Germany 2 - England 3

An unexpected comeback from 2 - 0 by a strangely resilient England.

My usual stance for England in big away internationals is to lay, since they are in a perpetual rebuilding phase.  Hodgson has done well with the side, with a great qualifying record.

So my initial bet was to lay £10 @ 5.9   Win: £10 Lose: £49

When it reaches 2 - 2, I decide to cash out - England are playing like Germany and Germany like England!

The cash out does:

    Lay England: £10 @ 5.9: Win: £10 Lose: £49
    Lay Draw:  £47.96 @ 1.23   Win: £47.95 Lose: £11.03
    Lay Germany: £6.14 @ 9.60  Win: £6.14 Lose: £52.80

So overall we're covered with:

     England Win: £47.96 + £6.14 - £49      = £5.10
     Draw: £10 + £6.13 - £11.03             = £5.10
     Germany Win: £10 + £47.95 - £52.80     = £5.15

The Back and the Lay

Trading on betting exchanges has been around a long time, but is probably in decline because of the perceived complexity, and lack of competition meaning that the monopoly site can keep commission charges high.  The promise over traditional bookmakers is more competitive prices, the betting site is just sitting as a middle man taking a commision on winnings and has no stake in the event outcome.

It is still an interesting thing to look at to understand the concepts.

If we have a backing bet of B and a lay bet of L at decimal odds of O_b and O_l respectively then the profit P made is:

Selection Wins:

          P =  B*O_b - L*O_l


Selection Loses:

         P = L - B

The idea with trading is to back and lay during the lifetime of the event so that you build a profit if the selection wins or loses.

So the conditions for P > 0 are:

       L > B    - i.e. your lay bet stake must exceed your back stake

     B*O_b > L*O_l  - i.e your bet odss/stake must exceed your lay odds/stake

The conditions for the value of P being some sought after profit margin after first backing, now if the offs O_l are available:

    L = B + P  - builds in P as a profit on selection win

    L = (B*O_b - P ) / O_l &nbsp - Tells us lay stake needed to profit P at the lay odds

Betting Results 2011-2012

Last year I started tracking my sports betting - I do not bet much per event but it is a way of keeping interest in things like football, as I've long since been an avid fan.

So the year is up how did I do?

Name	Value
Total staked	£626.05
Avg Odds	2.31
Profit/Loss	-£17.75
Avg Profit Per Week	-0.40

A breakdown by sport:

	Total	Won	Lost	% Win
Football	406	195	201	48.03
Tennis	35	27	8	77.14
F1	30	22	8	73.33

This year I am trying some different approaches:

1. A cleaned up spreadsheet with weeks properly demarcated.
2. A virtual bets to test out some more outlandish odds.

Betfair Betting Problem

A few red faces at Betfair, a runner stays matched at 28-1 even after crossing the line...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/horseracing/8981353/Betfair-faces-backlash-after-in-running-fiasco-over-Leopardstown-Christmas-Hurdle.html

Apparently £21m matched leading to an exposure of around £600m.

Clearly a systems fault - as Betfair are suggesting, any punter with that much on their account would be highly unlikely (unless George Osborne is getting desperate!).

So they are not going to honour the bets, to do so would probably banrupt them! - but still very bad publicity and the last thing they need.

Watching the odds

I tracked some prices of the England v Spain friendly football international yesterday. Betfair provide an open access API and some sample code that is easily modified to watch the price data over time. Spain were favourites and England were expected to struggle. In the end England despite missing some big names were resolute and saw out the Spanish pressure, managed to score a set piece goal, and held out for the 1-0. This had better not make them favourites for Euro 2012!

First of all stake over time:

My graphs are per minute, with about 30 minutes pre match included. A staggering £8 million changed hands! Next the bets for the home win with implied percentage (interestingly Betfair call the outcomes "runners" in their sample code, betraying their horse betting roots):

The Lampard goal clearly evident, England were drifting as time went on - the market reacting to their dogged defensive work.
The draw as implied percentage:

The away win as implied percentage, you can see Spain throw it away...

Betfair new CEO

I read today that Betfair are going to announce a new CEO, recruiting the Chief Operating Officer from the online traditional bookmaker PaddyPower.

An interesting move they have had a lot of bad press, they seem to be throwing away and stagnating a fundamentally good idea. Maybe it is a case of you can only go so many places from where they are now, and there is not the scope to expand the business (although I am sure a lot of other businesses would love to have the opportunities of the market Betfair are in).

I use both sites for some low stakes fun betting. PaddyPower seems the most commercialised, incentives, and special offers based. In some ways that can be a distraction but at least the mechanics of actually betting do not get interfered with. They always market their offers as a fun thing and not as a cold business transaction.

Betfair on the other hand feels like a clean unchanging interface, I actually find it very functional and unfussy. They do a lot of former sportsmen "name" sponsorship which I always feel is a waste of time. These people only seem to get advertised on the site, and by definition you already know about Betfair if you are looking at their site!

So I hope the new CEO can sort out some of the problems they seem to encounter, supposed platform reliability, lack of growth opportunities. I wonder if they may even start to look at the high commissions charged, after all 5% is what the traditional bookmaker will build into their odds - and Betfair have always promoted themselves as better than the bookies - let's start seeing more evidence!

Betting profit and loss

For a few years now I've done some low stakes betting, I term it micro-betting to keep my enthusiasm for sport - especially football going.

But I've never really tracked profit and loss, just bet within my initial budget. I do have memories of building up one account from around £10 to nearly £50 but that was eeking things out over a couple of years.

So this year, with the start of the new season upon us, I've decided to use a spreadsheet to track things. Hardly revolutionary, but I used Google Docs - very impressed with it for a basic spreadsheet like this, and I can access it from whereever I am.

Lets hope there is no cloud outage.

Formula 1 - Bahrain

The season starts in Bahrain. Alonso an easy winner, from Massa and a Ferrari 1-2. All became clear after Vettel's reliability problem. Mclaren a little disappointing, Schumacher beaten by his team mate.

Also the return of the world's quickest bet, first lap leader - pretty consistently the guy who has qualified on pole.

Looks like the rule changes on refueling could make for an interesting season.