Freaky Friday

A weird day yesterday.

Started off well with some overnight NHL bets winning, and a nice win on the Aus vs Pak T20. Then a cobweb-clearing long walk as it was a lovely day, one of the best we've had for a while.But it all went a bit off the rails after that, losing on the footie - done by a team coming back from 0-1 down to win, a relatively rare occurence - and on the tennis - Monaco had been the winner of a possible fix but came out to win again.

Then woke up today to find another overnight NHL bet had come in so ended up with a nice green!A busy weekend already under way with Fed Cup in Aus. Liquidity not great but picked up, presumably as people in Europe woke up! Might be worth playing the later matches.

Bloody Sky Sports and their exclusive Fed Cup deal means we can't get any Betfair or Bet365 streams for the matches in the UK. Why buy the rights then not show the matches? Or if you don't show the matches then at least let others do so. Appalling state of affairs.

4 Feb

Another nice day, having a good run with all these small days adding up.

Jelenic obliged, losing eventually after putting up a bit of a fight in the 1st set. I was on the verge of getting out as I didn't know anything about either player, just laying Jelenic because he'd won an alleged fix, when Berrer finally broke for 5*-4.

Played a few footie matches after that. Atletico Madrid are an infuriating team, playing like crap when I back them, winning when I lay them! But ended up with a nice green overall.
A T20 to get up early for tomorrow. T20's - the crack cocaine of in play betting, should be a laugh.

3 Feb part two

Ended up having quite a decent day today although I'd not anticipated anything too special.

I always keep an eye on the Betfair tennis forum for any mention of fixes. They are a bit of an alarmist bunch on there, but they do have a pretty sharp nose for dodgy looking matches. Then I'm in the habit of laying whoever wins the alleged fixed match in his/her next match, the rationale being 1) s/he is crap otherwise the odds on the fix wouldn't've been any good 2) s/he won't care as s/he's paid the bills for a while thanks to proceeds from the alleged fix. I've no idea if the reasoning is valid, but most of the winners lose their next match. Dodig had been in an alleged fix on Monday and he played today and duly lost. Jelenic was in one yesterday and he's next up tomorrow for this particular "system", though not at very good odds.The footie produced some good results, including a muggg treble, though I messed up the Turkish Cup afternoon game by being greedy and not greening up, and getting done by a late equaliser. And I got a bit carried away after the earlier wins and overstaked laying Sevilla hoping for a Getafe equaliser. Dammit! Never mind, a nice green day.

(You may be wondering why I was red on Fulham despite backing them in the acca. As both Tottenham and Inter had already obliged I decided I'd hedge the acca against a late Portsmouth equaliser by laying Fulham) Debating whether to stay up for the Copa Libertadores. A fun tournament, and great to watch via a web stream of a native language tv channel to get the exuberant commentary rather than suffer the turgid drone of the Betfair live video idiots.

3 Feb

Just a brief update. Not been doing much the last 2 days, just a few small bets on footie and NHL. Footie the main fare till next week, and possibly some bets on the Fed Cup, though liquidity is usually very poor. Plus hopefully the API will be stable by Sunday and I can trade the golf.Ps forgot that the Superbowl is on Sunday too! Doh. But I've no strong feeling either way on it.

API down

Now the NFL is all but over, with just the Superbowl to go, I usually have a small dabble on the PGA Tour golf on Sunday evenings, opposing the fav by dutching 4 or 5 of the other leading contendors. Amazing what can happen in 18 holes of golf! However, with the Betfair API very unreliable all day I gave it a miss tonight, as it's virtually impossible to dutch several players in a moving market to a specified liability using the web interface. Just how did we ever manage before? And would Betfair be as big as it is now had they not developed the API?

I use Gruss and it's wonderful value, but I wish it had the facility to dutch lay selections. Granted the calc is quite tricky to do for varying numbers of runners, and Gruss doesn't offer it. Do any, I wonder? Also I've often wondered why an API vendor hasn't brought out an app solely for 2 or 3 runner markets. Many markets on Betfair are like this, and it would be much easier to provide more hedging options knowing there would only be a max of 3 runners. For example, an option to cover red rather than go equal green would be very useful for me as it's something I often do. Granted it's not hard to do manually, but sometimes if the market is moving quickly you can end up chasing it down and missing the best price.
Anyway, had a win on the Fed express earlier. Not often I'll bet on the men, but, having seen how Fed demolished Tsonga and how Murray spluttered against a fatigued Cilic, Fed had to be backed. After that, dabbled on the footie, winning some, losing others. But not a bad day in the end, rounding off a strange week, with very little action early on, then everything happening at the weekend. I suppose patience is the lesson, waiting for the moment to strike.
There's very little going on next week - no WTA, only a few odds and sods footie matches in the evenings. Might be forced to keep trying this NHL lark, though I'm torn between keeping going as I'm on a roll or quitting while ahead!