Archive for September, 2011
Back to back
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on September 30th, 2011
That’s woken me up from my slumber!
A very simple strategy would have made you money trading the racing today. Get a back order filled and wait.
Somebody was in the market a lot today, as we have seen before, with seemingly infinitely deep pockets. Race after race has had one horse or another completely smashed up with huge back orders. When trading you don’t need to catch many of these to make a huge difference. I am sure a few of us got caught out early on, but when the pattern became obvious, race after race, it seemed a simple strategy to simply take some low risk backs and wait. At worst you should have just biased your trade to back first rather than lay and hope to catch one or two.
An interesting day!
Lost focus..
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on September 30th, 2011
Been feeling a bit off colour this week, so have slowed down a bit. With the nice weather I also decided to take some time out this week to enjoy the late sun. I think it’s time for a break soon as feeling off colour has left me a bit tired and I have lost focus on a couple of times recently and missed some really good opportunities or not done them at all. Time to re-focus on a couple of achievable goals and pay attention a bit more.
Some of the lack of focus has come from not trying to chase down last years totals. It’s impossible for me to grow double my activity at the drop of the hat, which has been a requirement since 18th July, so I’ve stopped trying and taken a more leisurely approach. Not looking at last years results has meant I have missed a few opportunities. One I wont miss is this weekend. It’s a busy weekend ahead and I will be putting in a bigger effort this weekend as a result. It’s one of few weekends when I will definitely be trading on Sunday when I give the Prix de l’arc de triomphe a go.
That aside, it’s time to get some focus back into things! But only after I have re-charged my batteries a bit.
My next objective
Champions league
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on September 27th, 2011
Tonight’s matches should generate on average around 23 goals. I’d rank most to least: -
Real Madrid vs Ajax
Man Utd vs FC Basel
B Munich vs Man City
Lyon vs Dinamo Zagreb
Otelul Galati vs Benfica
Napoli vs Villarreal
Trabzonspor vs Lille
CSKA Moscow vs Inter
I much prefer the knockout stage of the competition or the latter stages of the group stages when incentive to score is highest.
Stat of the evening for you. There is around an early 60′s% percent chance that B Munich could take the lead at some point during the match against Man City.
Time for a chit chat
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on September 25th, 2011
It’s been a while since I did my last webinar so I’ve decided to dust off the webinar service and give it another go.If it goes without a hitch I will do some more. Now the evening racing is gone, that will also free my time up a bit more. I plan to hold the webinar on Monday evening 8pm UK time.
There is no specific topic planned, but I am sure there will be lots of questions. The format will be to turn up and ask some questions and we will attempt to get through as many as we can.
To register for the webinar visit: -
What to do when Betfair is down
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on September 24th, 2011
Unfortunately Betfair suffered another outage this afternoon. Here is how I am set up to deal with such issues: -
I always have two version of Bet Angel running. One in API mode and one, with the refresh off, in non API mode (Log in via connection mode 1).
This means I can switch quickly between applications and if I am caught on one I can exit on another. We note that a site crash seems to happen in stages and having two bites of the cherry to exit works well. The site often comes back up in stages also, so it works well in either direction. This feature is worth the subscription to Bet Angel on it’s own!
In case the crash is at my end I have a back system, an iPad linked to Bet Angel via a VPS. This covers all bases in case of a catastrophic power or connection failure.
Of course you also have Betdaq that you can trade on. The liquidity on Betdaq is higher than ever at the moment and strategies that I use on one exchange tend to transplant well to the other. So whether you use Betdaq to hedge or trade outright its more viable than ever nowadays.
The connection mode feature on Bet Angel is a really useful feature in moments like today. So make sure you are familiar with it.
http://www.betangel.tv/video/using-bet-angel/setting-up-bet-angel/161-connectionmodes
Cheaters never prosper
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on September 24th, 2011
I saw this post on another blog recently and it shows up how statistics can actually reveal very little at all. This is obviously unintended in this case, but is a trap a lot of people fall into very often. Especially when gambling / trading.
http://www.soccerbythenumbers.com/2011/09/cheaters-never-prosper-connection.html
I first looked into the relationship with fouls and goals some time ago and the link is the attacking strength of one team over the defence of another. If your defence is under pressure then they are more likely to commit a foul. It’s as simple as that, there is little more to be read into things.
