Posts Tagged football
Classic set up
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on March 7th, 2010
A wonderful set up occurred in the FA Cup clash between Reading and Aston Villa this afternoon. Against the odds, Reading took a 2-0 lead againsts premiership outfit Villa. The teams went off for half time in distinctly different moods. A break in play is the perfect opportunity for teams to turn things around and that Villa did. Rejuvenated from their half time talk it wasn’t look before Villa were suddenly 3-2 in the lead. You could have backed them in the teens only to green up at 1.29 after a few minutes. Doesn’t happen that often, usually it’s just a case of looking for the one goal, but three in ten minutes left any half time Villa backers with a stunning 10 fold return on their stake.
The interest in this set up was multiple. Non favourite leading, half time break, incentive to score, plenty of time left. Normally you are only looking for a goal, but now and again things just work much better than expected!
Europa league matches
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on February 27th, 2010
Had some fun last Thursday messing around on the Europa league matches. I like the Europa league as they break down the matches into two blocks. One going off at 18:00 UK time and the remainder at 20:05. This gives you two cracks at the whip at trading them. This week was also the second leg of a knockout competition, which I prefer. I also tried an experimental strategy to small stakes on Thursday and that is what this post is about.
Basically I was trying a variation on the strategy I detailed here. Football is one of few sports available where you have multiple ways to hedge risk. All football markets are very tightly integrated and that allows you to offset risk across a variety of markets if you wish. This shifts your focus, less to managing downside and more to looking for upside opportunities. Even if you place positions at random, as long as you think about your hedged bet it’s difficult to lose substantially. Use Soccer Mystic to work out your counter positions in secondary markets.
Because football matches all go off at the same time you can use the guardian tool on Bet Angel to skip between markets in a flash. It also allows you to place orders quickly with automated trading functions which are managed in the background as you skip around the different markets. This allows you to easily trade many markets at once without fear of losing control of things.
For my experiment I used £10 stakes with a maximum risk of £30. I took positions before the off and hedged positions when a goal was scored or at half time. It was a fairly painless strategy but yielded some useful information and a profit to! It’s always useful to play around with these types of hedging strategy, even if you don’t make much you learn a lot and the commission generated across multiple markets is a useful way to offset the premium charge.
Portsmouth go into administration
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on February 26th, 2010
Further to my post some time ago Portsmouth officially went into administration this afternoon and almost certain relegation. Hopefully you jumped on board following my post a little while ago. One of the lowest risk trades of the season!
While it’s not pleasant to see clubs get into trouble, the economics of football are astonishing. It’s quite amazing to see how poor the economics of most clubs are, but even the top teams are not in a very good shape. LBO’s put a huge burden on clubs and drain resources as people borrow money from the future to pay for success today. The problem is that while money does, generally, buy success. In an effort to keep up new teams join in card game and up the ante. This makes the return on investment and general economics decline overall. It’s not a viable path long term.
I remember watching my local team when I was young and the feeling then was that, on their day, your team could beat anybody. The feeling now is if your team isn’t £10bn in debt then they have no hope of challenging for any honours. I also would see local players on the pitch that had come through the youth system, this fuelled the dream that maybe one day I could be out there as well. I don’t believe that is remotely realistic nowadays. I think both points have taken the soul out of football as a grass roots level, that’s not the best way to encourage future generations.
Will it change? I doubt it!
Champions league trading
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on February 17th, 2010
Porto vs. Arsenal
Priced at a lowly 2.30 goals, this is fairly typical construction for a match of this type. Porto are priced as having a slight edge but only just. The market is pretty much spot on in terms of pricing.
B.Munich vs. Fiorentina
A less competitive clash according to the market. Priced at 2.90 with Munich having a 1.30 goal advantage. Under 2.50 goals offers long term value, I would have priced at 2.14 vs. 2.22 in the market.
League football is where I perform best and where I have most of my data, so I am always quite likely to build a lot more margin of safety into these matches. I suggest you do the same. First legs of the knockout round in this competition tend to be dominated by teams playing safe for the first leg and trying to sneak a goal. Home teams are usually desperate not to concede an away goal. We didn’t see that last night in Italy where Man Utd are in a dominant position for the return leg. When I saw the odds for the match I didn’t really believe that they were so favourble for a Man Utd win, but the market was right.
Don’t forget that in these big games it is quite easy to trade before the off. There is so much money passing through the markets that you can trade quite casually and still manage to get a positive result. When you have done that, you will have some free cash to throw at an outside chance in-play. A good tactic even if you are not into football much. Little risk, plenty of upside.
