Sports Arbitrage Guide's Blog

RFP NEWS- 26.08.2006,Volume 77

Removed 3/9/06 due to RFP requesting that members no longer publish the “Members Only Newsletter”

If you would like a copy of any RFP newsletters, you can ask any member (myself included) to email it to you. All members have complete access to all past newsletters in their back office.

Shane

read morePosted on: Sunday, August 27, 2006

Late Updates

Hi everyone.

I really am sorry that I have been so undisciplined lately with keeping things updated. Working a full time and trying to maintain a full website by yourself while frequenting about 15 different forums while also trying to maintain a social life and still sink some of your time into computer games as a form of relaxation really drains your time. I am still arbing, and I should post profits again, but it takes time also do the calculations I was doing every week. It has been quiet lately plus I have had less time at home for trading, so the profits are less than the earlier consistent results, but they are still happening. It is much easier to arb than it is to update a website about arbing! LOL.

For instance, I finally updated the alert services page to reflect the fact that SATMarkets is gone. No explanation, just up and left one day. I hope no one lost any money in their so called pool, but I suspect that maybe that was their goal the whole time. I never did get a reply from RiskFreeProfit as to whether SATMarkets was a competitor or if they were accessing thier feeds illegally or what. Still don’t know when it comes to GotoBets who also has an identical program to SBP and SATMarkets. At least GotoBets doesn’t have an investment pool which promises unrealistic returns week in and out.

In other news, since i last posted many of you may have noticed the addition of ArbsCalc to the website. I’m pretty excited about having that. Finally, thanks to cheong the creator of ArbsCalc, SportsArbitrageGuide has some unique content on it which no one can download anywhere else. And without a doubt, ArbsCalc is the best arb calculator I have ever seen. Everyone I have spoken to has said the same thing too. Its free to download, and the shareware version has complete functionality, so even if you don’t believe me, you can download it and try it out yourself at no cost and make up your own mind. Be sure to read the manual as well, it will teach you how to use it. I have already started using it and it has helped me make on the spot betting calculations a couple of times…

The download is availabel on the arbscalc page .

And for those curious to know, current trading bankroll is at $3,167.48

read morePosted on: Saturday, July 22, 2006

Week Ending 25th June 2006, Week 11

Opening Balance = $3,033.97
Bookmakers funded = 7
Bookmakers Used = 4
Number of Trades = 2
Profit = $9.23, 0.30%
Closing Balance = $3,043.20
Logged Time = <20 hours

I was very busy, lazy, and sick this week. So the complete lack of action is mostly my own fault, althought the time I did have SBP running, there didn’t seem to be anything happening. Astute watchers will probably also notice that I am posting this report almost a week late…thats also part of the busy/lazy thing… Sorry about that, but sometime you just can’t stay on top of everything, and sometimes you just really want to walk away from a task you know you have to do. Admittedly, that is one of the attractions with Arb Trading I guess… You aren’t being controlled by anyone else…

See ya in a day or two with this weeks results.

Shane

Further Stats:
Favourites won 0 of 2 arbs
Average arb percentage = 0.88%
Average Profit actually taken = 1.19%
Average Trade amount = $417.64

%Profit Per week average = 1.68%
Profit per week average = $46.33

read morePosted on: Friday, June 30, 2006

SportsPunter Arbitrage Alert Service Trial Review Continued

Unfortunately I do keep finding errors in their odds. This is just one example http://www.sportsarbitrageguide.com/picts/…untertrial3.jpg where the odds given for pinnacle and betjamaica were wrong. These odds were reported for something like 10 minutes before being removed, and you will also notice that the pinnacle vs pinnacle false arb is still being reported from yesterday. This is a bit discouraging, however I have confidence that the good people running sports punter actually are putting a lot of time into fixing these bugs.

Which brings me to the big positive I have noticed since I last posted: At the top of the arbs page is a text link to “Feedback, enhancement requests, known bugs, and more information” I didn’t notice this link until I re-read my introductory email from SportsPunter which mentioned that I can edit my bookmaker list through it. So i went there to edit my bookmaker screening list, and noticed that this is a single page dedicated to all of those things, with most of the page there for people to report bugs and request improvements to the service. This is very impressive to see, as they list all of the known bugs, errors, and requested improvements, and their progress with each. This is the list and the improvements currently listed on their page.

