No Nark in the Park

Just a small profit eked out this weekend.

I was reading before the British Super Middleweight title fight on Friday that Paul Smith is the hardest hitter that Billy Graham has ever worked with.

I found this hard to believe, and I think it was Chris Sanigar who questioned how he could say that after training Carl Thompson.

Billy had replied, ‘I was the one holding the pads’.

Well, it seems that Billy must be feeling the effects of the years because there was little evidence that Smith’s punches were having any effect on Tony Quigley in the bout.

Until the champion tired in the last two rounds, Quigley seemed in control and despite being out on his feet, Quigley never really looked like getting stopped even in the last round.

To be fair to Smith he was never hurt either, and in addition, power punches are not too easy to land on Quigley, as his style makes it difficult to land anything of note. It was worrying for Smith supporters that their man didn’t seem to impose himself on the contest, and seemed to be the one back-pedalling for most of what was in truth, a very scrappy affair.

I had seen Paul Smith box in pedestrian fashion before & I figured that Quigley’s win over Dodson might have been under-rated. I took a bit of the 3.55 about the champion and little I saw in the first 2/3 rds of the contest convinced me I was wrong.

The market makers on betfair clearly agreed and I was able to lay off Quigley at 1.36 in running after the 8th round.

On my card I thought that Smith needed a stoppage after 10 but I was relieved to have ‘greened out’ after the champion tired and Smith won the last two rounds clearly.

I still thought that Quigley had edged it but Smith was the house fighter, and also seemed to have more vocal support in the arena.

The result was a split decision in favour of Smith, which seemed a little tough on Quigley, but I was right to sacrifice some of my potential profits and secure a profit whichever of the three outcomes were decided.

Immediately after this contest Fran Warren told the MC to announce ‘there will be a rematch’, but I cannot say that there would be many looking forward to watching that again. After such all-Liverpool classics as ‘the Nark in the Park’ with Andy Holligan and Shea Neary, and the Quigley v Dodson thriller earlier this year, this one was pretty disappointing it has to be said.

The late Autumn season finally gets in full swing over the next few weeks with Sexton v Rogan II, David Haye challenging Nikolai Valuev on Saturday, and Miguel Cotto challenging Filipino sensation Manny Pacquaio.

Regarding the Haye v Valuev bout this weekend, i expect a big performance from Haye.

The bigger they come, the harder they fall is one adgage. of course you may also say 'a good big'un beats a good little 'un.
My take on this is that class is the over-riding factor rather than natural weight or size. Roy Jones Jr hammered John Ruiz by just being too good, and it really wouldn't surprise me if this was like Haye v Arthur Williams, where the younger guy jumps on the older, slower man from the bell and basically punishes him into submission.
Unless stamina becomes an issue, Valuev doesn't seem to have the power to KO anyone these days, instead relying on labouring to points decisions, several of which have been very generous.
let's face it, however you read it, a life and death struggle with faded former champ Evander Holyfield is pretty awful form, and Haye should be approaching this bout with confidence.
haye to win inside the distance at 3/1 is the recommendation.

still in action...

but very busy with lots of domestic tuff, so I have had to sacrifice the blog updates, and this may continue for a while, but I have had to scale my bets back quite a bit.

This has been due to a few factors but primarily due to getting collared at a few of my books.

I even spotted two middles on the NFL, got my bets on and had my action cancelled without even getting an email to explain why.

I had some exposure there but one won and one lost so no damage was done.

Over the last two seasons I have done well from arbing and middling the NFL but 5 weeks in and it has been pretty poor this time round.

Now that I have cashed out my remaining balance with sporting I will look to a couple of other European books to see if they are out of line on their prices, and hopefully I will have a little more joy there.

In boxing, we have seen some recent action, not much of which has excited me very much.

I lost a little on the Prizefighter tournament which was ridiculous really as I tipped a 20/1 outsider who got to the final, winning his first two bouts. The only bout I backed him in though was the final when he had a great first round against Audley Harrison, but was knocked out in the 2nd.

