Category: Trading strategies
FA Cup fifth round
So the FA Cup trundles on.
No real surprises so far in terms of how the tournament is playing out. I’ve pointed out in previous blog posts that from a tournament trading perspective it’s dominated by the top teams. So far this year premiership teams have dominated the book% in all rounds and that doesn’t look like it’s going to change.
Volumes on FA Cup matches are lower than higher profile so I’m starting to find it a bit annoying! I …
The depths of winter
So here we are at the start of February, in the depths of winter.
Australian Open tennis has just finished, Cheltenham isn’t too far away but for now the immediate outlook is a little weak for me.
It can be pretty tough, especially on the racing front, at this time of year. So it’s only with experience that you learn not to worry, it’s just part of the annual cycle. In the summer opportunities come thick and fast and you can …
Volatility friend or foe?
Volatile markets can be like rollercoasters, one minute the price is here, then it’s there, then it’s back to where it started.
There are two prevailing views on volatility, one is that it’s great because it creates opportunity and the other one that it’s a nightmare because a volatile market means more potential losses, which one is true?
I’m going to give you the first shot of an opinion. I’ve added a poll onto the main blog page where you …
Key turning points in a Tennis match
When trading you want to look for key moments to trade in and out. Sometimes these can be arbitrary, a goal up, a goal down, certain times. A set up, a break up etc. etc.
Today I saw a turning point in the Australian Open final that I hadn’t witnessed before and one that I had.
I’ve mentioned before about how players are keen to get opponents out of the zone where possible, but today this happened in an unusual …
Is Tennis trading a load of old balls?
Ever the researcher, I have been browsing some books and documents recently. I stumbled across an interesting document that relates to whether new or old balls are an advantage in a Tennis match, it gave me some food for thought. It relates mainly to Wimbledon but it’s got me thinking about other surface types also and whether the same thing would be applicable there or whether this is an anomaly.
So for my first serve, stop reading for a second …
Visualising sports trading data
You may have noticed my regular theme of visualising data. Why do I do this?
The reason is simple, it’s easy to pick up patterns when you are looking at them visually. If you have to plough through billions of rows of spreadsheets, pivot tables or outputs from a database, you may find some of the more obvious patterns may elude you due to number blindness. Visualise it and it often leaps right out at you.
Bet Angel contains a …
Seeded vs non-Seeded tournaments
We have a couple of classic divergences being display in full glory in the markets at the moment.
In Melbourne we have the Australian open Tennis where, in a seeded tournament, the semi finals look like they will be played out amongst the top four seeds. Seeded tournaments are basically there to ensure the top competitors have every chance of meeting in the latter stages.
In the UK, I just watched Bradford City complete a remarkable cup run to make …
Aussie Open serves up another classic tennis match
Anybody trading on Sunday was treated to another classic Tennis match in Melbourne.
Stanislas Wawrinka shocked world number one Novak Djokovic by racing to a 6-1 first set lead. Djokovic was clearly in trouble and needed to stage a big fight back or hope that Wawrinka faded.
Being the champion that Djokovic is, he dug deep and started the fight back. This match exhibited perfect trading characteristics again. It was another match, where if you were trading, you couldn’t lose. …
The appeal of Tennis trading
Some decent matches this week at the Australian Open, it’s been a good opening week. Don’t forget to use Tennis Trader!!
There are two key aspects of Tennis trading that should interest you if you haven’t traded tennis before.
(1) No pre-defined length of match
I was active on the Kvitova vs Robson match, which eventually ran into the start of the racing. This is always a problem with Tennis. Being a competitive match, both players fought hard to …
It will get you in the end…
There is one definable characteristic in Tennis that allows you to predict how a player will perform year on year.
It’s age….
There is also definable characteristic with most gamblers, it’s called the gamblers fallacy. Basically people back things because they either expect them to continue, or they expected a ‘trend’ to reverse. In Tennis this often leads people to consistantly back dominant players to win or back once great players expecting a ‘return to form’.
To pick up …
Two very contrasting days
You couldn’t wish for two contrasting days in the racing markets this week.
Boxing day was pretty chaotic and messy, that wasn’t entirely unexpected; but it was much chaotic than I wished. Very few races dovetailed neatly into one another and overall volumes on average were down 20% year on year. I struggled to get any fluency into my activity and couldn’t really build any momentum. In fact I had quite a few losers in a row as I struggled …
Boxing day bonanza?
Hope you had a good Christmas, we are back with a bang today.
It’s a another boxing day holiday in the UK and the sports schedule will be stuffed full of fixtures, meetings and all manner of sporting events. On racing, even with one meeting abandoned there will be 80 race in the UK and Ireland today.
That’s sounds like heaven to sports traders, but it can be a bit of a nightmare. So many things happening at once often …
I lose money regulary…
Insert caveat – When I’m testing a new strategy!
In the thinner winter markets I often spend a lot of time revising data collected at other times of the year and inching forward on new ideas. I’m a great believer that no matter how much data you have, it’s more important to actually apply things into the market. There are two key reasons for this: -
(1) You need to be careful when Data mining, it can be statistical deja-vu. …
Trading correlated win markets
Last night we were presented with a good opportunity to trade a correlated market and it’s a favourite trade of mine.
Leeds were playing Chelsea and the opportunity was to oppose Chelsea without actually betting against them. This is because we were in the latter stages of a tournament. It’s important to note that this tactic only really has any logic when matches are taking place on different days.
In the latter stages of a tournament a red hot favourite …
Do simple things, very well….
I’m oftened ask what is the ‘secret’ to sports trading. Is there a Betfair trading strategy works and is really easy?
