Punt.com - A Blog About Gambling by a Professional Gambler.

"Value", and the need to be right, straight away.

The two parts of this blog entry title are not compatible.  Value, and being right straight away do not go together.  It seems a lot of people think they do.  Someone who places a bet they believe is good value, who then sees the price become even better value or go against him, is a "mug" in some circles, and subject to much ridicule and merriment.

This person is not a "mug", they've simply either misjudged the situation, or have not executed it as well as they might.  Or, if they want a very large bet, they may have had to go through the market in order to get on... Especially if they don't have time to spend drip feeding to build a big position.  There's nothing wrong with any of these scenarios, what we have here is misunderstanding of what this punter is trying to acheive - and that is getting on with an edge and a view to running his position.

Our punter has no need to be "right" with immediate effect.  A price that goes against him is no cause for concern, because when he places his bet,  as far as he was concerned, the edge was there at that moment.  He's placed a bet for an amount he is happy losing and so there is no emotional attachment to the price movement at any time after he has had his bet.   These are far from the actions of a mug punter.

Why then, is there a need for many to think that he hasn't played this very well?  The fact of the matter is that many (most) people do have a need to be right, straight away.  This means that when they place a bet, the price must almost immediately head in a positive direction for them.  Should it take a negative tick or two, they will experience negative emotional pangs...  "Pain" for want of a better word.

Betfair markets are full of these types of traders.  They are extremely price sensitive.  Overly price sensitive.  (Sensitivity of price is generally a good thing, but once you are on, the sensitivity should be calmed with good judgements on taking profits / cutting losses.)

Lets take the Big Brother winners market as an example.  Here we have a market based upon who will win a tv show, decided by the voting public on what is going on in the house and being shown on tv.  As far as betting goes, there's few markets around which are as purely about opinion as this.  But even in this market, price sensitivty takes a firm grip. 

In fact, if you were to watch the market and the show at times, the two don't match up particularly well.  And that's due to the need for many to fidget over the prices.  The vast majority of people trading this are sensitive to the odds.  A tick this way.. emotional reaction, a tick the other way.. another set of emotions.  It's incredibly tough to trade this market (or any market) tick by tick, emotionally and physically.

Anyone attempting to, has to ackowledge that a single big player can come in and obliterate their position rapidly.  Anyone came come and do as they please,  and not everyone has the need for their bets to have immediate positive confirmation.  They should reassess whether their need for such a confirmation is a good or bad thing...  It's pretty obvious by now, that it's a huge hinderance.

Overly price sensitive traders have a big weight on their shoulders and emotions.  Minute by minute they watch the market, analysing the volumes on either side of the market, looking for the weight of money, big players that can cause damage and asking questions of their positions.  This is no way to spend hours trading, months if it's Big Brother. 

These emotional reactions can get you into numerous pointless trades, causing you to take profits quickly, run losers or never give things a decent chance to occur.  Decent trades are misted over by the noise created by the sheer number of reactionary trades.  Reactions based on nothing but the actions and reactions of other people in the market, and not on real life events.  If you are price sensitive, then you are at the mercy of every other person in the market.  Only one of these people has to do something you don't like to trigger a poor trade.

Remove the emotional impact of price movements from your game. 

Ackowledge the problems that exist with the various approaches.  A value punt needs executing well.  A trader needs to devise a trading plan to make it easy for himself to make calm clean judgements.  Both methods need to stake to a size which does not trigger too much price sensitivty and endless fidgetation.  Let other traders struggle with their market itches and scratches.

Blog downtime and Las Vegas.

Apologies to those of you that may have tried to visit the blog recently and found it unavailable, there was a power outage at Typepad HQ, so everyone using their platform suffered.  Hopefully that's all sorted now..

I've not been betting much over the last 2 weeks, taking that holiday has changed my gear somewhat, so I've been relaxing away from the computer a bit, getting addicted to facebook and getting a haircut.

Which leads me to an interesting chat I had with my barber who is going to Las Vegas on his holiday.  He knows what I do, so my visit was full of questions about gambling and casinos.  I've always known that professional gamblers and the general public have very difffering ideas on gambling, but it was a very interesting conversation that highlighted them all pretty much..

Questions about the best tactics on Roulette !?  Which games he can win on, whether I would play Slot machines ! 

Now, I know there are people out there convinced they can win on roulette, and they might even do so - I get enough spam in my inbox from people claiming they've made millions from it.  For the general population though, it is much safer for them to know that the odds are in the casino's favour, the more you play it the worse your chances of leaving the game with a profit are.  An interesting concept to the barber.. Another one was that casino's are in the business of taking your money, when did you last see a poor casino owner?