Known Bugs Intertops handicaps for soccer are inaccurate – this is a problem with the Intertops feed. *FIXED*
Golf odds are not very accurate. Some books have feeds which don’t distinguish between 2-balls and tournament matchups. Some robots need updating to distinguish between the two. More robots need to be added. The entire golf system needs an overhaul and is expected to be more useable around mid-March. *FIXED*
Arbs occasionally have missing header information. *FIXED*
SportsTAB’s external odds don’t always update. We’ll leave this for now and see if they resolve the problem. If not we’ll move to use their internal odds once the Australian football seasons start.
Some books keep outdated odds after the events start. eg Intertops, MVP and more. Looking to resolve this during ongoing developments.
Eurobet’s odds feed contains positive lines for both sides (half-time and full-time). *FIXED*
Gamebookers odds feed is inaccurate eg series prices in match prices, half time prices as full time prices. *FIXED*
Sports Acumen sometimes has series prices as match prices in the cricket. On hold for higher priorities.
Gamebookers includes P2P odds for all sports except tennis. Nothing we can do about this – you can remove Gamebookers from your list if it becomes a problem (though they do present good arb opportunities) – but it is recommended to leave them in your tennis list.

Enhancements

Move robots to one-minute-delayed updates (ongoing development)
Addition of “rules” checking to help eliminate risk due to differences in bookmakers’ rules. *FIXED*
New arbs to be listed at top and remain at top for 5 minutes. *FIXED* (replaced by “age” functionality)
Ability to filter arbs by min & max %’s, and rules checking. *FIXED*
Quick links to create a “basket” containing what arbs you have placed. On hold for higher priorities.
Addition of more books to markets like halves betting, quarters betting (ongoing development, going well!)
Addition of more markets from BetFair (eg handicaps, un/ov). On hold while we talk to Betfair and work out the best way to proceed.
Addition of BetFair lay prices, and arbitrage opportunities from laying one side and backing the same side at a bookmaker. As above.
Inclusion of set betting in arb opportunities. Will be fitted in some time.
New Sound file to be used *Fixed* Any Comments?
Addition of BetAndWin, BetInternet, Stanley Bet for head-to-head odds. Will be fitted in during ongoing developments.
Use of Hollywood’s “sharp” lines – on hold while Hollywood improves their feed.

I think that a company which provides a service, with a direct link to a form which allows you to make improvement requests and report bugs, is a high quality business. It shows that they have nothing to hide, that they are willing to continue improving, and that they listen. My trial with this program will be running for one month, and over that time I will obviously be posting occasional posts like this, but I am sure that I will be in contact with the manager of SportsPunter and I will continue to update these forums with their improvements and bug fixes.

..Continued…

A definite issue which I keep facing when using this service though, is their lack of a trade calculator. As I am used to trading with SBP, I am used to simply selecting the arb I want to place, and instantly having in front of me how the bet should be broken up. If one bet or another is too high, I can quickly bring the trade amount down to get a rough figure which I can then round in my mind so I know what to place at each bookmaker. The important thing is that I get to see a quick indication of how the bets will be broken down on each bet before I go to the bookmaker pages.

There is no arb calculator at all with SportsPunter (yet, and I haven’t suggested this in the suggestion form, although I will) and so I have to use a calculator my friend made up himself in Excel. This calculator is brilliant for my purposes, but it removes the instant knowledge from the equation. It means I have to look at another window, enter the odds, enter the amount to be traded and enter the rounding that I want so that I can figure out how much i need at each bookmaker. This has cost valuable time to the trading process which I don’t have spare. It also makes me go back and forth between 4 different windows: sportspunter, bookmaker A, bookmaker B and Excel.

Odds And Bets will similarly have this problem, although I didn’t notice it in my review with them because SBP was running at the same time producing the same arbs, so I could use SBP to give me the bets. O&B give you an Excel sheet download to calculate your bets, however that doesn’t address the ‘instant’ knowledge which I think is important.

