Posts Tagged australian
Alternative racing today
Posted by Peter Webb in Australian, Horse Racing on February 3rd, 2012
With the UK racing looking like it is heading for a weekend white out, it’s worth looking at other alternatives at this time.
This morning in Australia we have a meeting at Moonee Valley that usually brings half decent liquidity. Over £200k was traded on the 10:15 which, while below normal UK volumes, isn’t half bad. You also have Meydan racing on today where volumes have been picking up nicely. That comes on line a little later in the morning.
If you are looking for a complete difference but something similar to racing you also have the Greyhound racing to supplement your activity. Anyhow, lots of things to get stuck into.
Underneath a legendary Tennis match
Posted by Peter Webb in Tennis on January 30th, 2012
Not many words can describe the fantastic Men’s final at the Australian open tennis, so I wont try. But to say it was special, would definitely be an understatement. I started the match half dressed having not risen early enough to get changed properly, broke for a full Sunday lunch and still returned for a hour of excitement. Amazing stuff.
The great thing about these matches is that pretty much any trading strategy you adopt will win. If somebody goes from being a set up to a set down, or nearly a set down, you could have backed or laid either and had the opportunity to trade out at a profit. In this match it swung backwards and forwards on a number of occasions. In total, when I was active on the market, I counted 10 breaks of serve, excluding tie breaks.
At the start of the match you could back Djokovic for 1.71 and Nadal for 2.40. From there the start of each set had odds as follows: 2.28 & 1.74, 1.60 & 2.64, 1.14 & 7.8 then the final set started around 2′s as both players struggled into the sixth hour. If you would have laid Djokovic at his start price and got out at 2′s then laid again at your entry price to repeat the trade; you would have turned a trade at least seven times. This would have returned more than double your stake. Laying both at 1.16 would have worked as well returning an 84% profit on your stake. Timing either strategy would have increased your potential significantly.
I’ve put some charts on the forum, they wouldn’t fit on here. The Betfair charts are a bit ‘squashed’ and not linear, so these charts give a clearer picture of the match. In total £46.2m in matched bets were traded on the market, £42m in-play. Amazing stuff.
Murray Matrix
Posted by Peter Webb in Tennis on January 16th, 2012
Looking forward to seeing Andy Murray in action tonight.
Last night I bagged 25 decent winning trades from the overnight matches. I use Tennis Trader to work out key points in a match and what odds are likely to be traded around key points. By looking up these key points in advance I can set up a trade that will trigger at or around those points and offset to a value that will lock in a profit. All markets exhibit a ‘harmonic mean’ around which all volatility gravitates. Understanding that allows you to put trades inside this envelope of volatility and get a decent trade away automatically. I’ll be doing the same again tonight and all the early round matches. I’ll be picking and choosing matches that I want to actively get involved in. Even if you mess around with the former strategy, you will learn a great deal about the market. I set up my trades early in the evening then turn them into keep bets to get matched when the game is underway. Doing this gets me to the front of the queue as well!
In the image you can see I am looking at a particular point in the market where Murray would trade and examing how many sets or games he would need be down / up to achieve that price. It’s possible to work out all combinations of scores and how they can be reached and pitch your trade at a common point by doing this.
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.
Some winter cheer
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on December 26th, 2010
One look at the racing card will echo what you will have seen for the last month or so, abandoned racing. It’s the worst period I have known in my ten years on Betfair, pretty bleak. Boxing day usually brings a whole slew of opportunity and some top quality action at Kempton. Today, out of the 11 meetings due to take place today, only one hasn’t been abandoned as I write this, and there is a real prospect of that remaining fixture being lost. This has be costing racing a fortune.
On the upside I was up early this morning to watch the Ashes and feeling there was value in England, see yesterday’s blog, I was lovely and green when I rose to watch the match. I also did of a bit of racing in Caulfied and Randwick to top up the account.
It looks like a thaw is about to set in this week but the forecast is ominous again at the moment for the end of the week. Let’s hope the weather returns to normal again and we don’t experiance a ’63 winter again. I’ve almost forgotten what it’s like to have a normal day!
