General Betting
There is currently 1 person viewing this thread.
Poker and FOBT's?
seems footy and orseracing are traders games in 2015
opinions?
seems footy and orseracing are traders games in 2015
opinions?
sort by:
Show
per page
Replies: 114
|
By:
What's your definition of a mug punter?
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
By:
Well, betfair initially years ago attracted people with some smarts and hopes to varying degrees. Imperfections in the market and angles and no crossmatching allowed all sorts of opportunities for many. Of course heaps of people lost quickly as well. In my experience it is now very very efficient over the long term and most edges are in the 1-3% zone and after commission are a loss.
The market also seems to adapt to a lot of strategies - it spots what you are doing. I have had too many things gain steadily for a while then take a sharp turn to a break even situation or loss as bots or whatever picked off any poor value bets. Some approaches were probably flawed but hte pattern of an initial gain then almost a clear point in time when the trend shifted to no gain has repeated itslef over and over. Scale up your bets and bang you get spotted even faster. Conclusion? Bots and people with excellent deep analysis of value / form (some lone wolves and some part of sophisticated syndicates) systematically spotting slight shifts in the market and patterns of individual bettors and targetig them. I am in profit overall and so not necessarily a mug. But wow, commission plus the market efficiency makes it so hard. Trading is easier but can be very tedious and time consuming. On balance the stock market is more attractive - many more inefficiencies outiside the heavily traded stocks than many markets on betfair. So the mugs? Where have they gone? Word of mouth has told them either; - nothing (when did you last recommend someone join BF or at least say it was easy it make money on it?) - or to do something else with their spare time - or to just stick to the bookies for some fun I think people who join betfair expect to make money and so are more likely to leave when they don't. If you lose on betfair you seem more of a loser than if you lose with a bookie. Whereas the average recreation gambler feels less of a loser sticking to the bookies where they can blame the bookies for their losses not that they can't cut it with the "sharp minds" in peer to peer betting. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
By:
'mug punters ' haven't gone anywhere ,they still exist .
just that there are more outlets fobts, games,roulette tables ,casinos ,bookmakers sites - all have sprung up in the last 10 years | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
By:
besides ,those that lost on here wouldn't have been 'mug punters' in the true sense,that group were always seen in the Bookies ,as much for the social sense as for the thrill -
The ones who lost on here were simply folk who thought they were cleverer than they actually were , maybe because they had a clutch of A levels  Their confidence would have been sky high to start with ,but a few losing runs and they went running to the hills . Never to return it would seem | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
By:
Definition of a mug punter is one who doesn't have a good idea what the price should be and doesn't use the market to guide him or her in absence of that.
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
By:
We all knew it was likely that the markets would continually get harder to profit from. Everyone always knew it, just not how fast and in which areas, although it was always on the cards that arbing and derivative based opportunities would be the first to dry up.
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
By:
Darwins law at work.
Gambling is a mans world - and let the men go to battle . Or sharks ,in this case  | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
By:
Over the years I have found some interesting things through analysis of historical data. Many were just wrinkles in the randomness but others were / are genuine edges. But in practice the truism seems to be that an edge of say 15% on paper in practice ends up being just 1-3% in the real world and can't overcome the drain of commission. Or else for a short while it has a high return, then if you pursue it regularly you get spotted as a pattern by "someone(s)" and they target you somehow and pick of the poorer value bets pushing the returns down to break even or a loss.
The key markets are highly scrutinised by so many people these days that the path to profit is very narrow. Like standing in the middle of a highway with traffic roaring past. If you step just a little either way you get hit. Finding an edge is one thing, keeping it with volume needed to make decent money is a totally different thing. A LOT of form analysis would overcome this I guess. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
By:
I’ve certainly had instances where a once profitable system becomes no longer viable because the prices have dropped.
Because of the edge over industry SP from the combination of BOG and the exchange I find backing easier than laying. Now if I could lay at the prices offered by ladcrooks etc.......... | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
By:
When you see a horse race and look at any selection that moves for the price range, then surely there's still plenty 'innacurate' money floating around? The layers of winners at big prices, the backers of losers at low prices etc.
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
By:
“that moves for the price range”
By that do you mean moves back and forth within a range or just heads in a certain direction? I lay drifters (selected via certain parameters) and that seems to work ok but I don’t have a big volume with that one yet. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
By:
What I noticed was the PC killed off a bunch of layers which meant some markets had no liquidity which means mug punters can't bet and so don't return. Then the Betfair Sportsbook arrived and fooled mug punters into thinking it was Betfair and so that took another bunch of them away.
There were Premier League markets where you'd get 3-4 figure liquidity in the week before a match but now have literally £0 matched until the day of the match. I still come across mispriced markets now and then but people are so desperate to get matched they act like a bull in a china shop and the market soon adjusts. If you seed a market with, say, £1,000 and someone takes that £1,000 all in one go, you'll soon realise you're doing something wrong. People need to learn how to milk a market rather than slaughter it for meat. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
By:
Mug Punters (its a horrible phrase isn't it) are still out there, playing bingo, and arcade games, and placing bets with their favourite bookmaker on their phone or tablet, or in the highstreet.
