With the T20 Blast Finals Day coming up on Saturday, I though I'd share how I approach trading T20 games, and give you an idea of how to use the stats on the ground that I've published on the blog.
Fail to Prepare, Prepare to Fail
Firstly, knowing what games are coming up and where, I will do my research. I keep a database of T20 games where major tournaments are played, and this is my first port of call. I've published my stats for Edgbaston ahead of Saturday's games so you can see what I look at. As an example, from these stats you can see that sides batting second are at a slight disadvantage, with just 44% of chases being successful, and that this drops to just 21% where sides are chasing over 150. We can also see that first innings scores of 180+ are relatively rare, having occurred in one of every five games so far, on average.
With preparation on the ground done, I'll now look at the sides, looking at the relative strengths of batting line-ups and bowling attacks, who can put on big total, and who can defend lower totals, who likes chasing, who does well when batting first, etc.
I'll put all of this down on a notepad, and have this in front of me during games, as T20 can be fast and furious, and having everything written down means I can focus on the market when I need to, and not have to flail around looking at stats.
Watching and Waiting
During the game, with all the action going on it can be tempting to jump into positions early on. It took me a while to get out of this habit, but I'm glad I did. How I approach trading the games now is to look at the runs lines during the first innings, and not enter any positions until after the six over power-play. Looking at the stats page again, you'll see a table at the bottom of the page which gives average totals when a certain number of wickets have been lost in the power-play, and this is where I'll start. I'll also pay very close attention to how the pitch is playing, if it's coming onto the bat nicely, if cutters are sticking in the pitch, indicating batting will be difficult against spinners later on, how quick the outfield is, etc, and try to assess how easy batting will be. I'll then look to take on small positions in the runs lines market, and if I see what I think is some good value, I might take a larger position, but generally I'll keep things tight here.
During the second innings I'll look at the match odds, using all the information on past games and from the first innings to assess who I think is more likely to win the game. T20 can be so unpredictable, so I'll be very active in terms of limiting liability where I can. This unpredictability can also provide good low-risk/high-reward opportunities, such as batting sides going well, and trading at low prices, were you know chasing sides struggle, offering a good opportunity to lay them.
Thinking Longer-term
This might be an obvious point to many, but it is worth reiterating. You will not win every trade, and you will be wrong at times. Giving yourself the best opportunity to be right is all you can do, and at the end of the day we are dealing with uncertainty. Recognising this, and focussing on becoming consistent in the longer-term, and staying in control and sticking to plans for individual games, will be a big factor in successful trading.
Showing posts with label Betting Resources. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Betting Resources. Show all posts
Thursday, 27 August 2015
Wednesday, 5 August 2015
Trading on Betting Exchanges
Since the launch of Betfair's betting exchange in 2000, online gamblers have been able to trade the outcome of sporting events, that is, to place more than one bet on the same market at different odds, either to ensure that some profit is made, or to cut losses early when things aren't going to plan. Cricket, especially test cricket, is an excellent sport to trade, as there are often dramatic swings in matches which can provide excellent opportunities for traders to capitalise on.
To provide a step-by-step guide on how to use a betting exchange, and to hopefully give you another string to your betting bow, I'll talk through the example of the Ashes 2015 Series Winner market below. Going into the first test in Cardiff, before a ball had been bowled in the series, the market looked something like this:
England: 5.25 (19%)
Australia: 1.46 (68.5%)
Draw: 9.2 (10.9%)
I've included the implied probability for each result here, as understanding what the odds represent is crucial to successful trading. Essentially the market was pricing the chance of Australia winning the series at just under 70%, and I felt that this was an inaccurate representation of the true probability of Australia winning three of the five tests, and, therefore, that laying Australia at these odds offered value.
Why did I think that Australia's chances of winning the series were less than 68.5%? Well this was more of a gut feeling type bet rather than anything based on quantifying statistics. Although England's form had been very poor over the last year or so, the sacking of coach Peter Moores and the appointment of Trevor Bayliss seemed to me to bring a freedom to England's cricket. The drawn series against New Zealand earlier in the year, the first since Moores' sacking, saw England play some excellent cricket, and I felt that any replication of this against the Australians would make life very difficult for the visitors. The fact that it's a home series for England also indicated to me that the Australian's wouldn't have the easy ride the market was pricing in, and I made their chances of winning the series closer to 50-55%, and so layed the 1.46 on offer.
My intuitions on the standard of cricket England would play were proved right during the first test at Cardiff, and, although my bet was nicely positioned at the end of this game, I was keen to remove my risk from the market, as I was happy that my initial assessment was correct, and I felt that Australia under-performed in this test, and were likely to up their game in the remainder of the series. I therefore backed them at 2.54, a price I felt represented fair value at the time, leaving me with a level profit across all three outcomes.
