Insiders rig markets to their proprietary advantage.
Economists rig statistics and modelling to suit their blinkered and highly selective views of reality.
The "dismal" in the Dismal Science has alternative dictionary definitions that are nearer the truth of the alleged science it describes. The Free Dictionary offers "characterized by ineptitude, dullness, or a lack of merit" and "obsolete dreadful; disastrous", for example. Economics is not a science as such. It may have links to scientific disciplines like behaviouralism while it frequently uses and abuses statistical techniques and Black Box Technologies (Bbts) but economics is a multi-disciplinary macro/micro guesstimate of our global reality. When faced with the multi-layered complexities of a global financial system, economists seek, primarily, inside information but otherwise fall back on Bbts and econometrics and other tools that, in inexperienced hands, can produce illusory correlations and anomalies. Even when valid as part of a trading portfolio, Bbts depend on the inputs and, hence, are heavily dependent on the individual training up the software also undertaking the same analysis using more traditional non-linear mathematics and regressions. Vitally, this individual also should still be undertaking the analysis in long-hand, so to speak - it is only by trawling through the data yourself that you develop a feel for the market microstructure and without such micro-holistics, one cannot expect to be training one's Bbts to anything like the optimal degree. Econometrics is even sillier - mathematicians try and produce progressively more obtuse solutions to a rational reality that simply does not exist while the irrationality, lack of market efficiency, the insider trading, the corruption, the behaviouralism that underpins the real reality is beyond both their comprehension and, consequently, their models.
But where economists really show their true colours is in the marketing of their fake statistics. Disinformation is rife in media, in governmental despatches and official statistics. But it is more odiously utilised in areas like developmental economics.
Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) is one such ruse. PPP is a method of using the long-run equilibrium exchange rate of two currencies to equalize the currencies' purchasing power. It is based on the law of one price, the idea that, in an efficient market, identical goods must have only one price. A simple example of PPP for non-economists would be the Big Mac Index published quarterly in The Economist which compares the price of a food product made out of leftover bits of cow in different countries in order to determine whether currencies are under or overvalued. PPP is massive for the world economic overseers as it is the only measure which doesn't show the plight of the global underclass to be worsening over the last quarter of a century. The ability to purchase a few lower tier first world products does not represent economic freedom. For people of the heavily indebted poor countries (HIPCs), having coca cola pushed onto you at a vaguely affordable price, if you don't eat that is, is not liberty. If the global economic system is unable or unwilling to provide a sustainable system for the populations at the sharp end of this rat race then there has to be a freedom of movement to allow the disenfranchised to seek a better future elsewhere meritocratically. Both xenophobia and the realities of PPP make this a journey of peril. If you survive the boat passage and the attentions of the security practitioners who protect our gated countries, you will find that your currency doesn't buy your slaughtered animal remains quite so cheaply anymore and you suddenly realise that there is no escape other than to the bottom of another countries economic system where illegal employment (with associated lack of worker's rights) and the black market become the ghettoised reality. Yet, PPP allows us all that nice warm glow of thinking that the highly abusive system that is shareholder capitalism might actually be delivering some benefits to the bottom of the pile in a suitably laudable trickledown effect. There are numerous more minor issues relating to PPP too. Statistical reliability depends on identical products being available globally and you don't find too many Lexus Hybrid Drives in Somalia. Additionally, comparing standards of living using the PPP method implicitly assumes that the real value placed on goods is the same in different countries. In reality, what is considered a luxury in one culture could be considered a necessity in another. Furthermore, as a little cluster bomb of globalisation, the system imposes itself on the local environment using standard divide and rule tactics to produce the few abusers and the masses of the abused. Income inequalities are parallelled by inequalities in rights as a business elite controls a disenfranchised and enslaved population - think Thaksin Shinawatra. And as a final welcome to this globalised system, the path to the summit is steeper and longer than ever with global income inequalities (measured in any other manner other than PPP) reveal an increasing gap between the have's and the have-nothing's. A further example of the lunacy of PPP has been posted here previously - the size of the Chinese economy will surpass America in 2027 in reality; in PPP-land, it has done so this year. This must be news to the peasants of inland China.
And they have the fucking cheek to call this reality!?
To quote Professor Sheataj Singh: "It is obvious what the attraction is here for western conglomerates.The key thing that India has to offer the global economy is some of the world's cheapest labour, and this is the saddest thing of all the horrors that arise from Delhi's 15,000 inadequately regulated garment factories, some of which are among the worst sweatshops ever to taint the human conscience. Consumers in the West should not only be demanding answers from retailers as to how goods are produced but looking deep within themselves at how they spend their money".
There is no more abusive a form of capitalism than the sub-species that the planet is currently enduring and it is important that we look beyond their statistical propaganda and lies to the structural and economic environments which exist both to disprove the integrity and morality of their psychopathic financial system and to inform in a manner of, as the Italians might say, dietrologia.
If we're going to have a war on terror then lets have one on the terrors of a neo-liberal imperialist capitalism.
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
Wednesday, 31 October 2007
Wednesday, 24 October 2007
And No Polonium In Sight
"Its an absolute disgrace".
"Its outside the box".
"Things like that turn games".
"I can't reflect on the detail right now".
"I have not seen the flow of the game".
"That decision has cost us".
"We were in control".
"Five minutes of madness have cost us".
"The players are devastated".
"We have to stick together".
"We were away from home".
That was pretty much the summation of the ramblings of Steve McClaren in the aftermath of England's demise in Moscow. The England job is a pressurised post and McClaren does not possess the necessary range of talents to even have been considered for the post in the first place. The bookies choice has ended up costing the bookies millions if England's non-qualification is allowed to become a reality. Short-termism again...
The markets are up and running for the next fall-guy to have the misfortune to attach his reputation to the crooked edifice that is the FA and Team England. Keegan is around 66/1 which is entertaining and he is not the only manager to have severely devalued his market price through the England effect. Of recent coaches, only Eriksson has rescued his reputation post-England and Shinawatra should be grateful that Ranieri was otherwise engaged. These Specials Markets are fairly interesting markets and often transient too - Betfair have removed their outrageously overrounded market from their available markets (245% overround!!). If you can bothered putting the time aside, you can make profits in these markets by taking advantage of such obvious value. An overround of 245% on a 30-runner market is abusive, however, and these markets frequently have excessive tilts to the bookmaker. Particularly prone to this market manipulation are the events that are either totally randomised or are totally outside of any bookmaker influence. This is particularly marked in the latter case. From the perspective of a market maker, a random walk event is bad enough but markets where the information uniquely resides elsewhere eg the winner of the Booker Prize are anathema to bookmakers. Hence the overround.
Specials markets are pumped for liquidity by collusion with the mainstream media over the generation of "steamers". Capello seen in a London hotel... the Scolari myth... By implying that serious inside money has gone on these steamers, the industry presses one of those buttons that addicts just cannot resist. The psychological mechanisms are interesting and not for this place but the fear of missing out on an easy earner that everybody else is involved in has market influence from betting markets to pyramid schemes. Contrary trading is a profitable route to follow on steamers as long as you are close enough to the market reality to be able to spot the black swan event. But, once again, only if you can be bothered doing the work...
