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.
Roddick questions Twitter ruling
Interesting piece today about the use of twitter by Tennis players. I think reading comments can be pretty useful but it seems the authorities are getting a little nervous with players comments. It’s amazing what a following more popular twitters can have. Roddick has nearly 110k followers and Serena Williams nearly 1m!! We are also on Twitter but aren’t quite as popular, yet!
https://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/tennis/8228398.stm
New market overview screen
Anybody who has been trading the market for any length of time will know the importance of ‘framing’ the market. A sports market is significantly different from, say, the stock market as a sports market will always gravitate to 100%, the stock market could go anywhere! In a sports market it’s impossible for anything to move in any direction of any length of time before a corrective sets in and pushes the market back to 100%. With this is mind …
Frustrating pt2
Actually the day didn’t turn out too bad in the end, despite the quality! It was a good finish to the evening racing which now predominately switches to the all weather courses. Ffos las broke another great winning streak so I think I will have to wave bye bye to the chance of beating my longest winning run this year.
Watched the Barca vs Shaktar match and it was incredibly dull, I should have done something more useful in hindsight. …
Barcelona vs Shaktar
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 …
Frustrating
Logged on this morning to see Hamilton washed out on the last proper evening racing of the ‘summer’. A disappointing end to the evening racing. Having had a pretty positive week I was hoping to finish in style this week but it looks like I will have to settle for a more mundane performance. That said, it does look like I will hit my highest ever strike rate this month so it’s nice to end the summer on a bang.…
Inspiration
It’s funny where you can get inspiration from. I’ve been meaning to watch the film ‘Man on wire’ for a little time and finally got around to watching it.
It’s an amazing story with a lot of depth in it. It’s very inspirational as it shows that you should always us the word ‘impossible’, with the greatest of care. Well worth a watch.
I don’t know how many times people have told me that something is impossible or not realistic …
Arsenal vs Celtic
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 …
Make hay
Never was a phrase so true as in the horse racing markets than, ‘Make hay while the sun shines’ literally. During the summer we have wall to wall racing and a lot of quality then as we transition through to late August into September that just falls away.
The evening racing grinds to a halt and a card that could provide a top up to a good day or a serve you a get out of jail card, suddenly isn’t …
Quiet end to Ebor
The Ebor meeting closed with a quiet day, no fireworks or anything particularly special, but it’s been a good meeting.
I made a couple of cock ups today. Went too aggressive on one market and couldn’t turn it around when it went against me, but I did manage to restrict the loss to only -£50. Then I completely messed up the last and lost £120, not the ideal way to end, but the other races were OK. I managed to …
Picking up speed
Yesterday was a big improvement on the first day of the York. I was desperately trying to top £400 for the Ebor but just couldn’t quite pull it off in the end. Trading conditions this week seem to be ‘good to firm’. It looks to be shaping up for a good August, which is great, as I’m keen to see a good end to the summer racing season. Things go downhill from here!
Monday saw the end of the evening …
Solid start
Pleased to see Ebor get off on the right foot. Nothing spectacular and I could have done better, but a really steady start and best of all it felt ‘nice’, so I will put my foot down now. It has lifted my spirits and with the evening racing still to come I’m looking forward forward to a bagging decent day and extending that out into the week, hopefully.
I thought the markets were pretty steady today, no surprises and the …
Good week assured
There are not many weeks when I can start by saying I will definitely thrash last year, but this week I can say that.
Last year we lost York to the weather, endless rain and then some. It put paid to York’s big week. You can read the full story and my comments on last August by clicking here.
It wasn’t a fun time and I am really looking forward to getting stuck in this week, more so because my …
Bunny ears
Couldn’t stop laughing when Usain Bolt put “Bunny ears” on his compatriots’ head in the moment of glory on the podium this evening. Since I taught my kids this prank, many a photo has featured this gesture. I did some research: –
https://www.museumofhoaxes.com/hoax/weblog/comments/the_bunny_ears_prank_a_history/
Or the more amusing: –
https://tomhoehn.1000words.kodak.com/default.asp?item=508833
That web site!
