Low Risk Play

As I have written before, one of my baseball strategies is to take advantage of a price which is slow to respond to the withdrawal of a starting pitcher.

Clayton Kershaw is rather a good starting pitcher for the Los Angeles Dodgers, with an excellent record versus last night's opponents the San Diego Padres, and consequently the Dodgers started at ~1.51. (Kershaw's numbers are actually down this season on previous years, but he's still pretty good!).

I've also written before (somewhere) that 1.51 or thereabouts in baseball is less likely to offer value in baseball than it might in most sports, with several studies showing that reverse favourite-longshot bias exists in MLB, and has done for many years:

In contrast to the consistently observed favourite–longshot bias found in racetrack betting markets, it has been shown that gamblers in the market for Major League Baseball games reveal the opposite behaviour.

The strength of the reverse favourite–longshot bias is virtually identical to the original paper. The result suggests that, contrary to most reported inefficiencies in gambling markets, this bias appears to be permanent.

Anyway, while I'm usually waiting until the sixth innings or so before the starting pitcher is pulled shortly after throwing a little over 100 pitches, in last night's game ace Kershaw was whacked on the hip by a sharply struck liner (estimated 107mph) in the first innings, and the possibility of an early departure triggered a lay. In the event, Kershaw stayed in the game, took a 2:0 lead and traded as low as 1.07 before the Padres came back in the 7th to take a 3:2 lead. Time to green up:

Although the Dodgers ended up winning the game 4:3, these kinds of opportunities are why I find trading the less popular, less understood, albeit less liquid, sports so much easier to find an edge in than the more popular sports, and yes, I did make a tad more than the above screenshot, which was taken after greening up rather than levelling up.

Had Kershaw indeed been unable to continue, that 1.51 goes out, or should go out, of the window, but even if he stayed in (which he did for several innings), the bet isn't a bad one anyway. Kershaw walked 6 batters suggesting that he wasn't 100%, and it was unfortunate that the San Diego Padres couldn't take advantage of those walks. The worst that could happen is what the market had already priced in - low risk, high reward.

Fingers In Pies, Wealthy And Wise

The FTL obviously took up a lot of time this past season, with one consequence being that I’ve not been able to keep up with other blogs, although I’m not sure I have missed too much to be honest. I do usually read Daily 25’s weekly entry to see how that big hitter is faring, but there aren’t too many others that I seek out on a regular basis.

I did see this week on Twitter that the man behind the Betfair Pro Trader blog (James Butler) has completed a book he has been working on for the past six months - from his prison cell, unless I have my James Butlers confused.

With the title of “Programming for Betfair: A Guide to Creating Sports Trading Applications with API-NG”, the book “is a guide to creating sports trading applications” and more details are available here.

The trigger for this post wasn’t so much the book, the merits of which can be dissected far better by others with specialist expertise in this area, but by a recent post on his blog:

Completing the book was a long six months, full of doubts and rewrites. I am glad that the book is finished so that I can contemplate new projects. But just because I have put all my code into a book doesn't mean that I have nothing left to write on this blog. My observations of bot trading on Betfair will continue and decrying some of the nonsense you read elsewhere.

There is more code to write, which will probably find its way into another book in the years to come. Then there are my investments to catch up with. I am very much a believer of "getting rich slowly". Not everyone can be an Elon Musk or Richard Branson, creating a string of successful money making products. In fact, very few of us can. It's all part of the normal distribution. There is little space at the top of the distribution peak for many people. Every winner needs a loser and every big winner needs a lot of losers.

Be happy with what you have and make the most of it. By all means try to improve your lot but don't gamble for it. Invest wisely with your time to increase your knowledge and invest wisely with your capital to increase your wealth. There are many who win big only to lose big later. You can make a lot of money quickly and lose it just as quickly. It's all about risk and reward. The more risk you take the bigger the reward but also the bigger the potential loss.

I am sure you have seen plenty of blogs where people run up large wins at the beginning and then the blog ends abruptly. Blogs where people proudly boast their winnings but withhold their losses, even manipulating the figures or starting over so as to hide their failings. Sports trading is only a small part of what I do. I am in no hurry to make large sums of money. Approaching my fiftieth year means that the money I have is all the money I will ever have and so I have to invest wisely. I have money in Peer 2 Peer investment sites, I write, I code, I do the odd job, gathering money here and there. My life is varied and its my own. No nine to five and no manager. Time for a holiday.