If you want to view some videos on trading on Soccer / Football. We have a number here. Soccer Mystic is free when you have a subscription to Bet Angel.
Quiet transfer deadline day
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on February 1st, 2010
Often the transfer deadline throws up a few opportunities, due to the high correlation between wages and league position. A buy or sell can translate to a corresponding improvement or decline between now and the end of the season. This year it was very quiet. The only thing of note was Portsmouth net sale which isn’t going to help their prospects of avoiding the drop. If you followed my advice of a little while ago you should have a healthy profit, I suspect it will get healthier after today.
FA CUP value
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on January 23rd, 2010
Where is the value in today’s FA Cup?
To be honest any recommendations would come with a large pinch of salt. While predicting matches in the same league is quite a straightford process, doing the same in a cup competition can be pretty tricky. If there are any matches I am likely to get caught out on, its quite likely to be a cup competition, especially in the early rounds. As such I’ll do some simple things when the screen is full of cup matches. It’s just too risky to use the same model as you do elsewhere.
Looking for upsets and ‘local’ derbies is a good place to hunt. But nothing can replace simple, low risk, trading positions. Once complete you can use this money to take fairly speculative positions that can have good pay off if a shock occurs. This is where I be playing this afternoon.
Over / Under 10.5 goals
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on January 21st, 2010
You don’t see that market very often, but you did last night. What a remarkable match, Aston Villa 6 Blackburn 4! At 0-2 down Villa were matched in volume at 10’s, this match was a trading bonanza! The market was just slightly out on this one forecasting just 2.60 goals. Excluding specifics of the match itself, I can only find three 6-4’s in my recent detailed database of 10,189 matches. So its around at least a 3400-1 shot. Great entertainment anyhow. I think Milner should go to South Africa for the world cup next year. Every tournament needs some energetic new blood that the other countries won’t know much about, I think Milner fits the bill.
I had several emails of some spectacular totals from this match, much better than my efforts, I hope you did well also.
Portsmouth – To be relegated
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on January 19th, 2010
I’ve had a lot of fun on this market in the past and there is another potential opportunity. Portsmouth already looked pretty doomed given their position at the bottom of the table at this time of year. On top of that you have players low on confidence and a financial position that is, at best, precarious. At 1.30’s that information seems to already be discounted into the market.
But, HMRC has now been given the go ahead for their winding up hearing to take place on 10th February. If successfully the club could go into administration and possible points deductions could consign them to relegation. Also, as the weeks pass the price with come in anyhow.
Of course, new investment could also occur and save the club, but it’s worth a look.
Trade of the week
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on January 15th, 2010
One of my favourite types of trades appeared this week. The trade where you look at one market but actually trade another. These opportunities appear all the time but typically in knockout competitions and ante post markets where a result somewhere will definitely affect other prices in a same or similar market.
This week was a little more clear cut but unusual. ITV decided to cover the Liverpool vs Reading FA CUP match. It had all the signs of the perfect drama for the FA Cup. I was active on the match and when it was obvious that Liverpool were struggling and lacking confidence I immediately turned to look at Liverpool’s next match to see the price. It seemed others had already started discounting Liverpool’s poor form and the price was on the drift.
Normally that’s about it, the early market starts to adjust to the new information. But the next morning it was revealed that Torres would require surgery on his knee and a couple of other players picked up knocks during that match. So the drift continued. It’s quite rare to see such movements on football matches before the off as they are usually very stable. But, obviously, if circumstances start to change and the news coming out of the camp isn’t good news. The market has to react. One of the lowest risk but most rewarding trading opportunities of the week.
Time is money
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on January 14th, 2010
Odds can move in mysterious ways in a football / soccer match but generally they are quite predictable. Using Soccer Mystic to model the likely behaviour is a good way to come up with strategies that could generate a profitable scenario. Is this video I demonstrate one of those scenarios which can be used on any match that gets turned in-play.
Has this happened before?
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on January 3rd, 2010
An oft quoted phrase.
But, Man U 0-1 Leeds United. That was a big turned up for the books wasn’t it? Or was it?
Well you don’t need to wind back far to see the last time a similar thing happened. I looked at matches where the home team were priced between 1.25 to 1.30 for a home win. Curiously, where this involved an English team playing a foreign team, the English teams were very dominant. Focusing just on domestic football the last ’shock’ actually only occurred less than a month ago with Wolves winning at Spurs, Spurs were 1.30 to win. But going back further it was actually quite tough to find a similar situation, the glaring exception being Manchester Utd vs Coventry in the league cup in 2007. Man U lost 0-2 at home. Memories are short, aren’t they? If you go back a little further to 2005 Man U drew 0-0 with lowly Exeter in the third round at home as well.
