Closing In

Decent day today, meaning that I've now managed to pull myself out of the red that I've had for most of the month. There's still a way to go, but if I can get away, even with one penny of profit for this month, then I will be absolutely delighted. It's silly, but I still want to continue my unbroken run of profitable months.

Short post tonight as I'm going out.


Football: £204.97 | Tote: |  Total P&L:  £204.97 

 

Football Showing 1 - 12 of 12 markets

Market Start time Settled date Profit/loss (£)
Football / QPR v Tottenham : Over/Under 2.5 goals 21-Apr-12 17:30  21-Apr-12 19:40  10.77
Football / QPR v Tottenham : Correct Score 21-Apr-12 17:30  21-Apr-12 19:28  46.40
Football / Bundesliga 1 : Winner 2011/12 05-Aug-11 19:30  21-Apr-12 19:23  3.62
Football / Huddersfield v Scunthorpe : Match Odds 21-Apr-12 15:00  21-Apr-12 16:58  -0.01
Football / Bolton v Swansea : Match Odds 21-Apr-12 15:00  21-Apr-12 16:55  19.06
Football / Blackburn v Norwich : Match Odds 21-Apr-12 15:00  21-Apr-12 16:53  19.06
Football / Fulham v Wigan : Match Odds 21-Apr-12 15:00  21-Apr-12 16:52  14.29
Football / Aston Villa v Sunderland : Match Odds 21-Apr-12 15:00  21-Apr-12 16:52  19.06
Football / Coventry v Doncaster : Match Odds 21-Apr-12 15:00  21-Apr-12 16:48  0.02
Football / Arsenal v Chelsea : Over/Under 2.5 goals 21-Apr-12 12:45  21-Apr-12 14:45  18.57
Football / Arsenal v Chelsea : Over/Under 1.5 Goals 21-Apr-12 12:45  21-Apr-12 14:44  14.49
Football / Arsenal v Chelsea : Correct Score 21-Apr-12 12:45  21-Apr-12 14:43  39.64

It's Calling!

Yes, end-of-season mediocrity, and the time of "can't be arsed" and "I'm not bothered" is finally here. The golf course is calling all those professional football players who no longer have anything to play for, and consequently, they're just marching on the spot, looking at their watches.

For us traders, of course, this can be absolutely fine and dandy. If we know there is going to be little goal-mouth action, then we can either back unders, or scalp markets with a small degree of increased confidence.

At times like this, at the arse-end of the season, this is where trading comes into it's own in my opinion. Most serious straight bettors have shut their computers down for the season by now, as they can no longer rely on the results, knowing that the serious lack of motivation can skew their hard work and research into a game. Us traders, however, couldn't give a flying toss about each player's motivation.

Fully motivated, with a huge desire to bang in the goals for your team? Fine. Go for it, I have some trades that I can play. Feeling slightly more apathetic than a three-toed sloth with an in-growing toe nail? Well, that's fine too. I also have some things I can do.

I watched the Mainz v Wolfsburg match this evening; a classic example of the end-of-season malaise that strikes at this time of year. The odds on goals were surprisingly low, which meant backing unders was going to provide some reasonable movements at the right times.

I didn't go mad, of course. Just because things "seem" to be going one way, that's no reason to throw all discipline and caution out of the window, but it did all feel terribly easy this evening. And as far as I'm concerned, the end of the season can last all year. I just don't mind.


Football: £78.61 | Tote: |  Total P&L:  £78.61 

 

Football Showing 1 - 4 of 4 markets

Market Start time Settled date Profit/loss (£)
Football / Mainz v Wolfsburg : Correct Score 20-Apr-12 19:30  20-Apr-12 21:21  30.16
Football / Mainz v Wolfsburg : Over/Under 2.5 goals 20-Apr-12 19:30  20-Apr-12 21:21  22.31
Football / Mainz v Wolfsburg : Over/Under 1.5 Goals 20-Apr-12 19:30  20-Apr-12 21:20  10.98
Football / Arles v Sedan : Match Odds 20-Apr-12 19:00  20-Apr-12 20:56  15.16

Aarrghh!

