Posts Tagged betting
A question of scale (part one)
Posted by Peter Webb in General, Trading strategies on February 4th, 2012
I got a phone call from the Financial times the other week about the collapse of Centaur. They wanted to know how I knew it would collapse long before it did, they originally phoned me for an opinion when Centaur first started up and I told them then what I repeated recently.
When you looked at the proposition there were in fact many, many flaws in there; but the top one for me was one of scale. Mainly because I’ve experienced that first hand.
The betting market is like a financial market in some ways but in other ways it is definitely not. In financials you can scale to billions over many years, the sky literally is the limit in a global economy worth trillions. The sports market is no where near that, but it’s scale will typically suffice for most individuals. The key problem you find in a betting market is that when you increase stakes you actually end up influencing the outcome, especially on exchanges. This puts it off limits to institutions unless you run the mechanism and are guaranteed a profit, like err.. a bookmaker / exchange.
In a market of limited scale the more money you have the less likely you are to see a return. More money equals less chance of a positive outcome, not more. So this was a key reason why I felt something set up to raise money to use in a betting market would fail. That much money would be a burden, not a benefit. Anybody who has uncovered something that works will confirm exactly the same finding. On betting exchanges I touched my limits some time ago with a relatively small bank, that’s why I’ve continued to invest in financial markets for years; as I am some what below the scale where diminishing returns kick in. With a lack of core growth on exchanges it wasn’t difficult to bump up against those limits. That’s not a problem for individuals but I failed to see where that sits for larger forms of activity.
There’s your starter for ten, I’ll explain more tomorrow after I clear the forecast snow from the drive!
It's easy to choose the wrong scale
FA Cup – Round four winners
Posted by Peter Webb in FA CUP, Football / Soccer on January 28th, 2012
Rather than a prediction this is a glance back. A look if the ‘romance’ of the FA Cup is still alive.
At the start of the third round, premier league teams made up 93.69% of the market. They now make up 80% of the market, the romance of an outsider winning the cup is still alive it would seem.
However, top flight four teams met each other in round three so we will have to delete these for the purposes of what we are looking at. This deletion meant that the total book value of the remainder was 72.37%. We are now in round four and this percentage has increased to 80.27% a shift of 8% or so. If the book % increases between rounds in your selected group, this means it was sensible to back that group, this is why I deleted those other four. No point in backing a definite loser, of which there would have been two if we included those other two matches.
Basically, it didn’t make sense to lay any premier league teams, only back them to progress in aggregate. This is a fairly typically pattern for the FA Cup, especially in the earlier rounds. The only real hope for smaller clubs is if premier league teams knock each other out of contention and then a smaller club flukes a win. You have to go a looooooooong way back to find a season where a lower league team really had a chance. Millwall did well in 2003/4 thanks to a fortuitous route to the final, and in fact the chance of this increases in each round thanks to the random draw. But eventually they have to overcome much stronger opposition and the differential in strength at the top is wider than ever now. Best return to a level stake between round three and four was Leicester by the way.
While it appears to be a bit of a dream to see a lower league team reach later rounds, at least it’s more likely in the FA Cup. If you play in a seeded tournament, like the Tennis grand slams, the competition is unfairly set up to favour the strongest.
So there is a little romance left in the FA Cup, even if it’s only when you see the balls come out of the bag during the draw.
You only kiss your missis on the lips?
Give your football 150% this weekend
Posted by Peter Webb in Football / Soccer on December 17th, 2011
I love those throw away phrases where people say they are going to give it 150%. Of course you can only give it 100%, or can you? Not when trading.
In a betting market the market is framed at 100%. A football team can only win, lose or draw a match. There is a 100% chance of that happening. But when trading, you are trading how volatile those odds will be and that is always over 100%, whatever sport you trade. I cottoned onto this fact way back when I first started looking at stats and sport and quickly realised the significance when exchanges came along. But this fools a lot of people.
If you bet on a football match for example, over the long term the market is so efficient you will end up +/- nothing less commission (or other charges). But when you trade, depending on what you are doing, you are predicting an envelope of volatility. In football there are several match types that win whatever the underlying basic strategy, and these occur with quite regular frequency.
However, this ‘over 100%’ often fools people into thinking that they have stumbled across some great system. A lot of matches will end in profit simply because of this characteristic but, of course, you can only profit if you predict what is likely to happen than just because of this effect. It creates a high strike rate but that alone doesn’t create a profit.
