Foggy trading

I had to laugh earlier this week. The weather was terrible here and very foggy, but it looked great at Newcastle. Later the fog encroached and produced probably the biggest margin ever for in-running punters. I captured the following image as the winner came into view and was announced. Curiously enough even the commentator didn't see it cross the line and simply shouted it's name when it was in view. Any quick fingers had the opportunity to bag the winner at 1.45.

The draw

I was going to post about Liverpool vs Everton but never got the chance to do so. So here is a reverse appraisal. As most people know a local derby is always a tight affair and perhaps a match you would expect to end in a draw, as neither team want to lose.

Unlike a lot of myths this is actually generally true. I did some research a fair time ago and realised that there was a link between distance travel and the propensity to draw. So there are many factors that make a draw but in fact the proximity to the away team does indeed increase the chance of a draw.

One feature of the match the other night that was interesting was the persistance of the draw during the match. This meant there was ages where you trade the draw with only minor risk and during the match it felt inevitable that Liverpool would equalise. You often see this, but not as stark as in this match. An interesting match all round.

Classic battle underway in Melbourne

With the weather messing around with the horse racing again its great to see a real battle under way in the Aussie open Tennis. The two Spaniards just don't want to give up on this one and it's gone to a fifth set. With such a close match you will get massive swings in the final set, often for little risk so it's worth keeping an eye on progress in between the fits and starts of the racing.

Why do Man U get more penalties?

Celtic 11 - Dundee United 10.

Odd scoreline but this was actually just the penalty shootout. You can view all 14 minutes of it here. I was watching some tepid premier league match in comparison testing a couple of strategies. It got me thinking about what is the biggest shoot out. According to the article here it seems to be 16-17 with all but the last penalty scored. It's quite amusing seeing goalkeepers take penalties but, by accident or not, the Celtic goalkeeper scored the best of the lot IMHO.

To answer an age old question, yes top teams do get awarded more penalties. I did a study quite a few years ago to confirm this. You will also be interested to know that lower teams concede more. While it feels like a conspiracy, it's generally not. Putting aside the stats, it just turns out that teams at either extreme are more likely to be attacking or defending deep and a penalty is therefore more likely as a result. That's likely to disappoint the conspiracy theorists.

Daft isn't it

In one of my recent posts I gave you the horror of the worst start to the day I had in six months. Oddly enough, this week has been a breeze so far.

I just made a mistake and blew a race at Towcester to register an £8 loss. In contrast to that bad run, this was my first loss in 48 races! While I can predict and model a number of things in a range of markets, one of the wonders of sports markets is that there is always an element of entropy in the market. You could see that as a negative but in fact I see it as a positive as it creates opportunity. It was also this that probably gave me that slap around the face on Saturday and pat on the back in the last few days. Daft isn't it?

When not to cut a loss using full market depth

Of course it makes sense to minimise a loss when things go wrong but sometimes not cutting a loss is actually a very viable alternative. However, you can only attempt this if you have plenty of information to hand and full market depth.

High resolution MP4 video available by clicking here

Hoovering

Nope, I'm not referring to that Queen video with Freddie Mercury. I am talking about this months edition of Racing Ahead magazine. This month I discuss this controversial tactic and its impact on how you trade in play. Racing Ahead is available at all good news agents.

I am also in Gambling on line magazine this month but with a much smaller article, a guide to the basics of horse racing.

Back behind the desk

Rather bizarrely it seems the industry that deals with bereavement takes the weekend off. So it was a rather odd situation that occured after the events of last week. I found myself at the weekend pretty much with little to do.

With that in mind I settled down to get stuck into what looked like a decent card on Saturday. I succesfully got off to ther worst start I have had for six months! After such a rotten start I was getting distinctly worried. All of them had different reasons for the failure but it was a bit of a nerve jangling start.

I shouldn't have worried though as the day turn out to be excellent and having succesfully put that rocky start behind me I smashed through the rest of the card. Highlight of the day was the Cleeve hurdle where I netted the best of a good set of results.

My fathers funeral is arranged for next week so I've got a fair bit of stuff to get through between now and then, but I do anticipate I will be active on the markets, I have pretty much missed the Aussie open tennis. After the funeral I am likely to take some time off. February is usually my weakest month of the year and after a year of real heartache its as good a time as any to take a break with the family and return fresh for what promises to be another busy year.

