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.

It wasn’t long before I was placing bets every day but these were not on sports. Flutter offered some strange and unusual markets to bet on and the one which took my fancy was ‘”What colour hair will The Sun’s page 3 girl have in tomorrow’s paper’.

‘”What colour hair will The Sun’s page 3 girl have?

Looking back I find it quite amazing such a market was offered. Not only because those working at The Sun didn’t have to print their paper until after the market was opened but it also seems a bit, well, wrong. The closest we have these days would be the Big Brother markets but it’s not really anything in comparison.

As I recalled the good old days of betting on the died blonde hair of the page 3 lovely I remembered one of the lessons all gamblers learn at some stage. Believe it or not I was of the opinion I had found a pattern in the hair colour and could predict with amazing accuracy when the red head would spring up which was of course the longest odds of the three selections available.

My amazing ability was nothing more than luck but I felt I had found a niche and I was making a handsome £2 a day on average, less the 30 odd pence for having to buy The Sun. I don’t read The Sun these days, luckily some things have changed – then again I’m not sure you could say I read it back then. When Betfair took over Flutter the market ceased and so did my chance to show the wonderful skill I had developed. I lived on on the belief what I had done worked because it had never ‘gone wrong’. How could it possibly be luck?

About 6 years later I read the book ‘Fooled by Randomness’, a book to which I could say ‘I haven’t read better’. It showed me the error of my ways (or should I say thinking) and although it’s a hard pill to swallow, I now realise I couldn’t predict the page 3 girls hair colour. Still it was fun while it lasted !

As is betting one Formula One. It’s all fun and I make a decent profit from it but these days I’m always asking myself “am I just being lucky?”. It’s an amazing run of luck if I am simply hitting a winning streak (5+ years) yet I still ask the question. Are you making your trades through skill, or are you just on a lucky streak?

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.

So he may be 5th in the standings and a 20 points deficit may sound bigger than usual with the new system but of course it’s less than one win and we still have 7 races to go.  Vettel must surely be wondering how he’s not leading this championship but the same could be said for Alonso. An engine failure in Malaysia cost him points and is the only race retirement for Ferrari this year. A silly crash in Monaco practice put him out of qualifying where he was looking strong for at least a podium. The events in Valencia did conspire against Ferrari (although I felt they could have dealt with it a bit more maturely)  and cost more valuable points. Silverstone was in my opinion self inflicted (it was clear to see, they should have just let Kubica through straight away) and cost further points, all of which would see Alonso in with maybe more than a 50% chance at the WDC.

Of course the same “what if’s” could be said for other drivers, however it’s worth noting Ferrari and Alonso have experienced some bad luck so far this season. If they can find some momentum and string a couple of good results together Alonso will continue to eek every 10th out of the car and keep himself in the championship race as long as he can.

Probably the most important thing in his favour now is the other 4 drivers all need to beat their team mates. Again, love it or loathe it, the decision Ferrari made in Germany could be a very important one. Personally I would have liked to see 6 drivers still in this race but as a ‘gambler’ I also like to make the most of the cards I’ve been dealt and if Ferrari have chosen a number 1, I would like to make the most of it.

The next two races will be extremely important in deciding the championship. Mark Webber commented in an interview that Red Bull will be strong everywhere with the caveat “We’re a little bit worried about how the long straights might go at some of the other venues, at maybe Monza.”. Up next is Spa, followed by Monza which are both tracks where Red Bull traditionally are not at their best. The gap in Hungary was huge, massive in fact so they may not struggle so much this time around but should they be slightly off the pace then Alonso will be waiting to pounce.

If Alonso is going to win and if he really does have a 50% chance, it will be over the next two races he needs to make the biggest impact on that 20 point deficit. I will leave if for you to decide if Alonso really has a 50% chance, but 21% sounds a little under valued to me.

* As I write this the odds on Betfair are 4.6 (~21%) and the best bookie odds are 4.5 (~22%). The shortest odds on offer are 3.2 (~31%).

Is that a tinted visor, or is nobody in that car?

