Dunning-Kruger

WhyAlwaysMe doesn’t exactly sound like a name that someone full of confidence with all their ducks in a row would use, but I am pleased to see that he, admittedly self-reportedly, knows much more about betting than Derek McGovern. Why he continues to provide evidence in direct contrast to this claim is thus a little surprising.

For example, the idea that 50% edges are everywhere or that backing a team at 3.8 and fortuitously seeing it steam in to 3.1 means he had an edge!

The Dunning–Kruger effect in play perhaps? I have Al’s support on this, as he suggests:

Does that not mean backing a selection early and then hoping it steams [in] is just lucky and not getting value?

Indeed it is. As I pointed out, the steamer could just as easily be a drifter. You COULD be getting value with your back at 3.8, if for example you had the price at 3.1 at the time it was available at 3.8, but WAM had no idea of a ‘true’ price and it was his idea that he had an edge in such a scenario that was so amusing.

Al went on:

I’m confused now.

I thought if you identify value, whether it steams or not doesn’t really matter – as long as you have gained enough value to make it worthwhile, i.e. >10% etc.

This 10% figure that is being bandied about is probably my fault. Let me clarify that any edge is good, so long as it is positive, but that estimating ‘true’ prices can be tricky. By using 10% as a starting point, I have a little margin for error and it allows for commission or other charges.

Backing a ‘true’ 3.22 at 3.5 gives an 8.7% edge, but with a 5% commission for example, the edge reduces to 4.8%. If you can get 3.55, then your edges are 10.2% and 6.3% respectively. Banging my ‘why I love draws’ drum again for a minute, once established, the draw price rarely moves. You will see money matched mostly at say 3.5 and 3.55, and lesser amounts just outside these numbers, whereas to use WAM’s example of Huddersfield Town last weekend, they traded at between 3.8 and 3.1. In my experience, if you put a back in at that 3.55, so long as there’s not just five minutes to go before kick-off, you will get matched.

As for Al’s ‘enough value to make it worthwhile’ comment, if you generate enough bets, surely any positive return after expenses is worthwhile? I would not agree with the idea that you need >10% value to make it worthwhile. I simply like the >10% cushion on bets where the ‘true’ price is a little harder to calculate.

Wry? Always. Me

Why Always Me (henceforth WAM) came back with a couple of comments on my last post. They are rather lengthy, so I have broken them down (and corrected poor spelling for clarity) and added comments at each point.

Thanks for the reply Cassini, I did have a wry chuckle at your clever headline too!

I am an amusing man. People are always laughing at me.

OK first things first, you were correct to say my 33% to 50% example is totally unrealistic. Think I must have been using one of those 'inflation tools' that certain system sellers market. But to give an example from real life, it was possible to back Huddersfield on Sunday at 3.80 and they kicked off around 3.10 on Betfair which works out at 22.55%. Now I know this sort of movement is not very common but a 10% edge can be found a few times a week. I do however accept it won't be much more than this, to get more turnover you have to look at other sports too I think.

I am usually correct - you could have saved your keyboard. The example of Huddersfield Town on Sunday needs a little clarification. Was the 3.8 available at the same time as the Betfair price was 3.1 or did the price shorten on Betfair during the day from 3.8 to 3.1? The distinction is critical. If it was the former, then this was an outstanding arbitrage opportunity, and you need to make the most of it because you will soon find yourself limited or shut down completely by such a generous book. If it was the latter, then unless you had the ‘true’ price at 3.1 at the time you backed at 3.8, then you didn’t have an edge. The ‘true’ price at that time was 3.8, and you got lucky. The price could just have easily have moved against you, and it’s important you understand that a fortuitous price move is not an edge.

Not quite sure what the comment on increasing turnover is about to be honest, other than stating the obvious.

That post you did on working out your edge was really important and very helpful - it really gets to the heart of the matter.

Always happy to help. There's a reason why this is the world's number one sports trading blog. The blog that gives.

Turning to your draw systems, I believe you previously said your average advantage was about 3.25/3.11 which I make to be just under 5%. Is this a direct comparison with the Betfair kick-off price or a theoretical estimate i.e. Betfair is wrong on the particular match and your 3.11 is the 'true' odds?

What I am getting at is how do you measure your system's performance? I see the two draw systems are up about 10 units on 300 selections against a theoretical 15. However draws could have been more prevalent this season (the Premiership is 30% for example) or you could have had more winners than might be expected.

These numbers continue to change each week as I add more and more matches to the spreadsheet. As of last weekend, there were 1,525 matches (out of 4,770) that qualified as an XX Draw (Classic or Extended) selection, of which 474 finished as draws. The average draw price for these selections is currently (this season) 3.55 (the price is not necessarily that at kick-off, since I record the price I am matched at and have better things to do that monitor prices at kick-off) and the average ‘true’ price is 3.22. The average edge is thus 10.2%. Now this is not to claim that every match selected offers this edge, only that from a reasonably large number of matches with a specific profile, more than expected finish as draws. Results are measured using ROI%, which allows for a direct comparison with other systems and selections.

Obviously there are differences, sometimes significant, between leagues, and some seasons will see a higher than average overall number of draws, while others will be lower - it’s kind of how averages work!

Some examples of league differences - the Classic selections in England are at an Implied Price of 3.08 while in Italy they are 4.13, but Italy's Extended selections are at 3.08 with Spain the worst at 3.21. 

WAM points out that there are more draws than usual in the EPL this season, but a few years ago the draws were under represented. These runs do not impact the average draw prices as I have written before. They would eventually were the runs to continue, but the draw frequency is remarkably steady.

Cassini when I look for a rational argument for backing the draw from you I can't find any. So far all you have said is it's 'easy to back' and 'unfashionable'. To me this sounds like just the sort of guff you call other system sellers and bloggers out for. It's really disappointing.

If you think for a minute about how markets are formed your 'unfashionable' argument collapses. 1X2 markets are formed from Asian Handicaps, which have the draw in them, so the draw is not in fact unfashionable at all. Also if you are saying the draw price is out 5% that means the 0-0, 1-1 and 2-2 are out too, as well as the U1.5.

I am not suggesting that it is rational to back any draw, only that the draw in historically similarly profiled matches have hit at an implied price of 3.22 and that the price typically available on the draw represents value. If anything is disappointing, it is that people can’t seem to grasp this very simple point. You misquote me on the ‘easy to back’ – what I actually wrote was “If you find it easier to find this edge on the Home team or the Away team, then that’s great, but I’m not sure it’s consistently that easy”, although backing the draw does happen to be one of the easier bets. Finding value in football is seldom ‘easy’, but with the draw rarely below 3.2, I find it easy-er to find value here consistently than on other football bets.

