{"id":11768,"date":"2016-03-12T20:43:03","date_gmt":"2016-03-12T20:43:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.betangel.com\/blog_wp\/?p=11768"},"modified":"2016-03-20T15:18:46","modified_gmt":"2016-03-20T15:18:46","slug":"trading-cheltenham-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.betfairtradingblog.com\/blog_wp\/2016\/03\/12\/trading-cheltenham-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Trading Cheltenham"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/e2.365dm.com\/11\/03\/660x350\/generic-cheltenham-crowd_2574076.jpg?20110315184655\" alt=\"\" width=\"660\" height=\"350\" \/><\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">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.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">There is plenty to get stuck into on one of the biggest trading weeks of the year!<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Check out the following that will help you trade Cheltenham this year: &#8211;<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><strong><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><a style=\"color: #000000;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/playlist?list=PLVgQjBRi6AckuUwY6EaKNkxVa06SCk_tN\">My You Tube list of Cheltenham related videos<\/a><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">I&#8217;ve been discussing this meeting for a few years. It&#8217;s funny to look at the production values of some of the older videos! But it is interesting to see the comments and results. My approach hasn&#8217;t changed radically over the years but it&#8217;s interesting to contrast old comments with new. This year I&#8217;ve uploaded a video that looks as how huge some of the Cheltenham markets can get. <\/span>Every<span style=\"color: #000000;\"> seen \u00a3250,000 on <\/span>side<span style=\"color: #000000;\"> of the book waiting to get matched? Find it on the <a style=\"color: #000000;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=IrXumEhY_ZI&amp;\">&#8216;How will Cheltenham trade&#8217; video<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><strong><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><a style=\"color: #000000;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.betangel.com\/forum\/viewtopic.php?f=5&amp;t=11568\">Check out the Cheltenham 2016 thread<\/a><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">On the thread,\u00a0we will be chatting before the festival and <\/span>posting<span style=\"color: #000000;\"> updates as the meeting gets underway. Already on there, there a full list of charts from last year and spreadsheet of data from the festival for you to <\/span>browser<span style=\"color: #000000;\">. Lots more advice to come.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><strong><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><a style=\"color: #000000;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.betangel.com\/forum\/viewforum.php?f=43\">Automation library<\/a><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">There are no tons of examples of automation on the forum. So if you fancy dipping your toes in or doing something more serious there are a ton of examples to play around with.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><strong><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><a style=\"color: #000000;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.betangel.com\/forum\/viewforum.php?f=31\">Spreadsheet library<\/a><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Maybe a spreadsheet is more your thing? Or maybe not? But you may want to check out the data capture spreadsheet amongst other things in that section of the site. This will allow you to have a deep look at the markets, long after the last horse has crossed the finishing post.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">If you are interested in some stats, I&#8217;ve listed those for discussion below. But ahead of that, I&#8217;ve put the Cheltenham playlist.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/videoseries?list=PLVgQjBRi6AckuUwY6EaKNkxVa06SCk_tN\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><strong>The book over round<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Competition is fierce nowadays\u00a0and this means very little money is lost to either side of the book. On a traditional sportsbook the over-round, the theoretical margin paid to the bookmaker, can be large; but on an exchange this can be tiny. If the over round is 100% then it means that the market was \u2018perfect\u2019 and no money was won or lost (before commission) to either side of the book. The closer to 100% you get the more chance you have of winning in the long term as the knowledge gap to overcome the small margin against you is so much smaller.