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False markets
How would you like some free money? A couple of clicks and you have instant profit on your screen (but maybe not your account!)
Book percentages
In an outright market than can only be one winner. That is why, if you add up all the odds and percentages, the market will settle on a book value of 100%. If you can lay above 100% then effectively your payout is only 100% but your profit will be anything above that.
If …
New Version of Bet Angel Professional
Always looking to take your trading further forward, we are pleased to announce a new version of Bet Angel.
You can download it from here: –
https://www.betangel.com/download/?product=BetAngelPro
The new version of Bet Angel is available for free to any existing users or trialists.
Key new features in this version
The main feature of this version is the introduction of Automation Signals giving automation a huge amount of new flexibility and control. It opens the door to many new possibilities. (For …
US PGA Golf
The ‘fourth major’ starts today in the US and should provide some opportunities. That said, I temper my enthusiasm as the Golf season wears on as history has shown that I do worse at each major as the year progresses. I don’t know exactly why that is, but I suspect as form lines get stronger, opportunities weaken.
The US PGA at first tee last year turned over £5m.
Some of the stats I’ve used here have come from the excellent …
Trading Good-Way
From a trading perspective I like multi day high quality meetings. They usually throw up some good opportunities and are a welcome addition to the month.
Goodwood
As you may know, these higher quality meetings produce extra volume and that can change the characteristics significantly. But don’t let Goodwood fool you into thinking it’s the same as a Royal Ascot or Cheltenham, it behaves very differently. Goodwood benefits from decent volume but it’s not as much as some major meetings. …
Making hay while the sun shines
An old phrase, but one that is equally applicable to trading at this time of year. As we are now in peak trading season, it’s time to harvest!
All about the execution
At this time of year, you have many opportunities, so I will stretch every sinew to do as much as I can. Everything else has to take a back seat, I’ll be a little less active on the blogging, fewer education events, less time for chit chat or …
Do Betfair markets reflect true opinion?
OK, for years the exchange mechanism has provided a very useful pricing mechanism. A careful aggregation of demand between people competing on a level playing field and it has provided a beautiful insight into the way free markets can work to mysteriously, accurately, price an event – in this case the prediction that something will win a sports event.
Changes
But we have been watching closely as the market has gradually decoupled from it’s long established core. What do we …
Trading the Open Golf
The British Open is different from other majors in that it is played on rotation schedule across a number of ‘links’ courses in the UK. Links courses are traditionally near the sea, are near or on dunes, have an uneven surface and a sandy soil. This is in stark contrast to a lot of ‘modern’ courses which are often set in parkland or woods and carefully manicured.
Weather and links golf
Links golf is very different from traditional golf in …
The losers game in action
We had an interesting mix of sport at the weekend. As I suggested, I had a full blooded session on Saturday, but didn’t little on Sunday and choose to enjoy the sport instead.
In a previous post I talked about the ‘losers game‘, we saw some this weekend.
Win by not losing and win by winning
A triad of interesting sport awaited on Sunday. First up the British Grand Prix, definitely a case of playing the losers game. …
British Grand Prix
After a really successful week, I’m ducking out of trading seriously today to watch some sport and do a few other things. I can’t rule out doing something at some point, the temptation can be great, but I’ll endeavour not to do much. I may trade the Euro 2016 final pre-off.
British Grand Prix stats
The British GP is curious in that, for a non-street circuit, the average outcome is quite variable from Grid to Finish. It’s the least certain …
An Ace is worth more than a point
When you read that statement it looks a little strange. How can one point be worth more than another? But statistics seem to show that’s true. With Murray about to line up against a big server in the Wimbledon final tomorrow lets look at the perfect serve.
Wimbledon
Wimbledon is the home of mighty servers, with alternate big servers booming the ball past their opponent. But what effect does it have? Some, it appears.
Over the last couple of years, …
The thin line between individual skill in Tennis
If you have been active on Wimbledon these past two weeks you would have seen some great matches. But you should have also seen something else, maybe without realising it.
Often you see an outsider really battle away at a heavy odds on favourite, maybe even winning the first set, but despite this, their odds don’t seem to come in that much. Why is that?
What’s the point?
The first thing to note is there are a lot of points …
Can you predict 1.01 defeats in Tennis?
Surface problems aside, the main news from Wimbledon so far was the shock’ defeat of Novak Djokovic.
Of course things are very easy in hindsight. But that said, short priced players are easily opposed when trading, more on that in a second . The thing that is surprising in these cases is to see somebody who traded near 1.01 before the off losing. That’s rare, but certainly not impossible.
1.01 Losers in Tennis
I shuffled through one of my database …
Trading the dead zone
It doesn’t happen often, but now and again all things conspire to produce a dead zone in the markets. For racing, we are currently in that dead zone.
Why does it happen?
Racing markets are seasonal and peak and trough around major meetings. The last was, obviously, Ascot. So you can get a trough before a major meeting, but you almost certainly get one after it.
Summer racing can be a bit weak as there are more meetings and the …
Making mincemeat of Strawberries and cream
I’m pleased to see the 2nd round has just finished, on the first Saturday! So there is lot of Tennis to cram in on the 2nd week, starting today!
How I learnt to trade Tennis
When I first started to trade Tennis, I needed a few things to be in place. One of those was an understanding of how odds move in match. If I knew that, I could pitch my opening and closing trades just where I wanted. I …
Easy ways to automate your Tennis Trading
Next week see’s the start of Wimbledon the pinnacle event of the Tennis calendar.
And one of the best ways to trade the Tennis markets is with automation. If you have never used automation before there is probably no better sport to start with and with the year’s biggest tournament about to begin this makes it the perfect time to dip your toes in and give it a try.
