It only matters when there's money on it

PC Bother

2012-02-08T10:59:00.000-08:00

Wednesday is PC day, or alteast it is for some; I’m lucky enough to still have a reasonable margin until I hit that magic 20% barrier. However that margin won’t last forever (at current rates c. 6 or 7 months) and if I want to avoid it I really need to start soon. In fact I probably should have started a while ago but, like any deadline I’ve ever had, I’ve left it up until the last minute. My current charges are still in the mid 30s and so it feels like I still have a fair while to go which is the main reason I’ve been able to put it off but the longer I leave it the harder the job is going to be.

The next biggest reason I’ve put it off is that I simply don’t know what I can do to avoid it. I have several large hurdles to get over. Firstly, I gamble part-time as a hobby, some weeks I’ll trade a lot, some weeks not so much and some weeks not at all depending on both the tennis and my own schedules. This makes it very hard for me to keep my commission rate low, I’m generally able to keep it closer to 4 than 5% but as far as commission generated (CG) is concerned I am essentially wasting money. Secondly, my core tennis activity has far too low a CG figure and a large bottom line meaning that boosting the overall CG figure is going to be difficult. Lastly (and most importantly!) I don't have a profitable, high volume, high churn strategy. This problem is exaggerated by the fact that I don't have a sub 3% commission rate which means that the edge needs to be even greater to overcome the commission. The large CG gap caused by my main activity also means that it literally would have to be very high volume.

There are a couple of things in my favour though, as I mentioned, I do have about 6 months before I hit 20% and even then I will have the buffer of a £1000 ‘allowance’ and further more at first the charges will be relatively small. So its not as if I have literally left it to the last minute. Perhaps more important is the fact that avoiding the PC when you’re not already in the danger zone is probably cheaper than trying to do so once you’re already in it. My reasoning behind this thinking is that with the PC being charged weekly winning weeks are punished much more than losing weeks where there is no rebate. When you don’t have this enforced upon you, I suppose the main challenge is not getting carried away with large winning periods and conversely getting too dejected with long losing periods.

It is the ultimate aim of anyone who gambles on more than a £1 accumulator on Saturday’s football to one day win money on a regular basis. The sad fact is that, for most, doing so at a conventional bookmakers isn’t possible (although there are some operators where you won’t get easily restricted such as pinnacle – but then again there’s a reason for that) and therefore betting on an exchange is the only real way forward. Betfair were the frontrunners in this area and are still by far the biggest exchange and if you want to win there you have to pay them at least 20% of your profit in commission. At the end of the day they are a business and they now have shareholders to please. Anyone who doubts that Betdaq or any other exchange wouldn’t inevitably follow a similar path only need see my last post.

Those of us that did spend years and years plugging away without getting anywhere, either losing or essentially treading water do have a small advantage over someone who gets it much quicker because we should have pretty high CG amounts. If you’re not quite there yet perhaps that is at least some consolation J

As I see it I have a few options:

1) Attempt to dump as much profit as possible from Betfair into an account somewhere else (like Betdaq). Thus reducing over profit and at the same time increasing total CG. I suspect though that this would be significantly harder to do efficiently than it at first sounds

2) Develop a high volume, low edge profitable system the net effect of which would be to slowly increase gross profit but increase CG quicker. I suspect good candidates for this would be either football or horse racing, neither of which I have any particular edge on. Ofcourse, I could always pay someone else for their expertise but I suspect that whilst the CG % might be high enough the volume wouldn’t be unless I subscribed to multiple services. I also don’t know that I’d have time to manage a ‘portfolio’ of services. The other option available under this heading as I see it is to stick with what I know and take as many pre-event tennis prices as possible. This is looking to be a more likely candidate as I already rate players and keep a wealth of statistics which I’ve been using to help assist in-play trades. There’s no barrier to this other than an initial time commitment, but whether or not I could beat commission over a large sample of matches is debatable.

3) Develop a high volume, low edge unprofitable system with a similar effect as 2) except for there would be a slight reduction in gross profit. Now I could do this one with my eyes closed as could almost everybody, the trick would have to be to not lose everything! In some ways this is essentially 2) and I could probably have a decent go at losing to commission on the football as well.

