Posts Tagged trading
Aussie open – open!
Posted by Peter Webb in Tennis on January 15th, 2012
Just about to head off to bed, but in half an hour the Australian open tennis will kick into gear. It’s a great opportunity to get stuck into the Tennis, even if you are not into Tennis, as a lot of matches will appear in the UK early in the morning when not much else is going on.
I have set up Bet Angel to do some simple automation in the early rounds of the tournament as I know where the most volatile matches are likely to be. Bet Angel will be out on watch for me tonight to trade these matches if they reach a critical point. I’ll wake up tomorrow morning to see how it’s got on.
I’m looking forward to the first grand slam of 2012, let’s hope it’s a vintage year.
Rafa added some venom to the build-up
Big over-reaction
Posted by Peter Webb in Tennis on January 5th, 2012
Sometimes I just want to roll Gael Monfils up in a bundle and kiss him.
One of my biggest ever wins came on a match with Monfils in it. He overstretched himself and called for the trainer. I had just backed his opponent and his priced rocketed in and netted me a very lucky big profit, so I greened up. After a brief spell with the trainer Monfils carried on and looked like he had never been trouble and went on to win the match.
It was at this point that I learnt Monfils tended to be a bit elaborate in his play, often plays in a way that could lead to potential injury and tends to make a meal of it. That paid off last night.
I was watching the Monfils vs Becker match at the Qatar open. Monfils collapsed on the ground and everybody laid. I rewound the sky+ put it in slow motion and you can see all he did was whack himself on the knee as he tried to play the shot. Quickly backed him at what ever price I could get and laid it off a few minutes later. He went on to win anyway.
You can see the massive over reaction on the graph. A decent, low risk trade.
Is Darts the new Tennis?
Posted by Peter Webb in Darts, Tennis on January 2nd, 2012
Some great matches again at the PDC world darts championship this week. Dramatic comebacks from impossible positions, turnarounds, low odds turned over, high odds coming in, big matched bet turnover. Darts certainly has the characteristics of a great trading market. It’s popularity is picking up now as well.
Its scoring and ‘feel’ is similar to Tennis, you also have familiar concepts such as a break of throw / serve. But a big advantage of Darts is that the games are finite and occur over a much faster time period. This give Darts the edge in terms of suitability.
The PDC championships and about to come to an end but the BDO’s are about to start up. Plenty of time to play around in this interesting sport.
Back to open
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel, Betfair, Horse Racing on December 20th, 2011
It looks like we are going to have some fun and games in the market today. I’d recommend adopting a ‘back to open’ trading policy!
For more information read up on this thread: -
http://www.betangel.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=4934&start=240
Winding down..
Posted by Peter Webb in Betfair on December 19th, 2011
We are well on the run in now for the Xmas break now and this are going to get a little quiter as the week rolls on. Quieter apart from at home because the kids are off school now! Racing comes to a close on Thursday and there is no racing on the Friday or Saturday.
Plenty of decent racing on the Saturday just gone and it proved a good days trading. Best result of a good bunch came from the last race at Ascot. I did well on both exchanges on Saturday but couldn’t beat this total on Betdaq, but obviously could after commission!
Bits and bobs around this week but my enthusiasm for it isn’t high, so I’ll be working on new things and cherry picking some opportunities. I can’t see the markets being that favourable this week, but you never know.
If you are not active this week or busy Christmas shopping, why not use some of the new automation functions to trade automatically. Only a lack of imagination can separate you now from doing or learning something new about the markets, with this recent addition to Bet Angel. Set it up at the start of the day, in practice mode if necessary, come back and read your automatically exported P&L report at the end of the day. Tweak strategy, then repeat. Great fun.
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%!
0-0 Continued…
Posted by Peter Webb in Football / Soccer on December 12th, 2011
Well the two key matches I was looking at worked pretty well in the end but the other ‘deserved’ 0-0 at half time ended up 3-0 to the home team. This illustrates a key point.
With any in-play market you are hostage to what happens during the event. If you take a rigid approach to the underlying event you can’t really hope to out perform the statistics that can be modelled in the market.
In yesterdays match Joey O’Brian was booked in the 61st minute. Four minutes later he got his second booking and West Ham had another player booked as well. One minute later Reading scored and West Ham were well on the back foot. West Ham ended up having two players sent off and conceded more fouls than Reading. Basically, they lost it. You could only see that during that five minute spell in which it actually happened. If you had any positions open on the match, that five minutes spell should have forced you to radically re-asses your position.