Perhaps, these are interesting medium term markets to trade but, to me, I've just got better things to do with my life, really. Although the margin is an issue, the lack of market efficiency means that there is excessive value to be found on certain options. Despite that, there is a whole world of markets to trade and any involvement in peripheral markets will always be entirely intuitive.
And it is on an intuitive level that I'll place my bet on a tasty 100/1 shot to be the next permanent England manager...
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
"Its outside the box".
"Things like that turn games".
"I can't reflect on the detail right now".
"I have not seen the flow of the game".
"That decision has cost us".
"We were in control".
"Five minutes of madness have cost us".
"The players are devastated".
"We have to stick together".
"We were away from home".
That was pretty much the summation of the ramblings of Steve McClaren in the aftermath of England's demise in Moscow. The England job is a pressurised post and McClaren does not possess the necessary range of talents to even have been considered for the post in the first place. The bookies choice has ended up costing the bookies millions if England's non-qualification is allowed to become a reality. Short-termism again...
The markets are up and running for the next fall-guy to have the misfortune to attach his reputation to the crooked edifice that is the FA and Team England. Keegan is around 66/1 which is entertaining and he is not the only manager to have severely devalued his market price through the England effect. Of recent coaches, only Eriksson has rescued his reputation post-England and Shinawatra should be grateful that Ranieri was otherwise engaged. These Specials Markets are fairly interesting markets and often transient too - Betfair have removed their outrageously overrounded market from their available markets (245% overround!!). If you can bothered putting the time aside, you can make profits in these markets by taking advantage of such obvious value. An overround of 245% on a 30-runner market is abusive, however, and these markets frequently have excessive tilts to the bookmaker. Particularly prone to this market manipulation are the events that are either totally randomised or are totally outside of any bookmaker influence. This is particularly marked in the latter case. From the perspective of a market maker, a random walk event is bad enough but markets where the information uniquely resides elsewhere eg the winner of the Booker Prize are anathema to bookmakers. Hence the overround.
Specials markets are pumped for liquidity by collusion with the mainstream media over the generation of "steamers". Capello seen in a London hotel... the Scolari myth... By implying that serious inside money has gone on these steamers, the industry presses one of those buttons that addicts just cannot resist. The psychological mechanisms are interesting and not for this place but the fear of missing out on an easy earner that everybody else is involved in has market influence from betting markets to pyramid schemes. Contrary trading is a profitable route to follow on steamers as long as you are close enough to the market reality to be able to spot the black swan event. But, once again, only if you can be bothered doing the work...
Perhaps, these are interesting medium term markets to trade but, to me, I've just got better things to do with my life, really. Although the margin is an issue, the lack of market efficiency means that there is excessive value to be found on certain options. Despite that, there is a whole world of markets to trade and any involvement in peripheral markets will always be entirely intuitive.
And it is on an intuitive level that I'll place my bet on a tasty 100/1 shot to be the next permanent England manager...
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
Sunday, 21 October 2007
The Deconstruction Of A Spectacular Reality
Approximation in decision making may be fine if such approximation is random. In top level English football, it most certainly is not random.
Why is it that all the power structures in football desire errors?
When video technology exists and is successfully used in all other major team sports (rugby union, rugby league, cricket), why is football ostrich-syndromed about validating their sport?
It is evident that it is to the pernicious benefit of the people who are corrupting the game that the referees and other key insiders be owned. The abuser's strategy is carried out by individuals who possess virtual omnipotence regarding the outcome of a match. We should not expect anything less of the hyper-owners and bookmakers who leech onto the game.
But we should be more expectant of a route to meritocracy being on the agendas of FIFA and UEFA. Yet, despite all the marketing fizz of their campaigns against the various types of corruption endemic in the sport, neither body supports the use of video technology to authenticate the realities that are provided to us as entertainment, not sport but entertainment. The same linkages that connect bookmakers and owners to referees and key players also exist between football's governing bodies and the match officials. All the power merchants seek competitive advantage either in the promotion of a marketable competition or in the more psychopathic guaranteeing of profit in the betting markets or warping the results to their proprietary agendas. Now, this might look like football and sound like football but football it ain't. It is power brokers battling on the pitch via the control of referees.
Two months into the season and there have been five major spectacular global media matches on our screens. The outcomes of each and every one of these games has been corrupted by power lobbies linked to insiders. To refresh memories, the games are listed below:
Liverpool v Chelsea - Chelsea given a farcical penalty by Rob Styles who then failed to send Michael Essien off despite brandishing a second yellow card to the Ghanaian. Styles was stood down for a week but at least he gained a nice new patio and driveway courtesy of Roman Abramovich.
Manchester City v Manchester United - Thaksin Shinawatra needed a victory as the match coincided with the vote in his native Thailand for a new constitution which may have further compromised his diminishing power base there. Clattenburg accommodated by denying United a penalty in the first thirty minutes when the Reds were rampant. A goal then would have almost certainly changed the match outcome.
Manchester United v Chelsea - Mike Dean's comedy performance denied Manchester three penalties before giving them one which wasn't; sent off Mikel incorrectly before failing to send off Joe Cole and Rooney for more serious indiscretions; added extra first half injury time to allow United's attacks to reach the fruition of a goal. United were always going to win this encounter after Mourinho had walked out on Chelsea's dysfunctionality but Dean ensured that a farce resulted.
Russia v England - As we posted on Thursday, the result of this vital Euro 2008 qualifier (well, vital if you remove items like climate change, AIDS, Darfur and global poverty from the equation) was induced by an inducement. One of our key contacts in Asia has shown us the evidence regarding referee Cantalejo having an encounter with some key Russian representatives together with the related Far East betting patterns and we have to conclude that this match outcome was corrupted. Incorrect result again.
Everton v Liverpool - Clattenburg was the best Premiership referee last season and, until yesterday, was still at the top of our listings for the current campaign. Then he ruined the spectacle of the Merseyside derby. A penalty for a foul outside the area; a sending off when prompted by Stevie G not to merely give Hibbert a yellow card; the denial of two penalties (one a certainty and the other a 50-50) to Everton; the failure to send off Kuyt for a two-footed assault on Phil Neville. But the icing on a very corrupt cake was the rather revealing smirk on Clattenburg's face after he had awarded Liverpool their second penalty - a smile which clearly demonstrated that the job was a good'un - match outcome a fallacy.
If you provide an infrastructure that enables corruptions to be perpetrated then, inevitably, the types of character who choose to gain an edge by being in control of these corruptions are attracted to the game. If you then allow the mechanics of the sport to be compromised by these same individuals, the journey is one of a steady deterioration in the game (or "the product" as it is now quaintly termed).
We would hope that our arguments are convincing as to the role of the officials in this outrageous criminality. In the words of my former Economics Professor "the referee's are in a very powerful position". And so they are.
There is one simple solution to this destruction of our sport - video technology. Take the power away from one flawed referee and use instant replays to determine the truth. The match outcomes would be markedly more honest, the fans would discuss the beauty of the sport rather than the quality of the corruption, trophies would be won by skill rather than power hierarchies. Check out last night's Rugby Union World Cup Final. If it had not been for the intervention of Alain Rolland and the video referee and his determination to get the key match decision correct, England would have been given an incorrect try which might well have altered the match result. Although the xenophobic ITV commentators attempted to warp this totally correct decision to be the post-match focus, all of the England players (past and present) recognised that a foot brushing the line is in touch. End of story. Instead of a load of little Englander nonsense, we were able to celebrate the victory party of the South Africans, a victory which was gained in a meritocratic manner. All of the referees decisions, being on open mike, were audible. Nothing was deliberately made obtuse or vague. Compare and contrast with the closed microphone circuitry utilised in Premiership football. In fact, apart from the job title of sports referee, there was otherwise nothing coincident between the officiating of Clattenburg and Rolland nor, indeed, in the structural degree of integrity between the two sports.
