Green All Over

Two Way Twitter

noreply@blogger.com (Cassini) — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 01:13:00 +0000

Well, who knew? This Twitterage thing apparently works in two ways. Not only can you be followed, but you can also be a follower yourself. Jesus can also be an apostle. @markyiverson and @OnlineTrader pointed this out to me, and I am now open to suggestions as to who might be worth following. I'm quite demanding though, since I know I don't want anything horse-racing related, but beyond that, specifically what DO I want, I'm not quite sure. If there is a Twit suggesting winner after winner, that'll work.

The Saturday football went reasonably well, with all three Value Under selections winners, but of the two XX Draw selections, just the one Under to sing about. Koln v Schalke '04 was a draw until the 72' when Schalke exploded with three late goals, while Paris St Germain scored early at Brest, and the game ended 0-1. Both the Unders and the Draw price shortened considerably on the German game, offering a sure profit to anyone choosing to trade out before going in-play, but unfortunately this wasn't my own strategy here. The Under selections tipped were Catania v Param (1-1), Lorient v Sochaux (1-1) and Toulouse v Caen (1-0) at 1.7, 1.71 and 1.72 respectively- nice sequence there for those who like that sort of thing.

Mark J had one selection, Inverness Caledonian Thistle -0.5 v St Mirren at 2.2, but they could only draw. Football Elite had a winner yesterday with Hannover '96 beating Nurnberg at 2.25 while the Green Pullover's poor run in the draw department continued with four more losers. His pathetic Watson joke did, I am ashamed to admit, make me smile when I read it though.

SJ left a comment the other day which arrived in my inbox, but was flagged as spam by blogger - I just released it along with a couple of others that had made their way there. For the record, I never delete comments, even if they are mean and spiteful and make me cry. SJ wrote:

It is nice to think that “my well written” (thanks) blog is the spark for yet another ‘full-time/part-time/hobby” debate. Nice, apart from most of it is well trodden ground. I think theory of mind eludes most of us to a degree when this topic comes up as it is difficult to put yourself in another person’s shoes. I find it hard to imagine what I would productively do with my spare time if I were to gamble for a living. Last week I watched films, youtube videos and started a blog. Fun at the time, but not sure it would be on a regular basis. Plus despite the two hours of travelling a day I enjoy the routine of going to work and the social aspects whilst I’m there. I also like the guaranteed income and company benefits plus all the cross-skilling I do. So for me it is a very easy decision, gambling is a profitable hobby that I do in some of my spare time. That suits me perfectly. I can also see how if my circumstances were different then I could have a different opinion and I like Mark’s reasoning and I like the sensible approach to the longevity of the profession he takes.

ROI being a more useful indicator than unit profit (or anything) is another well read topic and I don’t suppose I have much to add to the pot. However I do have a couple of comments. The first is on Veitch and his 16% return, agreeing with the ‘’s around only, I think this is an exceptional return and that at his volume even a third of that would be highly impressive. Also as you allude to ROI on its own is a nice headline figure but without any qualification I find it is meaningless, perhaps comparable to looking just at goals for in football without referencing games played, goals conceded, relative position etc etc. Presented with a choice of either a system with a record of 5% ROI after 1000 bets at 1 bet a week or a system with a 20% ROI after 15 bets at a rate of 1 bet a day then based colely on that information I’d happily choose the 5% return. Ofcourse there are various shades of gray in between too and taking into account things like average prices, drawdown and recovery periods and volatility can all help calculate the worthiness of an approach.

Second comment I’ve left on a blog this evening that is as long as my last post so I’ll leave it there.

Nice of SJ to write my blog as well as his own! Yes, that 16% ROI claimed by Patrick Veitch is certainly high, suggesting as I wrote earlier that his edge is based on more than an analysis of factors available to all.

Analysis of any kind seem to be noticeably absent in the 'strategies' of a couple of fellow bloggers. One opens his latest post with these lines:

Once again the demons are near the surface. I found myself scanning betfair @ 2.30 am this morning looking for ANYTHING to bet or trade on, I fucked away 70Euro on NBA basketball, what a muppet. I withdrew my bank and decided to start again. I limited my deposits to €450 per week as I know what's potentially round the corner.

A second blogger received a good comment which was this:

From the outside looking in, it appears that when you up stakes you are actually trying to sabotage everything - and that's the mindset of a gambler, or any addict. I think you need to go deeper than 'a traders mindset' and find out if this behaviour is repeated in other areas of your life and why.

Both these bloggers would appear to be unsuited to trading or betting. No one serious about trading profitably finds themselves 'scanning Betfair at 2:30am looking for ANYTHING to bet or trade on" and the second blogger says

i've taken some time to reflect deeply on the way i am and how i have been in the past, a constant theme would be my addictive personality which can be found to be responsible for quite a few things when i think about it.

Where's the discipline that is essential in betting / trading, not to mention other areas of life? And then we read this

I really enjoy pre race trading and its something im not too bad at although as i mentioned before chrtistmas the in-play trading was taking off nicely for me. So as the markets fluidity is rather poor at the moment im going to spend a little time opting out of the pre race markets all together (maybe ill bend the rules on saturdays) and just constantly apply the methods i have for in running as its far more difficult for the in running markets to be skewed by manipulation, something i feel this time of year thrives in the pre race markets. Also it should free up some time for me to watch the runner prior to the start, i have already tried this since my last post on thursday and friday evening meetings.... guess what, couple of the better days ive had over the past couple of weeks!

No mention of an edge, which in horse racing is almost impossible as I have written before, and it would seem that our friend is simply gambling at random, pre-race one minute ('not too bad at' - what does that mean - profitable, lose slowly?), in-play the next ('taking off nicely for me'). Gamblers are notorious for selective memory, and unless I am reading this all wrong, this seems to be the case here. Benfing the rules - why have tules? There's the excuse for losses present too - 'markets skewed by manipulation'. What does that even mean? If you are confident about what price represents value, what any spoofers might try to do will be of academic interest to you only. If someone offers a bet that is value - take it! Or at least some of it. It could be Dietmar Hamann playing with some loose change.

Rather Optimistic Income (ROI)

noreply@blogger.com (Cassini) — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 08:08:00 +0000

Mark Iverson responded to my 'Great Work' post, I had a feeling he might, here:

Thanks for the mention Cassini - had a feeling you might respond to my post :-)

I can see your viewpoint and a normal career is one that appeals to most due to the 'safety' it provides, but after my mother died of cancer when I was 25 and after my son was diagnosed with his heart conditions it gave me a wake up call.

For me sports trading full time is a 5 year plan (4 years left) and after that who knows? If anything comes along to disrupt that in the meantime (enhanced premium charges, law changes etc) then I'm making plans as I go to provide myself with some breathing room.

Have you read the book I mention in my post, 'Rich Dad, Poor Dad'? It discusses the fear behind the 'no food on the table' outlook better than I could do justice and is well worth a look in my opinion.

I did read the book Rich Dad, Poor Dad a few years ago, although unlike Mark, and not just to be difficult, I didn’t actually think it was that good. I believe it was also reported to contain many errors and bad advice, but I did like their definition of financial independence which was that it “is when your monthly income from assets exceeds your monthly expenses” and tracking this percentage as a goal is fun and encouraging. That might not be the original source for the definition, but it’s where I first came across it, and it’s a good goal to shoot for. There are, in my opinion, better easy-to-read financial advice books out there, such as The Millionaire Next Door - want to be a millionaire? Well stop living like one!
Webbo wrote

Great post Cassini. I think the professional gambler dream appeals because people desperately want to be in control of their own destiny, doing something that they enjoy and gambling is something that anyone can try. I'm pretty sure the reality will never match the dream... well except maybe for a few intelligent bot-makers out there!

Indeed. Most pro gamblers are either in the know, or smart enough to build a bot, and thus smart enough to build a career while their bot is running!

Ben from Sports Trading Life has written a post on what returns it is realistic to expect from sports trading. The opening lines are a little worrying though, as he writes:

“So you have decided to take up Sports Trading or some form of gambling and you might have bought a few systems, looked at a few strategies or even joined a service which means you are now ready to make some money.”

I can tell you right now that if you have ‘bought a few systems’ you are unlikely to have what it takes to make money from trading because for obvious reasons, ‘systems’ do not work long-term. You will need to be a little smarter than that, if you aspire to be profitable.

While it can be confusing to talk in terms of points or units, (10 points profit a week is meaningless, since we need to know up front whether the stake is 1 point or 1000 points, and how many opportunities there are in a week), the ROI makes much more sense. If you’d stuck 1000 into a FTSE 100 index fund at the start of 2010, your ROI for that year would have been 9%. We know what that means – at the end of the year, you have 1090.

The main thrust of Ben’s post though, is that gamblers / traders really expect unrealistic returns. Ben mentions that professional gambler Patrick Veitch, who has reportedly won 10 million, has an ROI of ‘only’ 16%. I was actually initially very surprised it was that high, although on consideration, when you own horses as Mr. Veitch does, and are this privy to the inside information that goes along with this, it’s a lot more reasonable. Anyone returning 16% over the course of several years must have a huge edge.

Any positive ROI is arguably good, but there are other factors to consider. Often overlooked is opportunity cost – by investing money on sports, you are passing up the opportunity to invest in another investment. As Investopedia defines opportunity cost, it’s

“the difference in return between a chosen investment and one that is necessarily passed up. Say you invest in a stock and it returns a paltry 2% over the year. In placing your money in the stock, you gave up the opportunity of another investment - say, a risk-free government bond yielding 6%. In this situation, your opportunity costs are 4% (6% - 2%).”

There’s also the cost of the time to consider, as well as the cost of subscribing to a service for the selections or perhaps for data. You might, if you are lucky, be able to make that 9% ROI on 250 bets during the course of a year, but you’ve invested a lot of time which could have been spent on other gainful pursuits. Investing 1000 at the start of the year and collecting 90 at the end is much easier, if not quite so exciting. It's also worth mentioning that ROI isn't the be all and end all of it - the number of opportunities is also a factor. A method that offers a 20% edge, but only once a year, is not so useful as a method returning 0.1%, but which offers 50 opportunities a day.

The Friendly Tipster League Table illustrates well that a double digit ROI is unlikely in the long-term, especially when you factor in that the returns do not include commission. Of the tracked selections, only one (the rather tongue-in-cheek Back The Lay The Draw Selection) has a double digit ROI, and that will soon change as it heads down with each passing selection these days.