4) Assuming either 2) or 3) fail or I don’t bother then I can always suck it up and pay the PC. However, I’d rather not do that if I can help of it.

5) Move my business elsewhere, such as Betdaq. I tried this last year with moderate to little success – the platform sucks and the liquidity was patchy, sometimes decent, and sometimes dire. This would be the ultimate solution but its not a viable one now and there’s certainly no guarantee that they wouldn’t introduce a similar scheme, except then I wouldn’t have any room to manoeuvre.

6) Give up gambling and find a new hobby.

It looks like I’ve got a fair bit of work ahead of me if I am going to steer clear and I need to start being a little more proactive in planning that work. Even on ‘bad’ weeks like the last one I only managed to get my CG up to 15% which really does illustrate what a monumental task it will be. If anyone has any great pointers they want to share then I’m all ears!

Evolution

2012-02-07T09:41:00.000-08:00

Comeback Jack

2012-02-03T02:34:00.000-08:00

It has been great this week to see Paul-Henri Mathieu return to the ATP Tour for the first time in almost 2 years after a serious knee injury. His comeback started last week (as far as I'm aware) in the qualifiers for the Helibronn challenger where he put up a valiant effort against Ruben Bemelmans narrowly losing the first tiebreak to 6, breaking in the 11th game of the second to take it 7-5 before finally getting broken in the third losing the match 7-6(6) 5-7 6-3. This week he was handed a wildcard in Montpellier and despite looking a little shaky beat Cedrik Stebe fairly comfortably in the first round. Yesterday he played World #50 Jarko Niemenen and for the first set at least looked very competitive breaking the Fin's serve in the first but after losing the tiebreak in the first fell apart to lose 7-6(4) 6-1.

PHM used to be one of my favourite players up until his injury layoff he was my second most profitable player as he could be relied upon to be unreliable. It is easy to caricaturise a player and perhaps my memories of him choking every lead are a result of that but I know I made a fair bit of money on him throwing away leads. My most profitable player up until that point? Another Frenchman, Gilles Simon, mainly because he had a habit of losing the first set and then going on to win, if I remember correctly in 2008 he led the tour in 3 set comebacks with 18. He was a great player to watch back then, his slight build in stark contrast to the majority of players and his ability to soak up pressure and consistently paint the lines was something to behold.

Anyway, whilst I doubt PHM has enough talent left to return to the top 20 here's wishing him all the best in his comeback.

Another player making a comeback this week was Fernando Gonzalez who has been out (and back in briefly) also for the best part of 2 years this time initially due to a hip injury. Unlike PHM I never made an awful lot of money on Gonzalez but I certainly enjoyed watching him play. His forehand coupled with his haircut made him absolutely terrifying. Larry Stefanki once said Gonzalez had the best forehand of all time and there can be little debate that it is up there. The power, accuracy and consistency of it is simply amazing. I'd love to be able to hit just one shot like that; I'd probably never need to pick a racquet up again. Anyway given a wildcard in Vina del Mar he looked understandably shaky in his first round against Pere Riba but the Spaniard simply didn't have enough about him to take advantage. Yesterday though Joao Souza did. Gonzalez was still half asleep through the first four games of the first set before getting a break back and going on to lose the first set 6-3. He came out roaring in the second set, throwing in several incredible forehand bombs and even a few cheeky squash shots but from two breaks up he collapsed and eventually lost 6-3 7-6(6). Again, I'm not sure that at 31 he is capable of getting back into the top 20 let alone top 10 but hopefully he can make a solid comeback and entertain us all with that magical forehand.

On the gambling front there has been a bit of a comeback to form myself in last two days largely thanks to two matches yesterday in the form of Dodig/Garcia-Lopez and Gonzalez/Souza. The Gonzalez match in particular was one where everything went my way. It sure is nice when that happens, just a shame it’s all too rare an occurrence.

