Sunday 28 April 2013

Lay Grandad

Some major drama in the NBA last night with the Chicago Bulls facing the Brooklyn Nets. Down by 14 points with 3:45 left, the Bulls traded at 1000 (£14) as well as over £200k matched at 1.01. Need I tell you that the Bulls came back to win after three overtime periods?  More than a few hearts were racing I imagine, but the folly of laying at 1000 with so much time left in an NBA game should be clear. My biggest single win came in the NBA play-offs two years ago, in another game again involving the Bulls. Someone took my large lay at 1.03 and after dropping to 1.01, it bounced back to a winning bet as the Miami Heat went on a run to come back from a similar deficit. It's hard to beat the NBA as a trading medium.

Today's football selections from the Football Tipster League entrants interestingly sees one game feature more than once - the Espanyol v Granada game. I have recently started adding a Cassini 'value' selection to my email each week, and this is my value game for this week, but not only do I have it as value but so do others including the profitable Premier Edge and Football Formbook - who are not quite so profitable.

All of us find value in Espanyol. My recommendation was at 2.05 (-0.5) on BETDAQ, Premier Edge has 2.01 at 1.88 Bet, and Football Formbook had 2.05 at Pinnacle, but FF clearly are under the impression that Espanyol face an ageing team:
Granddad certainly needs the win more than Espanyol, but here's to hoping he feels his age, and Espanyol play to win.

Speaking of playing to win, the Atalanta v Bologna game qualified as as XX Draw Extended selection yesterday, but with a draw price around the 2.67 mark, the suspicion was that the game might not be played genuinely, and so it turned out. It's the Italian way. As Liam Brady said:
When a draw suits both teams in Italy, the game will end in a draw. It's all to do with the mentality of the Italian people. They see nothing wrong in such an arrangement.
Bologna equalised in the 76th minute (1-1) and there was little action after that - unless faking injury counts as action. I gave it a mention in the email to subscribers, but I am not including any selections where the draw price is sub 3.0.

Bologna have now been sub 3.0 on the draw six times since 2010-11, so this is nothing new for them. Three matches ended as draws so I guess 2.67 was value after all!

2 comments:

Matt said...

What a fantastic game the Nets @ the Bulls was, I've just started trading the NBA (well since February)and have enjoyed some success with the swings(I used to play at school. I was good enough to be picked for the regional squad.) Its just a shame its on so late in the UK. I find basketball-reference.com a good resource, but do you know of any spreadsheets/databases I could utilise?
On a side note i'm also getting into the tennis, as the swings are huge and I see Tradeshark offers a interesting spreadsheet. Do you know of him and is he reputable?

Sorry for all the questions but I've only been trading since the start of the year, firstly on the live show on the horses, but that seems too volatile and more often than not i'm making pence and losing pounds.

All the best

Matt

Brian H said...

What price did you get out at Cassini? Or did you let this one run? I remember you saying once you have no intention of losing your whole stake when you trade so why wouldn't you have 'redded up' at 1.01?

BTW, I'm trying to test an edge I may have over thousands of bets on the football. It's puzzling me that using a kelly staking system this is profitable but to level stakes the bets make a slight loss just short of break even.

I wanted to know what you thought of this as I remeber you and someone (Al maybe?) debating whether a system can make a loss at level stakes but a profit using another tsaking method. I previously thought you were right but now I'm not so sure.

Cheers
Webbo