’s often difficult to see how transfers and all the other summer shenanigans will play out, but that can show itself in some of the earlier matches. Keep an eye open at the start of the season for a few fast starters. Any one of the promoted sides can perform above expectations, but that usually fades as the season matures. Keep an eye out of fast starters. In the premier league I am paying close attention to QPR.
Not long now and all the football will be back on line and Saturdays will be a lot busier.
Betfair – Cross matching
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on July 22nd, 2011
Cross matching has slowly been implemented across many sports markets on Betfair and earlier this year on the big one, horse racing.
There are still some odd things with cross matching. Prices for the API and for the Betfair web site are different. This is because cross matching is not exposed via the API. We put the cross matching algorithm into Bet Angel, but quite a large number of API applications still show the ‘wrong’ prices. Betfair also never tell you when it is on or off, this only adds to the confusion.
When it was introduced on Horse Racing it was positioned as follows: -
“Cross-matching was introduced on most sports during 2008 and has had a significant, positive impact on liquidity.”
As you may be aware, because we are in the market all the time, we keep very detailed records on just about anything that happens. This gave us the chance to observe what happened when the cross matching was switched on in the horse racing markets.
Curiously the implementation caused the fill rate to drop from it’s previous level. What we found was that if you put an order in the market and waited for it to be filled, it filled twice as fast before cross matching was implemented than after it’s implementation. That seems a bit odd. Some of it could be accounted for by the fact that money now appearas elsewhere in the book when it can’t get matched at a certain price, but the average queue size doesn’t seem to reflect that.
Currently we are studying the markets post the 18th July. We are doing this because we do expect another change. We will report back when we have enough data as to how is has changed from this date.
A different sort of cross matching
Botfair
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on July 20th, 2011
I read some comments yesterday evening from some ‘traditional’ punters about how they were pleased Betfair’s new charges were going to get rid of the bots. Unfortunately for these posters, the opposite is almost certainly likely to be true. There is some pretty simple logic behind it.
Say you have a winning bot that makes money on a market and you suddenly face higher charges. At this level you would most likely work more aggressively to make more to offset those charges. Dropping down a level, say you had something that generally worked but took a lot of time as you had to manually do certain tasks. Losing a lot of that income to a third party for no reward means it could suddenly be unviable if you manually intervene, so the answer is to automate it to save your precious time. OK it may not yield as much, but at least it yields something and doesn’t take any of your time.
Less bots because of increased charges? I bet you it’s more.
If you are interested in automating your activity give Bet Angel’s spreadsheet functionality a try, http://www.betangel.com/excel/. It can pre-load multiple markets to one sheet, or automatically switch to events as the day progresses. It also includes some unique scripting capabilities to enable you to automate key trading functions.
Betdaq boost
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on July 19th, 2011
Yesterday saw a fairly big boost on trading volume on the horse racing markets on Betdaq, which was more or less running at double last weeks numbers on average. It’s too early to say if this is a sustained increase or just a blip, but it’s encouraging.
I’m not going to tell you to use one exchange or the other or both, that’s your decision, not mine. Everybody is at different stages of their trading. But there are obvious benefits to having strong competition in any market.
Many years ago Betfair was tumbleweed territory but as volume increased so did people punting on it and that created more diverse activity and so a virtuous cycle start. In each market, even today across both exchanges, I noticed there is a ‘magic’ tipping point at which volume growth becomes self re-enforcing. So it will be interesting to see if this cycle will establish itself again in growth areas.
If you want to have a play on Betdaq, try BetDaq Angel which is the most fully featured Betdaq app available today.
60%
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on July 18th, 2011
On the first day of trading on 22nd October 2010 Betfair shares closed at 1550p. At the time of writing this post the shares are trading at 627p or down nearly 60% from that closing high. How ironic!