Premium charge online

Just been emailed this link: -

https://premiumcharge.betfair.com/PremiumPortal/portal

By the look of it it appears to generate your last premium charge statement, or at least the front page of it. Despite efforts to reduce the charge mine still makes grim reading. But I suppose in some ways I should be thankful that is the case.

Flying winner

If you are looking for some new trading ideas you may want to look at Greyhound racing. Most meetings are bags meeting and attract little volume, but the televised meetings seem to pull in decent turnover. Last week I stumbled across an evening card at Perry Barr and had a dabble.

You can put through reasonable volumes through these markets, in one race alone I accounted for just over 7% of the the entire market! It was a curious market also, the favourite plunged into 1.04 at some point, possibly a case of fat fingers or a similar error but the backer got away with it as the dog won comfortably.

Despite my turnover, I only managed to get just over £80 in total from the two races I did. Not a great return on turnover but a useful result none the less.

Cheltenham volume

Just traded the 13:30 at Cheltenham and I have to say it had some of the worst volume for a Cheltenham race I have ever seen on Betfair. Hopefully it will improve during the day but the total was worse than some of the poorer quality fare I have seen and nothing near what it should be for a quality race. Not sure what to interpret on that count.

EH Webb 1935 - 2009

Sad news, my father died at 17:38 last night after a year of deteriorating health. We were very fortunate that he had not suffered any major illnesses during his life, that he awoke recently to say goodbye and died peacefully.

It was my father that inadvertantly shaped by career. When I was young he gave me a football pools coupon to fill out. I quickly became driven to solve the problem of what makes a draw in a football match. Something odd to do for the son of a carpenter. I now have one of the most accurate forecasting models for that very same problem. The thing I didn't realise was how that simple process kicked off such a journey.

When my Dad gave me that coupon, I obvioulsy wanted to work out how to win the pools. With some effort and thought I acheived that and key pinnacle of winning a first dividend on Littlewoods. That lead me to look at the gambling markets. With such huge margin lost to the other side of the book I quickly realised it was a mugs game so I decided to move onto the biggest casino of the lot, the stock market.

Despite starting with the out and out trading and statistics end of the market, a chance encounter in Houston airport radically shaped my thinking. This led me on a path that resulted in me meeting some of the wealthist people in the world and the most succesfull investor of all time. These experiances significantly changed my perspective not only on wealth and wealth creation, but life itself. During this period betting exchanges also emerged. With margins on the sports books now close to zero, this opened up work I had done years prior to their birth and set me off on another journey.

I wouldn't have guessed when my Dad handed me that coupon where it would lead. While the passing of a loved one is a sad moment, I still have the rest of my life to look forward to. I can't wait to live it.

At moments like this you reflect on things you have learnt, so here a few words. Don't listen to people who are unfairly critical, it says more about them than you. Always use the word impossible with the greatest of caution. Trust your instinct more, pursue happiness and finally, carpe diem!

Murray at the aussie open

I haven't been able to do much on the open for obvious reasons but have been following it as best I can. It's a real shame as I have continued working on Tennis for some time now and I planned to let rip on the open. That will have to wait for now.

At the start of the tournament I wrote down the rankings of the players Murray was likely to play. So far it's spot on, here is the list: -

R1 1140
R2 84
R3 31
R4 14
QF 5
SF 1
TF 2

He was pretty much 1.01 to win the first, 1.02 for the second and now 1.07 for the third round. From here on in, things get a bit more tricky. He would likely end up playing Nadal in the semis and Federer in the final.

For the full draw, click here.

Million dollar traders

Watched the second part in this series and I'm still not sure what these guys have been taught but it's not the sort of trading room I know.

I started messing around with the stock market in the mid eighties and eventually set off properly in the 90's. By then the Internet was picking up speed and I remember using Compuserve to place an order via Etrade! Things have moved on a lot since then and ECN's and a proliferation of platforms has made all manner of transaction available at the click of a mouse.

There is my point, I don't know of a modern trading room where you phone instead of clicking a few buttons. Yes, you have a relationship with a broker and may have to phone certain instructions through. But you don't do it for a couple of hundred shares. That's only one of many issues with the way they are going about their business. Apart from the Bloomberg terminals ,I don't recognise much else in that room. I think they will struggle to even turnover a million dollars at this rate! An excellent peice of timing it has to be said, in the middle of unprecdented market turmoil. On a wider basis I guess the point is, it makes good TV.

