Posts Tagged championship
BDO Darts final tonight
Posted by Peter Webb in Darts on January 15th, 2012
Dart’s is a good trading sport and tonight sees the world final live on the BBC. This and previous tournaments have thrown up some great opportunties and matches: -
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/other_sports/darts/8425631.stm
You sense that the future of darts in the UK is sliding towards the more regular, better funded PDC. If that means more coverage then great! I quite like darts, as it is a ‘pure’ sport. You against an opponent, it’s difficult to cheat and you win or lose on merit. No artistic interpretation or strange rules or judgements. That is why it will never make it into the Olympics!
Anyhow, worth a look tonight.
Could it finally be his year?
Open Source
Posted by Peter Webb in Golf on July 17th, 2011
Continuing my theme of getting more involved in sports rather than just trading them I am headed of to Royal St’ Georges today for the final day of the open golf. I’ll be able to see what it looks like at source. I hope it doesn’t rain too much.
No mobile phones or PDA’s allowed on the course, so no greensiding possible! I’ll just have to enjoy the day.
Open golf – Best trades
Posted by Peter Webb in Golf on July 16th, 2011
For a full list and other lists, visit the forum.
The Open has been brilliant so far. The highlight today was the hole in one by Tom Watson, amazing. When my shoulder is better I’m getting out there again to reduce my handicap. It’s inspiring to see a 61 year old holding his own against the worlds top golfers.
This is the last list now as we turn our attention to specific golfers for the remaining two days. The weather is going to turn real horrible for the remaining days, so it’s fingers on the lay button and the hunt is on for the golfers who can play low accurate shots, or who are just plain lucky!
These are the top ten returns for £10 stakes from the start of the tournament to the cut.
Lucas Glover – 600 to 18.5 – £314.32
Thomas Bjorn – 600 to 27 – £212.22
Chad Campbell – 500 to 34 – £137.06
Miguel Angel Jimenez – 290 to 20 – £135
Darren Clarke – 220 to 17.5 – £115.71
Tom Lehman – 700 to 90 – £67.78
Anders Hansen – 260 to 38 – £58.42
Pablo Larrazabal – 400 to 60 – £56.67
George Coetzee – 280 to 55 – £40.91
Dustin Johnson – 95 to 21 – £35.24
Big moves
Posted by Peter Webb in Golf on July 15th, 2011
I thought the first day of the Open Golf at Sandwich would be interesting and that’s exactly how it has proved. For a full list of movers visit the thread on the forum.
Golf has really grown on me as a trading sport and the small gap between the leader-board and oblivion creates some fantastic opportunities. With a £10 stake this is what you could have greened up for on the top movers at the end of day one. Plenty of room for manoeuvre, mistakes and a few losses elsewhere.
Thomas Bjorn – 600 to 25 – £230
Lucas Glover – 340 to 28 – £111.43
Tom Lewis – 520 to 44 – £108.18
Miguel Angel Jimenez – 290 to 34 – £75.29
Kyle Stanley – 560 to 110 – £40.91
Webb Simpson – 160 to 32 – £40
Ricky Barnes – 370 to 90 – £31.11
Pablo Larrazabal – 400 to 100 – £30
Darren Clarke – 220 to 55 – £30
Fredrik Andersson Hed – 420 to 110 – £28.18
Open Golf – McIlroy drift continues
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on July 13th, 2011
Now the Open championship market is firming up, I’m interested to see the drift on McIlroy is still continuing. I had factored in a bit of a drift but it’s interesting to see how strong and maintainted it is. At the moment the market and likely conditions are perfectly set up for a good trading market.
While zipping around the net I found this good preview for the championship. A good overview and some food for thought: -
How to play the play offs
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on May 18th, 2011
I was asked for an opinion recently on the championship play offs. I tipped a Reading vs Swansea final with Reading likely to edge it. So far so good, as both Swansea and Reading are through, so how did I get it right?
It’s quite simple really, “Form” is the answer. When you look at play off success over the years then form stands out as the key determinate. Form teams do well in the play offs on average and teams that are on the slide at the end of the season tend to fluff it at this stage. My picks were based around the recent form of all the teams and Swansea and Reading were stand out candidates. Last year Cardiff were on better form but a late surge from Blackpool made them stand out candidates. It’s a pattern that repeats year after year and explains the oddity of teams how do not finish third but go on to get promoted.
I personally think play offs are a bit unfair. You play well all season only to suffer some injuries which mean you are not automatically promoted, then lose in a knock out competition. I would feel aggrieved at this. I really feel sorry for long suffering Cardiff fans, I am sure their time will come.
Going up or not?
