Posts Tagged betfair
Betfair exits South Africa
Posted by Peter Webb in Betfair, News on January 19th, 2012
With regulatory tangles ongoing in many territories Betfair has hit another bump in South Africa. This is a real shame as South Africa is on the same time zone as the UK. Betfair has already sent out emails to affected customers. Here is an extract of the key elements of the email: -
“We’re writing to inform you that following the recent ruling by the South African Supreme Court of Appeal, Betfair has decided that as of 00:01 GMT on February 14th 2012, its website and all associated products will no longer be accessible in South Africa, or to South African residents.
As of the above time, all existing accounts will be suspended, therefore we ask that you ensure that all funds are withdrawn from your account before then. If your account is currently suspended the issues relating to that suspension must be resolved before any withdrawals can be made”
It’s another to add to the long list of complex, messy, regulatory, most likely protectionist, issues. Currently the number of territories where it’s OK to use Betfair is in the minority and the list is getting smaller. While the US is looking more positive recently, it’s likely that will only be a beachhead in a much longer battle. Till then other territories, even in Europe, are proving a prickly problem. It seems the anti-exchange proponents are currently winning their argument.
Ultimately I believe that the will of people will decided the very long term outcome of these sorts of things and it’s difficult to go against the value proposition that exchanges offer over traditional gambling. So if you want to benefit from that, move to the UK!
Friday 13th unlucky for Betfair
Posted by Peter Webb in Betdaq, Betfair on January 13th, 2012
Just days after their latest ‘upgrade’, the Betfair site crashed again. How incredibly frustrating! I’ve lost count of how many times the site has been down over the last year and each time the site is upgraded it seem almost certain now that a major crash follows.
If you want to trade today, why not give Betdaq at go. BetDaqAngel is the same Bet Angel platform you are familiar with but it’s compatible with Betdaq. Best of all its 100% free. It includes a link to Excel so you can automate your activity. We gave it a major overhaul last year to bring it up to date, so if you haven’t used it recently, download it and give it a try.
Betfair market anomalies
Posted by Peter Webb in Betfair, Horse Racing on January 12th, 2012
An interesting couple of days so far this week in the markets. Interesting for an anomaly that we have seen. It’s only a couple of days old, so I can’t draw any conclusions just yet, but it is unusual so I thought I’d post about it.
We monitor the markets cloesly and ‘felt’ that matched bet volume on occasion was much higher than we would expect. We noticed this because, in the latter stages of a racing market just before the off, we were suddendly seeing very high per second volume. So this morning I had a nose at the data from this year so far.
In the last two days there have been three races each where volume was over one million. But since the start of the year, ten days, we have seen 20 in total. So that doesn’t seem stand out on it’s own, 20 vs. perhaps an expectation of 30.
But the the overall average volume has been much higher than normal, 123% of average on the 9th and 143% yesterday. I have deliberately rebased the volume to take account of different pricing that may distort the overall volume.
It’s difficult to know if this is a trend or some else is happening, but something changed over these two days. It could be temporary of there could be some other explanation, but we will be keeping an eye on it.
Betfair to compensate Leopardstown losers
Posted by Peter Webb in Betfair, Horse Racing on January 11th, 2012
Hot off the press, just received this email from Betfair: -
“Dear Peter,
Since the 2.00pm race at Leopardstown on 28 December 2011, we’ve looked in detail at all the circumstances surrounding the technology failure and the anomaly it created. In addition, we provided our Gibraltar regulator, the Gibraltar Gambling Commissioner (GGC), with a detailed technical and operational report on the incident and the GGC made a number of recommendations. We have also consulted with customers and taken their feedback on board.
Accordingly, we have reviewed our decision to void all in-running bets matched on the race and, in the interests of fairness, certain categories of voided bets will be compensated by way of ex gratia payments from Betfair. This compensation complies with, and goes beyond, the GGC’s recommendations.
