Wizardgold Blog and Podcast

I got an email in the other day from a blog reader Bob and he has an idea about trading tennis. I don’t really know much about trading tennis so I sent the question to a friend who does know about trading tennis.

I also mentioned tennis the other day and said I had an idea.  I have some software called On Court which has every stat about every player and match for the last 10 years.  Some of these stats are based around the serve.  What I want to do is to find a game where one or both players are poor to average servers but are good returners, thereby giving a greater opportunity for break points and actual service breaks.  I will then look to trade for a break on the favourite’s serve.  I reckon the downside if he holds serve is very low (possibly a few ticks) but the upside can be great.  Even the threat of a break (15-30 or 30-40) should be enough to give a decent profit.  The reason for selecting the favourites serve is that the initial bet is a lay and this keeps liability down.

So this is how I think it should be done.

Using the match odds market place a lay bet on the favourite as he is about to start his service game.  Lets say the odds are 1.5 and you are happy to accept a £100 liability.  This will give you £200 on the receiver.  Should the fave hold serve I reckon his price will drop to be maybe 1.45 so you could trade out for a £7 all red.  However should his opponent break I reckon the price could very easily go out to 1.8 (trade at £33 all green) and even at 30-40 the price could be 1.65 (trade at £18 all green).

I would be very interested to hear your friend’s take on this and also keen to hear any other advice he may have.

I sent this to Arno my friend in Hamburg who has had quite a bit of experience trading tennis and here is the reply. Thanks Arno

Hi David –

As promised here are my thoughts on the ’strategy’ you forwarded.

I know there are a lot of people who enter tennis betting trying to trade the points, i would strongly advise against this for various reasons. The main reason is that you will be eaten alive by the fast picture boys!!!! I don’t know if your friend has been trading tennis before but there are big players/courtsiders/people with raw feeds out there who are always able to beat the market by a few seconds. You can actually trade tennis matches without scores because the odds will tell you the scores before a scoreboard or even a televised event will tell you/show you which player actually made the point. Just don’t do it, you will never be fast enough to make money this way.

Basically his idea is good, just don’t try to trade the points – I try to trade ‘key-moments’ in a match:

-         either back or lay after a break of serve in a match
-          either back or lay after player A or B won a set.

This does sound easy but you have to know your tennis, on gravel for instance a break of serve does not mean much, on hardcourt or grass it means the world. I feel it all comes down to the odds/value, you have to be able to spot the value. For instance, player A just broke player B’s serve – player A’s odds are now 1.50 what will his odds be if he wins the set, holds his own serve? Is this 1.50 value, are the odds right? Etc. etc.

I know this email does not answer all yor friends questions, but maybe it helps a bit, if he has any questions left, he can always contact me and i will be happy to shine a light on them.

So there you go good luck with trading tennis. Contact me with your questions. If I don’t know the answer then I may know someone that does.

January 6th, 2009 | Tags: Tennis | Category: Tennis | Leave a comment

Last week I tried out a software that was written Java and looked pretty similar to this software from Gruss. Two totally different animals though. The software from Gruss is written in Adobe Air platform and is rock solid. I was using it yesterday and liked it quite a lot.

Betdaq Assistant is quite basic but does has some important features. It has the ladder interface which is essential for trading and has one click betting and tick offsetting. The tick offsetting is an automatic hedging. If you place a bet with the offset feature enabled it will put in a second bet whatever number of ticks away you specify. You have a guaranteed profit when the second bet is matched.

I have started to record a video to show off some of the software. It is free to use at the moment which is great and also I have noted that the paid for Betfair Betting Assistant is only six pounds a month anyway. Very affordable. There is no learning mode as you get with BetIE which is invaluable if you are testing  a strategy but at least with Betdaq the minimum bet amount is smaller that with Betfair. There is more interest in Betdaq at the moment also due to the 20% tax that Betfair want to put on its most successful customers. I am seeing quite a bit of new software coming available for use with Betdaq. With more people using Betdaq we will see better liquidity in the markets also.

