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.
Bottom of the barrel
The clocks are about to change, racing gets earlier in the day and the quality drops off. The flat turf season is just about expended and the jumps and all weather racing are popping up with increasing regularity. Its officially the start of the tough period!
OK, lets not get all gloomy, there are plenty of opportunities, just less of them and fewer quality ones. Also it’s all relative. I am sure anybody starting out, would be happy with what …
Sure fire winner
Good ole Curley leisure. Whenever I see that hat with red stripes I know we are in for a fun time. Sometimes unpredictable, but always fun. These horses have the potential to throw up some really good trades. Yesterday the horse ‘Sure fire’ that was the big gamble for the Curley yard. Its chance of winning the race improved a ‘theoretical’ 20%+ over the afternoon session. You could have either backed this horses or laid the original favourite for a …
A clear cut trading signal
I’m often asked what is a good trading signal. In fact, many factors make up a potential signal and your tolerance to risk and mindset make up another factor that contributes to whether you can act on what you see or not. I quite like manic markets that seem out of control, but that’s because I can often see order in disorder, I’m tuned to that. Some people just can’t stand those markets. But there are some clear cut trading …
Betfair – Evening Standard article
I went into town last Tuesday evening to meet up with a friend for meal out and to catch up on things since we last met. We spent most of the evening talking about markets and volatility. Gold prices, house prices, stock prices, commodity prices, horse prices! It was great to have some quality time, enjoy a nice meal and to debate various aspects of the markets.
As per usual, I only just managed to get back to Waterloo to …
Welcome back Cheltenham
Delighted to see decent cards at Newmarket and Cheltenham today, with the champions meeting underway at Newmarket I am hopeful for a busy weekend. All the racing is on Racing UK today so that is helpful as wel. The coverage on this channel is so much better than on ‘At the adverts’.
There is a good mixture of different types of racing this weekend so you should be able to witness most types of markets over the next two days …
Retrograde motion
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 …
So close….
Almost a blockbuster start on Saturday when Lady Jinks, priced at 1000, almost won the first race at Chepstow.
If I make something on a race, I’ll often put a little on the outsiders, generally in the jumps season, in the hope of catching a big one. In this race Lady Jinks put in a great show and surprised everybody by shortening to as little as 5’s before fluffing the last fence. It was agonising to watch as she just …
Webinar this evening
I am running a webinar this evening, to register use the following link: –
https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/445915041
We aim to start around 17:30 but I may be a little late as I didn’t read the racing card correctly when I scheduled the webinar. Sorry for that!
Free live streaming – Ukraine vs. England
Lots of noise in the press about this match and the fact you can’t view it unless you pay to view at www.ukrainevsengland.com. However Bet365 appear to have done a customer acquisition deal with the providers, which means that if you open a Bet365 account and fund it you can also watch it free. I’ve had a few suggestions come through the inbox for other ways to view this match for free. But the Bet365 option seems the best, …
Betfair Aussie license set to expire soon
With Betfair’s Aussie license set to expire in 15 months time, the positioning and negotiation is well underway by the look of it. It could be a seminal moment, as agreement on a structure and new license will determine how the exchange model plays out down under. With the announcement from the French it seems widespread acceptance of exchanges is still someway from being achieved.
Full story on this link.
Ten pound trader – First week
I now realise I have two mistakes in the last week. First, last night I made a classic error in racking up charges, quite easy when trying to trade on two accounts. Second, over the last week my stake is rising too fast in line with my bank. Several Bet Angel users had spotted this already, but it only really sunk in for me when I kept getting ‘account exposure’ errors trading at higher odds! Ho hum, we are all …
French say non!
The French government has effectively outlawed the online betting exchange Betfair after passing an amendment to new gambling laws. Under a surprise last-minute amendment, betting exchanges such as Betfair that allow punters to lay as well as place bets were excluded from the legislation in a move that the company described as “discriminatory”.
Full story by clicking this link.
Opportunity
https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00n5b92/Micro_Men/
Emjoyed watching ‘Micro Men’ on BBC four this evening. It was a real blast from the past. Despite being pretty young, I too was caught up in the boom during this momentous time in the UK technology industry. While you may wonder how this is related to what I now do, it was back then that I picked up my fathers football pools coupon and started examining games of chance. I wanted a better way to fill out a …
Lack of draws hit Ladbrokes
Full management statement by clicking this link.
Ladbrokes reported 15% lower revenues. They blamed poor margins on horse racing and “exceptionally low” margins on football bets, due to the low number of Premier League draws. In the first 66 games in the Premier League season, only been four draws, just 6% of the total. This compares with the five-year average of 25%.
