Bolly, Broncos, And Blagging

I have sad news regarding Betfair Pro Trader and best-selling author James "Bolly" Butler. 

He's dead.

He's actually been dead since 2004, which makes it all the harder to take, and very sad considering how popular he was: 

That popularity ranking was from his street by the way, not his country, in case there was any confusion. 

Or perhaps it was all a mistake, and a timely example not to believe everything you read on the Internet. 

James actually sent me that link himself, so he really is alive and well, no doubt busy thinking about his next blockbuster, even if he's not actually working on it. 

The above Tweet linking to my previous post might have given readers the slightly misleading impression that I never invest in-play, and that the sole reason for that is the presence of courtsiders.

I do occasionally venture into these potentially dangerous waters, but it’s never (OK, rarely) on events where courtsiders are present, and never on events that I don’t understand well enough to have a reasonable shot at finding an edge in.

When you factor in that I’ve also reached an age and a stage in life where the time required for in-play trading just isn’t worth it to me, (despite what you may have heard, I really do need my beauty sleep), and nor is the stress desirable, (Signora Cassini assures me it is very bad for ones health), it should come as little surprise that in-play trading is something of a rarity for me these days, and why a ‘bet and forget’ approach is so appealing.



[I'm also the CEO of a billion-trillion dollar global enterprise in my spare time as some of you know, running a cosmic empire of gambling web sites and blogs from my Cassini Towers, Titan Station headquarters].

Longtime readers will know that I have never (OK, rarely) been involved in horse-racing, or tennis, or cricket, my logic being that these are such popular sports in the UK that I really would have to be delusional to think that I could have an edge over all these people, either pre-game or in-play.

The fact that I don’t particularly enjoy watching any of these sports just made the decision to leave them alone even easier.

Football is another sport where I am realistic to know that despite having watched it for most of my life, others understand the game better than I do, and for in-play there are some well-funded and sophisticated trading operations out there.

That still leaves a few niche sports, although any ‘big’ events around the world will now be attended by courtsiders, and ‘big’ events includes all NFL and NBA games. Without giving too much away, the proliferation of flags in the NFL does reduce the advantage of fieldsiders in that sport. Hence I said ‘rarely’ above. Matches with 1.01 traded on both sides are far from unusual events with several occurrences during a season.

The new season kicks off on Thursday night with a rematch of February’s Superbowl between the Carolina Panthers @ Denver Broncos – who won the 2015 finale 24-10.

The Panthers are favoured by 3 points on the road, (the Broncos have Quarterback issues) and opening weeks since the 32 team format was introduced in 2002 have seen Unders predominate in this spread range.

Including the 2.5 and 3.5 lines, Unders has been the result 50 of 79 matches (1.58), with one Push, and Pinnacle are offering 2.0.  

The favourites have won 52 of 70, an implied price of ~1.35, but for road teams, the implied price is 1.625, which is about where the Panthers are currently priced.

On the theme of not believing everything you read, Jamie (a popular name these days - good enough for Jesus' little brother I suppose, although religion is yet another topic that should be looked at with some healthy scepticism) commented:

I remember the Heathcote one. He disappeared without trace also. People need to realise there are more blaggers out there than there is people actually making any money. Talking of blagging the youtube video is still up there of Heathcote turning £7 into £1300 in 3 hours trading on the horses. I'd struggle to do that even if you told me the race results before the event.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UwevwGUTIi4 

Unfortunately, poor film editing resulted in the scene where £2,000 is deposited into the Betfair account being cut. Oh I'm sure some people believe it's that easy.