Further to my post on Bookies and Tipsters I will be following Hugh Taylors Tips and Backing each one for a £5.00 Profit with SkyBet. Not at the advised odds but at whatever odds are available at the time but because Skybet like to pay out on extra places and offer few races with Best Odds Guaranteed I will be backing them at SP with a stake that will give a £5.00 profit at the odds given at the time.
Only one selection today and is as Follows
Lingfield 8:15 Advised Odds 9/1 (10.0) Odds available at 09:30 : 4/1 (5.0) Stake 1.25 Result –
Yesterday I backed Hugh Taylors 3 selections at S.P. Here’s what happened (If you have just happened upon this post and are thinking why would I back a horse at SP when the price is steaming in please read the post I did on researching his April Selections the link is immediately below and will open in a new tab)
First to run was Gutsy Girl which was advised at odds of 4/1 (5.0) I backed it at 11:45 at S.P but the odds available then was 5/2 (3.5) Unfortunately it could only manage 3rd place.
Gutsy Girl (3rd)
Profit is Plummeting and the next to run was Valkyrian in the 8:45 at Windsor Advised at Publication at 16/1 (17.0) Stake was 67p at S.P. as available odds had halved to 15/2 (8.5) S.P. Odds recovered to 12/1 (13.0) which would have been nice if it had won instead of coming 7th
Valkyrian (7th)
With another 67p knocked off the profit the last runner on Hughs list was Coin Power. Advised at odds of 10/1 (11.0) by the time I got my 91p on at 11:45 the odds had dropped to 11/2 (6.5) By Post time the S.P. was 7/1 so again disappointing not to have surpassed advised odds but had it of won instead of coming 8th then I would have a profit of £6.37 instead of my target fiver.
Coin Power (8th)
Numerous people have now pointed out to me that S.P. is a poor bet and I agree but in all of the runners so far this month all have been above the odds available at the time the bet was struck so that with any other bookie than SkyBet Best Odds Guaranteed would have been applicable and instead of backing at S.P. I would have taken the offered odds for my Guaranteed fiver if it won. The sole purpose of this study if you like is to try and make people see that, yes the bookies decimate the odds to capitalize on the faithful which to my mind is despicable, but the odds can and do recover sometimes to a mark greater than the advised price at publication time. Its a good job Hugh had a couple of winners Saturday because my Profit is now down to £5.03
Today I backed Hugh Taylors sole selection at S.P. (If you have just happened upon this post and are thinking why would I back a horse at SP when the price is steaming in please read the post I did on researching his April Selections the link is immediately below and will open in a new tab)
Todays Selection was Cargin Bhui which ran at Hamilton this evening. Advised odds were 11/4 but just 1 hour later those odds had been cut to 2/1 Working to a profit of £5.00 per winner I staked £2.50 to Win at S.P. in the hope that the odds drifted towards post time A very close 2nd place has reduced my June Profit to £8.61
S.P. as you can see was 3/1 Another selection where S.P. was greater than the advised odds 👍
Further to my post on Bookies and Tipsters I will be following Hugh Taylors Tips and Backing each one for a £5.00 Profit with SkyBet. Not at the advised odds but at whatever odds are available at the time but because Skybet like to pay out on extra places and offer few races with Best Odds Guaranteed I will be backing them at SP with a stake that will give a £5.00 profit at the odds given at the time.
Only one selection today and is as Follows
6:10 Hamilton Cargin Bhui Advised Odds 11/4 (3.75) Odds available at 10:30 : 2/1 (3.0) Stake 2.50 Result –
Yesterday I backed all four of Hugh Taylors ATR racing tips but instead of clamoring to get my money on before the odds disappeared I simply backed them at S.P. (If you have just happened upon this post and are thinking why would I back a horse at SP when the price is steaming in please read the post I did on researching his April Selections the link is immediately below and will open in a new tab)
First in the List was Sea of Thieves in the 2:00 at Epsom Downs at an advised price at publication of 14/1. This was published at 9:11 and by 10:30 the odds were 9/1. I backed this at S.P. for 56p which would have given me £5.00 profit if the odds stayed at 9/1 or a bonus amount if the odds drifted and by some miracle the horse won.
