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.
I predict a draw
Hold on, haven’t I posted that before? Has this happened before? Err… yes at the end of each Italian football season. I’m wise to it now!
Part of my preparation for the weekends football fixtures, I suck in all the matches via Bet Angel into a spreadsheet and a couple of pre-set formula’s point out areas of interest. Last night it threw up Padova vs Atalanta as ‘odd’. You can see why on the following graph. The volume of matched …
Doing a Moonee
Tuned in to the William Reid stakes this morning at Moonee Valley in Australia to check on the market and progress of the best sprinter in the world at the moment, Black Caviar. I doubt if many people outside of the UK have paid much attention to this horse but having seen the odds on it get shorter in each successive race I think it’s obvious something special is going on here.
Even at the remarkably short odds she was …
Snooze to lose
I quite like novelty bets as they are difficult to price, but I missed this one yesterday. In hindsight an opportunity missed!
https://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/
Ken Clarke netted a punter a decent return at 16/1 by officially / unofficially falling asleep during the budget speech yesterday. Some of these other more esoteric bets didn’t come in.
Should I green up?
People often ask me if it is worth greening, or redding, up; hedging your profit so you win what ever the result. In a word yes, but a longer description follows.
First off the market is very efficient, so in essence you could argue that it makes no difference. If you hedge you need to place another lay order. The hedge value is calculated by laying off the profit at the current lay price, thereby dividing your profit by the …
Bump..
Now Cheltenham is firmly behind us and the champions league football pauses for a few weeks, it’s time to come back to earth with a bump. On the racing front, the weeks before and after Cheltenham are often starkly different, so it’s time to dig deep and stay out of trouble.
I’ll be adopting a cautious approach in the coming week and not trying to push too hard to find an opportunity. Doing that gives you a tendency to look …
Great finish to Cheltenham
“Phew, that’s it then”. That was my feeling at the end of play today. An exhausting but rewarding Cheltenham. The gold cup was an excellent race and one that lived up to expectations, it’s really nice to enjoy the racing. We will be brought back done to earth for sure today! I have never had a good Saturday on Cheltenham week. If I do manage to pull a good day out of the hat, I’ll be in touching distance of …
Perspective
A better day again at Cheltenham so I will upgrade myself to a 9/10 for yesterday’s performance. I continued my strategy of trading on both exchanges this week. I now have a headache, it’s a bit intense!
I’m looking for a 10/10 tomorrow, but I think that’s a bit of an ask; but you never know!
It’s funny, while results can look impressive year on year, you often forget how you managed to dig a result out. This year is …
All green on St Patricks day?
Yesterday was an interesting day at Cheltenham. I did OK and, combined across both exchanges, I actually did pretty well so I’ll give myself at 8/10. Volumes on Betfair are almost exactly the same as in previous years, it’s very flat.
I have now gathered enough information to determine what is and isn’t working at Cheltenham. First off, the markets are much ‘slower’ than usual, getting an order matched is a painful experience; more painful that previous years for sure. …
Something odd
Hmm, I’ll give myself a 6/10 for my efforts on the first day of Cheltenham.
The markets were not particularly easy today, but I didn’t do a great job; in comparison to other people I know anyhow. Still chucked in some good numbers, but as others did a better job I have to mark myself down as a ‘could do better’.
The first day of Cheltenham is generally spent now looking at how things have changed since last year. I’ll …
Efficient Cheltenham
Just had a browse at the first few markets at Cheltenham and it’s amazing how small the book percentage is on a lot of them. Some of the books are only just over 100% and this makes it fantastic value for backers or people dutching the market.
I’ll be gathering data all week, so I’ll let you know if I spot anything interesting. But that’s the first thing to jump out at me this morning.
Detailed Cheltenham preview
As I mentioned in the newsletter, register now for GX Magazine and get a detailed preview of the Cheltenham festival to download today. There is a multi page spread in the magazine which contains information from us full of key stats, hints and tips.
Sign up here: –
https://www.gx-world.com/uk/register.html
Betfair offer an explanation
Betfair have offered an explanation of the significant outage yesterday, to view it click on the following link: –
https://promotions.betfair.com/explanation
They have promised to attempt to do any further work on the site for the whole of next week.
What a joke!
Just two days before Cheltenham we find ourselves facing another Betfair outage. Not just that, but this is the second day in a row that the site has been offline. This is the worst period for reliability I can remember on Betfair.
Some years ago Betfair used to boast about how many transactions they did per day, but that took a back seat when the focus turned to reducing the load on the system, which no doubt reduced costs also. …
Europa success for Liverpool?
I must admit to being sceptical when ‘King Kenny’ was appointed as Liverpool manager. I felt that after many years out it would be difficult to adjust to the modern game. However, Dalgleish has had a mercurial affect on Liverpool’s confidence and at the top level of a sport that is critical. People perform with similar skill at the highest levels and confidence is a BIG factor.