I've never been too profitable gambling on NFL, in fact I've probably lost money but every year I have a little punt on the Superbowl - because it only matters when there is money on it. I haven't placed my punt yet but I will probably look to take the Patriots with a handicap. Elsewhere this weekend it is shaping up to be a big weekend for deciding the Champions League places with Chelsea/Man U on Sunday and Liverpool/Spurs on Monday and also in the relegation battle with QPR taking on Wolves with both looking to take advantage of Blackburn, Bolton and Wigan all having tough fixtures. All in all it should be a decent weekend of sport

Psych

2012-02-01T11:30:00.000-08:00

Gambling as a hobby can be mentally crippling at times (I can't imagine what it would be like if you relied on it as an income). Take the last two days, over that period I've made a modest profit of just under £150 but that headline figure disguises the path I took to get there. On Monday I started off losing a large sum of money and gradually earned it back to end the day with a small loss. Yesterday started with a bang and I made a significant sum only to lose the majority of it back during the course of the evening. Two almost completely opposite paths that were accompanied with two completely opposite feelings.

I was never a particularly big 'chaser' even at my worst as a gambler, and although I will occasionally adopt more risk when behind this tends to be when I'm already behind in a market as opposed to being down for the day/week/whatever. There's a solid(ish) reason for that as there is in effect less commission to pay on any winning trades from that point onwards. Back to the last two days and at all times I was completely in control of what I was doing, I was pretty happy with all but one of the positions I had (lack of concentration meant I forgot to cancel a bet). The nature of my trading style means that I'll have a lot of medium size wins and small losses and the odd big loss or big win so I'm perfectly used to the variance in my results. Nevertheless I felt very content to only lose £80 on Monday after being so far down but conversely felt disappointed with yesterday's profit (despite it being larger than the previous day's loss!).

I'm not a big one for targets, my only real targets are to make as much money as possible, and enough to make it worth the time invested. Despite that, it is very hard not to pay attention to how you're doing on a match/daily/weekly/whatever basis and it’s perhaps only natural to create artificial checkpoints. Still, it seems illogical that a losing set of bets brings more happiness than a wining set where the only distinction is the order those bets came in.

I see Leeds have 'dispensed with the services of Simon Grayson and his coaching staff' today. It is a decision that is hard to fathom, sacking the manager the day after the transfer window closes effectively leaving him to take the blame for selling their captain (and best player over the summer) and giving the new manager a clean slate. Hard to fathom unless you remember that Ken Bates is in charge, that is. What exactly Neil Warnock or any other manager will be able to do with Leeds' squad that Grayson couldn't I don't know. It was a rather callous wording of his exit too which is probably representative of the bad blood between the two. I read earlier that Grayson has the highest win % of any manager Leeds have had and having watched highlights of some of Leeds' recent games it would seem the players are more to blame than the manager. A little like at Goodison yesterday despite what Mancini says.

Back to tennis and the undoubted highlight of the week so far has been the camera feed in Marseille this year. Court microphone off, umpire microphone on, has been the general theme which I have to admit has been slightly off putting at times. The umpire last night in the Kamke/Serra match spent most of the time relieving trapped wind and muttering to himself. After half an hour or so I was having to stifle back laughter on almost every point, which might explain why I managed to lose so much money. Still, it has been interesting to get an umpire’s perspective.

Behind The Times

2012-01-31T10:46:00.000-08:00

Yesterday this article popped up on my phone's RSS feed. The article is about people's fears of not embracing modern technology. It quotes an interview with Douglas Adams over 10 years ago: "Everything that's already in the world when you're born is just normal. Anything created between birth and the age of 30 is incredibly exciting and creative and with any luck you can make a career out of it. But whatever is invented after you've turned 30 is against the natural order of things and the beginning of the end of civilisation as we know it -until it's been around for about 10 years, when it gradually turns out to be all right really." Fortunately I'm still the right side of 30 but I have to admit that whilst I've got a Facebook account, it is definitely not on my daily list of things to do. As for Twitter, well I simply don't get it.

