Author Archive: Peter Webb
I left a good job in the consumer technology industry to go a trade on Betfair for a living way back in June 2000.
I've been here ever since pushing very boundaries of what's possible on betting exchanges and loved every minute of it.
Two books that will change the way you think
In my quest for unreachable perfection, I’ve spent a lot of time trying to understand how people think. There are several reasons for doing this.
The first is to make better decisions myself, sometimes people make decisions or say things that just don’t make any sense. You often also get stuck making a decision which you can’t seem to resolve.
Having thoroughly explored the markets, what to do, when and how (so far) in my career I’ve switched my main …
A fool and his money are soon parted….
‘A fool and his money’ It’s a classic phrase, but it always seems to ring endlessly true and never shall it be any different it seems!
I have written about this before and in particular about the now infamous Elliot Short: –
I wonder how many times I will hear about some gambling scam where people have lost enormous amounts of money? It seems that will always be the case.
It’s a real downer!
It’s a real downer to …
Derby Day!
Isn’t the Derby in June? Yes and no….
If you are in Australia, early tomorrow morning (UK Time) is Derby Day at Flemington in Victoria. This kicks off the Melbourne Cup carnival and a week of top class Australian action. On Tuesday we have the race that stops a nation, the Melbourne Cup then more top quality days on Thursday and the following Saturday. It’s a busy period full stop on the horse racing front, as we also have the …
Luck and Skill in sport
Sport is generally about two different players or team competing with each other. It’s unlikely they will be equally matched in every respect, though not impossible. But typically a differential exists between the two. However, luck can be a key component in a sport as well.
Luck in football
The number of goals in football is low, an average of 2.60 goals a game. Watch this video to learn more about that.Over the course
Over the course of a …
Luck and Skill in trading…
Luck or skill?
On Monday I hosted a learn to trade course with the intention of giving people a decent start in their sports trading journey.
Distractions
People are always keen to see you do something when you’re hosting a course. This particular course wasn’t set-up as a full-blooded trading session. But I was happy to oblige, as there is no better way of understanding the concept if you see it in action.
Of course, you can’t guarantee that you …
A classic psychological flaw
Here is something that will help you understand the way people act and what you can’t do about it! But how you can benefit from it.
I made a comment on Twitter a little while ago saying something along the lines of “if I ever think going to lose my edge all I need to do is look at social media and I know that’s not going to happen”
Entrenched views
What I was commenting on was the proliferation of …
Trading the Ryder Cup
Once every two years, the sporting world turns its attention to what is turning into a classic sporting Rivalry, the Ryder Cup.
Many years ago it didn’t have anything like the profile it does now. Post war it was a chance of US golfers to show how much better they were than UK players. Then the rules changed to make their opponents UK and Ireland, but that was still dominated by the US. Then in 1985 when it became the …
The greatest show on earth?
Tonight in the US we have the first presidential debate and what an interesting one it looks like it will be!
Take your side
In the red corner we have the eccentric, surely can’t be elected president, TV personality Donald Trump. And in the blue corner we have the political dynasty that are the Clintons.
Political markets rise in prominence
Political markets on Betfair are becoming very big business and this prominence within the marketplace reached a peak during the …
Manual or automated?
It was with interest this week that somebody pointed me to a blog post debating, or should I say justifying a stance on automated trading vs manual trading. Here is my angle on it: –
Financial markets
If you look to financial markets you have many aspects to it. High-frequency traders, slamming in positions in and out of the market to scrape a few cents per trade in as large a block as they can get through. A very specialist …
Quick Sand – Racing at Laytown
The races
Since 1868 Laytown has hosted the annual race meeting like no other. With no formal race course to host the equine competitors, these horses are raced on the beach. Laytown catches the attention of wide range of racing and non-racing goers each year.
Quite a few years ago I was captivated by the sight of horses running on the beach. It just seemed a bit different and interesting. So I set my sights on visiting this very unique …
US Open Tennis
How I learnt to trade Tennis
When I first started to trade Tennis, I needed a few things to be in place. One of those was an understanding of how odds move in Tennis match.
The reasoning was that if I knew that, I could pitch my opening and closing trades roughly where I wanted, where the market would move to. I could also start searching for ‘precursors’ to that key point in the match.
Also, with so many matches …
Manic Monday
It’s that day of the year that you either love or hate. The August bank holiday in the UK brings a whole bunch of racing, all on the same day. Then as we drift into the late afternoon, the US Open tennis gets underway. Not exactly a relaxing Bank Holiday!
Today there will be 483 runners over 51 races. This may seem like heaven for some, but it’s a nightmare for others. Quite a few races will attract little liquidity, …
Loadsamoney
I made a post on social media this week about an article that appeared in the Financial Times. I didn’t realise at the time of posting, that in the background there was a mention of a sizeable position then went through the market at Royal Ascot.
I only realised this, when people started questioning it shortly after the post. Asking how it was possible put £125k through a market?
Ordinary or extraordinary?
This wasn’t an ordinary market, though, this was …
Ebor or Ebore?
Summer racing isn’t over quite yet and today kicks of the Ebor meeting at York. I’ve traditionally done OK at this festival each year so I am looking for something above average this week.
The Ebor meeting can yield some good results, but nothing is ever guaranteed and this meeting can be a bit random at times so it’s probably not going to be all plain sailing. It should be better than what we have been seeing recently though.
Traditionally, …
Why Monday’s evenings are great markets
Something snatched my curiosity many years ago about trading the evening racing during the summer.
Anomaly
It always seemed pretty anomalous to me, but I would always feel that I would do well on a Monday evening, But Tuesdays would often be terrible. The rest of the week would vary depending upon the type of races and courses where the evening racing was being held.