I’ve received a few emails about the exchange secrets site. I would just like to point out that I have nothing to do with this site, so I can’t comment on it or it’s contents. I do not have and never have had any involvement.
The first I knew about this site was at the same time as you, so I’ve no particular information that will be of interest. I also haven’t seen any of the type of information that …
Reactions
When you are busy on a market, especially scalping, your eyes should be intently watching the screen. Your brain should be carefully analysing everything in front of you. But it’s your reactions that will gently click that mouse to swing a trade into action. Well that’s the idea anyhow.
I had an interesting test of my reactions this weekend when I nearly had a car crash. It’s amazing how quickly your brain and body can react when required! Food for …
Montreal Murray
An interesting match. Del Potro sneaked the first, Murray the second, both on tie breaks, and then Murray trounced a tired looking Del Petro in the last. At potentially 1-1 in a three set match a tie break can bring some really significant opportunties and that was proved once again today. Murray traded around the 3’s at worse but after leveling the match his price crashed back into the starting price of 1.50. A quick and brutal swing. For a …
Roddick vs Del Potro
Roddick or Del Potro? No idea to be honest, both could easily win. But the interesting thing about this match is that if it’s a tight one you will get a massive swing in the final set. I’m up early in the morning so I can’t trade it, but if you are trading it this match has some potential.
Federer crashes out
With Nadal and Federer losing at the Montreal Masters, Andy Murray now has a great chance to pop up one place in the rankings to world number two.
Federer’s match was quite remarkable being two breaks up and 5-1 up in the final set, but still losing. Scott did a good post on the market on his blog. At 5-1 up in the final set I calculated his odds at 99.7% or basically 1.00, so no particular value …
$100k Soccer challenge
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 …
Where has all the money gone?
Can’t help but notice that volumes on the horse racing have often been very poor of late. This evening I was watching the ‘feature’ race of the evening a grade two race at Newmarket. Volume failed to reach £400k and most of that was on the favourite, that’s pretty poor, even for an evening race. There is also way too much bias on the favourites now in terms of volume. Volume on the favourites has always been dis-proportionate to the …
Friendlies
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 …
Betfair to change premium charge
During the forum chat with Betfair on Monday evening it transpired that Betfair are going to change the premium charge. Obviously not to traders advantage by the look of it. Join the debate on the forum.
Back at the start of this year we opened up a twitter feed. We haven’t made full use of this yet but will do soon. If you want to follow us, here is the URL: –
Coincidences
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 …
First weeks bring opportunity
The first and last few weeks of the football season has traditionally been a great opportunity to profit from the unexpected. By unexpected, I mean the lack of form apparent in each league. At the start of the season, you typically get one team that comes from nowhere to outperform and the collapse of an expected performer. Of course the problem is spotting either.
‘There is no limit to what can be acheived if no single person gets the credit’…
Miserable
Not me, the markets. Evening racing never has as much volume as the afternoon racing, but this evening it is very poor. Much lower than even my revised expectations. I don’t know what has caused this but it’s been hard to get any decent money matched this evening. Would have been much better enjoying a beer down the pub!
Edit : I just checked last year and it was exactly the same! How curious, I guess there could be an …
My quest
I was sat here this evening trading on auto pilot. Some times the markets are like that, yesterday wasn’t but this evening was. I decided to fire up YouTube and watched, not some related content, but some videos on sub atomic particles, very deep. It reminded me of what drives me in everything I do. A thirst for knowledge and understanding.
I seriously doubt that CERN will call me up to help search for the higgs boson any time soon, …
Information in a price
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 …
Football is back
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 …
William Hill to move to Gibraltar
As discussed by Scott , Will Hill have confirmed this morning that they are going to move their business to Gib. Full press release available by clicking this text.
With the government keen for tax revenue and the horse racing industry desperate for levy revenue this is a bitter blow. But also, this is likely to trigger a move by competitors to follow suit. At the end of the day if some people are paying less tax and levy, …
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