Hopefully that’s shown you why keeping an eye on an event in-play will help you outperform those that don’t.
- Where it all started to go wrong for West Ham
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.
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.
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.
Many hands make light work
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on October 21st, 2011
If you are searching for that elusive edge, have you thought about utilising Bet Angel’s many varied automated features? They say that many hands make light work and it’s true on these markets as well, even if they are virtual hands.
Using the spreadsheet functionality on Bet Angel it’s possible to construct very simple to very complex commands, instructions, tools and scripts to do pretty much whatever you want. You can also use it to test ideas or concepts fully automatically while you are busy doing something else. It’s a very useful way to explore the market or actively participate in it.
The way we have designed this tool is pretty clever as well. It’s possible to use Bet Angel’s main trading interface while the spreadsheet does it’s own thing. It can do this thanks to the way the multi market tool Guardian works. You can get Guardian to cycle around markets or load a ton of them onto one workbook for it to work on simultaneously. The advantage of this is that you could create, for example, something to look for arbs on football matches, or perhaps certain conditions on certain markets That can run automatically in the background while you work on the racing.
We have some very innovative solutions that people have put up on the forum. It’s amazing how creative people are given the right tools. Hopefully we can deliver more in the coming months.
If you are interested in how to use this functionality, then please view a few videos for the basics of how to set up and use it: -
http://www.betangel.tv/video/using-bet-angel/using-spreadsheets
You can use similar functionality on both the Betfair and Betdaq versions.
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.
Internationals
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on October 7th, 2011
I had my own international experiance last night when I met up with Howard Hamilton from Soccermetrics. A dedicated group of stats experts huddled in a pub in Fulham to discuss all things football related. Could have done with a quieter pub!
With so many international matches going off at once, or at best close to each other, you may consider using a generic strategy that you can automate. All this can be done in practice mode as well, so you have no risk of losing money. Have a look at these videos for some ideas: -
Trading multiple markets in one football match
http://www.betangel.tv/video/trading-on-football-soccer/176-multiple-markets-football
Linking and trading multiple football matches
http://www.betangel.tv/video/trading-on-football-soccer/177-multiples-matches-football
Example overs/under football spreadsheet
http://www.betangel.tv/video/trading-on-football-soccer/210-overunders-ss
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.
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!
Good old fashioned gambling
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on September 21st, 2011
Since Betfair introduced new charges for their most successful customers, me included. I’ve done a fair bit of work all over the place. Back on Betfair, no matter how easy the opportunity, I can’t tell you just how difficult it is to actually do something that you know will result in the loss of 60% of your profit, I don’t know about others, but I really struggle to do it.
So, I’ve done some additional work on Betfair by looking at alternative strategies with the view to understanding just what it would take to overturn or reduce the higher charges. Basically the bottom line is that you have to generate a small profit, while paying a lot of commission. I know this sounds obvious but let me give you an example.
Last week I set out to do some good old fashioned gambling on my account. This, amongst other things, has made a right old jumble of my P&L since the new charges. Last week I stuck fairly rigidly to only using my Betfair account to bet. I did lapse at one point by taking advantage of an opportunity that I could only execute on Betfair. But the practical upshot of that gambling led activity is that, thanks to the way results came in, I only paid 20% in total charges on my account. This means that Betfair still deducted an additional 40% on top of that. That’s a mare on gambling led activity and its a back to the drawing board moment.
The curious think about this is that people I teach can now earn 2.5 times what I can doing the same thing. So if you are interested in learning what I do, come and see me; I’m likely to have more time on my hands this winter!
Awesome match
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on September 10th, 2011
At last, a real classic match to talk about at the US Open. Djokovic through to the final after defeating Federer, again, in the semi final from two match points down. A great trading match as well, with some clear cut entry and exit points.
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
New in-running tool
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on September 1st, 2011
Something has been annoying me for ages and that is how I’ll often sit between races waiting for the next one to start. It’s a lot of wasted time, so I recently decided it was time to do something about it. The result is a new tool for Bet Angel users.
The concept is a clickable user interface that shows you the progress of a race as it happens. Its the first ever product to allow you to click on a graph to place a bet. To back or lay you simply point in front or behind of the horse and left or right click to back or lay. As the race progresses, the horses move towards the finish line giving you a visual view of what is happening in the market and a good representation of what the horse and everybody following it is doing. After watching a few races you can quickly pick up on some useful patterns that emerge in-running. This new tool is available for use on the latest beta version of Bet Angel which you can now download. Enjoy!
You can view a video describing the tool here: -
http://www.betangel.tv/video/horse-racing/212-inplay
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%.