And finally, in a book about Ancient Greece, and a chapter on Sparta, I came across a reference to the Helots, subjugated natives (essentially slaves) of the Spartans. Helots were allowed to continue their farming, but had to give 50% of the fruits of their labour to the Spartans. Ring a bell anyone? The Helots eventually revolted and allied with other Greek peoples to overthrow the Spartans.

Under / Over Prices From Correct Scores

noreply@blogger.com (Cassini) — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 19:42:00 +0000

Average Guy wrote:

Hi Cassini, I'm considering drafting a model for price predictions for Overs markets based on correct score probability. My question is, do the correct score probabilites drive the Overs price, or does the Overs price drive the correct score prices ? Hope I asked it correctly as I am even more confused now.

The Correct Score probabilities determine the prices for the Under / Over markets.

Calculate the Correct Score prices and then sum the probabilities for the scores that you need for the Unders. The Overs will be 1 minus the probability of the Unders.

For example, to calculate the probability of Over 1.5, sum the 0-0, 1-0 and 0-1 probabilities, and subtract this total from 1. For the Over 2.5, add the above three to the 1-1, 2-0 and 0-2 probabilities for the Under 2.5 probability, and subtract from 1 for the Over 2.5 probability.

And repeat as necessary. This is actually the easy part!

Great Work

noreply@blogger.com (Cassini) — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 14:30:00 +0000

Mark Iverson’s latest post is the inspiration for this one. I concluded yesterday’s post with a call for anyone to seriously consider the full ramifications of giving up a career to go full-time gambling. Note that I said ‘career’ rather than ‘job’. One could argue that a career and a job are both work, but there are differences, and I'm rather assuming that a career might be, if not something hugely enjoyable, at least something tolerable, while a job might not be. There are not too many gainful activities that I would describe as truly enjoyable outside of the world of professional sports or the arts, and even those might not be so enjoyable after a while unless you were one of the few making huge amounts from it which would certainly help.

One of the problems with giving up a career is that it can be very difficult to pick it up again after a break. My background is in IT, so my views on this are biased towards that industry, but a lot can change in a couple of years. In IT, skill sets become obsolete quite rapidly, and whereas the company you are with will (one hopes) re-train you at their expense in new technology, if you are on the outside, the cost of training is not only significant, but it is also hard to get a position when all you have is ‘theoretical’ experience. Even if you are lucky enough to be able to step back onto the ladder, the loss of a couple of years can mean going back to square one in terms of holiday entitlements, profit-sharing awards as well as seniority – since you are now behind others who have not taken a break.

This is not a problem for the unskilled, or for those with a trade of course, where it is much easier to pick up where you left off, but my feeling is that the modern professional trader / gambler is more likely to come from a ‘career’ background than from the unskilled or semi-skilled background. I am sure there are exceptions. If you believe the newspapers, the 1980s London Financial Markets were supposedly full of barely literate financial traders / dealers yanked straight off the street markets in the East End, thrown into the financial markets, and burned out by age 29 incidentally, but my feeling is that for the most part, an aptitude for trading is more likely to be found in someone with career options than not.

Mark talks in his post about the hours we work, and yes, work hours are hours that are not our free time, but there is a big difference between ‘work’ in an office and ‘work’ on an assembly line in a Chinese factory for Apple, for example. The latter really is work, but for many, a twelve hour ‘working’ day (including travel time) is really a lot less than that. Some people even get to write blog posts from their desk, read on their commute, (if they have one – working from home is becoming ever more common, even if not every day), have social chats by the water-cooler or coffee pot, take a lunch hour and breaks, adjust their hours to suit themselves and have access to personal e-mails and Internet while at ‘work’. Getting approved for a mortgage is a lot easier with a ‘proper’ job too, and as you move up the ladder, your income steadily increases too - something that is definitely not assured with betting, and quite possibly the reverse is true.

So I guess it all depends on where you are coming from, and where you want to get to. If I had a 12 hour shift in a Chinese factory, or a ‘job’ that I didn’t enjoy, my views on full-time trading would be a lot different, but the value of investing time in your future is perhaps something only fully appreciated when looking back in life.

As Mark mentioned in his post, Steve Jobs did indeed say this about work:

"Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle."

I’m just not sure a solitary life spent in front of a monitor betting on sports is what Jobs had in mind by ‘great work’, (he was probably thinking more Mona Lisa), and I’m not sure that I would ‘love what I do’ if I did it full-time anyway. I enjoy trading, most of the time, because it’s a challenge and because it's a way of relaxing from my real job, but would I enjoy it if the price of failure was no food on the table, or knowing that my income was at the whim of a PLC who could choose to stop doing business with me at any time because some accountants decided that I’m not good for their business model?

Career Advice

noreply@blogger.com (Cassini) — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 07:34:00 +0000

Finally, a much better weekend on the football with the XX Draw Selections finding two winners from four selections, and three winning on the Under 2.5 market. I also offered subscribers six value under selections, four of which were winners, and even more pleasing was that three were scoreless games - Bologna v Parma (1.77), Levante v Real Zaragoza (1.81)and Hoffenheim v Hannover '96 (1.92). The other winner was Nurnberg v Hertha Berlin (1.95), with the losers being Bayer Leverkusen v Mainz '05 (2.01) and Santander v Getafe (1.67). The I'll add these to the tipster table once the number of selections increases, but with few matches, the ROI is rather misleading.

The latest Tipster Table is here:

Backing the draw on Ian Erskine's Lay the Draw selections is on a losing run right now, but this method still leads the table in terms of ROI. Backing Under on the XX Draw Selections moves up to second place, while Peter Nordsted's Drawmaster drops to third after drawing a blank this weekend, although a little unlucky with two of his picks losing to 85' and 90' goals.

Mark J's selections are in fourth place, after a small profit this weekend, while Geoff's draws continue to struggle and drop to fifth. The final profitable method is the XX Draws mentioned previously, and in negative territory is Football Elite who had a disappointing weekend with one push, and three losers.

In eighth is Green Pullover, who managed to find one winner in 34 selections before a draw in his final pick this weekend, and Griff improved his ROI, if not his points, with one winner from five for an ROI of 48.5%.The random selections remain in ninth spot because I forgot to randomly pick any this weekend.

It's interesting how all of the draw-seeking methods have had long losing runs of late, of 15, 16, 17 and 20. Not unexpected that a losing run like that would be hit, but for Griff, the XX Draws, Geoff and the Green Pullover all around the same time is odd.

SJ knows the way to my blog roll is with a little sweet-talking, and writes:

Hi Cassini, apparently flattery is a good way to go about getting a blog link. Well yours is definitely the best gambling themed blog I've come across. Its impressive that you're able to blog so consistantly well on such a regular basis.

Anyway, my blog is at http://itonlymatterswhentheresmoneyonit.blogspot.com catchy, I know. Feel free to check it out and hopefully it will be worthy of inclusion on your blogroll

It helped that the new blog actually looks well written. As the Green All Over board of director was reviewing it, he noticed this:

Several times I've considered giving up work and gambling for a living, current winnings whilst trading less than part-time (i.e. when I can be bothered) alone would be more than adequate to live off but I'd be very hesitant to actually do so.

Hesitant with good reason I would say. Unless you have a unique edge (perhaps inside information) that will endure forever, or at least for long enough for you to not worry about working again, why would anyone give up a career to trade sports for a living? Later in the post, SJ wrote:

Secondly, contrary to something I recently read on another blog but conveniently forget the location, the markets do evolve and any edge I have isn't guaranteed to last, what with the Premium Charge about to rear its ugly head and the increasing presence of bigger fish.

That may well have been this blog, because I have written on this subject before - may times. Edges disappear, and external factors such as the introduction of a Premium Charge or Super Premium Charge do happen. The goal posts can and do move. If you can find an edge, then someone else can too. It's unlikely that you will remain top dog forever. And there is always the risk that in-play gambling (for example) will become illegal, or some other black swan event will mean that your ability to make a profit vanishes overnight. If you have a career, be thankful, hang in there, and trade on the side. A career is about much more than just the pay. Each year is an investment in your future, something that gambling doesn't offer. Yes, it may sound very exciting, especially to the younger and more impressionable among us, but the truth is that gambling for your living is unsociable, stressful, and bloody hard work.

Finally, a big day today for the football club that has been a huge part of my life for more than forty years. Another trip to Wembley would be a nice memory.

Proddabilities

noreply@blogger.com (Cassini) — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 11:27:00 +0000

Two big games in England today, and there's something a little odd about the Arsenal v Manchester United Unders price. As you all know by now, my spreadsheet calculates the probabilities of each score combination, and from that the Match Odds and any market I'm interested in. My Match Odds are (H/A/D) 3.01 / 2.56 / 3.61 and on Betfair the mid-prices are 3.025 / 2.57 / 3.575 - could hardly be closer, but my Under 2.5 price is 1.74 while 2.17 is available - a whopping 24.7% edge. If the market has a higher goal expectancy than I do, then why are the draw odds not higher? Opportunity knocks.

The Manchester City v Tottenham Hotspur game also has prices close to mine, including the Under where I have 2.13 against 2.17 available. Home I have 1.87 (1.925), Away 4.33 (4.55), Draw 4.18 (3.825). Not much value there.

Recovery

noreply@blogger.com (Cassini) — Sat, 21 Jan 2012 23:19:00 +0000

Well, that was a bit better. With today's football, I could hardly put a foot wrong. The first XX Draw selection of two today - Norwich City v Chelsea - finished 0-0, and although the second finished 2-0 to Juventus (@ Atlanta) I was happy to pick another under. The 0-0 was my first 'perfect' selection in 25 selections, so I was due.

As a trial, I also started listing Under selections where value, in my opinion of course, was in excess of 15%, and had two winners Hoffenheim v Hannover '96 (1.92) and Nurenburg v Hertha Berlin (1.95) and one loser - Santander v Getafe (1.67). The latter was probably a little low in hindsight, and I may need to adjust the spreadsheet to award a minimum value to their probability of scoring. Right now, if they've not scored in 12 matches, and not had a shot or a corner, my spreadsheet thinks they are incapable of scoring. I also took a look at the Bolton Wanderers v Liverpool game just before kick-off and had Liverpool much too short, (I had them at 1.86), and took Bolton on the Asian Handicap +1 at 2.1 and +1/+1.5 at 1.75.

