Author Archive: The Bet Angel Team
Loved sports and statistics all my life and eventually found a way to make a living from it.
On this blog I chat about my experiance in the market and my opinions.
Lay the draw – Revisited
Whenever you look at all strategies, no matter how complex, there is always some simple underlying key metric that is essential to whether a strategy works or not. This is also true in the case of ‘lay the draw’.
I’ve recently been looking again at value backing. There is a little more depth behind what I am doing, but one of the key issues you face if you pursue a value strategy is deviation from mean. You may be able …
Craving more Craven
Stuck in a pretty good performance on the first day of the Craven meeting and was pretty pleased all round with overall performance. Some of the testing I’ve been doing on new ideas came good as well, so I’m really chuffed. The champions league didn’t really through off a quality opportunity last night, but apart from some stuff before the off I didn’t really get that involved. Second legs should be interesting.
I prefer to know whether I’m in a …
Nuts, lightly roasted
I’ve been experimenting with a new strategy recently. I’ve learnt from past experience that data mining can be statistical deja vu. So whenever I make the transition from theory to practical, it always pays to be cautious. So on this occasion I have hedged my position on separate accounts to understand how the main strategy performs but without putting myself at too much risk.
Immediately the strategy started working, with a couple of glitches, so the main account started to …
After Aintree – Time for some R&R
With the Aintree meeting now behind us it’s time to take stock and get some R&R ready for the start of the flat season proper.
Aintree meeting
The Aintree meeting was a peach and I had good days most of last week, including the important races at Aintree. The Grand National was pretty eventful overall and lived up to expectations in all respects. We captured extensive data, which we are analysing in the early part of this week. But the …
Grand National 2004 style
Interested in seeing what Betfair looked like in 2004?
While busy preparing for this year’s Grand National I went back through the archives. In it I found a few screenshots that I had taken from way back in 2004, I thought I would share them with you. It was around 2004 that I started doing detailed archives of my work.
It’s interesting to see how some things have changed but some haven’t. I haven’t made a note of when these …
Great start at Aintree meeting
Well that went well.
No matter how experienced you are you can never be sure exactly sure what lies ahead each day. You will always be at the mercy of the market. So it’s nice when you find yourself on the right side of that. It’s a bit of a confidence boost for the weekend. The best result of the day we saw on Betfair, came on the first. The best on Betdaq on the last. But both were useful results.…
Punting on the Thames
My first rule for getting involved in the market is liquidity. If there is enough liquidity in a market, it’s usually worth getting involved. So on Saturday I thought I would give the Boat Race a go.
Liquidity wasn’t great at only around £50k when I joined the market, but rose to £300k at the completion of the event. I managed to put a fair amount of money through the market but ended up with a paltry total really in …
2012 Masters day three
That all turned out pretty well in the end.
Woods slump on the second round help move me into a considerable profit. This isn’t because of any position on Woods, more the impact of Woods sliding from short odds to being out of contention; this shortens up the rest of the field. It needed something like this as McIlroy and Westwood are certainly in the frame and Mickelson also shaped up a challenge. That was netted off with some good …
2012 US Masters day two
As predicted the McIlroy / Woods battle didn’t really take off on the first day. Henrik Stenson looked like he was going to create some waves but equalled the worst ever 18th with a snowman (an 8). This was a real shame because he was pulling off such a great move that the green on him alone was worth a fortune, if I had traded out, but I didn’t! I went back and reviewed his round and he had a …
2012 US Masters
I’ve been busy tracking the Golf markets since 2004 and the first major of the year is good place to start the Golf trading season proper.
The thing I like about Masters is its on more or less the same course each year, save amendments and pin positions, with the same sort of characteristics and foibles. There is lots of data as to how each hole plays and where the tough and easy parts of the course are. So that …
Champions league quarter finals
Looking forward to tonights match between Chelsea and Benfica. It has a nice feel to it. I had a good result on the Barca match last night, so hoping for a good evening.
Benfica must score to have any hope of going through, Chelsea are much improved since the sacking of AVB and the players must be feeling the pull of a final; but they still lack some consistency.
Comments on the forum made me look again at this match. Basically …
Trading football at random
If you trade something at random you will break even less commission? Is this statement true or false? If a football team is priced at 2.00 it has a 50% chance of winning a match, therefore you can’t exceed that, can you?
One curious thing you find if you start dabbling around at random in the markets, is the fact there are many situations in many markets when it’s possible to make money even if you don’t do anything clever. …
Betfair miss the chance for some great customer service
First off, on the plus side, the start of the flat turf season was a success, so that was a big positive.
On the downside; how would you feel if minutes into a game of football the match stopped and the team you just backed, decided to field a reserve team instead? Would you like your bet to stand? Thought not!
Yesterday at Meydan the Dubai Gold Cup had to be stopped mid race due to a fatal injury to …
Flat pack
Looking forward to the return of the flat turf season today with the Lincoln at Doncaster. 22 horses line up to battle out this competitive handicap.
We should rejoice at the return of the flat turf season. It’s return will herald less clashing and generally bigger fields. In the winter it can be a right pain when you have many cards and all the races and are falling all over each other. This will mean you should see better opportunities …
Betfair loses key Australian court case
Racing officials in New South Wales are rejoicing after a years-long challenge to their race fields legislation was this morning thrown out by the High Court.
