FTL Update, and 2013-14

The end of the season is fast approaching, and there is still all to play for at the top of the Friendly Tipster League table. No change from last week, with no Bundesliga selections, but with seven of the eleven Extended selections reaching half-time with no goals, the HT 0-0 category moved into third place. Pete Nordsted's Drawmaster found a draw at Sunderland for the seventh time this season (from eleven picks) and moved up to 5th spot. The Bundeslayga system had a good week moving back into profit with three winners from four, and also moving into profit for the first time since October were the Extended Under 1.5 selections. These were down by 33 points less than three months ago, but 34 winners from 89 has righted the ship and the Extended selections are now ahead in every category (Match Odds, U1.5, U2.5, U3.5 and HT 0-0).

That's the good news. The other seventeen contenders are all in the red. Backing Ian Erskine's 'Lay the Draw' selection is the best of the worst, followed by some Classic categories and some extinct contenders. Jon (Talkbet) and Neil are anything but extinct, but Neil is likely wishing he had quit at the end of January when he was up over 9 points, and in sixth place. Possibly he is wishing he had quit in July is Football Elite who had no selections this weekend. Little Al found one draw from the EPL games (the Sunderland v Southampton game) but the five losses meant an overall loss.

The grand total number of bets is now exactly 1700, for an overall loss of close to 48 points. The XX Draws (all categories) are up 72 points (not helped by the Classic selections it must be said, but fortunately more than compensated for by the other categories) while the professional services are in the red due to the under performance of Football Elite.

Speaking of which, I checked in to Daily25 and saw this rather interesting comment on the last week of April:

Soccer was the only sport to have an off week. Football Elite went 0-3 again and lost another $6,000, absolutely disgraceful, I think in the last 15 bets there has only been 1 or 2 winners. XX Draws made another nice profit and that’s usually the case when other soccer models don’t perform. It added $3,300. Combi FI lost $2,000 and TFA Established and Euro lost $800.

"Usually the case when other soccer models don't perform"? Steve does specifically mention Football Elite, who certainly are having a nightmare season, but Matt and I have observed how often our selections are the same, so perhaps Matt's misfortune is my gain.

Last weekend, (Matt had no selections this latest one), we overlapped on just two selections, both from the Bundesliga, and both were away wins. I take some comfort from the fact that both were Under 2.5 with Schalke '04 winning 1-0 at Moenchengladbach thanks to an 82' goal, while Bayer Leverkusen won 2-0 at Nuremberg.

As I may have mentioned before, Matt calls this overlap the result of us both fishing in the same waters, and the away team in my selections has won more times (176) than the home team (166). 153 have been draws. At the end of the season, I'll look back at last season and this and see how profitable laying the home team in these matches would have been.

Finally, after receiving positive feedback (and several renewals) from current subscribers, I have decided to continue the XX Draws service next season. Prices for new subscribers will be the same as last season - a bargain £99 for anyone joining before the end of June, rising to a still incredibly reasonable £149 after that.

Based on this season, there should be a little over 500 selections, and I think this offers really good value when compared to other services, but then I am biased!

Payment can be made via PayPal or Skrill / Moneybookers to CalcioCassini@aol.com

As for the FTL next season, several people have asked about how they can join, and I'll give this some thought. To encourage people to actually stay in for the full season (no one likes a quitter as they say at AA meetings) I may look to collect a small deposit of say £20 which will be paid out to the non-pro first three at the end of the season. Just a thought.

Betfair - Pricing And Crack Trading Team

Some very well thought out ideas on Betfair's pricing strategy, and their 'crack' trading team, written as a comment on Mark Davies' blog by Graffiti and deserving, in my opinion, to be read by a few more eyeballs:

Betfair’s problem is a very simple one. Have they ever put enough thought into their pricing?
Market liquidity operates along an S-curve / sigmoid function. Initially it is hard work (the first early players can’t get matched at a fair market-clearing price, or bets they leave up are unmatched). Once a market reaches a critical mass, then the conflicting opinions kick in, and the betting turnover starts increasing at a much faster incremental rate, with only a proportionately smaller increase in the number of players.

Betfair need to address the S-curve with their pricing. It just isn’t good enough to have the same pricing policy for a major liquid market, as it is for a side market where there is a danger of liquidity drying up.