So when you look at market when trading, you know you should, by default; look at giving it more than 100%!
Major new release of Bet Angel
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel, News on November 18th, 2011
We are delighted to announce a new version of Bet Angel!
This morning we have released a new beta version, 1.30, which includes a brand new feature.
The new feature focuses on automating your betting or trading activity and builds on the work we have done with Guardian and the Excel spreadsheet link. In fact you can use this new feature along side any activity in your core market and / or any activity you have in a spreadsheet.
The new automation feature in Guardian allows to supplement or automate your activity by creating rules and applying them to specific markets or all of your activity. You can simply click on a market and then use a simple to understand interface to construct the automation you want to apply to that market. Once applied, Guardian will sit in the background while you get on with other activity and get busy applying the instructions you have given it. You don’t even need Guardian open on your desktop or server.
You can apply as many different rules to as many different markets as you wish in Guardian, all at the same time. Bet Angel will cycle through all these markets and apply your automation to them all. This mean you could be trading a horse racing while Guardian and the automation tool will be automatically applying or managing bets, entering markets, exiting, greening up etc. all in the background on different markets and sports.
For more information click here, or to view some videos click here.
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:-
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!
In-running confusion
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on October 10th, 2011
From today new rules come into play for Jockeys and their use of the whip, new rules must also come into play for in-running punters. It will be interesting to see how this plays out.
For example, if a jockey has ‘used up’ all his in-running whip chances before the last fence and is desperate to edge out a close rival. In theory, he will be unable to do anything and this may bring what was a previously short price out a fair bit depending on whether the jockey risks a ban or complies with the new guidelines.
I reckon we could see a period where some value is seen by laying short prices in the final stages of races. Of course, people will adjust to this new dynamic, but I’ll be keeping an eye on the things to see how things unfold given the change in rules. It should be an interesting week.
Mighty oaks from little acorns grow
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on October 5th, 2011
When my first daughter was born I planted an acorn. Since then it has grown to the proverbial Oak Tree. This year it is 14 years old and yielded its first crop of Acorns.
My point?
When I was in a ‘normal’ job I was always planting metaphoric acorns. My hope was that some would grow to Oaks, and so they did. So I suggest you always keep planting Acorns. Not just in the context of building for the long term future, but also in the short term context of looking for new ideas. Each day, week and month I am trying new things. Prodding and probing looking for any new information I can find. Interestingly, a lot of the time, I discover stuff completely by accident while looking for other things.
One of the reasons we have multi market tools and spreadsheet integration in Bet Angel is because this allows you to experiment and test many markets while you carry on doing something else. This is a really useful way to widen your capabilities and search for new opportunities. Once you come up with an idea you can test and expand it and see how far away from break even you are before you then start to think about ways to bridge the gap. You will immediately know when something has taken root and is likely to grow. From there it just needs a bit of tending.
I’ll aim to put an example of this up on the Academy site which you can view when we are ready to launch. To get an email for when the happens, sign up to the newsletter.
Keep planting those acorns!
Bet Angel for Betdaq
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on October 4th, 2011
Somebody emailed me yesterday asking when we will be upgrading the Betdaq version of Betdaq. For those that were not aware, we did this in July; hence this post this morning!
Bet Angel for Betdaq is available free of charge and we were the first vendors to release a Betdaq version of our product way back in 2008. The upgrade in July was the first major upgrade we have done in a while. There are still some differences between products, but both and very similar now and you get a similar range of features and capabilities.
I’m not going to recommend you use one exchange or the other, that’s your choice. But I often use both exchanges where it makes sense on one or the other, or when liquidty, market structure or availability of certain markets suits. BetDaq Angel is availble free, so why not download and use it today.
Download by clicking here: -
http://www.betangel.com/download/
I have put up a video to show you what it looks like here: -
http://www.betangel.tv/video/using-bet-angel/getting-started/151-betdaq
Traders of the De l’arc
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on October 2nd, 2011
Once a year I will tuck into French racing like a connoisseur drinks French wine, with a sense of appreciation but with the gusto of a true enthusiast.