A while ago I started out on a venture into the world of betting BOT’s. For those not in the know it simply means programs which automate the betting and can be anything from a simple recording application to a fully fledged trading system. This is all done through the Betfair API and in my case I’m using VB.net and Visual Studio to make it all work.

It’s actually not very hard at all to obtain a list of runners and their odds from the API. The hard part is putting it all together in a functioning and safe working application. Add to the mix the problem of learning VB.net as I go along and no doubt you will understand at times the program has been a complete pain in the arse!

I am now at the stage where I can get a market, display the runners and their odds and update this information on a regular basis (up to 3 times a second). It’s amazingly quite stable and I’m chuffed to bits with it. I have an up and running application which also records the odds at set intervals to excel which is how I produced graphs such as the one in this post.

I’m sceptical as to whether bots can really produce a profit over time so I’m not looking to produce something that will for example scalp the horse markets. Maybe that’s something I will look into when I have more time but for the moment I want to improve on what I can do and that means using applications to trade the F1 markets. The aim is to free up my time (so I can look at other markets) by having applications monitor the market and then make decisions based on my inputs. In other words, if I have a a back position on Vettel for race win and overnight the odds start to drift, wouldn’t it be nice if a program could cut out of a position for me!

I didn’t click submit bet, a) because I'm not that confident in my team and b) because it doesn’t fully work yet!

My stumbling block now is getting the bet logic correct. Its far more difficult than you would first think as a matched bet is not just 1 item – it can be made up of many matched parts. You can also have partially matched bets but the Betfair API only has fully matched or unmatched parts which makes it a real headache to keep track of bets.

If bets could only be placed and amended by the application the logic would be fairly simple but where I’m struggling is when bets get amended elsewhere (say the Betfair website or another trading application) or they simply get cancelled/lapse.

If anyone out there has made a bot with some decent logic then could you give me a nudge in the right direction – I don’t expect you to give away code and I don’t want that. Just a simple nudge would be fine. For example, does anyone actually use the API call GetBet or can everything be done with GetMUBets ???

Whilst going through some of the data I’m collecting for the research on both my TCF and SC projects a couple of things stood out. There were also a number of interesting figures which I would not have predicted off the top of my head. There is nothing to be read into the following points but I thought I’d share them.

The sample I am using is from the start of the 2007 season which means it includes 62 races and a total of 3770 laps! In those races we have seen……

1. 20 retirements due to engine failures.
2. 26 cars classified but didn’t see the chequered flag (NOTE: This is important if you are the person who kept throwing money into the market earlier this season expecting all cars who fail to reach the finish line to be ‘not classified’ !)
3. 39 Safety car appearances in 26 different races.
4. By far the lowest number of cars to be classified was in the season opener at Melbourne in’08. Only 8 cars were classified…..of which 6 actually made it to the finish line (16 cars failed to finish  – see the video above).
5. 89 Collisions resulting in a retirement.
6. None of the races have seen all the cars be classified. 4 races have seen only 1 retirement.
7. 58 retirements as a result of cars who ‘spun off’
8. The highest number of SC appearances was in Monaco this year with it having to surface 4 times.
9. Catalunya has a surprisingly high rate of retirements with 8 in 07, 9 in 08, 6 in 09, 5 in 10 and 3 safety car appearances over the 4 years (2 races). Not bad for a track that’s tested on all winter and supposedly one of the boring races.
10. 14 brake failures causing an early bath.
11. At Monza in 07 and 08 there were only 1 and 2 retirements respectively yet the safety car made an appearance in both. In 09 there were 6 retirements but no safety car.
12. 5 punctures causing retirement.
13. 24 Gearbox failures meaning retirement.
14. Montreal witnessed 10 failures in 07 and 7 failures in 08 whilst seeing the safety car deployed in both races. ‘10 had 5 retirements and no safety car (I know that caught a few people by surprise, me included!).
15. Singapore has seen a safety car in every race (lets not go there…)

I’m still working hard on the figures but it’s going to take time. Will report back soon – good luck if you are trading/betting on this weekends race.