There’s a lot of common sense in that post, as one might expect from someone closing in on their fifties, (must be a different James Butler - phew) with all the accompanying benefits of maturity and experience, yet not at that age (53) after which the:

benefits of people's increasing experience begins to be outweighed by the inexorable deterioration of all parts of the human body -- including, of course, the brain. 

At 48, James is probably (like me) just now approaching his financial decision-making peak. 

I don’t quite agree with the first part of his statement:

“Approaching my fiftieth year means that the money I have is all the money I will ever have and so I have to invest wisely”

I believe James is a professional on Betfair, (the name Betfair Pro Trader does imply as much), so why his wealth will not increase over the next few years is not clear to me.

I have half an eye on retirement myself these days, but can’t yet bring myself into alignment with the traditional "Glide Path" strategy of becoming more conservative as that destination approaches. While I am sure there’s some psychology at work, with a flight to safety being interpreted as an admission of advancing years, we are all different and the idea of moving to something like an 80:20 bonds to stocks ratio as the traditional strategy recommends just isn’t appealing to me. And not just to me:

"There's no reason to change your risk tolerance just because you're getting older," says Nick Olesen, a Pennsylvania-based financial planner. "It's fine to take on less risk, but you shouldn't pare it down to have it all in bonds because that's what everyone tells you to do. Whatever [the investor's] risk tolerance is, that's what it's going to be. The old rule of age determining your bond portfolio of risk is fading away."

For now, I’m happy keeping the vast majority of my retirement money in stocks. The risk is acceptable because my job isn’t something I dread and can’t wait to quit, so if the worst happens and we have another Black Monday, (I well remember the first), it would be painful, but not the end of the world. My wife will just have to work a little longer. If you’re in a job you hate and can’t wait to leave, then your approach might well be different but sitting in an office all day with slaves to do any real work (although I'm not sure 'slaves' is the politically correct term) is a lot different to hacking away at a coal face for a living.

Basically there's no perfect age for taking on, or reducing, risk. It's a personal choice. Unfortunately my (still living) parents have never had any tolerance for risk, (unfortunate, because my inheritance should have been so much more!), but your health, life-expectancy and job security are also factors. [For any readers familiar with the North Devon area, one of my grandfathers (at one time, I had two) owned an adjoining property, and was offered the chance to buy Watermouth Castle for £10,000 back in the early 1960s, so arguably as the eldest son, and a big proponent of primogeniture, I should be inheriting my own castle].

At some point as we age, we all should have more wealth to protect, with less time to recoup severe losses and would be foolish to keep all our eggs in one basket.

James has his fingers in a few pies so far as income is concerned. Not only does he have his trading income, but he has other income generating investments and activities also.

Multiple income streams are welcome. At one time, trading on Betfair brought in a significantly higher percentage of my total income than it does now, but times change. Paying 50% in charges (Super Premium Charge) is obviously a big part of that (although this week my Total Charges were at 50.003%, offering a brief reprieve) but also markets adjust. 

As James says in his post – "Every winner needs a loser and every big winner needs a lot of losers.to win big / lots of losers." Fortunately, there seem to be no end of optimists out there – people with no edge whatsoever, who think that somehow the laws of probability won’t apply to them. While Daily 25 is not one of them, he does share a nationality with some of them according to a recent report in the Economist:

It puts Australian gambling losses at about $1,144 a resident.

Although Australia had the biggest gambling losses per resident, America had the biggest loss of any nation at $136bn. Australians lost a total $21.5bn, the report said.

And neither country can presently use Betfair in-play, (although I think Australia technically can via the telephone). Imagine the opportunities if / when that ever happens.

FTL - The End (For Now)

Many of the FTL entrants (mostly he winning ones it has to be said) sent some words of thanks for the FTL competition. All things considered, I think it went rather well. Once I'd get my process in place, there were remarkably few errors made (or at least that were noticed). The Erskine Cup didn't work out quite like I had envisioned it, and as I didn't receive any comments about it, I'm not sure what the feeling was among the entrants. The gladiatorial 'one-on-one' aspect was lost because it was just too much work for most rounds to collect all the entries and pass them on to the opponent, plus some were paid services who probably wouldn't take kindly to their selections being forwarded on. The monthly competitions were easier to manage, and with seven different winners from the eight months, showed how hard it is for anyone to stay consistent.

