Tips for Tikay

[edgascoigne]

Really wouldn’t recommend ploughing into it and I promise to limit the updates to brief – en passant – posts.

There he is.

[tikay]

Tal,

Lovely stuff, well worth a tickle, but has anyone else got a Market up?

I don't have a Marathon Account, I suppose I could - should? - open one, but are they the only one making a book on that?

[horseplayer]

do opalfruits have a market?

lovely preview tal

[Tal]

Really wouldn’t recommend ploughing into it and I promise to limit the updates to brief – en passant – posts.

There he is.

[Dubai]

I backed Arsenal @10/11. At 8/11 it's in no bet territory for me

I think I prefer backing both sides to score rather than laying Arsenal

[Dubai]

But that's opinion rather than recommendation, I would have recommended a bet @10/11

[Tal]

Tal,

Lovely stuff, well worth a tickle, but has anyone else got a Market up?

I don't have a Marathon Account, I suppose I could - should? - open one, but are they the only one making a book on that?

I can't find a market anywhere else, but happy to be told otherwise! Not much money this side of Russia for chess events, I wouldn't expect.

[mondatoo]

I have to do some other things so I won't post 50 other things here this morning. Sure I'll be reading the thread in an hour though. Sure I'll also end up posting some stuff on maths bets vs form and experience choices (is that a good way to summarise the slight disagreement that has rumbled for a little while?).

 I would say that anyone who is talking about having too many bets on one thing is just wrong. If the bets are plus ev then it doesn't matter if I bet ten horses in the Grand National or just one. If it is a long-term market it should have precisely zero bearing on my decision making process when having a new bet, that I have already had bets in days gone by. When revisting long-term markets it is essential that we totally forget about what bets we have already done and focus on what the prices are now, what they should be and whether we can spot bets that are +ev.

 It is possible that punters can bet too much of their bankroll on a single event. The solution to that is not to have less selections in that event though but to reduce the size of bet on each selection.

 I would also like to say that I felt completely and utterly physically sick when I read at the weekend of different people backing Cabrera and Scot at exactly the same time to hedge their outright bets on the other guy. At no stage did I hear those people make any attempt at giving an argument as to why they were betting their new player that had anything to do with golfing ability, price, stats, etc etc. The arguments were all to do with having an easy life, less pressure, locking up a win. I would suggest that if they can't hack it those people should either bet a smaller amount they are more comfortable with or give up altogether.

Read all your posts over the past few pages, great insight, an excellent read.

The last part of this post though is totally wrong. The fact is, some people don't care about being shrewd, they don't care about maximising value, etc etc. They just bet on something they fancy, and wager an amount they are comfortable with losing, however, once the opportunity is there to make an amount of money that matters to them they want to take it to avoid the disappointment of losing, this is ofc a mental leak, but who cares, it's totally fine for people to be mug punters that just like to have a gamble on something for the sole reason of it being fun, I am definitily a mug punter, I've been in a position before when I knew laying was bad but if your busto as the case would've been for me to considering doing so, or for whatever other reason, so what, it certainly doesn't mean you should stop altogether, sometimes it's good just to do something for fun.

Btw I'm not saying anyone that Neil was referring to is a confirmed mug punter before anyone gets excited, just mean in general.

[rinswun]

Sorry folks, I had a pretty hectic weekend so wasn't able to get IPL updates up. I'll start again today though. Maybe even get some pictures posted up tomorrow.

IPL day 14 update:

So, over the weekend and yesterday Pune played twice, winning against Chennai and losing to Mumbai in a match where we had to have a winner. Pune have now played 5 games and have recorded two wins but are looking a lot more competitive and could yet give us a small sweat. Without looking to put the mockers on, Mumbai look the class of the IPL. They lost their first game and have comfortably won out since. We should get full value for our 11/2 there.

On the top Englishman bet, we appear to be struggling as Rajasthan are just not picking Shah for some reason. I'm not sure why he's not getting a game as all pre-tournament literature suggested he was an important part of their middle order but we aren't getting much luck. On the other hand, Eoin Morgan has benefitted from McCullum's injury and has started all 5 games scoring 132 runs at the time of writing. Shah will need to get games, and to score right from the off or we could be left needing snookers.

Today sees Morgan's Knight Riders play Mahmood's Kings XI and they are currently 73/2 chasing 158. Morgan is 23* and Mahmood got a golden duck. The afternoon game sees Delhi against Bangalore. If Bangalore bat first I'd like to see a matchbet between Gayle and the entire Delhi team. Delhi definitely look to be the weakest spot in the IPL this season.

[Tal]

do opalfruits have a market?

lovely preview tal

Is that a nickname for a firm?

[tikay]

Chess. The FIDE World Grand Prix event in Zug, Switzerland, starting Thursday.