For the 'unfashionable' reference, I’ll defer to Derek McGovern who knows far more about betting than I ever will. He wrote, and I quote:

“ in a match in which theoretically all three potential outcomes - home win, away win, and draw - are equally likely, the true odds should be 2-1, 2-1 and 2-1. But such odds give bookmakers no profit margin, so instead they will offer, say, 6-4 the home team, 6-4 the away team, and 11-5 the draw (the draw being the longest price because bookies know that few punters ever back it, something that will be explained later).“

and also

"Punters are creatures of habit. When they have a bet on a football match they are seeking an allegiance. They do not want to see a match finish in a draw. Consequently few punters ever back the draw, a point I will pick up on later in the book". 

Why WAM thinks the 12X markets are derivatives of the Asian Handicap markets is puzzling. Presumably he has some evidence to back up this claim? I would certainly be interested to see this study.

Being a cynic, what's to stop me using the same sales pitch and setting up my own draw system? Hey the draw is easy to back and I'm a counter-trender. All you have to do it seems is pick the biggest draw percentage games, with a few bigger prices thrown in for luck, get out a prayer mat and hope for some positive variance for a couple of seasons! Charge £20pm per client - TYVM.

There is absolutely nothing to stop you from doing this, but good luck with it because you are again failing to understand that you really need a proven edge to attract discerning investors. Someone selling ‘guff’ like this, as you put it, is certainly going to be highlighted on this blog.

The above shows the total number of matches across all leagues. The percentage that end in draws is 26%, an implied price is 3.79. The results of the XX Draws across all leagues show 474 winners from 1525, implied price of 3.22. You need to do more than select draws at random.

Blindly backing the biggest draw percentage games will not be profitable in the long term, and throwing in a few bigger prices for luck will just add to your losses. Praying has never worked since humans first roamed the planet (more than 6,000 years ago in case you didn’t know), and never will work, although it is said that the secret to successful prayer is to pray for something that will happen anyway. Positive variance might go your way for a while, but probably not over four seasons and 4,770 selections, and a proven track record is something most potential subscribers will look for. Feel free to send your selections in to this blog for inclusion in the FTL table.

Cassini the reason I am having a pop like this is if you go to FB Elite or wherever it's basically done on trust. The guy is saying to you 'I have a private method of gaining an edge, trust me here is my record'. You either buy into it or you don't. But what you appear to be saying is 'buy my system because the markets are wrong', yet I've never seen any evidence from you to back this statement up. Which is irritating.

Pop away. I enjoy the discussion, and it makes blogging so much easier, and you can compare me to Football Elite any day. Football Elite was the first and, so far, only football service I subscribed to, and before doing so I looked at Matt’s track record. His results looked good, and I was interested to see his selections and understand some of the reasoning behind them. Unfortunately, results have been disappointing over the last couple of seasons, which may be a temporary blip, or it may be that the edge is eroded.

Matt is a professional punter and relies on selling his service to generate at least some of his income. I am not, and I am not selling a system. I do have selections available to anyone who is interested in them, but the spreadsheet that contains the data that generates these selections is not for sale. Actually it probably is, everything has a price, but unlike the selections, it wouldn’t be cheap.

As for the reason being ‘because the markets are wrong’, all I can say is “oh dear”. No service would ever be profitable if the markets weren’t wrong! This is how we find an edge - we need the markets to be wrong! 

WAM has much to learn.

He states here that he has never seen any evidence, (it was there all the time – irritating indeed - but he appears to have found it by the time he makes his follow-up comment, even if doesn't understand it all:

A couple more things.

I've been over the Prospectus and it shows an estimated profit of some 71 units for a previous period. But what I noticed is that a lot of profit came from U2.5, which if you are backing the draw is a correlated bet. Really you are double counting, if the draw comes in the U2.5 will come in most of the time.

The prospectus makes it quite clear that the Match Odds draw bet and the Under 2.5 goals bet are correlated, and explains why. It also breaks down the results of backing both bets individually, so you can single count or double count as you wish. It’s a matter of personal choice how anyone plays the selections.

Also your table is quite misleading. You occupy the first three places but your system as a whole is in loss! Either you are competing or you're not, how can it be right to split them up in this way? If you want to split them you could do it outside of the table.

I think my table is quite clear. I track five bets for each of the three categories (Classic, Extended, Bundesliga Extended). In addition to the Match Odds Draw and the Under 2.5 goals markets, I have this season included the Under 1.5 goals, Under 3.5 goals and Half-Time 0-0 markets. My thinking was that these should also prove to be profitable propositions, but as you can see from the current table, the results from these are all over the place. Backing the Under 1.5 market for the Extended selections shows a loss of 30.16 points while the same market on the Classic selections is up 6.52. For the HT00 bets, the opposite is seen - the Classic selections are down 11.92 while the Extended are up 8.11. 

It would be ‘quite misleading’ were I to combine these five bets together, and unrealistic since I doubt that anyone backs all five markets on each selection. How can drilling down and reporting on individual components be misleading? Individual bets should be reported individually so it is clear where the profits or the losses are happening. Obfuscation would be the result of combining bets, not the opaqueness we are looking for.

I suspect that it’ll be a while before these new market numbers settle down, but the lack of liquidity of some of these markets could well prove to be the death knell for these more fringe bets. I was actually surprised at how low the volume was on these markets.

My draw selections should be judged primarily on just that - the draw results. The other results are broken out so that we can all see how they perform. There is no requirement for subscribers to back five markets on every selection, but thank you for suggesting how I should run my table!

The prospectus makes it very clear that backing draws is not going to make you rich in a hurry. It generates a pretty good number of bets with an overall profitable ROI%, and is ideal for those who want to generate a little extra cash or churn some money to reduce the Betfair Premium Charge or the potential Premium Charge. I know a few people who use the selections for just this purpose.

The prospectus also makes it clear that there is no guarantee that profitability will continue, but with the average price on the draw unlikely to shorten, then unless there is a fundamental change in the way that matches of the profile my spreadsheet identifies play out, then I remain cautiously optimistic.

One problem with a profitable selection method that becomes well known is that the value can soon disappear. It’s a problem that Matt of Football Elite is all too aware of. He recently explained in an email that he would not reveal all the reasons for his selections, but he may have revealed too much information already.

