Tuesday, February 06, 2007

Cricket: England beat New Zealand

Daily Result: £310.85

So a good result, for both England and myself, in today's ODI against New Zealand. England progressed to the final where they now meet Australia, and I pocketed some more green for the wedding fund. But despite the profitable result I found the match a tough one to trade.

The problem I had with it was simply that for large parts of the match I just thought the odds on New Zealand were too short. Accordingly I took positions against New Zealand which kept building me red. It looked like I wasn't the only one a little perplexed by the prices.There was a big difference of opinion between the fixed odds and spread firms during the England innings - and their prices were even moving in opposite directions for a while! While the cricket trader from at least one High Street bookie was regularly offering a price on New Zealand that was 10 ticks higher than what was available on Betfair which was making for an arber's dream!

Anyway, each of the positions I took against New Zealand, especially in the second innings, were opened with quite short stops in place as they were already a short price and I didn't want to get in a position where I had a large red on them and needed a weighty lump on in order to finish green on them if they won.

I guess my instict was right but my timing was just wrong. As several times I hit my stops and had to get out, each time building a little more red into my New Zealand position. The red never got that large so everything was under control. But in another bad example of timing I didn't have a lay in place when a couple of crucial wickets fell and the odds finally shifted in England's favour. It didn't take me long to get on England and their price very quickly (less than 5 overs) went from 1.7x to sub 1.2. And it was being on the right side of that drop, coupled with some short-priced end of game positions, that gave me most of today's green.

Which was all a little annoying really as the profit could have been so much more if my timing instinct had been a little better today. But still, £300 is £300 and I can't really complain about that. It's a good contribution to the funds and I guess we could all make more if our timing was perfect.

Popular links: Betfair trading software .....Bet Angel..... Free software trial

No comments: