Page 3

At the moment I’m reading the book ‘You Bet’ which is ‘the story behind Betfair’. I’m only a few chapters in and to be honest I’ve read better but I will give it more time. The reason for mentioning it is because one comment reminded me of the reason I got into not just the exchanges, but betting as a whole – and yes, it is all related to the page 3 girls in The Sun.

One day when surfing the net, back in the day of the slllooowww dial-up connections being best you could get unless you lived on top of a BT exchange I stumbled across a website called Flutter.com. I have no idea how or why I found it, maybe I was looking for page 3 girls….but after taking a look around and not finding any ladies, just lots of boring numbers, something made me stick around. I was intrigued as to what this Flutter.com was all about. I think it was the fact at first sight Flutter.com looks very complicated (as does Betfair to a newbie) and I wanted to work it all out……..

“I have a 50% chance”

Fernando Alonso came out with an interesting comment in an interview the other day, stating he has a 50% chance of winning the ‘World Drivers Championship’ this season. It would appear a very large number of people either disagree with him or haven’t thought things through, otherwise the odds available would not set his chances at 21%*.

On the assumption all drivers are given an equal chance then we have 6 men who could take the WDC this year. However we know Massa has already been assigned a ‘number 2’ role so lets say we have 5 runners at this stage with a likely chance. Both Red Bull jockey’s, both of McLaren’s pilots and Ferrari’s Alonso.

In my opinion Bet365 run a pretty tight F1 book and are usually not far off the mark so I have shown their odds to the left. Rounded up this gives us a total of a 109% book. In Alonso’s view he has double the chance of winning than what the bookmaker thinks. It’s a pretty bold statement from the man who currently sits bottom of those 5 runners in the standings, but then one thing Alonso’s never been short of is balls out confidence.

It was that confidence which allowed him to win 2 drivers championships with Renault against Raikkonen and Schumacher (in Schumacher’s good days). In the years when he’s been given the car to challenge for the win it’s probably fair to say he’s only failed to win it once. That was In 2007, when he (and Lewis) lost out by 1 point to Kimi in fiercely fought championship. Unfortunately it’s that same confidence which has led him to some darker situations. Love him or loathe him you cannot deny he has an amazing ability to get the most of the machinery he’s been handed. Many a time this ability has made the 2nd driver look slow – I’m sure Massa (who I rate highly, still) would wish otherwise……

New BBC Gadget

An interesting new gadget will be tested out by the BBC for this weekends British GP. I’ve seen similar on the iPhone App last year but over the 3G signal it tended to jump around a bit. Hopefully this solution from the BBC will be more accurate although it’s still based on the live timing rather than GPS from the sounds of things. This means it makes an assumption based on a generic sector time to predict where the car is on track. For example it will clock the end of the sector and then move the car around the track at a steady pace with the theory it should reach the next sector at roughly the same time as that one gets clocked and the cycle continues. In other words it won’t tell you if a car goes off track or if a driver gets held up in traffic until the end of the sector and is therefore not much more of an advantage than normal live timing.

Hopefully this version can be more accurate as although it gives no advantage over live timing, it would give a nice visual representation. Of course I will need more screen space – I already have 3 monitors so things are now getting silly!

James Allen explains it all on his website here…

http://www.jamesallenonf1.com/2010/07/bbc-to-introduce-driver-tracker-to-live-online-f1-coverage/

Freshen Up

Just a quick post to say the site will probably be down for a bit while I have a quick tidy up. I’ve noticed Wordpress is not a fan of using loads of plug-in’s so I’m going to strip it bare and start again. I don’t know if the RSS feed will change/stop working so maybe check back soon if you don’t get any updates as I will be back soon.

In the meantime it’s the British GP and I will attending on the Friday so no trading the In-Play practice session markets – Booo! On the plus side I can remember in 2008 when I went on the Friday that seeing the cars in real life gives you such a different perspective. I can remember Kovalainen looking so much more comfortable than Hamilton yet the market still had Lewis as clear favourite of the two for pole. Heikki got pole and Lewis was 4th. Some things never change hey ……..

Time Out

Those who have followed my blog since the re-start (if anyone has?) will remember I left my job at the start of the year. This was the main reason for starting the website up again as with so much time on my hands the idea of blogging again was intriguing.