Free morning workshop
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on August 22nd, 2011
This summer we have been holding a series of morning workshops, we are currently conducting another one this morning. These have been aimed to improve your ability to use Bet Angel and your participation in the markets. Because of the small class sizes we do have a waiting list, but if you are interested in attending future courses, please register your interest now.
Look, no hands…
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on August 19th, 2011
One upshot of Betfair’s recently decision to increase their rake from more successful users like myself is that I have revisited my love of interacting on the exchanges with spreadsheets.
I have taken some time out from ‘normal’ trading to work on spreadsheets a bit more. This is to see if I can create something that works fully automatically for me where the payoff will now be particularly high as it takes none of my time to execute. When something takes up none of your time but its profitable, then that’s a pretty good payoff. Personally I think Betfair may have accidentally created a huge incentive for bot writers and in the process converted a lot of previous manual only users to start in this area.
Even if you don’t fully automate stuff, at worst, automation is something that can make your life a bit easier . The wonder of working this way is that spreadsheets can show you more information and you can interact with the market in a form that’s easy to understand than staring at a screen full of numbers. You can in effect create your own custom view of the markets.
I’ve refreshed the spreadsheet section on Bet Angel TV so you can join in the fun too!
http://www.betangel.tv/video/using-bet-angel/using-spreadsheets
It’s all kicking off!
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on August 13th, 2011
Yes the premier league is back. Twenty teams, OK maybe four, well maybe three battle it out for the greatest honour in football…. Who will sack their manager first!
As I have mentioned in previous posts the market tends to inefficient at the start of the season. I looked back over the two months at the start of last season to see what happened last year.
The first thing to note is that the market got the number of goals scored pretty much spot on. On average there were 2.72 goals scored per match over this period, this was against a forecast of 2.72 goals. So little value was created there. Home wins were forecast at 48% and came in at 47%, so not much there after commission (especially 60%). However, the predominant characteristic at the start of last season surround away teams.
Away wins were forecast by the market to arrive 26.6% of the time in the first two months but only occurred 20.7% of the time. Draws were forecast 25.5% of the time but occured a whopping 32.3% of the time. So if you were looking for value last season, that was were to find it. To qualify that and to see if it will repeat this season, you also need to answer the ‘why’ question.
New Videos
Don’t forget to fire up Soccer Mystic (see video) to have a look at matches you are likely to trade. While it can’t be 100% accurate it will give you plenty of ideas on where odds are likely to be and should fire up your imagination for some strategies.
You may not have considered a couple of unique ways in which you can use Bet Angel to trade, analyse or bet on football matches. So watch the following videos to see: -
How to connect multiple markets to one workbook on your spreadsheet
How to connect multiple football matches to one spreadsheet for trading simultaneously
Use the subscribe button on the channel home page to automatically get updated when new videos are uploaded.
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.
Getting better at Golf
Posted by Peter Webb in Golf on August 5th, 2011
In real life and on the markets!
Out with my son again this morning who got his first par today and I managed to get round the whole nine holes on par. Haven’t done that for a few years, one birdie, one bogey. I’m also getting better at understanding the golf markets. It’s taken a few years but I am finally getting under the skin on the markets. It’s proved pretty interesting and it’s also been a bit of a learning curve as I am trying to predict things on a very broad basis rather than a narrow one and that has proved the key to getting to the bottom of the markets. I’ve drifted outside the majors into other competitions now I am confident in what I am doing. I don’t know whether these will work as well, but there is only one way to find out! Anyhow, day one movers from the Bridgestone Invitational, returns to a £10 back bet: -
Adam Scott – 55 to 5.5 – £90
Jason Day – 40 to 6.8 – £48.82
Nick Watney – 28 to 11 – £15.45
Tiger Woods – 19 to 15 – £2.67
Martin Laird – 130 to 42 – £20.95
Ryan Moore – 90 to 44 – £10.45
Rory Sabbatini – 120 to 44 – £17.27
Stewart Cink – 100 to 48 – £10.83
Brandt Snedeker – 110 to 42 – £16.19
Kyung-Tae Kim – 210 to 120 – £7.5
Thomas Bjorn – 310 to 95 – £22.63
Jonathan Byrd – 240 to 150 – £6
D.A. Points – 380 to 100 – £28
Keegan Bradley – 250 to 180 – £3.89
Pablo Larrazabal – 460 to 170 – £17.06
Ryo Ishikawa – 410 to 200 – £10.5
Arjun Atwal – 810 to 510 – £5.88