The categories of bets that will be compensated are:
- In-play winning positions in both the ‘win’ and the ‘to be placed’ markets which were achieved before the technology failure; and
- In-play winning positions in the ‘to be placed’ market achieved at any time through to the completion of the race.
Bets matched in the ‘win’ market after the technology failure will remain void.
As your bets were placed in one of the two categories described above, a payment reflecting your winnings had the relevant bets not been voided, will be made to your Betfair account today.
Once again we would like to apologise for the inconvenience caused, and the time taken to reach this outcome. We do thank you for your continued support and remain committed to providing you with the best betting proposition possible.
Regards,
The Betfair Racing team”
Will Betdaq take off this year?
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel, Betdaq on January 7th, 2012
What an open question that is! I’ve stuck up a poll on the right that you can give me your answer on.
For years Betdaq has been a much weaker market than Betfair. In 2008 it got a boost when Betfair increased charges. A few vendors, including Bet Angel, rushed to make their applications Betdaq compatible. But the majority didn’t however. This rush to Betdaq was short lived and things very soon, sort of, carried on as normal. I say sort of, as some people who tried Betdaq or took the time to develop stayed, me included. It was quite an easy decision for me as, through past experience, I knew that having more than one feather in my cap always paid dividends and having two companies competing for my business was better than one.
Things have been improving slowly over time and but got a big flip again last year when Betfair changed charges again. Once more people said they would do more business on Betdaq, but will it be different this time?
One thing that has changed this time is that there has been a sustained increase in business on Betdaq and that has provided more opportunity, as I have mentioned often in the blog. I think some of this has come around because some larger players have been forced to really make it work this time. We have also done our bit by completely overhauling Betdaq Angel, it received a major upgrade in the middle of last year. That brought it up to spec with the Betfair version, spreadsheets, Guardian and all. It’s been completely free since we introduced it in 2008, so if you want to see more activity on Betdaq; spread the word. Because it’s free you have no real excuse to not download and use it!
From my perspective, I was around at the very start of Betfair so I know the characteristics of a ‘young’ market. Therefore, I am getting better and better on Betdaq, I am often getting similar results on both exchanges (see below for the last race, last week). But to be ideal it just needs a bit more of the ‘right sort’ of activity to bring into play additional strategies. If that happens then I think we could hit an upward cycle.
Your individual circumstances will vary and therefore I suggest you use both exchanges, I do. It’s most important that you use something that suits your style or needs and gives you the greatest opportunity. But it will interesting to see if Betdaq really gets going this year. What do you think?
£1k account caused £600m Betfair error
Posted by Peter Webb in Betfair on December 30th, 2011
Betfair have issued a statement this afternoon outlining the error that caused the exchange to misfire. The full statement is here: -
But here are some bullet points:-
“This bet was placed by one of our UK customers trading the race via our API or Application Programming Interface (bdp.betfair.com/) using an automated program (a “bot”). Their bot had developed a fault causing it to try and place a very large number of bets on the Exchange. These bets were large in size and mispriced…… However, due to a technical glitch within the core exchange database, one of the bets evaded the prevention system and was shown on the site. This was an issue that was triggered because of a unique sequence of events that had never happened before.” – “In this case, the customer had less than £1,000 in their account so none of these bets should have been accepted.”
“The Betfair technical teams continued to investigate the details of the fault and, having identified the issue, worked on putting a fix in place which was applied at 10.15pm on December 28th.”
“Following extensive testing, we can confirm that there have been no subsequent occurrences of this fault and we’ve taken steps to prevent its reoccurrence in the future.”
“Again, I would like to clarify that the account in question has no commercial relationship with Betfair other than being a customer. Our reputation has been built on integrity and we have been pioneers in the industry in ensuring that betting is carried out in a fair and transparent manner. By making the voiding decision, I can assure you that this decision was not taken lightly and that we have implemented what we believe to be the fairest solution in these truly exceptional circumstances.”