For some time I sought to understand how to price odds on a football match. This was the obvious key to finding value. Bit by bit I improved my forecasting skills to the nth degree. In that quest I discovered many things, but one of them was how a lot of stats that are proffered to the market are in fact completely useless in determining value.
If a team has scored two goals a match for ten matches in a row, then you may think this has some bearing on the next match. But ultimately it doesn’t. But that doesn’t stop every pundit and his son offering this as a useful stat. In fact the source of true odds actually lies much deeper in individual statistics and how you plug two disparate teams together. Sort that out and you have the key to successful forecasting.
Betfair AGM pt. 2
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on September 23rd, 2011
Having been to many AGM’s in the past I didn’t expect much from Betfair’s first AGM.
I almost didn’t get in as Betfair were blocking access to people who have nominee accounts. Not many people own shares directly any longer, but I’d never been blocked access to an AGM before despite this. However, I had contacted Betfair directly before the AGM to indicate that I was going to attend; so this piece of foresight was enough to get over this difficulty. Unfortunately I had to waive my right to vote and ask questions to achieve this.
The room was buzzing with the news that Ed Wray had announced that he would step down but, as with most AGM’s, there were not actually very many shareholders or proxies in attendance. Shareholdings are a great piece of democratic capitalism, unfortunately it’s poorly understand and significantly underused.
The AGM was held at BAFTA in Picadilly. Richard Grant waltzed up the stairs when I was there and each seat in the, sparsely populated, auditorium was endowed by one celebrity or the other. The AGM followed a familiar format where the CEO does a quick presentation and gives an updated on current trading. That is followed by Q&A’s and the formal business of voting for or against resolutions (most of which is done electronically nowadays).
The questions were not particularly probing, but there was one shareholder who was deeply questioning an incentive plan. There were many more questions that could and should have been asked IMHO. After about an hour everybody headed downstairs for some refreshments.
At this point I did get the chance to ask questions, so I sought out a number of boards members. Courtesy prevents me from divulging the discussions but I was given plenty of opportunity to put forward and discuss a number of items directly to the board and that was the main objective for my attendance.
On the way out I shareholders and the board were greeted by a Betfair customer upset at having £52k of premium charges deducted from his account. His activism appears to have worked as his details were published in the Guardian today along with a less than flattering account of the press ban that Betfair appear to have had at the meeting.
Overall this AGM was little different from many others I had attended, but it was nice to finally get to the talk to the board face to face and I appreciate they took the time to listen. I’m delighted to have had the opportunity to have represented Bet Angel customers at the meeting.
Betfair AGM
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on September 22nd, 2011
By the time you read this I should be ensconced in my position at the Betfair AGM.
When Betfair listed I took a look at the prospectus and felt the company was fairly richly valued given the outlook and nature of the IPO. I wrote for a financial magazine for three years in another life, so I was in a great position to be a judge of the IPO. I put pen to paper and detailed my rationale which was deemed interesting enough to be published. I knew this was important, as foresight is a much better quality than hindsight! I can now claim to have been completely right in my assessment.
Everything has it’s price and the longer you are in financial markets the more you realise that the market under or over shoots in either direction. At the off, Betfair was very overvalued against my valuation. At its low it was probably undervalued given its structure and outlook.
I had always intended to attend the AGM, but to do that you needed to be a shareholder. As the price slipped to it’s current lows it seemed a good opportunity to buy the shares I needed to gain attendance. I’ve already had a meeting with Betfair this week, so I doubt there will be much to say at the AGM. Having been to a fair few AGM’s in my time, most are pretty dull affairs. But I will be interested to see who else is at the AGM today and what, if anything, of note is said.
I’ll type up a summary for you when I get the chance.
Good old fashioned gambling
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on September 21st, 2011
Since Betfair introduced new charges for their most successful customers, me included. I’ve done a fair bit of work all over the place. Back on Betfair, no matter how easy the opportunity, I can’t tell you just how difficult it is to actually do something that you know will result in the loss of 60% of your profit, I don’t know about others, but I really struggle to do it.