I guess I'll just have to watch it next week.

Update on my Dad / Trading from hospital!!

Thanks for all those that have sent best wishes to me and my father. Things are still touch and go and we are taking each day as it comes. Some days he is alert and speaking and other days he is just comatose. I can't see him going on for very long as he is pretty much unable to do much, even eat. Even when he does we have to feed him. For the moment we are still hanging in there but I don't know for how long.

As my Dad is very often not lucid for a number of days I've started to bring my laptop into hospital. I also bought a Rubiks cube to re-learn how to solve it; I find it impossible to sit and do nothing. You feel a bit of a lemon sitting there with somebody who is unable to respond but you feel it is important to be there.

The hospital has very kindly let me pretty much set up an office next to my Dad's bed. I only intended using it to try and keep on top of things, but I couldn't resist seeing if I could trade from my laptop as well. It's always worth pushing the limits and I thought this was an interesting test. It wasn't for any reason other than wanting to know if it was viable in such a scenario. If so , it would open up new opportunities. The beach in summer via 3G is a highly appealing prospect.

Anyhow, bit a fantastic results but it definately worked and I was surprised to see that I could stream OK from my slingbox as well. A worthwhile experiment in rather bizarre surroundings. Freedom from my desk beckons!

Impact of financial turmoil on gambling

I've had plenty of time for reading recently and, as I always do, I have been nosing around some company reports. Ladbrokes, IG Index and William Hill have all reported good results recently and this seems to bode well for the wider gambling community. IG Index, the spread betting company continues to impress. They are growing much faster than Betfair.

While revenues seems to be holding up quite well, on two of those three there are shadows over the results. Both Ladbrokes and Will Hill have a fairly large debt burden and this will need to be re-financed. As you have seen in the news, banks are not that keen on lending and that could cause big problems for heavy borrowers. As you would have seen from previous posts, Betfair don't exactly have a problem with debt. But they do have another problem which will shape their business this year.

The Bank of England recently lowered interest rates again to just 1.50%. As, effectively, a net lender to society this is not great news for me, but at least I am in a good position compared to most. I owe this thanks to the wise words of Warren Buffett in 2003 who predicted exactly the turmoil we have seen. The problem that Betfair has lies in one aspect of Betfair's business model. One that is directly related to interest rates.

If you look at their reports and accounts in the last five years, interest received on cash in hand has totalled a eye watering £26m. In 2007 & 2008 interest received accounted for 25% of profit before tax for Betfair.

(1) Client withdrawals will no doubt have drastically depleted client funds on deposit at Betfair. This was no doubt exacerbated by the financial crisis last year and also by the fact that client deposits in gambling markets are not regulated in the same fashion as in financial markets. This probably sped up the withdrawal of cash.

(2) Betfair will earn less interest due to these lower client funds. Betfair's bottom line has obviously benefited quite a lot in the past from all this interest received. Now that interest rates are so low, the yield is going to be tiny. Betfair will have to plug the gap somehow, either by cutting costs or increasing charges.

Based on prior experiences, I think I can guess how they will plug the gap. What ever happens it looks like Betfair definitely have a business issue to solve.

Bleak mid-winter

What a poor month it's been for racing. Frost, fog, Great Leighs goes into administration then water logging. Makes depressing reading for anybody reliant on Horse Racing. Don't get too depressed though as the winter months are never a bunch of roses.

A fair few years ago I used to panic that I had lost it at this time of year, but nearly nine years worth of experience has taught differently. Winter is a difficult time for most sports and for racing its typically quite bleak. Lower quality meetings and fewer of them don't add up to great conditions. To be completely fair, I think this year is harder. I think people are finding it much worse this year due to the Betfair premium charge. That just sort of compounds issues.

Try and keep focus during these spartan times. There is no way you can do the same as you could in the summer so don't try and achieve that, it's just not possible. In contrast, now is a good time of year to have a break or to pull back on less profitable activity or experiment with new sports. When trading always focus on quality. Don't try and chase positions or make something out of nothing, because if there is nothing there. No matter how hard you push, you will probably not change that.

In short don't panic. In a few months time you will have forgot this barren period. So keep things simple and focus on quality, not quantity.