If a layer operates in a big main market, they pay normal charges. But someone putting liquidity up into a side market adds a much greater value to Betfair’s diversity of markets/betting events. There has to be the introduction of a financial incentive for people, especially key big layers, to make it cheaper to operate in a market which will be in essence a lot less profitable for them (their bets won’t get matched as easily/often, they will have to give away value to get anything matched).

Betfair’s pricing is almost exclusively based on profit/loss, whereas it needs to be changed to reflect liquidity, especially urgently needing to focus on favouring people who leave bets up in illiquid markets. The time and effort people put into side markets makes them proportionately much harder work and more hassle. This must be reflected by Betfair in its pricing, and is why Betfair’s current pricing is, well, a bit meh.

Betfair needs at the extreme, where a market has dropped below critical mass, to not just offer zero commission to big layers, but if the little fish come and nibble away, paying 5% commission on their side of the bets, why not give maybe even half of the commission to the layer. You would then in effect have NEGATIVE commission on bets in these markets to the layer, whilst a boost in turnover overall, with Betfair getting half of the commission, is better than getting none at all, surely? .

A market maker would suddenly find that markets which were much more costly to them to price up (not just in pecuniary terms, but in time terms too) would suddenly be back in play and worthwhile participating in.

You then reduce these discounts/incentives once sizeable liquidity has been reached.

There is something intrinsically valuable to Betfair in having as many markets being offered, with as deep liquidity as possible. Ever thinner and narrower side markets drive people away. The reason side markets have shrivelled is solely because of a faulty mix of pricing/incentives to people to get involved in them.

There is also huge room for a new type of market-making. The “crack trading team” is a throwback to the stone age of bookmaking, and an embarrassment for Betfair. What is obvious, is the crack team often don’t understand pricing in the internet era. The crack trading team needs to be disbanded, it is a waste of time and money. Betfair haven’t spotted what to replace them with. I remember Betfair buying a small company/startup which analysed betting patterns (to stop linked accounts, through intelligent analysis of them..?). That is where the future of pricing is, that is where Betfair will find the answer to their liquidity problems.

A large part of me thinks the Betfair sportsbook and exchange separation is a huge mistake. Ebay made a strategic decision to show less information/clutter to new users, to keep it initially simple, but more frequent users were allowed a much more full set of information. I think the exchange and sportsbook should be merged, where someone who logs on in the UK (to keep things simple), they will see say 5/6, and take 5/6 on a bet, but behind the scenes you could actually give them 1.95 or whatever the current higher price available is on the exchange. That would keep things simple for Joe Public, but bearing in mind Yu and Morana’s epithet when they spoke together on record saying they could see that people kept coming back and playing more when they got a better run for their money (hence why Yu was in favour of the Betfair education/statistical database tools etc), this would combine great value, with simplicity. I suspect the crack trading team don’t care how profitable Betfair is, they probably care how much money is diverted onto their poor prices (often with knockback size).

Betfair should be a £5billion+ company. It should be the biggest and best bookmaker of all. I don’t even think that gambling bets should be the flagship profit for the Betfair exchange to match, but that is by the by. 

It would be great to see Betfair in 2015 aspiring not to be Paddy Power 2013 “Lite”, but to be Betfair 2013 “heavy”, if you see what I mean.

May Delay

I've been a little tardy on the Friendly Tipster League update from last week, but here is the table as of last Monday. The midweek updates and this weekend's results will be posted early next week. A lame excuse, but I have had family staying with me on all week, and my usual routine has been a little disrupted, but in a good way. It seems like forever ago, but the highlights from last weekend were that the leading XX Extended Draw category has seen its lead trimmed back after going 0 from 6 selections, while the second place XX Bundesliga selections had two winners from two selections. Among the other leaders, Peter Nordsted's Drawmaster found two draws from three, which guarantees the season will end in profit for these, and little change among the other 'in-profit' contenders.

In the red zone, Neil's nightmare Spring continued with four losses from four, and Football Elite's nightmare season continued with another losing weekend, while Talkbet chalked up a second profitable weekend in a row.

Nothing from a few of the regulars this weekend. With the silly season upon us, a few people are being extra cautious. My own XX Draws have had four selections voided in the last couple of weeks, with the draw price well below 3.0 - and three went on to be draws.

Looking For A Silk Purse

Webbo asked on the last post:

What price did you get out at Cassini? Or did you let this one run? I remember you saying once you have no intention of losing your whole stake when you trade so why wouldn't you have 'redded up' at 1.01?