How to lay £600m worth of bets on Betfair?
Posted by Peter Webb in Betfair on December 29th, 2011
That has to be the #1 question after yesterdays debacle in one of the feature races at Leopardstown.
To summarise, a mysterious lay bet appeared and stayed on the winning favourite at 29′s right up to the finish of the race. The ‘layer’ offered up £21m at 29′s creating a £600m liability. Betfair voided the in-running market.
Betfair have come out officially and ruled out that it was them or any account controlled by them or that they had a commercial interest in it. So it would appear it was just a common lay that created the error. But the question now shifts to who was this layer and how did they create the error? Nobody on the planet has £600m to gamble on a single runner in a race, so that points to some system quirk. There are checks in place that stop you exceeding your account balance or exposure limit, so what could jump over both those hurdles?
The amount of the Lay was curiously near the value of a 32bit binary number, slightly over if you add in additional stakes. The range of values of a 32bit binary is -2147483648 to +2147483647 which fits with the stake amount displayed on Betfair. You can create an error by forcing overflow or underflow with a calculation involving an integer, so it’s not impossible that this could be the source of the error. There is a good explanation on this link, curiously to do with customer balances: -
http://weblogs.asp.net/dvravikanth/archive/2008/03/10/integer-overflow-amp-underflow-revisited.aspx
I can’t comment authoritatively on the way that Betfair have coded their back-end, but lets just say that it’s not impossible that something like this could be the cause of the error. It could be that the exposure calculation is done using an integer and this layer just fluked it somehow. If it is something like this, then I am pretty sure an arms race is already underway to exploit it. The ability to force a voided market is potentially quite valuable, so Betfair should announce what the error is and what they are going to do to solve it, immediately. The person who placed the bets knows what created it, so that layer is hot property at the moment!
By quoting terms and conditions to void the market, people were quick to spot contradictory terms that stated that in the event of a bet exceeding agreed exposure all bets will stand, whoops! You can find the clause under section 9. Has Betfair has possibly opened themselves up to a legal issue?
I get the feeling this story is going to rumble on for a fair bit. But I sense we are nearer an explanation.
Leonhard Euler proved in 1772 that 2,147,483,647 was a prime number
Biggest ever loss on Betfair?
Posted by Peter Webb in Betfair on December 28th, 2011
One of those remarkable events happened today on Betfair when, in the Christmas hurdle at Leopardstown, Voler La Vedette was offered up in-running for massive money at massive prices despite the fact it won.
Seemingly, over £21m was offered and held in-running to get filled at HUGE prices. £1,642,094 was matched at 29′s meaning the loser would have to pay out £44.8m on their bet at 29′s. In order to be able to just place the bet the user would have needed near on £600m in their account. Which is of course impossible, as all the users added up at Betfair don’t have those funds available.
Massive speculation abounds on what could have possibly caused, what looks like a catastrophic error. Was this a system error at Betfair, a bot error, or something unknown. Have Betfair just taking a massive bath due to an errant bit of code or did somebody else? How could such amounts be offered at such prices? It looks like a bug / system error to me, but early reported discussions with Betfair helpdesk indicate that it is not an error. I guess we will have to wait and see. Some people have reportedly made significant profits from the glitch, however it occurred. The market is still suspended and we await an outcome.
Read all about it in the forum
Satisfying chaos
Posted by Peter Webb in Betdaq, Betfair, Horse Racing on December 27th, 2011
OK, yesterday didn’t seem that chaotic in the end, just a bit frustrating. I had to wait ages to find races that really set themselves up nicely, but eventually I did and they were OK. But it was a little dull overall.
Kauto Star lit up the day when I took a few races off to watch the King George VI produce a bit of history. What a great horse we have been treated to and it looks like we could be seeing an interesting Cheltenham gold cup now as well. Lets hope we get a big field and a competitive race.