Shane

(Originally posted 12th April 06)

read morePosted on: Tuesday, May 23, 2006

Sports Punter Trial Review

I was offered a 1 month free trial of the SportsPunter arbitrage service in order for me to be able to review it for my site. After just one day of looking at their service, I can see why they were willing to offer me the free trial: It is very very good. (its not smart business to have your service reviewed by an independent third party if its bad LOL). This service, at first impressions, seems to be one of the best arb finding service I have seen so far.

That being said, it is still true that any arb service is still more suitable for some people than other people. One of the strongest attractions for me to this arb service is that it is Australian based, and I am from Australia. That means that the bookmakers it uses are all accesible to me and probably all of them even accept AU dollar (I always use US when trading because it has more universal acceptance) bets. Of course, for someone from the US, you will need to check through the list of bookmakers here and check to see how many of them accept US citizens, because I know that most of the UK and Australian bookmakers don’t. SportsPunter still uses many of the upper echelon US bookmakers, but you may lose many bookmakers if you are from the US.

OK, I already have a screen shot of how the interface looks on the main site at the arbitrage alert services page. This screen shot shows quite a few interesting things about how thier interface works. You can see the ‘ages’ of all of the arbs, the liklihood of rule clashes between bookies, and the options down the bottom. The bookmakers are all followed with their locations: UK, Costa Rica, Carribean, Australian States (NSW, WA, Vic, NT, SA, Qld, Tas) etc. Another brilliant addition to this interface is the ‘odds’ link that comes with each event (see the end of the line describing who is playing who). This link takes you to their main odds comparison screen, showing you exactly what odds are being offered by all of the bookmakers scanned by SportsPunter. The advantage of this is two fold: 1. It allows you to see instantly when there is one bookmaker making a really obvious mistake vs when there is a lot of confusion about the odds of a game and its anyones guess, and 2. If you miss half of your arb, you can quickly find the next best set of odds to place the second half on.

Early on in the trial there was a rather obvious error displayed as an arb. There haven’t been any other errors since, and if you actually bet on this ‘arb’ then the loss would be your own fault and you maybe should re-consider whether sports arbitrage is for you or not! The screen shot shows you why: http://www.sportsarbitrageguide.com/picts/…untertrial1.jpg
Clearly I am talking about Pinnacle having an arb with itself…and i ridiculessly high one at that. Looking at Pinnacle I can find where these odds have come from, although I don’t know why their software thought that this was an arb. http://www.sportsarbitrageguide.com/picts/…ialpinnacle.jpg
I havent seen any other mistakes yet, but generally any mistake like this is so damn obvious that you cant lose money on it. Hopefully they won’t make any half time vs full time arb errors or anything like that as I know some of their competitors do. Those errors are actually problematic as new people regularly don’t understand gambling very well and misunderstand the error and place the two bets anyway. I have a month trial though, so we will have plenty of time for me to find out how it goes.

SureBetPro has been offline for two days (very dissapointing), but when it comes back on I will be able to take some comparitive screenshots of that and show the differences in arbs between the two. So far I get the feeling that SportsPunter has many more arbs and much higher average percentage, but we won’t know for sure until I have them side by side (it is possible that today was just a good arb day….although mondays rarely are).

Shane

(Originall posted 10th April 2006)

read morePosted on: Monday, May 22, 2006

Week Ending 21st May 2006, Week 6

Week Ending 21st May 2006, Week 6
Opening Balance = $2,800.03
Bookmakers funded = 8
Bookmakers Used = 5
Number of Trades = 6 (2p)
Profit = $19.45, 0.69%
Closing Balance = $2,819.48
Logged Time = 38 hours

A devastatingly quiet week for us in trades. There just didn’t seem to be anything all week. Every trade except one was less than 1%, and the one which was over was only 1.14%. One trade was made late sunday night and is still pending decision, but it wouldn’t change the result by much anyway. You can see my hours are almost half of last weeks too; I was away all weekend again so that didn’t help.

Arbs came from NBA, WTA and 3 on ATP.