I've been feeling a bit off-colour this week, so it's been rather quiet. I watched the Chelsea v Barcelona game from my sick bed, but managed to fall asleep during the match. Consequently I don't have a massive amount to report.

I did trade the match odds of the Sporting Lisbon v Athletico Bilbao game tonight, which went okay, but it's nothing of note.

After my last post, I did get a comment from Gundulf about my loss on the Celtic match last Sunday:


That's one hell of a red on the Bhoys correct score! One wonders what the upside would have been were it not for that late (and unexpected) goal!

As I replied, it wasn't really anything to do with the unexpected nature of the late goal, but rather my continuing ability to allow myself to become too easily distracted - this time by my youngest daughter showing me one of her drawings at the wrong moment.

So what happened? Well, if you did happen to follow the match, then you'll know that Hearts (as the listed away team) scored first, Celtic equalised and then Hearts were awarded a late penalty and scored.

And there I was after the pen, playing the usual trick of offering terrible odds to people immediately after a goal was scored, hoping to grab some unworthy ticks to those who weren't paying attention... only it was me not paying attention. Instead I was busy laughing at my daughter's drawing, as she still hasn't managed to start drawing elbows on people so they all have these weird bendy arms.

My chuckling soon turned to tears, however, as I suddenly realised that I had thrown £400 down on the 2-1 scoreline. But the score was actually 1-2, and I had just thrown away £400 in one second flat on a scoreline that was now completely unattainable.

With horror, I realised my mistake, but repeatedly hitting the scratch button was futile as my money was safely whisked away to some very gratful bank accounts of those sitting on the other side of the fence, waiting for hapless wankers such as myself.

So there you go. I did my bollocks in double-quick time doing something I still can't quite believe I did. It was a nasty, painful lesson, but I do believe it's done me some good. So, like the good boy that I am, I will take this medicine and go forward.


Football: £45.91 | Tote: |  Total P&L:  £45.91 

 

Football Showing 1 - 1 of 1 markets

Market Start time Settled date Profit/loss (£)
Football / Sp Lisbon v Ath Bilbao : Match Odds 19-Apr-12 20:05  19-Apr-12 21:57  45.91

Cometh the Hour, Cometh the Carroll

I see that Andy Carroll popped up with another late goal again over the weekend. I say “another” late goal, because it did strike me that, although he rarely scores, when he does so, he seems to score late on in a game.

This caught my attention for some reason, and I started to wonder exactly when he does tend to score within a game.

Now, I do realise that looking at these kind of correlations is normally an exercise in futility. At best they will only catch a passing trend and at worse they can provide a wholly false picture on which to base some losing actions… nonetheless, I thought I’d take a look anyway.

Of course, our Mr. Carroll’s goal tally has steadily dwindled over the past three years, so we also have a lack of decent data to play with (especially this year), but just for fun let’s look at the stats:

• In the 2009-10 season, Andy Carroll scored 17 goals. His average scoring time in that season was 45.88 minutes, with 53% of his goals coming in the second-half.
• In the 20010-11 season, he scored 13 goals. His average scoring time was 52.46 minutes, with 61.5% of those goals coming in the second-half.
• In the current season, our man has only scored 8 goals. The average scoring time is 68.75 minutes, with a huge 87.5% of those goals coming in the second-half. The only other goal he scored that wasn’t in the second-half, was scored at half-time.

As I say, this is all just whimsy on my part, and I don’t think these stats are going to really get us anywhere, but it does show that Carroll doesn’t really get going until the second-half of games (and often not even then). Over the course of the last three seasons, he’s steadily been scoring later and later. Maybe if you’re looking at betting on him in the goalscorer market, perhaps you should lay him as the first goalscorer as generally he won’t score before the hour.

Putting Carroll to one side, it could be interesting to see the average scoring time for all strikers in the EPL. We’d have to consider if players are substituted or not, but it may be that some players are generally better in certain sections of a game, perhaps they are fast starters or slow burners?

Something to think about for the future maybe.