Of course there is no one liner that I can give that could possibly encapsulate all the experience I have gathered. I’ve participated in hundreds of thoasands of markets and know much about how the markets are priced and how they work, tha’s a lot of information that can’t be crunched into one line, but there is a small …
The Gambler’s fallacy
The Gambler’s fallacy is a psychological error, also referred to as the fallacy of the maturity of chances. It is the belief that deviations from expected behaviour revert to mean. This is often referred to as ‘the law of averages’, I prefer to call it ‘The flaw of averages’
It layman’s terms it’s the feeling your mind gets when 15 reds pop up on the roulette table. There can’t be a sixteenth can there? So you bet black. In reality, …
Clever ways to trade and visualise football data
Market data can be boring in it’s flat form format. By re-interpreting this data you can not only get a bit of depth in a market but perhaps see things you haven’t seen before. I tend to visualise data, because this allows you to look at the data in a much more intuitive manner and this means you can spot opportunties easier as it significantly aids your reading of a market.
In the embedded video we use the multi market …
Are traders really the dominant force on Betfair?
You often read about traditional backers (or layers) moaning how traders ‘mess up’ the market.
I’ve posted elsewhere on the blog that I actually think trading creates a range of new opportunities for traditional strategies because they often chase prices into value territory, without actually realising it. So much so that I’ve started taking advantage of outlier prices. But that point aside, I do often wonder just how much trading goes on and on what scale? We already know you can’t …
Chocolate and Nobel Prizes
I’ve taken this headline from a tongue in cheek article on the BBC web site.
This article reminded me of conversation I had with somebody recently about their ‘success’ in gambling markets. They came up with a thought recently, put it to use in the market and were walking away with hundreds a day. They came to me to ask if this was good. It was an outright gambling strategy, so I guess they also wanted to show me …
The comeback kings
When trading you are looking to lay at the shortest possible odds first then trade out at much higher odds, or vice versa. Doesn’t matter which, I’ll take either!
However you need something to happen for that opportunity to arise. In football there are many ways that this can happen but the main method to see a swing in odds is goals.
The perfect scenario is for a team to conceded a goal then comeback to win the match. This …
Newton would have used exchanges
Newton’s Third Law states that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Sometimes people are perplexed at how you can correctly call price action on an exchange, but sometimes it’s quite easy; thanks to referancing Newton’s third law.
Every betting market must add up to 100%. It’s impossible for it to exceed that value in either direction for any prolonged period of time. So if something is coming in, in one direction, this means something else, either in isolation or in …
Trading the unexpected
Reading 5, Arsenal 7 – This was obvious the stand out football result from the last week. A most remarkable scoreline.
For so many goals to be scored in one match is rare, especially seven goals away from home; though Leeds fans may have more recent memories. But to win 7-5 from 4-0 down is remarkable. I’ve been scanning my records to see if I could find an example, but I can’t. 4-4 draw’s are rare, but I do …
Trading psychology in a nutshell
Some time ago I sat two people down and gave them each a simple trading strategy. I wanted to observe first hand how people executed them.
The reason I did this, was that it had become apparent to me sometime ago, that given the same set of instructions, people often execute differently. The difference appears to be psychological.
On one desk we had one person executing fairly well and making a small profit. On the other desk we had another person who …
Home advantage
One rule I have, is to favour positions where they is a psychological bias in the in the underlying event. What do I mean?
Take a look at the post I made about the Olympics not so long ago. This post documented home advantage bias with some academic evidence and concluded by explaining a number of reasons why this exists.
Imagine in a football match that we have a strong home team playing a weak away team and the away …
Mass aggregation
A rather opaque title for a football post.
This evening we have the Europa league football and I like this stage of the tournament because, as I mentioned in my other post recently, the mass of markets means I can make a hash of things and most likely still end in profit. Actually I didn’t say that, I said that you could improve your expectation of a profit by spreading your risk. But I hope you see what I …
Hedge your bets
Last night in the champions league we had a range of generally uncompetitive matches. Only Galatasaray vs Braga exhibited the characteristics of a match that could potentially be tight.
Of course you can never quite tell in Football. The average number of goals scored is quite low so results can be highly variable. A ball in the back of the net off a ‘wicked’ deflection, why are all deflections ‘wicked’?, could easily see a side take the lead unexpectedly. From …
Trading the Ryder Cup Golf
Looking forward to the Ryder cup this weekend. Nothing like a bit of Patrotism to spice up a sporting event!
I did a full write up on the Ryder Cup last time around but have been too busy to do so this year. One thing I remember really well from th 2008 Ryder cup was how ‘the tie’ played out in a competitive competition.
This year looks very competitive, though I was surprised to see home advantage priced in as …
What Betfair traders have forgotten
Back in the ‘good old days’ when gambling meant just backing only, your objective was clear. Back then, excuse the pun, you had to back something that won more often that the odds would suggest.
Participate in these modern markets and you would think that this quaint old fashioned strategy had long since completely died a death. Everybody seems to be doing all manner of things in the market and you could be forgiven for thinking you couldn’t do anything …
Losers, winners and strike rates
Further to my previous post about strike rates, I thought I add some flesh to the discussion.
At the end of the day people have a variety of different risk profiles. Your tolerance and reaction to risk is predominantly a psychological factor. The good thing is you can learn to overcome any psychological failings. When I was not as experienced as I am now I would often over analyse things and let the market be my master. Now I am …
High probability Betfair trading
Sounds nice doesn’t it, winning positions regularly topping up your account?
If you look at any ebook or system sellers nearly all of them focus on high probability trades. Basically positions that win very frequently. That’s great, it makes the person who just shelled out some cash feel really good. They keep winning on a regular basis and in an excited hubris they often credit the author with some positive feedback, then booooooom; It all goes wrong. Eventully reality dawns that …
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