A quote from the article I quite like is "There is a point when, arguably, you should know about something." I'm beginning to think that perhaps Twitter is something I should know about. However, I think that this is a valid concept in the gambling universe, when the Betfair API was first introduced I was sceptical at best and as time went on I had the opinion that I was 'good enough' without it. Of course, I was still break even at best at this point. Then one day I decided that perhaps it was worth just trying, what was the harm? Anyone remember Betfair Rapid? It was pretty unimpressive (being polite) but I thought that one click betting was the best thing since sliced bread; I could now make bad decisions 5 times quicker. Result. Eventually I stumped up the £5/month for Gruss and the rest is history. In a similar fashion I saw no point in keeping proper records but eventually I started to make notes and record my bets and then slowly I moved to downloading my results from the Profit and Loss screen and onto requesting a detailed transaction record/audit trail/account statement/call it what you will from the Betfair 'Help' Desk. With this I was able to start to build a picture of my overall activity and cull the unprofitable parts of my betting. Another example, it took me a long time to embrace laying low/backing high and accepting I wouldn't win every bet. I'm still not Roy Keane on losing but accept that it is inevitable.

There are still a few things I've yet to adopt, social media being one, tipsters another. My next big thing to embrace will be diversification and building a portfolio of sports/approaches to both spread my profit base and also hopefully combat the ever looming PC. I have a few ideas in mind across a few sports; I'll probably go into this in more detail at some point in the future. Once that is in full swing I might take a crack at this Twitter lark. It could be interesting to see what applications it could have with gambling. As for tipsters I’m going to have to stay ignorant for now.

Trader's Nightmare

2012-01-30T10:48:00.000-08:00

Yesterday's Australian Open final was almost certainly described as a "trader's dream" by someone at some point. I can see why someone might have this opinion: the masses of liquidity, both players taking it in turns to dominate, the sheer length of the match, the ridiculous amount of time in between points. But in order for a trader to enjoy a "dream", another must suffer a nightmare, and I most certainly had a nightmare yesterday.

A professional sportsman's performance can be effected by all manner of things ranging from the food he ate to the amount of sleep he had the previous night to how his home life is. Pretty much any small detail can have an adverse (or indeed positive) impact on the level at which he performs. Therefore it is perfectly plausible that the same can apply to sports traders and it would explain why I was so bad yesterday; except it doesn't. I had a good night's rest, felt relaxed and calm, my home life is good, there was no pressure on me to win etc, etc. Sometimes sportsmen, no matter how good they are, are simply outclassed by their opponents; was I outclassed by the market? I normally avoid matches between high-profile players, especially finals because I don't like the amount of money in the market. When there is more money, the dynamics change and I'm simply not comfortable with them. Having said that there were plenty of opportunities for me to get involved yesterday, I just read almost all of them completely wrong, either that or I was unlucky. Sometimes you have matches/days/weeks like that where you can't do right but that is the nature of gambling and the gods of variance.

As a follow up to 'Embedded Value' here is some 'downloadable value'. I'm not entirely sure that downloadable value works as valid business concept but nevertheless I did go 'back to the drawing board' and soon gave up again. As I mentioned in my last post, statistics interest me and their applications within gambling are varied, all the way through the spectrum of analysis to prediction. Whilst Excel does have a data mining add in, it is not an especially useful data mining tool. MS Access on the other hand is, in comparison at least, pretty good. Still, despite its limitations Excel does present data quite well and so on the link you can download a functioning hard copy of the embedded head 2 head calculator. The data is more accurate, and the functionality slightly improved. I did originally try to incorporate some other features that I have in my databases but in the end gave up. After all, I don't have endless amount of time. With that in mind I hope that this might at least spur a few on to explore the possibilities that collecting and analysing data has. If not then it is simply an offline H2H calculator. I've put the data back into the spreadsheet in a similar format to that found at tennis-data.co.uk for those of you that want to keep it updated but can't get the data elsewhere. Hopefully there are no errors and it is reasonably self explanatory, but I did it in a rush so please let me know if there are.

And finally, another video for you all. Some more incredible tekkers on display, this time the sport is football.

Rock Star

2012-01-29T06:54:00.000-08:00

As I've mentioned before something I'm looking to improve on this year is being able to follow and trade more than one market at once. I'm not convinced I'll ever be able to fully concentrate on multiple things at once but I've almost perfected rubbing my belly and patting my head. It’s a start at least. Today I decided to attempt to follow the Australian Open final and the final round of the Abu Dhabi Championships and see how I got on. The theory being that there would be too much money in the match odds market for me to be overly successful and that the golf was suitably paced for me to be able to divide my attention between them both.

