Tuesday, 23 April 2013

Unique - Just Like All The Others

A somewhat ironic statement from Betfair in reportedly rejecting a £912m takeover bid led by Formula 1 owner CVC Capital Partners for being too low.
In a statement on Monday, Betfair said its board had rejected the bid because it "fundamentally undervalues the Company and its attractive prospects".

 "We have a unique business with a market position, profitability, cash flow and prospects that this proposal fails to recognise," said Gerald Corbett, Betfair's chairman.
What they failed to mention is that their 'unique' business is one that they are currently doing all they can to turn into a bog-standard, uncompetitive on-line sportsbook business. Despite this change in direction, the press-release driven article rather disingenuously continues to state that Betfair's business...
allows users to bet against one another, acting as a social network for gamblers.
Technically true, but it might be an idea to restore the default page for this 'unique' business to point to the exchange rather than make the more educated of punters hunt around for a small "Go To Exchange" button, while the hoi polloi take poor value on the sportsbook.

 Possibly the 'unique' is a reference to the fact that it's the only business to tax its more successful customers at up to 60%?

 And while I'm venting about Betfair, how about employing some Suspenders who actually know when a game is over? Top of the ninth in baseball with bases loaded is not game over, either literally or metaphorically (see below screenshot from Sunday night):
Your Premium Charges At Work
For anyone wondering what on Earth Day I was doing, one of my baseball strategies is to find a tied game after seven innings or more, and back the home team at greater than 1.69 in the middle of the seventh, 1.63 in the middle of the eighth and 1.55 in the middle of the ninth (or extra innings). You might be surprised at how often the home advantage at this stage of a game is under-estimated.  Or you might not.

 They also Suspended and settled the Los Angeles Clippers v Memphis Grizzlies game prematurely this morning. Clippers went ahead with 0.1 seconds left and as unlikely as a change in result was, the possibility was there.

 FTL update next post.
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4 comments:

  1. BigAl23 April 2013 at 15:01

    1.55? I read recently that home teams win around 52-53% of extra innings matches.

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  2. fizzer55523 April 2013 at 15:24

    I think Cassini meant to say, to bet in the middle of the 7th, 8th and 9th innings - so the home team still has to bat in that innings, so in the middle of the 7th the home team have 3 innings to bat, the away team 2 etc.

    Based on the data in Tango's book the game I have these at 1.69, 1.63 and 1.54

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  3. BigAl23 April 2013 at 17:30

    Ok. That makes more sense. But it's a dangerous game simply applying the overall average to every game.

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  4. fizzer55523 April 2013 at 19:11

    I agree Big Al but its a good starting point.

    The betfair markets price movements tend to follow the Tango probability tables throughout the game, but with a favourites/dogs overlay.

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

    ReplyDelete