I don’t want to feed that hand that bites me, to reverse the common metaphor. So, for me at least, action speak louder than words. Whether volume decreases or increases on the Betfair exchange, why will be the most pressing question. Volume will increase on Betdaq for sure. With all the risk and effort I take, I can’t operate at 60%’; as can’t many others who have contacted me. But, there are plenty that still have some way to go to be charged at this level, so I look forward to helping those Bet Angel users get there as fast as possible!
I’ll post some more thoughts in the coming days and report back on the markets as well.
Open Source
Posted by Peter Webb in Golf on July 17th, 2011
Continuing my theme of getting more involved in sports rather than just trading them I am headed of to Royal St’ Georges today for the final day of the open golf. I’ll be able to see what it looks like at source. I hope it doesn’t rain too much.
No mobile phones or PDA’s allowed on the course, so no greensiding possible! I’ll just have to enjoy the day.
Betfair down, again!
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on July 16th, 2011
Just two days before Betfair are due to impose massive increases in costs on their users, they face yet another major outage on their site.
You just can’t really believe it’s possible to get much worse PR for Betfair, but somehow they manage to pull another shocker out of the hat. It’s really quite incredible. You think the least they could do was quickly put a message up on their service page.
Open golf – Best trades
Posted by Peter Webb in Golf on July 16th, 2011
For a full list and other lists, visit the forum.
The Open has been brilliant so far. The highlight today was the hole in one by Tom Watson, amazing. When my shoulder is better I’m getting out there again to reduce my handicap. It’s inspiring to see a 61 year old holding his own against the worlds top golfers.
This is the last list now as we turn our attention to specific golfers for the remaining two days. The weather is going to turn real horrible for the remaining days, so it’s fingers on the lay button and the hunt is on for the golfers who can play low accurate shots, or who are just plain lucky!
These are the top ten returns for £10 stakes from the start of the tournament to the cut.
Lucas Glover – 600 to 18.5 – £314.32
Thomas Bjorn – 600 to 27 – £212.22
Chad Campbell – 500 to 34 – £137.06
Miguel Angel Jimenez – 290 to 20 – £135
Darren Clarke – 220 to 17.5 – £115.71
Tom Lehman – 700 to 90 – £67.78
Anders Hansen – 260 to 38 – £58.42
Pablo Larrazabal – 400 to 60 – £56.67
George Coetzee – 280 to 55 – £40.91
Dustin Johnson – 95 to 21 – £35.24
Big moves
Posted by Peter Webb in Golf on July 15th, 2011
I thought the first day of the Open Golf at Sandwich would be interesting and that’s exactly how it has proved. For a full list of movers visit the thread on the forum.
Golf has really grown on me as a trading sport and the small gap between the leader-board and oblivion creates some fantastic opportunities. With a £10 stake this is what you could have greened up for on the top movers at the end of day one. Plenty of room for manoeuvre, mistakes and a few losses elsewhere.
Thomas Bjorn – 600 to 25 – £230
Lucas Glover – 340 to 28 – £111.43
Tom Lewis – 520 to 44 – £108.18
Miguel Angel Jimenez – 290 to 34 – £75.29
Kyle Stanley – 560 to 110 – £40.91
Webb Simpson – 160 to 32 – £40
Ricky Barnes – 370 to 90 – £31.11
Pablo Larrazabal – 400 to 100 – £30
Darren Clarke – 220 to 55 – £30
Fredrik Andersson Hed – 420 to 110 – £28.18
Repeating patterns
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on July 14th, 2011
Sometimes the markets surprise me, but more often than not they don’t. After 11 years of doing this, even the surprises don’t seem surprising any more. But yesterday I got a surprise.
Yesterday, last year, I traded a race at Catterick and got a really cracking result from it. A year later at the same course, on the same day and on the exact same race I got the same result. You would think it impossible that such a thing could happen, but it did! This is not the first time this has happened though and history does seems to repeat with alarming regularity. Now all I need to do is to understand why.
That may take a while.
