Patsies and Strumpets

Eggmund, possibly not his real name, commented on my Physics Presumptions post:

Hello, nice blog.

I used some of the principles of Statistical Mechanics that I picked up from my Physics degree when writing my Cricket model. It could be that this is the sort of thing referred to as "Physics Presumptions".

A very charitable explanation, and one that in my opinion, isn't supported by the evidence when you consider the individual's writing in more detail. 

Here's his Pinned Tweet:

It's hard to view this nonsense as the product of an educated mind, from an individual who might be into "particle physics" or "Statistical Mechanics". 

To me, it's a nonsensical rambling with the end goal of selling a worthless tipster service to gullible individuals by adding faux intellectual gravitas to the subject. 

Eggmund, (if there was never a King Eggmund** back in the day, there should have been), is clearly a much nicer and more intelligent person than myself, and he continues: 

By the way, I like your principle of Bet-And-Forget. It nicely expressed what I've been looking for for a while as gambling time competes with family time! I'm now working on how I can build positions purely during intervals in test matches, without having to follow games live. Thank you for the tip.

The only person who benefits from betting in-play these days is someone trading the game with the advantage of being court-side / green-side / pitch-side / table-side / etc. If you do not have this edge, and most of us don't, Bet-and-Forget is the only strategy that makes any sense.

It's gratifying to see that this message is finally getting through. Trading sports sounds dangerously simple, an easy way to riches, and back in the early days of the concept it was quite possible to find a trading edge, but the markets have evolved.

One more time - If you are trading in-play, you are competing against others with more information than yourself.

Here are my thoughts from a few weeks back:

You are not going to obtain any information from your TV that hasn't already been seen, evaluated, and acted upon, by others before you.

If you, and I think quite logically you can, assume that these full-timers are not donating their money to the market each day, i.e. they are net winners, how can you, sitting at home, seriously think that you can overcome this disadvantage over the long-term and make a profit?

It's a zero sum game, and as the Warren Buffett quote from yesterday puts it:

"If you've been playing poker for half an hour and you still don't know who the patsy is, you're the patsy."

No guide in the world is going to be able to help you overcome this disadvantage. You are always working with stale information, which would be a level playing field if everyone else was too, but you're competing in markets where others have more current information than you.

It's frankly delusional to think you can be competitive under such conditions.

** I checked - no Eggmund, but we did have a couple of Edmunds and an Eadwig (955 - 959) with an interesting background:

The eldest son of Edmund I, Eadwig was about 16 when he was crowned king at Kingston-upon-Thames in southeast London. Legend has it that his coronation had to be delayed to allow Bishop Dunstan to prise Eadwig from his bed, and from between the arms of his “strumpet” and the strumpets’ mother. Perhaps unimpressed by the interruption, Eadwig had Dunstan exiled to France. Eadwig died in Gloucester when he was just 20, the circumstances of his death are not recorded.