I couldn’t do it for ‘my’ selections if I tried. They are my spreadsheet’s selections, and I have no idea when I enter the teams in each week what numbers will come flying out the other end.

Here is the FTL table for this week, a little later than usual, but I’ve been busy writing this blog post! No significant movers this week, (a very limited EPL schedule didn't help) - the only one moving up or down by more than three places was, talk of the devil, Football Elite, who dropped four spots to 24th.

True Fiction

The Fibonacci Fibbing post drew a couple of comments. First, this one from WhyAlwaysMe:

Backing draws is quite a limited strategy in my opinion. I believe the common argument put forward is that the draw can be 'value' because it is not a popular bet. However this conveniently ignores efficient market theory - on Betfair the odds are generally accepted to represent a 'true' price in liquid markets. In other words if the draw gets too big the big pro players will come in and take up the slack. So the draw can be unpopular among small bettors but also well supported in the market.

But I have another reason for not being keen on the draw, which is the limited upside. If you look at historical odds the draw is always going to conform to a narrow range, there will always be a ceiling. For the vast majority of games the range will be between 20% and 32% for the draw, so however good you are you are always playing in this narrow band. About the best you can hope for is an advantage of 2 or 3% realistically and that's if you get everything right.

If you are on a winner system it is possible to identify winners prices at 33% that are close to 50%. The margin of safety is much bigger on the win because you are operating in a much bigger band than with the draw.

I hope I am getting the point over - if you are playing the draw you do have to be super accurate because the bands are so narrow.

Don't get me wrong - beating the market by 2 or 3% is very decent if your model is that accurate. But personally I prefer a bigger margin of safety than that which is why I would always look to the winner markets on football betting.

An interesting point of view, and it’s worth addressing some of the points. To start, I don’t agree that backing draws is a limited strategy. When viewed on a match to match basis, it is certainly not a get rich quick strategy, but it’s important to consider the number of opportunities a strategy provides as well as its potential rewards.

Most would agree that a small edge on several bets a week is more useful than a larger edge on an annual event. There are football matches every day, so even a small edge here will soon add up. For this reason, I don’t view the ‘limited upside’ as a problem at all. If I can find draws that should be 3.25 at a price of 3.5 or so, I am a happy camper. The sky's the limit, and for me, the robustness of the draw price, meaning that any downside is limited, is more important. Despite what the Fibonacci article implies, draws are very rarely in the 2.62 range, and rarely as short as 3.2, and for my XX Draws the average is closer to 3.5.

WhyAlwaysMe suggests that it is possible and safer to identify winners at 3.0 that have a ‘true’ price of 2.0, (a 50% edge incidentally), than it is to identify draws at a smaller edge.

Possible? Yes, safer, yes. Probable? No. Seriously, how often is 3.0 going to be available on a ‘true’ 2.0 chance in a football match? If it is with any frequency, then you simply employ Kelly and retire with a small fortune after just a few weeks.

It’s simply not realistic. Betting is not that easy. This so-called big ‘margin of safety’ doesn’t exist. Unless you have inside information on a fixed match, successful football betting isn’t about having rare big wins at 3.0 on a 2.0 chance. It’s about finding repeatable, and typically much smaller, edges and eking out a profit in the long run.

It is also wrong, in my opinion, to talk about the draw as somehow different to the ‘winner markets’. It is precisely this, to my mind illogical, way of thinking that reinforces why it may be easier to identify value on the draw than on a so-called ‘winner’.

Does it make the draw more back-able if the three outcomes are listed as Home, Away or Draw rather than Liverpool, Arsenal or Draw?

As I wrote in a post at the weekend, whether you are obtaining 1.61 on a 1.46 shot or 3.3 on a 3.0 or 8.8 on an 8.0, it all works out the same. You have the same edge (10%) in each example. If you find it easier to find this edge on the Home team or the Away team, then that’s great, but I’m not sure it’s consistently that easy, especially with odds-on selections. Sometimes it pays to be unfashionable.

On the ridiculous Fibonacci staking method, Richard writes:

Martingale by another name isn't it? I've always felt that the reverse Martingale type plans are best, or at least more fun, for sports betting i.e. increase stakes on a winner, reduce stakes on a loser, though clearly it depends on what sport and the winner/loser ratio.

Martingale is simply doubling up after a loss, and can only be used for selections priced at evens or above. Its limitations are well known. Fibonacci increases stakes after a loss somewhat slower, (but rapidly nonetheless, and requires a price of around 2.618 (after a handful of losses) for a winner to recover previous stakes.

Some of you might enjoy reading Norman Leigh’s 1975 book Thirteen Against The Bank - “The True Story of How a Roulette Team Broke the Bank with an Unbeatable System” although the accuracy of that statement is placed in some doubt with the book’s classification as ‘Fiction’!

It supposedly describes using the Reverse Labouchere (cancellation) staking method on roulette in a fictional casino in 1966, and I remember it was an interesting read, although I was easily impressionable back then thinking that a clever staking system should be able to make a negative expectation game profitable.

It was in the late 70s when, anxious to try out one such brilliant system, I wrangled an invitation through a colleague to an illegal Chinese run gambling den somewhere close to Piccadilly Circus. I was a little surprised that not only did they let me record the outcomes of spins and take notes, but they provided the pencil and cards for it. This was all too easy I thought.

I didn't win, and had to go in to work next day.

My partner in crime that night stopped coming in to work soon after. He was working the graveyard shift, and thought it would be amusing to call the department manager up at 3am and report a problem with the computer system. In those days such a call necessitated getting dressed and driving in to the office, and he was none too pleased to arrive at the office and find my erstwhile friend somewhat the worse for wear and slurring "April Fool" to him. I never saw him again. Perhaps he found the Roulette Holy Grail?

This quote from Calvin Ayre has already been highlighted on Peter Webb's blog, although Peter's choice of post title - Betfair weilds the axe -looked most unwieldy, but the quote was very funny and worth repeating. 

Writing about the latest Betfair redundnacies, and Betfair's 'rescue plans' announced by CEO Breon Corcoran , Calvin wrote:

Pardon us for saying so, but this is akin to a straight guy planning to ‘reinvigorate’ the number of girls he scores with by working out, getting his hair cut, then spending a lot more time in gay bars. There is no ‘free’ nor ‘easy’ business to be had in highly regulated and competitively mature markets, just as there are comparatively few straight single girls to be found in gay bars. But we suppose this is just the way public companies view the world.