Open Golf – McIlroy drift continues
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on July 13th, 2011
Now the Open championship market is firming up, I’m interested to see the drift on McIlroy is still continuing. I had factored in a bit of a drift but it’s interesting to see how strong and maintainted it is. At the moment the market and likely conditions are perfectly set up for a good trading market.
While zipping around the net I found this good preview for the championship. A good overview and some food for thought: -
Life in the old dog yet
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on July 12th, 2011
OK, So I know I said I wouldn’t post these any more as they will lose their relevance soon. But I couldn’t resist this one after a good day yesterday.
Mondays & Tuesdays in the summer can be really tough so it was a pleasure to do well yesterday. Today looks a bit better on the racing front. So if you had a stinker yesterday don’t worry, today does look better. I did get a bit lucky yesterday, so it’s a flattering result but a welcome one. Ended the day with a nice £36 loss at Wolverhampton, somethings never change!
The Open Championship
Posted by Peter Webb in Golf on July 11th, 2011
Had my first really detailed look at the Open today. McIlroy has drifted a bit since my first casual glance and that makes for a much more interesting market.
I tend to have a good go at the majors unless there is a very short priced favourite, so the drift on McIlroy is welcome. The weather forecast is mixed for later in the week so that increases my interest. I will probably be heading over to Kent on Sunday so I am looking to take a position to trade off before then. I don’t have any strong opinions at the moment but I am active in the market and will let you know if I find anything interesting.
If you want some background, here is an interesting overview: -
http://www.espn.co.uk/golf/sport/story/100409.html
British Grand Prix
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on July 10th, 2011
By the time you read this I will be tucking into a Bacon Roll at Silverstone, home of the British Grand Prix.
I’ve been determined to get to more sporting events this year rather than just sit at my desk looking for an opportunity, so I am pleased to confirm I am fulfilling that obligation so far this year. I was going to the Open Golf, because it is in the south this year. But given recent events I think I may delay that and go for it next year and do it in style.
I actually think the Grand Prix could be an interesting trade this year. There was a lot of fuss about Formula 1′s latest rule change and it’s timing, with Ferrari appearing to benefit and McLaren lose out the most from a decision to ban a technology called off-throttle blowing of the diffuser. The qualifying was a bit mixed up and that could lead to a more interesting race.
Any how, enjoy! I hope my son enjoys his first experiance of motorsport.
F1 is a noisy business trackside
Practice makes perfect
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on July 9th, 2011
I thought I would make this post to remind people to upgrade / try the latest version of Bet Angel. I’m motivated to highlight this by the fact that only a portion of our users base have upgraded at the moment according to last months figures.
As a reminder, we recently introduced a very comprehensive practice mode in the latest release of Bet Angel, version 1.28. You can see more about it here: -
The practice / training / simulation mode was a big upgrade and something people have been badgering us for, so please upgrade and use it. One great thing about the new mode is that you can use this mode with spreadsheet integration. This will increase the power and flexibility significantly, giving you loads of scope to try out all sorts of strategies. Please bear in mind though, that no matter how good the implementation, any practice mode that pretends to be like the market can never actually be perfectly like the real market. You will only learn that through actual participation.
However, it’s still a very useful addition, Enjoy!
A year after leaving
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on July 8th, 2011
A very interesting post from Ex Betfair man Mark Davis has appeared on his blog this evening, worth a read: -
7/7
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on July 7th, 2011
Not much to add above the post I made a couple of years ago.
Lack of liquidity
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on July 6th, 2011
Low matched bet turnover, gappy prices, lack of depth in the market. Yes, I am sure you are familiar with these problems. But I’m not talking about Betdaq, I am talking about Betfair.
Back when Betfair started the markets were pretty thin, but I still saw opportunity in them. As people began to develop techniques to squeak a few quid out of these markets things improved. As traders joined the market and improved liquidity, bigger backers and layers started to exploit the larger amounts of money available, and so a virtuous cycle started.
