The Ashes - Fifth Test Preview

The Oval 20 - 25th August 2015

The fifth and final Test of what has been an incredible series so far kicks off at the Oval this Thursday as a dead rubber, since England wrapped up the series last time out at Trent Bridge.

I very much doubt, however, that either side will be approaching this match as an irrelevance, with the England camp talking up the importance of winning 4-1, which would be the first time ever England have won four Tests in a home Ashes series, and Australia looking to prove a point following a hugely disappointing tour so far.

Both sides are in transitory stages, with England in the final stages of rebuilding after the previous away Ashes series, and Australia preparing to lose captain, and final remaining member of the great Aussie side of the 2000s, Michael Clarke. Along with Clarke, opening batsman Chris Rodgers has confirmed that this will be his last Test, veteran seamer Ryan Harris withdrew from the squad, and there are question marks over the future of several other players, Watson, Voges, Fawad and Haddin in particular. Steve Smith has, rightly, been named as successor to Clarke's captaincy, but will not be in charge for this Test, leaving a side that looks to me to be very much betwixt-and-between, waiting for this tour to be over to move on.

This aspect of the Australian squad is making me lean towards backing England again here, with the price currently at 2.5 on the Betfair Exchange. Given the two biggest trends in test cricket at the moment, the lack of draws and the struggles that away sides are having, this seems to be the best play for this match, closely followed by a lay of the draw. I'm planning to effectively take both, but to skew my green from the draw lay onto England, with some green on the visitors, and all liability on the draw. This doesn't give as good value on England, but it does cover me should the Aussies put up a fight. I think we can fairly safely discount the draw here, the weather seems set fair, with perhaps some showers on day one, and the way these two sides are playing, we could lose two full days and still get a result. The oval pitch should provide a bit less seam movement, but it seems England have realised that they're actually quite good in these conditions, and have started ordering pitches to suit, so we may well see another here.

In terms of other markets, there's not a great deal I can see. Rodgers as top Australian bat at 5s might be worth a small play given how he's really the only Aussie bat to show any fight this series. It looks like Anderson will miss out again, and with this being a meaningless test, backing Finn or Wood for top English bowler might be a good play. As discussed in my Fourth Test Preview, Broad has a tendency to turn up when it matters, and as this is a dead rubber, may just go through the motions here. Dutching, betting on both, Finn and Wood gives odds of 2.5 should either finish as top bowler, which looks ok value to me.

Good luck in the markets, and if you have any questions please get in touch on twitter or leave a comment below.

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.

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.

The Ashes - Fourth Test Preview

Trent Bridge 6th - 10th August 2015

After a fast and furious test at Edgbaston, with England recording an impressive victory over a limp Australian side within three days, the fourth Ashes test rolls into Nottingham with the series very nicely poised at 2-1 to the hosts with two to play. A victory for England here would wrap up the series, whilst a defeat would make the final test at The Oval a winner-takes-all match, and so both sides will be approaching this game looking to win.

England will be missing James Anderson through injury, with Liam Plunkett and Mark Footitt being brought into the otherwise unchanged squad as potential replacements. Obviously, Anderson will be a huge miss for England, especially given his impressive record at Trent Bridge, having picked up 53 wickets in eight tests at an average of 19.24. His absence will mean that Stuart Broad, who has picked up 25 wickets at 23.24 in his previous six tests at Trent Bridge, will be England's senior bowler. Broad has bowled excellently so far this series, although this is not reflected in his 12 wickets at 27.41. Given England's otherwise inexperienced bowing attack, and Broad's tendency to produce game-changing bowling spells when it counts, backing Broad for Top England Bowler at 3.75 looks like good value.

Australia seems to have selection headaches in all departments, with their batting line up, which looked imperious two weeks ago at Lords, flopping to 136 all out in the first innings at Edgbaston, and the seam attacking looking toothless, with the exception of one excellent over from Mitchell Johnson. Journalistic consensus seems to be that Adam Voges will be dropped for Shaun Marsh, who will bat at 4 with Michael Clarke moving to 5. Clarke has had an extremely poor series so far, scoring just 94 in 6 innings, averaging 18.8, and his previous two tests at Trent Bridge have been disappointing, having scored 115 at 28.75. There is also talk of Peter Siddle being brought into the side at the expense of Josh Hazlewood to give the Australian bowling attack more of a wicket-taking threat. Siddle has played one test previously at Trent Bridge, picking up 8 wickets at 16.87, and also had a fairly impressive summer with Notts in 2014, and so will be familiar with the conditions. Siddle can be backed for Top Australian Bowler at 5.5, and given the lack of a threat from the remaining Australian seamers last week, this looks to offer some good value.

Turning to the outright market, Australia are currently favourites, at 2.14 on the Betfair Exchange, with England 3.6 and the draw at 3.8. My play here is to lay the draw at 3.85, as neither side will be content with a draw, the weather looks set for the five days and the pitch looks to be very similar to Edgbaston's, with a healthy covering of grass. I am also tempted to take England, as I think the 3.6 is very generous, giving them an implied probability of 27.8% of claiming victory, and there are rumours of a growing discontent within the Australia squad around the selection of Peter Nevill ahead of Brad Haddin at Birmingham. However, given England's inconsistent record, WLWLWLW over their last seven tests, the swings so far in the series, and Australia's toughness, I prefer opposing the draw.