Perhaps Betfair should keep their eyes on developments in the US, which is finally moving towards legalising on-line gambling. 

“Opportunity dances with those already on the dance floor.” - H Jackson Brown Jr.

Fibonacci Fibbing

There were some big differences of opinion about the Under / Over total for last night's NB All-Star game. The totals line ended at 294.5, although Betfair had markets for 291.5 and 297.5 as well. Before the tip-off, the Over had traded as low as 1.8 and as high 2.22. As my Twitter (@calciocassini) followers will have seen, any price north of 2.0 was great value to my mind. While the game has become less and less defence oriented in recent years, 295 points has only been reached once, last year, in regulation, although three other times the total went over after overtime. 

You always need to be careful with these ultimately meaningless games that are more about the show than competition, but the fourth quarter is always played seriously if the game is close. Even with little defence, four quarters of 74 points is a lot to ask, 6+ points per minute. After 6 minutes, the total was 34 points, (with 1.55 traded), and after one quarter just 57 points were on the board. The scoring pace picked up in the second quarter with 77 points putting the total up to 134 at half-time leaving 161 needed for the Over to come in. The most points ever in an All-Star half was the 157 scored in 1988.

After three quarters the total was 212 points and a four point differential, so the rest of the game was always likely to be a little more competitive. With 83 needed for the Over to come in, the only danger was overtime, but in the end it was a comfortable win, and I hope some Twitter followers got the 2.16 or close that was available.

Pinnacle sometimes has some good articles on betting, but this one on draws is not one of them:

Betting on draws isn’t the most glamorous form of soccer betting, but it could be one of the most profitable. We investigated betting in a set numeric pattern on draws with odds of 2.618 or more to see whether the Fibonacci betting system is a magic bullet for soccer betting profits.

The essence of the Fibonacci Strategy – published in 2007 by Fragiskos Archontakis and Evan Osborne- is simple: bet on a draw, and if you lose, bet on another one. Repeat this process until you win. There are only two additional – and vital – rules to follow:

Only bet on draws when the probability is above 2.618

Increase your betting stake in a way that follows the Fibonacci sequence: 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21 etc.

The idea is based upon a theory from 1989 that the draw is the most difficult for bookmakers to predict, and therefore can be exploited. The idea is that as long as you continually increase your stake, any win will overcome your previous losses.

The Fibonacci Strategy in practice

Looking at data from the 2011/12 Premier League, there were 93 draws in 380 games – therefore 24.5% of all games ended in a tie. Interestingly, the odds for a potential draw in all 380 ties were above the 2.618 threshold suggested as the lower limit by Archontakis and Osborne. This means there should be – on average – a payout every four games. This means the winning stake would be the fourth Fibonacci number: 5, with a total bet each time £10 (the winning stake added to the failing three stakes before it: 1, 1, and 3). Considering the average odds for a draw over the season were 4.203, this means that the average winnings would be £21.02 (£5 stake multiplied by the odds), with a profit of £11.02 when the stakes have been subtracted. Over 380 games, this equates to a theoretical profit of £1786.7 – all from an initial stake of just £1.

Fibonacci Strategy Drawbacks

However, there are numerous practical limitations that prevent the Fibonacci sequence from printing money. For a start, many games are played concurrently, meaning there’s no option to increase your stake to the next Fibonacci number if a draw doesn’t occur, as the games will finish at the same time. Instead, bettors might consider applying a Fibonacci betting sequence to individual teams. However, this means that long streaks without draws could cause huge holes in bettors’ bank balances. Looking at the longest Premier League streak without a draw (Manchester United in 2008/09), the Red Devils went 20 games without drawing, before finally succumbing to a 0-0 tie with Arsenal. Because the Fibonacci sequence increases exponentially, bettors would have to have bet £10,946 on that final game to follow the sequence. Including that bet, anyone following the betting system would had to have staked £28,656 – a huge amount for a system that usually provides winnings of just £21.02. The odds for a draw on that game were 4.1 however, which would have provided winnings of £44,878.60, or a profit of £16.222.60. With Fibonacci, the increased stakes also provide impressive returns.

The Fibonacci Sequence explained

The Fibonacci sequence is one of the most widely known numeric sequences in mathematics, characterised by its simple formula:

N3 = N1 + N2

This indicates that (after the two starting numbers), each additional number in the sequence is the sum of the two preceding numbers. For example, the Fibonacci sequence begins 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, and 21. Looking at the start of the sequence:
N1 = 1, N2 = 1, and therefore N3 = 2
N1 = 1, N2 = 2, and therefore N3 = 3
N1 = 2, N2 = 3, and therefore N3 = 5
N1 = 3, N2 = 5, and therefore N3 = 8 

This is all terrible 'advice', and no magic bullet. If your draw selections aren't going to be profitable to level stakes, then the fanciest staking plan in the world isn't going to help you. And even the best of draw selection systems is going to hit long losing runs, it goes with the territory, and what the author is doing suggesting that the odds on a draw are possibly going to be below 2.618 is beyond me. It happens, but only in highly unusual circumstances - think end of season Italian games.

As an example of the length of possible losing runs when backing draws, the XX Extended Draws are in profit this season after 204 bets by 22.3 points (to level stakes) but in there was a sequence of 21 consecutive losses. Aggressively increasing your stakes after a loss is not going to work. Who would have staked £17,711 on that 22nd selection of Getafe v Sevilla at 3.5?

I also take issue with the statement that betting on draws is not glamorous. Is it a coincidence that eight of the  top ten in the FTL are draw related? What does 'glamorous' even mean in a betting context? For me, the glamour is the money in my balance, and if the draw is overlooked by others, well that can only help.

Updates on the FTL once the Monday schedule is complete.

Swanning Around

As Vagabond commented, the unpredictability of Liverpool can make it easy to look stupid when trying to identify value. While one match proves nothing, in the end Liverpool had the most comfortable of wins. The Cassini ratings came out ahead with the opinion that at 1.62 Liverpool were value, but we were all wrong on the Unders being value, and this includes Premier Betting who sent in an account bet to back the Under 2.75 Goals at 2.09.

Vagabond's comment in full was:

Interesting that the original poster felt so strongly about the Liverpool lay. They are so unpredictable that it can be easy to look stupid. To be fair the make up of the Swansea team today must have had a bearing on the end result. Does the rating system not take such things into account - I guess not.