BetAngel also have a version of its betting software that works with Betdaq but is only Windows based, which is a shame as it is the Rolls Royce of betting software and definately the choice of professional traders.

Back to the Betting Assistant from Gruss Software. They are based in England and look committed to keeping up with the software, not like Binarysoft which quit before they finished the job. When you get the software working you have to register with Gruss so that you can log in. This is so that they can shut us out if they decide to charge for the software later. It will come at some point in time but we might as well enjoy the free software for now. I will use it this evening with the Spurs game and look at it for tomorrow for the FA Cup games.

Look out for some videos coming soon in which I will show it being used.

BTW - Happy New Year and happy trading in 2009

If you have tried the Betdaq Assistant yourself already why not leave a comment and let us know how you got on with it.

January 2nd, 2009 | Tags: bet bot, BetAngel, Betdaq, Betdaq Assistant, Betfair, betting profit software, betting software | Category: BetAngel, BetIE, Betdaq, Betfair, English football, One-Click, betting bot, betting profit software, one click bet, robot trader, software for betting | Leave a comment

In this videocast I explore the games on Sunday the 28th of December on how they would work out with the strategy of laying the loser, after the first goal has been just scored.

The idea is to lay the team that has just let the goal in and is therefore at that time the loser in the game. The second part of the strategy is to put in a back bet on the 1-2 or 2-1 scoreline, which way depends on whether the home or away team scored first.

Seems like a good strategy but you do need to be aware that some games it will not work, like games that have only late goals. The the other thing is the possibilities when the underdog team scores first and it was a lucky goal. You might decide that the loser at that time is still likely to win and perhaps by more than the 1-2 scoreline.

Those sort of decisions based on knowledge of the game and the teams is what will give you the edge to have any strategy work long term.

Good idea too to have a staking plan so that when you have a bad day and the scores go against the plan you are not wiped out.

Don’t forget to keep a tally of how something like goes and if you can then paper trade to start with and see if it will work for you.

 

 Wizardgold Wizardcast 41: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Really want to hear from you and get some feedback on this theory, Have you tried this and if so what level of success did you have? Use the form below to contact me.

December 29th, 2008 | Category: Money, betting bot | Leave a comment

Not much work done lately with all the days being taken up with the festivities. If I wasn’t cooking and preparing things I was sitting and eating and using the time to be sociable. Well if you can’t be sociable  at this time of the year then you might as well go home and stay there.

I looked at the possibility of doing something with the boxing day games but was out for all but the last premiership game of the day. At least someone was doing something though because I saw a sale of the BetIE software and also of BetAngel. I still need to sort something out so that I can use the software again due to Parallels quitting on me. Why oh why can’t we have more software that will work native on the Mac. I really do miss BinarySoft BDI. Now that was a good bit of software, if a little differnet in its approach. You may have seen that I tried out some java based software to use with Betdaq but that kept crashing so was useless. You have got to have reliability when you are working with cash.

The offer of 2% commission at Betdaq will end soon but I think staying with Betdaq is still a good idea, despite lower liquidity in many of the markets.

I do wish I could do more matched betting. It really is a case of good maths and no risk. If you are keen to try out some betting strategies like the one I have been trialing lately with the “Lay the Loser” then it is a brilliant idea to build up a bank to work with and take out your original seed money to get your hands on the free money, and then just work with someone elses money. OK I know that you can use BetIE and make good use of the learning mode, which is what I do but then the next stage on is to use the free money from the online book makers.

One idea you might contemplate is to attend one of Peter Web’s courses in which he shows you how to trade on the betting exchanges. Specifically using BetAngel but that is such good professional software though it would be a very useful course to follow. In fact I suggest it would be an excellent use for the money you pull in from the matched betting.

BetAngel is Revolutionary Software and I am sure you will find Soccer Mystic pretty interesting also. Both are from the same company and they have just come up with a BetAngel for Betdaq that you can try for free.

I have been using it and I am impressed. In fact there are parts of the software that I ahave no clue whatsoever about how it works. But it is there for me to learn about later, which is nice.

