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

Keeping the work / life balance, pressure avoidance.

..Or should I say, the gambling / life balance.  I've always known there was an importance to maintaining a good balance to life, but I hadn't realised the real reason why, how the mechanism works, until this week.

The importance of how I live my life away from the computer and how it affects my gambling and trading has always been obvious to me.  Having a life away from gambling keeps perspective and reality in check, staying healthy and fit maintains trading stamina and a clear head.  The importance of how and when I should take time away, and why that matters has been less than clear, in fact, not something I've spent much time considering. 

I've always been into figuring out how our heads work, how the various thinking mechanisms tick, inputs and outputs.  Though obviously nothing is ever clear cut with the human brain and our emotions, we're hardly a rational species at times.  But happenings this week made a few things clearer as to why it's important to do things away from gambling, and I'm not just saying this because I had a few losses!  ...I have losses every week...(though fewer than my wins - if I'm fortunate!)

This week saw plenty of work on offer, and I was in the mood to work, but I've had my eye on an event I wanted to attend this week in the city, nothing to do with work at all.  Now I could have gone on Thursday, in fact I had planned to do so when I woke up, but of course, there was work available, good work at that and so I stayed home thinking I would head out later... time kept ticking of course and I ended up staying in later and later, in the end, not going out at all.

All the while, it was playing on my mind that I really wanted to go out.  As I worked I had a few losses - the quality of which got worse as the day progressed.  The first losses were of the acceptable kind, good bets, well thought out and staked accordingly, fortune transpired that my player simply didn't win and that's fine.  But as time progressed, and I began thinking more about wasting my time staying in (especially as the sun was shining), I became distracted. Unknowingly, I was becoming more preoccupied with making my day pay it's worth for staying in.

Whenever you want to make gambling pay, more specifically - the time you spend gambling, you are instantly going to commit a heap of mental errors.  You place impatient bets, you get concerned about losing, enough to be tempted to chase losses, decisions aren't arrived at in the same way they would normally be, the list is endless.  We all know there's a million ways to lose in this game, not many ways to win, this situation is not exactly helping your cause.

The more I reflected on this on Thursday night, the more I realised how simple this really is.  If you don't want to work, if there's somewhere you'd rather be, stop working and go!  Clearly "work" in this case means gambling, I'm not suggesting you leave the office because you'd rather be playing golf, not unless you want to lose your job.  What I am saying is, if you'd rather be doing something else than gambling, you should do it.  The alternative opens the door to too much concern with time and it's wastage.

Come Friday morning, I decided a clear plan was called for.  The event I wanted to attend was still going on, I decided I would work until midday, then go, regardless of work.  Maintaining my life balance was of higher priority than placing a few more bets.  I have to say, it worked great, I was relaxed in the morning, I knew what I was doing and had a few hours in which to focus properly.  Equally as important, I avoided betting in a weakened mental state in the afternoon - avoiding losses.  Not only this, but my work / life balance was restored, perspective regained and I was ready once again to focus on Saturday morning with a clear mind.

There's two parts to this then, the 'time' element - anytime you are placed in a situation where you feel you 'have to' make the time you spend gambling pay, you are operating in less than optimal mental state.  And the other part is to do with maintaining perspective, recharging the mental batteries and reminding yourself of why you work, and why you focus properly when you do.  So much of our gambling and trading mentality is about positioning yourself in the right situations to think properly, doing stuff you want to do away from gambling, when you want to do them, is vital to our success.

Time, in gambling, is to be spent doing things properly and not meant to be used as some yard stick to measure whether you are finding it worthwhile or not - you can figure that out after a meaningful number of bets have been placed or time has passed, ie. several months.  Kind of paradoxical I know, but that is the correct attitude - 'staying in the present' is a more commonly used, easily understood description.   If you find you can't spend time doing the right things, then reduce the time you aim to spend, and commit to work properly for the entire time.

