Constituency Polling - 11am

Important constituency level polls coming out shortly - could lead to some opportunities today.
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Bookies are getting much faster at updating their odds / closing their markets when the polls come out. Furthermore I'm working out of a Second Cup today due to renovations at my place so it was a bit harder to be as fast as possible for this stuff.

Regardless I got a couple decent bets in, but I could have done better if I was a bit faster. Big moves for Cannock Chase and Great Grimsby.

As the bookies get faster at pulling down their lines, it will become more important to hit lines for constituencies that are neighbours to those being polled below, where you would assume a similar swing would be occurring. A decent bet now is Labour to win in Cleethorpes at > 3.0 on Bet365 and Betfair Sportsbook. Norwhich North at 2.37 on Bet365 is also not bad.

UK Election - Constituencies

One of the things that makes the UK Election so interesting to me is the ability to bet on individual constituencies, and the very infrequent constituency polling data.

For many constituencies, there will be no polling during the duration of this election campaign. So the support levels must be completely determined based on a model.

There are over 300 constituencies that can be bet on, and each constituency is often available for betting on at least 3 different sites open to Canadians. You really require some form of automation to be able to handle this amount of data, just to be able to get a nice view of the markets.

Furthermore, in some of these very uncertain constituencies, there may be a poll released all of a sudden. When this happens, there can be a huge swing in odds, because we now have some certainty about the result, which may or may not have been in line with what the markets / models were previously expecting. Since there are multiple sites, any swing in odds can be taken advantage of by arbitraging between the leading and the lagging sites.

These are the exciting days for me - and today was one of them.

There were a series of constituency level polls released covering much of the swing constituencies in Scotland. These polls showed more support for the Scottish National Party (SNP) than previously expected, and odds swung very drastically from Labour to SNP in several of these constituencies. I was able to get a large number of value bets in before the odds started moving on some sites.

Best Value


I think your best bet in light of the recent polls is East Renfrewshire offered at 2.25 on Bet365. SNP support has been surging across the board and this has been confirmed in two recent polls within this constituency. In February SNP was 1% behind Labour, and the poll from today now finds them 9% in the lead with less than 3 weeks until the election. I got in at better levels, but I think the market will move to SNP being the favorite here in the next couple days, and anything 2.0 and up looks good to me here.

UK Election 2015

The next big event for me is the UK general election coming up on May 7, 2015.

The political landscape in the UK is vastly more complicated than Canada, and you can't even compare it to America's 2-party system. There are at least 5-6 parties that you have to consider if you want to forecast the UK election. You have vastly differing parts of the country (Scotland, Northern Ireland, England, and Wales) which have very different political support. In Northern Ireland, for example, you don't even have Labour or the Conservatives expected to take a single seat - and these are the frontrunners to win the election.

Currently the betting market says it will be a Conservative minority. Most forecasting sites predict this as well, though some say it will be a Labour minority.

As usual, I don't want to be the one doing all the leg work, so I'm looking for sites that do the majority of the forecasting for me. My value is in aggregating all the available information, translating this into odds, and finding value bets based on the information that I have. Market making is not as easy on this one as Pinnacle is not offering odds, so this will be a pure value play.

So far I've found a few good sites out there. Nate Silver is working with a couple PhD's who are producing the forecasting here - http://www.electionforecast.co.uk/

Normally I would put a lot more faith in anything that Nate touches - but I've been using these numbers and some of them just seem off to me (normally the problem is that the predictions are too extreme).

Electoral Calculus has a shitload of great stats and very transparent forecasting here - http://www.electoralcalculus.co.uk/orderedseats.html

Electoral calculus is a great site that has tons of info, and they do constituency level forecasting that seems relatively in line with the betting markets.

May2015 maintains a poll of polls, and forecasts each constituency here - http://may2015.com/category/seat-calculator/

This site is fine as a check, but it doesn't provide the probability to win for each constituency (just gives the prediction, but not the probability with it). So it's hard to get a feel for the model, and more importantly, you can't compare the model win probabilities vs the betting market odds.

Elections Etc and The Guardian also offer forecasting, but I don't think they are forecasting individual constituencies (just using the top-line national numbers), and this is not good enough in my opinion to get an accurate picture.

