But That Was Just A Dream, Just A Dream

I am accused of sulking. James writes:

This is a long sulk. It was only a meaningless piece of Victoriana with no relevance in modern soccer.

As many of you are aware, for almost 50 years, I have been a Crystal Palace fan. They were my local (league) club. They were the first club I ever saw (technically tied with Birmingham City I suppose). They have one of the, if not the, best names for a football club, and they had great colours. What they haven't had in that time is a huge amount of success. Our all-time major trophy haul is limited to the Zenith Data Systems Cup win at Wembley in 1991 (I was there), with other more modest successes consisting of promotions and since their introduction in the late eighties, play-off wins. We've had several of those, boasting the best record in the league for play-off wins (4) for promotion to the top level. We are also one of the few clubs to have won a championship in our first league season (Division Three 1920-21, I wasn't there). We used to have the outright record for most Premier League relegations, but we have to share that now with Norwich City. Four consecutive top division seasons is also a record we will be matching in 2016-17, and hopefully breaking after that.

So winning the FA Cup last weekend would have meant so much to the club but I'm honestly glad (all over) that I support my local club and can fully appreciate successes (usually modest) when they come along. United won the Cup for the eighth time. Great, but at some point along the way, when you become used to success, winning trophies becomes the standard - for most United fans, 2015-16 was a disappointing season. Liverpool fans might get excited about the Europa League, but qualifying for it is not a success for one of the elite teams these days.

Cup Final day will certainly live long in the memory. The train ride into London from Surrey was lively, and I met up with friends at Victoria for a couple of beers. Gaining access to a pub in the Wembley area proved mission impossible, but upon reaching the stadium, rather bizarrely, among a crowd of 89,000+ people, I ran into three people I knew within the space of five minutes. It's a small world.

"That's me in the corner, that's Pardew in the spotlight"

The atmosphere in the stadium (west end anyway) was fantastic, as anyone watching on TV would have seen. Taking the lead with 12 minutes to go was incredible, but when the big screen showed Pardew - "He's Alan Pardew, he shags who he wants" - gyrating on the touchline, I had a bad feeling. Seriously, your team has just taken the lead in a Cup Final, and rather than calm the players down, warn them of the pressure that now must come, make some adjustments etc., he's out there dancing "hey world, look at me". I thought he didn't want attention these days. Less than three minutes later, and the lead was gone. Only one club has played in more FA Cup Finals than Palace without winning it, and our wait to become the fourth south London club to have their names on the trophy (actually the latest trophy was only introduced in 2014, certainly not Victoriana) goes on. It was rather depressing to have an old school friend later suggest that if the next Palace final is another 26 years away, we won't be here to see it. I might be old, but I plan to still be here!

Thanks James for bringing me out of my mild depression.

On betting / investment related topics, I have received a couple of emails requesting more details of the Cassini Portfolio systems and bets that have been mentioned on here, so I will be putting these together in a single 'user guide' for anyone interested.

Included will be the Bundeslayga and BLUnders systems of course - the 2015-16 Bundeslayga system has wrapped up, with the lowest ROI% since records (i.e. Pinnacle Sorts) began, but profitable. The BLUnders is still technically active for this season, although it is hard to imagine any qualifiers coming out of the Finals Series which starts on Thursday.

Glass Houses

My verbification of the colour red in this post caught the critical eye of Baz who wrote:

Your slipping Cassini, double d in redding !

"My slipping what?", I thought, as I pondered that comment, (the double-D reference side-tracked my mind for a moment) before realising that English language expert Professor Baz had, rather deliciously, fallen victim to Muphry's law, which states:

"If you write anything criticizing editing or proofreading, there will be a fault of some kind in what you have written"

As Ducky McDuckface (above) observes, it's hard to take someone seriously when they don't know the difference between "your" and "you're".

No names, (it wasn't James), but in the past week we saw these examples from a regular blogger:

Because the reality is your probably going to lose the first one.

Oh dear. It wasn't just a one-off mistake either - the final line of the post was this:

Take you’re time!

Here's a helpful guide:

How apostrophes and the words "their, there and they're" are used, or often abused, is also a useful guide to how seriously to take someone.

Moving on, and I'm not sure a word for locking in a loss on all outcomes exists yet, or at least is in common use. While there are plenty of references to 'greening up' to be found - in guides to Betfair trading for example - the optimistic message in such writings (everybody always wins) appears not to want to consider, and thus doesn't mention, the possibility of locking in a negative outcome.

There was much debate in the early days of exchanges about whether a bet was 'laid' or 'layed' but I think the latter has over time become the accepted word.

I wasn't the only one to notice Baz's faux pas. James (he of Betfair Pro Trader fame) commented:

@Baz - Not to mention 're in you're. ;)
@Cassini - I always try to be positive.

As I (not James) wrote almost three years ago on being positive:

The other thing is that successful people tend to be more positive. You could argue that it's a lot easier to be positive when you have achieved some success, however modest, but I think that earned success (as opposed to winning the lottery for example) is often the result of a positive attitude rather than the cause.

I'm not sure I understand fully the negative attitude that so many people seem to have towards others who manage to be relatively successful.