The arguments against the use of video tech are flawed, myopic or simply laughable. The time delay for a decision to be taken is irrelevant as the game is already littered with such breaks for free kicks, corners, penalties, disciplinary stuff and injuries. The pitiful argument that video tech is not 100% accurate pales into insignificance when one compares the efficacy of the technology with the human error situation (criminalised or otherwise). Video tech is 95% correct which is a level that Mike Dean generally or Mark Clattenburg yesterday can only dream of.
Equally revealing are the protagonists lined up on either side of the video tech fence. Hyper-owners, bookmakers, corrupt players, the media, Sky, Blatter and, to his discredit, Platini wish for the power links between themselves and the officials to be maintained. Arsène Wenger and Football Is Fixed are from the other side and it has to be worthy of note here that Wenger's Arsenal are one of the very few leading teams that do not exploit the potential for referee-based corruption.
We must demand change otherwise football is following horseracing on the gradient to becoming merely a betting medium. The parallels are already there if you look in the right places. In the mid-twentieth century horserace meetings were packed with fans and punters enjoying their well-deserved leisure time. The repeated corruptions that have tarnished horseracing in the last fifty years have now resulted in racecourses where human beings are conspicuous by their absence (I would struggle to classify the owners, trainers, bookmakers and jockeys who are still present at these farcical events as members of our species). The large empty spaces in the grounds of all but the glory hunting teams is indicative of the similar demise in football attendance. The sole determinant of horserace outcome is the betting activity on the rails, in the betting ring together with the money returned to the course from the betting offices nationwide. Although public, this psychopathic environment disguises the market realities by the use of destructive disinformation in the media and on the course and the development of a private language, tic tac, that is opaque to the average member of the human race. Similarly, the sole determinant of Premiership and major UEFA and FIFA football matches is the betting activity in the illegal underground markets in Asia. This infrastructure has the additional advantage that it is not public and may be only viewed by proximity to the corrupt markets themselves. Who needs tic tac when you've got Shinawatra?
The process of the turning of the world's greatest sport into a betting medium will continue apace. The major protagonists all display psychopathic personality disorders (PPDs) to various extents and it is interesting to assess the impact of these disorders on their financial strategies. PPDs individuals are short-termist and non-strategic. They fail to respond socially to any given circumstance and choose to target any opportunity for proprietary gain, preferably at the expense of others. The shareholder capitalist system that we all endure is based on giving a free rein to these characters to seek profit and abuses where the rest of the human race fears to tread. This is not only worrying for the planet but for the sport of football as a whole and also for the clubs who have jumped on the psycho bandwagon. Being short-termist, the likes of Shinawatra, Abramovich, Gudmundsson, Gaydamak throw their illicit financial assets at their new toys resulting in an immediate gain in performance on the field of play - nobody could deny that Man City, Chelsea, West Ham or Portsmouth are punching above their weight due to the black market money supporting their endeavours. But psychopathic business structures all possess a similarity in time profiles. The initial application of a no-holds-barred culture undoubtedly improves a shareprice or a league table position but at what cost? All of the hyper-owners are actively involved in the global betting markets. While they are developing a power base in their club, they veer towards proactive performance enhancement through mechanisms like the buying off of match officials. But, eventually, the realities of betting market liquidity kicks in and selective performance highly correlated with the betting markets becomes the template of choice - several of the Premiership teams under hyper-ownership have already reached this stage of strategic development. As horseracing clearly demonstrates, it is far easier to lose deliberately than to win - the loss is in one's own hands (or rather, the trainers and the jockeys) while a victory involves everybody else in the event. As the hyper-owners concentrate on their selfish profit motives rather than the medium-long term good of the team, the time profile moves forward to an era of frustration for the fans and illicit financial gains for the psychos. At some point, a more attractive financial opportunity will arise elsewhere and the football club will be left holding the shell of their cultural identity while the antisocials will be reconciliating their gold in their Swiss bank accounts.
Aside from Wenger, all managerial participants in this massive corruption play along with the propaganda and lies. Take Rafa Benitez and his apoplectic response to the Liverpool/Chelsea game outlined above and compare with his idiocy following yesterday's match. Any sign of a balanced assessment of the realities? Nada... Instead the latter day tinkerman came up with the a defence of Clattenburg's biases concluding with "In England, you don't like to see players diving and it was a surprise to me" in reference to Lescott falling under the influence of Carragher's GBH in injury time. This attitude is crass stupidity and plays into the hands of the manipulators of the English game - corruption is great when in our favour but not so great when not. Listen beardy-weirdy, corruption is not great full stop.
So what are we left with? Marketed and branded hype about a product, a product whose real value is diminishing rapidly due to the lack of customer focus, customers who are choosing gardening or some other sport rather than being hoodwinked by a bunch of criminals, and criminals who are perpetrating a massive corruption hand in hand with the regulatory bodies, the media and the institutions that allegedly exist to protect the game.
Prediction. Football as we know it will soon be dead. Every single instance within the game will be warped to the needs of the betting markets and the monopolistic requirements of the football establishment. We will be left with a declining fanbase, global criminality and a planet of betting addicts.
Shit, we're almost there...
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
Why is it that all the power structures in football desire errors?
When video technology exists and is successfully used in all other major team sports (rugby union, rugby league, cricket), why is football ostrich-syndromed about validating their sport?
It is evident that it is to the pernicious benefit of the people who are corrupting the game that the referees and other key insiders be owned. The abuser's strategy is carried out by individuals who possess virtual omnipotence regarding the outcome of a match. We should not expect anything less of the hyper-owners and bookmakers who leech onto the game.
But we should be more expectant of a route to meritocracy being on the agendas of FIFA and UEFA. Yet, despite all the marketing fizz of their campaigns against the various types of corruption endemic in the sport, neither body supports the use of video technology to authenticate the realities that are provided to us as entertainment, not sport but entertainment. The same linkages that connect bookmakers and owners to referees and key players also exist between football's governing bodies and the match officials. All the power merchants seek competitive advantage either in the promotion of a marketable competition or in the more psychopathic guaranteeing of profit in the betting markets or warping the results to their proprietary agendas. Now, this might look like football and sound like football but football it ain't. It is power brokers battling on the pitch via the control of referees.
Two months into the season and there have been five major spectacular global media matches on our screens. The outcomes of each and every one of these games has been corrupted by power lobbies linked to insiders. To refresh memories, the games are listed below:
Liverpool v Chelsea - Chelsea given a farcical penalty by Rob Styles who then failed to send Michael Essien off despite brandishing a second yellow card to the Ghanaian. Styles was stood down for a week but at least he gained a nice new patio and driveway courtesy of Roman Abramovich.
Manchester City v Manchester United - Thaksin Shinawatra needed a victory as the match coincided with the vote in his native Thailand for a new constitution which may have further compromised his diminishing power base there. Clattenburg accommodated by denying United a penalty in the first thirty minutes when the Reds were rampant. A goal then would have almost certainly changed the match outcome.