I don’t tend to trade on Sunday’s or on French racing, but the richest race in Europe always draws my attention as it and the companion races are nearly always a great opportunity. It has to be said that most of the other stuff on today is not the greatest quality. So I’m fixing up some new bikes I bought for the kids and paying for them, and then some, by trading in between sorting them out. Good luck if you are trading today. Early races have shown market conditions to be like the weather, surprisingly good.
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
Back the draw
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on August 27th, 2011
I’m going to put up some information on Saturday’s about football / soccer. Some of it may seem contradictory for some of you and some logical, but it’s all based on years worth of research and application in the market.
For starters: -
If you backed the draw, pretty much at random, last weekend; you would have have netted a cool profit. I know, because I did exactly that and suffered a 60% thumping as a result! I was doing some work on how diversification affects your net P&L if you are backing varying numbers of events and wanted to test something.
It drew me back to a spreadsheet I did in 2005 based around the efficiency of the market. I came up with a back the draw strategy that squeaked around a 1% margin on average out of the market. I brushed down the spreadsheet and updated it and had another look at the efficiency of the market.
I looked at 15935 recent matches and discounted the implied probability the market was giving on the draw. I then compared that to what happened. On average the market was only about 0.66% out. The chance of a draw occurring versus what the market offered at the time was pretty much spot on. It also highlighted that you could come up with some crazy system based on the draw and still end up with only a small slice of luck. A lot of filtered selections could still end up and fool you into thinking that you had discovered some edge. Check out a few e-books for some examples of this.
The main problem was not an edge though. I worked out, with a simplistic calculation, that using £10 stakes I would have lost £8686 to commission. If you imagine somebody staking in a sequential manner, their £10 per match turned into nearly -£9k. This also highlights the difference between commission on outright betting versus trading on the price movements. It is much more favourable for the latter.
If you think hard enough though, even with that commission paid is possible to overcome. It ‘only’ represents 3.9% of the total amount bet at the worst rate of 5%. Pay above 5% though and it becomes very hard indeed.
So there you have if. The market is still as efficient as ever, but this means you will need a fair chunk of data to ensure you have an edge. You will also need to ensure that edge is quite large to overcome commission. By trading you reduce some of the liability and that will help you overcome that 0.66%.
How to win the lottery
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on August 10th, 2011
Caught this article the other day and it tickled me. I think we all dream of finding a way to make money from things like this. When I was young I dreamt that maybe, just maybe, there was a way to make money from betting on sport, never dreamt it would actually come true!
If you are into this sort of thing then read the book the Newtonian Casino, or watch the film “21“.
Kick off
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on August 6th, 2011
The English football season kicked off in earnest last night with Blackpool nudging a 1-0 win against Hull. Today league football gets underway properly and the hopes and aspirations of many will re-ignite across the nation. How appropriate that the financial markets are crashing under the weight of false hopes and huge amounts of debt just as the football season starts up! If you are looking for excess then there is plenty to find on and off the football field, not just in financial institutions.
If you are interested in the crossover of the finances of football clubs and the betting markets, then have a read of http://www.theexchangemagazine.com/ this month. This includes an article where I discuss the how club finances affect their chances over the course of the season.
I really enjoy the start of the season as this is where value is created in the markets in abundance. At this precise moment in time I can’t tell you where, but in a couple of weeks it should be a bit clearer. Good luck with your football this season.
Another new strategy
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on August 4th, 2011
Sat the in bath the other night pondering a number of things. Of all the things I do, looking for new things and trying to solve the puzzles that any market throws at me is the thing I find most interesting.
I came up with a way off thought based upon what I had seen from recent market data. Basically that the market has been tightening and less money than ever is lost to one side of the book or the other.
It’s too early to judge whether I’ve found something new but I put it into practice this week and the results are encouraging. The graph is just from the first two days of operation. Typically I use a spreadsheet to run some simple tests to see if I am on the right track and from there I can refine what I find. Using spreadsheets with Bet Angel are a great way of testing a market or ideal with minimal effort. The market never seems still despite it’s age so always keep looking at new ideas.
I’ll keep you in touch with my progress, or lack of it! For some background behind that last sentence, read these posts from last year.
http://www.betangel.com/blog_wp/2010/10/07/death-of-a-strategy/
http://www.betangel.com/blog_wp/2010/03/13/the-birth-of-a-strategy/
Good approach
Posted by Peter Webb in Golf on August 3rd, 2011
Looks like it will be the last day before the glorious weather breaks in the UK so went out to play some Golf with my son this morning.