The difficult thing in gambling,if you are losing then you feel like spending even more time, working even harder until you have the money back.  But where does it end?  To what end are you going to spend all this time?  I have a friend who after having some losses, withdrew himself into work to such an extent that he stopped going out, ceased to keep up with friends and worryingly, was close to not even looking after himself.  Clearly, it could be easy to say he has a problem with his gambling, I'm not really commenting on that here - he may or may not, I'm reserving opinion, but what is apparent, when you analyse the time spent, is that he is not making any progress at all - just the opposite.

He was going round in circles, he would win for a while, then the amount of time he was spending gambling would begin to preoccupy his mind and add 'pressure', he would then begin to rush to make money, sure enough, losses would follow - more than he won previously.  He would then work even harder than before and so on, in an ever deepening circle. 

As silly as this sounds,  it's probably unnervingly easy to get involved in.  We've all got to be smart in this regard, keep a balance between gambling and life, overbearing pressure coming from spending too much time gambling will then cease to be a potential problem.

5 clues that a tennis match is fixed.

Given the recent focus on fixed matches on the ATP tour, I thought I'd write a piece about some of the signs of a fixed match.  This is by no means an exhaustive list, just 5 pointers to raise suspicions and importantly - raise enough doubt for those of us that bet on tennis to give it the swerve.

1 & 2, "Irregular betting patterns" before the match begins.  Most fixed matches will involve an amount of money being put down before it begins.  This is when liquidity should be at it's strongest - the odds being based on form, surface, physical condition, head to heads etc.  Liquidity being provided by bookmakers and betting exchanges, there's plenty of scope for a lot of money to be wagered on many different websites.

Things you should look for are;

• Larger than normal movements in odds.  Not just on who will win the match, but sometimes in the set score markets too.  It's fairly common for a player to be told to work towards a 3 set match rather than a straights sets win - money can be made just by altering the story of the match.  It's not usual for the odds to move a bit pre match in line with normal supply and demand.  Odds that move in excess of 15% are unusual and are either injury related, a very strong opinion expressed by one or more big players or signs of something untoward.  Clearly there is a need to stay on top of injury information.  The larger the move in odds pre match then the more serious the injury or the more fixed it might look.
• Markets being closed by bookies.  This is an unusual move from the bookmakers - what it is showing is that they have taken a large amount of money on one player or outcome and are of the opinion that this is suspicious: ordinarily they would continue to keep it open but just move their odds to make the other side of their books more attractive.

3, Odds during match bear no resemblance to the match itself.  There are certain movements in the odds during a tennis match which can't be argued against, unless a player is injured in some way. 

Using the Davydenko v Vassallo-Arguello match as an example.  A player that wins the first set comfortably (6-2 in Davydenko's case) without sign of injury should have his odds considerably shorter to win the match (perhaps 25-40% of what they were at the beginning).  In the case of that controversial match, Davydenko's odds were longer after set 1, even though he was cruising the match, injury free - it made no sense at all, other than someone knew what was about to happen.

This was only acheived with the help of a great deal of money being put on his opponent, thus soaking up the money that wanted to back Denko at these seemingly crazy odds.  Odds that don't conform roughly to the laws of probability are unusual.

4, Large amounts of one sided money during the match.  This in itself is not unusual, there's plenty of big punters in these markets, some will take a view.  It's also the case that in order to get all of this money on, they have to be agressive and sometimes go against the run of play slightly.  It's the extent and the timing of this seemingly contrarian view which needs consideration.  No respectable big player will give away "value", that's why they are having their bet.

Question things if large amounts of money go through at odds that are out of line with where the market has been trading, especially if the player being layed is doing well.  Of course, some degree of proof that these people were ahead of the game wil only arrive when it's too late for the rest of us, and even then, everyone makes mistakes or takes views occaisionally - if we're honest this is a hard one to prove a fix with.