Envy is obviously part of it, (I am a little envious of Ian's £1.4million for example), but I would rather use that envy in a positive way, a benchmark for what can be achieved, and as an incentive to keep moving forward and improving my strategies, than use it in a negative way, by spending hours writing comments suggesting the numbers are made up, that Elo ratings don't work, that workshops are a waste of time etc.

Not picking on Danny specifically, since there are many others like him, but I think that until your attitude changes from negative to positive, you will never have the mindset needed to be successful.

Even Jordan Spieth has admitted as much this week:

I just need to do a little bit better job of being positive with myself and smiling a bit more, having a bit more fun.

Effectively Retired

Smithlondon asked:

Do you declare your profits from "trading" to the local tax man? In the UK there is no tax on "gambling" as HMRC and case law see it as not carrying on a trade. https://www.gov.uk/hmrc-internal-manuals/business-income-manual/bim22017

If you are going to start arguing that traders are not gamblers then that's a slippery slope for tax purposes and a lot more "full timers" will find themselves back working for someone else than those leaving because of the PC charge.

In my opinion each bet placed is a bet. Not one half of a trade regardless of your future intent. A second bet merely closes out an open position for a profit or loss. It doesn't change the nature of the first bet.

While I have sympathy it always amuses me when people get on Twitter and scream at the Betfair help desk when the site goes down saying that they are not "gambling but trading" and can't close out a position. No, you've had a bet. On of the factors you are betting on is that you may be able to close out at a stop loss or profit. But in so doing that doesn't alter the fact that the first thing you did was have a bet.

I'll let James respond to the tax question shortly, but I don't think I have ever argued that traders are not gamblers; only that a trader will close out a position rather than let his bet run to expiry. The outcome for the trader might result in a profit, a loss, or breaking-even. Any time you take a position in a market, you are gambling, which is how the tax authorities see it.

Betfair Pro Trader James responded:

@ Smithlondon - You are going off on a tangent. All trades or bets within sport bookmakers and exchanges are regarded as gambles as far as tax is concerned.

Further, most financial trades are speculative and are therefore gambles but as far as the government is concerned they are financial trades and subject to tax.

I argue the difference between trades and bets in sports on an intellectual level that has nothing to do with tax. I just like to differentiate between trades (bets) that go to expiry and those trades which are closed or hedged ("greened up").

Perhaps it's a sign of James' success or optimism that he doesn't mention "reding up", something I've done on many occasions, and an important part of trading.

"Always try to make your wins as big as possible and your mistakes recoverable" - Laura Harris

Marty questions the bet / trade definition, posing:

If I leave a position to run to expiry then haven't I effectively just 'traded out' at the price implied by the result (i.e. 0 or 1 in probability terms)? What difference does it make to anything what we call it?

It makes little difference as I wrote in my last post:

I think... that there is a clear differentiation between a bet and a trade, but... what matters is if your chosen strategy is profitable or not.

It's hard to disagree that a bet expiring is 'effectively' trading out at 1.00 (or 0.00) but it's akin to dropping dead at work from a heart attack and then arguing (from heaven) that you 'effectively' retired.

Except that you didn't retire - like your bet, you expired!

In response to my previously referenced latest post, James wrote:

Thank you for clarifying that I had little input in today's missive and where I did contribute it was more than adequately referenced.

I must point out though that the neck injury was probably picked up the night before the tennis match whilst sleeping due to arthritic neck vertebrae. The tennis merely exacerbated the injury.

To help (or confound) the bet/trade definition further. In derivatives trading one can leave a position open and take delivery of the oil, the wheat or the cash equivalent (in market futures or stock options) or pay the margin if the position goes against. Alternatively, you can trade out prior to expiry for cash only.

I prefer to keep to strict financial trading definitions. Those who only sports trade/bet tend to grab at financial terminology to sex-up their activities without fully understanding them.

"Scalping" is another such word. Say you are a scalper in the financial markets and you might get a visit from the FSA and the City of London police.

One of my concerns when I first entered the world of futures trading was the horrifying prospect of a consignment of pork bellies (I'm using these here as a pars pro toto for commodities in general) turning up at my front door one day because I forgot to trade out of a position. It never happened of course, but as James made clear, you do have the option of taking delivery. Futures trading was a short-lived interest - rather early on, it dawned on me that perhaps it was unrealistic to suppose that I knew more about pork bellies than the full-time traders I was competing against, a lesson I believe I have shared here in regard to active stock trading.

Moving on, and James concluded his comment with:

And finally... You are far braver than I. Squash is a no-go area for me. Even as a fit twenty-something I could walk into a squash court feeling more than capable of beating an obese female on fifty cigarettes a day and yet step out of the court later, a dishevelled wreck.

Sadly, that was probably my last ever game of squash, but what an ending - holding your 25 year old son to 'effectively' a draw...  

Squashed

Baz (and I want to be absolutely clear, not James) writes:

But isn’t a trade just a bet on which way the market will move? Get it wrong and you lose like any other bet.

No it isn't. By definition, a trade requires two opposite actions, buying and selling – although not necessarily in that order.

In the context of sports betting, the initial action is a bet. You now have a position in the market. This remains a bet unless you make a second bet to close out your position.

If a second and opposing bet is made, your two bets comprise a trade, and your trade may be for a profit, a loss or it may break even.