Audley finally displayed some of the grit that has been lacking throughout his low profile career. Whether this heralds an upturn in his fortunes must be questionable though. To be fighting 8 fight novices nearly 10 years after his Olympic Gold is pretty poor, and it remains to be seen whether Audley will ever make into the top ten rankings of any of the world organisations. He is currently ranked #55 in the world by independent authority www.boxrec.com, but that is behind fellow Brit Tyson Fury who only turned professional last year.

I expect he will continue for a couple of years, fighting, and probably losing to fringe contenders like Derek Chisora or Fury, before disappearing off the radar completely.

Apart from Prizefighter, Sky’s output of Friday night fights has been lacking in decent contests, so much so that I couldn’t even be bothered to watch them.

Last weekend saw the start of Showtime’s Super Middleweight ‘Super Six’ tournament, and this tournament has really caught the imagination and put a much needed spring in the step for boxing.

It started with Jermain Taylor travelling to Germany to fight Arthur Abraham, and Andre Dirrell coming to England to face Carl Froch.

One of the rules of boxing betting is never to back against the home fighter on a German promotion. Of course I wrote the rule, and ignored it with my selection of Samuel Peter vs Vitali Klitschko.

Now, I am a fan of Abraham but I still thought he looked very small against the others in this tournament, moving up from middleweight and I gave Taylor a good chance of outboxing him. I envisaged him getting a decision after keeping Abraham on the end of his jab for the duration. At the odds, I had a small wager on Taylor, who was the underdog at 3.55.

Of course the judges were not needed as Abraham proved to be the puncher in the fight. Long before the knockout in rd12, Abraham had shown that a well organised style was too much for Taylor who had no plan B once his own punches were making no impression. From round 5 it was pretty much all Abraham who was easing to a wide points win until Taylor was caught flush with 20 seconds left.

This fight had me wondering

a) why I had broken my golden rule again, and

b) how Taylor had managed to defeat Bernard Hopkins twice

As likeable as he is, quite frankly Taylor is finished as far as elite level boxing goes. The Taylor who ground it out against Hopkins now seems a distant memory.

It will be interesting how Abraham gets on in his bouts outside Germany .

With his peek-a-boo style, gloves glued to the side of his head, and shorts pulled up to his armpits he has been protected from body shots by referees penalising clean blows as ‘below the belt’. He will not get the same kind of official assistance in the USA .

It would be a mistake to write-off King Arthur though. He is very tough, carries his power throughout a bout, and has a real fighting heart. Anyone who saw him boxing on for half the fight against Edison Miranda with a broken jaw will understand that.

Because he starts slowly and doesn’t seem very quick you always expect that a decent boxer could out-point him comfortably but he won’t be easy pickings for anyone.

In the other contest I figured the books had it about right, and was about to give this one a miss, when I notice the odds on Froch were dropping close to fight time.

Of course Dirrell had struggled to make weight the day before, and the line moved a little after that.

I wondered what was causing the line shift, and I spoke to a friend who was at the bout. He said that the word at the venue was that the occasion was getting to the American and that he was a nervous wreck, leading many to think he would freeze in the ring.

Of course I should have treated this info with a pinch of salt but instead I had a few bets on an early KO in rounds 2, 3 & 4, and a pretty lumpy bet on Froch to win over at Matchbook who hadn’t moved the line like the others.

For those who haven’t see it [link to fight writer] the contest (I hesitate to use the word fight) was absolutely awful, and there has been a lot of controversy about the judges scoring of the ‘fight’.

A couple of facts about the bout

Carl Froch was trying to engage his opponent in a battle of fisticuffs.

Andre Dirrell was attempting to stay out of punching range, and occasionally counter after his opponent had missed.

On my card, the score was 115-113 in favour of Dirrell.

Froch was plodding forward like Frankenstein’s monster but he wasn’t landing many punches, whereas Dirrell’s occasional counters were sharper and more accurate.