5, The players act strangely.  Another difficult one to question, we're all human and prone to bouts of unpredictability.  If everyone was predictable this game would be rather easy wouldn't it.  A few things to consider;

• Players form during the match takes a larger than understandible turn.  Particularly if up already in the match.  Watch for numbers of unforced errors and double faults.
• Strange injuries that are not obvious during open play, with injury time outs taken at very odd times of the match - for example, when the player is winning - why interupt your own rhythm.
• Player body language, looks "bothered" at some points and not at others.  Entering very subjective areas here, it's very tough to call this correctly.

What some of this information should have told you is that it can be very difficult at times to decide whether a match is being fixed or not.  In fact I would go as far as saying that any of these 5 clues on their own is not enough to prove anything, it's when they happen together and in sequence that suspicion is raised.  One might add that a player's nationality could offer further clues.  It would appear players from Argentina, Russia and Italy are more likely to be suspect. 

The timeline of activity is the important factor here.  Money needs to be wagered in size - against the flow of the match or in highly liquid conditions, before the fix is executed on the court.  And even when this does happen - there is always the chance that this is an unfortunate coincidence.  The amount of money and the probability of the action that's taking place on the court has to be weighed carefully.

With so many matches under scrutiny, it's very easy to call "fix" when you are looking for it.  So don't look for it.  When it happens, it's very obvious.  Looking for it will affect your betting actions.  Normal decisions and reasoning won't be happening - you may even be trying to guess the fix.  It's asking for trouble.  If you suspect something, the right course of action is to stop betting on that match and move on.

Big Brother betting.

I thought I'd write a post about a totally different subject, for my comeback entry.  Betting on Big Brother.  Contrary to many opinions, it's actually possible to make a a profit from this program.  The question is, can you really be bothered ?!

I've been a Big Brother punter for 5 years, I had some big wins the year of Jade Goody, since then I've not bet as often on it due to lack of interest, until this year, when I had my largest ever "BB" bet early in the series on Brian to win (I've now squared this off to win on the twins too).

There's a couple of ways to make money in this, both require knowledge of the show, and unfortunately - watching the show!  (At least fairly often.)  You can trade on small price movements, or you can take a punt on the winner - using a series of intelligent guesses on several different factors.  Personally, I like the 2nd method, you can make serious money doing it and potentially - you don't need to watch the show as much - a real bonus!

In the old days I would trade the movements, looking for someone to have a good or bad show and gauging viewer and market sentiment.  Using clever strategies to get in and out.  There's a few things you need to consider with this method.

One, it's a weak market place, liquidity might look reasonable, but it's completely opinion based.  What this means is, there's little concrete evidence of what the prices really should be - no statistics here, it's opinion v opinion.  The market can move quickly, on the whim of a single person if they care to have a good bet.

There seems many people out there unwilling to acknowledge this fact, some even unhappy that a big player can move the market in this way.  Don't make the same mistake!  It's a fact of life in this market (and any market for that matter) that 'anything can happen' - meaning, it only takes one person with a slightly bigger bank and a strong opinion to shift prices and throw out your trade.  As someone who bets bigger than most in this market, let me tell you I enjoy doing this and watching people moan about it afterwards.

Perhaps I'm not executing these bets as well as I might - but I'm certainly having fun, and surely if you are going to have a financial interest in something like BB, then you want to be enjoying it in some way.  The forum is full of people who take it deadly seriously, spending all day, everyday, writing propaganda and subtle ramping posts to try to shift the price that small amount so they can feel happier in themselves and with their position, or so that they can get out.  Several people write 50+ posts a day on this subject, some fix Internet viewer polls... one can only presume it's a bit of a sad existence for 13 weeks a year.

How might I execute these bets better ?  By drip feeding.  Spending time (hours or days if it's a big bet) posting up multiple layers and depths of smallish bets in the hope that they'll get matched without scaring the market.  Time, is the factor here.  Quite honestly, I can't be bothered.

There's another point to make here.  And that is, if you bet big into this market, people take notice. 

Some people will react angrily and egotistically.  Especially if it's a big player who has the opposite opinion, it can trigger a reaction from them and you'd be surprised how often I've had big bets matched in such a weak market - masses of drip feeding time saved!