As you can see from the settled bet that the price did drift, not to the advised price but close and if it had won would have given a profit of £6.72 instead of the £5.00 at the 9/1 price.
Second to run was Billy Webster in the 3:10 again at Epsom. Published at 9:24 at advised odds of 10/1. I again backed this at S.P. for a stake of 83p as the odds available at 10:30 were down to 6/1
The calculation for these bets is simple Target profit / Decimal odds -1 £5.00 / (7.00 – 1)
By Post Time the odds had drifted to 14/1 which would have given a profit of £11.62 if it had won.
Taylors next selection to run was also at Epsom and he tipped Relentless Voyager in the 5:15 at an advised price of 13/2 (7.5) at the publication time of 9:03. By 10:30 these odds had sunk to 4/1 or 5.0 in decimal. Backed at S.P. for a stake of £1.00 to reap a £5.00 profit if the odds didn’t sink further.
As you can see the odds drifted out to 7/1 (8.0) at post time and the horse won giving a profit of £7.00 instead of the £5.00 target figure.
Taylors fourth and final runner was at Doncaster in the 6:15 and was published on the ATR website at 09:39. Wild Waves price was advised at 9/2 (5.50) at this time and an hour later was a mere 5/2 (3.50) on Sky Bet. Backed at S.P. for a £2.00 stake my target profit if the odds didn’t dip below this price and if the horse won would again be £5.00
As you can see from my settled bet slip This horse also won at 11/4 (3.75) and while the odds didn’t reach those of the advised price by a long chalk they did drift slightly from the 3.50 giving me a profit of £5.50
My Total profit from these four bets ended up at £11.11 from a total of £4.39 staked! Better than being poked in the eye with a sharp stick I think.
I know that if I had used another bookmaker that offered BOG then I would have had guaranteed odds and could have taken the price offered without fear of the odds dipping some more. As it is if I had taken the prices offered by SkyBet at the time of striking the bets then my profit would have been £8.61 – £2.50 less than my actual profit. If you had used the same staking method AND had been able to get the ADVISED prices then the profit would have been as follows
Sea of Thieves Advised odds 15.00 Stake 36p Lost P/L -36p Billy Webster Advised odds 11.00 Stake 50p Lost P/L -50p Relentless Voyager Advised odds 7.5 Stake 77p Won P/L £5.01 Wild Waves Advised odds 5.5 stake £1.11 Won P/L 4.99
If you are following this series of posts you will know that after day 1 the profit from backing every favourite stands at a total of £13.41 with the best performing track being Doncaster with a profit of £4.73. On 3rd March there were a total of 13 Meetings at tracks across the UK with the best performing track being Crayford with a profit of £5.12 This is in direct contrast to yesterdays loss of £3.85. If you remember from yesterday I touched on the race class figures and Open Races proved to be more profitable In this case Crayford was profitable in the Open Race category but If all open races throughout the day were backed by favourites there would have been a loss of £3.02. The most profitable race class was A7 which produced a profit of £5.71
As you can see from a screen shot of my Excel workbook I can also break down the distance within the race classes to provide a clear picture of which distance, track, and race class shows promise. Once March 31st data is in I will make the workbook available for all In the meantime keep reading the blog.
My total P/L for 3rd of March was a Loss of £3.42 making a total profit across the 2 days of £9.99
Betfair Historical Data has been, for some time now, openly available for free but it seems that no one is prepared to share just how you open the damned stuff!!! There are plenty of sites out there willing to share their python knowledge but stop short of a full explanation – very frustrating. At this point I have to give credit to “Trading The Market” guys who have finally given me the Eureka Moment! If you follow the steps below you will soon have all the research information to back test your systems. To begin with you do need to have a betfair account and to access which data you need you will need to be logged in and at the following page https://historicdata.betfair.com/#/home
For the purposes of this post I will be using the basic plan which costs nothing and has a data frequency of 1 minute. If you need more frequent data logs then you will have to purchase your data by the month but there are free plans available for limited months mainly in 2020. In this post I will be analysing the data from the North London Derby – Arsenal v Tottenham on the 1st October 2022 The easy way to handle this data is to “purchase” a month at a time so I will “Buy” the Soccer data from OCT 2022 To do this simply select the plan, sport, and month you need in the drop down boxes and click “Add to Purchases” and then the “purchase” as in the screen shot below
You will then be asked to confirm your purchase – Check that you haven’t included the wrong plan by mistake as the fee will be taken straight from your betfair balance. If everything is ok click confirm and you will see the following screen.