Derby day
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on October 29th, 2010
Isn’t the Derby in June? Yes and no, if you are in Australia, early tomorrow morning (UK Time) is Derby Day in Victoria. This kicks off the Melbourne Cup carnival and a week of top class Australian action. On Tuesday we have the race that stops a nation, the Melbourne Cup.
As I have leant more and more about this carnival of racing, the more I realise it’s significance and I’m actually quite excited about it this year. I don’t know if I have the energy to trade it, but an early rise may be in order given the right market conditions and enough desire to overcome my need to sleep! Good luck if you are getting involved.
Shocking
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on October 16th, 2010
Good volume on the Caulfield cup in Melbourne this morning, £1.25m was traded on this high profile race and it produced some nice moves. The favourite, shocking, was defeated on heavy ground by Descarado trained by the colourful Gai Waterhouse. I had no idea she was Scottish!!
Shocking is also in key contention for the Melbourne cup, maybe the ground will be more suitable there. It’s been a good session this morning and ideal practice for the Melbourne Cup.
Odds chart for shocking
Greener grass?
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on March 6th, 2010
For some time I’ve watched the Aussie horse racing and admired that they seem to often do a better job than the UK. Then of course the weather, it’s just so much better down under. It’s enough to tempt me to head out to Aus during the winter and work from there for a little while. I had thought about doing that this year, but circumstances dictated otherwise.
This week has been a little different and three meetings have been lost to the rain. As I write this one of the commentators is sheltering from hail the size of golf balls at Flemington in what he describes as ‘The worst storm in Flemington for 30 years’. Probably an exageration in the heat of the moment, but it just goes to show you that nowhere is immune to acts of god.
EDIT – He wasn’t wrong, the meeting has been abandoned!
Here is a video of the chaos: -
http://video.au.msn.com/watch/video/freak-storm-ends-flemington-race-day/x2eqbzb
Tennis trading lessons
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on January 28th, 2010
A couple of neat lessons were served up by the Tennis yesterday and both showed that statistics don’t always give you the key to actually understanding what is going on in the underlying market.
First we had the Federer match. Struggling with a vibrant opponent and having lost 13 games in a row you could have counted Federer out for the count, but a revealing post match interview revealed what was going through his head at 2-6 1-3 down. Federer commented on how the sun was bothering him and how he couldn’t wait till it had cleared the court. He also, accidentally, revealed how he timed his ‘comfort break’ to allow him a chance to regain his thoughts and break the stride of his opponent. Unfortunately I was not around for this match so I missed this opportunity but it is amazing how a break in play can change things around.
Later than morning / evening we then had Djokovic seemingly in total control of a match only to get beaten from odds of 1.12. The explanation, Djokovic suddenly felt ill in the middle of the match. At the end of one energetic rally Djokovic bent over double at the end and looked up to his trainer. A few points later he was also off for a ‘comfort break’. He never managed to recover from feeling ill and it was an easy win for Tsonga in the end. I’ve captured the movement in odds from the moment he started to feel ill. Just goes to show it’s not only stats you should look out for in Tennis matches.
Tennis trading advice
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on January 18th, 2010
I was asked to write a primer on trading tennis markets last month. You can view the full article in this months ‘Gambling on line’ magazine. Unfortunately I can’t publish this article here just yet, but I thought I would point it out for you so you can read up in time for some action on the Australian open tennis in Melbourne. I have talked about Tennis trading quite a lot on this blog as well, so be sure to do a search and read up on some of my previous posts.
Early rounds of these sorts of tournaments are often dominated by very short priced favourites. If you want to do some speculative work in the markets it can often throw up some easy profits. When Nadal got of to a rusty start today he drifted from 1.02 to a slightly panic driven 1.09. At 1.02 you can lay of a lot of liability for little risk so this was an excellent opportunity.
However, the main thing that caught my eye today was Fabrice Santoro. Santoro has become the first ever player to successfully compete in grand slam tournaments over four decades! Full story on this link, a remarkable acheivement.