So, I’ve done some additional work on Betfair by looking at alternative strategies with the view to understanding just what it would take to overturn or reduce the higher charges. Basically the bottom line is that you have to generate a small profit, while paying a lot of commission. I know this sounds obvious but let me give you an example.
Last week I set out to do some good old fashioned gambling on my account. This, amongst other things, has made a right old jumble of my P&L since the new charges. Last week I stuck fairly rigidly to only using my Betfair account to bet. I did lapse at one point by taking advantage of an opportunity that I could only execute on Betfair. But the practical upshot of that gambling led activity is that, thanks to the way results came in, I only paid 20% in total charges on my account. This means that Betfair still deducted an additional 40% on top of that. That’s a mare on gambling led activity and its a back to the drawing board moment.
The curious think about this is that people I teach can now earn 2.5 times what I can doing the same thing. So if you are interested in learning what I do, come and see me; I’m likely to have more time on my hands this winter!
Full tilt poker was a Ponzi scheme
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on September 20th, 2011
I’ve been following this story for a while and listening to the rumours but now US authorities have come out and mentioned the P word.
“US authorities have accused the owners of online gambling site Full Tilt Poker of operating a huge Ponzi scheme that defrauded players out of $440m (£289m).”
Full story: -
Red vs. Blue
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on September 18th, 2011
I recently watched an episode of Horizon on BBC iPlayer. These documentaries are right up my street and I love exploring some of the more esoteric views of things. This particular episode was all about colour and how the brain interprets colour. It was really fascinating as it highlighted that a lot of the colour you see is “interpreted” by the brain and not actually “real”.
One element of this was looking at the effect of red and blue and how it affects sports performance or the interpretations of officials in sports tournaments. The results were fascinating. So with another red vs blue match on today the conclusion of this research is that I should favour red. I’ll be backing Man Utd today! Of course this is just one element of things so don’t take it too literally but the research was interesting. You can find lots of there in the Internet: -
So, back to last week and the question “If a team is priced at 2.00 how often will they go on to score first?”. I was surprised by the diversity of answers, but the actual answer is 60% (Give or take rounding, equipartition, sample size etc). I first worked out the rough percentages back in the mid 80′s for some work I was doing then. Over the course of a season, if I take a stab at the first scorer, I’m accurate to within 0.07% of the actual. But there is a lot of variability in there, which is the reason behind my “What does value look like post”. Just because you pick something, doesn’t mean it will happen. Only that it will happen X% of the time based on your stats. The interesting thing about this stat is that it is saying that if you trade the favourite rather than just back it, you get a 10% better chance of profiting.
Whatever strategy you choose, whatever filters you apply it needs to yield over a 60% strike rate to have any possibility to make money in the long term. If you starting hedging they your increase liability needs an even higher strike rate. I’ll discuss that more in future weeks.
What does value look like?
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on September 16th, 2011
I’ll often make suggestions around value. In my football ratings I point to matches that will have above or below value median results. What I am trying to say is this looks value, that is value, this isn’t. But what does value look like?
One thing it is not, is a tip. I’ll liberally scatter the words ‘on average’ into many posts as that is what value looks like. All sports and most events show a great deal of variability and that means that it’s nigh on impossible to get things right all the time. Therefore when you see something from me, I’m not saying back or lay this item. I am saying there is value in that. To understand how value manifests itself over time take a look at the following chart.
This chart represents a lay value strategy. I think I have an edge, in fact I am pretty certain I do based on my research, but this graph shows you how variable the results are. After nearly 500 events using £10 stakes I am up £400. But, as you can see, the road is bumpy and this is because value plays out over the very long term. In that mix you can get very long runs where it’s very positive or very negative, but over the long term you should see your bank produce higher lows during each draw-down. That’s how you know you are achieving value. Once you are certain, you start looking at how scalable the strategy is.
So when I make recommendations or give ratings, be sure to interpret it correctly. It’s easy when recommending something to look foolish, but that will only occur if you interpret the information incorrectly. What I am saying when I post up information is that, based upon my analysis, it looks value or look for value here. I know from experience that I can generally find it, but often the biggest hurdle to making it pay is commission and associated costs, that’s critically important as well. So don’t forget to focus on that as well!