Why automation works so well
There are a couple of reasons …
What’s working in Euro 2016
As we move into the knockout stage, let’s review what’s happened in the Euro’s so far from a market perspective.
Turnover
The first thing to note is that the volumes are down a fair bit from Euro 2012 on Betfair. In 2012 in the group stages the lowest turnover match was £7.7m before the off and £17.8m at the end of the match. This year it was a paltry £1.6m and £3.3m, slightly lower than in 2012! I think it’s …
Trading Royal Ascot
And so here we are another year, another Ascot.
Ascot is obviously a big deal and, generally, I target it to be at least the second biggest week of the year. I’ll look to do more in a week than I can normally do in a month, so it’s a significant meeting. Wall to wall, quality racing, from Tuesday till Saturday. You also get the added bonus of lots of drunk people places bets on horses because they like the …
Finding an Edge in Football Markets using Soccer Mystic
How can you to find an edge and profit from Soccer markets? The answer is as the title suggests with the use of Soccer Mystic, a profiling tool which is included as part of Bet Angel Professional.
If you have never used or even heard of Soccer Mystic then now is the time to give it a try.
What is Soccer Mystic and what exactly does it do??
Soccer Mystic is a module included with Bet Angel Professional that profiles …
Volume is not liquidity
I was at a meeting last week and was at pains to point out the difference between volume and liquidity. I’ll save the detail for another post at some point in the future, but here is a simple view and some examples, using just £100 stakes.
If you come on any of the courses we run, I’m happy to talk you through the strategy. It’s simple easy and really effective at tournaments like Euro 2016.
Stuffed full of cash…
Are England just unlucky? No!
When brushing up for the Euro’s I had a good look at prior records to see if there were any trends. One of things that stood out was England’s terrible opening game record.
Since this Euro’s started in 1960 England have never won their opening game, a proud record that was upheld yesterday. So in 15 competitions spanning 52 years. It will be at least 56 years before England win their opening game of the tournament, possibly more. An amazing …
Deep breath
Here we go, summer starts right here!
I must admit to being a bit tired already, which isn’t great planning. But from this point on we have a really busy schedule ahead of us starting tonight. It’s the same every other year. Major footy championship, Ascot, Wimbledon, Cricket and half a dozen other sporting events combine to produce a smorgasbord of opportunity.
Over the next few weeks, you can trade very high quality and high liquidity markets in quick succession …
One Bank Holiday you may want to trade
Bank holidays can be a bit of mare. Four billion horses, racing over a thousand meetings. OK, A slight exaggeration there, but you get the picture. Too much racing, too many courses, not enough quality and everything falling over itself.
But today that actually isn’t the case and generally isn’t on this holiday. We have a lot of runners and they are spread many races, but the card is lined up well. That means, even allowing for later starts, it’s …
Monaco Grand Prix
The Gym I belong to had a new joiner that I started speaking to last year, he is an ex-racing driver. He has given me some valuable insight into the racing world from behind the wheel! He told me Hamilton would struggle this year and that Red Bull stood a good chance of pole position at Monaco. I’m all ears now when I chat to him now!!!
For a view of the race from behind a spreadsheet, read on…
You …
Tennis vs Football
Some of the overriding factors in trading are opportunity, position placement and money management. Get any of these out of kilter and your trading strategy goes up in smoke.
Let’s look at Tennis and Football to understand what I mean.
Skill differences are slight across a lot of sport, but have you noticed how there can be some wildly uncompetitive matches in Tennis but in Football the opponents always seem to have a chance?
Football
Football is a game dominated …
Its Not Just Women Who Can Multi-Task
As we steam head on into the summer months some of the hardest choices you’re going to be faced with this time of year is deciding where to focus your attention and which sport or markets to trade, with the Horse Racing’s flat season now in full flow the Derby and the summers big festival meetings like Royal Ascot are just around the corner, we have Tennis also in full swing this time of year as the European circuit gets …
Interesting statistics for the FA Cup Fi-nil
So the FA Cup final is upon us and, rather predictably, the final has delivered us two premiership teams. But what will the match deliver? Is that going to be as predictable as well?
While today’s match may throw off differing characteristics based on what I saw of Palace last weekend, I’ve delved back over a number of years to see if I can unlock some prevailing trends.
History has shown us, the FA Cup is no particular respecter of …
Last match could be the most interesting
If you keep your eyes open, opportunities can occur from the strangest of circumstances.
On Sunday May 15th, 2016 we faced an interesting final day in the English Premiership season. The title and relegation battles had already been settled. But there was still the qualification for European competition to decide.
Qualification
Most of the focus was on Man City, Man Utd, West Ham, Southampton and Liverpool. Some could qualify for Champions league football, some for Europa league football.
You also …
York Dante Meeting
After a successful Chester meeting we roll onto York for the Dante meeting this week.
The York card looks good with plenty of group racing, but the other stuff on the card today looks a little ‘testing’. For a direct comparison look at the prize money. Kempton has a grand total of £18.4k, York £191.5k. I’ll be cautious and use small stakes at the smaller meetings as a result.
As we move through the early part of the flat turf …
The losers game
Ever felt like somebody is deliberately trying to coax you into a mistake when you trade?
When I first started trading
When I first started trading I wasn’t sure why the market did what it did, but my response to this was was quite simple and something I have always done in any market I have participated in. I started keeping detailed records of everything I did.
That sounds incredibly dull and uninteresting, but it’s actually the core of any …
Trading Horse Racing – Workshop
Why trade horse racing?
Trading horse racing markets pre-off is big business. In 2015 just short of £9bn was matched on horse racing before a single stride in the race had been completed.
That’s more than twice as much as football and nine times the same amount that is matched on Tennis. Racing is the biggest pre-off market on Betfair and provides some unique trading opportunities.
As I write this, today there are eight race meetings, with a total of …
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