Others will be angry but not have the money to do anything about it.  They're angry about having their position messed up or that their drip feeding has been ruined, they'll most likely call you a mug or a show off.  What is happening though, is that it's making people notice and most of all - reassess their opinion of the price and the person being backed or layed, and that's quite powerful, especially if you time it well and hit a nerve.

As you can see, I'm quite biased towards the punting strategy in this market, it's because I feel it's the only way to make serious money from it.  The market and forums are full of people trading backwards and forwards, attempting to read where the price is going to be in an hour, tonight, on Friday or in 3 weeks etc.  Sometimes the market is only moving because these people expect it to.  I can't justify spending the amount of time required to make that strategy work.

So how do I go about picking a winner ?  I think it's important that you've watched the show in previous years.  You need experience of how the viewing public look at contestants, and how the viewing public's views mature from week to week and series to series.  You need experience of how how various personalities and actions are viewed and interpreted.

This idea of a maturing viewing public is important.  Many times it is a case of the wider audience being "ready" for someone or a type of person to win and be accepted.  For example, a Black housemate has never won the show, yet.  Race, sexuality and gender are 3 of the obvious variables that you must gauge readiness for.  Many times, this is a case of looking at who has previously won the show and looking for a type of person that has never won before.  Proven, stereotypical winners are, in this case, less likely to win as the show goes on in the medium term - we are still on BB8, if we were in BB25, then maybe you could argue otherwise.  Here we have an audience keen on experiencing a new type of winner each year.

The production team.  Who do they want to win?  Who do they think the public are ready for?  Who are they going to help over the winning line with good edits for 13 weeks and who will they keep in for entertainment and most importantly - viewing figures?  Vital questions.  If you watch the live feed and compare it to the edited highlight show, you'll begin to see who they favour.  Thankfully I have other people's opinions on which to go on and I don't have to watch the live feed!

Whether you are trading or punting, you need to consider your opinion very carefully if it opposes what the producers are doing in terms of edits.  Short term moves in price might be fine, but you will soon find yourself and the rest of the market being forced to move with how the highlights show is being put together.  Can you stand that pain?  What the producers want is arguably the most important thing you need to figure out to win, they can virtually make an unlikly winner out of anyone they choose. 

Just thought I'd get a few ideas down on the blog about this unusual market.  If you don't like the show - avoid at all costs, you will be forced into watching it, perhaps even into posting meaningless rubbish onto Big Brother forums and in the very worst cases - watching the live feed!   

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..

Chart patterns.

Thought I'd post up this pretty chart pattern from Roddick's match with Bogdanovic last week at Queens.  I think this snapshot was taken near the beginning of the 2nd set, Roddick being broken early in the 1st and the market formed a near perfect trending price as the set continued.  It's not often you see it this perfectly formed.  Apologies if I have the match details wrong, I don't have any match notes from the time and I should have posted this up straight after it happened, but better late than never.  What's important is the pattern itself.  (Click on image for full size)

As the set progressed each high was higher than the last and each low was also higher than the last - as both players held serve and Bogdanovic got closer to securing the set.  It's easy to look back on this as a "traders dream", but when you are in the midst of it happening, the ease with which you spot the pattern is affected by your position and the effect it's having on your mind. 

For example, I was foolishly long Roddick at very short odds (I wasn't the only one to struggle) and being in the bad trader mentality that I was in I didn't cut my position until most of the way through this trend.  I was too heavily involved - If I had a small position then cutting would have been easier mentally, I would have accepted the unexpected, see previous posts...   Moral of the story - don't get too heavily involved early on, especially at short odds.  Let the match develop and make it easy to keep an open and aware mind.  You might also want to get the heck out of someone who's been broken on grass! Had you (and I) done that then there's a variety of ways we might have traded this.  Here I've highlighted the trend with some blue lines:

I suppose you might notice first the volume spike early on, someone's had £250,000 on Roddick at really short odds!!  Thankfully, that wasn't me..  nightmare!!  But the focus here is the blue lines, I've drawn these in myself to show the band within which it's trending.  You can see as Bogdanovic holds serve the chart shoots up to a new high, as Roddick holds, the chart goes down, but not as far down as it did the previous Rod service game.  This is correct price-wise since Bog was ahead by a break.