If you're not all sick of updates and reviews, a final look at the season to wrap everything up seems like a good idea.

The overall picture was that there were 10,433 selections made, with 107 resulting in a Push. Of the 10,326 remaining, 3,785 were winners (36.7%).

Sixteen of the 33 entries finished in profit, and another three beat the -2.0% margin built into Pinnacle Sports prices.

The attrition rate was less than I had expected too, with most people slugging it out until the end. Three people dropped out in October, Betcast, Daily 25 and Ian Erskine, a list that included two of our sponsors, and Abromo wasn't heard from again after January.

Mortimer kept me busiest with his 910 selections, followed by winner Gecko with his 605 selections.  The FTL saw no less than eight different leaders, with Fairfranco, BettingTools.co.uk, Drawmaster, Mortimer, Jamie A, Randolph, Club Havana and Gecko all leading the way at some time in the season.

Fiarfranco had the highest monthly total of 28.21 points in November, while the biggest win of any round was BettingTools.co.uk 17.87 profit on Valentine's Day weekend - lovely stuff.

King of the Draws was TFA Draws, with a stellar finish to the season. After being down by 16.75 points in mid-March, the selections picked up 22.16 points to end the season in 8th place overall.

King of the ROI was Randolph's 10.37% from 266 selections, with Gecko's 9.94% from 605 selections worthy of mention.

Online Trader Neil is the latest to ask:

Thanks for running this all season you have done a sterling job, will there be a repeat next season?

Gecko said:

Looking forward to another go next year if you're still keen to do it, understand if not as it takes a lot of time and it's probably way more work than people realise

My response is that it probably depends on whether anyone is willing to sponsor an encore performance. It does take a lot of time, but it's not been too onerous. I'm not sure the £2.50 admin fee per entry worked out to be one of the best hourly rates I've ever had, but it probably covered the cost of the coffee required to keep me awake as I updated the numbers each week!

So if anyone is interested in sponsoring next season, either with a lump sum or as a Bounty Boy, please let me know, and if you are interested in entering, please also let me know, and whether you would like to keep the entry fee at £50 or raise the stakes to maybe £100.  For a full season of entertainment, it's not bad value. After all, you could be wasting your money on a season ticket at Tottenham or Dundee. (Teams chosen completely at random, and most definitely not intended as teases for any previous sponsors).

Update: I did forget to mention that all but seven of the 30 entries reaching the required minimum number of selections received at least some return on their investment. 20 received League or Bounty prize money, and three others were Erskine Cup beneficiaries, or Rubicon, who managed the extraordinary feat of seven losing months, but the one winning month (December) was a Monthly Prize winning effort. 

Havana Laugh

Thanks to all the Bounty Boys (Football Elite, Skeeve, Football Investor and The Football Analyst) for their prompt handling of the bounty requests.

The disbursement of the FTL funds is almost complete, although not without some issues. All of the big winners have been settled, but for one entry, I received the message "This recipient is currently unable to receive money" while Fairfranco was again overpaid (I paid him double for his November monthly win).

Fortunately Stephen hadn't yet gone on his travels, and being a man of integrity, refunded the overpaid amount. Thanks to Mr. Franco for indeed being Fair.

The most serious issue faced was with "Club Havana's" transfer.

I received an email from PayPal's compliance department on Sunday, with concerns over the payment:

To ensure that activity and transactions comply with current regulations, PayPal is requesting that you provide the following information via email to compliancetransactions@paypal.com:

1. Please explain the meaning of "Havana" within the message of payment xxxxx attempted on June 05, 2015 in the amount of $999.99, including a complete and detailed explanation of the goods or services you intended to purchase.

It took me a few seconds to realise what the concern was, but of course it was the word "Havana" which apparently is still something of a dirty word with the US Government, even though relations with Cuba are improving fast, and there were concerns that the activity:

may be in violation of United States regulations administered by the Department of the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC).

Although I had never heard the acronym previously, "OFAC" was pretty close to what I said at the time.

Combined with a new addition to the Cassini family later that day and someone attempting to use my credit card details on-line, it was an interesting weekend. 

FTL - The End (Almost)

After 10 months, it’s all over. The first entries were received for the weekend on August 2nd 2014, the last were a few Serie A selections today, and after a total of 10,433 selections the overall winner is Gecko from Adelaide with a final total of 60.15 points. As a bonus, Gecko also clinched the April/May monthly prize.