If you let your initial bet run to expiry, that’s not a trade, even if your intention was to make this a trade. Again though, your bet either wins or loses or is a push.

Although I know what Baz (not James) means when he says “get it wrong and you lose like any other bet”, I should point out that a losing bet (or trade) doesn’t necessarily mean that you “got it wrong”.

Similarly, a profitable bet or trade doesn’t mean that you got it right.

It’s all about expected value.

If you are getting 5.0 (4/1) on a 4.0 (3/1) shot, the reality is that you are still going to lose 75% of the time. Does that mean you get it wrong 75% of the time?

No, because you have a positive expected value and thus, on the other 25% of the time when you win, your profits more than cover your losses.

Baz (not James) adds: 

Perhaps we are kidding ourselves by trying to differentiate between bets and trades.

I think, as I’ve tried to explain above, that there is a clear differentiation between a bet and a trade, but to Baz’s (not James') point, what matters is if your chosen strategy is profitable or not.

I do suspect that the ability to trade out of positions these days perhaps leads to less than optimal decisions being taken.

For example, while the initial bet might be taken after much research and consideration, the temptation to lock in a profit, or at least eliminate the possibility of a loss, can be hard for a novice or ill-disciplined trader to resist after just a small movement in the ‘right’ direction.

Behaviour which of course goes completely against the golden rule of trading - keep your losses small and let your winners run.

Betfair Pro Trader James has another post up, less technical than many and one that I can identify with as someone who is also close to 50 (although not as close to 50 as I was yesterday...) 

Poor old James managed to hurt his neck playing tennis, but had a few kind words:

At least the pain was relieved by a post from Cassini at Green All Over (America's #1 Sports Blog!). It was good that a recent comment of mine on his website inspired another old boy back into action. The sports trader blogosphere will be all the more barren if Cassini hangs up his quill.

Pain in the neck James' tales from the tennis court have prompted me to write about my own recent sporting adventures. 

Last month, I decided it was time to teach my 25 year old son some of the finer points of squash. Never mind that I hadn’t played in about 25 years myself, experience matters more than enthusiasm, surely. Just to be sure of success, I gave myself home advantage and arranged to play at the club in Coulsdon where I played in my youth.

It was a little surprising that the court appeared just as I remembered it, same door, same floor, same everything really, except with a quarter of a century of wear and tear and general deterioration added in. (At least the squash courts were playable – the tennis courts outside, on which I also spent many summer afternoons and evenings, were in an even more depressing state - see above).

I thought I acquitted myself rather well for the allotted forty minutes, diving to the floor a couple of times, placing delicate drop shots into the corners, avoiding getting hit, and with the 'time's up - get out' knock on the door surely imminent, was readying myself to shake hands and leave when my son pointed out that we’d actually only been on the court for five minutes, and that what we had been doing was called ‘warming up’. 

Well that's a little disappointing, I thought to myself, as pools of sweat accumulated by my feet, my head span dizzily and my heart pounded at a rate not seen since my days of running the mile in four minutes something, but there was no way out. 

Perhaps I should clarify a couple of things written above - by 'diving to the floor' I mean going into full cardiac arrest and collapse, and by 'placing delicate drop shots' I mean smashing the ball as hard as I could, but at my age, shots barely make it to the front wall sometimes.

I don’t want to talk too much about the match itself; suffice to say that I did score a few points in the eight games we completed, and that we sadly ran out of time to complete our best-of-seventeen match, which means that technically speaking, the match ended as a draw.

Admittedly it started off as a best-of-five contest, but as I felt stronger and stronger, decided to extend the match, first to a best-of-seven, then best-of-nine, then… you get the picture.

I’ll be better prepared next time. I should perhaps also mention that for the best part of the following week, I had a great deal of trouble with stairs, getting in and out of cars, and generally just moving. My parents (not James) generously loaned me their walking sticks for a few days while my muscles slowly regained some semblance of normality. Apparently it's a different set of muscles that are called into action when playing squash than those used for a little jogging (shuffling) around the park or riding my bike.

Pain in the neck James' (yes, James) then wrote:

I have only one negative thing to say about Green All Over and that is Cassini's habit of quoting you and then adding a few more quotes from other people only without attribution. This creates the impression that every quote in his post was by yourself, which is not the case in today's post, Bold Ambition. Still, it's a good article as are all the posts on Green All Over.

This is certainly not intentional. I usually put a link to the source of the quote, even if I don't explicitly name it. I find referencing the source in the text can interfere with the flow of the post, but I'll be more careful in future.

Finally, and I just knew this would happen, I (Cassini, not James) wrote yesterday that:

The BLUnders this season had an ROI% of 2.46% from 142 selections. (There could yet be more picks, but as we move deeper into the play-offs, it becomes less likely).

And just like that, selection #143 comes along, with the Golden State Warriors 12.5 point favourites in their home game versus the Portland Trail Blazers tonight. At 3-1 up in the best-of-seven series, the Warriors are hoping to clinch the series, while the Trail Blazers are probably hoping for a rule change and a best-of-seventeen series...