What this does show up is the near perfect trading opportunity - that is, if Bogdanovic is going to continue to hold serve for the rest of the set.  A lay of Roddick after he held serve the game after Bogdanovic secured the break would have been an excellent spot to enter a trade.  This would then be closed out as the set ended - see where the chart exits the band.

Of course, there's no guarantee that the match will follow the perfect path to form such patterns.  It's only looking back that we find these things, and this one is fairly unusual, though more likely on grass where the players hold serve more easily.  The important thing is the higher highs, and higher lows.

If you are new to trading, I recommend doing some learning about the technical analysis of charts.  Find out what the various chart patterns are, and also why these occur.  It can greatly help you understand the markets.  A link to some basic info on technical analysis.

Sizing up your opponents.

There's a tendency among traders and gamblers to just see the prices and the volumes.  It's something I sometimes get caught up in.  We're all on an endless lookout for value prices, but what about the people behind the prices we're looking at.  Who are they ?  And why are they offering that price ?  How often do we actually acknowledge their existence on another computer somewhere, betting against us, or with us...

These are very valid questions, ones you can't afford to ignore.  We all know there's a variety of different types of punters and levels of skill.  On a more basic level, there are winners and losers.  Putting it slightly obviously, you want to be betting against losers (and with the winners)!

Whether you are a trader or gambler, there's a series of questions you ask yourself about each situation before you come to a decision about a bet or trade.  Among these questions should be, why has this person made this bet or offer ?  What do they know ?

There's hundreds of possible answers, some of these bets will be clever, some of them won't be.  Try to size up the intellectual quality of the bet that faces you.  This will depend on your own intellectual knowledge and betting experience, if you can't figure them out, then it's healthy to remain cautious and observe closely.

In fact, it's a good idea to watch as much of everything that goes on in the markets as you can, pure trading particularly is all about pattern recognition.  Within these patterns will be some of the answers about why certain people place the bets they place.  It will help you to begin to categorise the bets you are observing.  Think along the lines of emotional / mathematical / systematic / reactions - over and under / pre-emptive / pro-active.

Some of these categories have strong intellectual depth.  They deserve respect in the marketplace, to begin with at least.  Bets that are systematic or show good maths and are pro-active and seem well planned are tough to go against - you need to out think them and disprove their credibility.  This isn't always possible.  These are likely to be placed by knowledgeable and profitable people and often - in fairly large size.

The areas that offer the most interest to me are emotional bets and over/under-reactions.  They're closely related.  An emotional bet is very often poorly thought out and rushed.  They're less likely to be placed by excellent traders.  Reactionary bets are almost as bad, but often caused by general market movements, they can quickly turn into the emotional kind if a market is going against a group of vulnerable traders.

Spend time looking for these bets and devising methods of spotting them within the markets.  One very obvious attribute to other people's bets are their size.  Large bets are to be treated with caution.  These are likely to be placed by knowledgeable players, likely, but not a certainty.  One thing that is almost certain is that 99% of other people will back off these big bets - rightly so, and another pattern worthy of note.

Before placing your next trade, make sure you question your opponents motives and qualities first.  This can open up completely new avenues of investigation in the search for profitable bets.  Among some traders it's arguably as important as finding that elusive value, for some - it's the alternative.  At the very least, you should pay the other market participants the respect they deserve before taking them on. 

French Open trading update.

It's been a strange week for me so far.  A lot of losses, some good wins but overall I'm roughly level.  It's been stop / start with both the weather and my P/L, tough to get a rhythm going and tough to read the play.  My trading and my brain have been in a bit of a muddle because of this I've been struggling to get things in order. 

One part of this is down to the sheer number of matches going on.  I'm a fairly experienced trader these days, but I still get into a mess when there's so many matches to look at.  It's a case of being distracted too much... I might just be able to trade 2 matches at the same time.. but 3 or 4 is too many and I end up taking a position and not managing it correctly.  Which is actually what's going wrong when I'm trading one match at a time anyway.