Awesome match
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on September 10th, 2011
At last, a real classic match to talk about at the US Open. Djokovic through to the final after defeating Federer, again, in the semi final from two match points down. A great trading match as well, with some clear cut entry and exit points.
Who scores first in a football match?
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on September 10th, 2011
When trading football, whatever strategy you use, it tends to gravitate to the key question, who scores first? (You could add when to that as well!)
I first asked this question in the early 80′s and worked out how to calculte this and most likely time for a goal. I recently revisited some old material and transplated it to today’s markets so see if much had changed. Not a great deal has changed to be honest and the stats are still pretty relevant against today’s. Thanks to modern technology though, I have a much greater depth and perspective of a match, long before it has kicked off and while it is inplay.
So I have put up a poll today to see what perception people have of football statistics.
I have started with a simple question. If you backed a team at 2.00 to win, they have a (1/2.00) chance of winning the match, 50%. If you traded a match, you would benefit because when the home team scored first because you would be able to green up after a goal. So my question is: -
When a team is priced near 2.00 how often will they go on to score first?
Don’t forget that Bet Angel includes the wonderful multi market tool, Guardian and which allows you to trade multiple football matches all at once and the unique football profiling tool, Soccer Mystic.
Three day game
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on September 9th, 2011
Andy Murray finally put to bed his forth round match at the US open. But the fact it took three days highlights one of the potential issues with trading Tennis. Do you take a long term or short term position, do you hold a position or close it out at defined points?
There are two sides to the coin. The fact an event has no definitive end point vastly increases the volatility and the chance of getting two prices matched at different levels. This increases your chance of success. In a limited time event you not only have the underlying score to think about but also the time value of money. In Tennis this effect is less pronounced.
On the flip side how long the match takes to finish is an important consideration. If you are taking a longer term position you could have to wait some time for a payoff and if the match is interrupted or plays out over a long time frame that could affect the viability of the trade. I tend to look at opportunities from a few perspectives. How often can I find an opportunity and how long will it take to mature?
If you look at a football match, you could find an opportunity in there where your exposure can only last a maximum of 90 minutes or so. If you look at a horse race you could do nine races in those 90 minutes. So you have to ask yourself, what can I yield on a football match and could I yield nine times less but more frequently on the horses?
This is how I approach each day in terms of looking for opportunities. The best scenario is to have multiple sports starting at multiple times. as this means I can participate on all. But if I am forced to choose, it has to come down to the yield multiplied by opportunity equation. It’s at that point that you realise that this itself is also a factor of time.
Laytown
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on September 8th, 2011
Sounds like a small town where people favour only one side of the book. But its actually a racecourse in Ireland.
This race course captivates me each year. Circumstances worked against me again this year, but I will definately pay it a visit next year. Besides, I have more reason to visit Ireland nowadays!
http://www.meath.ie/Tourism/SportsandActivities/Horseracing/LaytownRaces/
Don’t come back till St Leger day
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on September 7th, 2011
The oldest classic horse race in the world is almost upon us again and while it marks the closing of the flat turf season, tradition dictates that it also marks an upturn in financial markets if folklore is to be believed.
“Sell in May and go away, don’t come back till St Leger day”
There is a general ‘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 discusses 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 the St Leger for some reason, but that won’t stop me having a good go this week.
Betfair revenue down 7%
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on September 6th, 2011
Full regulatory news release available from the following link: -
http://www.investegate.co.uk/article.aspx?id=201109060700136723N&fe=1
Betfair suffer DNS hack
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on September 5th, 2011
Betfair and a number of popular web sites suffered when hackers changed their DNS records to redirect their visitors to their site. It’s important to note that the site itself was not hacked. For the full story read the following link: -
Fooled by randomness
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on September 3rd, 2011
Acknowledging the angle offered by Nicolas Taleb, where he uses this phrase to write an entire book based on the fact the odd things happen more than they academically should, I would like to point out the same can happen in a football match.
Often I see people claiming to have found some new system for trading football. You know the sort, hold a chicken in your hand, put your head out the window and place a back bet if the team is at certain odds, subject to a, b,c and d if this, then that etc. etc.