Teimour Radjabov is 11/1 with Marathonbet.

http://www.marathonbet.com/en/betting/Chess

His recentish record against the field (in order of current rating):

Karjakin (2 wins 3 draws 1 loss)
Caruana (5 draws)
Topalov (13 draws)
Nakamura (1 win 5 draws)
Mamedyarov (1 win 8 draws)
Morozevich (4 draws 1 loss)
Leko (7 draws 1 loss)
Kamsky (4 wins 3 draws 2 losses)
Ponomariov (3 wins 6 draws)
Giri (no classical games on record, but 2 wins 2 draws in blitz and blindfold comps)
Kasimdzanov (1 win)

The data is difficult to get much out of, as I have had to pull data in some cases going back 10 years. He doesn’t play much in elite competition against these guys but he is very solid.

The tournament is set up very interestingly. The players who are known for being aggressive in their style are...Karjakin, Caruana, Topalov, Nakamura, Mamedyarov, Morozevich and Kasimdzanov. The rest, including our man, are more solid. Of the more solid types, Radjabov is the best player and is the 4th highest rated player in the world (it will take a beating next month when the Candidates results are included, but only so much as to put him back in towards the top of the pack, rather than where he now is, at the top of it). The big boys aren’t in this one, because they already qualify by being the highest rated, the previous Candidate or the current Champ.

Radjabov is a very solid player (5 losses against this field in the last five or so years tells its own story). He likes to counter-attack, rather than to be a swashbuckler, but he has excellent opening knowledge and is more dynamic with Black than with White (this is a combination that tends to lead to a higher draw rate FWIW).

The Candidates all went wrong for Radjabov. He turned up having not played a serious competition for some time and started well (he should have beaten Carlsen in the middle weekend and was a whisker away from doing so). He missed a couple of chances through rustiness, having reached good positions in most of his games. Once he started to tire and the results started to go against him, it is commonplace to see the other players play more aggressively against an exposed player and, at that level, it was a horrible spiralling set of zeros that followed.

He will have been knocked about by that result and his rating took an absolute hammering. However, he has now had months of preparation, three weeks of elite competition and a few weeks of wound-licking behind him. He is now to be playing in a qualifying event for the next World Championship cycle. In racing parlance, I would describe him as “excuses latest; trip likely to suit”

I don’t expect Radjabov to win this tournament. However, the comp doesn’t favour players who win one and lose one over those who draw twice (in other words, it is 1 point for a win, ½ for a draw and 0 for a loss, rather than a football 3/1/0 system). It might well be that the top five in the market beat each other up and clear no ground. Radjabov, if he can win a couple of games against the rivals, might well find himself in contention. He most certainly has the talent and it would not surprise me in the slightest if he were up there at the end. 11/1 feels like the market has overreacted from his Candidates performance.

I’m going to be nitty. Would Fred fancy a fiver? It is a bit of a punt, because there are more dynamic players in the tournament and we can’t be sure how Radjabov will react to last month’s stay in London. Nevertheless, I don’t believe he’s three times less likely to win this than Karjakin. The majority of the time, we are not going to win anything, but I’m seeing 11/1 and thinking this could be an opportunity to value-nibble. Mamedyarov at 9/1 looks silly in comparison.

Really wouldn’t recommend ploughing into it and I promise to limit the updates to brief – en passant – posts. Just wondered whether £5 at 11/1 with Marathonbet might enable Fred to cover a few darts elsewhere.

Boom!

We have a Marathon Bet Account now, & we are on.

Regular Updates are part of the value.

We have £5 @ 11/1, Marathon Bet, Teimour Radjabov, FIDE Grand Prix.

ON

#1
Bet Source: Web

Single @ £5.00 (£5.00)
Total Price: 11/1
18 Apr 11:00 Chess / Super Tournament / FIDE Grand Prix / Zug / Outright / FIDE Grand Prix. Zug / Outright - Radjabov, Teimour @ 11/1

[bobby1]

I think I made a mistake. I was so keen to say that we should take them all that I forgot some of the key points of that post.

 I started that one off by saying that the reason we can "know" that we are having value in these bets and therefore we should take them all blind is that the Cheltenham market is very mature and with perfect knowledge how can it be wrong?

 There are several reasons a market might not be perfect and in these situations we should be careful with priority offers.

 One of those reasons might be that the market is very new. It has not been beaten into shape by hundreds of thousands of annoying robots and 23 sharp minds, (sorry Betfair would assure you they still have plenty of pro punters knocking these prices into shape and trading millions to get positions either way).

 The horse that was backed at 7/1 recently was in a market that had traded less than 10% of what the ante-post Cheltenham markets had done at the time we did our bets. It was possible that once the price had been traded a bit more strongly, (with 99% of that trading happening on the day), it might drift or be backed massively. Using the thin, young Betfair market there to tell us blindly if we had a good bet, without recourse to the opinions of a judge like Chompy was wrong, whereas on the Champion Hurdle we don't need to bother consulting because the mature Betfair market has done all the work.


 It is possible occasionally that the mature Betfair market may have new news that is about to hit it, and we could, on consultation, realise that a priority price is not great because of that. It is unlikely that someone on this thread could know about Tiger spraining a wrist or being almost disqualified before the rest of the market but it is possible that the clever people here could be able to respond better than the market to the implications of that. A very mature market like the Gold Cup could change completely if it rained 20mills overnight and a priority price on the firm-ground loving 2nd favourite could be bad value as we "know" that that must surely drift once the market has really absorped the new information.