While I am aware of some ratings systems that include individual player ratings, this is a step too far for me, and probably most people who are not betting full-time. My ratings are all statistics based, and while it would be judicious to check for any significant team news before putting betting the farm on any one bet, for most of the time it's all about the numbers. Swansea did make several changes, which makes it all the more surprising to me that Liverpool could be backed at 1.62. Punters like Omega who are basing their opinions purely on results drive the price up, which benefits those of us who look at other numbers too. Liverpool out-shot Swansea 33 to 4, a little above their average 24 shots per game at home to non-big teams, but not totally unexpected. Swansea average 10 shots away from home, but today's 4 matched their numbers at Everton and Tottenham Hotspur this season, so again not unexpected at all. I am now kicking myself for not investing more!

I usually ignore Anonymous comments, but this one was polite enough, and perhaps he's just shy:

Great blog!

Why is 1.61 a 10% edge on 1.46? Isn't this including the stake return? Looking at profit, 1.51 would be 10% value as 0.51/1 is 10% higher than 0.46/1 when considering only the winnings.

Otherwise isn't there a distortion between % value at short odds (where the stake return is a large part of the payout) and high odds (where it is minimal)?

I don't know the answer, just a query I've never really sought an answer to.

Your thoughts greatly appreciated!

My thoughts are that yes, this is a great blog. As for the edge, I look at the expected return from backing a 'true' 1.46 at 1.61.

If, and it's a big IF, the true price on Liverpool is the 1.46, this represents a probability of 68.5%. and over 1,000 bets (excluding commission) backing at this price, we would break even. We would win 685 bets for a profit of 315 points, and lose 315 bets.

If I can back this 68.5% shot at a price of 1.61 (Implied Probability 62.1%), my 1,000 bets would be up 102 points (10% of the stakes bet) - 685 bets would win for a profit of 417 points, and 315 bets would lose.

For a 10% edge, needing 1.61 on a 1.46 shot is the same as seeking 2.2 on a 2.0 shot, although 10% is an arbitrary number that works for me. The calculations above don't include commission, but of course in the real world you need to account for this. Backing true evens shots at evens isn't enough unfortunately!

The Last Letter

There is only the one EPL game this weekend, today's Liverpool v Swansea City match, and Premier Edge have Swansea +1.25 a value bet at 1.81.

Alan finds value in the draw at ~4.5 while the Omega Betting blog returns after a three month break with some very bold claims.

Tomorrow sees this weekend's only EPL match and as the title says you should be laying Liverpool. Here's why:

Over the past few years I’ve been working on a ratings systems, which I’m pleased to announce is finally complete. I have been focusing my own betting on correct scores and have made a return of 60.22% of stakes in the season to date – Without a losing week

From next week I will be publishing the figures here, free of charge, but here’s a sneak peak at tomorrows game:

Liverpool are over valued: They have a less than 50% chance of victory and are at 1.62 on Betfair. Lay

Goals will be at a premium: There’s is a 58.9% Chance of under 2.5 goals, available to back at 2.32 on Betfair.

The most likely score is Liverpool 1-0 at 13.7% This is available to back at 10 and so represents value.

It’s also likely that I’ll be shutting the blog down in the near future. I’m working on something new which evidently from the lack of posts here has distracted my attention. However I’ll try to post up when time allows, at least to share my new system.

60% is rather impressive to say the least, and would see Omega well clear at the top of the FTL table were he competing, so I was very excited to read that:

From next week I will be publishing the figures here, free of charge

I was hoping he meant the selections ahead of time rather than the results after time, but in the end it is a moot point as just a few sentences later, Omega has a change of mind, and writes:

It’s also likely that I’ll be shutting the blog down in the near future

Well darn it. a 60% ROI, and without a losing week, is just what I'm looking for. Anyway, to his numbers for the match tomorrow, and Omega claims that Liverpool have less than a 50% chance of victory. There is probably no EPL team that divides betting opinions more right now than Liverpool. For me it is essentially a matter of whether your pricing model is based primarily on results, or whether shot and possession data are included. If the former, you are likely of the opinion expressed above, that Liverpool are a deciedly average team. If the latter, you are more likely to find their price value as results have underperformed expectations.

While Omega doesn't actually reveal his price for Liverpool, only that it is greater than evens, my spreadsheet suggests a price of 1.46. 1.61 is thus the price needed for my bet triggering 10% edge, and the best prices available are close to this. Paddy Power and William Hill have 1.62.

As for Omega's expectation of a low scoring afternoon, my Under 2.5 numbers are very close to his - expectation is close at 56.5% (1.71) with both of us way out of line with the market. I also have 1-0 as the most likely correct score, followed by 2-0 and 1-1. Stand by for a 3-3 thriller!

Here are the other Premier Edge selections today for those following.

11:00 Real Sociedad v Levante - Under 2.5 goals (1.96 at Pinnacle)

16:00 Valencia v Mallorca - Both Teams to Score: Yes (2.0 at Boylesports)

20:00 Real Madrid v Rayo Vallecano - Real Madrid -2.0 Asian Handicap (1.85 at Pinnacle)

Meanwhile, on a completely different subject, the counter for this blog will tick over the 500,000 hits mark some time today, although the real total is already well past this number as the counter (starting at zero) wasn't introduced until some time had elapsed. According to Blogger, the true number is:

Not too shabby.

Trading Solo

The Sultan wrote a post recently about trading on behalf of a third-party, and it’s a subject that is of interest. I know that when I mentioned in a post many years ago that I had placed a bet on someone’s behalf, I was emailed and told by a couple of people that this was not allowed.

There is probably a term and condition somewhere that technically forbids this, although I doubt that the intent is to stop someone from putting a fiver on to save their Dad or whoever from a wet and windy walk to the High Street bookies.

I’ve also read stories, always with a sad ending, of syndicates being formed, meaning by definition that at least one person is placing bets on behalf of others. The Footsoldiers saga “In The trenches” is possibly the most famous, or rather infamous, and while the exact truth of what happened is not known to me, and probably never will be, the ill-conceived idea ended badly, with moments of black comedy along the way.