My golfing ability could be described as 'poor' at best but along with a number of other sports it is one I am looking at in an effort to diversify. Whether or not golf is a sport I have, or could have, an edge in is debatable but, like most sports these days, statistics play a big role and statistics interest me. I probably don't have enough exposure to the dynamics of the sports' in-play markets yet to be able to be confident that all my decisions are sound but I find the best test of any approach is to stick some money in the market and see what happens. So that's what I did and after 3 holes I layed Tiger Woods at 2.2 with Robert Rock also managing to go 2 under and a chasing pack not too far behind. Perhaps a little lucky but Tiger bogeyed the next two holes and his price went out beyond 3/1. His price did come back in again later to trade around evens but I stuck with my initial position. The other position I took was against Rory McIlroy at 7.8, it is hard to remember the exact circumstances but I believe he was on -10, 3 behind Rock and a hole further ahead. He was out with Paul Lawrie who was on the same score but trading at 17s so I decided that it was something worth taking on. A few holes later he was trading at 19s and I decided to take my money back which, as it turns out, was a decent play as on the next hole he birdied his shot and when Rock came upto the hole he bogeyed it and McIlroy briefly went favourite. Anyway Rock went onto win the tournament and both the lays won. The nerves were obvious telling for Rock though; going into the final hole he had a 2 stroke lead, at the tee he asked everyone to put their cameras away and proceeded to hit his ball right on the edge of the water hazard. He did indeed drop a shot but it was enough for the win. Congratulations to him.

Congratulations also to Novak Djokovic for winning his fifth slam and taking his record in slam finals to 5-2. Nadal's third consecutive loss is apparently a record; probably not one he'll be proud of. Unfortunately I lost all the money I made on the golf and a little bit more on the match itself. I just wasn't able to read the game very well, but despite that it was an absolutely cracking match, almost as good as the 2009 final between Nadal and Federer. There were so many good moments but my two favourites occurred in the final set. At 5-7 6-4 6-2 6-7 0-0* 15-15 Nadal hits a sublime forehand winner cross court almost painting the baseline, except it wasn't a winner, Djokovic somehow gets it back and behind Nadal. Backpedalling, almost to the point of falling over he hits the same forehand winner right into the corner. Incredible. The other was probably the final turning point at 5-7 6-4 6-2 6-7 4-4* 30-0, two games earlier Djokovic fell to the floor with exhaustion after losing a 31 stroke rally and in this point his shot hit the line but was called out. Djokvoic asks the umpire for his opinion and he agrees with his line judge, Djokvoic challenges anyway and it was in. Djokovic gained some belief from there and the rest was history. Or was it? This Wikipedia page was written a full 10 minutes before the match finished. Conspiracy? duh duh duh.

Anyway, a final note, Nadal’s serve statistics seemed to mirror last year's efforts against Djokovic with 67% 1st serves in, winning 66% of those serves but only 45% of the 2nd. The tour now moves on, a few hard court tournaments, a few clay court tournaments, the first round of the 2012 Davis Cup before the tour arrives in Acapulco - my favourite tournament on the calendar, but more about that nearer the time.

Australian Open Final

2012-01-28T10:26:00.000-08:00

The women’s final today was a bit of a letdown. Victoria Azarenka started off very nervous in her first singles grand slam final, which was perhaps understandable, and Maria Sharapova took full advantage dominating her way to a 2-0* lead which soon went to 2-0* 0-30, a few Sharapova misses and a crisp winner led Azarenka on a 10 point streak and despite Sharapova holding on to make it 3-3* that was the last game she won.

The men’s final tomorrow should hopefully be a bit more of a contest. It wasn’t the final I was expecting, or hoping, for which was Murray/Federer but nevertheless it should be interesting. Going into last season Nadal had a 16- 7 record against Djokovic but Novak won all 6 encounters last year including two on clay (taking his record to 2-9). The market has Djokovic at 1.71 but I suspect that this might have been a fair bit lower had you priced the match up before the tournament.

As I said in an earlier post I haven’t had the opportunity to watch any of the second week matches but by all accounts, against Ferrer and Murray, Novak has looked a little sluggish at times and this time last year he still had a reputation for someone who suffered with breathing problems. In fact in 2009 he was unable to defend his first AO title due to retiring in his match against Andy Roddick suffering in the heat. Anyway, hopefully he can overcome any issues he might be having and we can have a competitive 5 set thriller to end the first slam of the year.