 It's possible that the mature Betfair market may contain an inherent bias. In the Masters players like Woods, Mickelson and Rory are massively overbet by the punters. The proportion of bets does not look like 25% of the money on the 3/1 chance and 8% on the 12/1 chances, it is more likely to look like 45% on the 3/1 chance and 14% on the 12/1 chances. Bookmakers are prepared to run a lopsided book because they like to gamble for a result and it is also a good way to gain new customers in a competitive market. However they may now push the prices of the three favourites in a bit because they know they'll still get backed.

 It's my old thing about the price that will split the handle against the one that will split the result. In the case of Tiger I think the 6/1 just HAD to be a great bet. In retrospect I don't think anyone who had that bet can complain. Tiger went off 4/1 and we had a big edge against a very mature Betfair market. Personally I took all the Hills priority prices and also the Ladbrokes enhancements.

 The ones that that are annoying me now are the 14/1 Mickelson and the 12/1 Rory. At the time Rory was "only" 11/1 on Betfair and I took 12/1. Mickelson was trading 12-12.5 and I took 14/1.  While it is generally true that Betfair can be your guide in established mature markets and if you can beat it you should bet blind I don't believe in either of these  I was getting enough. It is possible that there was an inherent favourite bias in the Betfair market and that the true price of all three at the off should have been slightly bigger. After all Tiger traded at 5.6-5.7 for 48-hours yet on the off he was 4.9-5.0. Did the market really learn new information about the chance of Tiger Woods winning in that time or was that all just weight of money, much of which, by definition, must be from recreational punters who had 2 days to bet him at 9/2 and who could have got 6/1 if they were shrewd?
 

 

I haven't read past this post yet but I really wanted to touch on what Neil said in the last portion of this. The BF market on most events these days is too thin to be guiding us to a bet. The horse at 7/1 example in this post nails it, we took 7/1 and someone was asking for a small amount under these odds on BF in a really immature market well before the race. Does this bet( I think it was £100 quid) really deserve to boil down to a punter or some random's in internet gambling land want to have a tiny fraction of what will be  bet on this market at a few ticks under the price we are getting?

If that offer of 7/1 had been the price on BF then would we have had the bet?
Is taking 7/1  because on BF it is 6.6/1 that much of an edge that we have to bet £100 on it?

What also must be considered is there are people that cannot get much on with some bookmakers that will happily ask for 6.6/1 if they cannot access the 7/1 and 13/2 is the next best price. They want the arbers to bet the 7/1 fixed odds and then lay their request at slightly under that price. I even saw a thread on the BF forum the other week where a guy wanted to back a 16/1 chance and actually laid out what the people that could get the 16/1 should do to give them a small profit by laying his request at 16.5 after they had got the 16/1 fixed odds.

The other really important point in the above post regarding the Masters golf is that market on BF is dictated by very few people, in fact there are probably now a handful of people populating that outright book in decent amounts. So there isn't always enough money available to hold the price of popular players up and the ones that are bookmaking the event are happy to shorten them up and keep laying them providing they can lengthen a lot of runners that aren't as well tipped up/fancied to bring in some business on those players.

If we use to above selection process for Jack Dexter and use it on the Masters golf in a book where runners are only shortening thru lack of money to hold the market up and well tipped players being over bet then Adam Scott was around 28/29 early in the week, on the off he was around a rock solid 26. So by simply using the BF market as a guide we wouldn't have backed him at 25/1 if he had been 28/29 on BF but would back him at 25/1 if he had been 25/1 on BF.

Has anything other than weight of money changed the price from 28 ish to 25 ish. In the real world has his % chance of winning the event got better anywhere but the BF market?

There were a host of other selections that shortened a lot too so my point is, if you look at the BF market at different times in the week to make selections for you then you are going to be getting different selections at different times. Are you discounting various players as each way bets because they are say 66/1 fixed odds but have drifted from 70 to 80 on BF simply because the layers bookmaking the event want to lay the ones that have been friendless in their books. They need to lay those players to make a book. For example did Jason Day's chance in the actual event change because he drifted from 65/70 to 80 on BF?

Did Mickelson's price collapse from 15.5 on BF in the week to 13.5 come Thursday morning mean he really had a better chance?
If you could take 12/1 when he was 15.5 and didn't then you are letting an impure market dictate your bet if you then take 12/1 on Thursday morning just because he is now 13.5 on BF.

cheers

[horseplayer]

do opalfruits have a market?

lovely preview tal

Is that a nickname for a firm?

it was a "joke" on marathon/snickers theme

albeit a very poor one

[Tal]

do opalfruits have a market?

lovely preview tal

Is that a nickname for a firm?

it was a "joke" on marathon/snickers theme

albeit a very poor one

Entirely my fault.

You whooshed me good and proper.

[The Camel]

do opalfruits have a market?

lovely preview tal

Is that a nickname for a firm?

it was a "joke" on marathon/snickers theme

albeit a very poor one

Stick to 1m all weather handicaps mate.