Tag: trading
How evening racing is different
We have now started the evening racing in earnest and it won’t stop till the end of August. So you have four months to make hay while the sun shines, not forgetting we are in the England, so it won’t shine much.
However, there are at least four different states that you see in racing during this period.
(1) Afternoon racing
This tends to me higher quality than the evening racing and will therefore trade differently.
(2) Evening racing
There …
Always be a contrarian
I chortled with much merriment yesterday when I saw the story about how people were saying the lottery was ‘fixed’.
Twitter filled up with disgust that five numbers on the draw yesterday netted the life changing sum of just £15. But as per normal, people blamed their own issues on somebody else. Because things didn’t work out the way they wanted, it must be somebody else’s fault. It couldn’t possibly be down to them.
Flawed thinking
The fact is that …
Finding a front runner – Exclusive offer & free trial
Click here to take up an exclusive free seven day trial of Pacecards
Trading in-running
One excellent strategy you can use on betting exchanges, is backing or laying before the off and trading out in-play. Many Bet Angel customers do this or a variation of this, , as part of a profitable activity in the market.
In-running tools
Bet Angel is great for this as you can do it manually or automatically using the automation. On the manual front we …
Trading Cheltenham
There is plenty to help you and get stuck into this Cheltenham if you are a Bet Angel user. Not only do you have a vast range of tools available but also the biggest set of videos you can image, a busy forum to chat to other traders and if you are looking to trading automatically a library of examples.Plenty to get stuck into on one of the biggest trading weeks of the year.
There is plenty to get stuck …
Preparing for Cheltenham
We are so close to Cheltenham that I’m now in that final, ‘Have I done everything I can to prepare’ mode.
Cheltenham pretty much makes or breaks March for me. A good meeting and it’s a good March a bad one and it’s a struggle to make the numbers.
Each year I go through the same sort of preparation for big weeks and in this video I explain that process and my thoughts on the run up to a big …
When Saturday comes…
When I first started sports trading I treated it like a 9-5 job.
I did all the usual things you would in a normal job and returned to my out of work activities after the day was over. Fairly quickly I realised that this wasn’t going to work. All the best opportunities tend to occur outside of ‘normal’ hours and therefore I had to shift my working patterns.
Shifting my workload
At first this was a little tricky, I started …
Trade, text and tweet from 20,000 feet
Half term is a good opportunity for a break
So, I decided to head out of the country for half term week. It’s a good time of year to do that and relatively speaking, a low opportunity cost for me.
It’s amazing how technology has changed since I started trading on Betfair. The first time I had to head oversea’s it was pretty much impossible to get a decent internet connection, Skype didn’t exist as a widespread platform and trading …
Poll straw – Trump trumped
An interesting set of results came in from the US caucuses last night. But it highlighted again that people don’t tell the truth to pollsters. I think I can explain.
Everybody hates an outsider
Nobody likes to be an outsider, apart from me it seems. But being an outsider is where some of the best decisions can be made. However it takes a great deal of strength to be different. So when a pollster phones you or harrases you in …
The big short
Went and watched the big short last night. I enjoyed it.
The film
I thought they dumbed down elements a bit, but that’s to be expected to broaden the appeal. I’d imagine it will go over the heads of a few people that are not interested in financial markets, but it was entertaining and enjoyable if you are into trading in any manner.
As a traditionally comedic actor, I thought Steve Carrel’s performance was particularly good.
Like most dramatisations there …
Billy no mates
Nobody has invited us around this Christmas, so yet again today, our family is hosting everybody for lunch, but I wont be there. I guess somebody needs to earn the money to pay for it 😉 I’ll be locked in my study and making the odd appearance to say hello.
New years day is a busy day in the sporting world. At least the footy is occurring on a different day this year! But the racing is on today, as …
Finding value in Football matches
Yesterday I posted the following:-
There were a number of reasons I said I was looking for some upsets, far too complex for one blog post. But one of the things was confidence. Not confidence in my ability, that’s not a problem :), but more confidence within the teams playing each other. It looked fairly ripe for an upset or two. Therefore I was looking to lay (and / or trade) with that in mind. I was opposing the …
OLBG trading censorship
A little while ago I saw a comment on OLBG’s site that I knew wasn’t true. So, as is my right, I made a comment to clear up any confusion. The author responded positively and kindly to my clarification and all was good. A generally positive experience, I think I’ll come back again.
Faffing about
A few months later I checked back and noticed the counter comment was gone, so I tried to log into my account and post again. …
Why trading horse racing works so well!
We had a glorious example earlier this week as to why trading is definitely a better way to earn money on Racing than traditional punting! The great thing about this trade, is that I did it office when we had somebody in for training; so it was great to pull of such a trade while they were here.
If somebody from a traditional punting background doesn’t understand why they should trade, show them this post!
The set up
We have …
Why trading works so well – On football
With the champions league football starting up again, I thought I’d take a look at football at a simple level and explain why trading works so well, using football as an example.
First off a simple maths lesson.
Finding value
When you look at odds on Betfair, they refer to the implied chance of that event occurring. If we saw Manchester United priced at 2.00, we simply divide one by those odds and it produces the implied probability of that …
Predicting chaotic markets
Took one look at the racing card this morning and was a bit frustrated. Yes, lots of racing on which is great, but just too much. My spreadsheet gave me the following dialogue: –
“There are 587 runners today over 61 races, an average of 9 runners per race.Based upon long term averages today’s racing is likely to exhibit much less volatility against what we would typically expect to see.If all races start on time, then there will be 11 …
Galwood day one
It was a slow but interesting start to the week at Goodwood and Galway.