Out of interest below is a graph comparing Nadal and Djokovic’s service statistics in their matches together both prior to 2011 and for the 6 matches last year. As you can see Djokovic’s first serve % and points won off both serves increased last year, whilst Nadal’s dropped, particularly off the second serve where he was winning 10% less points. This is reflected in the fact that whilst both players were able to save c.55% of break points they faced last year, Nadal gave up 12 break point opportunities per match on average compared to Djokovic who only offered his opponent 7 chances. Of course what the stats don’t show you are the reasons for Djokovic’s apparent improvement/Nadal’s drop in form.

Anyway, there’s no doubt that Nadal is playing better this year than last, 1^st serves in have risen from 64% to 72%, 1^st serve points won has risen from 70% to 77% and 2^nd serve points won from 48% to 56%, will the improvement in form be enough? Who knows, but I can’t wait to find out.

Finally, if you haven’t already seen the tekkers on this ball boy then you should. England could do with some fielders like him, perhaps a batting order that can get more than 13 for 8 too.

Gender Trade

2012-01-25T13:45:00.000-08:00

Perhaps if I were a woman trading would be a lot easier. I'm not too keen on the major surgery but I wouldn't mind being able to effectively multitask.

When I was younger I liked to play poker, both live and online. This was during the time that poker exploded in popularity back in 2004-2007 (the 'poker boom' was apparently between 2003 and 2006), the sheer quantity of people willing to give their money away was staggering and it was all too easy during the first couple of years. My game of choice was 7 card stud but I didn't mind playing Holdem, both Limit and No-Limit. People simply didn't understand the odds and at the levels I was playing, which typically was $1/2, there was a lack of sophisticated play. Then gradually with the help of tracking software, calculators and the wealth of reading material out there players started to get smarter. There were still a large number of fish, but the sharks got bigger and stronger. Players that probably had the moves to hold their own at a $5/$10 table or even $10/$20 were playing $1/$2 and $2/$4 but on 20 tables at once. I constantly found myself playing against the same group of people and perhaps just one fish. My edge was gone and I had to quickly accept it and move on. I tried adapting my strategy and started playing a lot of $50 + $5 STTs and had reasonable success with an ROI of 7.5% over 144 games. However this was actually only $600 which for the sheer time involved in playing worked out at around $4.50 an hour. In an effort to eke out more money I started trying to multi-table, something I had been completely out of my depth with in ring-games. It was safe to say that as I was concentrating less on each table my performance tanked and I eventually decided to give up on poker altogether. I'm just not very good at multitasking.

Similar is true with regards to trading. I can only watch and trade one match at a time. MY approach relies heavily on my ability to read both the match and the market and my brain can't cope with the sensory input from multiple matches. One of the things I want to work on this year is being able to trade two matches at the same time and with that in mind I spent last week trading just one match but having a second match video on my computer screen too - just to get used to the idea. I don't think my performance was effected (in fact I had one of my best weeks ever) but at the same time I probably couldn't have recounted many inflection points from the secondary games. It’s also probably one of the reasons why the horse racing markets aren't for me - too many ladders and too much information for me to concentrate on.

It’s not all bad news; I've recently become comfortable managing multiple pre-event positions so perhaps there is hope for me yet.

If any readers (if there are any readers!?) have similar or indeed contrary experiences they'd like to share then I'd be interested to read them.

Giving Up Value

2012-01-24T05:52:00.000-08:00

One of the main disadvantages of taking the first week of the Australian Open off and not the second is that I end up missing the bigger matches. Despite what is implied by the name of the blog I'm still a tennis fan at heart and so enjoy watching the typically high quality tennis between the biggest names in the sport.

On the flipside in the first week there are far more matches played both overall and simultaneously. This means that there are far more opportunities for me to get involved and also that liquidity is spread thinner. Like all good things liquidity is good in moderation, too little and you're constantly chasing your tail, too much and you're constantly chasing someone else's tail. I don't mind giving up a little value in order to have more oppertunities to get matched but at either extreme time ends up just being wasted.

