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.
One for the conspiracy theorists!
Was it my imagination or did the live TV feed from the Everton vs Liverpool FA Cup match break down right at the critical moment? One minute the match was dragging on to a 0-0 draw and penalties. The next minute the feed is lost and we see adverts and the like. During the ‘outage’ Everton score. Goodness knows how many minutes without a goal and then an outage in the seconds a goal goes in. A coincidence I am …
Gamble landed
Whenever I see the red, white and black colours of a Curley leisure horse on the card, I know it’s going to be an interesting market. It was no different tonight at Kempton. Tusculum was ‘backed off the boards’ and eventually accounted for 76% of the total volume in the market. You would think most of the other horses only had one leg or something. Anyhow, Tusculum won.
Hardest speech ever
As you know I have done a lot of public speaking in my time. My most nervous moment was probably addressing the chair in front of 20,000 people in Nebraska. However that paled into insignificance when I stood up to say a final goodbye to my Dad at his funeral yesterday.
I think I was quite fortunate to have had plenty of time to say goodbye to him, but it was still a very difficult moment. I had a sheet …
January wrap up
Being contrary
Classic final underway?
Currently watching some great tennis this morning at the Aussie open in Melbourne. I’d be happy to hit just one of these shots when I play tennis, let alone on each stroke. It’s generating some great trading opportunities as well. Unfortunately I have promised to take the kids swimming so I am likely to miss out.
As an example, when Nadal broke Federer in the first set the price moved out a fair bit, but this also left Nadal to …
Foggy trading
The draw
I was going to post about Liverpool vs Everton but never got the chance to do so. So here is a reverse appraisal. As most people know a local derby is always a tight affair and perhaps a match you would expect to end in a draw, as neither team want to lose.
Unlike a lot of myths this is actually generally true. I did some research a fair time ago and realised that there was a link between distance …
Classic battle underway in Melbourne
With the weather messing around with the horse racing again its great to see a real battle under way in the Aussie open Tennis. The two Spaniards just don’t want to give up on this one and it’s gone to a fifth set. With such a close match you will get massive swings in the final set, often for little risk so it’s worth keeping an eye on progress in between the fits and starts of the racing.
Why do Man U get more penalties?
Celtic 11 – Dundee United 10.
Odd scoreline but this was actually just the penalty shootout. You can view all 14 minutes of it here. I was watching some tepid premier league match in comparison testing a couple of strategies. It got me thinking about what is the biggest shoot out. According to the article here it seems to be 16-17 with all but the last penalty scored. It’s quite amusing seeing goalkeepers take penalties but, by accident or …
Daft isn’t it
In one of my recent posts I gave you the horror of the worst start to the day I had in six months. Oddly enough, this week has been a breeze so far.
I just made a mistake and blew a race at Towcester to register an £8 loss. In contrast to that bad run, this was my first loss in 48 races! While I can predict and model a number of things in a range of markets, one of …
When not to cut a loss using full market depth
Hoovering
Nope, I’m not referring to that Queen video with Freddie Mercury. I am talking about this months edition of Racing Ahead magazine. This month I discuss this controversial tactic and its impact on how you trade in play. Racing Ahead is available at all good news agents.
I am also in Gambling on line magazine this month but with a much smaller article, a guide to the basics of horse racing.
Back behind the desk
Rather bizarrely it seems the industry that deals with bereavement takes the weekend off. So it was a rather odd situation that occured after the events of last week. I found myself at the weekend pretty much with little to do.
With that in mind I settled down to get stuck into what looked like a decent card on Saturday. I succesfully got off to ther worst start I have had for six months! After such a rotten start I …
Betfair Premium charge portal
Just been emailed this link: –
https://premiumcharge.betfair.com/PremiumPortal/portal
By the look of it it appears to generate your last premium charge statement, or at least the front page of it. Despite efforts to reduce the charge mine still makes grim reading. But I suppose in some ways I should be thankful that is the case.
Flying winner
If you are looking for some new trading ideas you may want to look at Greyhound racing. Most meetings are bags meeting and attract little volume, but the televised meetings seem to pull in decent turnover. Last week I stumbled across an evening card at Perry Barr and had a dabble.