Of course, given that there were four tests left in the series, if I had different risk preferences there were other options I could have taken. I could have backed Australia with all of the profit for my lay bet, meaning that I would have had no liability in the market, and essentially a free bet on Australia, or I could have done the opposite, covering my liability on Australia leaving profit on England and the draw, making this a free lay of the visitors. Should the result have gone the way of Australia, and England had reverted to the type of cricket we saw during the previous Ashes series, I would have been able to back Australia, at shorter odds that I layed them, which would have meaning I would have taken a loss, but a smaller one than if I had just let my bet run until Australia had won three tests and the series. Having this control over your bets is why so many gamblers prefer to trade on exchanges, rather than with traditional bookmakers.
The charts below show the price movement of this market up to the start of the fourth test, and, as you can see, there have been some dramatic swings in the pricing over the three previous test matches.
There are two very important concepts mentioned above, namely understanding the odds and identifying value, which it is essential to understand as a gambler, and I have gone into a lot more detail on these here. I hope the example of my trading on the 2015 Ashes Winner market gives a good illustration of how to use these concepts to generate profit from sports betting. If you've got any questions, leave a comment below or get in touch on twitter.
To provide a step-by-step guide on how to use a betting exchange, and to hopefully give you another string to your betting bow, I'll talk through the example of the Ashes 2015 Series Winner market below. Going into the first test in Cardiff, before a ball had been bowled in the series, the market looked something like this:
England: 5.25 (19%)
Australia: 1.46 (68.5%)
Draw: 9.2 (10.9%)
I've included the implied probability for each result here, as understanding what the odds represent is crucial to successful trading. Essentially the market was pricing the chance of Australia winning the series at just under 70%, and I felt that this was an inaccurate representation of the true probability of Australia winning three of the five tests, and, therefore, that laying Australia at these odds offered value.
Why did I think that Australia's chances of winning the series were less than 68.5%? Well this was more of a gut feeling type bet rather than anything based on quantifying statistics. Although England's form had been very poor over the last year or so, the sacking of coach Peter Moores and the appointment of Trevor Bayliss seemed to me to bring a freedom to England's cricket. The drawn series against New Zealand earlier in the year, the first since Moores' sacking, saw England play some excellent cricket, and I felt that any replication of this against the Australians would make life very difficult for the visitors. The fact that it's a home series for England also indicated to me that the Australian's wouldn't have the easy ride the market was pricing in, and I made their chances of winning the series closer to 50-55%, and so layed the 1.46 on offer.
My intuitions on the standard of cricket England would play were proved right during the first test at Cardiff, and, although my bet was nicely positioned at the end of this game, I was keen to remove my risk from the market, as I was happy that my initial assessment was correct, and I felt that Australia under-performed in this test, and were likely to up their game in the remainder of the series. I therefore backed them at 2.54, a price I felt represented fair value at the time, leaving me with a level profit across all three outcomes.
Of course, given that there were four tests left in the series, if I had different risk preferences there were other options I could have taken. I could have backed Australia with all of the profit for my lay bet, meaning that I would have had no liability in the market, and essentially a free bet on Australia, or I could have done the opposite, covering my liability on Australia leaving profit on England and the draw, making this a free lay of the visitors. Should the result have gone the way of Australia, and England had reverted to the type of cricket we saw during the previous Ashes series, I would have been able to back Australia, at shorter odds that I layed them, which would have meaning I would have taken a loss, but a smaller one than if I had just let my bet run until Australia had won three tests and the series. Having this control over your bets is why so many gamblers prefer to trade on exchanges, rather than with traditional bookmakers.
The charts below show the price movement of this market up to the start of the fourth test, and, as you can see, there have been some dramatic swings in the pricing over the three previous test matches.
There are two very important concepts mentioned above, namely understanding the odds and identifying value, which it is essential to understand as a gambler, and I have gone into a lot more detail on these here. I hope the example of my trading on the 2015 Ashes Winner market gives a good illustration of how to use these concepts to generate profit from sports betting. If you've got any questions, leave a comment below or get in touch on twitter.
Understanding Odds and Identifying Value
There are two very important concepts that combine to form the key to long-term success in sports trading, namely understanding the odds and identifying value, and it is well worth taking the time to understand what these mean for anyone who gambles on sports.
Understanding the odds essentially means identifying what the market is pricing as the probability of that particular outcome, this is called the implied probability. There is a useful tool for calculating this here, but to work it out yourself, it is just 100 divided by the decimal odds. To take the example of Australia's price to win the 2015 Ashes Series on the Betfair Exchange prior to the series starting, 100/1.46 = 68.49%.