Still, I would have enjoyed watching Djokovic/Hewitt, Federer/Del Potro and Nadal/Berdych - all appear to have been excellent matches.

In other news, Diego Maradona is now an armchair Man City fan just like 2,000,000 others and Harry is in a bit of trouble. To celebrate here is another of my favourite 'arry videos.

Embedded Value

2012-01-23T12:35:00.000-08:00

A few weeks ago whilst flicking through random blogs on Google Reader I came across quite a cool embedded spreadsheet. Unfortunately I've also forgotten the link to that blog. However whilst using my head to head tool earlier, I thought "what a great idea to put online". I dislike most of the online ones as I find they aren't especially user-friendly and they don't give you a lot of filtering options whereas what I've built in excel allows me to do that very easily.

There's always a catch though, and what I didn't realise was that you can't include macros in embedded spreadsheets, which is a shame as it works almost entirely on macros. So I went about recreating most of the functionality using formulas including displaying pictures of the selected players but it turns out that the file was too big to embed. I then removed the pictures and realised you can't use data validation which was the final nail in the coffin. However after I went to a reasonable amount of effort to produce something that was supposed to be a 5 minute upload job I don't want it to be completely wasted so I've embedded the remains of what was once a useful tool.

Edit: Due to the restricted size available on the blog I've further had to edit it and squash in some columns. It also loads slowly. Complete failure. Back to the drawing board.

A couple of notes on it: Firstly because there is no data validation you need to copy and paste the player's name from the second tab which contains a full list of the current top 1000 players. Manually typing doesn't seem to work.

Secondly, only ATP data from ATP World Tour events is included.

Lastly, the data post 2008 is sourced from the ATP website, pre-2008 data is sourced from tennis-data.co.uk (who source their information from the ATP and also from stevegtennis.com

A bad day

2012-01-23T09:00:00.000-08:00

My body clock took another pounding today as I went back to work for the first time in what has felt like forever but in reality has been only a week. Like a couple of people I know (of) I always like to take the first week of the Australian Open off work. The time difference with Australia is so great that it isn't possible to stay up and watch matches and also get up to go to work at 6 so it is the only real chance to watch/trade any of the early season tennis/

Rather predictably the workload I came back to was ridiculous which, coupled with an hour's commute, made me rather wish I was at home gambling still. Several times I've considered giving up work and gambling for a living, current winnings whilst trading less than part-time (i.e. when I can be bothered) alone would be more than adequate to live off but I'd be very hesitant to actually do so.

Firstly, what would I call myself? I like the sound of Equine Investment Officer but given my lack of interest in horses it doesn't seem appropriate. Sports Investment Analyst sounds quite snazzy too and if I started a tipping service I could be a Sports Finance Advisor. Alternatively I could keep it simple with Data/Market/Investment Analyst or even play it straight with Unemployed, but who wants to be labelled unemployed?

Secondly, contrary to something I recently read on another blog but conveniently forget the location, the markets do evolve and any edge I have isn't guaranteed to last, what with the Premium Charge about to rear its ugly head and the increasing presence of bigger fish. Most importantly I enjoy my job and I also enjoy gambling, something I might not be able to say if they were one and the same. There's also no pressure on my gambling it is a very nice side income at the moment rather than something I rely on, hence why if I don't feel like gambling, I don't.

No, I think that despite the unreasonable workload and stupid commute I'll still go into work tomorrow. It sure would be nice not to though.

I thought I'd end by sharing one of my favourite ever sports related videos after watching Harry twitch his way through an interview yesterday.

It can't be done!

2012-01-21T14:07:00.000-08:00

I don't particularly like the phrase "it can't be done" but I see it expressed a lot in relation to gambling. I think that what is really meant is "I don't know how it can be done".

I don't know how a lot of things can be done, whether that's through a lack of in-depth knowledge of the sport itself or through not having a way to beat the relevant market(s). But just because I cannot do it doesn't mean there aren't others out there who can. Football is a good example of a sport I do understand and one where I can beat the market but just not to a great extent. The problem I find is that even though I know how to rate teams, model goal probability and price up a market there are plenty out there who are able to do this better than me. Not the least trivial of the reasons for this is because they have more time to dedicate to doing it. It is a popular sport, which is good for liquidity, but bad for competition.