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Over time the number of races that resolve under 100% has been increasing, indicating that the market is getting more and more competitive. It\u2019s been a slightly bumpy ride though. In 2009 we had just one market under 100%, eight in 2010, twelve in 2011, eleven in 2012, just three in 2013. Average book SPs from 2014 to 2009 were, 1.8%, 1.7%, 0.5%, 1.9%, 0.5%, 2.78%, respectively. You will lose very little betting on an exchange.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">The \u2018worst\u2019 SP was 105% but even that was well below what you would get in a \u2018normal\u2019 sportsbook. Basically, backing at Cheltenham on a betting exchange is fantastic value for money.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><strong>The favourites<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">In total around 50% of all money matched on the markets is on the favourite. 2014 was a below average year for favourites and we saw just 22% of them win their respective races, this was below the long-term average of 26%. But the average SP was lower so in fact backing favourites last year would have left you net positive overall. In the last six years, as the markets have become more competitive, just backing the favourites would have yield a profit in the last four. There is a catch though, you need to use proportional staking, not level staking. If you want to know how, read on.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><strong>Where the winners came from<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">If we rank the runners from favourite to least favourite we can examine where in the field the winners generally came from. Over a quarter of the time, the favourites were declared winners. It\u2019s not until get past the eighth favourite that the number of winners declines significantly.\u00a0 But looking in the front eight gets you a winner 80% of the time. You need to be a bit luckier beyond the front eight.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><strong>Best strategy for backing big priced winners or more than one runner<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Dutching is a neat way of spreading your risk when trying to pick a winner on an exchange. Rather than using level stakes dutching allows you to spread you risk and profit across more than one runner in the field.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Picking one winner from 28 is tough, especially in a competitive handicap. But \u2018dutching\u2019 allows you to winners from a range of selections in a market ensuring you have a better chance of a profiting. If we expand our focus from picking one winner to picking one from a number of selections, things look up a bit.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">When \u2018dutching\u2019 you flip traditional betting on its head. When placing a traditional back bet you simply choose a stake and place a bet at the best available odds. When \u2018dutching\u2019 instead of putting \u00a310 on something at 16\u2019s, you nominate how much you would like to win then pick a number of selections that you think could win. Once you have made your selections, the dutching tool in Bet Angel will do some clever maths to work out how to achieve your bet and will give you the stake required to achieve your objective. In a ten runner field, for example, you may want to win \u00a310 by picking any five runners to win. Once you make your selections you just click the \u2018place bet\u2019 button and Bet Angel takes care of the rest.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">You can go a step further on Bet Angel than traditional dutching tools by nominating your profit by runner. So it\u2019s possible to construct a back bet that says something along the lines of, \u2018I want to win \u00a350 if the favourite wins, break even on the second favourite, lose \u00a35 if the third comes in and I want to win \u00a320 on the next three\u2019. This gives you huge flexibility on finding a winner and more importantly, on your terms. Given the low over-round available on exchanges it\u2019s a great way of picking a winner.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">The real in dutching comes from find a big price runner. As long as you don\u2019t go mad then there are some big priced winners to be found in the competitive races. If you dutched runners ranked 7-18 you would have made money in all but one of the last six years. Just blindly the back of the book from runners ranked 10 and upwards\u00a0wouldn&#8217;t\u00a0have worked, so it\u2019s that middle division that is a good place to look to unlock value at\u00a0Cheltenham.