Manchester United v Chelsea - Mike Dean's comedy performance denied Manchester three penalties before giving them one which wasn't; sent off Mikel incorrectly before failing to send off Joe Cole and Rooney for more serious indiscretions; added extra first half injury time to allow United's attacks to reach the fruition of a goal. United were always going to win this encounter after Mourinho had walked out on Chelsea's dysfunctionality but Dean ensured that a farce resulted.
Russia v England - As we posted on Thursday, the result of this vital Euro 2008 qualifier (well, vital if you remove items like climate change, AIDS, Darfur and global poverty from the equation) was induced by an inducement. One of our key contacts in Asia has shown us the evidence regarding referee Cantalejo having an encounter with some key Russian representatives together with the related Far East betting patterns and we have to conclude that this match outcome was corrupted. Incorrect result again.
Everton v Liverpool - Clattenburg was the best Premiership referee last season and, until yesterday, was still at the top of our listings for the current campaign. Then he ruined the spectacle of the Merseyside derby. A penalty for a foul outside the area; a sending off when prompted by Stevie G not to merely give Hibbert a yellow card; the denial of two penalties (one a certainty and the other a 50-50) to Everton; the failure to send off Kuyt for a two-footed assault on Phil Neville. But the icing on a very corrupt cake was the rather revealing smirk on Clattenburg's face after he had awarded Liverpool their second penalty - a smile which clearly demonstrated that the job was a good'un - match outcome a fallacy.
If you provide an infrastructure that enables corruptions to be perpetrated then, inevitably, the types of character who choose to gain an edge by being in control of these corruptions are attracted to the game. If you then allow the mechanics of the sport to be compromised by these same individuals, the journey is one of a steady deterioration in the game (or "the product" as it is now quaintly termed).
We would hope that our arguments are convincing as to the role of the officials in this outrageous criminality. In the words of my former Economics Professor "the referee's are in a very powerful position". And so they are.
There is one simple solution to this destruction of our sport - video technology. Take the power away from one flawed referee and use instant replays to determine the truth. The match outcomes would be markedly more honest, the fans would discuss the beauty of the sport rather than the quality of the corruption, trophies would be won by skill rather than power hierarchies. Check out last night's Rugby Union World Cup Final. If it had not been for the intervention of Alain Rolland and the video referee and his determination to get the key match decision correct, England would have been given an incorrect try which might well have altered the match result. Although the xenophobic ITV commentators attempted to warp this totally correct decision to be the post-match focus, all of the England players (past and present) recognised that a foot brushing the line is in touch. End of story. Instead of a load of little Englander nonsense, we were able to celebrate the victory party of the South Africans, a victory which was gained in a meritocratic manner. All of the referees decisions, being on open mike, were audible. Nothing was deliberately made obtuse or vague. Compare and contrast with the closed microphone circuitry utilised in Premiership football. In fact, apart from the job title of sports referee, there was otherwise nothing coincident between the officiating of Clattenburg and Rolland nor, indeed, in the structural degree of integrity between the two sports.
The arguments against the use of video tech are flawed, myopic or simply laughable. The time delay for a decision to be taken is irrelevant as the game is already littered with such breaks for free kicks, corners, penalties, disciplinary stuff and injuries. The pitiful argument that video tech is not 100% accurate pales into insignificance when one compares the efficacy of the technology with the human error situation (criminalised or otherwise). Video tech is 95% correct which is a level that Mike Dean generally or Mark Clattenburg yesterday can only dream of.
Equally revealing are the protagonists lined up on either side of the video tech fence. Hyper-owners, bookmakers, corrupt players, the media, Sky, Blatter and, to his discredit, Platini wish for the power links between themselves and the officials to be maintained. Arsène Wenger and Football Is Fixed are from the other side and it has to be worthy of note here that Wenger's Arsenal are one of the very few leading teams that do not exploit the potential for referee-based corruption.
We must demand change otherwise football is following horseracing on the gradient to becoming merely a betting medium. The parallels are already there if you look in the right places. In the mid-twentieth century horserace meetings were packed with fans and punters enjoying their well-deserved leisure time. The repeated corruptions that have tarnished horseracing in the last fifty years have now resulted in racecourses where human beings are conspicuous by their absence (I would struggle to classify the owners, trainers, bookmakers and jockeys who are still present at these farcical events as members of our species). The large empty spaces in the grounds of all but the glory hunting teams is indicative of the similar demise in football attendance. The sole determinant of horserace outcome is the betting activity on the rails, in the betting ring together with the money returned to the course from the betting offices nationwide. Although public, this psychopathic environment disguises the market realities by the use of destructive disinformation in the media and on the course and the development of a private language, tic tac, that is opaque to the average member of the human race. Similarly, the sole determinant of Premiership and major UEFA and FIFA football matches is the betting activity in the illegal underground markets in Asia. This infrastructure has the additional advantage that it is not public and may be only viewed by proximity to the corrupt markets themselves. Who needs tic tac when you've got Shinawatra?
The process of the turning of the world's greatest sport into a betting medium will continue apace. The major protagonists all display psychopathic personality disorders (PPDs) to various extents and it is interesting to assess the impact of these disorders on their financial strategies. PPDs individuals are short-termist and non-strategic. They fail to respond socially to any given circumstance and choose to target any opportunity for proprietary gain, preferably at the expense of others. The shareholder capitalist system that we all endure is based on giving a free rein to these characters to seek profit and abuses where the rest of the human race fears to tread. This is not only worrying for the planet but for the sport of football as a whole and also for the clubs who have jumped on the psycho bandwagon. Being short-termist, the likes of Shinawatra, Abramovich, Gudmundsson, Gaydamak throw their illicit financial assets at their new toys resulting in an immediate gain in performance on the field of play - nobody could deny that Man City, Chelsea, West Ham or Portsmouth are punching above their weight due to the black market money supporting their endeavours. But psychopathic business structures all possess a similarity in time profiles. The initial application of a no-holds-barred culture undoubtedly improves a shareprice or a league table position but at what cost? All of the hyper-owners are actively involved in the global betting markets. While they are developing a power base in their club, they veer towards proactive performance enhancement through mechanisms like the buying off of match officials. But, eventually, the realities of betting market liquidity kicks in and selective performance highly correlated with the betting markets becomes the template of choice - several of the Premiership teams under hyper-ownership have already reached this stage of strategic development. As horseracing clearly demonstrates, it is far easier to lose deliberately than to win - the loss is in one's own hands (or rather, the trainers and the jockeys) while a victory involves everybody else in the event. As the hyper-owners concentrate on their selfish profit motives rather than the medium-long term good of the team, the time profile moves forward to an era of frustration for the fans and illicit financial gains for the psychos. At some point, a more attractive financial opportunity will arise elsewhere and the football club will be left holding the shell of their cultural identity while the antisocials will be reconciliating their gold in their Swiss bank accounts.
Aside from Wenger, all managerial participants in this massive corruption play along with the propaganda and lies. Take Rafa Benitez and his apoplectic response to the Liverpool/Chelsea game outlined above and compare with his idiocy following yesterday's match. Any sign of a balanced assessment of the realities? Nada... Instead the latter day tinkerman came up with the a defence of Clattenburg's biases concluding with "In England, you don't like to see players diving and it was a surprise to me" in reference to Lescott falling under the influence of Carragher's GBH in injury time. This attitude is crass stupidity and plays into the hands of the manipulators of the English game - corruption is great when in our favour but not so great when not. Listen beardy-weirdy, corruption is not great full stop.