Betfair know this, thats why the exchange is left to traders and bots to fight it out amongst themselves, and not a mug amongst them. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
By:
agreed mug punters is a horrible phrase
I suppose I mean casual bettors thats more respectful and what I'm getting at, definitely for me the FOBT took a wave of mug punters (I'm gonna leave that term in place for these idiots) no doubt, poker has possibly taken a few and the array of football markets took a few more I've been trying to work on a few different strategies to add to my artillery lately cause I think the end may be nigh for Orse racing | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
By:
Where do the new exchange punters come from? 18 year old computer programmers are about it. Yer old school bettor has tried and retired hurt so all thats left is whats been said, bots and sharks in a death spiral.
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
By:
personally I'm not anti bots, I think for the average punter they create on a low level profitable spots I have £25-£50 staking systems that are affected by bots in no way whatsoever
I'm a little dubious as to whether bf use their own personal sort of high frequency trading bot maybe, I think they might have one | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
By:
I had a look at winning horses between 2008 and 2014 in GB and IRE, and compared the ISP against the last price available on betfair before the off, this is what I got
I guess the mean average would indicate profit margins have gone down for backers? | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
By:
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
By:
Some of my systems (automated) work but once I filter out down to what seems to be the key criteria, the volume shrinks to just a few bets per day often in fairly thin markets. This is sort of worth doing but then it takes months to get the history to really know if there is a genuine edge or to spot shifts in the market. Then if you increase the bet size to exploit your little niche you tend to get spotted and more likely to have your good bets jumped in front of and not taken and your poorer ones snapped up. So all the work to spot the niche seems a little pointless in terms of long term profit. The thick markets are much more efficient and harder to gain an edge. UK racing virtually always performs worst for any of my systems. Good on those who are cleaning up on here but I think you are becoming a rarer and rarer species.
Back to casual bettors. The key thing is that most on BF think like me - they actually genuinely want to make money (not just have a flutter) and if you don't are highly likely to leave or spend time elsewhere doing other stuff. Made more money from the stock market by far in recent years - better use of my time. The recreational bettor would feel more comfortable battling the bookies where deep down they expect to lose and can justify in their minds that it is not surprising when they are against the might of a serious bookmaker. On betfair, it is more complex but also in their gut they would not like the concept that some other guy sitting in front of a computer in their underpants has beaten them - the concept of a loss is more personal. I used to watch a guy I worked with put on some bets in his lunch hour. Look at the form for 15 minutes, place a few bets and that was it. From our conversations I could tell he did not expect to win overall but loved the occasional good day. BF would have been more of a hassle and he would have felt that he should be doing a heap of stuff to get an edge to beat the other guys. I imagined him on BF and thought it would upset his equilibrium and possibly take the fun out of it. So the exchange is a shark pool with not many little fish wanting to venture in. Used to be much easier. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
By:
"Yer old school bettor has tried and retired hurt so all thats left is whats been said, bots and sharks in a death spiral"
Rarely a truer word spoken on this forum. Impossible to make the kind of money these days that you could make 5-10 years ago regardless of how good you are because the markets are vastly more accurate. Betfair has consigned the exchange to a slow, painful death by the introduction of the sportsbook and effectively shepherding the new customers on there to bet with them direct. I have withdrawn over 95 percent of my balance in the last year and I think the 2015 Flat season might be my last year of serious punting on here. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
By:
Juk made a very valid point here I go again for GB and IRE racing 2008-2014
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
By:
I'm def pretty old school in my approach compared to some of you guys but I 'seem' to be doing ok, but then I don't do huge volumes or have huge stakes.
Eg last year I backed 315 horses at evens or less and made 7% roi, so there must be 'value'/and edge in the picks I make at those sort of odds. Many of those bets weren't on betfair because I could get better odds and bog elsewhere. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
By:
oh yeah strike rate was 67.5%
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
By:
That's really good but what the ROI be if you had to place them all on betfair and were playing at volumes that meant you effectively had to take SP?
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
By:
where as above evens my strike rate is less than half but my roi is double so I'm obv getting better value on the bigger prices but I hate losing runs so I do the shorties as well as they make a profit
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
By:
I know part of my edge is down to beating isp
I think I'd have to be putting on pretty big sums to be stuck with isp or at least bsp because I can still get bog in lots places, although centrebet closed my account and betvictor took bog off me | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
By:
Take them for as much as you can while you can. Maybe if you are spreading your bets out you can stay under the rader for a while!
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
By:
All that trading stuff seems like a lot of work for a couple of % , I dunno how anyonecan ar&ed with that unless they're using a bot cos the effort/gain ratio just wouldn't be worth it to me otherwise.
