Distracted

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August has been a testing month so far which is especially frustrating after having a blinding start.  I'm wondering if it's at this point I stood on a mirror or perhaps insulted a gypsy by mistake, as every step I've made since has left me banging my head against a wall.
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Firstly it was my cooker.  One lonely night I was all set for a ready meal 'a la carte' and the bloody thing wouldn't heat up.  It turns out the heating element had gone.  Three days later it was fixed and back up and running - ah well, I thought.
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The next day I got a call off Nic who shouts down the phone, "the car's broken down on the motorway!"  Bugger.  She managed to get it to the nearest garage but what was initially diagnosed as a 30 minute job turned into a bill for a £1000 and a week driving a courtesy car. I hate Mechanics.  With the risk of something else going wrong it was decided we needed a new car.  More money down the drain.
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Surely nothing else?
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Wrong! Within the next few days the Dishwasher packed in and my computer blew up!  Unbelievable.  Now I like to think of myself as a pretty good planner and someone who takes into account all eventualities, but this was turning out to be me v the World at Defcon 1 and Dell telephone support were not the people I wanted to be speaking too.  Maybe I went a little far in screaming down the phone but they had me on the phone for 6 hours trying to fix what turned out to be a faulty graphics card.  Something which they couldn't resolve but still wanted to charge me £69 for because I'd taken up the Technicians time.  If only I'd been in Bangalore.....grrrrr.
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If you add to all this a 20 week baby scan (which fortunately went okay - we're having a little girl), the hassle of Betfair Premium Charges and doing preparation for the upcoming NFL season, you could say it's been a busy time.
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What was it that John Lennon once said?
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" Life is what happens while you're busy making other plans"
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Too right John.  Rant over.  Feeling a little better.

Football Match Database

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After spending a lot of time researching and gathering football statistics over the last few months, I've come to realise that I won't be able to commit to sending out weekly rating emails over the coming year.
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As most of my time is focussed around cricket it only leaves so many hours in the day, and with a new baby on the way it's only going to become harder to manage!

However, it's not all bad news as I've decided to offer the data I hold to subscribers of last seasons ratings email and to readers of my blog.

In total, I now have access to over 30,000 football results covering seasons 2000/2001 to 2010/2011, with match statistics for each game at the click of mouse.  The majority of the major European leagues are included:

English Premier League

English Championship

English Leagues 1 & 2

Scottish Premier League

Spanish La Liga

German Bundesliga

French Ligue 1

Dutch Eredivisie

In addition I've also included my revamped performance ratings which splits a team performance into attack and defence (maximum of 13 points for each).  By doing this it helps me build an instant picture of a teams strengths and weaknesses. 

If you are proficient in excel and are happy at filtering and using pivot tables,then you can answer multitudes of questions in seconds - full data includes:

Home & Away teams with match dates

Full time scores (by team)

Half time scores (by team)

Attack, Defence & average performance ratings (by team)

Number of shots (by team)

Number of shots on goal (by team)

Number of fouls (by team)

Number of corners (by team)

Number of yellow cards (by team)

Number of red cards (by team)

Pre-match Bookmaker odds (home, draw & away)

Total match goals

Full time and half time results

I really believe that having this information makes a difference, so if you want access and a copy for yourself then follow the link below:

I WANT A COPY OF THIS DATABASE

There's a small one off fee but after that the data is yours to keep and manipulate however you wish.  The data is supplied as a spreadsheet in .xls format and is best accessed using Microsoft Excel 2007 or later.

To give you an idea of what to expect I'm happy to email anyone interested a sample file of 500 matches for free - just email me at members@markiverson.com.  Enjoy!

Note - For those of you who do decide to purchase, please allow up to 24 hours for delivery and check your spam folders for my email.
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I'm making this available as I feel some of you could benefit from using the data to analyse and benchmark past games, but if you're not interested or already have something similar then that's fine.

Barrier To Entry

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The last month has been a challenge, as wherever possible I've tried to direct my business to Betdaq as opposed to Betfair.  Liquidity for Test Matches has been good but as my income from this form of cricket is small when compared to one day games, for me at least, it's the T20 and One Day International markets that will need to improve.
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Don't get me wrong - things are much better now than they were, and there does seem to be a concerted effort from disgruntled 'Premium Charge' payers to move, so it just needs certain parts of the jigsaw to come together, and one of these is the availability of a quality API product.
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For those of you unaware, both Betfair and Betdaq have an API which allows third party vendors to create software to interact with the data from their exchanges.  However, until now vendors have mainly focused on providing users with a better product for Betfair due to the popularity of the exchange.  This is totally understandable as it wouldn't have made sense to invest equally in a product that didn't have an equal demand, but it appears that things maybe starting to change.
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On the Geeks Toy forum there's currently a clamour for the Geek to develop an alternative, and the good people at Bet Angel have recently upgraded their Betdaq software to include a number of significant enhancements.  These are huge steps showing an intent and willingness for change.
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So what's next?  Well, it's now up to us.  If the vendors are prepared to go out on a limb then we need to be prepared to follow.  If not, the status quo will remain and the long term forecast will remain bleak.
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For what it's worth, I can't underestimate how much of a difference using these types of programs have made to my betting over the last 6 years.  I can honestly say I wouldn't have been as profitable without them as they allow me to see the true form of the market and empower me to enter and exit positions instantly, so I'd strongly recommend you visit the following links if you haven't done so already:
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Geeks Toy
Bet Angel
Gruss Software
Centaur (they include access to their software if you sign-up to their Traders Club)
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I'm currently reading the book, 'The Newtonian Casino' and as it says at the end of the first chapter - "why would anyone play roulette, without a computer in their shoe?"
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The same principle applies here.
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Make Or Take?

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After reading countless forums over the last few weeks I stumbled across details of Betdaq's new commission structure.  I say new, but it would seem that this structure has been in place since the beginning of the year except I didn't know about it! The good news is that the post was from Betdaq's team themselves and it makes total sense.  Here's an extract:
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The reason for this post is to inform you that we have been studying the impact on our product and on our business of the activities of API users. We have noticed over the past year the increasing influence of such users who take offers made by other users while rarely making offers for other users to take. This has the impact of reducing the available liquidity for normal retail users.

 
Following this review, we decided to change the way in which we charge commission to customers using the Betdaq API.

From March 1st 2011 we introduced a new commission structure that operates for API users as follows:

Betdaq will operate a scalable commission structure whereby the greater the proportions of offers you make that are taken by others, the lower your rate will be. Commission will continue to be charged on your market winnings from any single market. 

The standard commission rate is 5 per cent, but you will be able to bring that down to as low as 1 per cent depending on your activity Take/Make % over a rolling 7 weeks period.

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What makes this so appealing?  Well, Betdaq are obviously trying to attract market makers who will in turn attract liquidity to their markets.  By putting up orders rather than taking them it's then possible to reduce the amount you pay in commission to just 1%. Imagine that, winning £100 and getting to keep £99! Here's the full commission table: 
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A different approach to normal maybe needed, but it's hard to see any initial drawbacks.  The full post can be found by clicking here.
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