So what are we left with? Marketed and branded hype about a product, a product whose real value is diminishing rapidly due to the lack of customer focus, customers who are choosing gardening or some other sport rather than being hoodwinked by a bunch of criminals, and criminals who are perpetrating a massive corruption hand in hand with the regulatory bodies, the media and the institutions that allegedly exist to protect the game.
Prediction. Football as we know it will soon be dead. Every single instance within the game will be warped to the needs of the betting markets and the monopolistic requirements of the football establishment. We will be left with a declining fanbase, global criminality and a planet of betting addicts.
Shit, we're almost there...
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
Thursday, 18 October 2007
That's Not Cricket, Old Chap...
It was the half-time inducements that won it in the end...
There were so many inappropriate linkages in yesterday's Russia versus England game that it was inevitable that one such dynamic would define the eventual outcome.
As we've intimated in recent posts, the ownership of the outcomes of England internationals is a many splendored thing. On rare occasions, the result may be defined while the game is in motion although, it should be noted, not from events on the pitch but rather from those off it!
The global betting turnover for the game in Moscow was less than £100 million ($203 million) and there were constant rumours in the Asian trading rooms about, shall we say, the complexities associated with England's forthcoming demise.
The one constant about football matches, even when set against the commercialised framework that dominates the modern game, is that there are winners and losers. In the quaint old days, the winners and losers would be local players and owners and their associated communities. Who wins and who doesn't is now a significantly broadened spectrum of power bases.
The people who have woken up with grins on their faces this morning are, in order of grin width, Roman Abramovich, Guus Hiddinck and the Russian national team, Michael Owen and Luis Medina Cantalejo. Last night's option was bad for the bookmakers, the media (three consecutive summers of a no footie vacuum is too challenging for these people), the England footballing family (if such a thing exists), the British government, UEFA and the integrity of the game.
In key matches, our traders micro-analyse the performance of the match officials. Our thorough analysis is not to be shared in this place but we possess, throughout the game, a clear overview of the horizons of the referee and his assistants. There was unanimity across the board in our post-match assessment of Sr Cantalejo last night. His first half performance profile bore no resemblance to his second half reversal. One leading Asian market maker of our acquaintance believes there were conversations at half time between a powerful Russian with loads of money and an influential Spaniard with a receptive bank account. We couldn't, of course, comment on this particular liaison but we would indicate that such a structure would satisfy certain cause and effect linkages in yesterday's match market and atmospherics.
Regulars will comprehend that we don't have much time (a couple of nanoseconds max) for England's latter day hero, Michael Owen. We've repeatedly pointed out the man's inappropriate business linkages with Goldchip (a private bookmaking firm for industry insiders) and the degree that market money is correlated with Owen's performances on the pitch. The media circus could talk of little else other than Owen's remarkable recovery from surgery and the defying of club restrictions to represent his country in these two key games. Undoubtedly, Owen was fit for the games - in the first half until England took the lead in Moscow, he played a professional role. But lets look at his performances in their entirety over these two matches. Against Estonia, superman did not have one shot on goal although he did manage to be the recipient of 50% of the match offside calls. And in Moscow, Owen also failed to have one single effort on goal or off and displayed body language bordering on the horizontal from the moment England took the lead. Does McClaren have any idea of the realities in front of his eyes?
Which brings us on to the losers... The resigned handshake between Venables and McClaren post-match was fully indicative of their acceptance of the imminence of a mutually agreed termination of contracts. McClaren post match psycho babble was pretty entertaining and he has been in the six foot end for too long already and is unable or unwilling to break the links between the England national football set up and the bookmakers. Sven Goran Eriksson's reemergence as a shrewd manager is also indicative of the negative weighting that a period in charge, allegedly, of the England football team may have on reputations. Date of manager change? Next manager? Who cares...
The bookmakers wish for England to lose or draw the maximum number of games possible prior to falling at the latter stages of the final tournament. That is the prime profit profile for the bookmakers bottom line. It is hardly surprising that the template that most suits the bookmakers is also the template that is imposed on the English national team. Through the ownership and coercive practices imposed on some players, the bookmakers are in control of the process. While the game remains in the territory where the prize for winning is miniscule compared with the liquidity of the betting markets, this will remain our reality. It is an interesting aside that the only occasion where the bookmakers grip is weakened would be if England reached a final. The incentive profile would warp as the life benefits of being a real winner always trumps the short-term gain of taking the illicit dollar.
The absence of England from next summer's finals will cost the bookmakers in England a fortune. Shame. It will also cost the British economy £1.25 billion as the feelgood factor that precedes the quarter final/semi final elimination makes us all spend irrationally, apparently.
The English game warrants its comeuppance. Money has distorted the 20-20 vision of those in control of the game at all strata. The FA and their mismanagement of the new Wembley project and, combined with the Premier League, their lack of stewardship of the English game has produced a vacuous expanse where money always wins out in the end, both on the pitch and in the markets.
The new management need to be more meritocratic in their selection. National teams are like national governments, they become more corrupt and less efficient as their power solidifies over time. If certain players, whatever their status, were removed from the squad and selection was less London-biased, England could have a small window of opportunity when they might actually win something. Of course, this would be prior to the same corrupt cycle starting out all over again. As the Frank Lampard's and Michael Owen's of this world settle for contemplation of a summer of dubious Dubai sunshine, they should at least attract the media's attention for their role in England's non-qualification. In the same way that beautiful players are overvalued in the transfer market (Guti and The Beast syndrome), players who have rampant and supportive media attention also experience a value-added to their market price. This is a powerful input to the highly inefficient football markets on both betting and a transfer levels. We are told that Owen and Lampard are good and we believe them. Selective statistics are used in support of their misrepresentations but, if one takes the time and trouble to gather extensive data and statistics, a more holistic overview is possible. Opta Stats and other forms of proprietary match data allow very revealing analyses of player performances. It is not rocket science to neural net these performances with key betting inputs. The sight of England's saviours, Lampard and Crouch (!!), coming on as late match substitutes shows just how close to the bottom of the barrel England have reached.
A positive thing. Once again a major football event has produced a distorted outcome through poor and/or inappropriate officiating. The use of video replays would largely eliminate this blight on the game. Nothing allows the criminals as much control as the referee having such a monopolistic role. There is remorseless focus on minutiae affecting the game but virtually no coverage given to the use of video technology to meritocratise football. All the power bases utilise referees as a direct line of control to the match itself and the value of such linkages would be severely compromised by the democratisation of the decision-making process. It would have taken 10 seconds to determine that Rooney's foul, if a foul at all, was perpetrated outside the area. The argument that this would break the flow of the game is a non-starter. Video tech would also eliminate the very real issue of audience dissatisfaction - people are only going to buy this nonsense for a limited time. However, while all the institutions and the bookmakers are gaining from the current structure, do not expect the monopolists to vote for change.