Bold Ambition

James is back, once again in agreement with me, this time on the topic of what differentiates a bet from a trade. I opined that a bet only becomes a trade when it is not allowed to run its course without an off-setting bet or bets, and James says:

That follows my definition too. A bet is a single leg of a trade allowed to go to expiry. A trade has a return leg in the opposite direction to the entry to realise a profit before expiry.

Far more eloquently stated than my effort. James adds - and if you haven't read this post of his on the subject of "reality versus fantasy", you should, that:

Sports and financial trading is littered with people of bold ambition. Survivorship bias means we only hear from those who succeed. It is, after all, a zero sum game.

Nothing wrong with bold ambition of course, but the ambition needs to be grounded in reality:

While it is all very well to be optimistic, it’s probably more important to be realistic, and the logical conclusion is that with all the resources at the bookmaker’s disposal, any success by an individual is likely to be very short-lived

In James' opening paragraph, he writes:

I never discuss the details of my trades because winning strategies are hard to come by. Share a winner and it becomes a loser because the market will arbitrage the edge out of it.

I'm not actually convinced that most readers recognise a good thing when they see it, or at least lack the patience or discipline to follow through. I've given away a few secrets here over the years, but unless the selections have a 100% strike rate (ideally more) and an ROI somewhere north of 25%, the information appears to mostly be immediately forgotten.

The forums regularly have posters starting new challenges - 2% a day for a year and the like. 2% a day? 2% a day is massive. Actually, it's more than massive. 2% a day on a starting bank of £100 would make the bank over £137,740 by the end of the year. Is this realistic?

That was a rhetorical question.

The BLUnders this season had an ROI% of 2.46% from 142 selections. (There could yet be more picks, but as we move deeper into the play-offs, it becomes less likely).

This was actually the third worst season of the past ten, and the worst since 2010-11, but a 2.46% ROI for a system that takes maybe five minutes a day is, by my reckoning, great. The time spent is key - as Webbo wrote four years ago:

It's interesting that you say punting profits are more value when you factor in the hourly rate as it's for this reason I'm trying to turn my attentions more to these. It's obviously much harder but if I'm honest I am starting to resent the amount of my free time I spend betting inplay and I do fear each time another blog opens of a young person who aims to make a living from inplay trading. Their lives will consist of staring at a screen 24-7 and if I had to price it up, I'd say it's 1.01 that they don't make anything close to a living out of it.

The Bundeslayga is several seasons old now, and for the first time since I revealed it, in danger of a losing season:

Only one selection this weekend currently, which would at least guarantee another season in profit.

And then there's a baseball system that is also historically efficient - it takes about five minutes a day, and over the last ten seasons its record isn't perfect, but it's pretty darn good with a double digit ROI% in nine of those ten seasons:

But it's 'only' 50 to 60 bets, the ROI% is 'only' 12%...

I think I'll pass - I'll go for the bank job on tonight's Romanian Third Division game - much more exciting.

And in the unlikely event that I lose, I'll open another bank. Brilliant.

Sports Investor Wins Although Afterwards Decides Upon Pastures Anew

For those of you thinking that the Betting Exchanges are a viable alternative to a career, there is an interesting thread - "Another boring 'goodbye' after 9 year here" - on the Betfair Forum this week, as another full timer realises they are not.

Siwaadupa (possibly an acronym?) opened the thread (spelling and grammatical errors corrected, and readability enhanced) with:

So the time has come for me.

In 2008 I was saying Betfair is the best thing in world, I will always have something to do (work)

Middle 2008 - Cross-matching - I hate it, it privileges fastest stream person who is happy to pay high charges or it's Betfair themselves

Late 2008 - 20% PC - I could have lived with that - still had plenty to do

I believe 2011, PC2 - shock, completely changed my mind - I started to become worried for the future. 

Then Sportsbook appeared - significantly less customers, particularly on sports like basketball and volleyball.

Tennis bots + basketball bots + football bots are taking significant part of my previous activity - destroying me in some way.

I don't want to moan that it's not possible etc. - In my case, its not worth it- when you add all figures, hours spent in front of PC you will figure out that elsewhere I will have more for less. I want to add that I'm not a mug:

80,337 Exchange points = 52% Commission Discount

So I'm pretty active. I won't be any more from tomorrow. I'm not quitting, but as a full timer its over for me. It's another boring exit for £12 per hour elsewhere.

While there is no confirmation that Siwaadupa actually reached PC2 status, it wouldn't be an unrealistic expectation for a full-timer after nine years.

£250,000 sounds like a lot of money, but when you break it down over nine years, it's not so much at all; a little under £28,000 a year. If you work 46 weeks a year, that boils down to £600 a week.

While that number is net and exceeds the median UK gross earnings (ASHE 2015) for full-time employees of £27,600, not many of us want to be 'average', and career development, annual bonuses, pension considerations and other benefits also need to be factored in.

As I've written here before, sports investing is far better suited to being a part-time activity than a full-time one.

The thread contain a couple of other interesting observations too. One Ghetto Joe posited:

Yep I think PC2 has driven loads away, margins getting smaller and penalised at least 42% of your winnings. All those early players who promoted and extolled the virtues of the exchange now paying 9 times more than any newcomers who do exactly the same thing just because they've been long standing customers who probably won around £17k for each of those 15 years the exchange has been up.