Unfortunately it is not clear to which event or bet his comment relates to, but when trading, it is true that I have no intention of losing my whole stake. Unfortunately, whether it is my intention or not, that unfortunate outcome does result from time to time. Sometimes the market moves against you, and you do not get an opportunity to trade out at anything close to value. In trading the NBA for example, one risk of getting involved late on in close games is that you will see huge swings. Great if you called it right, but unfortunately us mere mortals sometimes call it wrong, and we are left holding a large red. For less liquid sports such as baseball, the problem is often that there are no takers at the true price, but you are better served in the long run to hold a position than you are to trade out at an unfavourable price - assuming of course that you are staking sensibly, which is easier said than done when a great opportunity presents itself. Webbo says “why wouldn’t you have ‘redded up’ at 1.01?’ In my experience, 1.01 is not usually a value back. It can be, but more often it is the case that the 1.01 is taken and the price then moves out. Years ago, I read a reported statistic from Betfair that only 70% of 1.01s actually won. I have no idea if that was true then, or is true now, but what I do see in the sports I trade is that the 1.01 gets taken too early.

Some of you may have woken up yesterday morning to find that one baseball game was still in-play. The Oakland Athletics v Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim game went to 19 innings and didn’t end until 9:42am BST. Money had traded at 1.01 on the Angels – not mine unfortunately - and they went on to lose.

I mentioned the Brooklyn Nets – Chicago Bulls game at the weekend in this post. Here, not only 1.01 traded, but also 1000 traded, and the ‘sure-thing’ lost.

Even when a 1.01 wins, more often than not, a little fear creeps in to the market, and you can back at 1.02 later on. I caught the end of the Golden State Warriors game on Sunday night / Monday morning, and the Warriors had a comfortable lead in the fourth quarter, up by 16 / 18 points or so. I layed five figures at 1.01, not because I expected the Warriors to lose (although that would have been a nice bonus financially) but because I expected Denver to close the gap at some point, which would result in a few rattled nerves. Greed and fear drive the markets. Sure enough, I was able to back some back at 1.03, some at 1.02 and make a little low-risk money when the lead dropped to 13 or 14. All it takes is a turnover, an ‘and one’ or a three-pointer to shake someone’s confidence.

The second part of Webbo’s comment went like this:

BTW, I'm trying to test an edge I may have over thousands of bets on the football. It's puzzling me that using a Kelly staking system this is profitable but to level stakes the bets make a slight loss just short of break even.

I wanted to know what you thought of this as I remember you and someone (Al maybe?) debating whether a system can make a loss at level stakes but a profit using another staking method. I previously thought you were right but now I'm not so sure.

Not sure about me being right?!! Oh ye of little faith.

A system can certainly make a loss at level stakes but be profitable using another staking method - in the short-term. In the long-term, no. For an example, look at Roulette. The true odds on black are 2.0556, whereas you will get paid at 2.0. Can you employ Martingale to overcome this negative expectancy? For a while, most likely you will, but sooner than you might think, probability catches up with you and you hit the house limit, run out of money, or you lose your nerve. Labouchere might seem a gentler way of playing this bet, but again, sooner than you might think, probability catches up with you, and you have a losing run and the stake size becomes too high. There's a reason there are no professional roulette players.

Unlike in Roulette, the edge on football bets will vary from event to event. It is quite possible that the edge on the smaller Kelly stake selections is negative. Perhaps Webbo would tell us what the level stakes P&L is when the lowest Kelly bets are expunged from the data set. A few higher value bets with larger stakes would compensate for the lower edge bets.

And now the moment you have all been waiting for - the Friendly Tipster League updates from the weekend. The XX Draws (Extended) had three draws, all 0-0, from 10 selections, three one goal games, and a 90th minute goal to take a draw away, so overall not bad. The Monday night game between Aston Villa and Sunderland was the final selection of the weekend, and not the best suggestion the spreadsheet has ever had.

Just two Classic selections, with the 1-1 draw between Real Vallodolid and Sevilla ensuring a profit on the draw bets. No joy in the Bundesliga though, where an 87th minute goal prevented one draw from two selections.

The top six are all from the XX family, with the Extended HT 0-0 moving into a Champions League spot:

 
while the next six, and the remaining profitable, entries are:

Premier Betting moved up form 13th, while Drawmaster came up empty and drop down from 6th.