BettingTools.co.uk finished in second place with 45.25 points, while Randolph finished third with 27.58 points.

Only two others made a double figure profit; Club Havana made 14.51 points and Mortimer made 13.66 points.

The final round saw very little action or changes with only four people brave enough to play in the tricky waters of a league’s final round of matches, and three of those four probably regretting their decisions. The only winner of the round was Mountain Mouse who had one selection, Cagliari, and this one winner, and another 1.29 points. 

The round saw an overall loss of 2.71 points, and for the season as a whole, the deficit finished at 215.15 points, which sounds bad, but the negative ROI of 2.06% isn't to far off the 2% over-round that Pinnacle Sports (whose prices we use) work to.

Of the 33 entries, 16 finished with a profit, while 17 finished with a loss. The profitable entries were:

While on Quiz Shows, points usually mean prizes, two of the entries failed to reach the minimum requirement of 76 selections to be eligible for prizes, in case you were wondering why there are zeroes next to Over Goalify and Betcast's names. Their loss saved Bounty Boys Football Elite and Skeeve £50 each, while Fulltimebettingblog and TFA_Raz each gained a £25 bounty reward.

The remainder of the entries before we get on to the process for disbursement of the prizes:

With the prizes for the Erskine Cup and the monthly prizes, the settlement picture looks like this:

To minimise fees, I'll wait until I have the Bounty Payments and then pay out the respective total amounts shown above. 

The final Bounty totals are:

If Graeme, Matt, Skeeve and Stewboss could make their relevant payments to me via PayPal at calciocassini@aol.com in the next couple of days, I'll get the ball rolling for the lucky winners. If your name is above, please confirm the PayPal address you would like the funds to be paid into.

For probably the final time, another big thank you to Ian Erskine and Betcast for the sponsorship up front, and to the Bounty Boys for their generous results based sponsorship which has added another dimension to the competition. 

FTL Penultimate Update May 25th

The big winner of the weekend was Gecko, who found eleven winners from his fifteen selections to make 15.90 points, enough to reclaim first place overall and take the lead in the April/May monthly competition. BettingTools.co.uk dropped to second with a couple of losing selections and with the finishing line in sight, it looks like the virtual League trophy will be headed to Adelaide.

Mountain Mouse hit three winners out of three for a 9.01 point gain, and up six places into profit, while Bounty Boy TFA Draws continued his good finish to the season with another winning week making 2.58 points and moving up four places - which at £25 a place means £100 saved on bounty payments.

Overall the round was profitable by 4.03 points, with the big losers being Jamie A who dropped 7.47 points and out of the green, closely followed by TFA Euro Draws who lost 7.41 points. The bottom (red) half of the table looks like this:

We're almost there, but one more round of Serie A  to come next Sunday before everything is wrapped up.

The final monthly prize race looks like this:

None of the three leaders have yet won a monthly prize, which means that it is likely the eight months will have seen seven different winners.

While most of the exact Bounty totals are not yet known, it is almost certain that Football Investor (Stewboss) will owe £500. The current state is:

Finally, some nice words from David, aka TFA_Raz, who wrote:

Just wanted to say a big thank you for all the effort you put into running the FTL. Entering it has added another dimension to the season for me and it's been a lot of fun! Shame it all went a bit pear shaped towards the end but oh well.

Thanks David.

FTL Update 17.May

It would usually be quite exciting to announce that the big winner of the weekend was my XX Draws, but when the largest profit of the round is just 1.01 points, that's not really much to be excited about. Fellow Draw man Draw Picks made 0.60 points, and Over Goalify (+0.39 points) were the only other entries in profit on a round with a net loss of 32.95 points.

The losing side of the coin was led by Talkies Tips (-6.00 points), followed by Drawmaster (-5.00), Gecko (-4.06) and TFZ_Raz (-4.00) with nine other entries dropping lower amounts.

No one moved up more than one place, and the big losers on places were Football Elite and Talkies Tips who both dropped three positions. Gecko slipped off his perch to leave BettingTools.co.uk on top, and we have just two weeks to go.

The 'in-profit' entries are:

The entries in the red are:

TFA Draws leads the way for the April / May monthly prize:

Oh Burnley

For those who like this kind of thing, i.e. me, interesting that every top English league bar the Premier League was won by a team beginning with the letter B (ignoring the AFC).