Who can forget the unfortunate setback due to the instigator’s brother being unfamiliar with the Betfair screen?

apparently with the 500k investment money he told investors that his brother wouyld be responsible for placing the bets but to wait a few weeks as he had to LEARN BETFAIR FIRST

Or the Champions League game in Lyon where the ‘impossible’ happened and visiting Rangers won 3-0 at 9 to 1 and a sizeable portion of the syndicate’s funds were lost for ever as the lay of Rangers went down in flames. Footsoldiers never understood that value is key to long-term success:

u get guys talking about value all the time....it bores me to death, it's like a disorder with them a cleaning disorder they can't bet unless they think they have this thing called value - now if i turn over 30k a month a 1000 a day by not betting the value what are they going to say ???

yeah thats one of the biggest misconceptions
''keep backing the value, even if they keep losing and in the long run you will win''
i cant get my head around the pro that is happy to back at 3.5 but not 3.4

The subsequent loss of the remainder of a significant amount of money ultimately led to (allegedly) threats of violence, someone living in fear in Glasgow, reportedly broken families, stolen money and police involvement, and the saga proved a cautionary tale for why trusting strangers with your money is not usually a good idea.

Someone said they had persuaded their In Laws to put their life savings in , which was about 50k IIRC .Someone had their house repossessed having taken out a 2nd mortgage also i believe. One guy said his wife had left him over it and from what was said on the deleted thread Footsoldiers was no longer on speaking terms with members of his own family (he blamed his brother in some way from what i recall)

Accepting money from strangers isn’t usually a good idea either – assuming that they want it back of course.

In the early days after finding our edges, probably many of us spoke a little too freely to friends and family about our success, but you soon learn to keep quiet. It all sounds so easy to those we bore with our stories, that there’s the inevitable “If I give you some money, can you invest it for me?” questions.

Well for me, it’s no I can’t. I used to explain that the edge is in making snap decisions which, while they are right more often than the probability suggests, apportioning a profit or a loss to someone else’s investment was nigh on impossible. And the extra money was no use to me.

If you find you have an edge in trading, or punting, you really don’t need any funding other than your initial deposit. The thing about having an edge is that your bank grows anyway and you soon reach the point where the limitations of the betting markets become apparent. Betting markets are nowhere near as scalable as the financial markets, and it is not often that my self-imposed exposure limit of £5,000 has proved to be a problem. My bank is currently in the £20k range, and an injection of cash from a third-party would either be insignificant or unusable. Useless in other words.

 Want £2 on the Clippers -3.5 to beat the Lakers? You might well have no problem filling your order at 2.0, but if you want £2,000 on the same bet? That might not be so easy.

So the extra capital isn’t needed, and assuming our investor wants a profit on his investment, how is it in my interest to generate profits for him, rather than keep them for myself?

Is it even true that we trade better with someone else’s money? I would suggest that when we have someone to answer to, how ever freely they might give you the money, our trading decisions are negatively affected. I think it is human nature to take a little more care of something you are entrusted with than you do with your own, and so you trade a little too cautiously. As if the end of the month were approaching perhaps?

If I am wrong, and we trade better with someone else’s money, then it could make sense to work this way, but only if your cut of the profits that you generate exceeds the money you could have made trading less optimally from your own money. In my opinion, the likelihood is that if you are profitable in the first place, then any improvement is likely to be slight rather than dramatic.

Of course, if the decision making is taken out of your hands, then there is one advantage to placing bets with other peoples money, or there would be were it allowed. It increases turnover and reduces charges, and for anyone with Premium Charges in their future, which should be most of us, the more of this we can do, and the earlier we can do it in our trading lives, the better. Of course this assumes that our 'clients' don't have an edge. If they are consistent winners, it's not going to help with your charges, but not many people can consistently profit from punts. It's more likely to be recreational punters who want you to put bets on for convenience reasons rather than pros looking for another outlet.

Shove It

There are still a couple of matches to come to complete the weekend. Premier Edge has a selection in the Monday night game in Spain and Little Al is looking for a draw in the Liverpool v West Bromwich Albion game, a match I have Liverpool as value for, even at their low ~1.39 on the exchanges, or if you prefer, at 1/3 on their Sportsbook. I am not a fan. An article in The Times in 2003 included this:

Betfair.com is a success story from the madness of the dotcom revolution, now increasingly visible via a sponsorship deal with Fulham for the Barclaycard Premiership. The company was launched in June 2000 via a publicity stunt that is proving as prophetic as it was provocative. Betfair paraded the streets of central London with a coffin in a mock-funeral, to mark 'the death of the bookmaker.'

The likes of William Hill, Coral Eurobet and Ladbrokes sat back and waited for Betfair to fail. Instead, though, the company has gone from strength to strength. A glance at the betting press shows just how much Betfair has upped the ante. Again and again the company's critics seize the slightest opportunity to condemn Betfair as 'illegal', or a 'menace' to the punter. Meanwhile, the punters continue to register with Betfair, happily leaving the industry to play out its debate over whether what it does is legal or not while they take advantage of its revolutionary betting exchange system.

Andrew Black must be turning in the aforementioned coffin, except for the fact that he is very much alive and well. Times have changed and Betfair is turning into the likes of William Hill, Coral Eurobet and Ladbrokes while, somewhat ironically, the latter look to move into the exchange betting business through their purchase of BETDAQ.

Betfair are even reverting to the use of 'traditional' odds, which haven't made any sense since the days of crowns, half-crowns, shillings and (old) pennies, which my parents have told me about. My Dad still dusts off his antique Shove ha'penny board at Christmas, although I can't say it is the most exciting game in the world. It has a surprisingly dodgy past though, with Wikipedia reporting:

In competition games a scoring placement is judged by a referee. In times past considerable sums could be wagered on games of shove ha'penny and influencing the referee – whether actual or suspected – could result in sudden and violent confrontations.

Match-fixing is nothing new, and royalty played it too, although not too well it seems:

King Henry VIII is legendarily alleged to have lost large sums to his more dubious drinking companions: 'The privy purse expenses of 1532 show that in January Lord William won £9 of the King at "shovilla bourde," and "My lord of Rocheforde won of the King at shovilla bourde and betting at the game £45." In the following month Lord Rocheford won £41, 12s. 6d. of the King at the same pastime'.

Who knew that the founder of the world's one true religion was such a well adjusted individual? The womanising and drinking was already enough to convince me of its merits, but now that gambling is added, well that's just icing on the cake. (Along with his seventh wife, Marie Antoinette, Henry was partial to a little cake too, judging by the pictures). I used to love history at school, but it was all so long ago.

I digress. The big winners from the FTL this weekend were the XX Extended HT 0-0 and XX Classic U1.5 selections. There were no winning draws from the XX Classic selections (the losing run extends to 14) but two of the three this weekend finished with just the one goal, while the Extended selections had four winners from nine selections, and nearly a fifth except for the 90th minute draw-buster at Celta de Vigo. Six of the nine matches were goalless at the half, while in the Bundesliga, I fluked a 3-3 draw. One winner from two for the Bundeslayga system as well.