In the red by less than 10 points are these nine:

The Bundeslayga selections are having a bad run with just two winners from 12, and the big gainer was the Extended U1.5 selections which has mentioned above had six winners from 10 selections. Neil's poor run continues too, with just one profitable weekend since mid-March. At the end of January, Neil was in 6th spot, and up 9.63 points, just 10 points off the lead.

The Hall of Shame candidates are this sorry lot:

Football Elite's nightmare season continues with just 4 winners in the last 25 selections, and my own XX Draws (Classic) remain in the relegation zone. Credit to Football Formbook though for keeping the selections coming on his blog. Plenty of others gave up long ago.

And hello May. Until this morning, April was something of a nightmare month, and the only one in the red in total.

April Daily Averages (Net)

After seven years of roller-coaster results, I finally realised where I was going wrong and after a decent, if not spectacular April this year, every month is now green, although April remains very much an outlier.

Lay Grandad

Some major drama in the NBA last night with the Chicago Bulls facing the Brooklyn Nets. Down by 14 points with 3:45 left, the Bulls traded at 1000 (£14) as well as over £200k matched at 1.01. Need I tell you that the Bulls came back to win after three overtime periods?  More than a few hearts were racing I imagine, but the folly of laying at 1000 with so much time left in an NBA game should be clear. My biggest single win came in the NBA play-offs two years ago, in another game again involving the Bulls. Someone took my large lay at 1.03 and after dropping to 1.01, it bounced back to a winning bet as the Miami Heat went on a run to come back from a similar deficit. It's hard to beat the NBA as a trading medium.

Today's football selections from the Football Tipster League entrants interestingly sees one game feature more than once - the Espanyol v Granada game. I have recently started adding a Cassini 'value' selection to my email each week, and this is my value game for this week, but not only do I have it as value but so do others including the profitable Premier Edge and Football Formbook - who are not quite so profitable.

All of us find value in Espanyol. My recommendation was at 2.05 (-0.5) on BETDAQ, Premier Edge has 2.01 at 1.88 Bet, and Football Formbook had 2.05 at Pinnacle, but FF clearly are under the impression that Espanyol face an ageing team:

Grandad certainly needs the win more than Espanyol, but here's to hoping he feels his age, and Espanyol play to win.

Speaking of playing to win, the Atalanta v Bologna game qualified as as XX Draw Extended selection yesterday, but with a draw price around the 2.67 mark, the suspicion was that the game might not be played genuinely, and so it turned out. It's the Italian way. As Liam Brady said:

When a draw suits both teams in Italy, the game will end in a draw. It's all to do with the mentality of the Italian people. They see nothing wrong in such an arrangement.

Bologna equalised in the 76th minute (1-1) and there was little action after that - unless faking injury counts as action. I gave it a mention in the email to subscribers, but I am not including any selections where the draw price is sub 3.0.

Bologna have now been sub 3.0 on the draw six times since 2010-11, so this is nothing new for them. Three matches ended as draws so I guess 2.67 was value after all!

Shady Business

It has been mentioned on here before, but it is interesting how involvement in financial markets is generally admired and respected whereas a similar involvement in sports trading is generally treated with disdain. One factor is that financial markets have the advantage of longevity which begets respect - the London Stock Exchange dates back to about 1698.

Betfair, the first betting exchange, dates all the way back to 2000, and much has been written recently (regarding the move from exchange to sports-book) on how the trading concept remains beyond the comprehension of many.

Betfair could help themselves in this area in my opinion, for example by having just one price on binary markets. With a Back of Team A exactly the same as a Lay of Team B, why confuse people by offering an unnecessary choice? It might be hard for those of us who are familiar with the exchange to comprehend what is so difficult about the concept of backing and laying, but choice overload (overchoice) doesn't help, and offering just one price would make it easier for Betfair, and others, to present their product in a more readily understood stock market format.

The inspiration for this post came from Peter Webb's comment yesterday that betting markets are generally held in low-esteem because the public keep hearing stories about people getting ripped off in gambling markets.

Now it's true that people are ripped off in the financial markets too - insider-trading, Ponzi schemes, hidden fees etc. - but gambling markets have their cheats not only in the sports themselves (drugs, match-fixing), but also, as Peter puts it, people 'exploiting the gullible'. This weeks's example is someone using sports markets to (allegedly) defraud family friends out of huge sums of money for example.  Peter writes:

You also have the current issue that people who have never traded successfully are positioning themselves as experts or people are seeking to exploit the trading opportunity, rather than getting on and doing it, that isn’t helping matters.