Not my best result of the day, but a decent result came out of this market on Betdaq. I’ve been doing more work on Betdaq recently and will publish more information on the blog. Market conditions are improving all the time and I recommend using both exchanges where possible and for your own benefit and needs but also to increase competitiveness in the exchange market. If we have people fighting over our business maybe we can get a fairer deal. But obviously for me every £100 on Betdaq is worth the equivalent of £250 on Betfair, so it’s really worth me pushing hard for a result and sacrificing time on Betfair. As my activity is net accretive to the exchange I am also creating opportunities for others. As I get better at managing my risk I am probably creating some value for others. Today I had to exit a position that I made a mess off, I was still in profit but wanted to dump it and start again. I offered it many ticks higher on Betdaq than the best available price on Betfair. Any body active on both would have seen this and could get value from it or arbed it. The opportunity is there if you look, quite a few hundred quid as well!
This week looks pretty reasonble with the holiday cards increasing the scope and capacity of the racing. I reckon it should be a good week.
120% Premium charge!
Posted by Peter Webb in Betfair on December 21st, 2011
As premium charge payers know it’s PC day today. What a surprise then to see Betfair have double debited my account. So this week I paid 120% premium charge, ouch!
Obviously a mistake, but I suggest all premium charge payers check their account immediately and flag it to Betfair. It looks like everyboyd is affected. Nice timing Betfair!
[EDIT : About two hours later the duplicate charge was refunded. I imagine this is applicable to everybody, but please check, just in case]
What are the odds?
Posted by Peter Webb in Betfair, News on December 21st, 2011
A bit of a laugh ahead of the Christmas break. Vote now!
Back when I joined Betfair, nearly 12 years ago now. They sent me a nice diary for my patronage. I didn’t generate much commission for them back then and didn’t write articles, design software for use on Betfair or anything like that. The following year I also received a small gift, and so it continued. Calendars, playing cards and the odd email with seasonal greetings.
About four or five years ago (I can’t remember exactly when) this stopped abruptly and since then, not even an email to wish me a Merry Christmas.
So this year, as I have done in all prior years, I rolled up my sleeve and sent all my key contacts a personal greeting card. I extended this gesture to the board of Betfair as well.
So the poll this week will be a seasonal… “How many Xmas cards will Peter get from Betfair?” – Vote now!
I’m putting this post up to give Betfair a fair chance to send me a card. I know you can afford it this year for sure and while I am grateful for the opportunity that Betfair presents to us all, I’m sure it’s not beyond your capacity to show some seasonal goodwill. I’ll update everybody on the result in the new year.
In meantime I’ll just read through this bulging sack of greetings from other companies and people.
P.S. A funny footnote to this post. I was searching for “mail man sack” and up popped a load of images of Blackburn manager Steve Kean. 
Betfair profits up on flat growth
Posted by Peter Webb in Betfair, News on December 14th, 2011
See the full press announcement here: -
At first glance revenue (comissions) have declined, but so has the cost of sales, producing an increase in the bottom line. Admin expenses have also fallen adding to the bottom line.
I’ll have a proper read of the full statement when I get into the office. Betfair shares are up a bit in early trading this morning.
If you want an update of content of the conference call, I’ll be tweeting updates: -
http://www.twitter.com/betangel/
It’s jungle out there
Posted by Peter Webb in News on December 2nd, 2011
Another week and another amazing betting system drops into my inbox.
Each one is similar to the last, as for only a few quid, limited to just a few people; you can have a system that requires little work yet prints money. Sounds fantastic, but as we all know it’s just not true. Why sell something for a fraction of the profit it allegedly generates? Just doesn’t make any sense.
In the past I have noticed that most of these systems are simply ebooks or manuals of one sort or another, but increasingly you are now seeing software being touted with these systems.
When you receive these new mailers it’s difficult to believe any of the claims. But furthermore, when you dig deeper, you often find the individuals involved have done their best to hide their identities. Doing a ‘who is’ on the domain reveals nothing. Asking, enquiring or trying to dig for a contact equally draws up a blank. So, my point….