Out of the 33 matches I could easily find back to 2007, 2 ended up in victories for the away team. That works out to odds of 2/33 or 16.50 in digital odds for the away team. Leeds started the match at odds of, you guessed it, 16.50!!
Football often throws up odds results thanks to the fact that so few goals are scored on average. One goal can make a huge difference to a game. Therefore football is one of the sports where upsets can, and do occur, with quite a bit of frequency.
FA Cup value?
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on January 2nd, 2010
In the absence of horse racing today I’ve taken a look at the FA Cup fixtures this afternoon. Subject to team sheets there appears to be a lot of potential value in the Reading vs. Liverpool fixture this afternoon. I’ve explained my full rationale on the forum.
Of course, just seeing value doesn’t mean the result will come in. But over time hunting for value is always a good strategy. If the weather persists in being so cold, I’ll get the chance to explain more.
Four year hoodoo ended!
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on December 2nd, 2009
Ever since I watched Southampton relegated from the premiership four years ago, my presence at a football ground seems to condemn the home team. I don’t get the chance to see many matches nowadays, but every match I turn up to since then, ends with the home team unable to win. Regardless of the quality of the teams, whether its the champions league or a more minor game, I have been unable to watch a home team win. Finally I have laid that to rest.
Last night, I nipped down to the south coast to watch Southampton take on Wycombe in a not particularly inspiring league two clash. I offered 1.50 for a Southampton win and, unlike the last match against Brighton, there was little going for the away team. It looked a fairly certain home win.
And so that turned out to be. Southampton won and climbed out of the relegation zone. They made fairly heavy weather of it though. Despite dominating the chances, Wycombe only had one shot worth recalling, Southampton only managed the one goal and really should scored quite a few more; but a win is a win.
One point of interest. I think it’s always interesting to watch sports live as you control the action of the ‘camera’ and can spot a lot more than watching on the TV. It’s a nice reminder of what you can miss when a director is controlling the camera. It’s worth getting out there now and again and looking at the broader picture. It’s given me a few ideas to pursue in the new year.
1234 & 9-1
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on November 23rd, 2009
Amazing result from Spurs on Sunday. Not often you get to see 10 goals in a match, especially nine of the them in the second half. That said, Spurs did get a 6-4 against Reading on 29/12/2007. In the same season we also had Portsmouth vs Reading on the 29/9/07, which produced a 7-4 scoreline. I have actually watched a 10 goal match. It was Southampton vs Coventry, which Southampton won 8-2. Some time ago though, that was back in 1984.
1234, where does that come into it? Well according to my model, that was the theoretical odds that there would be ten goals in this match. Checking my database that turns out to not be far from what what we have seen in recent years.
Personally, I think it would be fun to have odds above 1000 on the exchanges and also more correct scores to choose from, at least something starting with 4’s would be good. Somehow I don’t think we will be seeing any 9-1 markets any time soon though.
Liverpool vs Man City
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on November 21st, 2009
I’ve had quite a few emails on this match so here are my prices.
Liverpool – 2.02
Man City – 4.30
Draw – 3.60
As you can see the market has it pretty much spot on, maybe very minor value on Man City. I know my prices are within 0.10 accuracy over the course of the season so I can’t see any value. Both teams probably won’t want to lose this one so perhaps a tentative match is likely?
A curious thing about this market is that all the markets suggest an above average number of goals, which is counter to the prevailing psychology of the match. The price on 0-0 correct score will probably decay rapidly if there are no goals.
Massive match fixing probe launched
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on November 20th, 2009
German prosecutors have launched a probe into around 200 football matches. They suspect a number of matches, including champions league and Europa league matches, have been targeted by criminals who bribe players and officials to fix games. The criminals made money by betting on the results. Matches under investigation were played in Germany, Belgium, Switzerland, Croatia, Slovenia, Turkey, Hungary, Bosnia-Hercegovina and Austria.
How to turn over a 1.60 shot
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on November 16th, 2009
I knew Southampton would lose yesterday, or at least not win. How? Well there were two key overriding factors in yesterdays match.
First, I had bothered to make the trek to the south coast to watch the match. Because of the unsocial hours of the sports markets I don’t get the chance to watch much sport so when there is a team nearby that plays when I can watch, I’ll often nip along. Unfortunately for Southampton every time I watch them, they lose! My mere presence appears to send them to defeat. As it was a case of the form team playing the team short on form on this occasion. I expected this mere fact to overturn my Southampton hoodoo. They lost 3-1.