Once you have identified the markets expectation of the probability of a given outcome, you can then go about identifying if and where there is value in the market. Value is where the implied probability of an outcome in the market is different to the actual probability of that event. To take the classic example of a coin toss, there is a 50% probability of either heads or tails occurring on any given toss. If we were betting on this, what odds would represent value here? The total probability of all outcomes is 100%, and dividing this by the probability of each outcome (50%), gives fair value odds of 2.00 for both heads and tails. Let's say that there is a market for this on a betting exchange, and the odds (to both back and lay) are 1.90 heads, and 2.10 tails, is there value in this market (assuming a non-rigged coin)? Calculating the implied probabilities for each outcome (100/1.9 for heads and 100/2.1 for tails) gives a 51.6% chance of a heads, and a 47.6% chance of a tails. The market is, therefore, overpricing the chance of a heads, and underpricing the chance of a tails, and so there is value here, either in laying the 1.90 for heads, or backing the 2.1 for tails.
Of course, either outcome could occur, and just because we have found value does not mean that we have found a guaranteed winner. What it does mean, however, is that we have a positive expectancy, an edge. That is, over a large number of outcomes we expect to profit from the discrepancy between implied and actual probabilities. To use the coin toss example, if we backed tails at 2.1 for £10 over 1000 coin tosses, we expect to lose 50% of these (-£5000), but to win the other 50% (+£5500), resulting in a net profit of £500.
Where sports trading gets complicated is in deriving accurate probabilities for the different outcomes of an event. There are plenty of different methods of doing this, from supremacy ratings based on detailed statistics to just having a hunch that one side will perform on a given day, but what all of these methods have in common is that they identify where there is a mismatch between the implied probability in the odds and the actual probability of an outcome.
Learning to identify value in sports markets can be difficult if you're new to it, and so it's advisable to limit stakes and manage your bankroll properly while you're developing your eye for value. I'd also recommend spending time on twitter looking at what more experienced gamblers are doing and trying to get a feel for why they are taking their bets on.
This can be quite a complicated topic, so if there's something you'd like clarified, please leave a comment or get in touch with me on twitter, and I'll do my best to help. For a really good introduction for sports betting, including a discussion of the above, I'd recommend Bettingexpert.com's academy.
Understanding the odds essentially means identifying what the market is pricing as the probability of that particular outcome, this is called the implied probability. There is a useful tool for calculating this here, but to work it out yourself, it is just 100 divided by the decimal odds. To take the example of Australia's price to win the 2015 Ashes Series on the Betfair Exchange prior to the series starting, 100/1.46 = 68.49%.
Once you have identified the markets expectation of the probability of a given outcome, you can then go about identifying if and where there is value in the market. Value is where the implied probability of an outcome in the market is different to the actual probability of that event. To take the classic example of a coin toss, there is a 50% probability of either heads or tails occurring on any given toss. If we were betting on this, what odds would represent value here? The total probability of all outcomes is 100%, and dividing this by the probability of each outcome (50%), gives fair value odds of 2.00 for both heads and tails. Let's say that there is a market for this on a betting exchange, and the odds (to both back and lay) are 1.90 heads, and 2.10 tails, is there value in this market (assuming a non-rigged coin)? Calculating the implied probabilities for each outcome (100/1.9 for heads and 100/2.1 for tails) gives a 51.6% chance of a heads, and a 47.6% chance of a tails. The market is, therefore, overpricing the chance of a heads, and underpricing the chance of a tails, and so there is value here, either in laying the 1.90 for heads, or backing the 2.1 for tails.
Of course, either outcome could occur, and just because we have found value does not mean that we have found a guaranteed winner. What it does mean, however, is that we have a positive expectancy, an edge. That is, over a large number of outcomes we expect to profit from the discrepancy between implied and actual probabilities. To use the coin toss example, if we backed tails at 2.1 for £10 over 1000 coin tosses, we expect to lose 50% of these (-£5000), but to win the other 50% (+£5500), resulting in a net profit of £500.
Where sports trading gets complicated is in deriving accurate probabilities for the different outcomes of an event. There are plenty of different methods of doing this, from supremacy ratings based on detailed statistics to just having a hunch that one side will perform on a given day, but what all of these methods have in common is that they identify where there is a mismatch between the implied probability in the odds and the actual probability of an outcome.
Learning to identify value in sports markets can be difficult if you're new to it, and so it's advisable to limit stakes and manage your bankroll properly while you're developing your eye for value. I'd also recommend spending time on twitter looking at what more experienced gamblers are doing and trying to get a feel for why they are taking their bets on.
This can be quite a complicated topic, so if there's something you'd like clarified, please leave a comment or get in touch with me on twitter, and I'll do my best to help. For a really good introduction for sports betting, including a discussion of the above, I'd recommend Bettingexpert.com's academy.
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