You can put through reasonable volumes through these markets, in one race alone I accounted for just over 7% of the the entire market! It was a curious market …
Cheltenham volume
Just traded the 13:30 at Cheltenham and I have to say it had some of the worst volume for a Cheltenham race I have ever seen on Betfair. Hopefully it will improve during the day but the total was worse than some of the poorer quality fare I have seen and nothing near what it should be for a quality race. Not sure what to interpret on that count.
EH Webb 1935 – 2009
Sad news, my father died at 17:38 last night after a year of deteriorating health. We were very fortunate that he had not suffered any major illnesses during his life, that he awoke recently to say goodbye and died peacefully.
It was my father that inadvertantly shaped by career. When I was young he gave me a football pools coupon to fill out. I quickly became driven to solve the problem of what makes a draw in a football match. …
Murray at the aussie open
I haven’t been able to do much on the open for obvious reasons but have been following it as best I can. It’s a real shame as I have continued working on Tennis for some time now and I planned to let rip on the open. That will have to wait for now.
At the start of the tournament I wrote down the rankings of the players Murray was likely to play. So far it’s spot on, here is the …
Million dollar traders
Watched the second part in this series and I’m still not sure what these guys have been taught but it’s not the sort of trading room I know.
I started messing around with the stock market in the mid eighties and eventually set off properly in the 90’s. By then the Internet was picking up speed and I remember using Compuserve to place an order via Etrade! Things have moved on a lot since then and ECN’s and a proliferation …
Radcliffe risking it
Well I wish her luck, but having been a long distance runner in my days I wouldn’t be tempted to run a marathon when injured and ill prepared. That said, I never got to have a go at the Olympics so that may have swayed things!
I guess its a function of Radcliffe knowing this could be her last chance at an Olympic medal. There is no knowing if she would be in contention in 2012 but there should be …
Magnificent Murray
Two years after beating Federer at the Cinny Masters Andy Murray finally managed to get the same masters title under his belt and move up to an all time six in the world rankings. The final showed that there is plenty of room for improvement. Djokovic never managed to put any real pressure on Murray’s serve but Murray still had to battle out a 7-6 7-6 victory. The game should have been long over before the final tie break was …
Expecting Ebor
The fall of Federer
You couldn’t have missed the news that Roger Federer lost again this week and is about to lose his status as the worlds number one tennis player. Cincinatti is not Federers favourite venue, he lost to Murray there two years ago and he also struggled in the prior round against Ginipri (See the Betfair chart). Putting those facts aside, what’s behind his slump in form?
Having played a lot of sport when I was young I think I know the
Three Club Monte
Where opportunties are created…
17:30 Thirsk today
Sir nod and Toy top are racing with pretty much the same coloured silks. So much so that the commentator makes it clear to viewers to look at the horses and not the silks. Near the off Sir Nod starts messing around and it’s obvious he will not load. Off they go without Sir Nod. Bizarrely the commentator messes up and calls Toy Top as Sir Nod. On this occasion there wasn’t a great opportunity but on …
Clash city..
I’m not referring to the 80’s pop group more the incredible balls up at the start of this evening’s racing. Three UK races, two Irish, somehow four of them all conspired to go off at the same time for various reasons, what a mess! The fifth only failed to join them by 2 mins. OK, I know I may be biased in wanting nice gaps between races but what a mess. Remarkable that it could happen at all.
By …
Financial spreads vs. Betfair
Each morning I spend a lot of time browsing company reports and reading up on companies, industries and all manner of things. Today I was looking at IG index and the spread betting industry. IG are an interesting company and one I have held shares in twice. The report makes
The wedding speech and Jim McGrath
When I got married, quite a few years ago now, I struggled to find inspiration and eventually found it from the comedy series Blackadder. The peak of my speech was the rather corny, ‘Life without you is like a broken pencil’, long pause ensues…..’Pointless’. I also remember my embarresment years later when I encouraged the children to enjoy this particular type of black comedy. One episode ends with the immotal line, ‘Duck that rhymes with F’ at which …
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