Indeed Froch appeared to be getting very frustrated as he couldn’t impose his type of fight on his opponent.

Froch has fought awkward opponents before, Matthew Barney perhaps the most unorthodox, but none as quick as his American adversary here who really was very sharp.

Now, two judges scored for Froch and one for Dirrell whilst most online pundits watching at home had the American a clear winner.

I likened the contest to Taylor v Spinks from last year when Taylor was the aggressor but plodded forward landing virtually nothing while Spinks fulfilled the Dirrell role of the bullfighter ‘now you see me, now you don’t’.

In the end, the judges preferred the aggressive intentions to the tactics of Dirrell and Spinks who were perceived as too negative.

Nevertheless, how can a fighter be awarded rounds for swinging at thin air?

The ironic thing is that Dirrell did finally take the centre of the ring in rounds 11 & 12, and reeled off a few punches that showed Froch he did have the power to compete at this level. The Englishman was even back pedalling at one stage, so if Dirrell had just been a little more ambitious, this is a fight he could have won.

I could have added to my stake in the closing stages with Froch trading at 2/1 on Betfair, even as we were waiting for the decision, but I missed out on this - I must admit I was pretty sure the decision would go the other way, but

Still, I'm not complaining with the bet putting me back in the black for the day.
Sometimes you get the decisions and sometimes you don't.

Asikainen v Macklin Preview

Amin Asikainen is a solid European career middleweight who has been exposed when he has tried to take his career to world level.

Matthew Macklin is a solid domestic boxer who has been exposed when he has tried to capture British titles.

They share a common opponent, in the last two years, the veteran slugger 'Yory Boy' Campas.
Asakeinen stopped the tough Latino in five, whereas a few weeks later Macklin made do with a points victory.

So Asikainen is the favourite for this match. Wrong.
Macklin trades at 1.25 whereas you can get 4.2 about the Finnish fighter.

Why is Macklin such a big favourite?
Well he is the home fighter, as he enjoys a headline spot on the Sky Sports televised show, promoted by his friend Ricky Hatton who is acquiring a decent stable of boxers.

Macklin is a complex character. A bright lad who studied law before becoming a pro fighter, he has had more trainers than a sports shop in his paid career.
Initially a prospect under Frank Warren's promotional banner he was dropped after losing a decision to the awkward Andrew Facey.
He worked his way back to junior middleweight reckoning and challenged top notch British Champion Jamie Moore.
Macklin was with Hatton's trainer Billy Graham at the time so the fight was a real local derby against Salford hard man Moore.
In the event Macklin was brutally knocked out in the championship rounds after his petrol tank ran empty.
After giving a solid account of himself and being bang in the fight, Macklin worryingly was knocked out cold after seeming to run out of gas.
Many thought that heavy defeat would be the end of him, but he hasn't lost since and has regrouped with a series of wins, some impressive, others not so.
Two fights ago he looked sluggish as he made hard work of a durable journeyman, but he got it right in his latest fight, seeing off former champ and world title challenger Wayne Elcock.
The victory was clearly the best of Macklin's career and it is possible he has really clicked with new trainer Joe Gallagher.
He certainly produced a very polished performance being in total control in what had been billed as a 50/50 fight.
If he gets past Asikainen, the future looks promising for Macklin, with world title eliminators and possible big money fights with other boxers of Irish heritage like Andy Lee & John Duddy.

There are question marks about both men.
Asakainen, at 33 may be just going over the hill, while Macklin may be hugely flattered by defeating a fading shell of a fighter in Elcock.

I can see why the oddsmakers favour Macklin. He produced an apparent career best last time, and could be finally fulfilling the promise he showed as a young pro.
He is the younger man, on his own turf, and this fight has been made for him to win. There was also no disgrace in losing to Jamie Moore as the Salford boxer has showed he is above domestic class in his long unbeaten run. Macklin may be better equipped to a live TV fight this time round as he admitted to burning up a lot of energy with nerves in that contest.
1/4 is pretty short odds though.
As a seasoned traveller, and having fought abroad many times I don't think Asakainen will be fazed by coming over to the UK, and he could nick a points win, if Macklin is flattered by his last outing.
However, if Macklin is really an improved operator, he could force a late stoppage.
I'll probably give this one a miss and just watch it though.

stay in action

cancel this Party!

what a joke. the Partybets bonus offer came with more strings than a broken Harp.