Pete Nordsted's Drawmaster made a small profit again with a winning draw at Norwich City, but drops to fourth spot. Premier Edge's fate for the weekend is in the hands of Real Betis and Rayo Vallodolid. Currently he has a small profit on the weekend, which will either become a bigger profit or leave him with a loss. Neil took a small loss, Premier Betting made a small gain, and little Al needs a Liverpool draw to salvage something from the weekend after four misses.

And then we come to 20th placed Football Elite who, as has been covered elsewhere, has decided this week to add more selections to the Recommended Selections of which there were seven this weekend.

Unfortunately only two won for another losing weekend. What Matt is doing by expanding the number of bets is solid enough. Very similar to my decision to start sending out the Extended XX Draws along with the Classic selections. As it turns out this season, the Extended are up 22 points, softening the disappointment of the Classics being down 9.8 points right now. And the newly (this season) added Bundesliga selections are holding up very well too, just behind the Extended Draws with a profit of 17.3. To date, that has meant an additional 243 bets for subscribers, which they are free to include in their action or not. One thing Matt doesn't do is indicate which Recommended Bets are 'new'.

Here's the table as it stands on Sunday night:

  

Selections For The Weekend (Feb 9-11)

For anyone following the Tipster Table, here are the picks from those currently in the green. 

Premier Edge and Neil are neck-and-neck in 5th and 6th place, up 6.88 and 6.63 points respectively.

Premier Edge go for:

Saturday 9th February
12:45 Tottenham Hotspur v Newcastle United – Under 2.75 goals (1.99 at Pinnacle)
15:00 Norwich City v Fulham – Under 2.5 goals (1.91 at by CouponDropDown"32Red)
15:00 Stoke City v Reading – Over 2.25 goals (1.833 at Pinnacle)
15:00 Swansea City v Queens Park Rangers - Over 2.5 goals (2.05 at BetVictor)
15:00 Mallorca v Osasuna – Both Teams to Score: No (1.95 at 32Red)
17:30 Southampton v Manchester City – Manchester City to win by 1 or 2 goals (2.11 at Ladbrokes). This bet needs separating so you put 0.56 point on Manchester City to win by 1 goal at 3.8 and 0.44 point on Manchester City to win by 2 goals at 4.8.
19:00 Levante v Malaga – 2 or 3 goals (2.08 at 32Red)

Sunday 10th February
16:00 Athletic Bilbao v Espanyol – Under 2.75 goals (1.847 at Pinnacle)

Monday 11th February
20:30 Real Betis v Rayo Valladoid – 2 or 3 goals (1.95 at by CouponDropDown"Bet365)

while Neil's selections are:

Norwich City v Fulham - Norwich City @ 2.4
Sunderland v Arsenal - Draw @ 3.75
Aston Villa v West Ham United - Aston Villa @ 2.61

The Bundelayga system has two selections this weekend, currently up 1.4 points in 9th place:

Eintracht Frankfurt v Nuremberg 1.86
Freiburg v Fortuna Dusseldorf 1.66

Alan is also in the green, up 1.25 points in 14th spot. His draw selections this weekend are:

Tottenham Hotspur v Newcastle United 4.1
Chelsea v Wigan Athletic 5.5
Southampton v Manchester City 4.2
Manchester United v Everton 4.0
Liverpool v West Bromwich Albion 5.3

Fixings And Riddles

Close on the heels of the 'Lance Armstrong cheated' shocker, seriously, who knew?, comes the news, or rather 'confirmation' for those of you who read Declan Hill's blog on the blogroll, that some football matches are 'fixed'. I have a problem with the use of the word 'fixed' when it comes to football, simply because you need so many people to be involved to 'fix' it. You can influence the game, and move the odds in your favour, with a key player or the referee, but fixing a game to end say 2-0 must be incredibly difficult without all players and officials being in on it. 

Anyway, the risk of a game not being played genuinely is always there in dead rubber games, meaningless friendlies, and on games in third-world countries or where player wages are relatively low. Or Germany.

If the numbers quoted are correct, and the:

biggest payment to an individual was in Austria for a total of £121,000

it's fairly obvious that the sums involved are unlikely to interest most players in the top leagues, and if you play games in Eastern Europe, Africa or Asia, you take your chances on how genuinely the game will be played.

It wasn't a good weekend for the FTL table, including for the XX Draws. Saturday wasn't too bad, with three winners from eight selections, but Friday saw a loser, and Sunday was a disaster with goals galore in all five games, and no fluked 2-2 or 3-3 results. The games were all fixed! The Bundesliga XX Draws had three losers as well, although the Bundeslayga did find a couple of winning home lays at Gelsenkirchen and Wolfsburg.

Premier Edge had their worst weekend since September dropping 4.29 points, while Neil went 0 for 3. Drawmaster found two winners from three for the second consecutive weekend, although Premier Betting had a small loss. Little Al joins the big boys in the green finding the Everton v Aston Villa draw at 5.1. Football Elite found a winner to start the weekend off but followed it up with three losers. Talkbet showed a loss too so with rare exceptions, not a very good football weekend at all.

Much to my relief, it does appear that it is not only me who finds trying to post on Peter Webb's blog a little harder than he implies with his

There is really nothing very complicated about how to post a comment.

Tim missed the point slightly, writing:

I can't see the problem? I've just had a look and registering was easy. It's normal to have to register for posting comments isn't it? It seems to me like you are just searching for another axe to grind.

The point is not the ease of registering, but that you have to register or log in in the first place. Al challenged Tim with:

Tim. Please post a comment on Webbs blog. I've never seen one and I'm registered with WordPress.

but no update from Tim yet.  My old friend, or is that sparring partner?, Big Al commented:

Most of the entries I have read on the Bet Angel blog are written in riddles, presumably designed to generate interest in his product.

I did take a look at his tennis trader thing once and the way I understood it to work missed probably the most important concept of all.

Little Al (no relation) wrote:

I have to agree with BigAl. Most of the entries are riddles and some random posts about how Peter is connected to the markets with VPS, Desktop PC, Laptop, Tablet, Mobile using broadband and a mobile phone connected to the Betfair API and also the website.

I also believe Peter is constantly gathering data from the markets and making graphs, calculating probabilities and making strategies. His first strategy was where he decided to enter a back and a lay bet in the horse markets.

