It's that time of year again when we are supposed to reflect on things spiritual and to review how well we measured up to those rash promises mumbled in a drunken haze nearly 12 months ago.
You might have noticed that my postings have been dropping off a bit of late. This is nothing to do with a lack of trading, more to do with a complete lack of anything interesting to write about!
Hopefully the creative juices will start flowing again in 2013 but for now I wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
Until 2013.
Sunday, 23 December 2012
Friday, 14 December 2012
Value laying in the Correct Score market
I have written previously about the opportunities presented by the Any Unquoted score in the Correct Score market. Just this week there have been two matches that I have noticed, and traded, both of which featured very low AU prices at kick off. One was in South America a night or two ago, but tonight there was a price on offer which really just had to be taken on.
In 16 Bundesliga matches prior to tonight Bayern Munich had scored 4 or more goals twice at home and once away from home. No opponent has so far been able to knock four or more past the Bavarians. Their opponents, Borussia Moenchengladbach (and I'm not going to type that bloody lot out every time! - let them be 'BMG'!), had played the same number of games and had conceded 4 or more twice, both times away from home. They had recorded 1 AU scoreline in their favour so far this season.
So in 32 games involving these two sides so far an AU score had been recorded on 6 occasions. Put another way it occurred 18.75% of the total. Yet I was able to take AU on at odds of 2.98 to lay pre kick off. The implied percentage of those odds is c33%. For those of you as inept at the maths of betting / trading as I am that is to say the market saw the possibility of four or more goals at approximately twice that suggested by the trend from 32 games.
In my mind's eye the odds on offer at kick off were roughly what I would have expected to see with Bayern a goal to the good after say fifteen minutes. To be honest my original intention was to have stayed in the trade for about twenty minutes before backing AU with the same stake as my original £50 lay and await the onslaught of goals for a free bet on that score. BMG, however, had other ideas and took the lead after about that period of time, whilst I was still in the trade. (As an aside, I noticed that 0-1 had been taken at prices north of 50 just before the penalty was awarded - it was 9.6 at half time so some made a good few quid there I'd think). The nice thing about AU is that it is normally very low only if there is a massive favourite. If the underdog scores first the market doesn't react in anywhere near the same fashion as it would had the favourites scored first. So I decided to tough it out and stick with the trade.
All credit to BMG - they held on at 0-1 until some way into the second half and ended up taking a very well earned point home with them. I ended up taking the liability out of the lay as the price headed into the 8's and just let it run all the way home from there.
These opportunities happen several times in a season and I for one actively seek them out. Sure it's a bit of a liability laying at odds of between 3 and 5 but in my opinion it's always worth looking beyond the obvious ' team A is gonna spank team B' kind of assumption - which is what effectively happened with this market. Give it a go with modest stakes and you'll see what I mean.
In 16 Bundesliga matches prior to tonight Bayern Munich had scored 4 or more goals twice at home and once away from home. No opponent has so far been able to knock four or more past the Bavarians. Their opponents, Borussia Moenchengladbach (and I'm not going to type that bloody lot out every time! - let them be 'BMG'!), had played the same number of games and had conceded 4 or more twice, both times away from home. They had recorded 1 AU scoreline in their favour so far this season.
So in 32 games involving these two sides so far an AU score had been recorded on 6 occasions. Put another way it occurred 18.75% of the total. Yet I was able to take AU on at odds of 2.98 to lay pre kick off. The implied percentage of those odds is c33%. For those of you as inept at the maths of betting / trading as I am that is to say the market saw the possibility of four or more goals at approximately twice that suggested by the trend from 32 games.
In my mind's eye the odds on offer at kick off were roughly what I would have expected to see with Bayern a goal to the good after say fifteen minutes. To be honest my original intention was to have stayed in the trade for about twenty minutes before backing AU with the same stake as my original £50 lay and await the onslaught of goals for a free bet on that score. BMG, however, had other ideas and took the lead after about that period of time, whilst I was still in the trade. (As an aside, I noticed that 0-1 had been taken at prices north of 50 just before the penalty was awarded - it was 9.6 at half time so some made a good few quid there I'd think). The nice thing about AU is that it is normally very low only if there is a massive favourite. If the underdog scores first the market doesn't react in anywhere near the same fashion as it would had the favourites scored first. So I decided to tough it out and stick with the trade.
All credit to BMG - they held on at 0-1 until some way into the second half and ended up taking a very well earned point home with them. I ended up taking the liability out of the lay as the price headed into the 8's and just let it run all the way home from there.
These opportunities happen several times in a season and I for one actively seek them out. Sure it's a bit of a liability laying at odds of between 3 and 5 but in my opinion it's always worth looking beyond the obvious ' team A is gonna spank team B' kind of assumption - which is what effectively happened with this market. Give it a go with modest stakes and you'll see what I mean.