The reason I didn’t choose the Safety Car markets as my first investigation was because it felt a bit silly looking into something I don’t believe there would be an edge in. But the more I think about it the more I realise investigating this market would be beneficial for investigating other markets. It could be the % chance of a safety car appearance has an influence on the number of cars expected to finish the race, or on the other hand it may not have anything to do with it – but it won’t hurt looking. In most cases the SC is deployed because of an accident which usually means a car has retired from the race. Therefore would it not make logical sense for tracks with high SC appearances to also have a low number of classified drivers? Or is that poor logic – would it be races with low numbers of cars reaching the flag that produce a SC appearance…..

It now makes sense for me to investigate the Safety Car (SC) market along side the Total Classified Finishers (TCF) markets. Not because I think there is a link between the two  (if there is then hopefully the stats will show it – I don’t want to go into begin any of these investigations with any prejudice), but it somehow seems to make sense to do them at the same time, to collect the data and compile them together etc. In some cases it will be the same factor that has the biggest influence over the outcome. In a rain soaked race the number of finishers and SC appearance both have to be dramatically changed in their expected outcomes than compared to a dry race.

After this weeks German GP I hope to get a more meaningful post up about the markets and what my first impressions are. In the meantime, enjoy the race.

As explained in an earlier post I’m going to change the format of the blog to look into aspects of the F1 markets from a statistical point of view. I suppose my aim is to try and price up some of the markets which would therefore indicate what prices are value and those which aren’t. At the same time I will be learning/teaching myself some more complex maths to help achieve this so it’s going to be a long and slow process but I hope it will make for a more interesting blog than ‘I done this, I think his’.

The first investigation I would like to conduct needs to be simple so the maths doesn’t get too complicated and to keep it short as a little introduction. Diving straight in to looking at what price the man on pole should be is tempting but it’s never going to work – it would be trying to run before I can walk. The ‘Total Classified Finishers’ markets offer an interesting investigation as the they are more dependent on statistical data rather than any sporting ability and offer only two outcomes. The two outcomes is the biggest reason for starting with these markets as the choice of ‘Over’ or ‘Under’ make it far simpler than Red Bull, Ferrari, McLaren…….

The other important reason for choosing these markets is I never play them. Not once have I ever placed a bet on a over/under X number drivers to be classified so I have no pre-conceptions or bias before I start this work. The aim is to find out:

1. What markets are available on both the exchanges and bookmakers sites?
2. Collection of data for each track for number of cars that finished in each race to gauge track specific results
3. Collection of data for each season for the number of cars that finished races to determine the reliability rates under those rules.
4. Combine the data from 2 & 3 to be left with an expected number of finishers for any race.
5. Convert the expected number of finishers into odds which relate to a particular market (for example Under/Over 16.5 Finishers).

Feel free to add in anything or opinions as we go along. Remember I’m learning as I go so I’m bound to get bits wrong!

Finally, to prevent me having to type Total Classified Finishers every time I will use TCF which will also become a sort of codename for this ‘project’. Roll on TCF !

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/

The new gadget will tell you where on the track each car is

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 ……..

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.

For the Canada GP I noticed a slight change in the way I traded. You may have noticed I was somewhat ‘lost’ going into the weekend. This was because I didn’t have time to do my normal amount of research and crammed it in. I ended up chasing the market which on that occasion worked out fine as I made a handsome profit, but it didn’t feel right.

This weekend it was the (what could have been fatal) error of placing a bet on the wrong market. I was rushing to get bets on at the last minute – partly the fault of poor liquidity but also sloppy on my part. During qualy I was again chasing the market and this time lost out. I had felt Webber offered much better value and he did – but I just didn’t trade the odds very well and made a loss (within my limits).

I didn’t do any prediction post before the weekend either, A) because of time and B) because I didn’t want give away any tips when the volumes traded were so low.

Those who read a number of betting blogs will probably now be thinking this is a post about giving up the blog – it’s not.

When I made the decision not to go back to full time work and to try and earn a living by other means, I was determined not to quit or let anything stand in my way. But I do have to be realistic and to get to my ‘end target’ I have to prioritise my actions to those which offer me the most value in return.

Doing a post about what my predictions for the forthcoming race are is not much use to me. If I’m right then I may have given away an advantage and if I’m wrong then I won’t have any readers so it’s a waste of time! Doing a post about how I traded the race is also of no use to you (those variables will not happen again for you to replicate it) and no use to me other than maybe learning from mistakes.