There's been a lot of momentum changes in the matches so far.  It's been tricky getting used to 5 set matches instead of 3, there's a lot of conserving of energy going on with the players and I think it's important to decifer when a player is putting in maximum effort and when he isn't. 

A good example was Moya's game yesterday where he was very slack in the 4th (restarting the match 0-4 down in the 4th set overnight) against Seppi... he came out in the 5th,  several gears higher and Seppi couldn't cope, great game strategy though and one that's used a lot by various players.  You can do well opposing someone who's winning a set a bit too easily just before the start of the next.  Their odds are often way out of line.

The main area where I think I'm going wrong is getting on at the wrong odds in a whole match context.  What I mean is, the bets I'm placing might be fine, but I'm not allowing for what might happen and I'm certainly not getting some of the best odds available on a player during the course of an entire match.  I tend to be just getting on and leaving it, which is not a good idea, given the number of twists and turns we're seeing.  A consequence of this is that the intra-match / set upside and downside is not being weighed up the way it should.

As I say, the bets themselves are fine, but by no means the juiciest margin on a player in each match.  I have to work on weighing up where the biggest edge is likely to be for various scenarios and wait until this occurs, rather than getting on at the wrong time and thus treading water.

A few reactions and judgements of form so far..  Serena is not playing that well, doesn't seem to be timing it that well, but you have to think she will find it against good opponents.  She'll need to, because so far she's no match for Henin or Jankovic etc. 

Vaidisova has come back from a wrist injury, but appeared to hold it worryingly in her first match of the tournament, she's still mentally weak too - the racquet was thrown and the coach given a look after just 1 1/2 games!  It did make me chuckle.  Some growing up needs to happen soon.

Sharapova is looking more like Bambi on ice on the clay, an opponent that can keep the ball in play whilst moving her around will see her off comfortably. 

Federer looks good, I quietly fancy him to take it this year.  Nadal is just being Nadal..  Hewitt had a battle with Gaudio earlier, Gaudio should have won it, but it came down to mental strength in the end, both were making like walls, Hewitt just made like a wall for longer, or at least, that's what Gaudio felt.  Importantly though, Hewitt's shots did not seem to have enough power to get through Gaudio, definitely a concern for him going forward, and the stumbling block for him v Nadal. 

Baghdatis is looking transformed after indifferent form over the past few months.  I think he's lost some weight, he looks faster and he's hitting it harder whilst being patient.  I hear he's changed coach...

Back to trading.

Betfair's New Commission Rates.

Yesterday Betfair announced that it would be raising it's commission rates.  For those that don't know, here's an explaination of their rate system..  This, predictably, hasn't gone down too well amongst the customers, myself included - nobody likes a price hike do they ?

Taking a look at the new pricing structure, it would appear on average that most people are 6-8% worse off.  Personally I'm probably between 3 and 5%, having worked my way over the 100,000 commission points fairly regularly, they've been fairly lenient at this far end of the scale compared to the majority of the core user base.

I had a lengthy call with my premium account manager earlier today about the increases.  He was in a fairly stressed mood, they are all run off their feet replying to and calling customers about the increase.  There was some interesting stuff to come out of the call.

The main reason he called was due to a post I made about the customer service needing to improve in proportion to the increase in rates.  I stand by this comment, I know he was unhappy with it but could understand what I meant. 

If you are a big account, you get looked after at Betfair, but if you are in the other 98% of users (% is my guess) then you get the standard helpdesk line.  This is an area in need of a big improvement from Betfair.  Very often the help is substandard, or slow (in the case of emails).  My manager was quick to point out that this is very often the case with big companies that are growing quickly, true - but it still should be addressed. 