I'll update the Tipster League after tomorrow's matches.

I have finally completed Walter Isaacson's biography of Steve Jobs, with some interesting comments at the end from Jobs himself which rang a bell. He said, and I am paraphrasing here, that companies are started by individuals with great ideas and products, but that after a while they are taken over by sales people whose sole interest is in the bottom line, and couldn't care less about the product or innovative ideas. An excellent book, by the way. He was certainly a little different, but his innovations have positively impacted everyone reading this - and a few others!

Disheartening

noreply@blogger.com (Cassini) — Sat, 21 Jan 2012 10:46:00 +0000

This month, and year, started full of promise and hope. The NBA season was underway, the XX Draws had hit a winner and ended their losing run, and all was good in the world. Unfortunately the XX Draws have embarked on another depressing losing run, and after a good couple of weeks, even the trusted NBA has gone rapidly sour. This past week has been one of those where I just can’t get a thing right. I lay a team after they go on a run, ‘knowing’ that after a timeout the run will end, and yet they continue on their run. If I make the call that the run will continue, it stops immediately. If I take a loss, it turns out I should have let the bet run, and if I let the bet run, I should have taken the loss. For a couple of nights, I scaled back, and of course was successful, winning small amounts, but when I up the ante again and start risking four figures again, the bad ‘random fluctuations of probability’ recurs. I can’t remember a run like this, and whether it is a blip or there is something fundamentally different about the NBA markets, I’m not yet sure. This season is certainly different, with teams playing a condensed schedule, with teams on occasion playing on three consecutive days, but I’m not convinced that is the source of my difficulties. The Super Premium Charge is now further away than it was at year's end, which is some good news I suppose, but 2012 is not starting out as I would have liked.

Perhaps the XX Draws will get back on track this weekend. The first selection went down in flames as Borussia Moenchengladbach, refreshed from their winter break, easily beat Bayern Munich last night. One of the XX Draw subscribers went so far as to suggest that Google has started to review the draw selections, as my e-mail this week was consigned to his googlemail junk folder. Now that hurts. Griff has selected no less than half the EPL schedule for draws this weekend, selecting Everton v Blackburn Rovers, Fulham v Newcastle United, Queens Park Rangers v Wigan Athletic, Sunderland v Swansea City and Wolverhampton Wanderers v Aston Villa.

Mark J’s value selections are Wolverhampton Wanderers (2.625) v Aston Villa, Freiburg (2.2) v Augsburg, Dundee United (2.25) v Motherwell, Espanyol (1.82) -0.5 v Granada, Borussia Dortmund (1.91) –0.5 @ Hamburg and Rayo Vallecano (2.11) -0.5 v Real Mallorca.

Geoff has an even more diverse selection of draw picks this week, venturing as far afield as the Africa Cup of Nations for two of his eight:

Undergroundtrader posted up his views on statistics in a post on his new blog, and reproduced here:

Nice discussion around in various blogs about a mostly overrated subject, "mathematical approach". In the view of undergroundtrading it goes like this:
With the assistance of maths you solely describe the past! The past is almost nothing but smoke and mirrors, you could it solely take as indicator what the mass are thinking about the event and reference point for bookies and punters. Next step is to take a look at the present (i.e taking into account change the manager, upcoming CL match and so on), to scale the own expectations. Pretended a little bit more experienced traders are going now to define value or not by comparing reference point on maths with scaled "Odds" and given odds. ok, so far so good but real undergroundtrading and value riding is starting only now. You have to think about future aspects (exspectations) or better yet to have "valuable" informations about the future (i.e manager will announce "parking the bus" in the team briefing, heavy snow at match time, ...)
Thinking about what most likely will happen or of course insider informations define the real value and give you the edge.
Just want to sharpen punters mind not to stay in the past and to look "under the ground" of upcoming trading opportunities. Trade the third dimension (future)vs (past,present)!
Looking forward to give you a real trading example in one of my first postings on my new blog. Perhaps already this weekend in German Bundesliga I or II, where i "get deeper insights"

Of course, we would all like inside information, exclusively, but that is not going to happen, at least at the top level of the game - perhaps Geoff has a friend in the Annan Athletic dressing room? - so I think UndergroundTrader dismisses the importance of mathematics, essentially rating form, too easily. Statistics give you an excellent starting point, even if they are not the whole answer. I think I have written before that perhaps our biggest advantage as punters is that we do not have to bet in every event. We can be very selective, and this, together with some solid probability calculations and a sprinkling of subjectivity at the end is the way to make profits. But it's not easy.

Almost

noreply@blogger.com (Cassini) — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 08:58:00 +0000

Loudsight, still enjoying his winnings from the Green All Over One-Third of a Million contest a few weeks ago, rings some alarm bells about a couple of bills currently making their way through Congress in the USA. I must admit I wasn’t aware of either until I saw the Wikipedia protest on Wednesday, which seems to have had the desired effect of raising awareness and increasing opposition to it. The two bills are SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act), a bill originating in the House and its sister bill from the Senate, PIPA (Protect IP Act).

Loudsight says

I notice you sometimes use copyrighted material on your website i.e. pictures and quotes from other publications and blogs. I believe the proposal to combat piracy listed in one of these bills SOPA and PIPA (can't remember which) would allow the copyright holders to send a notification to your service provider i.e. blogger.com and blogger would take down your WHOLE site. You also become responsible for policing comments to ensure links to sites hosting copyrighted material aren't posted. I think it would be cool if your blog took part in the campaign to raise awareness of this issue. This maybe an American law, but affects all of us. So if you have any American friends please let them know that they need to vigorously oppose these crazy draconian bills.

http://www.ted.com/talks/defend_our_freedom_to_share_or_why_sopa_is_a_bad_idea.html?awesm=on.ted.com_ACxO&utm_campaign=defend_our_freedom_to_share_or_why_sopa_is_a_bad_idea&utm_medium=on.ted.com-twitter&utm_source=t.co&utm_content=ted.com-talkpage

http://azizonomics.com/2012/01/18/the-internet-today/

American friends? I have an American wife, but I'm a little short of friends - of any nationality. It's something I'm working on though - with my therapist.

Along with many bloggers, I do sometimes post pictures, quotations or excerpts from other sources on the web, without really worrying too much about my actions. This blog is not a commercial venture and my intentions are never malicious, (ok, the occasional piss-take excepted), and I usually link the extract to their source. Since most such excerpts are from fellow bloggers, and only lead to an increase in traffic to those sites, albeit miniscule, I have yet to receive a single complaint. Usually the source is pleased to have been referenced.

The bills in their original form would seem to have little chance of progressing to become law, with several of the remedies mentioned by Loudsight going too far – shutting down a website without due process is obviously too draconian. Some of the original sponsors of SOPA have also dropped their support in the last few days, but even if these bills pass in some modified form, I doubt that it will have much effect on little old me. The best reason to oppose these bills is perhaps that they are endorsed by Rupert Murdoch.

Rob The Builder wrote:

I spent a while reading Eddie's piece. Heavy going but nice to see some real detail and thought on a blog. But doesn't his example show one of the limitations of calculations. However good the maths, I didn't see the formula include whether De Jong and Barry were holding down in midfield, or whether Mancini was 'going fo it' with Johnson, Balotelli, Silva and Aguero.

Eddie will be writing another piece shortly, showing how to rate the contribution of each individual player to a team, and how to adjust the goal expectancy of a team once a line-up is definite. It will include notes on how to follow all players on Twitter and get a feel for their mood, how well rested they are, how much beer did they have on their last night out, plus an analysis of biorhythms and everything else you need to know. Or maybe not. While football is an eleven player team game, and thus the contribution of individual players more diluted than in a sport such as basketball, the loss of a ‘world-class’ player from a team is something that should be factored into the equation if practical. I’m just not sure how practical this is, and I tend to feel that the market often overreacts to any such absences. Replacements at the top level of football are usually not too shabby. If you are lucky enough to hear 30 minutes before kick-off that Wayne Rooney is surprisingly out of the team, then use that information, but most of us are too remote for it to be of much use. By the time we hear about it, the news is already factored into the price. The sensible thing to me seems to be to use the numbers to identify value, and then verify that there is no team news that would render this irrelevant before placing your bet. What 'team news' you deem relevant is subjective of course. It would be a quiet exchange if we all agreed.

Mark Davies mentioned the topic of bettors trying to buy money in his blog yesterday, and indeed it’s strange that the Daily Telegraph seems to suggest that we should have more sympathy for someone risking 100 to win 2 and losing 2 times in 100 than for someone risking 50 to win 50 and losing 50 times in 100.

“In-running punters on Betfair left to count the cost as two 'certainties' fail to deliver at Newbury: In-running betting has been in the spotlight lately and the risks associated with this form of punting were never better illustrated than in the first two races at Newbury on Wednesday.”

I’m not quite sure why the “risks associated with this form of punting” are any different from any other risks. If you back at 1.02, it’s because you feel that the probability of the event occurring is greater than 98%. If that price is correct, then yes, one time in fifty you will lose, and when that 2% chance happens, it’s hard to feel sorry for someone who should be well aware of the risk:reward he is taking. At least the article put a quote around the word ‘certainties’, although it might have been better to say ‘almost certainties’. Despite what you might read on the Betfair forum, there are few certainties when it comes to sports. I’ve even been on the wrong side of a score adjustment in the NBA half-time market – made long after the half was over! ‘Winning’ field goals in American Football are waved off because the coach called a time-out. Buzzer beaters disallowed because the shot-clock was down to zero before the ball left the player’s hand. Caveat emptor. A few years ago I read that 1.01 shots are overturned about 70% of the time on Betfair. I don’t know for sure of course, but that number seems about right, and given the number of markets in a day, that is a lot of ‘upsets’, although one man’s upset is another man’s delight.

Going Underground

noreply@blogger.com (Cassini) — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 08:40:00 +0000

Lazy Trader commented on the numbers I posted up yesterday:

Interesting to see the financials only taking 259K, which should really be in the In play volume btw :)

I remember the financials used to be one of my early markets back in the day and the turnover whilst not huge was decent and playable. As usual betfair started to tinker with the markets brought out tradefair and completely killed off the financials. Wonder if the same will happen with their own fixed odds arm due out soon.