There has been a lot of talk and incidences where betting accounts are being actively de-frauded. We were all alarmed to learn that Betfair will not refund in these cases as they are not taking counter party risk, yet. Therefore, could you realistically use software where you can’t see it has been approved by an exchange, has no track record and you can’t even find out who made it? Coupled with extravagant claims, it’s not really worth the risk is it?
I know most readers of the blog will not be in the group of people that could be suckered by these things, but if you know somebody that could be drawn in. Give them a gentle reminder and save a lot of possible heartache. At best we may move to a situation when everybody understands the risks involved and maybe get some formal involvement from the exchanges themselves.
Given the risks, he is probably a better bet.
Betfair maintenance this morning
Posted by Peter Webb in Betfair on November 30th, 2011
Please be aware Betfair has site maintenance going on this morning around 7am UK time: -
An ‘interesting’ Saturday
Posted by Peter Webb in Betdaq, Betfair on November 28th, 2011
Well that was an interesting Saturday. I sort of got the feeling that the day may not go as planned right from the off.
Went shopping with the kids to stock up the office and got back a little late which left me no time to put the stuff away. I just had to dump it on the stairs. Sat down to the early start and immediately realised there was a problem… The Internet was at a virtual standstill. I tried all the various thing you do, router reboot, PC reboot but nothing was really having the desired effect. I had backup plans in place, so I continued to use those while I rooted out the problem. It looked like general Internet issue.
So after the third race I dashed back home to trade from there, but that connection was also having issues. It seemed to a ‘local area’ issue. So back up plan three kicked in and I started trading in earnest. That was going OK until Betfair started to creak and buckle at 3pm.
Anybody who has been on the markets for anytime knows that when the feature race of the day in the winter coincides with the start of the football it creates conditions that have delivered a few Betfair crashes in the past. Saturday was no exception. I think we were lucky on Saturday as we sort of got fair warning. The site sort of fell to bits in pieces.
When I realised we had a problem on our hands I instantly switched to Betdaq, which was working well anyhow, and just focused the remainder of my time on there. As a result I had another good session on both exchanges. On quite a large number of occasions now I am ending up net net ahead on Betdaq vs Betfair, that probably wont be the case for you unless you are paying 60% I guess. I know some of the other sports are weaker in liquidity terms on Betdaq but it was the same when Betfair was growing up and eventually activity spilled out to these other sports. I guess time will tell, but conditions are improving and it’s likely, as more people arrive on Betdaq, additional strategies and sports will come into play. I’m ready and waiting!
Back on Betfair we eased back in with a non API connection mode. From the number of emails we got in support we should point out publicly that you must be on the very latest version of Bet Angel for the non API mode to work correctly. We often have to recode this and that means old versions of the software may not be able to log in via non API mode. You have two choices, use mode 0, full API mode, or download and use the very latest version. Check with support first though, so we can give you direction.
Anyhow, I managed to get through the session and headed off to the ATP world tour finals in London courtesy of Betdaq, thank you! Even that didn’t go to plan as there was a power cut on the Jubilee line and I had to find my way to North Greenwich in an indirect and roundabout way. I did manage than however, just in time to see the doubles match start. From there my day started to become a bit easier and relaxed, and I was able to reflect on a stressful, but successful day.
Bombs away
Posted by Peter Webb in Horse Racing on November 14th, 2011
Every now and again in the racing market an individual arrives that doesn’t make much sense. From a trading perspective at least!
The come into the market and back a selection for a large amount of money, then back again and again and again! I’m not sure the oft quoted description of ‘mad bomber’ is accurate, maybe there is a better description. But what is certain is the impact they have on the market. You could view this as a negative, but if you know the way they work then it’s a big positive.