A good approach on the seventh left me in the middle of the green but with a tricky put for an birdie. Almost the perfect put, but the ball stopped just short of falling in the cup. No amount of stomping on the green would make it fall in, so I had to settle for some appreciative comments from the group in front of me.
Got back to my desk to see Betfair had deducted the super premium charge. I experimented last week to see if value seeking, straight betting and/or arbing may help offset some of the charge. I just messed around with small stakes to experiment. Unfortunately last week the ‘wrong’ things won and Betfair stung me for a total of 65% of my profits! The problem I now face is that I am in deficit and the same could happen again this week, leaving me further behind. I am sure there is a better way than this Betfair? Hmm, back to the drawing board.
The good thing is that I am still finding it fairly easy to find opportunities in all markets and on both exchanges. The recent increase in liquidity on Betdaq has brought a number of new strategies to the fore that were not there before so I’m quite fascinated by that at the moment. I am currently measuring and collecting a whole range of data at the moment and I am revisiting data that I collected back in 2004 from Betfair as that is proving useful on Betdaq. Onwards and upwards!
You don't need to be this clever to uncover opportunities
Betfair International Stakes
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on July 24th, 2011
Couldn’t resist posting up this P&L on this race from yesterday. OK I got more on Betfair, a bit, but nowhere near the same when if deduct a 60% commission.
You should always do what is best for you, especially in a trading market, but look at my circumstances. It’s a strange feeling to only be able to earn 40% what others can earn by doing exactly the same thing. I can teach people how to do similar things and with a bit of practice they could replicate it , but I can only possibly win 40% of what they can. I struggle to comprehend that. Is this issue a portent to new charges, or a mistake to be rescinded?
For me, the equivalent value of the win like this on Betfair translates to pre commission £317, which would have been an unlikely result on this race. Now I’ve had a lot more practice I am starting to pick up some decent results on Betdaq, not only on the bigger races but also on the smaller ones too and there seems to be few problems interacting with the market. Last year Betdaq was very quiet but with the increase in liquidity it’s really starting to look interesting. Still a very long way to go but, I’m really looking forward to Goodwood next week where we should see some good markets across both exchanges. It will be an interesting week for sure and I’ll report back what I find.
Bet Angel is available for Betfair or Betdaq so you can choose where you want to do business, or why not use both?
Betfair – Cross matching
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on July 22nd, 2011
Cross matching has slowly been implemented across many sports markets on Betfair and earlier this year on the big one, horse racing.
There are still some odd things with cross matching. Prices for the API and for the Betfair web site are different. This is because cross matching is not exposed via the API. We put the cross matching algorithm into Bet Angel, but quite a large number of API applications still show the ‘wrong’ prices. Betfair also never tell you when it is on or off, this only adds to the confusion.
When it was introduced on Horse Racing it was positioned as follows: -
“Cross-matching was introduced on most sports during 2008 and has had a significant, positive impact on liquidity.”
As you may be aware, because we are in the market all the time, we keep very detailed records on just about anything that happens. This gave us the chance to observe what happened when the cross matching was switched on in the horse racing markets.
Curiously the implementation caused the fill rate to drop from it’s previous level. What we found was that if you put an order in the market and waited for it to be filled, it filled twice as fast before cross matching was implemented than after it’s implementation. That seems a bit odd. Some of it could be accounted for by the fact that money now appearas elsewhere in the book when it can’t get matched at a certain price, but the average queue size doesn’t seem to reflect that.
Currently we are studying the markets post the 18th July. We are doing this because we do expect another change. We will report back when we have enough data as to how is has changed from this date.
A different sort of cross matching
60%
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on July 18th, 2011
On the first day of trading on 22nd October 2010 Betfair shares closed at 1550p. At the time of writing this post the shares are trading at 627p or down nearly 60% from that closing high. How ironic!
I don’t want to feed that hand that bites me, to reverse the common metaphor. So, for me at least, action speak louder than words. Whether volume decreases or increases on the Betfair exchange, why will be the most pressing question. Volume will increase on Betdaq for sure. With all the risk and effort I take, I can’t operate at 60%’; as can’t many others who have contacted me. But, there are plenty that still have some way to go to be charged at this level, so I look forward to helping those Bet Angel users get there as fast as possible!