I didn’t generate these numbers myself, but I must admit I was a little puzzled about the financials volume all being pre-event, but as it’s an area I don’t go near myself, I left it as it was.

Then we had a comment from UndergroundTrader:

great thanks to you for your write ups. They inspired me to start a blog, where i m going to provide hopefully useful trading experiences over 20 years now in stock and sport markets.

In terms of your considerations about volume: for profitable trading you need volatility and liquidity and marginal price movements preferably without greater gaps.Thats the reason for increasing matching in-play in basketball, tennis and so on. Btw. just four ingredients lead you to a constantly "green" trader: It s all about 1) discipline 2) value picking 3) money management 4)to do the opposite of what human mind and emotions of your own and the other market player want to mislead you (i.e. exaggerations, cutting profits to early, let losses slide.....). Thats the reason why just 5% of the traders (in stock or sports trading) have a positive ROI. The key is "undergroundtrading" in terms of looking under the ground of your mind and emotions as well as the other players.
i ll point out this subject in one of my first upcoming posts.

Some good points about the ingredients needed for successful trading, all of which regular readers of this blog will be familiar with, but it's always good to get another perspective.

Speaking of which, A Punter's Year posted this up yesterday via Betfair Guru, and I thought it was worth including here because again, it makes some very good points:

"The underlying theme of everything we do is market dynamics and risk reward. It's very important to distinguish between price related entry and opinion related entry.

For our entries it doesn't matter for a second who wins the match eventually but what we do need is tight closely fought games.

One of the points I push repeatedly in the chat room is I have as much chance of knowing who's going to win the next game as you do. IF we take that approach we are basically guessing and hoping we got it right and that's not a road I want to go down.

Our approach is based on taking good risk:reward positions over and over again as long as the price and dynamics are right. Over time we will win an awful lot more than we lose, but lose we will... repeatedly in fact. And that's just the price you have to pay to have your money in the market with a chance of a big swing. The losses are tiny and the wins are big and that's how we make our money.

The MOST IMPORTANT thing to implement here is patience and discipline..... I cannot make the opportunities arise, they just happen or they don't. When they do we'll make the appropriate entry, if they don't come then there's no way I'm going to advise anybody to put their money in a spot that I am not prepared to. Over time you will begin to make your own entries but it's vital that they are at the right places."

We don't KNOW who will win, (despite what you might think on reading the forums), and we can't make things happen. Excellent advice. Be patient, and play the numbers when opportunities arise.

Al asks:

Cass, is picking a 75-1 winner today just luck?

Does he not read this blog? - there is no such thing as luck, only ‘random fluctuations of probability’!

75-1 winners come along every day - look at how often 1.01 shots are overturned on Betfair - but whether or not a 75-1 winner is down to a favourable random fluctuation of probability, inside information / fixing, or there is an element of skill, (the infamous ‘edge’), can only be determined in context. How many 75-1 selections has Al made? If it’s a handful, then it’s a promising start, but nowhere near enough data to be confident that this is the outcome of anything but chance. With no edge at all, you would be expected (have a better than evens) to find a 75-1 winner after 53 attempts, but I don’t mean to spoil Al’s day. I’m sure that 75-1 winner was very welcome, but just don’t give up the day job yet.

Historically, the favourite-longshot bias showed that the better value was in betting shorter prices, (this method still showed a loss, but a slower rate of loss than backing outsiders), but I suspect that this may have changed, or at least reduced, with the evolution, or revolution, of betting over the last few years. The advent of Betting Exchanges heralded the arrival of a more sophisticated investor and while there are still plenty of recreational punters for who making money is secondary to entertainment, for the most part I would suggest that bettors are far more savvy than was the case years ago.

Finally, a quick mention again of, not Pete, but Eddie - aka Soccer Dude, who followed up his excellent Correct Score market write-up with a Poisson For Dummies piece which is a good introduction to the subject. I await his ideas on handling the 'too-low' results that Poisson gives for binary numbers, and his views on whether the probabilities are independent or related, i.e. does Team A's probability of scoring 2 goals increase if they are playing a team expected to score 3 goals, versus if they are playing a team expecting to score 1 goal?

Volume

noreply@blogger.com (Cassini) — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 08:04:00 +0000

I made a couple of (very rare) errors in my last post, both now corrected. Soccer Dude is Eddie, not Pete, not even close really, so apologies for that, and yes, of course I meant that a Wigan Athletic win would have been a better result for someone betting on Wigan than the Manchester City win that actually occurred.

Thanks to Shevy who suggested the best bookmakers for Asian Handicap bets were SBOBET or IBCBET. I shall check those out.

I was also sent a very interesting spreadsheet showing the total volume on Betfair in the nine months between March and December last year. Only markets with a matched volume of 200k plus are included, which will obviously lessen the visibility of the more fringe sports such as baseball, ice hockey and basketball, as well as 'soccer' where many markets would fail to reach this threshold. Nevertheless it is interesting reading, and I have added a column showing the percentage of the total that is comprised of in-play trading. Sorted by Total volume, the numbers are:

Not surprisingly, horse racing leads the list, but drops to third behind soccer and tennis for in-play. The sports with less scoring (e.g. soccer, ice hockey, rugby, baseball) tend to be those with a higher percentage matched pre-event, while the more volatile sports (e.g. cricket, basketball, volleyball, tennis, darts, snooker) see more matched in-play.

This does mesh quite nicely with my opinion that it is hard to win trading soccer given that the price movements are so well known and follow predictable paths, while sports such as basketball are far better suited for trading over the treacherous pre-game punt where one late injury can ruin your bet.

Many thanks for sending those numbers my way.

Flatfish

noreply@blogger.com (Cassini) — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 05:52:00 +0000

The Wigan Athletic v Manchester City game was profitable, although a draw or Wigan Athletic win would have been preferable. My spreadsheet was of the opinion that the goal expectancy here was too high, and that Manchester City were too short. The Unders came in comfortably enough, but a straight lay of Manchester City, 1.42 at kick-off, didn't. Laying at 1.42, or the 1.45 I was actually in at, is the same as backing at 3.38 or 3.22 as you all know, but the Asian Handicap markets are there as an alternative to a straight lay. I was already on Wigan +1.5 at 1.88, but @shevyten pushed me into adding the +1/+1.5 option, which was matched at 2.13 which worked out well. Twitter is profitable already! I must admit that it's not only Twitter that I have been slow to embrace, but also the Asian Handicaps. My excuse is that they weren't around in my youth, and it's hard to teach an old dog new tricks, but I am warming to using them. The markets on Betfair and BETDAQ do seem a bit gappy though.

There was an excellent 'Correct Score' market write up by Soccer Dude Eddie on the Football Trader's Path blog the other day, the best I have seen - article I mean, not blog! For me, as a dedicated follower of Poisson, albeit modified, the following paragraph was of special interest.

You could also use Poisson to calculate the percentage chances of each scoreline being achieved. If you do utilise pure Poisson, you should ensure that you increase the probability of 0-0 and 1-1, and reduce the probability of a 1-0 home win and a 0-1 away win. This is because the Poisson model is known to under forecast 0-0 and 1-1 draws and over forecast 1-0 and 0-1. There are also other well-known algorithms that you could use to calculate the goal expectation and, again, these would all help you to make a more reasoned selection for you to lay 0-0.

Soccer Dude mentions the adjustment that needs to be made for the binary scores, (i.e. not using the usual zero-inflated Poisson model) and this helps with the problem of Poisson underestimating draws as so many draws are 0-0 or 1-1. Getting the goal expectation and this 'adjustment' right are key, and while it's unfortunate that you can't simply use the POISSON function in Excel with the goal expectancies for each team and generate your odds, this difficulty is what can give you an edge. The maths is, to my simple mind, quite complex - here's one example:

Bivariate Poisson models can be expanded to allow for covariates, extending naturally the univariate Poisson regression setting. Due to the complicated nature of the probability function of the bivariate Poisson distribution, applications are limited. The aim of this paper is to introduce and construct eﬃcient Expectation-Maximization (EM) algorithms for such models including easy-to-use R functions for their implementation. We further extend our methodology to construct inﬂated versions of the bivariate Poisson model. We propose a model that allows inﬂation in the diagonal elements of the probability table. Such models are quite useful when, for some reasons, we expect diagonal combinations with higher probabilities than the ones ﬁtted under a bivariate Poisson model. For example, in pre and post treatment studies, the treatment may not have an eﬀect on some speciﬁc patients for unknown reasons. Another example arises in sports where, for speciﬁc cases, it has been found that the number of draws in a game is larger than those predicted by a simple bivariate Poisson model (Karlis and Ntzoufras 2003)

but I am expecting a couple of books in the post any day now that were recommended to me, and if they are written in English, may improve my understanding, and more importantly, my pricing model. I studied some of this in my Pure Mathematics With Statistics 'A' Level, but that was oh so long ago, and I don't recall it being this complicated. Perhaps I wasn't paying attention. Again.

Why the Flatfish you may be asking yourselves? Well, 'zero-inflated Poisson' might be fine if you are French, but in English, can't we simply call it Flatfish?

I'll get my coat.

Hits - 1005 Good, 1 Not So Good

noreply@blogger.com (Cassini) — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 07:46:00 +0000

An eventful day yesterday, some good, some not so good. For the second day running, I took a big hit on my trading - one of those days when everything I tried seemed to go wrong. I ended up with (relatively) small wins on the Milan derby, the New York Giants at Green Bay Packers NFL match, and the Golden State Warriors at Detroit Pistons game, but bigger losses on Swansea City v Arsenal, the Baltimore Ravens v Houston Texans and the biggest of all on the Denver Nuggets v Utah Jazz where Denver and their tremendous home record (in part the altitude advantage) just couldn't get their act together which all means that January, and thus 2012, are now in the red. Here's a link to some good advice on taking a hit, or more specifically for bouncing back from one.

With January historically my best month, this is a situation I've not faced since 2007, when that January ended with a loss of over £9k, and it took me until August 5th to recover. At least I'm not on schedule to match that, yet, but it's a reminder that trading isn't as easy as showing up, and cashing in. I suspect I am trying to make up for the shortened NBA season and being a little less patient than I need to be, so as I have done before, the medicine seems to be to scale back on the risk, pick up a few smaller wins, and regain the confidence before stepping it up again.

