Thanks for visiting this page. Here is a story to warm you late at night or in your hour of need. Some things happen that you don't expect or just can't understand. I have a history of winning at Gambling events, Investment, Speculation, Soccer matches, Golf, Horses and the like. Also people have wondered how somebody who is a long term investor can also be 'into' gambling markets. Hopefully this page will give you some understanding about the linkage between the two, the core of both for sure is my 'love' of numbers. Do you make your own luck? I've always believed this but some would say I was "Just born lucky...."

First off, A story about really being lucky!

There is the side of me that people would say really does appear to be lucky. A lot of the bizarre things I have done have often gone unnoticed but one story in 2005 caught the attention of the press and soon my in-box was filling up with messages. Early in 2005 I awoke one night from a startling dream. The sort of dream where you are sure you have just re-lived something. So powerful is the feeling you need to double check the event has not happened, you may be familiar with that feeling. This dream was a little bizarre though. However it was so real that when I woke up I felt compelled to write it down and make a note of its contents. The dream was about a football match and the detail was so explicit that I was able to note the event, the timing, who was playing, where I was sitting, a goal, who scored the goal and the time of the goal. In the dream I saw this all unfold in front of me and my heart sank as the team I had supported for many years was relegated on the last day of the season after spending decades in the top division in English football league. When I awoke and had made the notes I nipped on the Internet to see who my team were playing on the last day of the season. Well I never!, exactly as I had dreamt, it was the same team. So it remained for a couple of months. On Betfair a posting appeared one day, that I replied to, that was about dreams and premonitions. I posted my 'premonition' on March 30th 2005 but discounted the chance of it happening as I was not even expecting to attend the match. It did prompt me to start phoning around for prices though!

Soon after the weirdness truly began to set in. As the close of the football season arrived it was obvious that it was going to go to the wire and my team would have to leave it till the last match of the season to stay in their league. The first part of the dream was coming true, it was going to go to the last match. Then, on the Tuesday before the match, a phone call from an old friend. He was unable to go to the match so would I like his ticket? I was straying into officially freaked out territory now. I accepted but couldn't accept that fate really was unfolding. Should I go and watch my team get relegated to a lower division or should I stay at home and forget about it? I started resposting my premonition and telling friends and family about it. Knowing I was going to sit in the stadium and watch the game prompted me to act. I hadn't dreamt the score but I knew who would score to send us down and when. So using a combination of bets I bet on the correct score, the scorer and the time of the goal. On that fateful Saturday I went to the match to watch things unfold and the rest as they say is history.... The subsequent press coverage endorsed this bizarre scenario. For somebody that is into cold hard statistics and often casts aside instinct this was a bizarre story. I would definitely not recommend putting money on dreams and to me this was about as distant from my normal activities as you could get. Very strange. The following links to the BBC story and begs the question "Was I really was born lucky?"...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/funny_old_game/4555559.stm

My story about Betting Markets

My maths tutor at school (Mr Snell, You never forget these things) was a constant thorn in my side. Consistently commenting on my lack of ability with all things numerical. Of course he was right in that aspect, but wrong; by not metioning that everybody has the ability to perform well given the right encouragement and guidance. I hope the following gives those who are academically challenged in the numeric department some hope.

I first started analyzing football matches and other games of chance after reading all about Pascal and various texts on probability many years ago. The motivation behind analyzing football was spawned from my interest of the sport. I must thank Jack (Can't remember his second name) who came from Yorkshire and knew my parents. He spawned probably the earliest, fervent, memories of that I can recall of watching football regardless of location, weather or league position. Looking back I have fond memories now and realise that through football support I actually learnt a lot about life! Before that it was my father's boss, Ray who took me to see my first football match. It was Southampton Vs Brighton in August 1977; a drab 1-1 draw if my memory serves me well.

When I was young I was a bit of a whiz and used to do assembly language programming on Z80 microprocessors. My father did the football pools and I was convinced that using a computer I could do better than chance so I decided to start writing analysis software. The concept was for my model was simple, write a statistics engine that you chucked data at and the computer would work endlessly to attempt to understand what, if any, trends could be garnered from the data. My initial attempts were crude but given time the engines were modified and completed to a state where I did not anticipate having to change much. At the same time I was expanding my knowledge by reading piles of documents that were already available on probability and existing games of chance.

"Genius is there for us to learn from, not to try and re-invent"

The thing that surprised me (but shouldn't have!) was how much all my research pointed back at the fundamentals of maths and statistics. I guess a few hundred years of genius is there for us to learn from, not to try and re-invent!! Therefore I decided to raise my general level of ability in mathematics to ensure I could mix my skills into something useful. What was interesting was that the monetary reward was relegated to the background and the challenge of resolving these problems came to the fore. I enjoyed this challenge.