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><strong>What worked in-running?<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">The in-running markets produced their usual slice of interest. Winners came from 95, 480 and a whopping 1000 in running to win; Western Warhorse providing the big price. The general rule of thumb at Cheltenham is that short prices really need to be out of contention to drift significantly. They do tend to drift anyway, just not significantly. Laying to back is a little riskier at shorter prices at Cheltenham. Bigger prices that perform well in-running tend to shorten pretty quickly and that is where you should be looking. The average high price the favourite traded at in-running was 41 in 2013, 30 in 2012 and 45 in 2011.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">It&#8217;s interesting to see the winner of the Gold Cup last year romped home having traded at 300\u00a0last year, in fact it traded slightly higher but on tiny money. Of course, having traded it pre off I just watched the race any how. But it was an interesting market of note.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><strong>Best strategy for laying the field in-running<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Another area to explore in-running is to lay the field. It\u2019s a really simple strategy to deploy. You type in a price you want to lay at in Bet Angel and then click, \u2018Lay all\u2019. The general rule of thumb here is that to break even you need to lay X runners at X odds. If you select digital odds of 2, you need to lay 2 runners at 2 to break even. Three runners at 3\u2019s will break even and so on.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Last year at Cheltenham there were 21 races where a runner traded at or under evens in-play and still lost the race. \u00a0When laying the field though it\u2019s not about the lowest price reached, but more about how many runners trade below certain levels in running. In 2014 49 runners traded at or below 3.00 and still lost. Over the last six years we have generally found near 50 runners achieve this feat. Only three races last year had two runners trade under 2.00 and lose, 2013 was the same but 2012 was all fun and games with nine such races. Other years the market gravitates to smaller values. The in-running market is far more certain at Cheltenham.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Of course, things can change depending on how the race pans out and if there is an early faller. But for that reason I suggest you try arming your lay the field target price and await an opportunity during the race. For lay the field in-running to work you ideally really need a competitive race with a close finish where the lead is uncertain in the final part of the race. Up until that point it\u2019s more about staying in the race.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><strong>My trading approach <\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">I tend to use Tuesday as a day to test out strategies and examine how the market is \u2018behaving\u2019. From a trading perspective, you can never be totally sure what you are about to face. As year passes, you often pick up subtle shifts in the market. So the start of the week is the opportunity to learn, quickly, how the markets are behaving this year. From there it\u2019s about putting your foot down with some confidence.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Because of the amount of money being traded at Cheltenham, volatility by tick prices are naturally lower. In fact I can give you some exact numbers. It is 33% below what you see in a \u2018normal\u2019 market. Obviously the amount of money at Cheltenham is much higher than a \u2018normal\u2019 market and this leads to a slower fill rate on money offered to the market. Over the years this has got bigger and bigger and reached nine times normal activity in 2014. In short it can take an age to get your order filled. That increases your trading risk but the lower volatility offsets that somewhat.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><strong>Summary<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">There are many things that can work quite well at Cheltenham. Hopefully, I\u2019ve given you some clear pointers in this article.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Don\u2019t forget you can deploy these strategies with ease or even fully automatically using Bet Angel. We have a practice mode so you can test ideas or the many tools inside the software completely risk-free.