Bournemouth won the Championship, Bristol City League One, Burton Albion League Two, Barnet the Conference Premier (with Bristol Rovers winning the play-offs), Bromley the Conference South (with Boreham Wood winning the play-offs) and Barrow the Conference North.

Bristol City also won the Johnstones Paint Trophy for good measure.

Burnley, what happened?

On a similar trivia note, Jonathan Liew had a piece in the Daily Telegraph on the decline of Northern clubs in the Premier League in recent seasons. Why are there fewer and fewer Premier League teams from the North of England?

There'll be at least one fewer next season.

FTL Update 11.May

Another losing round for the FTL as the traditionally tricky month of May continues. The collective points lost was 23.46 with three major contributors to this total. With just 10 draws in the top leagues, Jamie A picked the wrong week to go for "Lots of draws!" and ended up as the biggest loser of the week dropping 10.09 points, closely followed by fellow draw seekers XX Draws (-9.66) and Draw Picks (-9.00).

Drawmaster lost a rather more modest 2.27 points, but bucking the trend in some style was TFA's Draws, with the Bounty domestic selections going 100% on the weekend making 2.42 points (OK, so he only had the one selection), but the Euro Draws made 5.42 points, which was impressive given the rarity of them this weekend.

The April / May Monthly numbers look rather impressive for Graeme:

In the season long competition, not much change at the top although Gecko extended his lead over BettingTools.co.uk - by 0.01 points!

The 15 entries in profit are:

In the red we have:

For the so far unmentioned Bounty Boys, Skeeve and Football Investor had no entries, while Football Elite lost 1.00 point.

Just a couple more weeks to go, but still plenty to play for.

Attitude

Continuing with the theme of code-breaking from yesterday, and this silly little gem coincidentally appeared on my Twitter timeline this afternoon.

Using the values above, K N O W L E D G E gives you 98 as does H A R D  W O R K. Both are important, but fall just short of 100. However, A T T I T U D E gives you 100. 

Coincidence? I think not!

I think Ian Erskine might like this one.

Enigmatic Selections

Not surprisingly, there's been a big drop in the number of FTL entries this week. No doubt everyone is in a state of depression following the unfortunate outcome of the General Election, or it is possible that the end of the league season in the lower English leagues is the reason.

It's interesting how the formats of the entries differ - some send spreadsheets from which I extract the entries, while others send in single team names. Mountain Mouse's are in code, for example this week's entry read simply:

Ned Utrecht Excelsior Home EPL Everton Sunderland Home Fra Evian Thonon Gaillard Reims Away

I put my Mother's Vera Lynn 78 record on the old gramophone player, watch a few minutes of The Imitation Game, take myself back in time to Bletchley Park in the 1940s and within just a few minutes (usually) I have the puzzle solved. The selections for this week are Utrecht, Everton and Stade de Reims. I have yet to find a weather forecast hidden in there though.

A couple of the Bounty Boys are in action this weekend - Football Elite has a couple of selections, and TFA has just the one. 

Back to the Election, and not only was the result extremely disappointing, but it was also quite an upset based on the Betfair odds leading up to Election day. Scott send me a link to an article a few days ago from the Daily Torygraph, 

A “well groomed” pensioner has placed a £30,000 bet on the Conservatives winning a majority in the general election after walking into a betting shop with the money in his jacket pocket.

The anonymous gambler, who is believed to be a former accountant, asked what the odds were in a Ladbrokes branch in Hope Street, Glasgow, and after being told they were 7/1 he produced the money in crisp £50 notes.

According to one cashier, he "looked like he knew what he was doing", was confident and calm and “just thought it was a great bet”. A customer who witnessed the bet said the man looked “well-groomed, wealthy and well-informed”.

Following the punt, which is the biggest bet to date on a party emerging with a majority next Thursday, the bookies cut the odds of the Tories to 6/1, while the odds of no party forming a majority were reduced from 10/1 to 8/1.

Alex Donohue of Ladbrokes said a bookies in Glasgow was “the last place you'd expect to find a punter prepared to have a record-breaking bet on the Tories".

He added: "It's fair to say Cameron & co have been handed a vote of confidence from one of the unlikeliest locations and should they defy the odds, our customer will land a significant windfall."

The bookmaker also has odds of 25/1 on Labour winning more than half the seats, compared with 1/8 for the election resulting in no party having an overall majority at Westminster.

Scott included a screenshot of the Betfair markets at the time, and unless the "well groomed" pensioner is paying the Super Premium Charge, 7-1 was not the best of deals.

