Sorry for the lack of updates recently. Keeping the site up to date is hard work and I’m sure a lot of these betting blogs go down the drain for this reason. It’s been nice to have the ‘time off’ since that dramatic race in Brazil but I thought I’d better do a quick update.

Since the end of the F1 season I haven’t placed any bets or traded any events. Actually that’s a lie because 10’s on Diana to win X-Factor at the start was too good to miss and I traded out of that at 2.6 when she didn’t appear the other week. But apart from that I’ve done nothing. It’s been nice!

Since the end of the F1 season I have spent as much time as possible on my little project to create a betting application using the Betfair free API.Read about it here. Yes the free API is slow and crap but for the purposes I plan to use it, it shouldn’t be too much of a problem. If it starts to prove successful I may be able to cover the charges for the full access at a later date.

With the lead up to Christmas I doubt I will have much time to post but I have some time off over the new year and plan to do my season round-up then.

One last thing, I booked a holiday to Las Vegas in the new year. I don’t expect to come back with any winnings because I won’t be gambling too much - I will find it more entertaining watching everyone else loose !

I wouldn’t be able to do the race justice if I started to explain what happened today so I will keep this purely about the betting. Before I begin, congratulations to Lewis and Massa in making possibly the most interesting championship in years and of course to Lewis for finally winning it. Now to the betting….

Lay position on Massa

My plan was to only let the lay of 1.7 go in-play if the rain had wet the track. With 10 or so minutes to go it was looking dry and I scratched the position just in time as his odds dropped to 1.6 as everyone thought the expected rain was not going to materialise. I was listening to Radio 5 who seemed to catch on to the fact the rain had actually started about 2 minutes before the off – a lot longer than ITV. I jumped back on the lay side of Massa @ 1.62 and watched as his odds shot up and traded back out at 2.4 (pink line).


If the race had not been delayed for 10 minutes I would not have exited and would have let the bet run, but the delay ensured there was enough time for the teams to get prepared. Noticing the rain had stopped I decided to back Massa @ 2.4 no more than a minute later and sure enough his odds tumbled back down again! Exiting the position at 1.8 for a good green means I made an almost perfect trade (blue line)…..unfortunately…….

I sacrificed that profit towards the end as I was unsure how much the rain would affect the last laps and decided to lay Massa again @ 1.28 for a free lay. The rain was expected before the end and I figured out a better way to make a larger profit.

The WDC Championship market

During the last few races I have built a free bet position on Massa to win the championship. Last year I did the same with Alonso and Kimi while Lewis had the lead. It acts as a kind of safety net for the deciding race as it gives you more freedom with your race positions. While taking lay position on Massa today I knew I was going to win if he won the race and the driver’s title because my lay was smaller than the free bet return. The only risk was Massa winning and Lewis finishing top 5.

Instead of watching the race winner market towards the end I switched to the drivers championship market. At this point Lewis was still in 5th and heading for the WDC. Then the rain came and Vettel managed to pass him. I greened my free bet position on Massa at odds of 1.39 – probably the best move I’ve made all year!!

You can see from the graph on Massa that 1.39 was nowhere near the bottom but going into the last corner with Lewis in 6th and you would have though Massa had done enough as it seems a lot of people did. There is quite a bit matched at under 1.2 for an F1 market.



Lewis never really got matched that high, maybe because it all happened so quickly. Note the amount of money placed on Lewis compared to the rest of the market due to the fact he was leading the WDC for most of the season.



EDIT: You can see more about this here...http://betting.betfair.com/betting/formula-one/lewis-hamilton-drifts-to-160-on-betfair-during-final-lap-but-comes-031108.html

And this wasn't me by the way! Although I wish it was....http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/3366564/Fan-could-pocket-125000-from-Lewis-Hamilton-triumph.html

Other positions

I made an overall small loss with the other markets. Profits from podium and best of the rest markets proved successful with Vettel (I took these on before the race and traded out when he was 2nd – he won neither of them). I did loose on Kubica and Rosberg for points places though as with more rain they would have been in strong positions.

So for the actual race I pretty much broke even but ended up winning from the driver’s championship market. A winning end to the season has to be the best way to finish.

There’s no more F1 until late March 2009 but I will post some updates and reviews about the season from a betting perspective over the winter break. After breaking my record for the total profit made over the course of the season I’m going to have a deserved break!

I didn’t post yesterday because there wasn’t much to say about my trading – basically I didn’t really do any. It was a really tough one to call and not wanting to take too much risk I ended up leaving my positions as qualy went in play. I had been trading the odds on Kimi and Heikki during Friday and Saturday morning to get some nice ‘free bets’ on them should they be lighter than the title contenders. I could have greened them for a small profit but it would have been really small - I felt leaving them as free bets was the better choice but of course Massa stormed to pole and now I know better. Still nothing lost on qualy so I’m only down because of the P1 bet on Lewis (which he just missed out on).

As for today, we have an odds on favourite in Massa. If you followed my blog this year you will know I don’t like odds on favourites this season because of the safety car risk.

In a dry race with ‘normal’ safety car rules then 1.7 for Massa is a fair price. Today is expected to be wet and we have ‘silly’ safety car rules so is 1.7 really representative?

I have taken a lay position on Massa for race win with the following exit strategies -

• If it’s dry at the start of the race exit for a small loss. Its worth a lay in the wet but in the dry the odds start to become true – take a small loss before it gets bigger!
• If it’s wet then his odds won’t come down much lower than 1.5 should he lead into the first corner. (if they do it may be worth laying again!). It really depends on how much rain there is as to what happens next. I would expect the odds to vary quite a bit if it’s raining so it should give plenty of opportunity to get out at some point. If he still leads after the 1st pit stops then I will gradually exit the position over time. A Safety car could come at any point so I don’t want to exit early in the race, however I don’t want to leave it so late that I take almost a complete loss.
• Anything else will be in my favour. Depending on what happens I will either slowly exit the position if he’s not leading or leave as an outright if he ends up way down the order.

The start to this race is crucial and I can already feel the tension from my room in the UK 7 hours before the race! I can’t imagine what Massa and Lewis must be feeling.

Lets hope for a nice clean fair fight and congratulations to whoever ends up as the 2008 World Drivers Champion.