 _________________________________________

As I've been a little remiss lately in posting, I thought I'd give an overall P/L for the current month. Unfortunately it's showing a negative value - with some unusually large gaffs on my part (please see the Celtic game from yesterday below!) which I don't believe I've regaled you with (may do later). However, it's all largely unimpressive this month. I do still hope to get into profit at some stage, thus continuing my trend of continued profit - but we'll just have to see how it pans out for the rest of the month.


Football: -£323.14 | Tote: |  Total P&L:  -£323.14 

 

Football Showing 1 - 20 of 66 markets

Market Start time Settled date Profit/loss (£)
Football / Arsenal v Wigan : Correct Score 16-Apr-12 20:00  16-Apr-12 22:01  90.45
Football / Arsenal v Wigan : Over/Under 4.5 Goals 16-Apr-12 20:00  16-Apr-12 22:01  11.50
Football / Dynamo Dresden v Fortuna Dusseldorf : Correct Score 16-Apr-12 19:15  16-Apr-12 21:06  50.51
Football / Arsenal v Wigan : Over/Under 2.5 goals 16-Apr-12 20:00  16-Apr-12 20:24  0.00
Football / Barclays Premier League : Winner 2011/12 13-Aug-11 15:00  16-Apr-12 10:31  15.95
Football / Tottenham v Chelsea : Correct Score 15-Apr-12 18:00  15-Apr-12 19:41  12.60
Football / Tottenham v Chelsea : Over/Under 3.5 Goals 15-Apr-12 18:00  15-Apr-12 19:36  0.00
Football / Tottenham v Chelsea : Over/Under 1.5 Goals 15-Apr-12 18:00  15-Apr-12 19:09  -192.10
Football / Man Utd v Aston Villa : Correct Score 15-Apr-12 16:00  15-Apr-12 17:56  33.20
Football / St Etienne v Brest : Correct Score 15-Apr-12 16:00  15-Apr-12 17:51  50.51
Football / Syrianska FC v AIK : Correct Score 15-Apr-12 14:00  15-Apr-12 15:53  49.56
Football / Celtic v Hearts : Correct Score 15-Apr-12 12:45  15-Apr-12 14:43  -345.00
Football / Celtic v Hearts : Over/Under 2.5 goals 15-Apr-12 12:45  15-Apr-12 14:40  3.36
Football / Celta Vigo v Deportivo : Correct Score 15-Apr-12 11:00  15-Apr-12 12:51  50.46
Football / B Munich v Mainz : Correct Score 14-Apr-12 17:30  14-Apr-12 19:23  30.80
Football / B Munich v Mainz : Over/Under 2.5 goals 14-Apr-12 17:30  14-Apr-12 19:21  14.51
Football / B Munich v Mainz : Over/Under 1.5 Goals 14-Apr-12 17:30  14-Apr-12 19:21  9.02
Football / Leeds v Peterborough : Match Odds 14-Apr-12 15:00  14-Apr-12 16:56  9.52
Football / Burnley v Coventry : Match Odds 14-Apr-12 15:00  14-Apr-12 16:55  9.52
Football / Liverpool v Everton : Correct Score 14-Apr-12 12:30  14-Apr-12 14:26  46.29

 Pages: 1  2 3 4   of 4 Pages 

What Are The Chances?

I saw someone talking the other day about their idea of waiting until half-time in a match and then laying the current scoreline, "... as there is more value to be had".

I wondered what proof this person had available as they seemed very sure of themselves, but I asked myself if this was really true. Just because the odds are lower, does that necessarily make them value? Lower odds, it should be remembered, do not in themselves equate to value when laying. Thinking they do is a schoolboy error.

I suppose you can say that a loss won't hurt your bank as much as laying the 0-0 scoreline at the start of the match, but if we're seeking value, then we should really determine whether laying the current scoreline at half-time does represent value. The only way to do this is by looking at the data.

There is a well-known saying that "goals beget goals", and indeed there is some evidence to suggest that this is true - that if a goal or goals are scored early in a match, then there is a greater likelihood of further goals in the match; so it may be that if a goal is scored in the first-half, then bettors assume that there is more value available in laying the current scoreline at half-time as there "are bound" to be further goals in the second-half.