Credit where it's due though, and the 'former accountant' picked a decent priced winner. These accountant people seem to be pretty smart, although walking around Glasgow with £30k in cash might arguably be described as less than smart.

Yours truly learned his lesson in the April 1992 election, when he put too much faith in the polls and lumped almost a season's worth of football betting profits on Labour in an attempt to buy money, and lost - incidentally the last time the Conservatives won an election with a majority, and an election with much in common with this week's. It was not one of my smartest betting moves.

My thoughts then on why the polls were so wrong is that people were simply too embarrassed to admit they might vote Conservative, and just lied if asked. One can't blame them of course, although I feel the poll tax played a part that year.

Actually, it's probably inaccurate to say that the polls were 'wrong' this year. Polls are snapshots of opinion and the exit polls, taken when the 'opinion' is in the ballot box, were at the same time both shocking and quite accurate. Certainly the betting markets were wrong though. The Telegraph relates an example of a July 1985 by-election:

We can trace the question to July 4 1985, the day that the political betting markets finally came of age in this country. A by-election was taking place in a semi-rural corner of Wales, with Labour and Liberals the key contenders. Ladbrokes made the Liberals odds-on favourite. But on the very morning of the election a poll by Mori gave Labour a commanding 18 percentage point lead. Ladbrokes kept the Liberal candidate as the solid odds-on favourite. And who won? The Liberal — and anyone who ignored the pollster and followed the money.

The Telegraph doesn't mention that the Liberal won by just 559 votes, and as a "solid odds-on favourite" might not have been value, but then that paper has a habit of not telling you everything.

For those wondering, the Monster Raving Loony party candidate came fifth, and Mountain Mouse - I am just kidding with you. Your entries are jut fine.

Erskine Cup Final (Replay) Result

The inaugural Erskine Cup has finally found a home, and it will be Randolph's mantelpiece upon which it will sit despite his loss of 0.83. Losing finalist Gecko had his poorest outing for a while, and the worst of the round, dropping 6.02 points, but does have the consolation of holding onto his lead in the league - just. A mere 1.06 points now separates him from BettingTools.co.uk who picked up a round best 16.56 points and just like that, the seemingly secure lead has all but evaporated. BettingTools would have added another 3.88 points had they submitted the League One picks and Monday night's EPL game on time.

After more than 10,000 selections, we still have sixteen entries in profit:

Overall it was a good round, with entries making a combined 74.07 points. Talkies Tips had the second best profit of the weekend with 11.36 points, while TFA Euro Draws made 9.57 points. Jamie A was close behind in fourth gaining 9.53 and @ValueBankFooty made a decent 7.83 points.

With Sjosta sitting this round out, there were no big losers. Other than Gecko, no one lost more than two points. In terms of places, Faifranco was the big loser dropping three places despite winning 0.97 points, while the biggest gainers were Jamie A, XX Draws and sibling XX Unders which all moved up three spots.

The Bounty Boys had a profitable weekend. Football Elite made 1.29 points, and moved up one place trimming his liability to £275. Skeeve's mainstay Conference National is over bar the play-offs, and he was idle this weekend with his liability actually increasing to £400 as he dropped two places. TFA Draws made 0.99 points but remains in 18th place with a liability of £425 while Football Investor was also profitable, making 2.66 points but actually dropping one place with his liability remaining at the capped £500.

The race for the monthly prize for April / May looks like this:

The FTL ends at the end of this month, with the final over the May 29-Jun 1 weekend.

FTL Update 30.April

Although the weekend round has already started, there were a few entries in midweek with lots of games in Spain and Italy and a few in England and France. Overall it was another losing round with 6.62 points lost taking the total loss for April to 103.26. A new record. The two profitable entries were BettingTools.co.uk who made 2.15 points, a mirror image of XX Draws who lost the same amount. Jamie A was also profitable, but his haul of 0.09 points won't have rung any alarm bells with the leaders. Other losers were XX Unders (-0.40), Rubicon (-0.31) and Football Investor who dropped 6.00 points.

Those entries with either a point or positional change are:

Had the monthly prize been for April alone rather than combined with May, the winner would have been Gecko:

Gecko and Randolph are both in action this weekend in the Erskine Cup Final (Replay) with each's picks sent to the other so that they can check results in real-time. 

