The Masters and other musings

You might have noticed that I'm finding it harder and harder to come up with anything to write about these days! I have thought about gracefully retiring from the scene, but I'll leave that thought alone for the time being.

Despite the controversy over Tiger's misplaced ball, his 'rules is rules' opinion of the rather heavy handed penalty meted out to an extremely talented 14 year old and lots of rain on the final day I had an excellent four days trading The Masters. A lay of Mickelson in the hitherto un-noticed (by me, at any rate!) 'Top Lefty' market yielded a nice return even if Bubba did try his damndest to score higher than 'Lefty' by taking a 10 at the  par three 12th and frightening the life out of me! On the main market, lays of Tiger and Rory coupled with a smattering of small stakes large odds back bets together with live scalping on days three and four gave me a very healthy return on the event as a whole.

I'm still slogging away at the football trading, but think I'm at a point where I know what I'm doing, have done all the experimentation and am comfortable in my particular style of trading. I'm sure there's lots still to learn, and a post by the Sultan pretty well confirms this to be the case. This piece is well worth reading, especially if you are newish to sports trading. To be honest the final point (5) that he raises is still, after all this time, the one I struggle with. In fact this is so much the case that I have resigned myself to just enjoying trading - I don't think I have the necessary intestinal fortitude to fully conquer the discipline area of trading.

Eddie over at A Football Trader's Path has a couple of excellent posts about back testing trading ideas that you might have. Despite his protestations to the contrary I think he is a bit of an Excel wizard, and the sheets he's come up with are, in my opinion, well worth having a good look at. Despite what I have written above it is fair to say that since I started record keeping and looking at trades beyond a casual glance 5 minutes before kick off that my results have improved in leaps and bounds. A working knowledge of software tools like Excel helps with this no end, and the data is out there for you to access, assimilate and interpret.

Cassini is back from his company beano to the mountains and the US of A, saying, Twainesquely, that reports of his demise were premature.

In his post he makes the point that since he has been the subject of Super PC that he is a less frequent visitor to the markets. I can't say that I blame him for this - but the way he put it did get me wondering. He used the phrase 'the Premium Charge has done its job' in making him more circumspect about his activity on the site. Surely, not even Betfair are stupid enough to really want to force players like Cassini away from the markets, are they? The justification for the SPC is that they don't make enough money from the exchange model by charging ordinary mortals like me a mere 5% or so commission and that big winners should pay more to use the site. A cynical observer might suggest that they spend more time looking after their exchange customers instead of trying to compete with the big sports books, let alone their fixation with all the silly gaming ventures. The almost weekly Saturday meltdowns of their servers right in the middle of big racing and soccer cards must have forced still others to rethink some of their habits. Disappointingly there is little evidence that Laddaq are doing much about it, manifesto promises or not!

No round up of interesting posts around the blogosphere would be complete without a mention in dispatches for Betting Blogs Exposed. 'A running commentary on the best and worst betting blogs out there.' I read this blog a while ago and thought the premise was a good one - in a 'sort the wheat from the chaff' sort of way. On this blog, I mused, you'd probably find details of dodgy tennis trading ebooks with a limited production run of 3m copies at a special introductory price of £97. But, sadly, I'm none the wiser. To see the 'expose' in all its glory you need - wait for it - a password! Priceless!

Are Football Traders missing a trick?

I don't know how many millions were matched in the various markets available on the Chelsea v Man U FA Cup replay on Easter Monday, or in the two Champions League matches tonight. All these games, plus several other lower (but still high-ish) profile games swallow most of the liquidity on Betfair at any one point in time. Fair enough; the competitions and clubs involved are 'glamorous' and the games usually televised.

I just wonder what would happen if some of those traders broadened their horizons a bit and looked more closely at some of the less glamorous leagues and competitions. I am looking at an Icelandic Cup Tie scheduled for tomorrow evening and there is currently £23 matched on the Match Odds market and Sweet Felicity Arkwright on the Correct Score market. This is a shame, as I wouldn't be surprised if this one game nets more goals than both the multi-million pound Champions League games manage between them. I for one find football trading a) easier b) more profitable and c) much more fun if there are goals!

I expect by the time the game kicks off there'll be enough money floating around for me to make a trade, but if you've never strayed beyond the big leagues and the televised games please do have a look around. You might be pleasantly surprised!