Although I am a Birmingham City supporter (for my sins) it was good to see that Aston Villa could pull back to 2- against Arsenal. I saw the game on Match of the Day on the BBC and thought they deserved to draw if no win the game. My team here in Spain is Barcelona and like all the teams in La Liga they are having a break at Chrismas, which is quite different to the way it is done in the Premiership where they even have to play on Boxing day. I expect that they have to go easy on the eating on Christmas day or roll around the pitch the day after.

Thanks for coming to the blog during the course of 2008, I appreciate bot the readers of the blog and also the listeners of the podcasts. I am pleased that the numbers have been rising in my podcast statistics. I have about 2500 - 3000 downloads of the podcasts each month - nice to know that people are taking the time to listen to or watch my ramblings.

Lets all hope that 2009 is a good year for us all.

December 27th, 2008 | Tags: BetAngel, betbot, Betdaq, BetIE, betting bot, betting software, matched betting | Category: BetIE, BinarySoft, betting bot, betting calculator, betting profit software | Leave a comment

You must have noticed by now that I have been using twitter. I am Wizardgold on Twitter of course. I am on Plurk as footytrader and I keep a few other social networks updated with what I am doing.

Don’t forget that if you want to see the latest post as soon as it is done then the thing to do is to subscribe to the RSS Feed. I did a video a while back showing how to set up a home page on your browser using Netvibes and then have all your favourite sites come to you. Saves me loads of time doing that. All of the sites that have an RSS feed is on my Netvibes pages, I have more than one tab of feeds I follow. As soon as the site has something new I see it. I always have the Netvibes home page running how ever many tabs I have open in the web browser. Get the RSS url from the RSS icon above - right click it and choose to save link and put it in your RSS feed reader

I have also just started up a Wizardgold Wiki and this is for collaboration. If you would like to go to the Wiki and check it out, great. I am still finding out how it works and I may have to give permission if you are to be able to get in and make changes. The idea will be that you can go in and write about your experiences with the strategies you are using and say how they are going. Maybe you can write up new strategies that you would like to get an opinion on. Fill in the contact form below if you want to take part with the Wiki.

Use the form if there is anything else you would like to get off your chest. Or you can leave a comment in the comments area. I do have to approve comments so that the site doesn’t get attacked by the spammers, will not be a problem if you are on topic.

December 17th, 2008 | Category: Money | Comments (2)

A video cast showing how easy it is to mess up if you are not using the right software. I could use what I usually am able to use. SO I tried something else.

Today I wanted to try out a new piece of software but ran into problems. Not only that but the repeated crashing of the buggy software cost me my money as I wasn’t able to trade out as I was expecting to do.
I only put in the first part of trade for testing purposes. Each time I tried to trade out the Java based program just died.
Only 3 euro but still money.
So I was recording the video as I was doing it and thought you might like to see me messing up so easily.

I will have to buy a licence to use Parallels so that I can again use the Windows programs that are BetAngel for Betdaq and BetIE for Betfair. At least you can rely on those programs. Not like the piece of junk I had the misfortune to use today.

I can get at Betdaq using Safari browser but I wanted to try the greening up with this other software. Next time I will have the browser open and ready just in case.

 Podcast Video: Download

December 14th, 2008 | Tags: Java betting software | Category: Aston Villa, BetAngel, Betdaq, Betfair, Football, Trading | Comments (1)

News from Wizardgold

Getting 100 Euro bonus from a ZedBet and how to pull in 45 Euro of the 100 risk free.
I chat about the BetAngel Betdaq version and a little about what it can do.

I show you how to use the hedging function in BetIE.

The note at the end of the podcast is about the software I am using to make the video. I use VideoCue and ScreenFlow from Flip4Mac and also Garageband. I even used a bit of Amadeus Pro.

I really like VideoCue and this was the first time I used it so I was still finding how to make it work for me. Good for the autocue and it has some good titling screens and a green screen function. Looking forward to using that as I just bought a a green screen. I just need some lights to light the green cloth evenly.