One final comment is that, per the Official Rules, the minimum number of selections to be qualified for prizes is 76, and we don't have too many weeks left, so if you're not up there yet, start selecting! The FTL will run to Sunday 31st May 2015, which is the final round of Serie A, the last of the top leagues to wrap up. 

Orioles Fly South After Empty Nest Syndrome

Most of you will be aware of the recent events in Baltimore, which have led to two Orioles games being postponed, and the third in the series against the Chicago White Sox will be played behind closed doors tonight, which I am pretty sure is a first for Major League Baseball.

Pinnacle Sports Tweeted:

Although the Tweet implies that home field advantage is a given, the truth is that any home field advantage in baseball is small at best. The one exception is the Colorado Rockies who benefit from playing in Denver, a mile above sea level, but for some teams home advantage is negligible.

In the ten seasons (plus this one) from 2005, the Baltimore Orioles have won 411 games at home, and lost 407, which is 50.2%. Seven of those ten seasons they lost more games at home than they won, although to be fair, the last three years have all been winning ones.

The Orioles' 'home' games this weekend (Friday thru Sunday) will now be played in St Petersburg versus the Tampa Bay Rays with the Orioles still the official home team, but in baseball, the starting pitcher holds the key to the odds rather than where the game is being played.

FTL Update 28.April

Better late than never, but here is the weekend FTL wrap-up starting with the overall loss of 18.67 points taking the grand total to 228.66 points. The big winner of the round was Draw Picks who moved into profit making 8.56 points. Next best was BettingTools.co.uk who moved back up into second place after gaining 6.70 points. Mountain Mouse reduced his losses by 3.18 points, and as I mentioned yesterday, the two Erskine Cup Finalists Gecko and Randolph tied with both making 2.13 points. Gecko continues to lead the table by a comfortable 25 points.

The entries in negative territory are:

The big loser this round was Talkies Tips, who lost 9.74 points despite his best efforts:

As usual I've spent the whole week crunching various stats and numbers, examined the in play analysis of the history of all teams involved going back 80 years, looked at the players weaknesses and strengths based on biological family history dating back to the 18th century and have come up with the following sure fire 100% nailed on picks for the weekend.

I was suitably impressed, until he cleared things up with:

Actually, I've just spent 5 mins scanning through the various odds, not that you could have guessed :)

We guessed. Next biggest loser was Sjosta, who dropped another 6.82 points, and in fact none of the bottom third made a profit. TFA Euro Draws lost 4.95 points, TFA_Raz lost 4.74 points and Rubicon 4.31 points.

April/May is the worst month overall so far, with losses totalling 96.64 points. It was mentioned on Twitter by TFA's Graeme that:

The weekend Graeme highlights marked a turning point for FTL entries overall. Going in to the weekend, the net profit was at the all-time high of 64.28 points. As mentioned above, the total net loss is now 228.66 points, quite a loss in just three months and a bit, and not everyone is following Graeme's selections.

The Bounty Boys portfolio along with their liabilities now looks like this:

With a few matches this midweek, I'll have another update before the weekend.

Replay

With a full round of La Liga matches in midweek, and a few more in the EPL, Serie A and Ligue 1, my focus has been on updating the spreadsheet and getting the selections sent out rather than a full write up on the FTL.

I'll do that tomorrow, but one amazing coincidence happened which I shall now bore you with. Having mistakenly thought that Randolph was a no-show for the final, (Randolph and Mortimer have the same owner), Randolph in fact had 8 entries, with Gecko sending in 23. It looked pretty close as the results came in, but when the official numbers were added up, Randolph and Gecko had both made a profit of exactly 2.13 points. Quite incredible. They replay next weekend.

Here are the entries in profit, with a write-up tomorrow:

I also made an error in judgement by publishing a comment (now removed) without reading it carefully. Lazy Trader wrote:

Please take down Jeremie's advert, enough people get scammed without you giving them a leg up

The comment in question was from a Jeremie Outmezguine who said...

Courtsiding is a big advantage for scalping. I do it from time to time at tennis. You can offer lay bets and cancel them when the point or the service is not going in your way. You don't need real value to be successful.

I manage wallets for customers. If somebody is interested, he/she can contact me at xxxxxxxx@gmail.com. I also have a facebook side.

P.S. Nice blog!

I'm not even sure what a "wallet manager" does, but a quick search reveals that this French tennis trader has been posting similar comments a lot in recent days. e.g.