It doesn't take too long to find people with absolutely no track record offering their tips for sale. Ian Erskine is hot on this issue too, but on the question of people seeking additional funds to invest for others, Peter continues that:

...it has to be said, it’s fairly obvious that if you are producing stellar returns on something, you just reinvest the money yourself. No need to seek outside involvement. I know that, because that is exactly what I and many others have done. I’ve never met a serious participant in the market who wouldn’t do the same.

Exactly. Peter then shows a chart showing his 'equity curve' for the 116 days this year - check out his post here for the full details -  and suggests:

From it you can see that I am unable to compounding all my earnings, else the graph would be exponential. The fact is, even if you have a decent track record it’s impossible to put that extra money to use because your ‘system’ will collapse under the weight of your stakes. You become the market! The upshot of this is that sports markets are just not scalable enough to warrant raising funds to deploy in them. Fire up a spreadsheet and you will learn quickly that compounding small amounts rapidly at pretty much any positive percentage will mean it isn’t long before your average stake dwarfs what is sensibly available in the market.

Others may disagree, or rather misunderstand, the scalability issue because just a few weeks ago, a generally well-respected blogger wrote:

I've heard it said that the sports markets are not scalable, which is rubbish. I've already scaled up from £2 bets to £200 bets and the markets will be able to take far more than that before I even get close to finding it tough to get matched.

What is rubbish was that comment. Scaling up from £2 to £200 is one thing, but try scaling up from £200 to £20,000. You can always get a top price for your £2, but not may markets allow you to get 10,000 times that amount on in-play, and in many sports, you'd struggle to get a fraction of that £20,000 matched, yet in financial markets, that kind of sum is a drop in he ocean. I wrote on 22 Feb that:

If you have an edge, use it for yourself, build up your bank, and your balance will at some point grow to more than you need for day-to-day trading.

As Peter says, there's absolutely no need to seek outside investment if you have an edge, and anyone doing their due diligence and researching such an invitation for 'investment' would realise this very quickly. The problem is that so many people are gullible and easily fooled by appearances and the prospect of easy money. A promised monthly dividend of £70,000 from an investment of £400,000 is just not realistic - even without the Premium Charge!

Elliot Short Of A Few Million

Towards the end of yesterday's post, I mentioned that a reality in the betting world is that most people in it are looking for easy money, and that strategies requiring a little research and patience don't seem to be too popular.

Not long after keying those words of wisdom, I noticed that the 'Elliot Short Of A Few Brain Cells” post from way back in June 2009 was receiving a lot of fresh hits. A little puzzling given the age of the story, originally published in the News of the World and widely dismissed on the Betfair Forum at the time, and indeed by Betfair themselves, but I guessed that the surge in interest was for a reason, and that reason turned out to be the start of the subject’s trial on thirteen counts of fraud and one count of making or supplying an article for use in fraud.

It’s alleged that one person (James Crawford) lost £400k and another (Christopher Antoniou) £200k, while others lost lesser amounts as they apparently handed over what I would consider enormous sums of money for Short to work his magic with. Invest £400k, and reap a monthly dividend of £70k. That really would be a magic trick. Why can't my financial advisers do that?

When I wrote my original post on the subject, one Arthutfaxsake wrote:

I know the kid, and the amount of winnings the NOTW posted [£20million] is correct, although how he did it is not - he didn't participate in the article, but was set up by an undercover reporter.

Oh really? Well, either he didn't know the kid, or he was quite probably one of the victims deceived by a few fake screenshots, as Elliot Short allegedly had quite a lot to do with the original News of the World article, and who swallowed the follow-up lie by Short that he had asked Betfair to release their statement as "he wasn’t happy with the story and publicity".

A couple of months later I wrote, unusually for me, a little sarcastically:

Of course, Elliot Short made millions, but then he had a well thought out strategy that no one else had thought of which was to make up a story and find a reporter who was too lazy to take any time to verify the story and the millions turned out to be as real as Santa Claus.

Scott Ferguson suggested at the time "It sounded like a glory-seeking tosser making ludicrous claims", but unfortunately it appears to be more serious than that with at least three victims, and while they have only themselves to blame, I hope the money was amounts they could afford to lose.