ScreenFlow is super video capture sotware which lets me capture the screen from my Mac and the do some fancy things with it like zooming in and out. Callouts to the active window and to mouse clicks. Some really sweet effects. I can even do some basic transitions with ScreenFlow also.

 Wizardgold Wizardcast 39: Download

December 11th, 2008 | Category: Video, Video Cast, successful trading, under 2.5 goals | Comments (1)

In this short podcast I show how to set up a dutch on a correct score market on Betfair using BetIE. Really easy and I show how you can get a good ration of reward to risk. The stats combined with this strategy will mean that in the long term you will surely make money.

All you need to complement this is a sound staking plan. I will talk about a staking plan in a subsequent podcast

 

 Wizardgold Wizardcast 38 : Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

December 10th, 2008 | Tags: BetAngel, Betfair, BetIE, betting bot, dutching | Category: BetIE, Betfair, Football, Video | Leave a comment

It makes sense, as I have said before that there is no point in trading against the statistical information. When you are looking at a game to work with you should give yourself the better chance of success by reading the stats that are real for the market you are looking at. For example with the Premiership and the under 2.5 goal market.

Look at the image of the current stats as taken from the Soccerstats site only a couple of minutes ago. Games that finish under 2.5 goals is the number to look at. 46% of all of the 149 games played so far ended under 2.5 goals.

Now lets go to Betcalc and see what odds we need to get to have value on a trade. You have to enter the 46% and the look at the odds required to give you a profit on a back bet.

You can clearly see that you will have to put in the back bet at more than 2.12 to get value. If you place 100 of 1 Euro bets at that price in that market with those stats you will win 0.28 overall.

So it is going to make sense to try and get odds like that when you trade. OK lets look and see what odds are available now in Betdaq. There is a game on between Fulham and Manchester City today and the odds on the under 2.5 goals is 1.77. If we put 1.77 into the Betcalc value calculator and the 46% likleyhood of there being under 2.5 goals as pwer the stats. It does not look good. After 100 bets like that with the stake at 1 Euro then you are likely to have lost 18.58 Euro. (or pounds or shekels or whatever currency you work with)

So what can we do to try and increase the chances of getting better odds?

The odds are not static during the game which is why we can trade on a game. Buy in at one price and sell at a bettter price and be greened up to win whatever the result. You will see that after a goal is scored the odds will rise dramatically. So you can trade on the rise going up or on the drop in the odds either before or after the goal is scored.

• So at the beginning of a match you can back the under 2.5 goals and as no goals are scored then you can trade out when the odds drop.
• Or you could lay the under 2.5 before the goal and trade on the rise when the odds rise when the goal is scored.
• Or trade on the drop in the odds after a goal is scored. Looking at the graphs from the betting exchange you will see a steep curve downwards usually after the goal

The method I would use is the trading at the start of a game and look at that stats for the possibility of goals happening in the first 10 or 15 minutes of the game. Also the fact that the drop of the odds after a goal is quite steep is also alluring for trading. I would use both of these strategies.

Don’t take my word for it though get your hands on BetIE the betting software which has a learning mode and try it for yourself. Have the back bet in there and either use the built in automatic hedging or use the trading ladder to place the bets manually.

What you might do is place the back bet at that start of the game  and trade out part of the bet after 5 minutes and then the rest of it at 10 minutes. That way you remove some of the liability and capture some profit of the trade. The longer a game goes without a goal then the higher the probability of a goal being scored. I mean that is what both teams are trying to do, put the ball in the back of the net.

One of the nice things about BetIE is that there are no monthly charges. You just buy the software and thats it. most of the other softwares charge per month. Those are more for the professional traders that need fancier tools. BetIE does have a good tool set though and more than enough to the small betting exchange trader.

If you are more of a betting professional then I can highly recommend BetAngel or SoccerMystic for those with a football bias.

December 6th, 2008 | Tags: BetAngel, BetIE, betting, exchange, gambling, premier, Soccer Mystic, Trading, under 2.5 goals | Category: Automated trading, BetIE, Betdaq, English Soccer, English football, Premiership | Leave a comment