I suppose now we'll be treated to several weeks of The Hounding Of McClaren and endless talking-head-minutes of Who Will Be The Next England Manager? Once the initial mass depression has lifted somewhat, anger at being expected to play on a Plastic Pitch will have its fifteen minutes of fame. And, in a country where fear resides just below the surface of our spectacularised lives, some nutter will, no doubt, daub paint on the new villa probably being bought at this very moment by Sr Luis Medina Cantalejo.
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
There were so many inappropriate linkages in yesterday's Russia versus England game that it was inevitable that one such dynamic would define the eventual outcome.
As we've intimated in recent posts, the ownership of the outcomes of England internationals is a many splendored thing. On rare occasions, the result may be defined while the game is in motion although, it should be noted, not from events on the pitch but rather from those off it!
The global betting turnover for the game in Moscow was less than £100 million ($203 million) and there were constant rumours in the Asian trading rooms about, shall we say, the complexities associated with England's forthcoming demise.
The one constant about football matches, even when set against the commercialised framework that dominates the modern game, is that there are winners and losers. In the quaint old days, the winners and losers would be local players and owners and their associated communities. Who wins and who doesn't is now a significantly broadened spectrum of power bases.
The people who have woken up with grins on their faces this morning are, in order of grin width, Roman Abramovich, Guus Hiddinck and the Russian national team, Michael Owen and Luis Medina Cantalejo. Last night's option was bad for the bookmakers, the media (three consecutive summers of a no footie vacuum is too challenging for these people), the England footballing family (if such a thing exists), the British government, UEFA and the integrity of the game.
In key matches, our traders micro-analyse the performance of the match officials. Our thorough analysis is not to be shared in this place but we possess, throughout the game, a clear overview of the horizons of the referee and his assistants. There was unanimity across the board in our post-match assessment of Sr Cantalejo last night. His first half performance profile bore no resemblance to his second half reversal. One leading Asian market maker of our acquaintance believes there were conversations at half time between a powerful Russian with loads of money and an influential Spaniard with a receptive bank account. We couldn't, of course, comment on this particular liaison but we would indicate that such a structure would satisfy certain cause and effect linkages in yesterday's match market and atmospherics.
Regulars will comprehend that we don't have much time (a couple of nanoseconds max) for England's latter day hero, Michael Owen. We've repeatedly pointed out the man's inappropriate business linkages with Goldchip (a private bookmaking firm for industry insiders) and the degree that market money is correlated with Owen's performances on the pitch. The media circus could talk of little else other than Owen's remarkable recovery from surgery and the defying of club restrictions to represent his country in these two key games. Undoubtedly, Owen was fit for the games - in the first half until England took the lead in Moscow, he played a professional role. But lets look at his performances in their entirety over these two matches. Against Estonia, superman did not have one shot on goal although he did manage to be the recipient of 50% of the match offside calls. And in Moscow, Owen also failed to have one single effort on goal or off and displayed body language bordering on the horizontal from the moment England took the lead. Does McClaren have any idea of the realities in front of his eyes?
Which brings us on to the losers... The resigned handshake between Venables and McClaren post-match was fully indicative of their acceptance of the imminence of a mutually agreed termination of contracts. McClaren post match psycho babble was pretty entertaining and he has been in the six foot end for too long already and is unable or unwilling to break the links between the England national football set up and the bookmakers. Sven Goran Eriksson's reemergence as a shrewd manager is also indicative of the negative weighting that a period in charge, allegedly, of the England football team may have on reputations. Date of manager change? Next manager? Who cares...
The bookmakers wish for England to lose or draw the maximum number of games possible prior to falling at the latter stages of the final tournament. That is the prime profit profile for the bookmakers bottom line. It is hardly surprising that the template that most suits the bookmakers is also the template that is imposed on the English national team. Through the ownership and coercive practices imposed on some players, the bookmakers are in control of the process. While the game remains in the territory where the prize for winning is miniscule compared with the liquidity of the betting markets, this will remain our reality. It is an interesting aside that the only occasion where the bookmakers grip is weakened would be if England reached a final. The incentive profile would warp as the life benefits of being a real winner always trumps the short-term gain of taking the illicit dollar.
The absence of England from next summer's finals will cost the bookmakers in England a fortune. Shame. It will also cost the British economy £1.25 billion as the feelgood factor that precedes the quarter final/semi final elimination makes us all spend irrationally, apparently.
The English game warrants its comeuppance. Money has distorted the 20-20 vision of those in control of the game at all strata. The FA and their mismanagement of the new Wembley project and, combined with the Premier League, their lack of stewardship of the English game has produced a vacuous expanse where money always wins out in the end, both on the pitch and in the markets.
The new management need to be more meritocratic in their selection. National teams are like national governments, they become more corrupt and less efficient as their power solidifies over time. If certain players, whatever their status, were removed from the squad and selection was less London-biased, England could have a small window of opportunity when they might actually win something. Of course, this would be prior to the same corrupt cycle starting out all over again. As the Frank Lampard's and Michael Owen's of this world settle for contemplation of a summer of dubious Dubai sunshine, they should at least attract the media's attention for their role in England's non-qualification. In the same way that beautiful players are overvalued in the transfer market (Guti and The Beast syndrome), players who have rampant and supportive media attention also experience a value-added to their market price. This is a powerful input to the highly inefficient football markets on both betting and a transfer levels. We are told that Owen and Lampard are good and we believe them. Selective statistics are used in support of their misrepresentations but, if one takes the time and trouble to gather extensive data and statistics, a more holistic overview is possible. Opta Stats and other forms of proprietary match data allow very revealing analyses of player performances. It is not rocket science to neural net these performances with key betting inputs. The sight of England's saviours, Lampard and Crouch (!!), coming on as late match substitutes shows just how close to the bottom of the barrel England have reached.
A positive thing. Once again a major football event has produced a distorted outcome through poor and/or inappropriate officiating. The use of video replays would largely eliminate this blight on the game. Nothing allows the criminals as much control as the referee having such a monopolistic role. There is remorseless focus on minutiae affecting the game but virtually no coverage given to the use of video technology to meritocratise football. All the power bases utilise referees as a direct line of control to the match itself and the value of such linkages would be severely compromised by the democratisation of the decision-making process. It would have taken 10 seconds to determine that Rooney's foul, if a foul at all, was perpetrated outside the area. The argument that this would break the flow of the game is a non-starter. Video tech would also eliminate the very real issue of audience dissatisfaction - people are only going to buy this nonsense for a limited time. However, while all the institutions and the bookmakers are gaining from the current structure, do not expect the monopolists to vote for change.
I suppose now we'll be treated to several weeks of The Hounding Of McClaren and endless talking-head-minutes of Who Will Be The Next England Manager? Once the initial mass depression has lifted somewhat, anger at being expected to play on a Plastic Pitch will have its fifteen minutes of fame. And, in a country where fear resides just below the surface of our spectacularised lives, some nutter will, no doubt, daub paint on the new villa probably being bought at this very moment by Sr Luis Medina Cantalejo.
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
Monday, 15 October 2007
Flower Of Scotland Briefly Obscures Kieran Fallon
Saturday's collection of the mismatch, the manipulated and the irrelevant is not only a turn off for the fans, its also a bit of a 'mare for the remainder of the industry sector.
With all the moral rectitude of Blackwater executives, the bookmaking industry slimes its coercive route through the programme of matches while the media attempts to convince us that Estonia represent a real test.