As you can see from the screen shot there are over 250000 markets! for our research we only need 3 or 4 of these so we need to find them. I want to know how the under/over Markets behaved when each goal went in during the match. To do this click on the “My Data” Tab as shown below and you will see your most recent purchases as well as plans you have bought before.
We now need to populate the down load fields with the information that we need so if we look at the match stats we can see that there were 4 goals scored in total.
I want to see the following market odds O/U 1.5 O/U 2.5 O/U 3.5 O/U 4.5 O/U 5.5 O/U 6.5 and the Match. To do this we need to populate the download files panel as follows:
In the Plan Box (which is at the top but hidden in this screen shot) enter Basic In the Sport Box enter Soccer In the From and Upto Boxes enter 1 Oct 2022 Leave the event ID Blank In the Event Name box enter Arsenal In the Market Type box select the markets you need and in this case its Match_Odds Over_Under_25 Over_Under_35 Over_Under_45 Over_Under_55 Over_Under_65 In the Country Box select GB (There is no UK) and in the File Type Box select M Click the Add to Downloads button You now should have 12 files ready to down load. Click the Yellow Download button
You will find this file in your downloads folder as a Data “tar” file
Double click the file to un pack it in your unzipping program
Keep double clicking until you get to the actual data files
You should now see your 6 “bz2” files To make them easy to find Create a new folder on your desktop and name it ARS v TOT
You can now drag and drop the files into this folder from your unpacking software
We now need to convert these files into a readable format and Betfair provide one such program easily available from their website.
The first file we want to see is the Match Odds and this will usually be the largest file as most volume would have passed through that market. In this case we are looking at File 1.203213491
These are not very user friendly file names so I am going to rename them. to do this we simply select a file from the list using the betfair Historical Data Processor as below and note the file number and which market it contains. In this case File 1.203213498 is the O/U 6.5 goals Market. We dont want to do anything else yet. We are just identifying the files for our convenience
We can then repeat the process with all the files noting the file numbers to the markets and then rename all the files as below
We are now going to convert these files into meaningful excel ranges where we can look at them in more detail. To do this we again select a file from the folder using the Historical Data Processor and click the download settings button as shown in the screenshot below
This will open the settings dialog box as shown below
We now need to populate our spreadsheet with any relevant information we will need by clicking the drop down box arrow and selecting the fields by ticking the relevant tick boxes (dont worry if you put too much info into the spreadsheet as we can delete it later)
Once you have selected what you need close the drop down box by clicking the “up” arrow and because we are just interested in the in play data slide the “preplay” button to off as shown below and click save
We are now ready to download the file as a CSV file into Excel we do this by simply clicking the “Download CSV” button as shown and let the wonders of better brains than our own do its stuff.
This will put a zipped file into your downloads folder with the original file number
If we double click this file it will unpack and be available as a csv file which we can open with excel.
It may be a good idea to move this file to a new folder on your desktop and rename it as I have done here
If we open this in excel this is what we get.
We can now start to manipulate the data to best suit our needs. We can start by removing some of the columns we dont need. I have removed the following columns to be left with the following spreadsheet. Market ID Selection ID
The next task is to make the published time more reader friendly. as you can see this is total jibberish, it means nothing. If you select cell A2, in the address window you will see that the full date and time is shown
So that column A shows the time in hrs and minutes we need to select hh:mm from the custom cell formats as shown below.
When we click ok then cell A2 will show the actual time of the published data for that row
To convert all the row simply select Column A and repeat
When you click ok your spreadsheet should look like this
you will notice that the times are repeated 3 times this is because there are 3 separate outcomes within this betfair market – Arsenal to win The Draw and Tottenham to win. If we now draw our attention to Column F this is the last traded price column and we could do with tidying up this so that all the figures are shown to 2 decimal places. To do this simply select Column F and using the cell number format dropdown box, select “Number” as shown below.
