MARCO CONCEPTUAL

All market-makers and spread bettors want to get one up on the opposition. Part of doing that is the ability to read games as they happen, recognising what other spread bettors are wanting to do and which markets offer us the best opportunities to win.

But long-term success can also be achieved through recognising something else—a base change in a sport that substantially changes the way an event unfolds. This may be a

change which affects all games or tournaments in a sport or which is isolated to particular situations or areas of a game.

Spotting these base changes is difficult. Sometimes they are the type of phenomena that only afterwards sports fans look back on and say: ‘Yes, that changed everything.’

Sometimes the difference may be more subtle, but for the spread bettor absolutely as significant. Recognising trends and changes can be a profitable godsend. If you can see that something new is happening before anyone else, you will win. But be sure that the spread firms are working on spotting the trends first.

As we discussed earlier, we are living in an age of sporting dominance and the first examples of base changes are the sportsmen and teams who have come to win so often and so comprehensively that they change the face of their sports.

Tiger Woods is perhaps the ultimate example. Before his appearance on the professional circuit, no player had dominated golf for 30 years and the heyday of Jack Nicklaus. When Tiger came to the US PGA Tour, he had a phenomenal amateur record, but few predicted how complete his domination of the game would become in just a matter of months. Now, he is a 2-1 favourite for every event he plays in and just his appearance at a tournament completely alters the betting market. The game has been fundamentally altered by his emergence in a way that affects the other players and all the betting.

Other dominant teams and individuals are similarly changing the face of their sport. So Michael Schumacher in Formula One and the Australian cricket team come in the same category, even though none probably quite match Woods’s mastery of his rivals.

And of course, everything that goes up must eventually come down. All great empires eventually crumble and the bettors who first spot when Woods, Schumacher, the Australians or

whoever start to lose their edge over the competition will be on to another profitable base change. Maybe it will be age eroding their skills, maybe it will be a lack of motivation taking away the winning drive, maybe it will be technology levelling the playing field, but it will inevitably happen.

In the non-sporting world, Labour’s election victory in 1997 saw a significant base change in the political landscape. No one thought the party could win by so far because the natural Tory shires would protect the Conservatives from a complete electoral trouncing. How wrong that view seems now.

Base changes can be more subtle and unusual and some are really of interest to spread bettors and few others. Rule changes and interpretations can dramatically alter the way some spread betting markets are calculated, even if they make relatively little impact on who wins or loses an event. During the 1999 Cricket World Cup, Sporting Index made one of spread betting’s biggest gaffes after grossly underestimating the total number of wides in the tournament. Everyone has a different version of how Sporting got their figures so wrong. But one of the reasons was that they had failed to recognise how the new white ball used in the tournament swung appreciably more than the normal red ball and was far more difficult for bowlers to control. The error, compounded by the fact that Sporting bungled by also using the wrong average figures for the market, cost them more than £500,000.

Changes in rules and the way referees and umpires are instructed by a sport’s governing body to interpret the laws of the game can affect markets. Maybe new equipment will have an impact. In golf, players are hitting the ball further and more accurately thanks to tremendous advances in clubs and ball technology. Suddenly, long-hitting players do not seem to enjoy the same advantage as they did just a couple of seasons ago.

Sometimes single games or tournaments can see a base change in the way they are played—and when this happens it

can leave the spread firms’ best statistics way out of line. One example is the Scottish Masters Snooker, the tournament immediately before the Embassy World Championships in Sheffield. All the world’s best players want to peak for the World Championship and inevitably it means they are much less concerned with a run-of-the-mill event finishing days before. Most will probably enter the Scottish Masters…but probably are not too upset if they are knocked out early. Not surprisingly, there is a history of surprise winners in the tournament—even though the big guns are invariably marked up as hot favourites.

International football ‘friendlies’ can also often see unusual results. Early in 2003, England hosted the Australian Soccer Roos team. The England management had made it clear the game was merely a run-out and they wanted to get as many players on the pitch as possible. For the Australian team, including star players Harry Kewell and Mark Viduka, it was a chance to capture a big scalp and prove they were the equals of their more illustrious rivals. All the spread firms made England 1–1.3 goal supremacy favourites—slightly less then the international records and FIFA world ranking suggested, but still strongly fancied to win convincingly. In the end, England were flattered to lose only 2-1.

One football trader said:

‘On a game like England versus Australia we were constrained by the statistics. We might know England are not revved up for the game, but the figures mean we have to make them favourites. The skill for the clients is knowing the games where there is a mis-match in desire and intensity. Which team wants to win, which is not too bothered. None of us were surprised to see England lose, but we have to set a price to make

sure we see each way business and that means England favourites. If we had marked up the game as a level contest, we would have been overwhelmed with England buyers and that gives us an unhealthy unbalanced position.’

As he says, the skill is in spotting the opportunities when they come up.

All these examples, whether it is personal excellence or a variation in the laws of the game or a one-off situation, are there to be seen. All it needs from the gambler is a little lateral thinking and to consider what effect new conditions might have. The only rule is that in the competitive world of sport, the status quo never exists for long.