If somebody is backing in large amounts repeatedly then you should seek a speculative open order on the back side first. If you are on another selection then you need to lay first. It could also be possible to catch a bounce when the price gets backed in heavily, but you never know how aggressive this individual is going to be, so I prefer catching the top.
Why they are doing it is another discussion altogether!
Quietly moving ahead..
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on November 11th, 2011
It’s interesting to see that liquidity and market conditions continue to improve on Betdaq. It’s quite possible to sqeeze someting out of most races now and thanks to the favourable commission rate it’s proving a good use of my time. We appear to have gone from waiting for perfect market conditions to a wider range of acceptable reasons to participate, which is encouraging.
I’d honestly recommend using both major exchanges as competition is good in all markets, but some of this will be subject to what you are trying to do. While horse racing is working well and very liquid now on Betdaq, its not so great on some other sports; but generally improving. Basically use both where you can, but not at the expense of your net results!
As you may be aware we have had a Betdaq equivalent of Bet Angel for some time, around three years now. It contains all the features you expect and best of all it’s free! It got a major upgrade in July, so there is little reason not to download it and give it a try.
Should Betfair be more secure?
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on November 10th, 2011
I’ve put a poll up on whether Betfair should be more secure, read on and vote.
As you may / or not be aware, Betfair suffered a security breach not so long ago but choose not to inform customers after consulting on the risks involved in the breach. Personally I feel, whether there was a risk or not, people should have been informed.
The following was recently pointed out to me in the Betfair terms and conditions under the “limitations of liability” section: -
“We will not be liable to you for any loss that you may incur as a result of misuse of your password, or in the case of the Telephone Service, of your telephone access number, and we accept no liability resulting from its unauthorised use, whether fraudulent or otherwise.”
Restrictions in liability are quite common and I fully understand why they are there. But I was surprised recently by reports of people who have had their accounts defrauded on Betfair and who where subsequently quoted the above sections when asking about what happens next. The answer was “nothing” based on the above terms, the money was gone and that was it.
The net upshot is that if you are defrauded or if there is a system or operator error, it seems Betfair will not re-imburse your funds. Basically any money you have deposited is at real risk of total loss in the event of fraud or error. The people who have been affected and come forward to me explained in detail the cause of the loss and the fact that from the evidence they gave, it was obviously not a transaction taken by them. But that didn’t seem to matter.
This begs the question of if security protocols need beefing up at Betfair. Surely if your money is at such risk you should have the ability to restrict or limit your activity? Restricting to certain IP addresses or sports, or territories, or values would make perfect sense? It would make fraudulent activity much harder and re-assure people who have decent sums of money on deposit.
I’m not comfortable with the risks involved in the current process despite having been unaffected. I’m worried about what could happen and would like to see some changes. If you agree vote appropriately!
In the meantime, make sure you take sensible security precautions to limit any potential issues. Keeping as small balance as possible and regularly changing your password are two of the key elements. Ensuring your have valid anti-virus software etc is another. There are others, but don’t wait till its too late to take action. I’m not saying there is any increased risk in the system , but it’s better to be safe than sorry!
That’ll do nicely
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on October 17th, 2011
I had a feeling Saturday would turn out to be an interesting day, so I pulled out all stops to take advantage. I did well and it was a real pleasure to net my best day ever (At least before commission).
I managed to pick up a lot of decent results from a wide spectrum of events on both exchanges. Thanks to favourable commission rates and favourable liquidity conditions on Betdaq, it meant I found it pretty easy to beat my post commission Betfair totals on a lot of events. Overall I’m really chuffed with how it went. I’m picking and choosing my targets nowadays, so I’m glad I got Saturday just about right.
I’d happily recommend using both exchanges now, as I think both are perfectly tradable. I may not have said that a couple of years ago. It’s a big positive that we have two viable exchanges now. Yes, liquidity is lower on Betdaq, but it’s growing and there are fewer strange things going on over there, which makes it a bit easier. That also means the actual fill rate is higher in a lot of cases and that reduces overall risk. I note that different sports are at different levels of liquidity at the moment. But if history is anything to go by I think that may change. I guess either may suit different people and styles, so I suggest you try both. However, if you run both versions of Bet Angel next to each other you can see that both exchanges more or less track each other, but sometimes they do slip apart.