With more than six years of data to look back on, I can put these losses in perspective, knowing that the money always comes back, but it's still frustrating.

I meant to comment on a post by Peter Webb from a few days ago which should get you thinking if you lose at a faster rate than commission burn:

Over the years I’ve studied the markets and a number of strategies, but all of these have been focused on winning.

Late last year I turned my attention to why people lose, the psychology behind that, but also what fundamental flaws they have with their approaches in the market.

If you mess around at random you should, over long periods, break even less the spread or commission that you pay to the service provider. However, when I look at a lot of people that lose money, they seem to constantly exceed that.

So if you have an approach, preferably a systematic approach, that constantly loses money. I’m quite interested in hearing about it. Football is a nice sport for this as it contains only a few variables and can be pigeon holed into something simple. Back before the off, lay off if this happens, sort of thing. You don’t need to go public if you don’t want to, or if you want to suggest something I am sure people wont attribute that to yourself. But good suggestions are invited, however sourced. I’ve seen some real bum systems over the years so I imagine there must be some decent suggestions out there.

I’ve put a thread on the forum, which is a little off at a tangent at the moment. But I’m happy to look at any suggestions or approaches. I’m interested in not only what you did but why. I can’t promise to respond or comment on anything immediately, just trying to see some commonalities across losing approaches. The idea is to identify the most common errors and come up with some useful ways of avoiding them!

If this applies to you, then my initial thoughts on this are that you are greening up too soon, and letting losing bets run, rather than the opposite, which is what you should be doing. As Peter says, in football, just randomly messing about with selections should see you lose slowly, but many 'succeed' in doing far worse than that.

The better news from yesterday was 1) Green All Over exceeded 1,000 hits in one day for the first time ever - just, 1,005 was the final tally, and 2) the response that my entry into Twitterland generated - I could scarcely keep up with my e-mail at one point. I hope I didn't under-sell myself in the tag line!

140 followers in a little over 10 hours was rather a shock. Now all I have to do is find something to tweet about, which I suspect may be harder than blogging. The catalyst was the Milan derby I mentioned earlier, where the Under 2.5 goals prices suggested a 20% edge. I spent most of the first half working out how to get the account set up, but next time I see a similar opportunity, I'll be prepared. For the record, I have Manchester City too short at Wigan Athletic later tonight at 1.45, and the Under 2.5 as value at 2.32 - but not such great value as the Milan derby was.

A full day of NBA action coming up too, starting early for once. It's a holiday in the USA, I believe in honour of former NBA legend Dr Martin Luther King Junior.

Twitter

noreply@blogger.com (Cassini) — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 20:54:00 +0000

@calciocassini The world of Twitter is a new one to me, it takes me a while to catch up with the newest trends, and while I don't plan on tweeting every hour, it did occur to me that on occasion, it might be a useful tool to use to spread time-sensitive information or opinions. For example, when I looked at the Under markets for the Milan derby as kick-off approached, the 1.85 available looked huge value against my, admittedly too low, calculation of 1.55. Anyway, it's something to trial. It may work, it may not.

Flawed Hindsight

noreply@blogger.com (Cassini) — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 18:32:00 +0000

The Swansea City v Arsenal game this afternoon was the sole XX Draw selection from this weekend's fixtures. The Under 2.5 goals price dropped steadily from earlier in the week at 2.0, to 1.79 at kick-off, and as you might expect, the draw price similarly dropped from 3.85 to about 3.45 before kick-off. As a trader, being able to lock in a profit before a ball is kicked is ideal, and while it seems to me that more often than not, the prices on the XX Draw selections shorten, that may well be a case of flawed hindsight. I will be adding a couple of new fields to my spreadsheet to record the prices when the selection is identified, and the price at kick-off, although the latter may be problematic since despite what may appear to be the case, I am not trading 24 hours a day.

I was pleased to see that Peter Nordsted's Drawmaster is making a return in 2012, although somewhat disappointed that Pete still feels the need to force three selections each week, when there may be none, there may be ten, or more usually some number in between. He's already off to a good start though, finding Aston Villa v Everton yesterday, and today he was also on the Swansea City v Arsenal game, as was Griff who found Liverpool v Stoke City at 4.7 yesterday and is improving his ROI. Griff deserves a lot of credit for hanging in there after a poor run. In the end, we were all wrong, as Swansea conceded more than one goal at home for the first time this season, but scored three to win 3-2. The draw price traded as low as 2.26, after being 2.56 / 2.58 at half-time. 1.9 appeared on the lay side at 2-2, but Swansea's third goal came so quickly that nothing was matched.

A good weekend for Football Elite with two winners from three selections, Ajaccio (2.88) and Chievo (2.2) both won, and a return to the green on the season.

Mark J's selections returned a profit with three winners from five, but no winners from eight draw selections for Geoff, and none from six for the Green Pullover, although the Milan derby is yet to come.

I've been somewhat slack about updating these results at Gold All Over, but will try and find time once the weekend's games are complete.

I mentioned flawed hindsight earlier, and it's important that as traders / gamblers we understand this trick of the mind. Maintaining accurate records is essential. We all remember more of our wins than our losses, and the reason is selective memory - the way we remember things. From the passage below, most of us will also recognise the 'hindsight bias' - looking back and thinking that something was far more predictable than it actually was at that time.

Our memories are shaped to a great extent by the present and we frame the past using this knowledge. The implications for our experiences of investing in a horse, greyhound or football team is fascinating.

According to a recent paper by a firm of financial analysts, flaws of memory impair our ability to learn from the past and contribute to our poor financial decision making. The report states bad memories tend to be blocked out by good ones. Just as we find it easier to remember the types of bet on which we have won money, we block out our poor financial decisions with other memories that are more pleasant for us. This conditions us to become overconfident.

Another memory flaw gives rise to what is termed “hindsight bias”. This is the tendency to look back and see events as being more predictable than they were before they took place.

The dangers of hindsight bias usually get learned the hard way. It promotes overconfidence by fostering the illusion that the world is a far more predictable place than it is in reality.

This gives gravity to the process of diary keeping whereby our bets and the grounds, the thought process, for them are logged. These writings will allow us to learn from previous mistakes. It will be harder for you to convince yourself that you knew something all along when you are faced with the evidence of how events unfolded at the time.

From a trading perspective, selective memory may be helpful short-term - a big loss can be confidence destroying unless you place it context - but in the long-term, it can be harmful - the complete picture provides an essential reality check. Keeping records is essential. The mind plays tricks on us all, but spreadsheets don't lie.

The excellent Stock Market Trading blog had a piece on this subject a while back too. You can read it here:

Trading is one of those things that really requires a selective memory.

The same kind of selective memory that I needed when I was on the dating scene. I chose to ignore the bad experiences I’d had with certain girls, and I stayed in the game long enough to find the wife of my dreams.

It’s the same kind of selective memory needed on the golf course. That bad shot from a few holes ago needs to be suppressed for this next one across the water hazard. Otherwise, you’re toast.

Some traders never develop this skill, unfortunately. They cling to the past, unwilling and unable to let it go for the sake of making that next trade. Getting faked out of a good trade last week prevents them from taking a similar setup this week, afraid it will hurt their account once again, or worse, their ego.

They have a good memory, yes, but they’re not using it in a good way.

That’s no way to trade. Clinging to memories which don’t empower you is a form of recency bias, and it can really prove costly in this game.

As an aside, I find the activity of record keeping in itself is good for discipline in other areas of life, whether it's recording your weight on a daily basis, logging your exercise activities, alcohol intake or updating your net worth spreadsheet. The mere process of knowing that everything you do is tracked helps you to stay disciplined.

Random Fluctuations

noreply@blogger.com (Cassini) — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 06:30:00 +0000

My NBA activities were limited overnight due to the NFL play-offs. The New England Patriots were very short versus the Denver Broncos, 1.16 pre-game, and this often provides an opportunity. When the Patriots scored first and the price dropped to 1.1, I layed, and topped up as the price dropped to 1.05 as they took a 14-0 lead.

When Denver scored, and the price moved out to 1.1, my averaging meant I was able to get out with a profit, and green all over.

A free bet on the Broncos, but unfortunately the winning green was that on the Patriots, as they demolished the Broncos and justified their short SP. But the thing is with the NFL, one interception at 7-14, and a tied game, and each tick with those numbers represents a decent profit. Interestingly, I noticed that Betfair does not allow a stake of £10,000.01. I probably won't report the issue though, at £10k plus, the penny really isn't too important. The breaks in the NFL just give me too much time to play around.

After that, I looked at the Utah Jazz v New Jersey Nets game where the Jazz seemed to be trading too low in the first half, but the lead, at one point down to four, was extended by half-time and they ended up winning easily enough. I picked the wrong game - Atlanta Hawks v Minnesota Timberwolves saw a late comeback, with the T'Wolves up by 18 with 3:40 left in the third quarter. Less than 5 minutes later it was a two point game! Atlanta won by two. The Rockets v Blazers game went to OT, but you can't be everywhere at one time.

And in the Los Angeles derby, the Lakers never led, and while the Clippers always looked too short against a team riding a five game winning streak, and the Lakers did show occasional signs of life - Kobe Bryant score 40 points for the second consecutive game - I took a big hit on this one. Averaging down doesn't always mean a profit.

Not a great weekend really, and biggest loss since March 24th. It happens. I'd say it was bad luck, but there is no such thing as luck, just random fluctuations of probability. Here's hoping that Lady Random Fluctuations of Probability visits me soon.

Close Shave

noreply@blogger.com (Cassini) — Sat, 14 Jan 2012 19:51:00 +0000

Brian asked:

What actually makes you soooo negative towards the horses? You say too many people have inside information. Therefore you say there's no edge to be had. Well surely there's a lot of people in one football team that potentially has inside information that average joe doesn't have.

There is definitely an edge to be had in horse-racing - it's just one that I am never going to have. One example that I know from personal experience is how easy it is to run a horse intentionally poorly. Compare this with the number of people who would need to be involved with a fix in football, and you see why the the transparency of top-level football makes it, if not impossible, at least less likely to happen.