For the more logical answer of their 3-1 loss yesterday we should look at what happened between when I decided to go to the match and the events that led up to the match itself. Brighton have been on a slippery slope this season and endured some heavy defeats as they slid inexorably towards the bottom of league one. As a result their manager, Russell Slade, was sacked on the 1st November.
Things looked pretty hopefully for Southampton, this was probably the match they needed to finally lift themselves out of the bottom four of the league. That was until Gus Poyet arrived at Brighton to take over the vacant managers position. I’ve documented it before but it’s amazing how often teams that have just had a manager appointed suddenly outperform. For that reason, I felt that at a price of 1.60 Southampton didn’t represent good value. In fact they even contracted in price near the off to 1.52 according to my data.
Unfortunately because of my history with Southampton, I didn’t have a bet, such is life. I was more concerned with trying to squeak some money out of the last day of the Cheltenham open. What I can predict is though is that, because of this ‘exceptional’ loss, most rating systems will incorrectly mark down Southampton and probably incorrectly price their next match. It will take another match to work out Southampton’s true form but I’ll be looking for some value when they next play. Let’s hope its not another team that has just changed manager!
Real Copa Crash
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on November 11th, 2009
Real Madrid crashed out of the Copa Del Rey last night. As though that wasn’t bad enough for Real Fans it was to lowly AD Alcorcon. Priced at 1.39 to win the first leg away Real Madrid promptly got thrashed 4-0. But that was OK because they had 90 minutes of the second leg to turn it around. Last night they stumbled to a late 1-0 win and stumbled out of the cup.
Real Madrid play Zurich at home in the next round of the champions league.
Football value this evening
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on November 10th, 2009
A quick glance on this evenings football has through up Leeds as a clear value candidate. Rather than duplicate the information here, please have a quick read of the posting on the forum. The thing that stands out on this match is that it is a clear value candidate. Very often things are a lot more marginal, but here there is clear room.
Bear in mind that value only appears over time, so you need to stake with that in mind and consistantly over a number of matches. Read my previous post about this.
Swine flu hits Blackburn team
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on October 26th, 2009
See full article here: -
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/teams/b/blackburn_rovers/8325606.stm
The impact on the market has been immediate, with the price on Blackburn drifting throughout the day. I guess this will continue unless the match is called off. I’m not particularly keen on making money on somebodies misfortune so I will duck out on this one.
While most Football markets are pretty stable things like, injuries, weather and illness can have a profound affect on the pre-match market. I’ve seen lots of similar things in the past. Probably the most notorious was when the Spurs fell ill against West Ham a few seasons ago. They need a win to qualify for the champions league, but with a lot of the team out of action, it didn’t happen.
Have a look at the graph from that match as a comparison with today. A very curious lay of 25k just before the drift really started!
Retrograde motion
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on October 15th, 2009
Have a look at the England match last night and you could see a classic bit of why the market is efficient, but it isn’t. Immediately after the first England goal it was quite possible to back the draw and see it come in a fair bit. A fair bit as far as the odds were concerned, but not much in implied probability, around 2.5%.
The price on the draw came in after the first goal and this is contrary to what the stats would say, the stats would say the draw would get much less likely, not more. But this actually happens quite often around pivotal points in the market. The reason last night was that Belarus did not lose their shape after that early goal, but kept possession and controlled a lot of the first half. Therefore the market was discounting the possibility they may score. You can’t forecast that ahead of a match, but you can monitor the in play stats to get a better idea of what is happening when it is underway. That’s what I recommend, make your judgement before the match starts but play close attention once it’s underway. I’m already looking forward to a busy summer next year!
Better with ten men
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on September 28th, 2009
It’s always been frustrating to see people comment that a team seems to play better with ten men, the stats don’t back this up. That said, this isn’t a great example; as the team who had the player sent off did go on to win! However, you can see that the price reacted quite clearly when Da Silva was sent off.
I haven’t modelled a sending off accurately just yet but, I am getting there. On this occasion the market decreased Man Utd’s chance by 20% on the sending off. The upshot of this? It’s always worth watching players who already have a yellow card!
Not playing tonight
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on September 9th, 2009
No activity from me this evening as it’s my fourteenth wedding anniversary and we are out for a posh meal and some pampering. Traditional musings say this is an Ivory anniversary, but modern says Gold so it looks like a Spandau Ballet single is in order, LOL!
Just a quick post on the England vs Croatia game.
I reckon the odds should be 1.61 England, 7.20 Croatia and 4.1 the Draw.
Current market prices are similar but too short on the draw. I guess this is because it isn’t a must win game for England. I think the best value this evening was the price of Sweden to beat Malta. If you could have got any money on Czech Republic to beat San Marino, well done. I put an order in a long time ago and still didn’t get matched!