Last Sunday’s defeat of Man Utd will have given them a real boost …
£1.4m win for racing punter
Great scenes at Exeter today when a tote jackpot punter landed over £1.4m when Lupita won in the 17:00.
The Jackpot had not been won since Fontwell on February 27 and rose from £368,373 to £989,008 – the ninth-highest turnover day in Jackpot history – at Ffos Las on Monday. The biggest pool in history remains £2,308,852 at Haydock on August 5 last year.
Betfair switches to Gibraltar
Betfair released an interim management statement today detailing the following results: –
Overall Core Betfair revenue up 6.2% on Q3 FY10 to £77.0m
Core Betfair Sports revenue up 8.6% to £56.6m
Core Betfair Games revenue up 8.2% to £14.3m
Core Betfair Poker revenue down 20.5% to £5.2m
Further down the statement they slipped in the following announcement: –
Betfair announces that, with effect from 9 March 2011, its Betting Exchange will operate under a Gibraltar licence.…
Tangerine time
Interesting match this evening with Blackpool up against Chelsea. It must seem a long time since Blackpool charged up the league with some notable wins against high profile opposition. Only a couple of points above the drop zone, their focus now must be on the bottom of the league, rather than the top.
I’m not ashamed to say that Blackpool was one of my favourites to get relegated this season. Nothing against Blackpool, who have been very entertaining this season, …
The secret to good decisions
Was tipped off by somebody the other day about this key bit of scientific advice. So next time you make a bad decision you now know what to do!
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/
Safety in numbers…
An overlooked strategy on betting exchanges is spreading your risk across a number of selections and / or markets. A lot of people think this involves more risk but I’d actually argue it involves less.
By doing more you increase your chance of a return and minimise the pain of a loss. This is strategy that can be applied in a number of ways but can most commonly be applied across, say, a number of football matches before the start. …
Premier league darts
I know I’ve mentioned this a few times recently but the darts markets are growing on me rapidly for a number of reasons. Generally it is because matches take place over a short period of time but display characteristics similar to other markets.
Last night we saw Phil Taylor take on RayVan Barneveld and there were two obvious trades. Taylor got off to a good start and was worth backing from the off. 6-0 up at the break and trading …
February
Last month was pretty quiet. When we are in depths of winter I often take some time off and prepare for the busy summer season and so it was last month.
Summer is so important in sports markets that time off during this busy period is tricky, in the winter much less so. It is important to have a break, so winter is when I tend to do that. That said, a good friend of mine is getting married in …
Serena williams rushed to hospital
News just coming in that Serena williams has been hospitalised with a pulmonary embolism. Puts things into perspective doesn’t it?
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1362217/
Lift off!
After many years of trying I finally managed to see the space shuttle lift off last week. The scheduled launch of the shuttle last week coincided with a quiet time in the sports calendar and half term in the UK, so it was too good an opportunity to miss. The kids headed off to the theme parks, while Dad headed off to the coast in the hope of finally catching a shuttle launch. After a hold around T-5 the launch …
Doing darts
Sat here the other evening watching the premier league darts and suddenly realised what I am looking at is actually pretty similar to other sports in the way it is scored and played. The format of the premier league darts is also interesting with the introduction of the draw.
The underlying feeling and the way the odds move is fairly similar to other sports and can surely be traded in a similar manner. A huge benefit of course, is that …
Accidents and evolution (Part three)
Never one for rhetoric; I presented a similar case, to those I have described in the prior posts, at a talk I did last year. Using a similar model we followed how that can evolve from a base set of criteria and environments to something more complex. The following two snap shots are from a control where we work at random and an evolved model a few generations on.
I reckon I could replicate the performance of the two at …
Accidents and evolution (Part two)
So how did my view on evolution, natural selection and Darwin translate into market strategy?
There are many ways to apply it, but first you need to start. Your first strategy is to have no strategy, just poke around at random. This gives you a control sample to work with, a base metric from which you can build your activity. You should regularly revisit your control to ensure the base you are working from is still the same as when …
Accidents and evolution (Part one)
Some time ago, when I was young, I was accosted by somebody on the streets of Guildford. He was trying to challenge my view of the world and get me to sign up to their cult or something. He followed me down the street and asked me if I really believed the world, everything we see, was created by accident. Without hesitation I replied, YES!
When I was young I had asked myself the same question. So I went to …
Not again!
Got back to my desk on Sunday evening to see that Betfair had been offline again on Sunday afternoon. My commiserations for anybody that was caught out. I had some spreadsheets running but, fortunately, they were not completely caught out; only a minor hit. I am relatively inactive at the moment as the February is a good period to take time out with the family. I work very hard in the Summer, so this time of the year is when …
FA Cup
Most of this weekends ties look to have a certain amount of inevitability about them. You would expect to see most of the favourites see off the weaker teams, but I do fancy the look of Stoke vs Brighton.
It has a nice set up to it with Stoke doing ‘OK’ in the Premiership but Brighton going great guns in league one. I reckon the seagulls will really be up for this match and will have the belief they can …
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