Your spreadsheet should now look something like this
A bit more tidying up by changing the column headers and this is what you should be looking at.
This is your basic data spreadsheet for the entire match for the Match Odds Market You can now save it into a folder and repeat the process with the other 5 markets
In my next post I will show you how to manipulate the data so that we can see what happened in each market as each goal went in
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With Wimbledon just around the corner I thought it might be interesting to explore the possibility of dutching the set betting market for the WTA as there is only 4 possible outcomes and using betangel’s dutching tool I can place orders into the market to ensure a 20% or better return on a £10 total stake. The french Open is currently at the 4th round stage in the WTA competition and there are just 4 matches today (Sunday 4th June 2023) The risk to reward on this is quite high depending on the odds offered. anything from a 50% risk up to a mighty 80% risk. In this exercise I will be placing the margin stake onto the favourites 2-0 score Match 1 Pavlyuchenkova v Mertens This is an evenly matched match where both players are at around even money to win the match. The screen shot below shows the bets placed
As you can see I have put the margin stake onto Mertens 2-0 scoreline at odds of 11 This is a massive risk to reward scenario as I am risking nearly 89% of my £10.00 stake for a 25% return. One of the factors that has helped me make this decision is that I have downloaded all the results from the previous 3 WTA French Opens into a spreadsheet and filtered the results into following criteria. 1. Winners price at the start of the match is between 1.90 and 2.10 2. 2-0 set result 3. 4th round matches only Having filtered these factors the resulting percentage of matches that ended 2-0 are just 3 from a total of 24 4th round matches – just 12.5% If we drill this down even further to include ALL matches that ended 2-0 where the winners odds were between 1.9 and 2.1 we find that from 381 WTA French Open matches that have been played in the previous 3 years there was just 20 that is just over 5% What we also have to remember is that we are only interested in the odds selected for movement only need to move so far in order to be matched. In close matches such as this a first set score of 5-5 could be enough to convince the market that the match could go to 3 sets.
As I said there are four 4th round matches today and the next one is between Muchiva and El Avanesyan Muchova is odds on favourite to win at odds of 1.27
In this dutching trade I am risking 53% of my stake for a 25% return While the risk to reward is much less than the previous match if we look at the spreadsheet and input the same figures in relation to this match ie where the Winning favourite was between 1.25 and 1.3 there was just 1 (one) match in the fourth round that ended 2-0 and just 21 out of all 381 French Open Matches from the previous 3 years.
The 3rd match of the day is between Svitolina and Kasatkina. Kasatkina is favourite at odds of 1.66 to win the match
The final match today is Stephens v Sabalenka where Sabalenka is 1.25 to win the match
With all dutch trades in place I will post the logs and final tally tomorrow My Maximum loss for these four trades should they all lose is £27.39 out of £40.00 My Maximum Profit is £10.17 This signifies a 37% reward to risk factor but considering the very basic research I explored I am hopeful for a 75% strike rate
Dutching a Tennis match may seem a little bizarre as there are only 2 players but with the volatility of the market during in-play it is possible to trade in this way by backing the underdog at the outset at the same time as placing a back bet order into the market at odds higher than the current odds with the view that it will get matched at some point during the match. Some pre match research is essential when attempting this sort of trade so that you know roughly at what point your order is likely to be matched. This is done primarily with Bet Angels “Tennis Trader” tool. If you have read my previous posts on trading tennis you will know that this can be an invaluable way of predicting a feasible exit point for your trade and giving an insight to your potential risk to reward. It is a fact that in Tennis the WTA is the most prolific for having breaks of service, even with the most accomplished players and the fact that that players who are vastly overwhelmed by their opponents experience can overcome some of that prowess by playing in “overdrive” in the first set. This can mean that players who start the match at odds in the region of 1.05-1.2 can see their odds of winning the match increase to a point where this strategy can yield a 10% return on your stake. To illustrate this I have put a screenshot of the log I recorded yesterday of the match between Zidansek and Zheng. Zheng is seeded 19 and Zidansek is a qualifier.