From the early eighties I had been bouncing around several concepts to do with combinatorics and bets placed on pool or tote betting systems. This work, career permitting, continued for a number of years until I started to do a lot of work in earnest (I.e. putting money where my mouth is).

I decided to test my theory out on the football pools as I had always wanted to "Win the pools". (A dream since I was young, I had won several times before but not on any great scale). The odds were massive and seemingly very difficult to overcome. Another problem was that I had to complete the work quickly as the impact of the introduction of the national lottery to the UK would destroy the means, structure and therefore the application of some of my work.

My work culminated in a very public season netting masses of dividends, One win alone netting 115 dividends. To ensure the details were not missed or fudged I did this in parallel with a syndicate that I ran at my place of work to ensure that I would have plenty of witnesses. The crowning achievement was a first dividend on Littlewoods pools, achieved with an entry costing only just over £17. In the same year an economist published an article in the economic journal which validated a lot of the work I had done, satisfaction indeed. His analysis was somewhat more rigorous than mine, but the conclusion the same: -

"the presence of information costs combined with takeouts by tracks in pari-mutuel games leads to expected returns and market odds differing substantially from the perfect information betting market. "

"An economist published an article which validated a lot of work I had done" 

My most enjoyable win came the weekend before my birthday ; the cheque arrived in time for my birthday the following weekend. When I sat down on the prior Saturday at 4:45pm and the results were coming in one after another I was shaking with adrenaline and excitement. I couldn't sleep at night till the cheque arrived and phoned everybody and checked everything to make sure there would be no last minute problems.

"My most enjoyable win came the weekend before my birthday one year, the cheque arrived in time for my birthday the following weekend!" 

The upshot of the many years of work I had done on statistics and sports markets lead me deeper and deeper into investing which I was pursuing at the same time. I figured that principles such as probability and the psychology in play on gambling markets would probably transplant to financial markets. I spent a lot of time and money reading, researching and attending lectures on different forms of Investment and speculation. Contrary to my purely statistical starting point, I actually ended up as a long term value investor than bare bones statistical or technical analysis of investments. This does make sense though, as my work on producing a winning edge in sports markets was designed around large parts of the market placing their bets using anything other than fundamental analysis of the things that they were placing their bets on.

The stock market appears to mimic somewhat the sports markets. Sub optimal behaviour by market participants tends to create opportunities. Its interesting to note that there are lots of people who buy and sell financial assets with no appreciation of exactly what the underlying security is worth. Generally, a recipe for long term underperformance. On the more speculative side, techniques and applications of probability, psychology and gambling theory are omnipresent in the stock market.

I thought my interest in Gambling markets would end when I achieved my aim of winning the football pools and because of my growing involvement in the world of the stock market. But with the dawn of Betting Exchanges my work took another twist. The first betting exchanges in the UK opened in June 2000 and I signed up immediately. Initially I used them to arbitrage between the bookmakers and other exchange users but things advanced pretty quickly. It is absolutely fantastic to have an opportunity to bet with or against an event. For many years I had lectured that often it is only the house or bookmaker that wins. Never did I guess that I would be on the other side of the book and with such ease and opportunity.

"Betting exchanges are a fantastic innovation!"

Betting Exchanges are a fantastic innovation and full of opportunity. It is very easy to construct pretty solid models without undue complexity. Exchanges have opened up a world of opportunity and thanks to the internet, at little cost. I have spent many, many hours studying and analysing the betting exchange markets and have now documented a lot of that. My works continues at a pace though in these ever changing markets.

Betting Exchanges are a very efficient way of pricing betting markets. I have written a small piece of the efficiency of the exchange markets which you can view here. All the work I have done in the past has found new applications in this exciting medium. Despite knowing very little about horses using certain strategies I only lose money on around 10% of races. My current record for consecutive wins is 33horse races; this is doing each race on the card not picking and choosing. On soccer I had gone three months and 475 bets with only 1 losing bet, admittedly exceptional but none the less welcome! None of this involves arbitrage or laying outsiders, processes that are not as simple or as risk free as they first appear. It's fun, I enjoy it, which may explain why I am better than average.

But lets bring things back down to earth here, I don't profess to be a genius the likes of which has not walked the planet or possess an intellect higher than my peers but probably in reality sit somewhere between abstract academia and the lay person. Through lots of thinking and prodding I have come learn the ability to take difficult concepts and simplify them into something more practical. By the way, I recommend strongly that you shouldn't bet on your dreams, despite my story.

Well, what an interesting journey I have had! I trust the journey will continue. Probability…………..100%