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.
Champions league profits
With the tension rising ahead of tonight’s critical Champions league match, there will be loads of betting interest and massive volume on tonights match. One way you can take advantage of this volume is by scalping the pre-off markets.
Big matches like this exhibit very little price movement before the off, this means there are ideal scalping opportunity. In this trade from last weeks fixture, I managed to get some money out of the draw and Man Utd but had …
Arsenal vs Man Utd.
What an interesting prospect we have tonight!
Thanks to the vagaries of the aggregate score system you would think that somebody must score to go through tonight. Well I suppose it could go to extra time and penalties but you would hazard a guess that both teams would look to seal it before that. Arsenal need to overturn a 1-0 deficit, which doesn’t look impossible and Man U know if they score Arsenal will need three goals.
This seems to …
Don’t just feel the market, see it
When you are looking to trade a market it helps to have as much information in front of you as possible. When I first started trading I got a good feel for the market, but I didn’t think that was enough, I wanted to see it. So when we first designed Bet Angel we put charting in straight away as this immediately gave us a better view of the market. It also was a boon for swing traders and they …
1.01 to win, Before the off!
A bit of a classic today in the first at Thirsk. A drifting second favourite at Thirsk played up and didn’t load, not usual but it was only a four runner field. When the SP was returned after the adjustment it returned at just 1.01. Luckily the horse won but a lot of people must have been very worried having effectively backed something at such remarkably small odds to win. The other odd thing about this is that according to …
What’s a guinea?
May brings us several highlights on the sporting calendar. The first major flat classic takes place at Newmarket, the guineas meeting. “What’s a guinea” I hear you ask? For the more curious here is the description on Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guinea_coin.
This meeting covers the full weekend so if you want to give this high profile event a go, make sure you book both days off!! A few years ago I didn’t book time off and ended up trading the Guinea’s …
Biggest swings on Thursday
I mentioned in a previous post that Thursday was a volatile day. I had a look at my data and extracted the following list that I thought you may find interesting. This details the tick movements from the high price each horse traded to it’s low. While it’s unreasonable to suggest you may catch the exact top and bottom of a market it is a good illustration of the range of movement you see. I have ranked them by tick …
When it’s scary to scalp!
When I started this blog my first ever post was about three club monte, you can see the original blog entry here. Since I started trading, nearly nine years ago, my view has always been that there is a strategy for every market. Recognise the right one and it’s a breeze, well much easier anyhow. Use the wrong one and it will make your life very hard indeed.
If you looked at yesterdays races before they started you could …
Chaos at Folkstone
Not sure I have seen a race like this for some time. Two jockeys chucked before the start on the way to post. Horses run to post. Another horse chucks a jockey at the start. All the horses load when one plays up and gets stuck under the gate. All horses come out and are reloaded, another horse fails to run!
5 out 10 horses played up of which two were withdrawn, not sure I have ever seen that before!…
Champions league – Past performance
When you read a financial sales letter or advertisment, they always put that little caveat in that “past performance is not an indicator of future performance”, how apt in the current environment!!! You may be interested to know this often afflicts the betting market also.
It seems to be a classic case of placing too much reliance on past activity. What you often tend to find is that if something unusual has happened recently people think it has a higher …
Laying low
Never one to miss an opportunity to bet or analyse a sporting event, four years ago I was watching the London marathon with my laptop beside me recording and betting on the event. Being a former marathon runner I knew that front running a long distance race was a mighty task and I thought that maybe after her Athen’s exploits this race could determine how Paula Radcliffes running career went from here. I expected her to front run but expected …
Ouch!
Not having a great day today, but Leicester just compounded that with a £126 loss. I was fine on the ‘feature’ race if not making much money. Therefore, I held my position in the market till right on the last moment. At that point the price shot away and I suddenly had a big loss on the cards. Looks like somebody who had faster pictures took advantage of them and walked away with my money. This on a day when …
A marathon, not a sprint
It’s the London marathon this weekend and I’ll be there, but not running. Just watching and cheering on a few friends. For most of my life, trainers were an ever present part of my lugguge where ever I travelled. In my time I ran over 200 long distance road races all over the place and two London marathons, one competitively and one for charity. In 1996 I found myself in the right place at the right time and made it …
An easy 40% profit
You may remember this post from 1st April where I felt this was a clear opportunity: –
https://www.betangel.com/blog_wp/2009/04/01/going-down-out-or-both/
Today this bet came in with news that they will be deducted 10 points.
https://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/teams/s/southampton/8014811.stm
Well done to those that followed the bet, but it couldn’t have been many as the price has stayed at 1.40’s or so for ages! I have to say this was a pretty easy spot given the number of clubs that have gone into administration in recent …
Budget hit for gamblers
Bingo club owners amongst other operates in the UK were miffed yesterday when the budget lumped more tax on an already highly taxed sector. It’s likely the net tax increase was put in the budget because most of the electorate will not be directly aware of the increases.
Full story here: –
Betfair Partners with Cricket Board
Last week England & Wales Cricket Board, or ECB, named Betfair its official betting partner in addition to being an official betting partner of The Test Match Grounds.
Brokered by Essentially Group, the partnership allows Betfair to place the ECB logo on items and also includes perimeter boards, tri-vision sight screen and replay screen advertising, product sampling and promotional activity at the eight Test match grounds across English cricket.