Betdaq is used by the vast majority of on-course bookmakers so you can possibly see some late hedging going on now and again. But more or less they are similar. A price held up on Betfair very often does the same thing on Betdaq, but at that point Betdaq often shows a ‘cleaner’ path forward. In short I think it’s worth having both up now as you can get an extra dimension to the markets.
The market is an ever ebbing and flowing tide so I’m always on the look out for anything that is changing shape or form. I’ll keep you informed. Something curious happened to me recently, I’ll see if I can post up later this week.
Anyhow here are a couple of highlights from Saturday. I’m going to talk about these at my next course on the 17th November. These were NOT the biggest results of the day, but there were two of the most satisfying:-
Book%
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on October 13th, 2011
I fielded a question from somebody recently about the book% and what information does that contain?
I’ve seen quite a few theories about what the book% can actually tell you, but here is what it tells me.
At it’s most basic level the book percentage is merely a broad measure of the market. A big number of selections will equate to a big book% and small field a small one. This is due to the spread between back and lay prices. For example two selections priced at 1.99 would create a book of 100.5% on the back side and 100% on the lay side. If you expanded the selections to ten runners priced at 10′s, the best book you could get on the lay side would be 95.2%.
Early on in a market the book% will be higher than near the start of an event and this contraction is caused by more and more competitive prices being offered to the market. This process produces a subtle drift in prices on the back side of the market.
Back in the early days the book% was higher than it is now. Overtime it has shrunk and that has meant that outright backing or laying strategies have become a lot more viable. But whatever you do, you can’t avoid giving something to the house in the form of commission. However, in highly variable markets its quite possible to get a back or lay price matched above or below the VWAP price. This makes backing or laying for value quite possible. A side effect of the shrinking of the book% over the years is that less money has been lost and this, I suspect, is one of the reasons that Betfair have felt uncomfortable with the lack of losers. But it’s an exchanges biggest USP as well.
From a trading perspective the book% doesn’t hold much value for me as it is a re-active measure. When the price on a highly liquid runner is shortening, this will increase the % and when it is drifting it will decrease it. You could argue it pinpoints the turn of a trend but that is very reliant on what is happening elsewhere in the book. You may as well look at a chart at that point!
Book% isn't an open book
Dilemma
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on October 12th, 2011
It’s just gone 08:30 on Wednesday morning and I’m up over £700 on the day already. On Saturday, I sat down to do a decent days work on the exchanges. Across both I earned somewhere between £3.5-4k which was similar to last year, slightly higher as Betdaq is contributing more than it did in prior years. What’s my point?
As you are probably aware I’ve been doing this for over a decade now, have collected a ton of data and experience and know the markets in infinite detail now. I can tell you what is likely to happen in the next few milliseconds and the next few hours. Despite this, thanks to new charges, you can earn more than me at this now; it’s an odd situation. I am effectively at a disadvantage in the market. This causes a dilemma, two in fact. The second I will explain on a future post.
The upshot is that I am currently pondering what I should do about this. I have loads of great ideas around the software which I can spend more time on, we also have a nice office here kitted out with excellent training facilities which is relatively underused. But the bottom line is that, even with punitive charges, I need to be sure doing something else is a good use of my time . I love messing around and learning new things, doing new research and exploring the limits of what I do; but it also has to have an economic payoff and not impinge too much on the wider development of completely new things I want to do professionally and that of my family. Over the last decade I have worked on more than just betting exchanges, so that demands increasing attention also. The share of this activity has grown faster than my work on betting exchanges.
