Smarkets Blog

Well it was one of the most memorable Premiership weekends I can remember, and with Man City v Liverpool sure to top it off nicely! Wigan received a spanking from Chelsea who have scored 6 goals in the last two games, Arsenal brought Blackpool back down to Earth with the second 6 – 0 victory of the weekend, and as if we hadn’t had enough goals, Newcastle added another 6 to the tally with an emphatic win at St James Park. Man Utd received a taste of their own medicine conceding a 90th minute goal, and with Chelsea in rampant form they will need to pull their socks up for the coming games if they want to keep up.

Overall even with a couple of unexpected results the Smarkets team did reasonable well. Only three members lost any money, Jason falling falling prey of placing all his eggs in the Man Utd basket. Daniel nearly broke even betting on a Draw in each game and could turn a profit if tonight’s game ends a draw, and Jamie came a cropper when neither his long shots or his safe bets came in.

Brad, Russ and Scott turned a small profit, with the Everton result and Aston Villa loss pulling profits down. I managed a reasonable +2.4 units considering a 4 unit loss on the Villa game, and hope the Reds can earn me a few more this evening.

However the winner by a far is Alex with his emotional hedge unfortunately coming off against the Hammers. His team may have lost, but at least he has undisputed bragging rights.

So in conclusion either bet against your team, or bet against West Ham!

I also wanted to mention something I observed watching one of the markets for these game.  When the prices for this competition were taken on Friday morning Newcastle were at 3.26. At kick off they were around 2.5, which is quite an extreme swing. Punters gave Newcastle a 30% chance of winning on Friday, yet by Sunday they were seen as 40% likely to win. The crowd moved for Newcastle, and they were right! Wisdom of crowds can be a very powerful prediction tool, especially when there are large swings towards an outcome in a short space of time.

The first thing I check when I notice a price swing like this is whether a piece of previously unknown information has now been factored into the new price, for example an injury. Though sometimes it can just be the increase volume of bettors placing bets before the game moving the price. They don’t necessarily know something no one else does, but just want to bet on their team or the favourite!

You can profit from these movements through a risk free trade (if you buy and sell at the correct points), or just get better value by timing the placement of your bet. Patterns can often be seen from 3 days before a game to kickoff, with one of the most commonly occurring the favourite shortening. This makes sense, as the event nears and more bets are placed they are generally placed on the favourite pushing prices down. So you often get the best price for a favourite on a Friday before the weekend. Though this can also be explained by the fact there is more time for something unexpected to happen the further you are from the game, so it is harder to accurately predict what will happen. So you are at risk if you place an early bet on say Man Utd, and Wayne Rooney catches the Flu last minute!

Whereas profiting from these movements is very difficult using a bookmaker, with betting exchanges you can, using techniques ranging from simple to very complex. This is one of so many advantages of a betting exchange!