Last night, in the wee hours of the morning and after several Jack Daniels, I thought I'd take a look at the facts of these assumptions. Using data from the football-data website, I looked at the last five years worth of complete seasons in the English Premier League (so not including the current season). Using this data, I looked at four different scenarios:

Matches that were 0-0 at half-time
Matches that were 1-0 at half-time
Matches that were 0-1 at half-time
Matches that were 1-1 at half-time

Using these scenarios, I then set out to verify the number of times each available scoreline was recorded at full-time under those situations throughout the last five seasons.

The table of results can be seen in the downloadable spreadsheet (below), but the headline facts are that if a match is 0-0 at half-time, there is still a 27.32% chance (or fair odds of 3.66) of the match finishing 0-0.

Well I don't know about you, but I've rarely seen odds being offered at 3.66 or below at half-time, which would seem to indicate that there is no value here.

Okay, what about the other scenarios? What about 1-0, 0-1 and 1-1 at half-time?

1-0: 22.70% chance of remaining 1-0 (fair odds of 4.41)
0-1: 20.20% chance of remaining 0-1 (fair odds of 4.95)
1-1: 23.56% chance of remaining 1-1 (fair odds of 4.24)

Again, no value to be had here, as these scorelines are generally priced higher at half-time than 0-0. So it looks like our confident friend was barking up the wrong tree.

So does this mean there are no value scorelines that we can lay at half-time? Possibly - but this would be up to you to find out.

Take 0-1 full-time after 0-0 in the first-half. Fair odds for the game to finish at 0-1 are 7.66. There does seem to be a slight trend away from this scoreline (17, 20, 17, 13 and only 9 last year. So far there are seven 0-1s this season if 0-0 at half-time). I estimate for evenly-matched teams, the odds of 0-1 at half-time should be around 5.6 to 5.8, so there may just possibly be a little bit of value in laying 0-1 under certain games... but it doesn't look massively significant to me.

Anyway, all the tables are below. Have a look for yourselves and maybe you can spot some opportunities there.

Download results here.

It Worked

Just a quickie as I'm going out to Brighton for the day (so no trading today).

My post of a week or so ago entitled Guaranteed Winning Betfair Strategies! is already in the top five of my all time most popular posts out of 115, so that seems to be pretty conclusive evidence that the title has unduly influenced the hit count. That's something I find rather amusing.

__________________________________

Little bit of trading yesterday. Going to miss the televised games today, but hopefully will be trading tomorrow.

Football: £72.26 | Tote: |  Total P&L:  £72.26 

 

Football Showing 1 - 5 of 5 markets

Market Start time Settled date Profit/loss (£)
Football / Barnsley v West Ham : Over/Under 4.5 Goals 06-Apr-12 17:15  06-Apr-12 19:15  0.82
Football / Swansea v Newcastle : Correct Score 06-Apr-12 16:30  06-Apr-12 18:32  30.19
Football / Swansea v Newcastle : Over/Under 2.5 goals 06-Apr-12 16:30  06-Apr-12 18:32  36.71
Football / Barnsley v West Ham : Over/Under 2.5 goals 06-Apr-12 17:15  06-Apr-12 17:55  5.26
Football / Barclays Premier League : Winner 2011/12 13-Aug-11 15:00  06-Apr-12 15:05  -0.72

Trading Habits Part II

I had a timely comment on my blog today. The comment was on my Trading Habits post from last month and it's timely because today I'm going to go through the last ten habits from this month's Trading Magazine.

h haller wrote:

Hi there.
"1. Wealthy traders are patient with winning trades and enormously impatient with losing trades.
Nothing new here. This is a well-worn motto about letting winning positions run and cutting losing positions quickly."

I'm still quite new to all this. Already managing to make some profit, but still testing the waters so to speak. I'm curious as to what 'let winning positions run' really means... how does one know how long to let them running? I mean, let for long enough, there's always the chance that a winner becomes a loser right? Or am I misunderstanding what a 'winning position' really is?