On a related topic, there are often complaints on the forums about NBA games being fixed, invariably from people who have just lost and are looking for someone to blame other than themselves of 'luck'. Caprisun this season was complaining about the Miami heat point-shaving:

Wow - they got the job done in the end - won with the last throw of the game! Still disgusted with them though - most blatant shave of the season. And there'll be plenty this season trust me!

Not quite sure why we should trust him, he's clearly clueless. The idea that multi-millionaire players would risk their careers by engaging this is laughable. Agreed that short-time players and referees could be a target for fixing, but the NBA analyses the statistics and investigates any significant variances following the Tim Donaghy scandal. The College game is far more likely to see point-shaving, with one professor claiming in 2006 that 5% of games saw this. It makes sense in that college players are (officially) unpaid, and with most of them not going pro, the betting interest in college games makes them vulnerable to 'offers' to under-perform.

Sipernando2010, a new member of the Betfair Forum so perhaps he should be excused, wrote:

Lakers for example could have won by 30 tonight, and whether it was because they just didnt feel like it or because of some other corrupted reason is arguable

Not really. You can argue with yourself about it, but as I have written before, the handicap markets are to be treated with caution. The problem is that teams do not care about the handicap. They care about winning. There is no benefit to them in winning by 10 or 20 or 30 points. Last night, the Lakers were -10.5 on the handicap, and led by 19 in the third quarter. It's a very comfortable lead, and Fisher and Gasol were withdrawn, and the lead slipped to 12, still relatively comfortable, by the end of the quarter. In the fourth quarter, does anyone really think the Lakers care about that 10.5 point mark? You might care, if you have had a bet on it, but the players don't share your interest. All they want to do is secure the win with as little drama as possible and go home. If you look at the stats for the fourth quarter, you will see the lead was usually around 7 or 8. This situation perfectly illustrates statistically why the spread of 10.5 is now less likely to be covered. The Lakers start holding the ball, and by reducing the number of possessions in the game, this reduces the variability of the Lakers' final winning margin, and thus of covering the spread.

Cries of 'point shaving!', or 'it's a fix!' might make you feel better, (it's always nice to blame someone else for your losses), but there's no truth in either claim.

Suns Burn Out

noreply@blogger.com (Cassini) — Sat, 14 Jan 2012 08:34:00 +0000

Captain Webb denies that his flattery had an underlying motive, and then goes on to write a post for me. Very nice of him.

Haha! That wasn't the reason I was nice (honest). I have posted on here before but this username is new and setup for the use of my blog. Sorry for the incorrect address it's actually http://betfairbanter.blogspot.com/

I can see the value in laying short prices in play with plenty of game time left but the odds aren't always that wrong at the time and your gambling on things changing which they often will from 1.1. My question is when you've traded a 1.1 and it got to 1.5 and you didn't trade out and it went on to win do you think this influences your next trade where you lay at 1.1? i.e. do you think you will be more inclined to get out at around 1.5 because of the previous result?

It's for this reason I think manual inplay betting (without bot) can be tough and I would think most people would do better letting each lay bet run without trading out. Have you ever done any calculations to see what your results would be if you did this? I read recently on the betfair forum that by 'greening up' you had to find 2 value bets rather than 1 (or at least one at correct price and you are also paying commission on most markets. If you trade out only when your bet is looking like a loser you can red out and your effectively getting a winning bet without paying any commission. Would be great to hear your thoughts on this.

Agreed that a lay at 1.1 may or may not be value. If the odds are correct, then 9% of lays will go on to win, but of the 91% that go on to lose, some will trade higher before losing. The trick is for your exit point to be hit often enough to pay for the losers. Example, lay 100 to win 1000 at 1.1 - if the price drifts out to 1.5 27% of the time and you even up your position, you will come out ahead. If you trade out if the price drifts to 1.2, then you need this to happen about 54% of the time.

In practice, it all depends on how you are reading the game whether you scratch, get out for a small green, or hang in there for a massive pay day. There is no one-size-fits-all here; if your risk aversion is low, or as one commenter put it recently, you have big danglers, you might hold on for the 1.5 or more, if you are a nervous Nellie, you might lock in your green at 1.11!

Value is something that you will get better at identifying after watching lots of games. The Suns v Nets game last night saw a decent lay appear at 1.3 when they had been trading well above that up to that point (1.4 / 1.45). Yes, the Suns were on a small run, but nothing that warranted a plunge in price of that nature, in the third quarter. Unfortunately, I did not let the bet run - tiny danglers you know.

The Spurs v Blazers game ended up being a non-event, with the hoped for early Spurs lead failing to materialise.

I wouldn't believe everything you read on the Betfair forum. Greening up is simply another trade - good if it is value, bad if it is not, as has been explained in this blog ad nauseum. How someone is coming up with these numbers is beyond me, but then probably winning on Betfair is beyond them.

As for the question about previous results influencing the next move, I would like to say no, but that is probably not completely true. As human beings, it's very difficult for us to bet / trade completely without emotion - senza emozioni as we say in Italy - so it is always likely to influence us to some degree, but I have watched the markets for so long now, that the impact is negligible.

Football now, and Griff sent in his EPL draws for this weekend, and they are Liverpool v Stoke City (4.7), West Bromwich Albion v Norwich City (3.5) and Swansea City v Arsenal (3.75).

The always interesting My Football Facts web site had a table showing the average points per game for the EPL teams in 2011. The top teams are

Banter And Spouting

noreply@blogger.com (Cassini) — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 19:56:00 +0000

Someone, aka 500-5000, with younger eyes than me, noticed that the Betfair Banter blog address had an extra 'w' in the 'www' piece of the address, wwhich does make a difference. Wwithout it, I wwas able to revieww the blog, and I am pleased to announce that the GAO board has approved its inclusion for the time being. One sure way of securing an approval is to mention one of Crystal Palace's finer moments in your opening post

losing £100 (quite a lot of money for me then) on Liverpool to beat Crystal Palace in the League Cup. They lost 2-0 at home and as a result I didn’t really gamble again for a few years.

Yes, Crystal Palace can do that to you.

Also trying the same strategy:

Lichfield is a distant memory, the city crashpad is presumably re-let to someone younger and trendier than I, and the locals now follow The Eagles rather than The Brewers

was an old blog with a new name - Yorkshireman in SE20, formerly know as Rob the Builder's Building's Up The Spout blog which was always, well usually, entertaining, if not always about betting and trading. It almost makes you wonder if there is more to life than this.

A couple of bloggers reported that there were issues with Betfair earlier today, "following their recent upgrade", except that I don't believe there was any upgrade made, just a relocation of servers to a new data-centre. Anyway, for all I usually care, Betfair can be down all it likes between the hours of 8am and 7pm on a weekday, and I wouldn't notice. The cynic in me wonders how much money the problems saved most people.

In a few minutes, there is a Lay The Draw selection going in-play, Celta de Vigo v Gimnastic from Spain's Segunda Division. The draw is currently available at 4.9, 5.0 if you're lucky. What? I'm supposed to be LAYING it?

Friggatriskaidekaphobia Strikes Again

noreply@blogger.com (Cassini) — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 08:14:00 +0000

It really does make it much easier to post regularly, when there are some comments to respond to. As with many activities in life, the hardest part of posting is getting started, and when the start is taken care of, the rest flows much easier. In the order they were received, I had another request to add a blog to my blog roll. Having learned my lesson from the previous request, I am not inclined to do so, in part because it is a horse racing blog, but mainly because it comprises of a number of selections daily, but with no accompanying mention of why the selection supposedly represents value or any qualifications the author may have that give him any kind of an edge. It simply doesn’t make sense to me that someone from outside of the racing industry can find an edge in the sport. For anyone interested, the blog is called The Form Expert, but I doubt that too many readers pass through here looking for racing tips.

Next up were a couple of comments related to hits and views of this blog. Gambling Geek suggested I use Feedburner to track my rss subscribers, and I spent a few minutes adding this. It seemed straightforward enough, but time will tell whether the stats work. I appreciate the suggestion anyway. Scott Ferguson commented that my “Alexa rank is also very poor” which would be very disturbing if I knew what an ‘Alexa rank’ was. I called my Doctor, (Dr Spooner), but he was less than helpful. Said something about "tasting his wine". In full, Scott’s comment was:

considering the amount of referrals I get from your site each week, your Alexa rank is also very poor. But Alexa stats have been shown to be flawed anyway, and you say that much of your audience is via RSS feeds...

Being a one-man, not-for-profit blog, these stats are of academic interest only anyway. If hits meant money, then I might take it a little more seriously, speaking of which, what happened to my plan for everyone to hit the Donate button and give me an accurate count? By that measure, I receive a not too impressive total of zero hits which must mean that either there is a problem with Statcounter, or PayPal is broken. [Since I wrote that line, I have to report that I now do have some hits to report, as Franjo from Croatia made a very much appreciated donation. Thank you! Very generous.]

A trading comment next from 500-500 who wrote:

Just looking at the NBA earlier. I didn't trade any (wish I had) but Miami Heat were trading at 1.3 at one point against the LA Clippers. If you had laid Miami, at those fairly low odds you would have won, as the LA Clippers won the game. Bugger, wish I had put some money on it now.

You will see this almost every night in the NBA. If you look at the charts towards the end of a game, you will almost never see a price go to 1.01, in other words there is almost always a trading opportunity. I made some on the Los Angeles Clippers v Miami Heat game myself, laying at 1.55 when Miami held a five point lead, but with the Clippers looking strong. Knowing that Miami had played the night before, losing a game that went to overtime, the all-important momentum seemed to be moving towards the Los Angeles Clippers. I also prefer it when it’s the home team rallying, and the crowd starts getting involved. In the end, this game also went to overtime, and the Clippers prevailed. My suggestion is to get involved, and play with small stakes in these games and get a feel for how the markets move. Once you have watched a few (hundred) games, you will have the confidence to know that even if you lose often, the times that you win more than compensate.

Average Guy commented on my first ever betting shop bet, and the inability to lay bets off in those days. He wrote:

"There was no laying off in those days though". I'm surprised, why not dutch back the other 3 teams, was that not the equivalent ? Had you not evolved into the omnipotent trader / gambler, if not, when did the transition take place ?