Read more here – http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-03-30/racing-nsw-wins-court-battle/3922762/?site=melbourne
Betfair Australasia chief executive Giles Thompson says he respects the court’s decision but says it will reduce the competitiveness of wagering on racing in NSW. “A turnover fee will place extreme pressure on our ability to continue to offer our customers what we believe is the best product in …
Why a lack of fuel is linked to sports trading
On the walk into the office this morning I passed the local petrol station, there were a queue right out into the road. I saw somebody I knew who had driven in from some distance and he revealed a similar story across a wide area. It’s all down the fuss about whether tanker drivers will go on strike. People are scared that fuel may run out if this happens. You can summarise this situation up quite simply, people are acting on …
A question of scale (part three)
Click on the text for part one and part two
Curiously for some, it is actually quite easy to work out the maximum upside you can get in any market over time, that’s a definite calculable variable. See my previous blog post ‘profit exists everywhere’. You can also do the same for losses. When you look at those stats, you suddenly realise that the market is capped in either direction. That has advantages and disadvantages.
But the ‘market capped’ thing …
Profit exists everywhere
Somebody asked me the other day which markets have profit in them. Well the answer is that all have profit in them, it’s more a question of where it ends up. But all, have the potential for payoff. There are a couple of other key factors, which I will explain later.
Long before the market really gets going, each market can be split up and broken down in infinite detail. If you know how volatile it is then you can …
Sports Relief – Auction for signed England shirt
Just got back from my local school where two of my children have just done their run for Sports Relief.
Sports relief resonates with me as I’ve always been into sport. But it also strikes a chord because when I finished running competitively for a club, I still wanted to run. So I started to run for charitable causes instead. Keep fit and do something good as well. I ran my last Marathon in London in 1996 and my …
New version of Bet Angel
We’ve made some additions to Bet Angel and made a point release this week. The tweaks are: -
- New Sound Alert automation rule
- New Selection volume / Market volume automation condition
- Betfair charts and Advanced charts can now be synced with the selection shown in any of the ten ladders
- New ladder toolbar contains a button that displays the green-up value across all selections
Additional information is available on the forum. You can download the latest beta at http://www.betangel.com/download/…
UK Government changes remote gambling tax
During his budget speech today George Osbourne has announced plans to change the tax treatment of gambling tax so that it is generated at the point of consumption.
Depending on how it is implemented, this effectively stomps on offshore operators offering services to the UK while avoiding paying UK tax on those profits.
We have yet to see the detail yet, but that’s the breaking news.…
3-7
Not very often you see a scoreline like that in a football match.
I’ve been fortunate to be psyhically present to watch top level matches that ended 8-2, 6-2 and 5-5; but 3-7 is a really odd one. So odd I couldn’t really price it if you asked. I’d happily lay at 1000! Total goals are easier to price and I would have offered about 2000 for ten goals last night. Stats aside, there is a nice write up of …
Fraud on client funds again?
WorldSpreads recently entered special administration after the company said in a statement that as at close of business on Friday 16 March, the board of directors believed there was a shortfall of some £13m in clients’ money. I offer my sympathy if you have been affected.
Basically it looks like they have been trading using clients funds, though official information is always a big foggy in these cases. If so, it would not the first time a company has done …
F1 is back – Australian Grand Prix
Well my tickets for Silverstone are already booked and I’m looking forward to the new season.
I don’t tend to do much on Motorsport, but over time I’ve become adept at picking out opportunties on F1. Have a browse of some previous blog posts.
Comments from winter testing and early season practice tend to show you whose cars are competitive and whose are not. Other teams will catch up over the course of the season and rule changes can …
Happy St Patrick’s day
Best wishes to our Irish customers. Whatever you are doing today have a good one.
After the frenzy of Cheltenham we return to earth with a bump today. Lots of racing, but little of note. Use today to adjust yourself back to the melee of lower quality racing. On the football however we have the FA Cup quarter finals, so that looks interesting and will throw up some opportunities. I may dip in out and of those markets.
For main …
Don’t Panic!
This afternoon, for an experiment, I was wired up to a heart rate monitor. It was a test to see how I reacted throughout a busy day and to see what sort of stress I went through. As it turned out it measured a different sort of stress from normal!
The day started as normal and pulled in a couple of OK results. On the approached to race three though something seemed to be going wrong and the response I …
Cheltenham – So nearly a record
Big day today, the iPad three is launched! – LOL – You also have the Cheltenham Gold Cup.
Yesterday went much better than I thought. I scoured my notebook from days one and two to give myself the best chance of pulling something out of the hat and did. The markets are very similar to last year in that respect.
I was a bit more aggressive and confident yesterday and that helped a lot. I was also able to read …
Wolverhampton Winners
Two winners at Wolverhampton, one race after another. Have a look at the graphs and see if you can spot the pattern.
…
Cheltenham day three
Day two of Cheltenham went pretty much to plan.
I did get off to a bad start though, a small profit then a loss of £120 in the second race didn’t put me in the best of moods, but I pulled things around nicely and patched together a string of decent results to end up ahead of last year again. Still short of my best ever, but as I mentioned before, not a surprise.
I am trading both exchanges together …
Cheltenham day two
That was an OK start to Cheltenham. I’d rank it on the better side of the line. OK because I didn’t break any upside records, but OK because I didn’t do so on the downside either!
Volumes waiting to be matched are higher than last year, they are running at around ten times normal week day levels. The rate at which those orders are filling are only six times normal level so there is quite a big gap in the …
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