A couple of weeks ago an arbitrage existed on predicting the winner and loser in the World Cup final. It was possible to lay England vs. South Africa at 14.5

and back on bet365 at 16/1 (17). The arbitrage existed for a couple of days.

The Irish are favourites for the championship.

What I think may be worth a flutter going forward is Italy to be ahead at half time but to lose the game. Italy were doing well in all of their games at half time last year, but went on to lose them all.

• vs. Ireland

Ireland: (10) 26

Italy: (10) 16

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/rugby_union/international/4681060.stm

• vs. England

Italy: (6) 16

England: (7) 31

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/rugby_union/international/4696474.stm

• vs. France

France (8) 37

Italy (12) 12

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/rugby_union/international/4744926.stm

• vs. Wales

Wales (15) 18

Italy (15) 18

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/rugby_union/international/4792984.stm

• vs. Scotland

Italy: (7) 10

Scotland: (10) 13

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/rugby_union/international/4814686.stm

 

For this Saturday's match against France I will be placing a bet on Italy to either be ahead or drawing at half time and for France to win.

An update after Part 2

http://www.noelwatson.com/blog/PermaLink,guid,19dadf64-9907-40cb-bf00-a27237df036d.aspx

At the start of the Football World Cup, Betfair were placing England as second favourites (I think at 7-1). I'm assuming this is because the majority of Betfair's market is from England, and were therefore placing lots of money on their home team, as I did not believe they were this good (I don't really follow football - but English football always seems to underperfom).

I didn't place any money, but if I had I would've probably laid England, as I as confident they were not going to win. I remember England being fifth favourites after the group games, but I'm not sure if their odds had lengthened as there were now fewer teams in the tournament.

For the England vs. Portugal game, I predicted that Portugal would win on penalties (note that I also thought Brazil would beat France, so don't follow my betting patterns!). I started to watch the game while also sitting in front of the P.C. to see how in-play betting worked.

Below are a few screenshots - note how the matched figure gets larger as time progresses (to prove I have the screenshots in the right order)

• Potential arbitrage - Lay > 100%

• Rooney gets sent of. My contact at Betfair explained that markets are suspended to allow people to take offers off the table (Betfair is not quite real time - people at the match itself may gain an advantage and could then have the potential to have an unfair advantage.)

• Potential arbitrage - Back <100%. This happened soon after the market reopened

• the arbitrage got larger!

• This occured during extra time. Lay of 116.9%

This shows that there may be opportunites after all

As an aside, I had a look at Betfair after the France vs. Portugal game had finished. Note how someone is still offering 1000-1 on Portugal. I guess they are hoping that someone hadn't seen the final score - France won.

This site is quite interesting

http://www.sportsarbitragereview.com/

A friend of mine was discussing how betting exchanges use escrow accounts for outstanding bets.

I did some searching and found a wikipedia entry on how it can go wrong

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sporting_Options

This led me to a link on BackAndLay

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BackAndLay

http://www.backandlay.com/

This site appears quiet at the moment, but offers a free API (Betfair £2000/year for transactional service) and only 1% commission. My dreams of endless arbitrage opportunities may not be over (dream on)!

Global Gaming Techologies have launched a new exchange that allows you to compare Betfair and BetDaq prices.

http://www.sharecast.com/cgi-bin/sharecast/story.cgi?story_id=620652

This would appear to be a reasonably straightforward idea to implement - I wish I'd thought of it first. If GGT offer an API, it may be cheaper than subscribing to Betfair and BetDaq individually.

I looked at this a while ago

http://www.noelwatson.com/blog/PermaLink,guid,ee7d3f3a-bef3-4a84-bf29-f0067aa3ad3e.aspx

and wondered whether there were still arbitrage opportunities to be had - I concluded that it was unlikely.

I had a back of 2.96 outstanding on Scotland for the upcoming game against Wales. The bet was taking a while to get matches as it was greater then was being offered by the layers. I checked back and noticed that the lay side was at 100.1% - an arbitrage opportunity. Now obviously, the margins here are tiny, but it surprised me that the book stayed like that for about a minute, until an automated application (I assume) placed three lays. I would've expected the automated apps to either ignore the bet altogether as the margin was so small, or to place bets instantly. I guess it takes a while to iterate through all open books.

Maybe there are still opportunities out there

I've always been interested in developing an application that would trade automatically and generate me money (who wouldn't). After seeing some of the odds that we being offered on the NZ vs Scotland rugby match last weekend, I looked around to see how I might automate a betting application.

Betfair offer a webservice

http://bdp.betfair.com/index.php

with plenty of ducumentation

http://bdp.betfair.com/apidocumentation.php

with charges of £1000 a year for personal users

http://bdp.betfair.com/personalapi.php

This would probably have been a viable solution a few years ago - with potential for arbitrage opportunities.

(looking for back under 100% or lay over 100%).

However, I think the market would now be satured, with people chasing smaller and smaller opportunities - some products are shown below

http://www.arbmirage.co.uk/

http://www.welldonesoft.com/

http://www.probabilitytheory.info/