Trading sports events in those days just didn’t exist. You put your bet on and waited for the event to complete – a strange world. I was never a ‘serious’ gambler, and that bet was a ‘fun’ bet rather than an attempt at making money, although 132 back then was a month’s salary! Had Crystal Palace reached the final, I might have covered the bet to secure a profit whatever, and pay for my ticket, but 1976 was a long time ago, and I’m not sure the thought crossed my mind to be honest. Dutching was certainly a lot more complicated in those days, and a lot more expensive with the betting tax. The transition mentioned took place with my discovery of betting exchanges in March of 2004, though it took me a while, almost two years, to find a winning method.

Captain Webb somehow found the time to write two comments:

Enjoying the daily posts! Don't know how you find the time tbh.

Tbh, nor do I sometimes, but when I skip a day, there is uproar, so I am making an effort. Seriously, my style of trading involves a lot of waiting, and writing a post is an activity that it well suited for this time. Reading a book takes the mind too far away from the background sport, but blogging, with its frequent pauses for inspiration to arrive, seems almost perfect. Also, I don’t sit down and write a post in one session, but quite often write it over the course of several elapsed hours.

A nice comment, and again, it is appreciated. The second comment was to request the addition of Betfair Banter to my blog roll.

Hi Cassini, I'm one of the 600 (or more?!) who reads your blog daily. It's a great read and the first I added to my blog. I'd really appreciate it of you could add my new blog (http://wwww.betfairbanter.blogspot.com) to your blogroll.

Now I know why he was so nice earlier! Unfortunately, the address resulted in a Blog not found message... so my review is pending a correct address.

Geoff sent me his draw selections for this weekend, and they are:

Blackburn Rovers v Fulham (3.3); Millwall v Birmingham City (3.3); Nottingham Forest v Southampton (3.4); Portsmouth v West Ham United (3.3); Watford v Reading (3.3); Bury v Sheffield United (3.4); Rochdale v Stevenage (3.5); Dumbarton v Brechin City (3.5)

And finally, in a quiet night in the NBA, just a couple of comebacks worth mentioning. Two teams, the Charlotte Bobcats and the New York Knicks never led in their games, while the Detroit Pistons did lead - by all of one point lead. Phoenix Suns lost an eight point lead at home to the Cleveland Cavaliers trading at about 1.27, but it was a slightly tentative lay at this price given Phoenix's form at home (100+ points in their last three home games) so only a small win. The final game was the Golden State Warriors v Orlando Magic, two teams who can score points in a hurry, and great for trading. The Warriors took a 13 point lead in the second quarter, and traded as low as 1.32, far too low for a team of Orlando's quality, and by half-time the lead was down to just four, two just before the half, and that 1.32 was up to 1.93. The second half was tight to near the end, before the Magic finally won by a rather flattering eight points.

Eleven games tonight, and while predicting the games most likely to offer an opportunity, I'll be looking at the San Antonio Spurs v Portland Trailblazers game for an entry point. San Antonio and Portland both average 100+ points over the last 10 games, and give up 98 and 95 respectively. No Points Total Market posted yet, but it should be around 193.5. Spurs, unbeaten at home this season, are 1.82 now, but if they take an early lead, look to lay and wait for the trailing Blazers to rally.

And of course, merely by suggesting the possibility out loud, I have single-handedly guaranteed a steady drop to 1.01 for the Spurs, with a sensational 25 point comeback in the easy-to-miss Wizards - Sixers game instead!

Centaur Caught Trading Badly

noreply@blogger.com (Cassini) — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 06:38:00 +0000

A couple of readers, fairfranco and Baz, commented yesterday that perhaps my hit counter doesn’t accurately reflect the number of readers this blog has, and a quick look around the web suggests that people using a blog reader such as Google Reader are in fact not being included - Statcounter counts only the hits. This is rather upsetting! Almost as upsetting as finding out about the Premium Charge! Well, maybe not quite, since once costs me money, while the other is just a curiosity, but I do like my numbers to be as accurate as possible. Baz suggests that my “readership may be more than you think, millions perhaps.” Perhaps. What we need to do is have everyone who reads this, donate £1 to me via the PayPal Donate button, and I’ll let you know if we get to a million! If it turns out that I have zero readers, yet a few hundred hits, we will know something very strange is going on.

A day too late, but I thought of an analogy for backing a team to win the FA Cup at the start of the season. Given the unknowns, it occurred to me that it was akin to backing a horse to win a race, without knowing the distance, or whether the race was on the Flat or over jumps. It seems to me that this bet is more for the casual punter fancying a flutter on his team than for the serious investors among us. As evidence, I can reveal that my first bet in a betting shop (Coral's in Oxted) was on Crystal Palace to win the FA Cup in 1976, £2 at 66-1. Value? Arguably. I had just seen them not only beat, but outclass, Leeds United, and they made it to the semi-final where they were favourites to win. There was no laying off in those days though, and Palace lost and down the drain went my £2. That was rather upsetting too! That was a lot of beer back then.

Another observation from the NBA on opposing marquee teams such as the Los Angeles Lakers and the Miami Heat. On Sunday night, the Lakers were at home to the Memphis Grizzlies, and were of course big favourites to win, which they did. But as late in the game as five minutes from the end, the Grizzlies were within six points, and with two free throws to come. They made just one, but this, by any definition, is now a close game, yet the market seems unwilling to face reality and the Lakers stayed, in my opinion, too short at, as best I can recall, around 1.15 or so. A stop on the next Lakers possession, and a score by Memphis, and the price starts to shoot out. This was one lay that didn’t work out, the Lakers pulled away as the Grizzlies shooting went cold, but it’s low risk, high reward strategy that admittedly loses more than it wins, but when it wins, it wins big. In the past, I have backed a team at short prices, if I feel that price represented value, but when I compare my emotions in that situation versus being on the lay side, there is no doubt that I am far more comfortable with the latter. Buying money is incredibly stressful. Who backs at 1.01 with a full quarter of a game to go? I understand that 1.01 can be value, but in certain sports it does seem that such low prices are matched before that is the case.

Last night's example - the Orlando Magic game at Portland Trailblazers, and the Magic led by 23 points, and traded at 1.01 before Portland rallied to within three, and the Magic's price had bolted out to 1.35. After hitting 1.01 again, it then rebounded to 1.1. The Magic held on to win by three, but laying at 1.01 gives you far more options than backing at that price.

Scott Ferguson has already covered Centaur's move into administration, a company I wrote about almost two years ago:

Looking at the results for MaxLay, which works on the same principles as Maxnet, but for rugby, golf, tennis, cricket and horse racing in 2008 (2009's are curiously unavailable) their results are pretty solid overall, although the fund went almost two months without a winner between September 12th and November 7th picking six consecutive losing bets. No doubt, many of us are looking at them thinking "I can do better than that".

85 bets, 55 wins, and £10,000 turned into £12,252.24 in 12 months? Not bad, and I would probably be happy with that ROI on punts, but I would be disappointed if my trading profits were in that range.

The earlier posts in full were Galileo - Pisa Cake and Sports Intelligence. It is likely that a lot of people lost a lot of money, as I believe the minimum initial investment was €100,000 (£90,000) and in Gibraltar, the total amount of compensation is below UK levels at the sterling equivalent of €20,000.

And finally, this puzzler from the Betting Crunch - Do “Stop At A Winner” Systems Work? Surprisingly, the answer, in my opinion is yes. The problem is that 'Stop' here is not a hard-stop. It's a pause, and you start again, typically on the next day, and thus there is no rhyme, reason, logic or sense in pausing unless the pause is because you are awaiting value, which should always be the case.

Note To Self

noreply@blogger.com (Cassini) — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 07:01:00 +0000

There is yet more complaining in the comments section, but this time it’s all good. While I try to post something most days, I don’t always have anything interesting to say, despite what you might all think. Yesterday was just one of those days, but apparently my ‘daily’ musings are missed, and I shall try to step up my game in future. Apologies for the empty day in your lives.

Al wrote:

No post today Cass?

how are we supposed to get through the day without your incredible wit and tenacity!?!?!

while 500-5000 speculated that the most common explanation of a lack of posts, losses, was to blame:

AL - Cassini might have cocked it all up and lost all his money! Lol.

Cassini - Where is your daily post!?

Give us this day our daily post.

With no Betfair availability on Monday night, I did make an attempt at trading the NCAA (College) Football Championship game on BETDAQ, but as others found with the tennis matches taking place at this time, liquidity was very poor. There was certainly no sign that a significant percentage of Betfair traders had moved their activity over, just every indication that they had taken the night off. A further reminder of just how dependent we are on Betfair, whether we like to admit it or not.

And for the record, 500-5000 was correct insofar as I did make a loss on that game, but I managed to not lose ALL my money! I’m not as stupid as I look, and let me tell you, that was quite a relief to my Mother. It was just that I couldn’t see LSU failing to at least keep the game close, and so I opposed them from the start, but they were awful, and with the liquidity so poor, there wasn’t the opportunity to trade out and take a loss at anything close to value, so I left the bet to run. I was hoping to wake up to a miracle, but it seems that Tim Tebow gets all the miracles these days, and in the end Alabama won 21-0. Note to self, must pray harder.

Note to BETDAQ, must try harder. Their interface is just poor. Aside from the large gaps due to poor liquidity, the prices continually vanish from markets, it seems slow, and I noticed that the reciprocal prices weren’t showing up on this market last night either, which was surprising because I remember BETDAQ leading the way with this. While I used to immediately know whether it was better to back at say 1.7, or lay at 2.3, Betfair has made me lazy and I had to refer to my tattered printout which hasn’t seen the light of day in years, and has been serving as a bookmark since being retired.

There was another comment posted, a rather rude one if I may say so, but since the author removed it, I shall rise above mentioning either the comment or the author.

I’m not sure why, but the daily hit rate for this blog has exceeded 600 for four consecutive days, the first time this has happened. The recent 'Successgate' controversy, also known as a storm in a teacup, might be partly the reason - there is no such thing as bad publicity - and I suspect the hit count on other 'success full’ blogs has also been elevated as passers-by look in to see what the fuss is about. Yesterday’s lack of a post meant the number of hits dropped to 597. Note to self, must post every day.