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
By:
I would find it very tedious, it is not for me either.
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
By:
I dunno how anyonecan ar&ed with that unless they're using a bot cos the effort/gain ratio just wouldn't be worth it to me otherwise.
I'd also find it dull, but I can understand the appeal over a commute to do a job that you don't like every day. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
By:
Personally I think something like this happened, the old boys found it super easy to make money off a wave of less knowledgeable people chasing an easy buck in the early days thought it would last forever and are now bitter the crowd have sharpened and their dreams of milking an infinite cash cow have vanished from in front of their face
Unwilling to invest time and effort altering their systems they simply wish that the easy money would come back Betfair has undoubtedly gotten sharper but unless premium is killing you on here you're doing it all wrong | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
By:
Forgive my stupidity but it’s not my thing and I’m curious, as the trades are often worth no more than a couple of % (e.g. it seems backing at 6.0 then laying at 5.5 only gives a 1.54% roi before commission) , are they trading many horses per race and/or the same horse many times? Then you have the instances where the price doesn’t go the direction you thought it would.
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
By:
Many styles of trading - check out youtube. It can be follow big trends, predict big trends, grab small bites, frenetically back and lay, combine form knowledge to take a position with trading etc.
The best thing about it is that you have a rough idea if you have some hope of making money from your approach within a day or two (if you avoid mistakes and chasing which most people do not). Whereas with straight betting it can be months before you discover (or think you discover) that the gains you were making were just random patterns in the win / loss ratios. Trading used to be more fun, even exciting, as you could trade with more confidence in the signals. In the very early days it was almost as simple as putting a bet in front of any big amount and you'd win. These days there is so much faking, spoof bets and traps set for the unwary that things often seem to do the opposite of logic. But if you fade the fakers you can end up catching really bad moves. Snakes and ladders is the simple analogy. You can still make money but for the average trader it can be like the worst paying, most frustrating job you will ever do. There are still plenty of people doing okay and some very well trading though. But a guy I know who lived off it for 5 years very well now has a 9 to 5 job | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
By:
I guess the issue is how much time do you put into an opportunity that seems to be trending towards smaller and smaller ROI. Enjoy your life or put time into it into something else. Niche opportunities are often where the money is made. These are small and shrinking in BF - not enough volume to exploit without shifting the market and ruining the edge. In the stock market, in contrast, for example, niche opportunities have more than enough volume for any recreational punter to find an edge(s)with solid volume and never be noticed or targeted. On BF I've had plenty of things work till I scaled up a bit and then either got hit or jumped in front of.
BF had a buzz to it in the early days - bees to a honey pot. Now recreational punters and "sharp minds" can sense that the hive is struggling and full of wasps. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
By:
The Exchange is now basically bot vs bot vs serious traders
I doubt many people are making a lot of money off the exchange nowadays because if they are, theyre making it off other traders and bot users (not off the recreational punter like they all used too). Therefore, for every bot/trader winner, there's now a bot/trader loser. And if youre doing it for a living, and sometimes losing now, youre going to give up, and liquidity is going to just get worse and worse. It really doesnt look good for the exchange, does it? | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
By:
The truth of the matter is there is virtually no volume in any of the markets until just before the off when they tend to be very accurate. So unless you bet in sufficiently small stakes, you can effectively only bet at or around the betfair SP. The larger your bets are the more you are actually driving your own prices down (or up if you are laying). It will reach (for most people) a stage where it is not worth doing it any more unless the exchange is freshened up with new custom (eg from overseas). The pushing of new customers on to the Sportsbook means that the only ones who make it on to the exchange are the ones that win/beat the prices and are effectively not allowed to bet on the Sportsbook. Therefore they are likely to be fairly clued up. Some will be able to cope on the exchange and some will not but effectively only winning customers (of whatever method) are left betting against each other on the exchange.
Hence my decision to withdraw the vast majority of my profits and bet in smaller stakes. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
By:
Soup is correct.
Eventually there will just be a few big players left betting against each other. They can then either fight it out to the death, or take their money and walk. It really depends what type of characters they are but the exchange is on the way out. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
By:
Not having a go, but I do sometimes wish people on here would refrain from the doom and gloom approach.
It's similar to when the UK economy was doing worst, and pundits kept reminding everyone. Psychology is a big issue when looking the health of markets, and people reading on here will only see negatives much of the time. I agree that PC at heavier ends may well have stopped successful players of the past, but new players entering have a decent chance on BF (until they become very successful). No reason for any new (non-PC players) to not join the game, as it's still beatable. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
By:
Some say doom and gloom, others say realism!
Too some degree you are right to say there is no reason for any new players not to join the game, but the fact is they don't come to the exchange now, they go to the sportsbook in the main. I don't think my view of the markets is to do with psychology, they have been in gradaul decline since about 2008. |