I think I might have written that before here too. Joe later added:

Never understood the mentality of people wanting more charges, we're all using the same exchange, if some are gaining unfair advantages you should close those loopholes down not increase charges to cash in on them too.

Exactly. Again, as I have previously said, Betfair introduced the Premium Charges as their response to those gaining 'unfair advantages' and took a share in the ill gotten gains, rather than close the loopholes.

Finally, forumite fixed states that:

every bet is a trade and every trade is a bet

Not really. In my opinion, a bet only becomes a trade when it is not allowed to run its course without an off-setting bet or bets.

If you backed Leicester City to win the Premier League at 5000-1 (didn't we all?), and let it run, that's a bet.

If you subsequently layed Leicester City, (i.e. made another bet), then those two bets combined make it a trade.

The dictionary agrees with me. 

As a noun, a trade is defined as "the action of buying and selling goods and services". The 'and' is important.  

As a verb, to trade is defined as "buy and sell goods and services". Note the 'and' there. 

Nugget

The Los in Los Angeles Clippers turned to Loss last night, as the Portland Trail Blazers won four in a row to take the series 4-2. It's hard not to feel some sympathy for the Clippers, but basketball is very much an individual sport in that prices and fortunes are hugely influenced by one or two star players and to continue in the play-offs, teams need those players to stay healthy. Although I'm happy with the lay at 1.37, I am somewhat kicking myself for not taking a few hundred more that was looking to back the Clippers at 1.5. Opportunities like this don't come along too often these days.

While the BLUnders Sytem is probably done for the season, I saw a post on the Betfair Forum from 'nugget' saying:

92% of the playoff games have gone under the total

With the total varying slightly from book to book, the numbers may be correct for nugget, but my numbers show that of the 84 games played so far, 56 have gone Under. Exclude the 4 pushes and we have 70%, which is still impressive but not quite 92%.

Is this a one season wonder? Here are the numbers for the last five full season, plus the one in progress:

Not convincing evidence that blindly backing playoff unders is a long term profitable strategy, but as I mentioned in this post, BLUnders selections continue to be profitable in the play-offs.

Over the same period as above, i.e. 2010-11 to this season, their record in play-offs is 10 Unders from 16 games, with one Push.

A modified form of BLUnders for play-off use (16 selections in six seasons isn't going to do anyone much good) would have generated 45 selections, with 27 Unders (and 2 Pushes) +9.70 / ROI +21.6% 

Fortunes Clipped

It’s not exactly an example of ‘thinking outside the box’, but in a sport such as basketball where one individual makes such a difference to a team sport, the impact of injury can dramatically change the odds.

A couple of recent examples can be found in the ongoing NBA Play-Offs, where the Golden State Warriors and the Los Angeles Clippers have both lost their star players to injury this week.

The Warriors’ Steph Curry came back from an ankle injury, slipped on a wet spot, and sprained his knee ruling him out for maybe two weeks.

The Clippers’ star Chris Paul broke his hand this week, and Blake Griffin is now out of the play-offs with a left quadriceps injury.

Anyone watching game four of the Clippers Series (v Portland Trail Blazers) would have seen Paul’s reaction, and recognized that the injury was serious.

Add to that the sight of Griffin sitting on the bench clearly in discomfort and you have an opportunity.

There was money waiting to back the Clippers to win the series at 1.37 – but at just 2:1 ahead in games, (three home games won) and about (in my opinion) to lose game four and with major injury concerns, the Clippers were to my mind a value lay at this price. 

I may well have been late to the party as the Clippers had traded all the way down to 1.02 to win the series, presumably after big wins of 20+ points in the first two home games.

Even if you don’t trust a player’s reaction (superstars can be a little dramatic at times), the side-line reporters updates and post-game interviews can be useful sources of information.

With the series down to a best of three, the Trail Blazers were 1.45 favourites to win the series. Now that they are 3:2 ahead, with game six at home, they'll be down to around 1.15.

I was asked by text at the start of the play-offs “Will anybody beat the Warriors?” – my reply was, unfortunately for the Warriors, rather perceptive “Warriors are vulnerable if Curry gets injured”.

I didn’t mean to jinx Mr. Curry, (not that jinxes are real), and the Warriors have more depth than the Clippers, but my comment was to make the point that any team's fortunes can change in an instant with a key injury and that even in a ‘team‘ sport, it can be rewarding to look beyond the immediate event.

Blunderful Play-Offs

Given the selection criteria for the BLUnders System, it is hardly surprising that qualifiers during the play-offs are few and far between. The few selections are, however, profitable.

In the 20 completed seasons since 1994, there have been just 25 selections, most during the first round (of sixteen), but a few mismatches were from the Conference Semi-Finals (quarter-finals).

So far this post-season there have been five selections and all have gone unded very comfortably. The closest game was under by 9.5 points, while the others were under by at least 25.5 points. The overall five season record currently reads:

There's also an interesting trend in play-off BLUnders games when it comes to the handicap, a strategy that would be +9.04 from the 30 games of record, an ROI of 30.1%. I'll update this number at the end of the season.

Moving to football and last weekend was kind to the Bundeslayga System with a nice winner in the second division as the widely loathed RasenBallsport Leipzig lost and slipped to second in the table behind Freiburg. I suspect I wasn't the only one cheering that result. 