Wednesday, 5 December 2012
Champions League opportunities
Eddie over at A Football Trader's Path has an interesting analysis of tonight's Group E fixtures which is worth a read. It's a subject which caused a bit of debate the other night in the Trading Football chatroom where numerous voices were shouting 'fix' very loudly.
The prices for the Shaktar v Juventus game do look suspiciously like a suspiciously obvious fix such that you might find in a late season Serie B or Serie C game in Italy. But, as Eddie says, there are reasons other than the obvious 'fix' why prices should be as they are. So let's take a theoretical 'what if' look at the competition as a whole from the context of Group E, and see if there's a low liability angle we might be able to exploit.
The Champions League is set up in such a way that there are very definite benefits to finishing first in the qualifying group stage. If we work on the basic assumption that any team in this competition would rather not play the likes of Barca, Real, Bayern and Man U in a knock out tie I think we would be on safe ground! Ordinarily I'd include the mighty Blues in that list but as we know they can't join that exclusive group this year, and with all the managerial shenanigans etc probably would not be as feared as the others anyway.
So, hopefully we can all agree that both Juve and Shaktar would a) like to qualify for the next stage and b) would both prefer to top the group. Shaktar don't need to worry about the former, they are through (and probably liking the thought of drawing the gooners in round two :-) ). I doubt at this stage that either side are looking too far beyond the second round, but if I were the Shaktar boss I think I'd rather face Chelsea again than Juventus as it stands at the moment. So with this particular match I see no advantage to Shaktar in sitting back and taking a 0-0! Both teams have to try to win in my view, and on that basis the value I see in the Group E dynamic is a lay of Juve to qualify (1.32 at the time of writing).
Turning to the other game, I'll start by saying that having considered the appointment of Benitez since my last post / rant about it I now have concluded that I have just two questions:
1) Why on earth did Abramovich want to offer the job to Benitez?
2) Even more perplexing, why on earth did Benitez want to accept it?
But be that as it may it is clear that the Blues are far from firing on all cylinders, and that a hostile reaction from the faithful at the Bridge tonight is all but a given. They should walk this game, but with recent events I'm afraid (as a Chelsea supporter) that I find myself wondering if 1.13 is far too low a price. I'm not going to lay them, although I might regret that decision, but will rather be looking for the Blues to go ahead against the Danes preferably quite early in the evening and for Shaktar to get a goal against the Italians.
Two other games catch my eye this evening as being potential Scatter Gun opportunities - namely the matches between Celtic and Moscow and Lillte v Sevilla.
Good luck if you're trading the CL tonight!
The prices for the Shaktar v Juventus game do look suspiciously like a suspiciously obvious fix such that you might find in a late season Serie B or Serie C game in Italy. But, as Eddie says, there are reasons other than the obvious 'fix' why prices should be as they are. So let's take a theoretical 'what if' look at the competition as a whole from the context of Group E, and see if there's a low liability angle we might be able to exploit.
The Champions League is set up in such a way that there are very definite benefits to finishing first in the qualifying group stage. If we work on the basic assumption that any team in this competition would rather not play the likes of Barca, Real, Bayern and Man U in a knock out tie I think we would be on safe ground! Ordinarily I'd include the mighty Blues in that list but as we know they can't join that exclusive group this year, and with all the managerial shenanigans etc probably would not be as feared as the others anyway.
So, hopefully we can all agree that both Juve and Shaktar would a) like to qualify for the next stage and b) would both prefer to top the group. Shaktar don't need to worry about the former, they are through (and probably liking the thought of drawing the gooners in round two :-) ). I doubt at this stage that either side are looking too far beyond the second round, but if I were the Shaktar boss I think I'd rather face Chelsea again than Juventus as it stands at the moment. So with this particular match I see no advantage to Shaktar in sitting back and taking a 0-0! Both teams have to try to win in my view, and on that basis the value I see in the Group E dynamic is a lay of Juve to qualify (1.32 at the time of writing).
Turning to the other game, I'll start by saying that having considered the appointment of Benitez since my last post / rant about it I now have concluded that I have just two questions:
1) Why on earth did Abramovich want to offer the job to Benitez?
2) Even more perplexing, why on earth did Benitez want to accept it?
But be that as it may it is clear that the Blues are far from firing on all cylinders, and that a hostile reaction from the faithful at the Bridge tonight is all but a given. They should walk this game, but with recent events I'm afraid (as a Chelsea supporter) that I find myself wondering if 1.13 is far too low a price. I'm not going to lay them, although I might regret that decision, but will rather be looking for the Blues to go ahead against the Danes preferably quite early in the evening and for Shaktar to get a goal against the Italians.
Two other games catch my eye this evening as being potential Scatter Gun opportunities - namely the matches between Celtic and Moscow and Lillte v Sevilla.
Good luck if you're trading the CL tonight!
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