Ladbrokes are looking to cut their near on £1bn in debt by raising £275m from shareholders, cutting …
Ten pound trader – Day five
As predicted Monday was a tough one, but I failed to predict that I would actually try to trade it with TPT. What a fool, I shouldn’t have bothered as I initially indicated. TPT made only a tiny amount on Monday but it was still 5% of stake. Yesterday was a bit better and boosted the stake to up to £21.58 overall for today a gain of 15%.
So, in five days we have gone from a stake of £10 …
Making a book, on a book
Caught this little piece on the booker prize fiction and though it would make an interesting read for you. Generally, in old days, most bookmakers priced markets to spilt opinion. That way they get a balanced book. The problem all bookmakers have, is that a lot of punters just lump on a short priced favourites. Looks like we have another in this market!
https://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/8287587.stm
Commerçant de dix livres
Ten pound trader joined me for the Arc yesterday and shuffled in with a £2.23 profit, so his stakes go up to £17.81 today.
It was a very impressive run by ‘Sea the stars’. I think each sport needs its highlights and I racing appears to have found a new hero. It should add more interest to the racing markets. Unfortunately we are about to go head long into the jumps season, but at least we have the Denman / …
Ten pound trader – Day two
Using maximum stakes of £11.76, ten pound trader managed to make £3.73 yesterday. That’s represents a 31.72% return on stake size on the day. Sounds impressive! Well it is, but it isn’t, but I hope my point will come across over the course of this post.
If I asked if you could return the same percentage on the day, you would probably be hesitant. But if I asked you if you could make 11p a race you would probably have …
Steady start for ten pound trader
OK, £1.76 may not seem a great deal of money, but remember we are starting with a trading stake of only £10. This means that on day one we achieved a return on our stake of 17.60%. We can now raise our stakes to the grand sum of £11.76 for day two. I have included the full P&L so you can see how we made our £1.76. Lots of little amounts, but they eventually all add up to our final …
Ten pound trader – Day one
After a great September I had considered posting up the P&L for last month and also the last three months in total as they are absolute stonkers. But as I went to prepare the image for upload I paused for thought.
I guess they show what is possible, but having been around for so long you would suspect that I should be able to pull in something special, especially with bigger amounts of capital to hand. So I had another …
September
September was a cracking month, even considering the end of the summer racing. It turned out to be my second best month of the year and I also went on that fantastic run of 82 winners in a row. I doubt I will repeat that feat for a little while!
Thanks to the lack of races, it wasn’t a record month. But it was a bumper one and this was helped by my improving strike rate. The last three months …
Racing wants more cash
Really very interesting piece on the racing industry yesterday on the BBC web site. You can view the article here: –
https://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/8280227.stm
You can download the entire Deloitte report by clicking this text, it’s a 7Mb file.
I won’t attempt to summarise or make an opinion on the report but I do think they are slightly off with their figures. Amounts wagered and the levy amount can’t really be compared across such different markets, but I do concede that …
That was weird
Some odd betting patterns at Warwick today, Abhainn was unexpectedly backed before the off from 8’s into 3’s. You can see from the price chart that the price asked was very definite. At the time I thought, ‘That was weird’. But you are never going to get upset at laying something for much less than you expected. That was only half the story, in running £10k was matched at 2.36. It won!
Congratulations Scott
You have probably come across Scott’s blog, https://www.sportismadeforbetting.com
It’s always an interesting read. I am hopeful of a non sports post on their soon as Scott’s wife has just given birth. Just wanted to register my congratulations.
Better with ten men
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 …
Are cats good at trading?
I did a post on rats trading, so I had to share this users post on the forum with you: –
“Don’t know if this has happened to anyone else, but was trading a 3rd favourite today, odds of 8 – 8.2. I just couldn’t get it right. Ended up losing £11 on the race before the 5 minute to go warning. At this I decided to have a break and went to the shop to get some fags. …
Manipulators may be good
Saw this interesting piece on Betfair’s website which talks about the role of market manipulators and how they make the market more efficient, not less, through their practices.
There was a post recently on this blog about spoofers that fits well into this piece. I guess that what ever market you are in, you are always going to get people trying to influence prices. I think this probably works better in some markets than others, so it’s probably a skill …
In esteemed company
Just learn that one of the local pubs is hosting an official party conference this week. I may pop along to hear what will probably be some amusing policy decisions.
Hustle
Was this a hustle or just a case of fat fingers? On Wednesday we saw another one of those odd moments when the price on something comes crashing in for no apparant reason. I posted up some examples on the blog before where I got something matched at tiny prices that should have been 1000. On this race we saw something matched at 10’s that really should have been 20’s, not just once but twice!
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