Last night, or rather this morning, saw a pair of dramatic comebacks in the NBA - the Chicago Bulls gave up a 24 point second quarter lead at the Minnesota Timberwolves followed by Miami Heat giving up a third quarter 17 point lead (trading at 1.01) at the Golden State Warriors, a team I mentioned here as being one of my favourites due to their quick scoring ability. My son bought me a lucky Warriors shirt after our trip there last April, and it seems to be working as the Warriors went on to win by three in overtime. Thanks son, who also had a good day yesterday after putting his money where mine feared to tread, backing Crystal Palace to beat Cardiff City at a tasty 3.65 or thereabouts before taking his seat at Selhurst Park for the League Cup Semi-Final.

Laying at short prices while there is still plenty of time remaining is the way to go. Backing at short prices with the entire game to go is a recipe for disaster.

A small tweak, and Parkinson's Law -

Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion

can be adapted to apply to some sports. It is human nature to ease up after taking a comfortable lead, and in a game like basketball, once a team takes its foot off the pedal, either by the coach resting players, or the players themselves subconsciously easing up, (a shot when you're up by 24 is clearly just not as important as one in a close game) it can be hard to turn it back on again when you suddenly find yourself in a dog-fight. Cassini's Law -

Lay low in play, for a high pay day.

And finally, there was this question a couple of days ago James, who asked:

Can I get your thoughts on this, after seeing Chelsea had Portsmouth today and realizing they would likely progress I back Chelsea to win the cup at 7.6, they won their match and their odds on winning the cup dropped to 5.5. I can trade out now for a nice green.

Can this type of tournament betting/trading be considered successful long term?

It’s not a strategy I employ too much myself, primarily because I don’t like the ‘gamble’ aspect of the bet. (I say 'too much' because in some tournaments, it is possible to project a team's likely path to the final, which is not something you can do in a competition drawn with no seeding round by round). When you back Chelsea to win the FA Cup, you are betting on them qualifying through six ties, which at the start of the season could potentially be as tough as matches at Newcastle United, Tottenham Hotspur, Liverpool, Arsenal, a neutral semi-final against Manchester City before facing Manchester United in the final. Or you could be betting on Chelsea getting past Portsmouth, MK Dons, Stevenage, Macclesfield, Crawley Town and Wrexham in the final – a far less daunting feat.

The point is that the 7.6 is an accumulator on Chelsea winning six games, of which you knew just the first. Yes you may well consider that Chelsea would get past Portsmouth in the Third Round, after all, most clubs would, but what the price does next depends on the draw, as much, if not more than as a result of beating Portsmouth. A home tie with MK Dons (or QPR) and the price comes in (and all the more so if other big clubs are drawn together, as did in fact happen - god may love the Denver Broncos, but Sir Alex Ferguson has maybe done something to upset him), but if they had been drawn away to Manchester United, I suspect the price might have slid just a little. So my approach is always to bet on the known rather than the unknown and roll the stakes up round by round if it still makes sense to do so, i.e. if the price available is value.

Long Time Passing

noreply@blogger.com (Cassini) — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 09:18:00 +0000

Weekends are recently following the same pattern. The football bets, time consuming in preparation, if not execution, result in either a small profit or a loss, while the rest of the sports, that need far less preparation, but the game has to be watched, are profitable. Unfortunately the football bets, read the XX Draw Selections, are having a poor time of it right now, although by some definitions the results from yesterday were a success. Three matches selected, no draws, but one game did finish Under! That one winner seems to qualify me to call the selections a success. OK, maybe it's time to ignore that silliness, and move on, in which case I'll report that the XX Draws were not even close, and now drop into the negative for the first time since September.

It was fairly quiet on the Tipster Table, with the reduced schedule, and Green Pullover joined the XX Draws in the red, as he is also struggling to find draws right now with a run of one winner in the last 21 selections. Geoff did find one draw, (he fluked a 90' equaliser for the 1-1 draw at Bath City), but as there were six selections, a loss on the weekend here too. To paraphrase Joan Baez, 'Where have all the draws gone? Long time passing'.

The football losses were trimmed by four winners in the NFL Wild-Card matches, where all four home teams won, with Jesus personally showing up in overtime to help Tim Tebow win the game for the Broncos versus the Steelers. It's a shame he doesn't show up for me a little more often.

Wins these days, while always welcome, are no longer met with quite the same enthusiasm as the Super Premium Charge gets inexorably closer by the day, waiting in the wings to pounce. I know it's coming, and it's frustrating that there is nothing I can do to avoid it. Well, other than lose a little more. I estimate that I have about 65 days left until that day. I'll try my hand on BETDAQ later, during the Betfair planned outage, but BETDAQ feels very clunky to me and I doubt the lquidity will be on a par. But I like surprises.

Fair Game?

noreply@blogger.com (Cassini) — Sun, 08 Jan 2012 17:39:00 +0000

Soccer Dude from A Football Trader's path blog takes me to task for my treatment of the NBA, Football and Golf tips blog. Leaving aside the fact that he himself doesn't feel that this blog is worthy if inclusion on his blog roll, his comment in full was this:

Bit disappointed in this entry, and the other two entries, attacking fgtips.blogspot.com. Okay, there's little doubt that it's poor and not well thought-out, but you sniggering over the details of the blogger's delusions and misinformation has the slight feel of bullying about it.

You have a well-established and well-read blog. You are obviously intelligent, eloquent and provide detailed, in-depth entries on a range of different betting/trading related subjects. Compare this with the fgtips who is, shall we say, more laconic, and you can quickly appear to be taking up the role of a thuggish tormenter. Reading most of your other entries, I realise you're not like that. But, in my opinion, these kind of entries do you a disservice as they should be beneath you.

It's the easiest thing in the world to criticise and takes little skill to do so. I'm sure you could pop across to my blog and tear it to pieces in ten seconds flat. No problem. But is this really what your readers are looking for from you? Is this how you have steadily built up a readership? I doubt it. The blog you are attacking is a very easy target indeed, but low-hanging fruit is not always tasty.

And you also seem to have had some influence. Pop over to Geoff's blog at fulltimebettingblog.com and you'll see he's joined in the attacking too.

Please continue your blogging. It's largely enjoyable to read, as I trust it's enjoyable to write. Be positive on subjects or be negative - I'm not suggesting you administer self-censorship in any way - but perhaps it would be good to determine, before you publish, whether an entry is truly worthy of the excellent blog that you've spent so long building up.

The prosecution rests, and very well written it was too, but for the defence, a few comments. This blog came to my attention, because the author sought its inclusion on my blog roll. Essentially I was invited in - I didn't just happen to stumble across it and start critiquing it. I like to have my blog roll comprised of blogs that have something to offer, that are interesting. Pure P&L blogs do not meet this criteria for example, but FGTips blog was added because it was new, and I agree with giving these things a chance. However, when I started looking at it, with its porly written posts, lame tips, nonsensical staking suggestions, calling bets trades when they are not, no mention of value or why the tip was considered value, I posted a couple of comments over on his blog suggesting first of all that he include prices in his tips, something he wasn't doing at first, and then a second comment, behind someone else, suggesting in a very positive supportive way, that he learn about value and that blindly backing 1.1x selections with 'small stakes' didn't make sense and would not be profitable long-term.

But my comments and the other were removed, so any readers of his blog do not get the chance to see that there is another way of looking at things. Removing constructive comments, and reporting that a group of selections were a success when they clearly weren't, those are the two things that make me feel justified in writing here about it. Four selections at 1.27, 1.1, 1.26 and 1.14, with the first three winning and the fourth selection losing is a loss. To start the next post with

After our success on the NBA 2 nights ago (winning 3 out of 4 games)

is just downright dishonest. There was no success, only a big failure. Anyone claiming otherwise is at best a fool, at worst a blatant liar. Which is the case here? If he's a fool, then he should not be posting these tips and possibly encouraging others to lose money, and if he's a blatant liar, then what are his motives for such deceit?

You might also compare my treatment of this blog with the A Gambler's Life For Me blog which started up recently. Here the author took on board at least some of my comments, whereas our new friend deletes helpful suggestions and fails to learn. He's putting his selections into the public domain, asking for attention to them, and I think it's quite valid to point out any problems such as distortions of the truth that might mislead the more gullible of readers out there. Today's selection is from the NBA where the Los Angles Lakers are picked at 1.31 to beat the Memphis Grizzlies. They are currently available at 1.32, so perhaps his tips are impacting prices already! The author writes today:

I don't appreciate the comments left by Cassini and Fulltimebettingblog. I totally understand they can write whatever they want on their blogs, but I'd appreciate it if they let mine be and didn't criticise the games I suggest. Maybe I sense a tang of jealousy.

A tang of jealousy? I think the author means 'pang' of jealousy. Combined with his twisted definition of the word 'success', it rather shows that his knowledge of English is as poor as his understanding of value and mathematics. 0.27 + 0.1 + 0.26 - 1 <> Success.

This blog is overwhelmingly positive, and will continue to be so. What some may see as bullying, I see more as playing the role of a superhero, dedicated to protecting the gullible betting public from wrong, misleading and disingenuous information.

Grindstone

noreply@blogger.com (Cassini) — Sun, 08 Jan 2012 12:11:00 +0000

From an investment perspective, weekends such as this one, with a shortened standard fixture list, mean that making profits from football, never easy, is even more of a grind than usual. Net profit after Saturday's matches? Excuse the temporary slip into P&L mode, but it was a massive profit of £1.18. No begging letters please. Good for the Premium Charge, but not so good for the bottom line, and relative to other sports, a lot of effort for the rewards. Not that I have to watch the football games, since once value is identified, it stays there, admittedly diminishing, for the entire game as understood by James who commented on yesterday's post and the subject of calling gambling, trading:

Great post as usual Cassini,

Couldn't agree more on the comment about overs/unders "trading" being gambling.... It most definitely is.

If you have identified an overs/unders price as value pre K.O then surely you have a winning betting strategy long term and trading out will impact your total profit in a negative way? Trading out would lessen losing runs however but would prove less profitable if your assessment of a value bet/trade was correct.

At least someone gets it.

Now there is no evidence that Odwyer is the central character for the following quote, but on Betfair's Football Forum, someone asked if he "has enough to go pro with". Why I thought of Odwyer I have no idea, since he's not worked in years so far as I know, but there was one amusing reply from a Warro, who wrote:

Saying that you've received a redundancy payment and fancy having a crack at being a pro punter is a bit like saying that you received a tennis racquet for Christmas, so you will be entering Wimbledon this year.

It neatly hits the nail on the head, that there is more to 'going pro' than depositing funds into your account.