Finally, thanks to Baz for his comment that:

Having a new granddaughter is far better than winning any bet. Congratulations.

Yes, there are certainly more important things in life than money, something that becomes easier to say as you get older and accumulate more money.

Priorities

With an interval between posts of almost four weeks, readers might well be wondering if the author's enthusiasm for this blog is finally waning after 8 full years. Although there is some truth to that suggestion, I'm not quite ready to hang up the keyboard despite advancing another year in age, the arrival of a second granddaughter, and the imminent retirement at the end of this week of one of my oldest (in years known and in years lived) friends which has made me a little restless.

My new granddaughter missed sharing her granddad's birth date by a mere two hours, but at least she's an Aries and I should be able to remember her birthday anniversaries for a few years, at least until dementia / Alzheimer's sets in.

So I can't say that sports or sports investing has been top of my priority list of late. My interest in the Grand National was limited to winning £25 from my local pub's sweepstake as The Last Samuri placed second, but as I was celebrating Crystal Palace's Premier League survival in a crowded and noisy South Norwood pub at race time, I had no idea what I was watching! However, my in-depth knowledge of rowing meant that I was able to predict, not only the finalists, but also the Boat Race winner this year. The Cassini family also managed to leave the Whyteleafe v Herne Bay game with a profit - £9 each for two admissions, £1 for two Golden Goal tickets, and with 6:55 on the clock, my son's 7th minute ticket won him £20! I think I enjoyed that more than bigger wins on Betfair.  Who knew that I had an edge on pulling horse names and goal times out of a hat?

As for the more serious investments, the Bundeslayga System is clinging on to the slenderest of profits this season, with just a few weeks of the season to go:

Also clinging on to a small profit is the BLUnders System, with two more selections tonight as the regular season comes to a close.

Interestingly the 134 selections so far means the season total will be the highest since 1997's 162, in large part due to the dominance of the Golden State Warriors and the San Antonio Spurs who make up 62 of the selections between them.

I mentioned in my last post that there's a secondary bet which tends to win when the BLUnders selection loses, and this strategy had a great March and April and has improved the combined numbers as shown below:

Early days on the baseball SG3 system, but selections are coming thick and fast with another four today:

Finally, although I'm behind with my blog reading, I did see that Thoughts of a Football Trader wrote the following:

When we take our first steps into this minefield, each of us, without exception, blows a trading bank or ten. When we do so, we are crushed, and for a brief period chastise ourselves for making whatever error created the loss. But something inherent within us accepts that this loss, the others before and those that may come are the very lessons we need. So, we heed them, we reload the bank and begin again.

It's simply not true that "each of us, without exception, blows a trading bank or ten". My trading bank deposited in 2004 was £98.50 (after fees were deducted) and that remains the only deposit I have ever made. I believe the low was around £21.40 but blowing the bank was never an option for me and had it happened, I don't think I would have accepted the loss and re-loaded. Sometimes you need to accept that you simply don't have an edge and stop throwing good money after bad.

Revenge And Road Warriors

Fizzer emailed some thoughts on baseball, and on Barrie's 'revenge' system mentioned in this Revealing post. He writes:

Always enjoy seeing a new post appear on your blog, especially when it's about baseball.

Just a comment though about Baseball teams seeking revenge as suggested by Barrie. I don't really believe in that for Baseball. I can see that happens in some sports, and particularly in sports with a high level of energy and a heavy schedule such as NBA and NHL when teams have to pick and choose a bit where they put their effort in.

In baseball, however, it's a team game built around individual performance. Each at bat and each pitch are more subject to random variability than they are about motivation and revenge. I'd say every baseball player is trying to maximise their 'value' whether that's perceived as Home Runs, OBP, Steals, Strikeouts, WHIP etc every time they are at the plate or on the mound.

The value we are getting is not in spotting a revenge motive but in identifying when the market is over reacting to recent results - like the SG3 method - giving us value in the price versus the team's underlying ability.

Fizzer knows his baseball, and his comments make a lot of sense as usual.

At the risk of upsetting Fizzer, I turn now to the NBA where the BLUnders four year run of success is very much on the line with less than a month of the regular season remaining. Exactly 100 selections are currently split 49-49 with two pushes. There's a second system that I play alongside the Unders, which although overall is a losing system on its own, tends to win more often when the BLUnder selection loses. Not exactly Parrondo's Paradox, but something of a hedge with some additional churn value. The two bets combined are right now:

There's another selection tonight, but confidence is low since the game involves the Golden State Warriors whose Stephen Curry is hitting three-pointers like no one has ever done before. The previous season record was the one he set last season of 285, but this season he is on 325 with 16 games remaining. Apparently he has hit 77 consecutive three pointers in practice this season! 

Overall this season, Unders on Warriors BLUnders games have gone 11-15, but they are currently on a run of five consecutive Overs following their 17 point loss at the Lakers after starting as 17 point favourites on March 6th. Some of you may have noticed that the Away selections are an improvement on the basic BLUnders system, but it's an even better bet when it's the Warriors who are away this season. 

Revealing

Barrie sent me an email with details of another baseball system. He wrote:

...Also here is another one which again I can't support with stats, perhaps you can?