The bonus was only credited on completion of the rollover, which was 8x Deposit & Bonus.
Secondly, the only wagering that counted towards the bonus is at odds of greater than 2.0
So, a high wagering requirement, no option to bust, and a further stipulation that favorites could not be backed. Oh and I nearly forgot, a 14 day time frame to meet the bonus, or it is forfeited.
Anyone who manages to work through this requirement whilst maintaining their capital intact will have really earned their bonus.
If Party didn't offer such massive overrounds perhaps it would have been worth pursuing but I would say this is going to be impossible to do.

Let's get this party started...

I've been away for a while - house moves and so on.

It takes quite a while to get back into the swing of things doesn't it?

we are nearly through August and I haven't even posted for a month.
On the betting front - well it has been a time of little activity.
For one reason I have not had the time with the proliferation of things that have need sorting out both prior to and since the house move.
There was also a two week hiatus while I had no internet access whatsoever. This was caused by a mistake at the suppliers end when the order was not set-up despite me ordering it 3 weeks before the move, precisely to avoid any delays in set up.
Still, it seems to be set up OK now.
I have moved from a cable based set-up to a phone line based broadband with a filter on the socket so you can get calls as well as having access to the internet.
The download speed seems to be reasonably fast considering I had heard a few nightmare stories about the supply of broadband in the country.

Obviously I had a mass of messages to work through with poker rooms tempting me with various offers to play at their sites, none of which were particularly enticing.
I had two messages from my old friends at Party. On the one hand they were threatening me with a charge of five Euros if I don't play any poker at least every six months.

It is hard to see how they could collect this charge when I have no money in the account at the moment.
Nevertheless I suppose they could try to deduct some money if I took advantage of the other item which is an email from the subsidiary partybets offering a 50% bonus up to $200.
Sounds tempting. I can always scalp this with matchbook or Pinnacle. I seem to recall that last year, the terms were a little strange in that bets only counted towards the rollover if they were struck at greater than even money.

It meant that bets on handicaps at -110 were useless for rollover purposes, but money lines on underdogs were the only way to do it. Of course a -110 handicap could still result in a bust but wouldn't count for a rollover.
I will have to have a look at the NFL pre-season and MLB games this weekend. I recall they also did a NFL juice-free game every week to small money, so that is one way of working at getting a rollover.
I have a few options for looking into middling on the NFL too - which was a rich seam to be mined last year.
Of course the real action in the NFL doesn't get under way until September, and pre-season games don't always allow big action.

I got back in the swing with a few hours 5/10 and 10/20 cash games at Spin32. I can't say that the month's break has done any good to the games.
The only regular active players are pretty decent and we could have a situation where the games have evolved to the extent that the fish have been eaten up. Even when a live one arrives in the game there are 5 waiting to kill him.
Having said that, the five regulars, while not weak, are not as good as those on iPoker at the same levels. I don't fear any of them but they are all competent.
Perhaps it is the time to find some new games.

Betfair laying - Silver Fox style

I'm currently considering a blanket laying strategy as an exercise to gauge the profitability of laying activity on the exchanges.