Bizarre mess up on the Aussie Open

Thanks to the wonders of a slingbox and HSDPA card I am sat here watching the start of the Aussie open. I am witnessing a very bizarre situation on game featuring Anne Keothavong. As the match moved into the third set it appears her opponent has started serving first in the third set when it should be Keothavong to serve. This hands a massive advantage to her opponent which radically alters the shape of the match, especially in the third set. By serving when your opponent should be, you are effectively handed a 'free' break of serve.

The umpire doesn't appear to want to over turn things and so the game continues. I can't see that this is a fair way to continue, so it will be interesting to see what happens at the end of this match. Never seen anything like it before in a major tournament.

Thankful for small miracles

Well things have been rough for the last few days and as the hours wore on and my Dad never showed any sign of regaining consciousness, he looked so incredibly poorly. As such, we were advised to start 'making arrangements'. We switched off the medication and decided to let nature take its course while keeping a vigil at his beside.

Imagine my surprise this morning when he suddenly wakes and starts talking. I think it caught everybody on the hop! I quckly phoned my sister, who suspected the phone call was to inform of bad news. You can imagine her reaction when I tell her he is is awake and talking. I suspect this is only a brief respite. Even then, it's such a relief to get the chance to say goodbye to him properly.

Pause for thought

As quite a few of you know my father has been seriously Ill since last February. Through out the year he has been declining slowly and my activities have been punctuated with regular hospital visits. This week he has taken a dramatic turn for the worse and I am now by his bed in hospital. in what are likely to be his last days. As a consequence the blog will probably be a little quieter for a while. I do have some nice stuff about the Australian open next week, but that will have to wait for now.

Thanks for those that have been offering your kind support, it is much appreciated.

One for the scrapbook

Withdrawn horses are pretty common, I saw somewhere near 350 horses pulled from races last year. I've seen some crazy things, but Just when you think you have seen it all, something new gets thrown into the mix.

There are many reasons that a horse does not run, usually because it doesn't want to go into the stalls. This evening we saw something a bit different. A blindfolded horse, already in the stalls, broke loose at Kempton before the start of the race, not unheard of. The next thing that happened was unheard of. Still with its blindfold on, and obviously running blind, it crashed through the rails and into the lake. Quite a few of the stall handlers had to run around the lake for 15 minutes to shepherd the animal back to safety. With it being so dark on the TV it was difficult to see exactly what was going on, remarkable stuff. Fortunately it was ok and the blindfold didn't impede it's efforts to swim out of trouble but it looked a bit hairy for quite a time.

Fast pictures cause layers to slip up

I really thought we had got the worst of the weather behind us. But today it came back to mess up the racing again. Newcastle was too frosty and Lingfield too foggy! Newbury was left as normal and was OK, but I really wanted to get a decent week in the bag. Today was a very annoying interruption to that task.

At Newbury in running punters laid a horse heavily when they incorrectly called the false start. Backers were matched at odds of up to 60 vs an SP of 16.50! As soon as the market realised the race hadn't started the price crashed back to more normal levels. Just goes to show you there are opportunities everywhere for the astute.

The other side of the coin

Every now and again I've pondered who is on the other side of mis-fortune. This morning I found out the answer to one of these conundrums. I often nip in and read Ming Wong's blog. On it is a mention of an event I remember very well.

The 16:50 at Market Rasen on the 18th October 2004 gave me an idea that has stuck with me ever since. That of backing very high priced horses in running, over jumps, given certain circumstances. If you trade pre race you can quite easily afford to put a small amount on the rear of the field. Often you will have money on the rear of the field that is pretty much wasted unless a massive outside comes in. Even then you would expect a little more than the few quid you probably have on them. They don't come in often but when they do, it's in spectacular style.

The winner of this race 'Music to my ears' won at odds of 1000, after trailing the leaders by 30 lengths. £100,000 was lost on this horse. This is how the seven runner race panned out: -

Julies Boy - Fell when 2 out
River Marshall - Pulled up 3 out
Home by socks - Pulled up 4 out
Were not stopping - Pulled up 3 out
Polar Gunner - Fell at the last, remounted to finish third
Avadi - Fell at the last, remouted to finish second

Music to my Ears - 30 lengths behind when left alone to win!!!!

Million dollar traders

I know a few other blogs have mentioned this today already but this makes great, sometimes cringe worthy, viewing! Whatever market you trade on, it's worth viewing what is effectively 'The Apprentice' for traders.