It's a good question. How exactly do you know in the first place that you should keep a trade going? Unfortunately I don't think there is a straightforward answer to this question. Largely it comes with experience, but it's also down to self-recognition. If you are in a winning position in a trade, what is your reaction? Are you looking at the trade dispassionately, looking at the angles? Are you looking at the optimum exit position, and determining what you will do if the trade starts to turn against you? Or are you doing none of these things, but are instead feeling anxiety? You have to be honest with yourself here. Are you sweating on the money that you think you're winning, and thinking to yourself that you must get out to ensure at least some kind of win? If you are, then you're probably the type of trader that does indeed cut short winning positions.

_________________________________

Okay, onto Part II of Trading Habits from the magazine. 

11. Wealthy traders realise the market will be open again tomorrow.
This is something that Peter Webb has spoken about on a number of occasions, and it's all about not stressing or worrying that you're missing out on something good, or admonishing yourself because you have missed out on something good. A new opportunity is always just around the corner.

12. Wealthy traders never add to a losing position. Ever
Self-explanatory. Don't pile misery onto misery - and always protect your bank.  Don't add to losing positions, hoping it will turn, and don't allow losses go beyond your stop loss.

13. Wealthy traders judge their trading success on anything but money.
This doesn't mean the money is irrelevant. It is of course what it's all about. But when trading, don't consider the money, and don't set money goals. Make your goals compliance with all your trading rules, or make it successfully spotting a pattern in a trade. Anything but the money.

14. Wealthy traders read to improve.
Read as many good trading books that you can get your hands on. Some are more concerned with psychology rather than trading in itself, but all can help to improve you as a trader. Some of the books mentioned in the article are "The Wisdom of Crowds, by James Surowlecki, "The Art of Strategy" by Avinash Dixit and Barry Nalebuff and"Markets, Mobs and Mayhem" by Robert Menschel.

15. Wealthy traders see themselves as market makers.
This is a rather subtle point, but even if you're not physically a market maker, the point is to try and influence and manage any market you trade differently to all the sheep out there who are jumping on a so-called winner. Try to take charge and view things in a different light. Be the actor, not the reactor.

16. Wealthy traders practice reading the right side of the chart, not the left.
Not particularly relevant to me, but perhaps it is to all pre-event horse racing traders. For those who like a good candlestick pattern, it's quite easy to look at what's gone before and see the pattern of the race... but how good are you at determining what's about to happen? Money is made AS the pattern is developing, not afterwards.

17. Wealthy traders have an "edge" in the market.
'Nuff said.

18. Wealthy traders determine position size based on risk, not round number.
Don't say, "Oh, I'll whack a ton on this", but instead work-out what is the maximum exposure that you are comfortable with and then work backwards from there. Just using round numbers could mean that you are taking on more risk than you are really prepared to handle.

19. Wealthy traders buy strong markets and sell weak markets.
I like this one. Basically it's saying that you shouldn't be looking for "tops" or "bottoms" of a market, don't look for the trend change, but instead trade the trend itself. The peaks and troughs may only be 20 per cent of the chart, whilst 80 per cent is the trend in between. While this is strong, trade it. Stop looking for reversals.

20. Wealthy traders play the reaction, not the news.
Don't try to predict the way the market will react to certain news, but instead trade the reaction itself.

Okay, well, I've cut the shit out of the article just to give you the bullet points, but hopefully at least one of these will be helpful to you in your trading.

_________________________________

I traded the correct scores in a couple of the Europa games tonight. There were always going to be plenty of goals so it was quite a relaxed evening. If I'd been more in the mood, I could have probably done a lot better than I did. Still relatively happy though.

Soccer: £107.96 | Tote: |  Total P&L:  £107.96 

 

Soccer Showing 1 - 3 of 3 markets

Market Start time Settled date Profit/loss (£)
Soccer / Metalist v Sp Lisbon : Correct Score 05-Apr-12 20:05  05-Apr-12 21:58  50.73
Soccer / Hannover v Atl Madrid : Correct Score 05-Apr-12 20:05  05-Apr-12 21:57  50.51
Soccer / Ath Bilbao v Schalke : Correct Score 05-Apr-12 20:05  05-Apr-12 21:55  6.72