Daily match picks

Anyone who has spent any time in trading chatrooms or forums is likely to have had experience of the cries of “fix!!” when a match or market seems suspect. Ofcourse a lot of the time all that’s happened is they are in a losing position but occasionally we see markets that are clearly not being affected purely by the match score. Sometimes its blatantly obvious that the result of the match has been arranged prior to the game starting.

You may remember the match between Chela and Shwank in Acapulco back in February where Chela started as underdog despite being priced at 1.50 in the hours before the match and being far superior to his opponent. He then went on the win the first set easily and it wasn’t until he was a break up in the second set that he became favourite on Betfair!  Chela led 5-1 in the second set and then allowed Shwank to come back. to 5-4. Chela was broken when serving for the match. He double faulted on break point. Schwank held serve for 6-5 and then Chela quit saying he was injured.

Very few are so blatant and it was surprising that no action seems to have been taken against Chela. The price movements show without any doubt that there were people with inside information and the retirement was agreed before the match. Chela can sue me if he wishes. Most of the time it is very difficult to prove that a player isn’t trying or is actively throwing the match. It can be a fine line between a brilliant passing shot and the ball landing in the tramlines.

The Tennis Integrity Unit have reportedly passed a list to the Wimbledon organisers of people who should be banned from certain areas which give them access to players. That includes the locker rooms, practice courts and some of the social areas. The people on this list are not players but are those who try to influence the outcome of matches. Only the top players make enough money from playing to make any bribes or incentives unattractive. As more and more money is attracted to the gambling aspects of tennis so more and more players will be given an offer too good to refuse. Making it more tempting for them is the fact that only 1 player has ever received a life ban for match fixing and that was Austrian Koellerer in May this year.

The TIU is run by a former Scotland Yard detective and was set up by the ITF, ATP and WTA to protect the sport from betting scandals. All players must sign up to the Uniform Tennis Anti-Corruption Programme.

In reality the vast majority of tennis matches are not fixed and the players are giving the best they can to get the win. You are still unlucky if you get caught out by an unexpected retirement ( although sometimes it works in our favour. Thanks Azarenka! ). Sensible bank management will ensure minimum damage to our trading accounts.

 

You  may remember that around November last year it came to my attention that The Betfair Trading Expert by Dr Matt Abraham had copied its tennis strategies from my  site. As I said at the time no one can really lay claim to some strategies but the fact that it was copied word for word from my site and was repackaged as the results of years of observing markets was in my opinion taking the piss.

Abraham contacted me and offered to send me some customers but when I asked for an explanation of his copy and paste work he failed to reply. I emailed him again last week but not surprisingly have had no response.

While searching for something on google the other day I found a trading blog that was recommending The Trading Experts’ tennis strategies which irritated me a little. I left a comment on his blog which was rather blunt. I was actually under the impression that I had contacted him last year explaining the situation so was perhaps shorter than I normally would be this time around. Steve, the blog owner, didn’t like my “acerbic tone” and told me so. Being a stuborn Northerner I wasn’t about to back down and put my people skills to work. That pissed Steve off even more and in the middle of the pleasantries he asked for a copy of the Guide so he could do an honest review. As we hadn’t become the best of pals I wasn’t hopeful that a review would be done and if it was that it wouldn’t actually be a fair one. I sent my final response to his blog replying to his comment that I wouldn’t talk to him the same way in person (actually I am well known among family, friends and ex work colleagues for speaking bluntly and telling it like it is). I didn’t get an email from his blog saying that my comment had been published so assumed that Steve had removed it having had just about all he could take of my cheery disposition.

This afternoon while Betfair was down I decided to check if my comment was there and I saw a link under his “approved systems” to TradeShark Tennis.

Here’s a link to the review http://bestbetfairfootballtrader.com/system-reviews/tradeshark-tennis-review/

I have to say that it is a very honest and fair summary. However there are a couple of comments that I feel are misleading. I’ll give Steve the benefit of the doubt that it isn’t deliberate although I wouldn’t blame him considering how arsey I was on his site.

Steve says it is ironic that I have a large amount of copyrighted pdf ebooks on the site and also a tennis strategy that was “ripped off from Pete Nordsted”. Steve seems to be trying to compare this to what I was complaining the Dr had done. Lets put things into context. The members area which includes the Trading Guide is a webste with many pages. I have set aside one page on which I put any interesting ebooks or documents that members want to share with other members. I point out on the site that some may be copyrighted and that if I receive a complaint that I will happily remove them. They are freely available online, which doesn’t make it right to have them on the site, but it isn’t exactly a hanging offence. The 5 ebooks and the strategy document are presented “as is” and have not been repackaged and sold as anyone else’s work except the original author. In the Word document one of our members was giving his own ideas on trading based on the strategy from Nordsted which is clearly stated near the top of the document. I have even said on the site that I have only personally read 2 of the ebooks!

Any comparison between this and someone repackaging and selling my work as their own is at best misleading. These 6 items constitute a miniscule proportion of the material on the members area.

That said I have to say that Steve has shown he is a blogger with integrity who  despite probably thinking I am an arrogant twat has reviewed the site honestly. For that I thank him and apologise for my attitude in some of the comments I left on his blog regarding Dr Abraham.

Paul