Greg Wood of the Guardian reported at the time that the story:

was drivel — and dangerous drivel at that — from top to bottom, as anyone with even a faint acquaintance with Betfair could see.

The old canard that some people have more money than sense is never truer than when something appears to be too good to be true. It usually is. 

The trial is expected to last for three weeks and it promises to tell a sorry tale. I’m sure many of us will be following with interest.

Baseball By The Numbers

Yesterday’s post on baseball was poorly written, and should have made clear that the prices mentioned were the true prices for backing the home team in the middle of the respective innings. The win probabilities are of course significantly different at the top of the inning compared to the middle of the inning, assuming no change in score, with the home team’s chances increasing with each out of the top half of the inning. I have updated that post to make it clearer for future generations.

Our old friend BigAl, still looking in on the blog on a frequent basis for morsels of wisdom (there are a few if you pay attention) despite his oft dismissive and derogatory comments, (I forgot he was banned before I allowed his comments through, although they were actually quite sensible) suggests that “it’s a dangerous game simply applying the overall average to every game” but perhaps BigAl is no more well versed in the nuances of baseball than he is in the rules of cricket. The unique (other than softball) nature of the sport means that unless you have a good reason to believe that in any one game the long – very long in baseball’s case – established probabilities may be wrong, backing at greater than true (long-established) value is as dangerous as backing heads at greater than 2.0.

At the risk of educating BigAl and others who might otherwise take sub-value bets from or offer plus-value bets to the more knowledgeable of baseball bettors, the key player is the starting pitcher. One need look no further than the prices on each day of a series between two teams. A team is often odds-on for game one, yet the next day underdogs, and the only difference in line-ups is one player on each team – the starting pitcher. Teams generally have five starting pitchers, who rotate to start a game every fifth day. I'd like a job like that. 

In the game as it is played today, it is unusual for the starting pitcher to throws more than a hundred pitches, (the number throwing more than 125 in a season dropped from 212 in 1998 to a nadir of 14 in 2007, although it has risen slightly since then) and it is in rare circumstances that he remains in the game in the later innings. If he does, the most likely explanation is that he is having a blinding game, perhaps he’s on a no-hitter or a perfect game, but either way, it is thus unlikely that the game would be tied were this the case. The highest pitch count for a starting pitcher since 2005 is 149, thrown in a no-hitter, which rather supports my theory. 

Alternatively, the starting pitcher may also be left in the game ‘taking one for the team’, but this expression refers to the fact that the bullpen (non-starting pitchers) are being rested and saved for another day. Again in this scenario, it is probable that the game is all but lost, so the tied game state we need would not be an issue.

So BigAl’s cautionary words are certainly true in most sports, and should always be a consideration even in baseball, but my assertion is that the established probabilities are a solid starting point. If the value price is 1.63, then you would obviously need to factor in your individual edge and look for that price rather than take the bare minimum, but ask for 1.79 and you will get filled more often than you might reasonably expect. (1.79 is psychologically a better number for someone to lay, compared to 1.8).  

Home Team Odds - Bases Empty

The rather astute visitor fizzer555 follows my thinking too. In addition to understanding the true meaning of my poorly worded post, while agreeing with BigAl in principle, (not often a great idea), he was also sharp enough to observe that:

Cassini may be on to something though as by the time you get to the 7th innings the main reason for the fav/dog bias may be out of the game (i.e. the SPs) but I think the market may retain some fav/dog bias (gradually reducing across the 9 innings) that may not be justified. Don't have data to prove that but over 2 or 3 innings the hitting strength of each team is going to be very similar except for a few outliers (e.g. Miami, Houston low hitting) and similarly with bullpen pitching a lot of the teams will be in a narrow performance range.

Indeed, and I am beginning to wish I’d never let the cat out of the bag on this strategy! 

At least it makes for an interesting discussion and I have every confidence that the Donate button (top right) will be extra busy in the coming days as grateful readers once again line their pockets with extra cash, courtesy of Cassini’s shared wisdom. 

As the opportunity cost of my trading moves ever higher, I may give away even more such nuggets.

Of course, the reality could be that 99.9% of readers will move on, impatiently looking for an easier way to make money. Strategies that require a little research and patience don't seem to be too popular. 

I believe it was Shakespeare, in his play The Comedy of Errors, (not a play about BigAl's betting), who wrote: "You can lead a gambler to the edge, but you can’t make him leap".