You can watch it in the UK by using BBC IPlayer

I was actually the first ever poster on a financial forum way back in 1996. I enjoyed my time on the forums and posted for a while before the forums degenerated into the familiar chaos they often are. I met loads of interesting characters during that time and I also met several people that worked in these environments. I quickly realised a lot of these groups where run for the benefit of extracting money from the traders, not to make it for them. It will be interesting following the group. On the first episode you see all the classic stereotypical traits of first time traders. It makes good viewing, especially giving the timing of the filming.

Being on the advisory board of an investment fund and running my own SIPP, I am still very active on the financial markets. They are ultimately more scalable than betting exchanges but in constrast to the exchanges I tend to be an investor rather than a trader. I do have to say though , I've never seen a market that was as easy to trade and gave such high potential returns as the betting exchanges. You also have a perfectly framed market, it's always going to gravitate to 100%. The only issue successful traders have on the exchanges is that it is quite easy to outgrow them quickly. That shifts your focus back to investing your money, which of course you need financial markets knowledge to do.

For short term traders on the financial markets a generally different fate awaits. It's a lot better than it used to be but costs are still a killer given the small amount of margin on offer. At the end of the day a company can only throw off as much cash as it earns. You and I can sell each other bits at different prices all day millions of time but it's the ability of the company to generate income that drives the price in the long term. Frictional costs are enormous and it's generally the brokers that make the most money.

Optical illusion - Part three

The problem with looking at that Betfair chart is that you really couldn't see the true direction of the odds. Using the Bet Angel advanced charting is was possible to pick up on a number of trends in the later part of this move.

As the price was coming in quite a bit I sat there and waited, I hate following a trend! I waited till the price came back to the top of it's short term reversal and jumped in with a small trade at 2.86. It went in my direction for a short bit then stalled again, so I exited for my initial profit of £20.

I then waited to repeat the trade again. This time I got a better move and added £90 to my total. In fact it should have been more as the price went all the way into 2.28! But, as they say, you never go broke taking a profit. But then you never get that rich cutting out of a good run either! None the less it was a half decent result. In hindsight I should have probably got a lot more. If you had used bigger stakes you could have netted a decent profit on this 50 tick move. It was purely down to the short term charting that I managed what I did.

Optical illusion - Part two

I posted up recently about how the Betfair charts are a bit bonkers and I did capture some images that illustrate this quite well. Here is a chart of a horse at 12:33.

Then, the same horse at 15:41. Note how the many hours of early price activitely has now been compressed into the very far left of the chart. It makes it look like the price came in virtually instantly, whereas the reality was that it took a little while to do this, as you can see from the first chart.

No tears for Hankey

The BDO world darts championship final threw up another classic today. Two of the last four finals have gone to the 12 out of a maximum 13 sets and the other two ended 7-6, as did today. With the opportunity to close out the championship Hankey missed an easy out and his odds rocketed from 1.05 to nearly evens. He then gained his composure to claim the championship. Great entertainment and some great moves.

The movements are similar in a way to Tennis with the way the scoring is set up. I may try and model darts at some point having cracked Tennis. I'll keep an eye on future tournaments ,but for the moment any participation will be limited as decent volume events don't seem to come around that often. Good fun when they do though.

Good end to a really tough week

Well that was a interesting week. Probably one of the toughest weeks I have seen. I thought it may end up as one of the poorest, but it didn't in the end. During the week the card was decimated by the weather and all that was left each day was some poor quality all weather racing. Most of that didn't go off on time! I decided to do very little on Monday and Tuesday but got behind things a bit more from Wednesday onwards. In hindsight it would have made for a good week off, but predicting the weather in the UK is even harder than the predicting odds movements. The forecast is much better now, so hopefully we can look forward to a the first full week for some time next week.

Glass half empty?

Is the glass half empty or half full? I've often heard people say that one of the reasons they can't trade a market is because it is illquid. I'd say that you could trade it for exactly the same reason. At the end of the day it's all down to how you are looking at it.

When I first messed around on Betfair in its early days it was very illquid in certain markets. It was a great opportunity to profit. Alas those days are gone, but only on Betfair. The ability to make money from illquid markets still exists. To learn how, view the following video: -

Low resolution version (quick download)
High resolution version MP4 file (slower download)

2008 - A year in numbers

Thought this would make some interesting reading for blog followers. Here are some stats on last year.