Tennis is also a popular sport but the money is skewed significantly towards in-play (IP) rather than pre-event (PE). This is also rather conveniently reflected in the proportion of profit I make with just over 90% of the profit coming IP. There are a few reasons for this, the main being that the stakes involved IP dwarf the PE action. The reason for that? Because there's not as much money to match and at below Masters Level it can be almost impossible to get more than a couple of hundred matched at a decent price (for me) unless I'm wrong. The other reason is that whilst there are plenty of others who are able to rate players PE there appears to be far fewer who are able to price up a market on the fly IP once the match gets past the first/second set, or at least a lot fewer who are willing to back that opinion with money. This is where I make the majority of my money, and yet there are still others who undoubtedly are better than me at this. If there weren't I would have given up the day job and be living on a tropical island by now.

There are plenty of other reasons why tennis suits me, the spread of points, pace of the match, the number of matches to choose from and the fact there are only two competitors spring to mind, but the scattergun/panic nature of the markets near the end is certainly my favourite.

On a separate topic - the name of the blog - which is a reference to Sky Bet's former* slogan "it matters more when there's money on it". There was a time a couple of years ago when I couldn't sit down and watch sport without betting on it. Sad, but true. Fortunately I've come on a bit since then but even now I don't care who wins a match between Bolton Wanderers and Norwich City, but it might if I had money on the game. I guess the desired mindset would be "it doesn't matter even if there's money on it". I'm working on it.

* - I see Sky Bet still use it on their corporate website.

Crossroads

2012-01-18T18:54:00.000-08:00

I've gambled on Betfair with varying levels of interest and success since 2004, but recently I've reached a crossroads and I now have some difficult decisions to make in respect of how I move forward.

It is safe to say that I was a break-even customer at best for the majority of my first 5 years with Betfair. Several times I thought I had cracked it, only to look back in hindsight at the obvious shortcomings of my systems. One of the best was something that closely resembled 'lay the draw' but this was before it became widely known, or at least before I had ever heard of it anyway. My first 56 months on Betfair resulted in a total gross profit of £9303.19.98 and a commission paid of £8097.30 or 87.04%. Therefore my apathy towards the Premium Charge and its amendment to lifetime profit in October 09 as it wasn't ever going to conceivably affect me. I always hoped to be profitable, and deluded myself that everytime I wiped out my bank that it was just bad luck, but I think I knew deep down there was no danger of me paying PC.

This all changed almost overnight a couple of months later when at the 2009 ATP World Tour Finals I seemed to suddenly get 'it'. I can't remember the exact timeline of my progression from mug to competent but it was fairly rapid and it definitely all started by realising that the risk/reward ratio trading inplay far outweighed my previous strategies on all sports of lumping on at short priced favourites. I made just over a grand that week and whilst it wasn't the first time I'd won over £1000 in a week it felt different to the other times. There was a realisation that I wasn't likely to lose the whole lot in a couple of mad bets like I historically had.

I was never particularly keen on record keeping before then but in an effort to professionalise my gambling/trading activity I gave it a go. Excel isn't much of a data mining tool but in conjunction with Access it is the best that I had available and I quite quickly started to strip away unprofitable approaches. This left me with tennis as the only sport I was gambling on, which made sense as it was the only sport I'd previously made a profit at to decent volumes. Since then I have searched out edges elsewhere and do make a little money out of football but over 90% of my profits still come from tennis.

I don't gamble fulltime but I was successful enough last year that I made more money gambling than I did from my day job, having also done relatively well in 2010. For a while now the PC has been looming over me, my activity last year came with a commission generated of 9.71% and at current rates I'm looking at sinking into PC territory towards the end of this year. So far I've been procrastinating over actually doing anything much about it, hoping Betdaq (or another) become a viable competitor; but an incredibly good first 3 days of the Australian Open with a commission generated figure of just 3.7% has prompted me to start thinking about what else I might do given that tennis liquidity at Betdaq seems to have disappeared again the last few months.

Starting a blog unfortunately won't increase my commission generated figure, or at least not directly anyway. It is something that I've been thinking of doing for a while now though and I hope to comment on gambling/sport related topics as well as document any progress/decisions I make regarding what I will do about the PC.