Using Bet Angel on Saturday yielded the equivalent of about 320 monthly subscriptions. This morning, the equivalent of another 50. There is no doubt it’s good value for money, so my task there is to try and get that message across. If I fail, then the bottom line is that will be worth more to me than it is to others. On the training side we are looking at a number of options to help people achieve their potential but the same rule applies there also. So if you want to experience advice from somebody that actually does it, register your interest there so you can keep up to date with the new things that we are doing.
But, as we exit the busy period and move into November, I am definitely in full on pondering mode!
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!
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 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
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
The right connections
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on August 26th, 2011
First a history lesson.
A long time ago Betfair offered unfettered access to their servers. You could smash into their servers by requesting price information at will. Back then there was no API and you could only screen scrape information from Betfair. Because of this an arms race developed and Betfair considered banning the bots, but thankfully that never happened. What actually happened was an API was born and Betfair started slowly but surely changing the way their site works. From that simple start the process of connecting to Betfair now involves many hoops through which you need to jump to stay under the strict limits Betfair impose. Everybody has to conform to these limits so that no new arms race develops and Betfair can better control the IT on their side of the fence. Basically this means that Betfair limit the number of calls that API software makes so that nobody gets an unfair advantage, everything operates at the same speed. However there are things you can do to specifically tailor your exchange connection to your trading style to maximise your experiance.
To ensure you get the best connection using Bet Angel we provide you with a raw feed and allow you to tweak connection settings that are most important to you. You can save these settings and quick switch between them for maximum flexibility. For example, if you are trading pre-off you may want to increase the speed at which Bet Angel calls full market depth or reduce it when in-play and increase others, when that call it is less important. Even different locations can ‘feel’ different, so you can modify settings on that basis. Bet Angel buffers calls to avoid you running into horrendous charges, so if you accidentally, or purposefully, have the wrong set up it may feel a bit slow as the buffered calls back up. To avoid this make sure you are familiar with all the settings you can use so you can avoid this happening.
We monitor performance all the time as it is very important for everybody. But the key thing on this, is that I’d be trading toast if we didn’t have it humming. So make sure you take the time to familiarise yourself with this feature: -
http://www.betangel.tv/video/using-bet-angel/setting-up-bet-angel/147-bestconnection
Eye Watering
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on August 25th, 2011
I’ve been playing around with spreadsheets and a number of other strategies recently. With the increase in commission charges levied against me, I figured it would make sense to look outside my normal activity. While it’s flattering to know you are better than 99.9% of market participants have ever been, it’s less flattering to give away the majority of your profit! By ‘normal activity’ I am talking ‘active’ participation. I now have a very big incentive to find less manual ways of participating in the market.
One area I have been re-examining is that of value. The reason I am examining this area is that the market on Betfair is remarkable efficient now. In fact it is too efficient, I’m struggling to see how layers can make anything at some of the prices on offer! You can often get a pretty competitive big field handicap where the outcome on the race is very uncertain, yet the market is priced very close to 100% for a lot of the time. At this level, due to the variability in returns and more normal commission rates, I think it’s possible to overturn the margin lost to the other side of the book. This is actually what brought me to exchanges in the first place.
So I blundered in last week with a neat idea that would probably overturn this negligible percentage. I got lucky as, to my surprise, I managed to not only overturn that small percentage but pick a LOT of winners. This was unfortunate as you expect this now and again with a value strategy, not just right at the start. This is the second time this has happened to me.
The net upshot is that I now find myself back at square one. Because of the higher rate commission paid, I have to take a theoretical eye watering massive loss on these positions. I could wait for things to even out, but I am not sure that I can overcome the difference between normal commission and the super premium charge. I have quickly shuffled this strategy off to Betdaq. I tried this on Betfair because I though generating commission would help lower my charges. But when you look at the detail it seems you actually need to win and lose a huge amount of money to stand any chance of paying much lower commission. So much, it looks impossible to me.
I could be wrong, if any body has done the maths, please send me a spreadsheet!