So I’m going to kill two birds with one stone. Well actually I’m not killing anything, more merging items into one which I hope will then give me a benefit from spending time on it.

No longer will posts be in relation to the forthcoming race or how I traded the last one. It won’t be about me at all – it will be about F1 and Betting/Trading. Therefore posts can be written as and when I have the time to do so. It’s not so much the writing of posts that way a blogger down, it’s the constant feeling of needing to do a post, especially when you set yourself an imaginary deadline. So removing the need to post out of the equation I can better manage my time.

As a result of changing the content of posts I’m going to stop the self learning course in Maths & Statistics. It was fine, but is learning hardcore maths any use if I never get around to applying it to anything. I will therefore continue teach myself but on my own time frame (therefore removing deadlines again). To help with this learning I will apply what I learn to F1 statistics and how they relate to the odds etc. Therefore a typical post may be ‘If you backed the pole sitter, would it have returned a profit over the season?’. I have bundles of data but never get around to using it (time!)  – now I will be able to investigate my data and create a blog post at the same time.  Any other ideas for investigations would be welcomed.

Betting bots are also another thing I’m looking into at the moment so I may do some posts on these – probably when I need some help with solving programming issues!

Twitter will allow me to make quick comments when I feel like sharing something regarding the weekends current F1 race so those interested should follow me here.

As for the Flutter Fund, well it proved either outright betting does not pay or that I’m terrible at predicting the outcome of the race! Probably a mix of both if I’m honest but it goes to show how little ‘prediction’ is involved in trading as those returns are sky high in comparison. To finish it off, I have done one last selection for this weekend.

Yesterday I felt overworked and my trading suffered as a result. Last night when I made the decision to merge the blog and learning together and remove the need for a deadline on those tasks, I felt much better. I’m now looking forward to today’s race and come profit or loss, I don’t care as long as I’m back to trading how I should be.

Good luck for today (and for England!) and I will post sometime maybe soon, about whether there is value in backing a pole sitter such as Vettel @ 1.92 or if this should be a lay position…..

My next post will explain the reason’s but this is the last attempt for the Flutter Fund so I’m hoping to go out in style!

First up is a group bet offered by Bet365. Group 3 consists of Alguersuari, Kobayashi and De La Rosa with them offered at odds of 1.33, 5.0 and 6.0 respectively. Alguesuari starts in the middle of the Suaber sandwich but on the clean side of the grid and the Toro Rosso’s faster race pace make him favourite. In reality the race of these runners will be dictated by reliability (especially the Sauber’s) and ability to avoid crashing. De La Rosa has a had a pretty non-descript season so far and he was the first selection of the Flutter Fund, he will also be the last. At 6.0 it’s an interesting bet when the true odds should be something more like 1.6, 3.75 and 3.75. It’s worth 2pts of the Flutter Fund.

Second up is an outright on the race winner market with Stan James who are offering Hamilton at 6 to make it a hat-trick. He will hope to get Webber at the start and then I’m hoping McLaren can learn from past errors with regards to when they pit. Red Bull have been clever in knowing they only need to pit at the same time as McLaren  – with pit lane advantage they can release their car knowing McLaren *should* have to hold releasing their car until the Red Bull has passed. If McLaren can make their tyres last better than Red Bull then Keeping Hamilton out as long as possible and thus forcing Red Bull to pit first could give him track advantage. I’m also hoping the English can have a successful day in all sporting events! It’s also worth 2 pts of the Flutter Fund.

Last and probably least is a bit of fun to finish of this experiment. An early safety car could make the race a bit of a lottery and give those starting on harder tyres a boost up the running order. SportingBet have Sutil at 401 to win today. It’s not going to happen but as I said it would be a lottery and if you’re not in the lottery you cannot win it so I’m going to buy a ticket with 0.5 Pts of the fund.

If all bets lose then the Flutter Fund managed to lose 10% which is pretty poor – awful in fact. It has been an interesting experiment for me and I’m still hopeful it can end in profit.