I’ll post some more thoughts in the coming days and report back on the markets as well.
Grass is for cows
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on June 20th, 2011
Wimbledon is the only grand slam on grass, but it wasn’t always that way. Two other tournaments were played on grass on the grand slam circuit. The US Open, was played on grass until 1974, and the Australian Open, was played on grass until 1988.
Very few players would not admit that a win at Wimbledon would be a career defining moment. But it’s not through trying that players fail; it’s generally down to how each surface plays. Research by the ATP in 1992 showed that the average length of a point on grass was just 2.7 seconds versus 8.2 seconds on Clay. As there are more tournaments on artificial surfaces, many professional tennis players tend to prefer the slowness and higher bounce to be found on clay courts to the speed and low bounce of grass courts. That is why you see serve and volley players doing well at Wimbledon, as well as those with a powerful serve.
So, is Wimbledon dull and boring with such short lived points? More tomorrow.
Royal Ascot / Open Golf Thursday
Posted by Peter Webb in Golf, Horse Racing on June 17th, 2011
Another good day in the bag for Royal Ascot, but I left it late today. I didn’t get a real blockbuster race till near the end of the card. I had to work much harder than yesterday and I took my foot of Betdaq, as working harder meant I couldn’t keep focus on two exchanges effectively. I did broaden my activity out on Betdaq though to other races and they worked well. So after Ascot I’m going to continue my work there.
I did have a hiccup mid afternoon when my Internet connection went down. Quick as a flash I went to my back up connection and continued, but I never found out why it was only my main machine that failed. A quick reboot between races brought it back to life.
Overall, The weather made the markets a bit jumpy and there were some real moves around. The biggest was when the trainer of a horse came on and said his horse was unlikely to win because of the ground. See the graph below for what happened next. The weather has been incredibly poor this week and heavy rain has set in again this morning. So I think we could be in for another tricky day today unfortunately.
I got off to a great start on the US open golf, so it looks like it is going to be a very good week indeed. Here is a list of the top ten +ve movers overnight.
Rory McIlroy – 23 to 3.8
Charl Schwartzel – 80 to 14.5
Sergio Garcia – 90 to 25
Y. E. Yang – 170 to 24
Graeme McDowell – 70 to 28
Bubba Watson – 55 to 38
Louis Oosthuizen – 250 to 32
Brandt Snedeker – 70 to 38
Jason Day – 46 to 36
Stewart Cink – 100 to 50
For a full list of movers, visit the forum.
Match of the season
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on May 8th, 2011
A tantalising match this afternoon between Man Utd and Chelsea and the market is being cautious by pricing up Man Utd at 2.34 for the win. I would have priced Chelsea near 4.00 for a win here, but with so much at stake; its probably right for the price to be a bit shorter. The market is priced for 2.50 goals with 1.30 going to Man Utd.
Home advantage is historically 0.40 goals so if you take that out, the market is saying Man Utd are 0.90 goals better than Chelsea. If you think that is too high then you should back Chelsea. Away teams typically score first around 40% of the time in matches like this, so there are several strategic options available for you. I am visiting relatives for the day so no chance for me to trade unfortunately. But, thanks to the wonders of modern technology, I should be able to watch it.
If you want to do something with more certainty then look no further than the Italian league. The volume leader in all matches for whole of today, when I did my analysis this morning, was Bolonga vs Parma with over £600k traded already. Nearly all that is on the draw, which is priced at the astoundingly low price of 1.41. I wonder how that match will pan out 
Busy day
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on May 7th, 2011
Looking forward to a busy day today.
Promotion and relegation battles will be settled on the football pitches today, that always throws up opportunities. There is nothing like career death to focus the mind of a highly paid footballer. I’m looking for an outside chance today. I’ll probably spread around my options to even things out. Did you know that Bet Angel can monitor and fire in bets across multiple markets almost simultaneously? This is ideal for football where matches go off all at once. If you want to you can get bets triggered at X minutes before the off or something similar. You can do this using Guardian and the Excel functions.
In Tennis at the Madrid open we have an intriguing match with Nadal at a very short price on his favourite surface to beat Federer. Perhaps there is an opportunity here or at least a clue to the rest of the season?
Plenty of of racing to hand as well but I doubt I will be doing the Kentucky Derby. I have tried and failed to get anything substantive for quite a few years on this. I’ll have another look today but I doubt it will yield much. In previous matched bet turnover has been pretty poor and that’s been the key problem.