Further Stats:
Favourites won 4 of 5 arbs

%Profit Per week average = 1.8%
Profit per week average = $47.66

read morePosted on: Monday, May 22, 2006

Odds And Bets 3 Day Trial Review

My 3 day trial of the service provider OddsAndBets started at precisely 7pm Australian EST (+10) (which was midday by the time set by OddsAndBets, so I assume they are at +3??). The interface consists of a website with very clear text descriptions of each arb. New arbs are displayed with an Orange Highlight for the duration of that refresh. The screen refreshes every 30 seconds.

Part of the trial involves having all bookmakers included. This is obviously good for seeing how many arbs their program finds, however it also means you have to sort through which arbs are relevent to you and which ones aren’t. Paying customers pay more for the inclusion of more bookmakers, however in this circumstance, it is probably better to have less bookmakers, so you know exactly when YOU have an arb and when you don’t. I only actively use 5 or so bookmakers at the moment, so I would happily use their cheapest option.

In order to change account settings you have to email them, which seems to be quite troublesome. I have emailed them simply to ask what I can change. At the moment there is no audible alarm for higher arbs, and no method of screening bookmakers you don’t want.

Watching SBP next to OddsAndBets, the arbs come up at essentially the same time (depending on refresh point, but the same refresh in anycase). SBP consistently has more arbs than OddsAndBets, although this seems to be because 1. SBP has a few more bookmakers than O&B still, and 2. because O&B does screen arbs of less than 0.3%, while SBP shows everything it finds.

I have only been looking at this website for about 2 hours now, and so far my thoughts are that it really needs an audible alarm, an easier interface with the options than email, and a pop-up menu like SBP has… that tool is invaluable. The audible alarm is great for large arbs: when you hear that, you KNOW that you want to jump on it. But having an alarm ringing constantly because you ahve set it to 1% is annoying. But having the window pop up in the lower right hand corner momentarily every minute isn’t bothersome, and allows you to know when there is an arb which you could use if you want to. This window allows you to otherwise ignore SBP while you do other things. O&B though, because it is a webbrowser window really must be on top in order for you to see whether there is an arb or not. Right now for instance, I am writing this post on it, and I have no idea whether there are any arbs on O&B or not (there could be a snooker arb or something!) while I know that SBP has no arbs in my included list that are over 1% because the window hasn’t poped up at all.

That difference is critical so far in my mind. As I continue with this trial over the next 3 days, I will write to O&B a few times, and I will ask them if they can somehow implement some sort of scripting which effects a similar result for their software as the pop-up window (Note: The pop-up window in SBP is not the traditionally hated “pop-up”, but more like the MSN messenger alert window. It slides up in the lower right hand corner and then slides away without redirecting the focus of your windows.. ie: You can keep typing while it happens without your cursor being moved…)

Shane

read morePosted on: Wednesday, April 12, 2006

The Next Step in SAG

I would like to announce the next step in the continued growth of Sports Arbitrage Guide, the addition of a much more personalised review and comment section to the site. Until now everything in SAG has been an objective factual report based on the information available. I have done my best to not bring my personal feelings, assumptions or preferences into the reports so as to allow all of our readers to make up their own minds about what they think.

While I beleive this is still the right thing to do with regards to the goals of SAG, I still get contacted constantly by people wanting to know what I think about program xyx, which program is my favourite, would I do this etc etc. With the addition of this blog, I will now link from every report and article in SAG to a more subjective editorial style review of the product in question. Of course, this will all be my own opinion based on what I know, so any of it could be wrong, but if you want one opinion, then you can have it.

I will have a category for every alert service which I have something to say about, and I will probably post information and newsletters from each in their respective category too. I will have a main site category in which I will post all news and thoughts about the site, what I want to do with it, where it is going, things you should know about and so on.

Having this blog addition to the website will allow me to add more information all the time and keep everyone up to date on changes much easier without destroying the layout of the main SAG website.

Don’t forget to keep using the forums if you have any questions about arbitrage, and I look forward to hearing from you all!!

Shane (Aegist)

read morePosted on: Saturday, May 13, 2006

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