I've set up some spreadsheets that will pull constituency level info from Nate's site and Electoral Calculus, and also pull in current odds posted at Bet365 and Betfair (this was not a simple feat). My current play is to find where the models both show that there is at least 10% value in their forecast vs the betting markets, and then I will bet appropriately. I'm also currently long Labour for most seats as the polls have looked good for them, and the odds are attractive.

That's it for now. If you are interested in constituency level bets then hit me up - otherwise I think the value right now is in going for a Labour Most Seats win (decimal odds of around 2.9 on BetFair).

Oscars Post-Mortem

Should have posted this a while ago - things were busy with being in Ottawa, and my condo in Toronto flooded. Better late than never?

Oscars night was a lot of fun, you can see in the previous post a great breakdown for live-betting the event, which I was doing, and worked out pretty well. 

The big shock of the night for me was the Boyhood miss on Film Editing. There was 12 years of film to edit down into a movie - this thing should have been a lock for that award. After seeing this miss, it was pretty clear that there is not very much support for this film in the academy, and it is not going to take home Best Director or Best Picture.

As you can tell by my previous posts, my main call of the night was Birdman for Best Picture. I got into a big arb taking advantage of the swing in odds after the DGA announcements, and pushed most of the arb into a bet on Birdman to win the big one. To me it seemed very likely that it would win Best Pic after sweeping the guild awards. 

I also was going long Linklater (Boyhood) for Best Director. I liked that position because it was a natural hedge to my Birdman best pic bet - if Boyhood were to win Best Pic then it would also be likely to win Best Director. Also, I see Boyhood Best Director, Birdman Best Pic as a more likely BP/BD split than the other way around. 

However after the Film Editing miss for Boyhood I moved as much as I could onto Inarritu for Best Director - and effectively canceled out my pre-show position in Best Director, avoiding the loss that I would have had there. I also continued to buy Birdman for Best Pic / Best Director throughout the night, buying at odds as low as 1.25 right before the final announcement. 

I had some small positions in other awards but the main story of the night for me was just the big Best Picture bet, everything else was pretty much a wash. This was a very nice start to getting back into this betting stuff, and I designed some very useful spreadsheets for tracking my pnl and liquidity on the various sites. 

Academy Awards - Likely winners and Implications

Here's the list of expected winners, and the second most likely winners. I added some notes with my own views to the right. Most importantly for me, is the implications. I have this set up, so that regardless of who wins the award, I can immediately see the implications due to that win, which could be subtle (see Orig Screenplay upset). 

These categories are in the presentation order from last year, probably won't be the same order this year, but I don't think the presentation order has been leaked yet so I'll go with that for now. 

Academy Awards - Pre-Show Positioning

Just going over the categories that I am currently involved in -

Best Picture -
Put together a big arb here. My worst case is boyhood wins, and I still take a decent win. If Birdman wins, then it's a large win for me.

Best Director -
I have my money on Linklater, just due to the odds. If Inarritu wins for birdman I have a small win, if Linklater wins for Boyhood I have a decent win, and if anyone else upsets, it would be a relatively large loss (not gonna happen).

Cinematography -
I bought Birdman here as it hasn't lost a cinematography award going into the oscars. Its a larger bet for a smallish win if/when Birdman takes this award.

Adapted Screenplay -
Signs point to a win for The Imitation Game, and I have another larger bet at smallish odds for that film to win.

Sound Mixing -
This can often go to the film with the most overall support as people don't really know how to vote for sound. There are a few contenders and I'm hoping Birdman sneaks in with the win. I have a smaller bet on Birdman at longer odds. 

The Grammy's

Just took a quick look at this yesterday. I should have sold more for album of the year, there was some sucker in the market buying Beyonce at stupid odds, I was just afraid that I couldn't hedge it.

Probably going to have to stop worrying about that to be able to make any real money at this, when I can sell at very high value prices.

Album of the Year	Betfair	Bet365	Total
Beyonce	-234.25	185	-49.25
Other	333.75	-148	185.75
Song Of The Year	Betfair	Bet365	Total
Stay With Me	-107.86	119.7	11.84
Chandelier	201.64	-210	-8.36
Other	376.49	-210	166.49