In 2008 I participated in 8579 horse races. The interesting thing about this number is that it shows the potential to everybody. The huge number of events on the exchanges present excellent opportunities. Even if you are not an expert and get an average return of just a few pounds/euros/dollars per race on average, your total for the year wouldn't be terribly shabby for the average earner. £3 per race on average would earn you £26k. Push your average return up and things look very bright indeed.

Having been around for eight years, each year I keep pushing as hard as I can. This shows up in my turnover, which was 47% ahead of the previous year, volume on the exchanges grew less than this. I wouldn't have bet on managing to achieve 47% growth at the start of 2008, especially when your turnover is very large already. I will have to change tack a little this year as the changes at Betfair now effectively punish people for being active, so in order to increase turnover I will be making some subtle changes to how I use exchanges in 2009. I will also need to focus on the best situations rather than adding liquidity to more marginal activity. Average profit, return on stake, average stake values are all stable so thankfully I don't appear to be chasing turnover.

The biggest winning run I went on was 55 races in a row. This is not a record, I set that last year. My worst losing run was 5 races in a row. This low figure tells me I am probably being too cautious and need to take some bigger risks. One of the reasons for such long runs is that if you are trading in the right manner, you will generally see a high strike rate. If your strike rate is 50/50 then you are definately too trigger happy.

Biggest turnover on one race in 2008 was well into six figures, curiously this didn't deliver my biggest profit of the year. It was also a long way short of my best for 2007, in fact around 20% lower. I sense that the markets are not growing apart from selected high profile events. This poses problems for how to increase activity in 2009. It seems, as has been the case for a while actually, that you just can't increase stakes to move forward, you have to work much smarter.

Reviewing figures with some other Bet Angel traders shows that we have all moved forward quite a bit over the year. It would appear that Bet Angel users account for a increasing share of their chosen markets. Turnover for Bet Angel users is now significantly higher than I imagined when we first set out. When I started out, If somebody said that Bet Angel users would achieve billions in turnover on Betfair I would have been astonished. As it is I am sure we ain't finished just yet!

My objective for 2009, More of the same I guess! Due to my fathers terminal illness, I haven't budgeted for a bumper year but also, after years of hard work, I am going to also take some more time out for myself this year. I need to get some balance back into my life again.

In the last six months of 2008 I have probably compiled more research than in my previous eight years on the exchanges. We look forward to bringing you some enhancements based on this work. I'll see if I can do my bit to help you really move ahead in 2009. Here's hoping for a cracking 2009!

Murray now joint favourite for the Aussie open

Well I never. Didn't think I would see this in my lifetime but a British Tennis player is now favourite to win the Australian open. Murray defeated Roger Federer, yet again, to reach the final of the Qatar Open. This should make the Australian open a significant betting heat. From a traders perspective, in the UK, its the best chance you get each year to trade a big Tennis tournament without sacrificing other stuff. Most matches start early in the morning so it's a great chance to thwack a few trades in evening before the UK sporting action has started!!

Capital preservation

In one easy lesson. Thought I would share this with you. £12 greened up across the card. Not bad, err... no it's terrible!

It's moments like this that should make you unhappy about your trading. OK it's a profit but I really made a hash of things on this one. You can see from the 'my bets' area I actually put through the best part of £17k to get this stunning £12 profit. This example shows you one of the reasons why I say that capital preservation is one of the most important aspects of trading. Failure to manage your downside risk can be calamitous when using this sort of money.


Of course what you are seeing here is not £8.5k in one punt but nine trades on both sides. Even so, managing downside is often the key to the more favourable upside. If we had made a decent job of this trade the minimum you should have made was 1% or £85. There was plenty more in there if you did a decent job. But the downside is potentially as 'good'. This is where trading at low odds can help. At odds of lower than 2.00 you get a 1% move in either direction so to totally blow your entire bank you would need to see a 100 tick move against you. That just ain't going to happen, so trading at these odds does offer some downside protection. Trading at higher odds the odds move faster in both directions so losing £100 by trading at 4's, where the odds move 10% per tick, is much more likely than losing £100 trading below 2's.

Darts - Not just great entertainment

Good old Wolfie, Martyn Adams as he is correctly known, gave us another cracking performance the other night on the darts. Despite being a top seed he struggled to finish off a much weaker opponent. Pretty good volume as well on the match. Chissnel never traded below 1.64 but Adam's odds were all over the shop. Worth keeping your eye on the darts and Tennis in these bleak and intermittent times on the horses.