Betfair are in an incredibly strong position in the betting exchange market.  I'm not sure of the definition of a monopoly, but it's probably close to having one.  It's for this reason that they can raise the prices and get away with it easily.  The other exchanges suffer with poor liquidity (not many users and very little money in their markets).  Without liquidity, gamblers and traders don't play, but without gamblers and traders there is no liquidity - it's chicken and egg stuff.  If Betfair play their cards right, they can charge what they want, without causing enough of an uproar for some sort of mass exodus to occur.

It would appear there's a growing band of people wanting this to happen, but unwilling to leave familiar waters in order to start providing that liquidity elsewhere.  An example of this is at The Betfair Trader's blog.  Here is a trader that's in the middle of the rate bands, he'll really feel the difference to his bottom line, his annoyance at the changes are mirrored by many.  Some clever thinking on the part of competitior exchanges is needed to lure people across.

My account manager is, understandably, for the rate changes.  He had many good points about Betfair and how they can justify the new prices.  For example, they have not raised them in 3 years, and the rise is well below inflation.  Not raising them in such a long time is possibly going to cause more of an uproar when it does occur. 

But I'm not sure the inflation arguement stands up that well, given the way exchanges work.  It's not the same as raising the price of ordinary goods, raising the prices of a commission structure directly affects their business model.  Raise them too high and the exchange becomes useless to anyone using it.  There would be no hope of making money for most users apart from maybe the most ardent of traders and even then, they would surely move in their droves.  Have the rate too low and the exchange clearly wouldn't be making the profits that it should, no one can begrudge Betfair it's profits, having offered such a revolutionary betting product.

This is an important point, and almost certainly raises doubts of the extent to which they can raise their prices in the future, and indeed the future of the business as a whole.  For the average punter (someone who places bets and leaves themselves open to losing or without closing the position), making a profit on Betfair has become harder in recent times.  The markets have evolved quickly, they are fast and they are efficient.  For punters without a big edge, commission already wipes a big slice of what they might make, in fact it's probable it makes the difference between winning and losing for quite a few.

Today's increase will further reduce the prospect of winning for many users.  And when you get into this territory, it's not long before you begin to lose customers.  In fact, I was told they've had one or two closures.

Betfair's userbase is still expanding, for now.  Most of the growth probably now comes from international users, the British userbase left with not much room for expansion (there's only so many gamblers in the country).  But what happens once the growth slows or stops.  Where is the room to grow profits then?  The commission rates are already bordering on too high... profit growths will need to come from elsewhere.  This is why I cannot see Betfair being able to justify many more price increases.

The big players have been left unaffected.  There's a few people well above 150,000 commission points, so far above that they'll never need to worry about such trivial things.  I'm not sure I can manage to get that total of points, I've been happy to get to 2%, it's frustrating to see that mark being moved further away from me again.

Another point my manager was quick to note was that Betfair are offering new products, which require money to make available.  Live video feeds, Sports stats, Betfair radio, Betfair labs, etc etc.  I have to wonder how many people use these things.  Clearly enough to make them a priority it seems.  But most of these are available elsewhere and for free.   I do wonder about the sense in pushing for these utilities, and whether the userbase was sufficiently surveyed about the demand for such things.  Maybe they were, but I'm sure any survey question might have missed out the bit about raising rates in order to pay for them.

There is nothing that can be done about the rate change though.  No matter any amount of bleeting on their forum, Betfair aren't going to u-turn this one.  And everyone will still be using their platform to trade on, liquidity will remain poor elsewhere and soon the moaning will die down and the old rates will become a distant memory once more.

What Betfair should do though is take the initiative and improve their levels of service and integrity in line with their standing in the marketplace.  To suffer with customer service is exceedingly frustrating as a customer of a business in such a strong position, it comes across as arrogant and greedy... Two things I'm sure most at Betfair aren't, certainly not my account manager :)  They owe it to themselves to build a better reputation than they currently have amongst users.

They need to work on communication skills and speed of reply.  Some humility would also work.. very often I'm made to feel as if the customer is always wrong, rather than right or cared about.  Raise your standards, put your customers first and look after everyone, now that you've pushed the rate envelope, you have no excuses.