I don't know whether to lay every fav for a maximum liability of 1 point, or lay each fav for a stake of 1 point.
I'll have to run a few simulations.
I don't want to get into a situation of laying too many longer priced horses even if they are favs. I would prefer lays to be in the range of evens to 3/1.
I think there is generally a bigger over-round built into shorter SP favs. I also think the term ‘blanket’ laying implies that it is pretty arbitrary, but over time I expect revisions and tweaks to refine the approach, possibly into exclusively handicaps, certain distances, race types etc

I had a quick look at results last week, and played the lays game for real myself on Tuesday, picking all overnight favs that fit the range. There were only 3 in markets that were mature, & I laid them all to 1 point stake by the backer.
All three lost, for a profit of 3 points

On the second day I laid three horses in this category, and all three won, at evens, 6/4 and 7/4. I had put in a lay on another but it didn't get matched, at 2/1, and that won too.
Out of interest the 6/4 horse was matched at 55 in running for £400 so a good result all round for backers there.
My loss on Day 2 was 4.25 points.

On day 2 I could have laid more but I tried to get a bit too clever and decided to stay away from one of the day meetings where there were a lot of qualifying favs and instead went for an evening card where the favs looked a bit less solid. This backfired as the afternoon jollies were all sunk and the evening ones all won.
I think I have to stay away from this line in the future, and just let the results take care of themselves.
As it is a fact as certain as night follows day, that bets on SP favs will always return a loss, it stands to reason that this will make money.
The judgement will remain as to what lay price will constitute an SP return, and when making an instruction for a lay where markets are immature, this will still require a little bit of judgement to avoid offering backers excessive value.

Another advantage of blanket laying without exceptions is that it is less time consuming than a detailed evaluation of every race which could end up taking a full days work.

As it stands I doubt William Hill’s are quaking in their boots, but stay with me, there may be gold in this yet.

-------------------------------------

I see the Racing Post are making some changes to their website which is currently a complete dog's breakfast since the move to racingpost.com
Personally I only use about a quarter of the screen as the only features I am interested in are the news and racecard features, which are surrounded by pointless video clips that don't work, adverts and a lot of general irrelevant rubbish.

Whoever paid to have this redesigned needs their head examining, but with £1.80 prices per paper copy and circulation falling through the floor I guess this is pretty typical of the Post's backward progress in recent years.
It looks as though they are finally getting round to charging for some site features. I guess this had to come but even so it will be a disappointing day for racing fans.

I think we may look back to the era of the early 2000s as a golden era for racing fans.
We had tax free betting, great sign up bonuses, free coverage of every race on Attheraces satellite channel, free access to form and analysis on Racing post site.

In 2009 we now face a £20 per month charge to watch half the UK racing on Racing UK, membership fees on the RacingPost site, and reduced sign up promos.
Still, its miles better than 15 years ago when we had betting tax on all bets, a few races on terrestrial TV every now and again, and comparing the odds meant walking next from one shop to another, so let's not get too despondent about the state of play.

Royal Ascot lives up to its billing

Jealous Again - bullet speed

The greatest meeting in the world lived up to its reputation with some great races, great stories, and just as importantly, great profits for me!

I looked at the two year old race on the first day, and spotted a USA trained runner, Strike The Tiger who had won its only race on dirt over 4.5f.
Knowing the US horses are fast starters I fancied I could back the horse and lay off in running.
The horse was 55 on Betfair, and I had a few quid on.
It got into a clear lead at halfway, and i locked in a profit, but let the majority ride, and despite a long last furlong it held on by a neck for the first ever US trained winner at Royal Ascot.

My man in the long grass told me that wednesdays US runner Jealous Again was showing the most speed of any horse that the Wesley Ward stable had brought over.
Indeed the message from Newmarket was that the stall one berth was perfect for this fast starting rails runner.
Sure enough, John Velasquez got the filly in the box position and the opposition were burned off after two furlongs as the filly stormed to a 5 length win in a fast time that had Timeform calling it the best two year old filly for 20 years at the meeting. And the best bit - a 10/1 price.

After this the books took cover, shortening up the remaining three Ward runners to the front three in the betting despite the work watchers not being keen on their chances over longer trips.
Sure enough they were all unplaced, leaving my friend Andrew to comment very wisely about those who jumped on the ward bandwagon, just as the wheels fell off -

'If you haven't been to the wedding - don't go to the funeral!'

Wise words my friend.