'White out' on the cards

The cold spell looks like it will continue to grip the UK for the foreseeable future and today we saw the first 'all weather' meeting lost. That leaves us with one poor quality card at Lingfield and that doesn't look very appealing. It looks like it will be a tough month. Personally, unless things improve quickly I'll have no chance of reaching last years January total even without taking account of the additional 20% Betfair charge.

It's during these periods that I re-double my efforts to learn new tricks, practice them and look at other sports with more gusto. Soccer is still in full swing and I don't find it too hard to drag some money out of that, but my main focus is Tennis. The new season is about to kick off soon with the Australian open. I have been re-appraising my knowledge ahead of that.

All those points aside have a look at the graphic on this post. This is how 2008 panned out from a meetings perspective. You can see the troughs during Dec, Jan and Feb. So when the weather wipes out the card just remember how busy you will be in the summer and enjoy the time you currently have. I went out for a walk with the kids this morning, fed some horses and enjoyed the remnants of the snow showers. Much fun!

Southampton vs Man Utd

As some of you know I wear the millstone around my neck of being a Southampton follower. It is with trepidation that the two teams meet again today the first time since I last saw them play together in May 2005 when Southampton were relegated from the top flight for the first time in 30 odd years.

I tend not to bet or trade on favoured teams as this can poorly influence your decision making so I will give this match a miss and cower from behind the sofa as Saints probably get stuffed silly by the Man U second string.

From the timing perspective it couldn't be worse for Southampton. Their strategy this season is to pretty much to up the youngsters to the first string to save money. All the decent players have been sold or loaned out. Unfortunately it will probably end up costing them in the long run as anything above relegation this season will be a result. Running a football club is a charity not a business, so trying to keep it profitable generally puts you on a negative spiral. Perhaps if the Chairman hadn't vetoed a takeover before the credit crunch things would be different. As it is they are really low on confidence this year especially at home. I can't see them putting up much resistance against Man U. Curiously they also seem to particularly bad when on the TV!

Don't lay Southampton as the price is pretty big and in the event of no goal the price will move against you pretty quickly. So your decision boils down to whether or not you back or lay Man U. The market has priced in three goals and expects Man U to score , on average, two more than Southampton. If you think that's value back Man U, if not lay them.

Let's play darts

This week sees the world BDO darts championship take place just up the road from me in Frimley. The main thing I remember about Frimley is that my twins were born there seven years ago now, not at the darts championship of course, at the local hospital! You don't forget moments like that or the moment we discovered that we were not expecting our second child but twins. Of course lots of people emailed me and asked why I hadn't worked out the probability of that occuring. The words rod and back spring to mind.Anyhow, the other thing that I remember well about this Championship was the fantastic final of two years ago.

In all sports It is always worth looking for disruption points, tangible but slightly amorphous areas where the tide will turn. Having been pretty sporty and competitive for my most of my life I quickly learnt that the gap between top players was pretty small and in fact skill was only one part of the equation. Having the right mindset was also critically important in sport. When you are ‘in the zone’ you don’t want to stop. Breaking your game at this point meant that getting back into ‘the zone’ was always difficult. Professional sports people are always keen to, literally, break the stride of their opponents. Short of getting them selves in the zone, getting others out of it is the next priority. Sometimes this can be forced by tactical play but sometimes these breaks occur ‘naturally’.

In the word BDO darts championships final in 2006, favourite Martin Adams was no doubt in the zone when he stormed to a 6-0 lead in the final. He only needed one more set to win the championship and that looked an absolute certainly at 6-0, He was priced to lay at 1.01, the lowest price available on the exchanges. So in such a commanding position would you lay him at 1.01! The answer is simple, after six sets they were scheduled for a break. You would lay at this point hoping for a wobble after the break. Would Adams have too much time to think during the break and would he allow himself to get out of ‘the zone’? Adams traded at 1.01 to lay for ten minutes and slowly but surely Phil Nixon, the unknown qualifier, got his head and hands together and Adams simply fell apart. Just less than forty minutes later Nixon had pulled back to 6-6 and Adams was now trading odds against and was in severe danger of losing the championship.

It never quite transpired and Adams successfully closed out the championship at 7-6. For anybody laying at 1.01 with £1000, a risk of only £10, they could have closed out for a profit of £500 regardless of who went on to win. An excellent example of how a disruptive break can create an opportunity.