TytteTrading has registered, or tried to:

I tried to sign up, to be able to post on the blog. Still waiting for the confirmation mail - and yes, I did check the spam filter.

And WhyAlwaysMe suggested:

Clearly there is a problem somewhere because there are never any comment's on Peter's blog. It would be great if it could move to a moderated format like Cassini has done. I've often had questions in the past and it would enrich the blog if there was more clarification at certain points.

Regarding the sentence that has caused so much fuss - 'you should have struggled to lose money if you were trading', perhaps he was saying that this was a game that fitted the trading strategy - if you were doing say 20 probabilistic trades in the match the risk/reward ratio was so favourable you should struggle to lose money. He didn't say you would win necessarily but that conditions were very favourable. Like if you did 20 trades and you were getting 4/1 when the true odds were 2/1 then you should struggle to lose money. That's what I think Peter was trying to say.

Again, the point I would like to make is that at any time in the match, the next point could see the end of the game. It is only after it is over that you can look back and determine that a certain strategy would mean you would struggle to lose money. You may have a strategy that happened to work in this match as it played out through a long third set, but where your strategy would leave you had a player withdrawn injured or the third set been a lot shorter is likely a different matter. At least with a team sport played over a time period rather than dependent on sets or wickets, you know how long there is left (with overtime possibly a factor) and you can trade with that in mind. Selecting one game, and suggesting - after it is over - that you would struggle to have lost money trading it, is misleading in my opinion.

On The Defensive

The climax of the NFL season is upon us, with Super Bowl XLVII (47) taking place in New Orleans tomorrow afternoon / evening. The San Francisco 49ers represent the NFC and the Baltimore Ravens the AFC, and Nate Silver of US Election fame has taken a look at this game from a statistical standpoint for the New York Times. Thanks to Scott for forwarding me the link.

Does defense win championships? Stat-geek sports fans like me tend to distrust this old saying. Scoring a point helps just as much as allowing one hurts. And in football, the proposition risks ignoring the role played by the likes of Tom Brady. It is the case, however, that the better defensive team has usually won theSuper Bowl — and done so far more consistently than offensive juggernauts. The Web site Pro Football Reference publishes a statistic called the Simple Rating System (S.R.S.), which evaluates each team’s offense and defense based on the number of points it scored and allowed relative to the league average and adjusted for strength of schedule. Of the 92 teams to have played in the Super Bowl before this year, I identified those with the 20 best defensive and offensive ratings, according to S.R.S. (see charts above).

The defensive list contains teams that you would expect, like the 1985 Bears. These teams have compiled a 14-6 record (.700) in the Super Bowl. Their winning percentage is actually nearly 80 percent when you ignore the three cases, Super Bowls IV, VIII and XLV, when two of the all-time great defensive teams faced each other.

The 20 best offensive teams, however, are just 10-10 in the Super Bowl. There have been successes in this group, like the Saints under Drew Brees, but there have been just as many failures, including two of Brady’s Patriots teams. (During his three championships, the Patriots had a much better balance between offense and defense.)

The reasons that exceptional defenses fare so much better in the Super Bowl are still somewhat murky, but this factor bodes well for this year’s 49ers, whose defense belongs in the elite group, according to S.R.S. (it ranks 17th among Super Bowl teams). The Ravens, despite all the hype surrounding Ray Lewis, allowed a rather pedestrian 21.5 points per game this year.

The 49ers also have the better offense, according to S.R.S., so there isn’t much to recommend the Ravens . . . unless you look at the more sophisticated rankings published by Football Outsiders. Their system, known as Defense-adjusted Value Over Average (D.V.O.A.), accounts for a team’s success or failure on every play it ran during the year and not just on final scores.

Those rankings find that while the 49ers had the better offense and defense, the Ravens had the best special teams in the league this year. If they do pull off the upset, on the heels of Steve Weatherford’s game-changing performance for the Giants in last year’s Super Bowl, perhaps it will be time for a new cliché: punters win championships. But don’t count on that.

A Tangled Webb

I am sure Peter Webb means well, but for some reason he is not being totally forthcoming about the ease of posting comments on his blog. 

I'm beginning to think that it is as impossible to post a comment on his blog as it is to lose money when trading!

While the invitation to leave a reply on his posts appears to be there:

Must - Verb, be obliged to - or not

the requirement to login is clear. "You must be logged in to post a comment". And when you click on the 'logged in' part of the message, you are taken to the following:

Foggy Landing Screen

I suggested in my last post that this was something of a restriction. Not all of us are registered with WordPress and have no desire to be, but according to Peter:

You don't need to be a wordpress user. In fact you actually embedded the key link in your post. I've asked the guys to see if they can mod the landing screen to make it clearer.

So you must be logged in to post a comment but you don't need to be a WordPress user. Clear as mud?

Well, not to me, and while I have my denser moments, I'm usually able to work these things out with my sharp mind, logical thinking - God made me an atheist after all - and years of experience in the IT business, but this one baffles me. Then we get this rather snippy, patronising little comment from the great man:

While I am grateful for the for the huge amount of extra publicity I am getting at the moment. There is really nothing very complicated about how to post a comment.

Now if Peter's posts were all attracting several comments from non-Word Press users I would concede that I am missing something, but if there really is nothing very complicated about how to post a comment, then how come I can't recall seeing any over there?

This issue was also mentioned over at The Sultan's blog, where Peter claimed that:

"I do take comments on the blog, but you are also welcome to visit the forum to chat which is where most of my interaction takes place."

And The Sultan replied:

I have often wanted to comment on your posts but have never been able to do so as they've always been closed off (maybe I need to be a member?). If I'd been able to, I would never have written a blog post in the first place! Over to you, Peter :)

Indeed, over to you Peter, and please, would you spare us the sarcastic and patronising attitude next time, even if we're missing something incredibly obvious? It is unnecessary, it is not becoming, and it does nothing to enhance your reputation as the trader's friend, already a little tarnished following the, in the opinion of several people, at best poorly phrased, and at worst, intentionally misleading statement, that there are events where:

you should have struggled to lose money if you were trading.

That is simply not true for reasons The Sultan has detailed, and I have touched on. I can lose money on ANY event, and so can anyone else. Exchanges work that way - winners need losers and vice versa. we can't all 'not lose money'. 

Comments welcome by the way - and I've had 2,847 so far, which makes me reasonably confident that you can do it. After all, there is really nothing very complicated about how to post a comment, is there?