Drifters

Included in Peter Webb's interesting post on 1.01 tennis beatings, are these words:

If you look at players trading 1.09 or less then they come in a bit, but there are few ticks left to profit in these cases. However, there is plenty of room above them. Therefore, on average, they drift around 14 ticks away from their start price. If your player is starts at 1.20 then it’s an evens chance they will drift to 1.50 at some point during the game.

While tennis isn't my thing, I've mentioned many times that the down-side of laying low in any sport is very small, while the up-side is huge. As the numbers in several studies show, backing short priced favourites to win is a slower way of losing your money than most alternatives, but that's not much use to anyone except Betfair's shareholders. The opportunities for bigger wins are found on the lay side in many sports.

Not many NBA favourites start at 1.09 or less and never edge up above their starting price. Many years ago Peter Nordsted sent me a number of charts from this sport, and the bumpy road to victory for favourites was quite a revelation at the time. What is that saying about forests and trees?

I think one problem with learning to trade successfully is overcoming your prejudices. It's easy to watch a team come back from 10 points or more down in the fourth quarter and go on to win, and think that you have seen a once-in-a-season moment, but on a busy day in the NBA, 1.01s are turned over (go on to lose) every night.

If you go by the numbers and leave emotions and feelings out of it, if you know that 50% will hit 1.5 or whatever, then you can be far more objective in your betting.

The downside is that you need to actually watch these games whereas a punter just backs at 1.09 and goes out for a pint or to bed for some sleep, but the extra effort is worth it.

Incidentally, it's amusing to see the comments on the forums when this happens - people start threads titled "1.01 Gubbing!!!!" as if the events unfolding are as rare as Halley's Comet. 1.01 means there is 1 in 101 chance it will lose. How many markets are there on a busy day? 101 is not that big a number.

Perhaps it's my age, but it seems to me the word 'gubbing' has become far too overused. Every loss is not a 'gubbing'. Favoured horses, teams and individuals lose all the time. It's called probability. It seems like half the tweets I read from some people contain the word these days. And while I have my venting vest on, why do some Tweeters assume you are watching what they are watching? Tweets along the lines of "Wow - what a shot!" are a waste of everyone's time.