Again it concerns losing home teams but this time teams that have been embarrassed by a defeat by three or more runs and are playing the same team still at home in the next game, the theory is they will seek revenge and so should be backed but avoid weak teams by only betting if they are favourites. This is claimed to have shown a profit on both the money line and the run line for the last two seasons, your view would be appreciated and whether you put this on your blog for your other reader is up to you, I'm not sure systems being published makes much difference, maybe punters don't have the resolve to stick with it!.

I did take a look at the numbers on this, and whoever is claiming "to have shown a profit on both the money line and the run line for the last two seasons" is indeed absolutely correct. The 2014 and 2015 seasons would have made a total profit (Straight Up and Run Line) of exactly 110 points from 1,150 bets, an ROI% of 9.57%, which is very impressive.

No one should get too carried away over a couple of seasons though, and if we go back three seasons the profits and ROI% drop to 44.19 points and 2.65% respectively.

Last four seasons, and we're down to 4.56 points and an ROI% of 0.002%. Last five and we're in the red, so the likelihood is that this system has just been lucky of late.

I went back 10 years (actually 9 on the Run Line, as those stats for 2006 aren't available), and here are the numbers in full:

Playing the Run Line was more profitable than the Money Line in 7 of the 9 seasons, and that ROI% of 2.45% is quite respectable from 2,632 bets.

Anyway, thanks Barrie for the input, and the logical constraint to improve the SG3 system has been sent as requested.

A couple of spin-off thoughts from this post, the first being Barrie's suggestion that "I'm not sure systems being published makes much difference, maybe punters don't have the resolve to stick with it!". I tend to agree with this thinking. There are certainly some disciplined individuals around who do their research and eke out slow but steady profits in a rather boring manner, but most people are looking to get rich quick from gambling, and it doesn't usually work that way.

The Secret Betting Club's Peter Ling sent out an email the other day which contained this paragraph:

It’s fair to say the record is OK with only a 5.2% ROI and 156% ROC (AKA betting bank growth) over 2,400 bets. Certainly it isn’t the flashiest of services, yet does appeal to some due to the steady profits made, consistency and professionalism.

OK?  "Does appeal to some"? Good god people, is it just me who thinks that an ROI% of 5.2% over 2,400 bets is a little bit more than OK? If those returns are actually attainable, that is quite astonishing.

That the sport in question is horse racing just makes such numbers even more incredible, but it's that the service is described in such negative terms that I find so revealing.

This idea that betting is about being 'flashy' is surely one big reason why sports betting is still very much the bastard child of financial betting - I mean investing.

Daily25's Steve is in his sixth year of investing and sports, and his numbers (taken from his blog) are currently:

1.58% is fairly close to the current 1.71% I have for my Systematic bets, but I'd be happy with 1.58% after five years with them!

My old friend James had an interesting observation somewhat related to the topic of publishing systems on his blog last week. In his "Do Something Weird To Win A Bet" post, he wrote:

If you share ideas then those ideas will lose their value through being arbitraged away. By that I mean any strategy that has a positive edge will see that edge lost as money, from other traders with the same idea, moves the price to where there is no edge.

After many years of profitability, that may finally have happened to the Bundeslayga selections, which with just eight rounds remaining, this weekend dipped into the red after all four lay selections won.

Home Improvement

Congratulations to Fizzer555 for being the first to take the "Home Improvement" project one step further - the 'Shorties' clue in the post just made it too easy:  

When the team is at Home...

Even though the wins now exceed the losses, the system is still not quite profitable (-6.76 points, ROI -0.8%), but was a winner in both 2014 and 2015. Worth a closer look in my opinion. Thanks Baz.

If you select only Home Favourites that helps further. I guess if a team is being made fav after two losses at home to the same opponent then you are picking up on teams with more ability and filtering out the weaker teams.

Yes, the Home and Favourite qualifiers make a huge difference to Baz's basic idea. Here's the ten year record:

Just two losing seasons in the past ten years, and only one (2013) that would have hurt, this is worthy of inclusion in the Cassini Portfolio. It's another very manageable, quick and simple strategy that will generate around 100 bets on the season, approximately one every couple of days (it's a long season).

Now I just need a catchy name, to thank Baz and Fizzer555, and hope that anyone reading this forgets all about it and doesn't cause the prices to crash! It's again worth noting that the numbers above are all beatable on the exchanges or Pinnacle Sports but an ROI of 4.8% over ten years is very impressive.

There's one more logical constraint that historically would have increased the profits to 64.89 points from 537 bets, an ROI% of 8.3%. Baz / Fizzer: email me if you can't figure it out.

With many baseball series actually comprised of four games, I did look at the same strategy for teams losing the first three games. It's a rarer occurrence of course, and 93 bets over 10 seasons isn't much to get excited about, and neither is the loss of 15.48 points.

Major League Brooms

Someone other than James left a comment! Baz writes:

Thanks for the Blunders and Bundeslayga Systems, I follow both although I don't back every qualifier as I can't bet without my own input and, lucky that I am, I have improved the profits a little and it is entirely due to luck .

The baseball season starts soon and I wonder if you have any thoughts or systems on baseball, the only thing I do is oppose the clean sweep when a team win the first two games, I have no statistics to support this system that I read on a website.