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">So all I have to do now is wish you the best of luck, I can\u2019t wait to hear that Cheltenham roar!<\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"pvc_clear\"><\/div>\n<p id=\"pvc_stats_11768\" class=\"pvc_stats all  \" data-element-id=\"11768\" style=\"\"><i class=\"pvc-stats-icon medium\" aria-hidden=\"true\"><svg aria-hidden=\"true\" focusable=\"false\" data-prefix=\"far\" data-icon=\"chart-bar\" role=\"img\" xmlns=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg\" viewBox=\"0 0 512 512\" class=\"svg-inline--fa fa-chart-bar fa-w-16 fa-2x\"><path fill=\"currentColor\" d=\"M396.8 352h22.4c6.4 0 12.8-6.4 12.8-12.8V108.8c0-6.4-6.4-12.8-12.8-12.8h-22.4c-6.4 0-12.8 6.4-12.8 12.8v230.4c0 6.4 6.4 12.8 12.8 12.8zm-192 0h22.4c6.4 0 12.8-6.4 12.8-12.8V140.8c0-6.4-6.4-12.8-12.8-12.8h-22.4c-6.4 0-12.8 6.4-12.8 12.8v198.4c0 6.4 6.4 12.8 12.8 12.8zm96 0h22.4c6.4 0 12.8-6.4 12.8-12.8V204.8c0-6.4-6.4-12.8-12.8-12.8h-22.4c-6.4 0-12.8 6.4-12.8 12.8v134.4c0 6.4 6.4 12.8 12.8 12.8zM496 400H48V80c0-8.84-7.16-16-16-16H16C7.16 64 0 71.16 0 80v336c0 17.67 14.33 32 32 32h464c8.84 0 16-7.16 16-16v-16c0-8.84-7.16-16-16-16zm-387.2-48h22.4c6.4 0 12.8-6.4 12.8-12.8v-70.4c0-6.4-6.4-12.8-12.8-12.8h-22.4c-6.4 0-12.8 6.4-12.8 12.8v70.4c0 6.4 6.4 12.8 12.8 12.8z\" class=\"\"><\/path><\/svg><\/i> <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"16\" height=\"16\" alt=\"Loading\" src=\"https:\/\/www.betfairtradingblog.com\/blog_wp\/wp-content\/plugins\/page-views-count\/ajax-loader-2x.gif\" border=0 \/><\/p>\n<div class=\"pvc_clear\"><\/div>\n\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=betangel\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>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 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n<div class=\"pvc_clear\"><\/div>\n<p id=\"pvc_stats_11768\" class=\"pvc_stats all  \" data-element-id=\"11768\" style=\"\"><i class=\"pvc-stats-icon medium\" aria-hidden=\"true\"><svg aria-hidden=\"true\" focusable=\"false\" data-prefix=\"far\" data-icon=\"chart-bar\" role=\"img\" xmlns=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg\" viewBox=\"0 0 512 512\" class=\"svg-inline--fa fa-chart-bar fa-w-16 fa-2x\"><path fill=\"currentColor\" d=\"M396.8 352h22.4c6.4 0 12.8-6.4 12.8-12.8V108.8c0-6.4-6.4-12.8-12.8-12.8h-22.4c-6.4 0-12.8 6.4-12.8 12.8v230.4c0 6.4 6.4 12.8 12.8 12.8zm-192 0h22.4c6.4 0 12.8-6.4 12.8-12.8V140.8c0-6.4-6.4-12.8-12.8-12.8h-22.4c-6.4 0-12.8 6.4-12.8 12.8v198.4c0 6.4 6.4 12.8 12.8 12.8zm96 0h22.4c6.4 0 12.8-6.4 12.8-12.8V204.8c0-6.4-6.4-12.8-12.8-12.8h-22.4c-6.4 0-12.8 6.4-12.8 12.8v134.4c0 6.4 6.4 12.8 12.8 12.8zM496 400H48V80c0-8.84-7.16-16-16-16H16C7.16 64 0 71.16 0 80v336c0 17.67 14.33 32 32 32h464c8.84 0 16-7.16 16-16v-16c0-8.84-7.16-16-16-16zm-387.2-48h22.4c6.4 0 12.8-6.4 12.8-12.8v-70.4c0-6.4-6.4-12.8-12.8-12.8h-22.4c-6.4 0-12.8 6.4-12.8 12.8v70.4c0 6.4 6.4 12.8 12.8 12.8z\" class=\"\"><\/path><\/svg><\/i> <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"16\" height=\"16\" alt=\"Loading\" src=\"https:\/\/www.betfairtradingblog.com\/blog_wp\/wp-content\/plugins\/page-views-count\/ajax-loader-2x.gif\" border=0 \/><\/p>\n<div class=\"pvc_clear\"><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1422],"tags":[18,28,68,2230],"class_list":["post-11768","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-strategies-2","tag-betfair","tag-horse-racing","tag-trading","tag-trading-cheltenham"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.betfairtradingblog.com\/blog_wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11768"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.betfairtradingblog.com\/blog_wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.betfairtradingblog.com\/blog_wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betfairtradingblog.com\/blog_wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betfairtradingblog.com\/blog_wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11768"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.betfairtradingblog.com\/blog_wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11768\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11770,"href":"https:\/\/www.betfairtradingblog.com\/blog_wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11768\/revisions\/11770"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.betfairtradingblog.com\/blog_wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11768"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betfairtradingblog.com\/blog_wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11768"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betfairtradingblog.com\/blog_wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11768"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}