What I did try to impress on him was that as a professional gambler, I would never enter a casino, unless I was playing poker against other people (and even then probably not because I'm not very good at poker!).  I also said that he should consider any money he takes into a casino as "spending money".  He should think of it in terms of spending some cash and in return recieving an amount of fun and enjoyment from the game - a game in which is going to have to be lucky to win, ie. it's not skill based.

I asked how much he might take into a casino..  £200 ?  For that £200, you could have a very nice meal with some decent wine and some friends round, lasting hours probably (being Italian).  That would be money well spent.  Compare that to spending it in a casino, a place where they pump oxygen around to keep people buzzed up to bet, where all of there games are biased against you and where they make their money from people's gambling habits.  You'll be very lucky to come out with money, let alone profit.  Good food with friends, or solitary betting on where a white ball ends up ?

On reflection, perhaps I was a bit harsh.  But it seems few of the general public see gambling in this way.  They think they can go in and win, and indeed they can if they get lucky on very few bets, but consider them doing this at various times of their life.. every bet placed during their entire lifetime in a casino adds up to poorer value.  If you must, enter once, put the money down you had to spend on red or black and walk out again never to return.  The people with the best value from a casino, are those that never enter it.

As for those that claim they win, well good luck to them.  I'd rather spend my time doing something fun than spending hours of my life in a casino.

Back from a well deserved break.

First post since arriving back from my week away, which was much needed / deserved and enjoyed.  I missed the Men's Wimbledon final and the Women's mostly too as I went out on that Saturday afternoon, Venus and Roger winning as expected.

It's always a little strange taking a break immediately after 2/3 months of solid work - mostly 6 days a week, sometimes 7.  I've been placing large bets for all that time and to not have a bet or even look at the internet for that time is very strange.  It felt like I was missing something for the first 2/3 days at least, but as relaxtion mode kicked in, I began to enjoy not doing it.  Now that I'm back I have an odd mix of feelings... I'd definitely like to be back in the sunshine and not working again, but I'm also fresh and ready to get into the hard court season.

I also have that nagging feeling (having spent 7 days with some great people all with 'normal' lives and jobs) that I'm a bit of an outsider and perhaps I would like to get to that point of making enough money from this to move onto something new, soon than I previously thought.  Anyway, there's plenty of time to let these thoughts settle... I certainly don't want to just let them go though, and the thought that I should be adding in more to my life than sitting here for too long per day is important.

I'm not sure what the next week holds for me, I'll figure it out tomorrow, anticipating a quiet one with (hopefully) some real life tasks being seen to...  and one or two posts on the blog to look out for too.

Wimbledon Update

A quiet week on Punt.com - I've been busy!  Making money for a change, these last 3 weeks have seen me make back all (and more) that I had lost in the previous 6/7 weeks which is a real confidence builder for the rest of the year.

The big thing for me have been my findings as posted in the over staking entry (2 below this).  Trading to a size where I'm ok to lose, no anxiety and buzz.  There's also been a couple of max bet situations that have arisen, namely Serena's match v Hantuchova where she cramped and then it rained.  I took a view that she would be fine after the rain and pretty much ran this hrough.  Over 7000 commission points were gained from this win alone.

The rain has affected things massively this year.  From a trading point of view, the flow of matches has been interupted, it's meant virtually restarting the match each time.  Running positions has been a bit risky.  It's a real shame as well that many top quality matches have had to be played simultaneously, resulting in fewer tradable matches on tv.  As a spectacle it's been tarnished, quite sad to see center court half full on occaisions.

It wasn't a coincidence that yesterday (the first day where the sun shone for the entire day) the quality of play went through the roof.  Today will be my final day of trading Wimbledon this year, I'm taking a week off from tomorrow and will miss the men's final - can anyone stop Fed ?  I don't think so.

Venus Williams should win the ladies final today.  After her first 2 matches no one would have imagined she would get this far.  She was spraying unforced errors far and wide.  Clearly someone had a word with her about how if you don't hit the ball inside the white lines you lose the point - it must have been quite a revelation for Venus.  Since being tested against Morigami she's been playing unbelievable tennis.

I always feel with Venus that she responds better to taking a defensive stance to the match.  If she's against quality, then she's will be forced to retrieve more balls - thus having to focus on getting the ball in play, rather than hitting the cover off it looking for clean winners.  Her movement is second to none, she looks in great shape, it's tough to see Bartoli winning without Venus' unforced error count being very high.

But then, no one in their right mind saw Bartoli beating Henin in that Semi yesterday.  She played out of her mind!  So maybe, just maybe she could do something this afternoon.  Good luck if you are trading, back after my break..