Closer examination showed that Windsor was producing consistently above average results. So I came up …
Betfair Trading course – Learn to trade on Betfair
Check out the FREE Betfair trading course at the Online Academy: –
https://www.betangelacademy.com
Preamble
If you are looking at learning to trade, here is a way to get a really good start onto the first step of the trading ladder?
If you are coming from a gambling background, from matched betting or you are just intrigued by trading on sports. We can give you improved confidence in your initial trading journey by teaching you how to trade on Betfair. We’ve …
The footy season – My general approach
Now the football has started again, here is an insight into how I approach the whole season.
Off-season
During off season I am most active on research and new information for the next season. I gather a huge amount of data during the season and during the off-season I analyse it to take ideas forward to the next season. Same story this year.
I started analysing football matches in the 80’s, so I tend to focus on very specific problems …
False markets
How would you like some free money? A couple of clicks and you have instant profit on your screen (but maybe not your account!)
Book percentages
In an outright market than can only be one winner. That is why, if you add up all the odds and percentages, the market will settle on a book value of 100%. If you can lay above 100% then effectively your payout is only 100% but your profit will be anything above that.
If …
New Version of Bet Angel Professional
Always looking to take your trading further forward, we are pleased to announce a new version of Bet Angel.
You can download it from here: –
https://www.betangel.com/download/?product=BetAngelPro
The new version of Bet Angel is available for free to any existing users or trialists.
Key new features in this version
The main feature of this version is the introduction of Automation Signals giving automation a huge amount of new flexibility and control. It opens the door to many new possibilities. (For …
US PGA Golf
The ‘fourth major’ starts today in the US and should provide some opportunities. That said, I temper my enthusiasm as the Golf season wears on as history has shown that I do worse at each major as the year progresses. I don’t know exactly why that is, but I suspect as form lines get stronger, opportunities weaken.
The US PGA at first tee last year turned over £5m.
Some of the stats I’ve used here have come from the excellent …
Trading Good-Way
From a trading perspective I like multi day high quality meetings. They usually throw up some good opportunities and are a welcome addition to the month.
Goodwood
As you may know, these higher quality meetings produce extra volume and that can change the characteristics significantly. But don’t let Goodwood fool you into thinking it’s the same as a Royal Ascot or Cheltenham, it behaves very differently. Goodwood benefits from decent volume but it’s not as much as some major meetings. …
Making hay while the sun shines
An old phrase, but one that is equally applicable to trading at this time of year. As we are now in peak trading season, it’s time to harvest!
All about the execution
At this time of year, you have many opportunities, so I will stretch every sinew to do as much as I can. Everything else has to take a back seat, I’ll be a little less active on the blogging, fewer education events, less time for chit chat or …
Do Betfair markets reflect true opinion?
OK, for years the exchange mechanism has provided a very useful pricing mechanism. A careful aggregation of demand between people competing on a level playing field and it has provided a beautiful insight into the way free markets can work to mysteriously, accurately, price an event – in this case the prediction that something will win a sports event.
Changes
But we have been watching closely as the market has gradually decoupled from it’s long established core. What do we …
Trading the Open Golf
The British Open is different from other majors in that it is played on rotation schedule across a number of ‘links’ courses in the UK. Links courses are traditionally near the sea, are near or on dunes, have an uneven surface and a sandy soil. This is in stark contrast to a lot of ‘modern’ courses which are often set in parkland or woods and carefully manicured.
Weather and links golf
Links golf is very different from traditional golf in …
The losers game in action
We had an interesting mix of sport at the weekend. As I suggested, I had a full blooded session on Saturday, but didn’t little on Sunday and choose to enjoy the sport instead.
In a previous post I talked about the ‘losers game‘, we saw some this weekend.
Win by not losing and win by winning
A triad of interesting sport awaited on Sunday. First up the British Grand Prix, definitely a case of playing the losers game. …
British Grand Prix
After a really successful week, I’m ducking out of trading seriously today to watch some sport and do a few other things. I can’t rule out doing something at some point, the temptation can be great, but I’ll endeavour not to do much. I may trade the Euro 2016 final pre-off.
British Grand Prix stats
The British GP is curious in that, for a non-street circuit, the average outcome is quite variable from Grid to Finish. It’s the least certain …
An Ace is worth more than a point
When you read that statement it looks a little strange. How can one point be worth more than another? But statistics seem to show that’s true. With Murray about to line up against a big server in the Wimbledon final tomorrow lets look at the perfect serve.
Wimbledon
Wimbledon is the home of mighty servers, with alternate big servers booming the ball past their opponent. But what effect does it have? Some, it appears.
Over the last couple of years, …
The thin line between individual skill in Tennis
If you have been active on Wimbledon these past two weeks you would have seen some great matches. But you should have also seen something else, maybe without realising it.
Often you see an outsider really battle away at a heavy odds on favourite, maybe even winning the first set, but despite this, their odds don’t seem to come in that much. Why is that?
What’s the point?
The first thing to note is there are a lot of points …
Can you predict 1.01 defeats in Tennis?
Surface problems aside, the main news from Wimbledon so far was the shock’ defeat of Novak Djokovic.
Of course things are very easy in hindsight. But that said, short priced players are easily opposed when trading, more on that in a second . The thing that is surprising in these cases is to see somebody who traded near 1.01 before the off losing. That’s rare, but certainly not impossible.
1.01 Losers in Tennis
I shuffled through one of my database …
Trading the dead zone
It doesn’t happen often, but now and again all things conspire to produce a dead zone in the markets. For racing, we are currently in that dead zone.
Why does it happen?
Racing markets are seasonal and peak and trough around major meetings. The last was, obviously, Ascot. So you can get a trough before a major meeting, but you almost certainly get one after it.
Summer racing can be a bit weak as there are more meetings and the …
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