As I've mentioned before, the BLUnders and Bundeslayga Systems aren't going to make you rich quick, but they are relatively low maintenance additions which can at best add some profits, and at worse, generate turnover and mitigate Premium Charges.

Baseball does indeed start soon, and this blog has featured some profitable strategies in the past. One strong strategy in the early days of the season is to back the shorties. Here's the five year record for April:

Bas mentions the strategy of opposing the sweep when a series starts with the same team winning both games, and while the numbers don't show this to be profitable, at least not over the last five years, it may have some potential:

It's a modest loss overall and if we include 2010 in this, the system would be in profit overall, albeit by a mere 0.18 points.

Going back as far as we can, the full record is 2177 - 2348, -50.37, giving an ROI of -1.1% but by adding one simple qualifier we can improve this to 426 - 388.

When the team is at Home...

Even though the wins now exceed the losses, the system is still not quite profitable (-6.76 points, ROI -0.8%), but was a winner in both 2014 and 2015. Worth a closer look in my opinion. Thanks Baz.

Under Pressure

The BLUnders results for February are in and for the third consecutive month, and fourth of five, they (officially) finished in the red.

A solid November means that the Under - Over totals are level at 41 with six weeks of the regular season to go, so the run of four profitable seasons isn't ended just yet, although March started with a loser.

It's been a streaky season for this system, with runs on the Unders of 6 (twice) in November and December, followed by a run of 6 Overs, 7 Unders and 7 Overs. Some heart-stopping bets for anyone stupid enough to Martingale this system.

James put me in my place, writing (partly in bold) that:

Of course, Star Wars is not science fiction, which is why I called it a space western.

I like sci-fi, where the plot centres on future technology, but flitting around in space craft whilst shooting off lasers is just a movie about good against evil, as much as any western ever was.

Some good recent sci-fi movies would be Ex Machina, Robot and Frank, and the Spanish film, Time Crimes.

Now back to some quant programming whilst being constantly held up watching the live camera feed from the construction site at the new White Hart Lane stadium. And I don't even support Spurs!

Well of course it is not, Mr. Shouty James, but as I've never seen any Star Wars movie, all I had to base my genre classification on was glimpses of spaceships zipping from galaxy to galaxy firing lasers at each other, something I had always thought of as science fiction, but upon discussing the subject with an old friend, he informed that it is science-fantasy because of something called 'the force' - whatever that is.

Wikipedia classifies Star Wars as an "epic space opera" which is in turn described as a "sub-genre of science fiction" but as Queen said - Is this the real fi ? Is this just fantasy ?

James and I are back on the same page in that neither of us support title favourites Spurs. Five clubs have been title favourites at one time or another this season. Chelsea, Manchester City, Arsenal, Leicester City and currently Tottenham Hotspur. I'm not sure if that's a record, but it can't have happened for many years, if ever.

Star Wars And Watersheds

It seems to have taken longer to reach March than usual this year, but it’s finally here and a good excuse to look at the current 2016 results for the Bundeslayga Systems.

Overall, the Bundeslayga System is currently +3.31 points on the season, and +0.96 points in 2016, while the Bundeslayawayga System is +1.74 points and +0.49 respectively.

James and myself really do seem to more and more like twins separated at birth, albeit by a few years and with different mothers. (One can’t be so sure when it comes to paternity). His comments on Star Wars below echo my own thoughts, although unlike James, I never saw even one of the films as Sci-Fi has never been one of my favourite genres. James comments:

“I forced myself to watch the original Star Wars movie a few weeks ago. It took three sittings on consecutive days. The verdict? A space western and a very tedious one too. Certainly not worth a seven movie franchise.

I have now seen Oscar nominated The Big Short and can recommend it. Of course, the book has the fine detail. The movie doesn't make it clear enough how fraudulent the financial markets are. Something that the lone day trader needs to learn before they "beat the markets".

"Oscar Math"? Are we an American, after all? Was my "confidant" correct with his wild assumptions?"

The Big Short was indeed very entertaining, but as James says, obviously not able to go into the detail that the book does. It did win the Best Adapted Screenplay award on Sunday having previously won the Writers Guild Award in the adapted category, but forget I said that please...

As for the “Oscar Math” post title, this was actually a nod to (linked to) Nate Silver’s 538 site which featured the interesting podcast and articles on the subject of predicting Academy Awards winners. 

Unfortunately the event ended with a small personal loss overall, taking a hit on the Best Picture of course, and also losing on the Original Song category. Just two losing markets from the thirteen played, but I was rather too confident in the successes of Best Leading Actor and Best Director carrying over to Best Picture. At least the Premium Charge Mitigation department will be happy with the churn, if not the final total loss of £48.70.

The shortest priced favourite to lose was Best Supporting Actor Sylvester Stallone at around 1.30. Given Stallone's previous record (0 from 2) with the Academy (of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences) I left this category alone. As readers of this blog will know, I have found the 1.3 (77%) number to be something of a watershed.

Stallone has a far more impressive record in the anti-Oscars, the Golden Raspberry Awards - nominated 25 times, and winning no less than eight awards - although perhaps this year's win of the Razzie Redeemer Award shouldn't be counted. His 14 nominations for Worst Actor is a record, as is his 4 wins in this category.