As you can see Zheng started the match at odds of 1.16 but 10 minutes into the fist game her odds had risen to 1.34 before dropping back down to 1.18 and then back up to 1.3 and then back to 1.13. If we look at the actual game scores we can see that Zheng won the first two games breaking Zidansek’s serve in the second, but in the 3rd game Zidansek broke back to win the 3rd game and this is where these odds of 1.3 + would have occurred. This doesn’t mean that Zidansek was on to win the entire match it was just the market reacting to the in-play state of the match. Below is a screenshot of the first few games of the first set and as you can see Zidansek gave a fair account of herself.
So when we look at matches such as these “uncompetitive” matches as far as the starting odds would have it, there are some distinct possibilities that occur during the match and in particular in the first set that we can take advantage of. This is the essence of the trade I am going to outline in this post. If you have read my previous posts on tennis trading we are looking for the most reward against the least risk taken and to that end I am going to show you one match where there are two possible ways of making the same trade. For this I am going to turn to Bet Angel once again because it is the easiest way to place this trade into the market but this can easily be done manually as well by using a simple dutching calculator available for free on the internet. I will show this method later in the post. But first to Bet Angel. The screenshot below shows the Bet Angel dutching screen and the match loaded is between Vondrousova and Parks. Vondrousova is odds on to win with odds available to back at 1.10 Parks, the rank outsider is 10.00. We know that Vondrousova will 90 times out of 100 win this match, the odds tell us this so we would expect Parks odds to drift out to 1000 by the end of the match and we would be able to get any odds between 10.00 and 1000 matched at somepoint in the match so logic tells us that we should back Vondrousova at the start of the match and put an order into the market on Parks that is pretty certain to be matched at some point.
The Bet Angel Dutching tool enables us to select a margin of profit and total stakes If you look at the screen shot above the software is set to back Vondrousova for a stake of £9.99 and place an order into the market for a penny at odds of 1000 this, if it were possible, would net us 97p at the end of the match if Parks lost. The problem we have in this trade is that we would be risking £9.99 for a reward of 97p If we now switch this around so that we are backing Parks at the onset of the match and placing an order to be matched in play on Vondrousova the risk to reward has been turned upside down
This trade would now put an order into the market on Vondrousova at odds of 1.25 for £8.89 and place a bet that would be matched straight away on Parks for £1.11 at odds of 10.00. We now are risking just £1.11 for a reward of £1.09 – Even Money. So what are the chances of Vondrousovas back bet being matched in play? If we look at Tennis Trader (Screenshot below) We can see that it would only take a break of serve in Parks’ favour and for her to hold her serve until the 6th game for this bet to be matched.
It would not be advisable to blanket dutch all matches that have a favourite starting the match at odds of say 1.20 or less in this way as you would need to research the players to get some sort of feel that is the underdog capable of breaking the serve if he/she goes all out in the 1st set. But for the purposes of this post I will do just that on all of the WTA 1st round matches on day 2 in the French open today that have a favourite that starts at odds of 1.2 or less and post the results tomorrow.
Now I said earlier that you can perform this trade without the aid of Bet Angel by using a simple Dutching Calculator. For this I will use OddsMonkeys very capable dutching calculator which is available to use for free (I will post a link below) In the sceenshot below I have populated the fields with all the relevant information Stake £10 Parks Odds 10.00 Vondrousovas Odds 1.10 Commision 2% for both bets I have set the stake to be split over all selections and for the individual stakes to be rounded to a penny.
As you can see we need to adjust the odds for Vondrousova to make the profit show our 10% target for this trade which is about a quid.
1.20 is not enough as it only produces a 66p profit over all
1.3 is too much as it gives a profit of £1.43
Bingo! we have our desired odds at which we will place our order on Vondrousova and what stakes to use AFTER we have placed our bet on Parks. There is just one thing to remember and it is vital. Once you have placed your Vondrousova order into the market you must set the bet to “KEEP” otherwise when the market goes in play your order would be cancelled and you would in effect have a quid on Parks to win only. One more thing to remember is that if you are doing this manually on betfair your minimum stake is £1.00 so you may need to adjust your total stake to bring that to that amount.
Betornot 