Good luck whatever you are doing today!
Royal wedding bets
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on April 26th, 2011
Yes, you can punt on the Royal wedding as well!
I doubt this market will interest me much, but I do like the idea of ‘your sex is on fire’ being the first song the couple dance to.
The national – Part three
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on April 25th, 2011
And so ends the national series for this year, a decent result on the The Grand national, the Scottish national and the Irish national. Outside of the Irish national there was little of interest for me today, I didn’t like the card and I was proved right, it was a mess. I really should stop doing days that I know I wont enjoy, it makes little material difference to me and to enjoy a day out on a boat or something is probably of more value. Still, I managed to go for a run today and also pick up some new fish for the pond and I derived more pleasure from either than some of the racing today.
Looks like this month is going well, so it’s now time to start looking at the Guineas meeting.
Probe starts into AW races
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on April 22nd, 2011
On top of rumours of another scandal about to break, the BHA is investigating unusual betting patterns at all weather courses: -
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/other_sports/horse_racing/9465233.stm
Fair weather
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on April 21st, 2011
Well what a start to spring we have had in the UK! It’s more like the summer at the moment, not that this will impress people in warming climates, but it’s a welcome period after a very cold winter. Having flown away to warmer places in February, it’s been a good start to the year. No seasonal disorder for me this year!
The racing markets have been better in April as well, so the weather on that front is improving. But we have noticed a shift in the longer term weather patterns here. More news when we finish our work in this area. The dawn of evening racing has given me a chance to fill out the P&L with a few more races and I had a better day yesterday, but some of the evening racing is exceptionally weak this year. Turnover is falling on a lot of these races. Some of the day time stuff isn’t great either, for a prime example look at today’s racing. Not a single UK card of 10 runners or more, that is exceptionally poor. So poor actually that I may take today off. With some decent action around the Easter holidays, no racing on Friday, decent weather and kids off school, some time out looks like a 1.01 shot. Enjoy Easter!
I predict another draw
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on April 3rd, 2011
A cursory glance at the Italian football today reveals two matches were the matched bet volume is 5-6 times greater than normal and draw odds much shorter than expected. I have posted the two matches in question on the forum. I backed Brescia to win against Bologna on Saturday after picking up on activity on that match. Brescia were 2-0 up inside ten minutes, so I traded out at very short odds.
It prompted me to see what happened to the other matches like these in the past and I have detailed the results that I noted. There are probably many more, but these are just the ones were I collected quality information on. I’ll do some more work on this in time to see what the long term prognosis is: -
24/05/2009 Draw odds 1.79 – Chievo 0 – 0 Bologna
20/03/2010 Draw odds 1.88 – Chievo 1 – 1 Catania
11/04/2010 Draw odds 1.62 – Bologna 2 – 3 Lazio
02/05/2010 Draw odds 1.96 – Cagliari 2 – 2 Udinese
09/05/2010 Draw odds 1.39 – Bologna 1 – 1 Catania
20/12/2011 Draw odds 1.42 – Albinoleffe 3 – 3 Piacenza
Clean sweep
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on April 2nd, 2011
A very pleasing today on all fronts with lots of decent sporting action to get stuck into and generally favourable results all round for my most popular strategies. The highlight was racing where I managed a clean sweep on all 34 races I participated in. It’s pretty tricky to achieve that nowadays and there are many ways to get tripped up as the day progresses, so it’s a very satisfying result.
Coupled with some excellent results elsewhere it was a really good day. The total on racing was nothing amazing, but the manner it which it was achieved was very satisfying. A nice boost at the start of the month after a difficult period for the racing.
£15
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on March 29th, 2011
Not an impressive P&L. That is until you realise it was done with just £10 stakes, that’s a 150% return on stake! But not on capital, as you would need multiples of that to do this.
But the fact remains that I reckon using £10 stakes you could get profitable most days just picking and choosing your targets and strategies. The problem comes when you get to larger amounts, it’s much more difficult to do the same thing then. Today I have a seminar in the office where I am going to explain how this profit was made. Despite the chaos that often envelopes the market, there is actually some logic in it, I promise!
Further to my post yesterday, Good luck today; as when I checked the racing cards for today there were pretty miserable. Can’t wait for some better quality on Wednesday.