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on May 4th, 2011
I feel sorry for QPR fans who have just ‘won’ promotion to the premier league but could yet be scuppered by the FA hearing into irregularities. It’s another example of why value tends to exist at either extreme of the market. People discount something as certain or not far too quickly than chance would and this is where value is often found. My P&L is punctuated with big spikes where value lays or backs eventually return a big one off gain. If I am in profit on a position already I will always allocate a little of that to chase down positions that are likely to be value.
You could lay QPR for promotion at very short odds quite recently, not so much now of course! This is despite this unresolved issue trundling on for some time, the FA started investigating this last September. This is not the first time this season we have had a similar situation. This could cause quite a mess of the play offs as well now. It seems not all is done and dusted with the promotion markets just yet this season.
Jockey title opportunties
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on November 6th, 2010
Another close Jockey championship draws to a close this weekend and it’s going to the wire by the look of it.
http://www.yorkpress.co.uk/sport/8619942.Jockey_title_rivals_square_up_in_dramatic_Doncaster_finale/
http://www.thepja.co.uk/champ_flat.aspx
The battle is throwing up some interesting trading opporunties as people start to discount the prospect of a jockey change bringing a change of fortune for individual horses. Certainly there is a big incentive to win races that may have been over looked earlier in the season. Keep your eyes open for racing with either of the these two riders in them, as they may present decent trading opportunties. There have been many already this week.
Trade of the season (so far)
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on October 25th, 2010
I mentioned in another post about the Portsmouth saga and it turns out I was correct in my interpretation. This turned out to be the trade of the season so far. Portsmouth relegation markets have been a nice earner in the last couple of years!! I’ll have to wait till May to get paid out but I can now green out and look for the next opportunity.
Pompey likely to close down
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on October 23rd, 2010
Portsmouth say they are likely to fold after talks with former owner and key creditor Sacha Gaydamak broke down. Full story here: -
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/teams/p/portsmouth/9120108.stm
Odds on Betfair for relegation have plunged from 11′s to heavy odds on. In settlement terms Betfair count going out of business as relegation, hence the change in odds. I suspect this could be a wake up call from the administrator to the only creditor holding up the process. Lets wait and see….
Odds are going down, are Portsmouth as well?
Another big price winner
Posted by Peter Webb in Golf on July 19th, 2010
I am really starting to like Golf as a trading medium.
I tend to carefully model sports before getting deeply involved with them. Doing that allows me to test the up and downside limits to a strategy and that in turn allows me to know what I need to do to be successful. I tend to hunt for the downside to any strategy as that allows me to frame it at which point it clearly defines the upside for me. This is why I often suggest that people trade at random. If your random losses are X and your strike rate Y then you immediately know what you need to do to profit. If you can’t get near that metric, you either need to start again or think of a new way into the market.
Golf is tricky to model. Players heading off at different times, playing on different difficulties of holes. But for anybody that has played golf, one characteristic stands out. One good shot can make a good round and one bad shot can ruin in. These characteristics can send players rocketing up or down the leader-board.
The practical upshot of this is that big outsiders can shorten quickly and short prices can lengthen quickly. This seems to throw up some really big priced winners. Last year in the Open Championship we had Cink, an 800 shot, battling Watson, a 1000 shot, in a play off. This year the unknown Oosthuizen romped home at 490!
If I would have let my bet on Oosthuizen stand I would have made a small fortune, but I just find it impossible not to approach every market without carefully planning out my approach. As a consequence there were others I backed and I also laid off some of the substantial potential on Oosthuizen. Being a relative rookie I did expect him to crumble a bit under the pressure, but Oosthuizen did a great job of playing percentage golf over the weekend and with such a gap to the other contenders it was the right thing to do. The others couldn’t have any impact without taking risk and than ultimately led to mistakes.
Overall, a good tournament. Just itching for the next one now!
Wel gedaan!
Time to sit back and enjoy
Posted by Peter Webb in Golf on July 17th, 2010
With the hard work out of the way on the Golf, it’s now time to sit back and enjoy the weekend play. With plenty of profit in the bank I can take some speculative positions without too much worry and don’t have to watch the market like a hawk. I hope the weekend produces a thrilling climax to the tournament.
Open golf day two
Posted by Peter Webb in Golf on July 16th, 2010
Here is the list of my best backs from the open. Oosthuzien is the best having crashed in from 490 to just 14′s this morning. This means for my ‘massive’ £4.25 stake I can green up for near on £150 on just Oosthuizen. Daly touched teens early on as well. Three of these bets are on the top ten ‘odds leaderboard’ so its been a cracking start. Would have been even better if some of the shorter prices had blown up, but there are still quite a few that have slipped out of contention. Roll on the cut!