“The npower Ashes Series will be the biggest sporting event of …
Letter from Darley Stud
It’s nice to know our efforts are appreciated by the racing industry. Sponsorship is an altruistic process for a small organisation like us. We certainly don’t expect to see instant rewards, but it’s great to know our efforts are taken the right way and received in the manner it was intend. Hopefully it has also raised the profile of trading on exchanges for everybody.
We received a letter last week from Darley about our recent sponsorship. It’s nice to see …
Long term trading using trailing stops
Further to my last post on the blog if you are looking to catch longer, bigger market moves, then this is a useful set up to do exactly that. The great thing about this type of trade is you don’t need to actively manage it much. This means you can do this on multiple markets all at the same time and Bet Angel Guardian will look after this for you while you get on with your normal trading. Give it …
Un-shifting sands?
I spend hours watching the markets, even if I am not in them. People often ask me how they have changed.
Over the nine years I have been in the markets, they have changed a lot. Curiously though, markets are not that different from the recent past, though I guess they are more competititve than a few years ago. We noticed a shift in 2005 when we launched Bet Angel, I’m not going to accept credit for that though. It …
A classic case for lay the draw?
Both champions league matches tonight are interesting from the viewpoint that somebody HAS to score. Liverpool have a mountain to climb after their comprehensive defeat at home and they must score to have any chance. They have nothing to lose. Much depends on whether Chelsea kill the game off or simply pack men behind the ball. I’m not sure what Hiddinks instructions will be? It’s quite possible they will just try to frustrate Liverpool and then catch them on the …
Mixed up Monday
Ah, it’s that time of the year again when you are faced with the inpenetrable bank holiday markets. About a billion low quality races all going off at the same time! Often there is so much clashing and problems that next to nothing can be easily traded and if you can, you may not actually see the start itself. A risk in itself.
This particular Monday has never been a favourite of mine and two years ago I pulled in …
Electrifying end to the US Masters
Already green I am sat down enjoying the final day of the masters and there is some fantastic golf being played. It could be a really exciting finish if this level of play is kept up. Great stuff.
US Masters golf – Todd Hamilton
Hamilton will always be remembered for winning the UK open at odds of 1000. In the US Masters Hamilton was also priced at 1000 and is now 60’s. Any money placed on Hamilton at those starting odds would now be worth a greened up total of 15.67 times your indivdual stake on Hamilton!!! Food for thought!
Good from bad
As I’ve mentioned before, having a positive outlook on things is always beneficial. When I was young, I used to think this was a motivational trick, but after a few years it began to dawn on me that always having a positive outlook was a useful trick. You tend to find in life that unexpected things happen for good and bad quite often. If you aren’t ready for the upside you will often miss it. Friday and Saturday was a …
Masters first day
As expected Tiger drifted a bit before finishing strongly. I say a bit, at level stakes he moved 200% and now he is at much shorter prices. A good opportunity to green out, he looks in good form.
If you had dutched the ‘favourites’, all under 50’s including Tiger in this case. You would have LOST 11% of your stake value at the close of day one. In contrast if you had backed those ranging from 100-500 you would have …
US Masters on the Iphone
Just downloaded the US Masters Iphone app and I must say this is superb. A lot of other sports events could take a leaf out of the US Masters book and produce a similar app. No excuse now for not keeping in touch with all aspects of the tournament. Great stuff!
Master the masters
While golf isn’t a main sport for me I do like to have a play around at some of the bigger tournaments. Here are a couple of hints for you.
It’s almost impossible for the favourite NOT to drift at some point during the tournament. So laying the favourite is a good strategy. Tiger woods always makes me nervous, but when you look at the game of golf you would need the favourite to have a perfect round and no …
Suspended in dis-belief
Despite my nervousness, as expressed in a previous post, I actually did pretty well last Saturday, in fact it wasn’t the delays on Betfair that caught me out in the end however. It was the late suspension of the 15:05! I already had an open lay bet in the market and closed the position as expected before the off. In fact I had several positions that I closed together.
When the market failed to appear in play I took screen …
Champions league ratings
This is what the market thinks of this evening’s matches. Always remember, such is the variability of football that these represent average figures. It’s always going to be a numbers game: –
Villareal vs Arsenal & Man Utd vs Porto
Despite Wengers “we are the underdogs” cry. The market doesn’t think so pricing Arsenal for the win. The market ‘thinks’ there will be on average 2.24 goals in the Arsenal game and 2.60 in the Man Utd game. Man U …
Treacle trading
I can’t remember a day when I was so nervous about using the exchanges.
On Saturday, Grand National day, my biggest concern was with the stability of Betfair itself. As the day wore on and we came to the traditional 3pm pinch point, things were slower but bearable for me. Speaking to some other traders and customers though, they didn’t feel comfortable with the delays and quit. I guess the strain on Betfair was so high that delays were inevitable.…
Those nightmare moments!
Every now and again you get these odd nightmare moments that you don’t wish on anybody. Last weekend my main connection froze for a short period, but it wasn’t a problem as I always have a back up running. On this occasion though , the lock up occured right at the point just before the off and I was caught cold. By the time I had turned to my back up connection , only seconds later, I’d dropped £120 or …
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