Of course things change and 3 weeks ago I started some part time work. The part-time work provides me with enough money to cover basic bills and then anything I want on top of that I have to earn myself. It’s been an interesting experiment so far – I’ve gone for the best part of 6 months without working more than 18 hours in a week and more importantly I haven’t had to sacrifice much. When you work full time people have this belief that leaving their job would be a dire situation – how on earth would you cope? Well as always things are never as bad as they first appear. In fact when plummeted into the position of having no income the first thing you realise is how much stuff you thought you needed you don’t really need at all. Life actually becomes simpler and what used to be a chore is now a pleasure, even simple things like walking to the shops instead of going by car. To get an idea of what I’m trying to achieve then I recommend the book ‘Four Hour Work Week’ by Tim Ferriss.

Anyway, back to the point of this post. Having had endless amounts of time to do what I pleased with at the start of the year I began to get carried away with what I could do. I could start the blog up again, start trading other events, take a self learning course in Maths & Statistics, build some betting bots (which is taking hours and hours of my time) etc etc. All was well but now I’ve started part time work to ensure my rent is guaranteed each month all that spare time seems to have gone……..

AAAARRRRGGGHHHH!!

Ok, keep calm. One of the positions I wanted was Nico Rosberg for pole. In Monaco and Canada he showed real pace in the lead up to Q3 but then it all went wrong when it really mattered. I’m sure this is something that’s been worrying Ross Brawn and I’m sure in the background they have been looking into the reasons for the poor shows in the final qualy session.

I felt Nico would show promise again at the start of this weekend but couldn’t get matched on the ‘1st practice winner’ so turned to the bookies to place my bet. So I must be rolling in it seeing as that was the outcome right? No, I made a school boy error – I placed the bet on ‘Qualy Winner’ and not ‘1st practice winner’ by mistake. Doh!

To roll out the excuses it was a website I don’t use much but still I should have paid more attention. The reason for the mistake is I backed Kubica to also top the session. This brings up a bet slip an un-known/unnoticed to me the markets in the background scrolled down/up moving the market on show. When I then clicked on Rosberg it was for a different market to the one I intended. Let my terrible gut feeling of realisation when I noticed I hadn’t actually won the bet be a lesson to you all – pay attention!!!

Of course it’s not actually all that bad because the price on Betfair is now trading lower than my backed odds of 21. I had also backed Nico for a small amount on Betfair @ 38 which overall now puts me in a good position anyway.

Can he do it? I’m not confident enough to burn more of the Flutter Fund on an outright back bet but I’m not about to trade out either.

Slow Burner

The Valencia GP is usually a low liquidity affair. I normally put it down to the race being held in August when most are on their hols or because the weather outside is much to nice to stay in and watch one of the most non-inspiring races of the year. The race is earlier this [...]

Closed Call

Talk about the events during the Turkish GP continue to rumble on with everyone giving their own opinion on the actions of teams, team bosses and drivers. It’s provided us with some good off track entertainment in a season with amazingly little to talk about in terms of politics. It’s been a breath of fresh air but underneath it all is a serious problem. When does a radio call become a team order and when does a team order become cheating?

Now, before we begin let me make it clear I am not accusing anyone of anything. I have nothing against those involved and the following comments are more of a ‘what if’ and theory than statements of what may have happened and could happen in the future. I mention these items because I would like to propose a change which I believe would make F1 better and increase it’s credibility as a sport……..

Yes!!, but no.

Imagine my delight to see a new market on the F1 section of Betfair when I opened up my trading application. Not just one either, 3 new markets to cover the practice sessions. To top it off, they will all go in-play as well!! Brilliant.

To understand why I’m so happy about this you need to know I keep lots of data on practice sessions. I watch each and everyone of them (even the ones at night) as I’m lucky enough to not have to work on Fridays. It’s from studying these sessions I learn the most about the teams and cars and how they may be shaping up for the weekend. Some people will look at the timesheets at the end of the session to make their conclusions, not me. I look at the whole session and try to pick the bones out. I’m not sharing my data because I’m selfish, but for those who have not discovered the site F1Fanatic.co.uk then you should pop along to check out his graphs – usually posted up at the end of the Friday showing the times set and when by each driver………

Do Nothing

One of my worst habits with trading is always feeling the need to get involved. If I can’t find anything I like the look of I should just walk away but instead I look harder. Sometimes I will find something I missed before but mostly I just find things which aren’t really there.

The problem in the build up to this weekends Malaysia GP is the weather. Will it rain is the question?……