Barcelona vs Shaktar
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on August 28th, 2009
My models suggest a price of around 5.50 for the draw. Currently it is trading at 5.2 to back so this suggests, for once, there is value in laying the draw here. Even if I use a pessimistic view I wouldn’t shorten the price to less than 5.35. That said there isn’t a great deal to play for in this match.
Most of these assumptions revolve around the price of Barca. I would price them around 1.36 versus the 1.42 on offer, they look slightly too long at this price, Shaktar are too short at around 9’s. This market feels pretty loose to me at the moment.
Arsenal vs Celtic
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on August 26th, 2009
With the end of the evening racing I’ve finally put my footie head on. Market is priced for 3 goals with Arsenal expected to score at least a couple of those. From a stats perspective the price on Arsenal and Celtic is about right. If pushed for a price I would offer 1.40 on Arsenal and 11 on Celtic, looks like a Arsenal win! But I would also offer only 5’s on the draw which means there is some value in that.
I’ve put some thought into the match and popped up a video for you: -
$100k Soccer challenge
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on August 15th, 2009
A couple of guys recently flew into the UK do my course in July. They have now taken the bold step to do their own challenge via a blog. In contrast to others, they are going to do this on football.
They were a smart couple of guys and I’ve no doubt they will do well. Based on the start they have got off to, I think they may need to up their target a little bit. You can view the blog here: -
Good luck guys, with the football season in full swing plenty of opportunities are just around the corner.
Friendlies
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on August 12th, 2009
Just a short note while watching the England vs Holland friendly, I don’t do friendlies! I like teams to have a specific imperative to win or to score. If such a condition doesn’t exist, I think it makes it much harder to read how the match is likley to play out given any particular scenario.
I am currently a little late preparing the ground for this season proper so you may have to wait a little while before seeing some specific posts on soccer.
Coincidences
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on August 8th, 2009
I had another one of those coincidences last night. I went to my local Gym which is attached to a luxury hotel. I drifted through the hotel and there in front of me was the chairman and manager of Southampton football club. As you may know, for my sins, I have followed Southampton from when I was very young as they were my local team. I had a little chat with them, but they obviously have a lot on their plate; so I left them to chat with, whom I think was the CEO.
I was able to open a conversation due to another coincidence, Alan Pardew lives on the same street as a friend on mine. But finally Markus Liebherr is German so while he was busy chatting I couldn’t help but listen. I spent three years working for German company, so while I am not fluent, my German is better than average.
No great insights into todays match but it made for a more interesting evening!
Information in a price
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on August 6th, 2009
I love the way that markets operate. For most of the pre-season I have been following the various fortunes of the high profile premier league clubs. There have been some clear indicators of what is happening and how to discount that into price. Man City buying up everything that Real Madrid can’t, Man U selling off some prize assets, Arsenal doing nothing. All this activity has been slowly reflected into the prices. Have a browse of the premiership winner and relegation markets if you want to see this.
If you read back on my post here, it’s obvious how the transfers would be discounted into the market. Anybody following that would have netted a very low risk profit even before the season started.
The big movers are Man City who have crashed in from 50’s to 15’s and Portsmouth who have lost a lot of players and indicated things are not about to get any better, thier chance of relegation has tripled. Man Utd have drifted given the loss of Ronaldo and the lack of spending. It’s best to close out any trades now and attention can now focus elsewhere, though I am still watching news on Portsmouth like a hawk.
Football is back
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on August 5th, 2009
Happiness and sadness at the start of the new football season. Happy because there are suddenly more opportunties, but sad because it means the end of the summer racing is near.
I like racing a lot, simply because you get loads of it very quickly and you can dip in and out of it. A race every ten minutes from 2-9pm is just perfect, when the card thins out, it is less enjoyable. With racing you also know quickly if you’re profitable not, other sports can drag out for hours until you know your result. For me a football match lasting 90 minutes is equal to 9 horse races, so horses win. Fortunately, most football is in evening so that is just perfect!
Of course we designed Soccer Mystic specifically for football markets. If you’re a Bet Angel user you should download and use it simply for the profiling tool that is available. There are a lot of daft strategies out there and with Soccer Mystic you can test your theories without risking a penny. The great thing is, if you Bet Angel user, you get it for free.
We have been working hard through the summer to improve our knowledge on football and we are all primed and ready to start guns blazing at the start of the football season. Curiously we found was that the only generic net positive strategy last year was……
Okay, it’s a tease, you have to wait for that, but it’s not what you will think what you may have been told!