Author Archive: Peter Webb

What’s working in Euro 2016

As we move into the knockout stage, let’s review what’s happened in the Euro’s so far from a market perspective.

Turnover

The first thing to note is that the volumes are down a fair bit from Euro 2012 on Betfair. In 2012 in the group stages the lowest turnover match was £7.7m before the off and £17.8m at the end of the match. This year it was a paltry £1.6m and £3.3m, slightly lower than in 2012! I think it’s best …

Trading Royal Ascot

And so here we are another year, another Ascot.

Ascot is obviously a big deal and, generally, I target it to be at least the second biggest week of the year. I’ll look to do more in a week than I can normally do in a month, so it’s a significant meeting. Wall to wall, quality racing, from Tuesday till Saturday. You also get the added bonus of lots of drunk people places bets on horses because they like the name 🙂

But

Volume is not liquidity

I was at a meeting last week and was at pains to point out the difference between volume and liquidity. I’ll save the detail for another post at some point in the future, but here is a simple view and some examples, using just £100 stakes.

If you come on any of the courses we run, I’m happy to talk you through the strategy. It’s simple easy and really effective at tournaments like Euro 2016.

Stuffed full of cash

Are England just unlucky? No!

When brushing up for the Euro’s I had a good look at prior records to see if there were any trends. One of things that stood out was England’s terrible opening game record.

Since this Euro’s started in 1960 England have never won their opening game, a proud record that was upheld yesterday. So in 15 competitions spanning 52 years. It will be at least 56 years before England win their opening game of the tournament, possibly more. An amazing record, …

Deep breath

Here we go, summer starts right here!

I must admit to being a bit tired already, which isn’t great planning. But from this point on we have a really busy schedule ahead of us starting tonight. It’s the same every other year. Major footy championship, Ascot, Wimbledon, Cricket and half a dozen other sporting events combine to produce a smorgasbord of opportunity.

Over the next few weeks, you can trade very high quality and high liquidity markets in quick succession in a …

The Oak’s Betfair’s first ever market

So today we reach the Oaks and tomorrow the Derby when the summer racing really starts to step up a gear. The start of June means Royal Ascot is just around the corner.

If you are a Betfair newbie you may not know that the Oaks at Epsom was Betfair’s first market way back when they started in June 2000. But it was a little later that year, on June 11th. Mark Davis reminisced on his blog about it. I …

One Bank Holiday you may want to trade

Bank holidays can be a bit of mare. Four billion horses, racing over a thousand meetings. OK, A slight exaggeration there, but you get the picture. Too much racing, too many courses, not enough quality and everything falling over itself.

But today that actually isn’t the case and generally isn’t on this holiday. We have a lot of runners and they are spread many races, but the card is lined up well. That means, even allowing for later starts, it’s unlikely that …

Monaco Grand Prix

The Gym I belong to had a new joiner that I started speaking to last year, he is an ex-racing driver. He has given me some valuable insight into the racing world from behind the wheel!  He told me Hamilton would struggle this year and that Red Bull stood a good chance of pole position at Monaco. I’m all ears now when I chat to him now!!!

For a view of the race from behind a spreadsheet, read on…

You

Tennis vs Football

Some of the overriding factors in trading are opportunity, position placement and money management. Get any of these out of kilter and your trading strategy goes up in smoke.

Let’s look at Tennis and Football to understand what I mean.

Skill differences are slight across a lot of sport, but have you noticed how there can be some wildly uncompetitive matches in Tennis but in Football the opponents always seem to have a chance?

Football

Football is a game dominated by two factors. One …

York Dante Meeting

After a successful Chester meeting we roll onto York for the Dante meeting this week.

The York card looks good with plenty of group racing, but the other stuff on the card today looks a little ‘testing’. For a direct comparison look at the prize money. Kempton has a grand total of £18.4k, York £191.5k. I’ll be cautious and use small stakes at the smaller meetings as a result.

As we move through the early part of the flat turf season, the