It’s another half full / half empty moment. Some people see only opportunity and some people see only problems. The early Betfair markets were different from now and when I saw then I knew no different, so just did what was necessary with what was in front of me. As time moved on and the markets changed and so did I, leaving behind those that were unwilling to change.
So when you look at a any market, look for the opportunity, not the problem. That’s how I started over 11 years ago. Liquidity on Betdaq is bound to rise in the near future, so for me that’s an opportunity. Even if you are not a premium charge payer over on Betfair I suggest that a new opportunity has been created on Betdaq with its introduction. I suggest you gear up to take advantage of that.
Jelly
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on July 5th, 2011
A long time ago I worked for a company where the MD had a great idea. A quick way to boost profits was to levy a new charge for delivery. He asked for comments.
“Jelly” I responded. Everybody thought it was an insult not piece of insight. But my point was that like squashing Jelly, new charges wouldn’t lead to the problem being stamped on, it would just lead to the problem oozing out elsewhere in the business.
Imposing the charge would mean that customers would change their behaviour and in order to not lose business, commercial decisions would change and negate the effects. I summarised that they should address the underlying problems of growth and cost structure to be viable long term and not impose that cost on the channel which would respond and negate the effects. On top of this the bad PR and lack of full return of revenue would most likely offset the proposition in the first place.
A year later the charge was in place, but some customers had gone, margin on product was lower, discounts and rebates had increased and people changed their ordering behaviour to avoid the additional charge or mitigate it. QED.
What I should have said was ‘Laffer curve‘ because that was the thing that made me make the jelly comment. I just thought Jelly would get more attention and be more memorable, but the reality was that they were similar.
So when you get somebody to make a business decision, sometimes it’s often better to ask a psychologist, not an accountant or economist!
June
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on July 4th, 2011
June turned out to be a very good month in the end and much better than I expected. It was the best June I’ve had for a few years. How useful to have a decent send off as it were, given the news from last week.
The highlight was obviously Royal Ascot and that contributed the bulk of things for the month. As I have done for a little while, I used both exchanges during Ascot week and this has put me in good shape for the future.
From here on in I don’t think there is much point in posting up individual P&L’s or results for the month. Obviously a headline P&L will be very different from an underlying P&L now and my activities will change, as does my incentive. There is still plenty of incentive for somebody to earn £250k if they ‘only’ pay 20% of that in fees. But at my level I just can’t work incredibly hard, put significant risk into the market, be a net liquidity provider then give away 60% of anything that is left to somebody that isn’t willing to share risk or funding that risk. In my long and varied career I have never seen this anything like it, so I’m not going to directly reward the hand that takes from me. So things have to change, that’s for sure. One immediate change I have to make is to start record keeping afresh. There is little point in measuring against prior records if you have a mercurial change, so I’ll have to park that for the moment and work forward afresh. Actually this is quite a cathartic moment, I feel a bit of a release from the endless chasing down of prior results.
Just a shame I can’t close out the year in the manner it which I started, well not in the same way as before anyhow. But as always, onwards and upwards.
Well done Djokovic
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on July 3rd, 2011
Well played and and excellent job so far this year. A remarkable season so far, I wonder what heights he will reach this year?
I managed to call the final just right as it was easy to read and conformed to most entry and exit points. Wimbledon has been great this year. It’s probably the best tournament I have traded in terms of results and very few mistakes. This is rare, as you expect a few howlers through a grand slam.
Now the Tennis tour slowly rolls over the pond to the US. So some late night matches to focus on. I hope you had a good tournament.
Wimbledon 2004
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on July 2nd, 2011
I’ll never forget the Womans final of 2004 when Sharapova defeated defending champion Serena Williams. It was really the first big win I had on Tennis, which I had traded infrequently up to that point, so it was a bit of a watershed moment. Would be nice to get a result like that today but I’m not going to bet on it! Should be an interesting final though. Kvitova was tipped up to me early on in the tournament but I didn’t act on it. Such is life!