Selective viewing could reveal proper football. We pointed you in the direction of Scotland and Romania on Friday and their victories were merited. Scotland need only a point at home to Italy to qualify assuming the efforts of the Ukraine game do not prevent a victory in Georgia on Wednesday. Not before time, the Romanians are getting proper recognition for the quality of their football. A few years back the Germans were battered 5-1 in Romania and in the UEFA Cup, Romanian club teams have been major overperformers in recent years. Robbed of qualification for Euro 2004 and World Cup 2006 by outrageous refereeing, the Romanians should not be underrated - the two games against the Netherlands show that they are a team to be feared at next summer's event.
These two matches were positive on another level too. There have been times in the pre-Platini not-too-distant-past that these results would have been anathema to UEFA and machinations would have been afoot. Informationally and analytically, the Platini-UEFA is a fun market to trade. The incentive for positive change has to be incremental and incessant and Platini, to his credit, is making waves. There are, inevitably, still inappropriate power gradients at all levels of the UEFA hierarchy but, in his short period in charge, Platini has shown considerable skill in redrawing the lines of debate and focus putting football as opposed to strictly financial interests first.
On a trading level, international breaks are defined by two key factors. The negative is the chaotic kick off schedule which is incredibly irritating on a life hacking level. The positive is the markets themselves. All sorts of shenanigans went on at the weekend as various insiders generated preferential outcomes that were positively correlated with their market trading profile(s). Take Belarus losing at home to Luxembourg - this was Luxembourg's first competitive victory in 12 years and ended a run of 55 consecutive defeats in the European Championship qualifiers. The hosts simply made no effort to win. The Belarus team didn't even bother trying to disguise it - it was a training match. There were nuggets of money that revealed the outcome was a sale on the handicaps but we would not wish to share any other proprietary information about this particular event. Take it from us, the match was not legit. And neither was Slovenia's yawn against Albania which could have been predicted at market opening on the underground Asian markets. Nothing else happened throughout the entire market window that had the slightest impact on that initial professional money. Iceland/Latvia was a very British coup whereas Croatia/Israel had a broader continental trading distribution. The trade of the weekend was undoubtedly Spain who simply could not afford to lose in Denmark - some of the best in the industry were on the Spaniards big time.
Behind this charade, the reality of Kieran Fallon's court case regarding his alleged defrauding of Betfair clients continues in full public gaze. The British horseracing industry is rotten to the core. Whenever one of these occasional show-trials surfaces, we are merely seeing the usually hidden power politics of the horseracing world explode onto the radar. Lester Piggott being jailed for tax evasion being perhaps the most obvious example of blinkered reality! Picking out Fallon for criminality is an arbitrary selection if viewed logically but a politically-motivated one if viewed rationally.
And, anyway, what point is Betfair trying to make here? That Fallon is the usual one-bad-apple that always bobs to the surface when institutional criminality experiences a publicity glare? That Betfair clients are usually taking part in a betting exchange that isn't impacted upon by insider trading, corruptions, criminality and match-fixing? Betfair actively trade markets on a proprietary basis and, yet, we are expected to believe that the Betfair trading team do not treat privileged insider information as a major competitive advantage. It is not only external money that drives the prices of the betting exchanges.
At all levels, the spectacular society realities imposed on our horizons are fabrications - half-truths observed with restricted vision.
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
With all the moral rectitude of Blackwater executives, the bookmaking industry slimes its coercive route through the programme of matches while the media attempts to convince us that Estonia represent a real test.
Selective viewing could reveal proper football. We pointed you in the direction of Scotland and Romania on Friday and their victories were merited. Scotland need only a point at home to Italy to qualify assuming the efforts of the Ukraine game do not prevent a victory in Georgia on Wednesday. Not before time, the Romanians are getting proper recognition for the quality of their football. A few years back the Germans were battered 5-1 in Romania and in the UEFA Cup, Romanian club teams have been major overperformers in recent years. Robbed of qualification for Euro 2004 and World Cup 2006 by outrageous refereeing, the Romanians should not be underrated - the two games against the Netherlands show that they are a team to be feared at next summer's event.
These two matches were positive on another level too. There have been times in the pre-Platini not-too-distant-past that these results would have been anathema to UEFA and machinations would have been afoot. Informationally and analytically, the Platini-UEFA is a fun market to trade. The incentive for positive change has to be incremental and incessant and Platini, to his credit, is making waves. There are, inevitably, still inappropriate power gradients at all levels of the UEFA hierarchy but, in his short period in charge, Platini has shown considerable skill in redrawing the lines of debate and focus putting football as opposed to strictly financial interests first.
On a trading level, international breaks are defined by two key factors. The negative is the chaotic kick off schedule which is incredibly irritating on a life hacking level. The positive is the markets themselves. All sorts of shenanigans went on at the weekend as various insiders generated preferential outcomes that were positively correlated with their market trading profile(s). Take Belarus losing at home to Luxembourg - this was Luxembourg's first competitive victory in 12 years and ended a run of 55 consecutive defeats in the European Championship qualifiers. The hosts simply made no effort to win. The Belarus team didn't even bother trying to disguise it - it was a training match. There were nuggets of money that revealed the outcome was a sale on the handicaps but we would not wish to share any other proprietary information about this particular event. Take it from us, the match was not legit. And neither was Slovenia's yawn against Albania which could have been predicted at market opening on the underground Asian markets. Nothing else happened throughout the entire market window that had the slightest impact on that initial professional money. Iceland/Latvia was a very British coup whereas Croatia/Israel had a broader continental trading distribution. The trade of the weekend was undoubtedly Spain who simply could not afford to lose in Denmark - some of the best in the industry were on the Spaniards big time.
Behind this charade, the reality of Kieran Fallon's court case regarding his alleged defrauding of Betfair clients continues in full public gaze. The British horseracing industry is rotten to the core. Whenever one of these occasional show-trials surfaces, we are merely seeing the usually hidden power politics of the horseracing world explode onto the radar. Lester Piggott being jailed for tax evasion being perhaps the most obvious example of blinkered reality! Picking out Fallon for criminality is an arbitrary selection if viewed logically but a politically-motivated one if viewed rationally.
And, anyway, what point is Betfair trying to make here? That Fallon is the usual one-bad-apple that always bobs to the surface when institutional criminality experiences a publicity glare? That Betfair clients are usually taking part in a betting exchange that isn't impacted upon by insider trading, corruptions, criminality and match-fixing? Betfair actively trade markets on a proprietary basis and, yet, we are expected to believe that the Betfair trading team do not treat privileged insider information as a major competitive advantage. It is not only external money that drives the prices of the betting exchanges.
At all levels, the spectacular society realities imposed on our horizons are fabrications - half-truths observed with restricted vision.
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
Friday, 12 October 2007
Unglücklich Das Land, Das Helden Nötig Hat
"Unhappy the land that needs heroes".
Lets hear it for Bertolt Brecht although it would seem highly unlikely that he had Michael Owen in mind when he succinctly undermined nationalism and its links to xenophobia.
As the inevitability that is England's qualification for the Euro 2008 finals plays itself out in front of our disbelieving eyes, the gutter media is attempting to create spectacular societal headlines which have only a tenuous connection with the truth. Michael Owen's operation, his remarkable recovery, his refusal to play for his little club, his devotion to his island nation, his anger at the alleged disagreement with Big Sam is comedy journalism designed to fill column inches and establish the desired mass psychology for the betting markets in the international break.