A lot of these are just nonsense however as every market, not just football, contains a ‘harmonic’ mean of likelyhood. A level at which your actions sink to the realms of pure randomness. Some of these levels are actually quite high and can produce high strike rates, but longer term they produce no profit as they are not being made on key information or at least the proponent is unable to rationalise why it should work. In short there is no edge. Where people get fooled is that a high strike rate can be normality for some strategies and this high strike rate leads, in turn, to some lenghtly winning runs. Any losing events or runs can be justified by ‘bad selections’ or just ‘bad luck’. ‘If he hadn’t hit the post’, but unfortunately he did!
Football is great for this type of thing as a number of patterns can lead to high probablilty payoff events, but not many to profit. But curiously some matches, which you can hunt for, can lead to strategies that pay off whatever happens in the match. That sounds really strange but is true. Whether you back or laid any of the match odds you could still win if you were available to trade after a goal in certain matches. This is not genuis but to be expected in these matches, it’s finding them that is the key task; not executing the trade itself.
It reminds me a great phrase I came across in the stock market.
“What’s the definition of a bull market?”…………………. Answer – “A general rise in prices that makes everyone think they are a financial genius!”
Hasse vs Murray
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on September 2nd, 2011
Passive Tennis trading
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on September 2nd, 2011
Missed most of the US open last night as I opted to play Tennis rather than watch it, but I still profited on the matches last night.
I also had a nice reminder of how using stats can show a different version of the match than the score. I won 6-4 6-4 last night, but the first set was quite tight and I effectively won it with a break of serve in the ninth game. The second set was not close, but I lost two games against serve when I relaxed and tried too many adventurous shots. The score would have been 6-2 otherwise. A good reminder that you should always keep your eye on points won, rather than games won.
Bet Angel contains some very useful tools that allow you to do one thing while doing another. Using Guardian and the spreadsheet integration allows you to expand your sphere of opportunity. The following video shows us linking to all the days matches at the US Open: -
http://www.betangel.tv/video/using-bet-angel/using-spreadsheets/215-tennismultiplespreadsheet
One thing you may want to try is passive trading, setting up a position to get matched in-play to generate a profit (or loss!). I do this lot in the early rounds of Tennis tournaments. I use Tennis trader to identify key areas in a match and place an opening bet offset to get matched at a different price during the match. I can then monitor this in the background with Guardian and use a spreadsheet to give me an at a glance look at how things are going. This means I can trade all the matches with some potential in them. The trick is to place your bets at a area where they are likely to match, but with enough margin that they offset the ones that don’t work.
For example, using Tennis trader I have looked at the Murray match this evening and, excluding tie breaks and the last set won to advantage beyond seven, there are 659 possible score lines that could occur. Projecting forward the odds shows a cluster of odds that are much more likely to be hit than normal so I can place bets in or around this area knowing that unless there is a radical change in the shape of the match I have maximised the upside potential while framing the potential for loss. There is a cluster of potential around 1.30′s in this match which focuses any potential down to the question ‘Can I find more than one in three matches like this where this score will occur’. A variation on this is to place a trade with a trailing stop that has to potential to move into a profitable position. You can then set and forget and come back to analyse the results later, but you are still asking a similar question.
I do this a lot, placing positions in the market with a decent payoff and then searching for the right opportunity. And that in essence, is how you set up a passive trade.
Not so passive
New in-running tool
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on September 1st, 2011
Something has been annoying me for ages and that is how I’ll often sit between races waiting for the next one to start. It’s a lot of wasted time, so I recently decided it was time to do something about it. The result is a new tool for Bet Angel users.
The concept is a clickable user interface that shows you the progress of a race as it happens. Its the first ever product to allow you to click on a graph to place a bet. To back or lay you simply point in front or behind of the horse and left or right click to back or lay. As the race progresses, the horses move towards the finish line giving you a visual view of what is happening in the market and a good representation of what the horse and everybody following it is doing. After watching a few races you can quickly pick up on some useful patterns that emerge in-running. This new tool is available for use on the latest beta version of Bet Angel which you can now download. Enjoy!
You can view a video describing the tool here: -
http://www.betangel.tv/video/horse-racing/212-inplay