The Tuesday is always a bit tricky because the racing cards are a little bit weaker on these days. As a case in point, the top races today dwarf the the whole card from yesterday at both courses.
We have a group one race at Goodwood today, the Sussex stakes, that should prove interesting trading fodder and we also have a Galway plate. Both of these …
My life on the trading desk of a big bookmaker
Introduction by Peter
Some one recently joined me in helping prep for the new football season. His former job was on the trading desk at a big bookmaker, I thought it may be interesting for you to hear his story. With ‘Britain at the bookies’ on TV, I think it makes it even more relevant. First we start with some background: –
Life before Betfair
I left school with absolutely no idea of what I wanted to do for a …
The trading dead zone
It doesn’t happen often, but now and again all things conspire to produce a dead zone in the markets. Some are worse than others, but we are in a dead zone at the moment.
First off, this relates to the racing markets. 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 …
Tennis trading primer
Just a quick video as we have had a lot of people asking how you trade Tennis. So we have produce just a short primer giving you some ideas and a short discussion on Tennis, we hope it’s useful.
Today could be your independence day
Happy 4th of July to our American users. Hold on we don’t have any (yet)!
But the independence I am talking about takes a slightly different slant anyhow.
When we first designed Bet Angel it was a very simple one click interface. As time evolved we branched the product out to include more and more features, it was a reflection of our journey through the markets.
One of the early features we put into Bet Angel was the link to …
Using stats to generate entry points in Tennis
Something that is frequently discussed on social media is a player’s ability at the start of the set, or at the end of the set. This tends to be an imperfect subjective judgement which may or may not have sound statistical merit, but typically this doesn’t concern the average Twitter user!
It is possible using point by point data to look at start and end of set statistics, and to work out both whether there are different dynamics during these …
It’s not just about the big stuff
As Ascot fades into the distance you could be forgiven for waiting for the next big meeting, but it’s a fact that big meetings are the icing on the cake on the racing calendar, rather than the meat and potatoes.
Around 75% of racing doesn’t not fall in the ‘quality’ category so in fact a lot of the time a professional trader is simply trying to get something out of the market from whatever is around at that moment. In …
Tennis trading – Trading the Tiebreak
Many Thanks to Dan Weston who was the guest poster for this article, visit Dan’s excellent Tennis ratings site for lots of useful Tennis stats.
One area of trading which many Tennis traders seem unsure of, and some that I’ve spoken to even steer clear of completely, is tiebreak trading.
Tiebreaks are one of the most volatile parts of a Tennis match and due to this, it is possible for traders to have the ability to win and lose …
Punters ask for Moore
We are all familiar with a gambled horse.
It starts when a horse in a race receives particular attention. Seeing that horse is being backed, other people back it feeling they may be missing out on something. You find that often sets off a gamble as people discount a lot into the movement of the price of the horse as a ‘sign’, usually without any regard for the underlying rationale.
The Partnership gambler
Yesterday, we were treated to a different …
ATP In-Game Tennis Trading
Many Thanks to Dan Weston who was the guest poster for this article, visit Dan’s excellent Tennis ratings site for lots of useful Tennis stats.
Several weeks ago, we discussed point by point trading in the WTA, primarily looking at laying the player a break up and taking money out during a service game. As mentioned before, this allows more risk-averse traders to clear some or all liability at various in-game scorelines, and these were grouped into two brackets:-…
Apophenia
Apophenia is defined as, the “unmotivated seeing of connections” accompanied by a “specific experience of an abnormal meaningfulness”. For the full definition visit the wiki entry: –
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apophenia
Apophenia has come to imply a universal human tendency to seek patterns in random information, such as gambling or charts. It’s a flaw that afflicts many.
Apophenia and Gambling
Probably the best known appearance of this in gambling markets is the gamblers fallacy. This is when a long run of results lead …
Laying the Set One Winner
It doesn’t need much explaining that in a best of three set Tennis match, players need to win two sets to win, and once they have won the first set, they are 50% of the way towards the number of sets they need to claim to win the match.
Due to this, a player’s price will be significantly shorter than starting price when they win the first set, which is a lay entry point that many traders like.
Personally I …
Tennis – Dominant Sets in ATP Masters Events
A popular form of trading is laying the player a break up – I’ve written a great deal about it before, and the positive aspects of this type of trade is that it’s easily quantifiable (using projected hold and break lead/deficit loss/recovery statistics) and that risk is much more limited than taking a position when the set is on serve.
The worst result for this type of trade is when the player you have opposed turns a single break lead …
The best and worst players from winning positions in the ATP
Further to last week’s article which looked at the application of a blanket strategy, and the usage of WTA stats to illustrate why this is a bad idea, I thought I’d move onto some more detailed applications of statistics in the ATP, which is something I’ve been looking at in great detail lately.
An objective way to categorise front runners has been my major focus, with a particular plan of trying to work out which players are lucrative to …
Court Speed in Tennis Trading
Recently on Twitter, there has been detailed conversation about court speed, and the impact that it has in Tennis.
As a trader, let me make one point abundantly clear here – I don’t care why the conditions at a venue is fast or slow, just that it will be, and that it is possible to ascertain this information in advance. Advance knowledge of conditions will enable me to work out the likelihood of players holding serve, and a fast hard …
Connect
Connect with us on the following social media platforms.