Small loss this week, but two draws which would have been good (or great!) profit if they had come in. Unlucky.
02.01.
WEST HAM
liverpool
4.20
£30.40
2 0
02.01.
WATFORD
man city
5.30
-£10.00
1 2
02.01.
ESPANYOL
barcelona
19.00
-£10.00
0 0
03.01.
PALACE
chelsea
4.10
-£10.00
0 3
03.01.
VALENCIA
madrid
6.20
-£10.00
2 2
TOTAL
OVERALL
£352.57
By definition, the bookmaker's price represents a public wisdom of crowds. When you bet with a bookmaker, you are not really betting against their expert(s). You are betting against all their other customers. OK, so a bookmaker has to take an initial opinion when he opens his lines. That what its experts will do, i.e. set the line to as close as is accurate. Then customers start rolling in and he will adjust his price to manage the liabilities. This is how a bookmaker like Pinnacle Sports operates. Pinnacle is really just like Betfair, taking a commission. Now UK bookmakers still have an old school mentality to all of this. Their traders still see themselves as competing against their customers, which in my opinion is silly. But they do it, and this means that they will more likely open lines with prices that intentionally try to encourage punters to take a nibble, i.e. they deliberately offer loss leading value. Subsequently, they are less likely to shorten prices, because they like to continue to advertise their value via the odds comparison. Hence, their prices are less likely to represent crowd wisdom. So when a smart punter exploits their generosity, they will manage that risk in other ways, by limiting stakes and then closing accounts. That's why the likes of Stan James and others ban winners and Pinnacle Sports do not. But that's also why it much harder to beat the Pinnacle Sports market even though their margin is smaller, because their prices are much "wiser". I can't see how a wisdom of crowds system is going to work at a bookmaker where prices are already wise. I will work at somewhere like Stan James, but they will just ban you.