Hello

I am a betfair trader from Paris. Mainly I work on tennis and horse markets. I manage some wallets for customers. If you are interested you can contact me at xxxxxxxxx@gmail.com.
Regards, Jerry

Be warned - not that any readers would be stupid enough to investigate I'm sure. The dead give-away is the suggestion that:

You don't need real value to be successful...

If anyone has any more information on this character, let me know.  

Ordinary Man

On the topic of BBC's coverage of court-siding, The Fear wrote of the Betfair Forum:

I didn't think the programme acted as much of a selling point for Betfair. It all seemed a bit like the ordinary man on the street has no chance against people live at the event with automated systems. Steer clear. Disappointing they choose not to have a spokesman give an alternative view, because there must be people on here who have won a lot of money without resorting to fast pix and what an advert for Betfair that would be.

I fear The Fear is deluding himself if he believes the ordinary man in his flat does have a realistic chance of long-term success competing against others with automated systems and live data.

As I pointed out on the thread:

How could he? Any time he gets matched, it is at a price others with more information know is poor value. It's possible that the court-sider is stupid and doesn't know how to use his advantage, and this may have been true in the past, but today these groups are all a lot more efficient.

DStyle (a former commenter here) suggested that:

being first is just one part of in play betting.

but I fear he too is not thinking this through. What they are suggesting just doesn't make sense if we assume the court-siding operation knows what they are doing (and it seems reasonable to assume they do, or they will soon be out of business) and are able to accurately price an in-play event.

To make money from trading long-term, you need to be able to get matched at a price greater than the true price - i.e you need value on your side. When several people are ahead of you on game state information, why would there be any value for you to pick up? In an inefficient market, this may be possible, but the presence of organised, professional court-sider groups, means that such markets are now very efficient.

This is not to say that a skilled (knowledgeable) trader can't get close to value during breaks in games, but to do so does mean that they need to be as good at identifying value as the court-sider people, and since they are doing this full-time and will see more live than the man in his flat can see on TV, the probability of that seems somewhat unlikely.

If anyone thinks that a few seconds disadvantage can be easily overcome, the point may be easier understood by thinking of the delay as minutes rather than seconds. Value doesn't wait around for long - it gets snapped up by the first person with funds available to recognise it.

Being first may be "just one part of in-play betting", but it's a very big part. Overcoming such a disadvantage seems as likely as dropping a £20 note at the bus stop on your way to work, and it still being there for you to pick up on your way home from work later that day.

Short-term, of course it is possible to win without value, but over the long-term it is not.

Erskine Cup Final 'Half'-Time Update

The Erskine Cup Final this weekend is pretty close going into the last day (today) with the two entrants taking different approaches. It's not often that a cup finalist fails to show up, but Randolph took that approach, presumably hoping that in-form Gecko's winning run will come to an abrupt end, while the latter has 23 entries this weekend. After Saturday and 18 bets, Gecko looks to be provisionally close to break even, which means the (virtual) Cup (and a very real £150) will be decided by his remaining five selections (with current prices):

Arsenal v Chelsea DRAW (3.26)
Atalanta v Empoli HOME (2.54)
Parma v Palermo DRAW (3.41)
Groningen v Feyenoord HOME (4.66)
Zwolle v Ajax DRAW (4.76)

Gecko is, of course, going for the Double, which would be quite an impressive feat, and he is actually winning the final monthly competition of the season as well, just to rub it in.

FTL Update 22.April

Not much interest in the handful of midweek matches - all those in action are below, along with the leaders.

BettingTools.co.uk struggled again, and slip to third in the table after losing 6.00 points, while Mortimer and TFA_Raz both had small losses. All the Bounty Boys were idle.

On an old, but still ongoing, topic, I see the BBC has an article on court-siding, and Sporting Data's Daniel Dobson specifically.

Former Betfair Senior Product Manager Steve High is also featured:

This has led many other syndicates to employ courtsiders. Steve High says he has been told reliably that 75 people were at last year's Wimbledon final, "sending information back or betting on their own".

Remember that, next time you think you have an edge trading tennis in-play, and be aware that court-siders are now present at more events than tennis.  

Pitch, Click, Strike

One of my better baseball photographs, with a 90+mph fastball captured between batter and catcher.

Something I hadn't noticed before, because you can only see it from a certain angle, is the close relationship between the catcher and the plate umpire, who actually uses the former's shoulder to balance himself as he calls the balls and strikes.