I mean, who fucking cares?
Michael Owen could have been something amazing. He has become something abhorrent. Yet we are supposed to believe that this disingenuous little man is somehow the salvation of our national identity. Unhappy indeed. The fact that there is a climate of concern over the obstacle of Estonia is ludicrous. Estonia, a team 118 places below England in the FIFA rankings, a team that required a 92nd minute goal to scrape past Andorra at home, a team that is ranked lower than The Solomon Islands, New Caledonia and Eritrea, is, apparently, a real test for our £100K per week boys. Bejaysus...
The qualification pattern of corruption in England's pre-tournament groups is becoming a standard template. Underperformance in the early games (it is actually quite difficult to be so poor as to fail to score a goal against both Macedonia and Israel) produces a cacophony of angst-ridden headlines before the very same players who are happy to have a negative team impact in the early phases ride to the rescue by simply performing their job. Our belief is restored until these self same individuals let the xenophobes down by further creative unprofessionalism when their country needs them most. Now, personally, some of my favourite footballing memories are of England imploding on an international stage (sad, I know) but the fact that this warped euphoria is positively correlated with the whoops of joy from all bookmakers trading rooms restricts the width of my grin, even if only to a certain degree.
The most entertaining aspect of this weekend's Big Game is its utter irrelevance. Even if the mighty millionaires only draw with the Estonians, qualification will still be achieved by the draw in Moscow that is the only prerequisite for the finals in any case. Now, achieving a draw at home to the likes of Estonia takes some doing but with little Michael back up front, fat Frank doing his row Z shooting practice (if selected) and a heavily compromised if non-corrupt goalkeeper between the sticks, it could happen if the people's bookmakers and Goldchip (the footballer's bookmakers) desire it. The market has thirty hours to develop and, in true Thunderbirds stylee, anything can happen in the next thirty hours. Just be pleased that you are not naive enough to hand over your hard-earned cash for a seat at the theatre to watch this nonsense.
Elsewhere, there are some proper football matches taking place although, unfortunately, not without the corrupt influence of the English game. International matches are often rigged by bookmaking centres outside the sphere of influence of the English layers. Many former Soviet countries are still heavily linked to the Moscow markets while the Balkans and Palestine have their own peculiar idiosyncrasies. True to form, this irritates the British operations. Games involving the likes of Albania, Belarus etc are often removed from the coupons as control is in the hands of outsiders. Not so the events with certain English referees in charge. It is not a lack of coincidence that several top layers withheld opening prices for the Iceland versus Latvia match to be officiated by Michael Leslie Dean, for example.
For real events, check out the Romanians and the Scottish. Although the power hierarchies work against teams at their strata, excellent players in the former case and excellent spirit in the latter have ensured some nervous times ahead for the Dutch, French and Italians before the inevitable comes to pass. We will be particularly cheering on the Scots as Oleg Blokhin, the blockhead racist managing Ukraine, has said that he will resign if his country fail to reach the finals. See ya...
Finally, an optimistic development in the contorted divide-and-rule strategies that define our European game. Yesterday, we posted about the expansion power-grab by the G14(18)(50) and, today, we can balance that dynamic with focus on UEFA's historic agreement with Fifpro (the footballers union). Platini gushed: "In effect, this agreement is nothing more or less than the first decisive step towards the integration of all the families within football into UEFA's decision-making process". The Memorandum of Understanding covers a wide range of areas including the "equitable redistribution of wealth, collective rather than individual exploitation of wealth, a commitment to democracy, the need to preserve the values of sport in the face of growing corporate control, and the protection and development of a large and healthy professional football sector in Europe," UEFA said.
Equitable? Redistribution? Non-exploitation? Collectivity? Democracy? Try selling that one to the club power lobby!
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
Lets hear it for Bertolt Brecht although it would seem highly unlikely that he had Michael Owen in mind when he succinctly undermined nationalism and its links to xenophobia.
As the inevitability that is England's qualification for the Euro 2008 finals plays itself out in front of our disbelieving eyes, the gutter media is attempting to create spectacular societal headlines which have only a tenuous connection with the truth. Michael Owen's operation, his remarkable recovery, his refusal to play for his little club, his devotion to his island nation, his anger at the alleged disagreement with Big Sam is comedy journalism designed to fill column inches and establish the desired mass psychology for the betting markets in the international break.
I mean, who fucking cares?
Michael Owen could have been something amazing. He has become something abhorrent. Yet we are supposed to believe that this disingenuous little man is somehow the salvation of our national identity. Unhappy indeed. The fact that there is a climate of concern over the obstacle of Estonia is ludicrous. Estonia, a team 118 places below England in the FIFA rankings, a team that required a 92nd minute goal to scrape past Andorra at home, a team that is ranked lower than The Solomon Islands, New Caledonia and Eritrea, is, apparently, a real test for our £100K per week boys. Bejaysus...
The qualification pattern of corruption in England's pre-tournament groups is becoming a standard template. Underperformance in the early games (it is actually quite difficult to be so poor as to fail to score a goal against both Macedonia and Israel) produces a cacophony of angst-ridden headlines before the very same players who are happy to have a negative team impact in the early phases ride to the rescue by simply performing their job. Our belief is restored until these self same individuals let the xenophobes down by further creative unprofessionalism when their country needs them most. Now, personally, some of my favourite footballing memories are of England imploding on an international stage (sad, I know) but the fact that this warped euphoria is positively correlated with the whoops of joy from all bookmakers trading rooms restricts the width of my grin, even if only to a certain degree.
The most entertaining aspect of this weekend's Big Game is its utter irrelevance. Even if the mighty millionaires only draw with the Estonians, qualification will still be achieved by the draw in Moscow that is the only prerequisite for the finals in any case. Now, achieving a draw at home to the likes of Estonia takes some doing but with little Michael back up front, fat Frank doing his row Z shooting practice (if selected) and a heavily compromised if non-corrupt goalkeeper between the sticks, it could happen if the people's bookmakers and Goldchip (the footballer's bookmakers) desire it. The market has thirty hours to develop and, in true Thunderbirds stylee, anything can happen in the next thirty hours. Just be pleased that you are not naive enough to hand over your hard-earned cash for a seat at the theatre to watch this nonsense.
Elsewhere, there are some proper football matches taking place although, unfortunately, not without the corrupt influence of the English game. International matches are often rigged by bookmaking centres outside the sphere of influence of the English layers. Many former Soviet countries are still heavily linked to the Moscow markets while the Balkans and Palestine have their own peculiar idiosyncrasies. True to form, this irritates the British operations. Games involving the likes of Albania, Belarus etc are often removed from the coupons as control is in the hands of outsiders. Not so the events with certain English referees in charge. It is not a lack of coincidence that several top layers withheld opening prices for the Iceland versus Latvia match to be officiated by Michael Leslie Dean, for example.
For real events, check out the Romanians and the Scottish. Although the power hierarchies work against teams at their strata, excellent players in the former case and excellent spirit in the latter have ensured some nervous times ahead for the Dutch, French and Italians before the inevitable comes to pass. We will be particularly cheering on the Scots as Oleg Blokhin, the blockhead racist managing Ukraine, has said that he will resign if his country fail to reach the finals. See ya...
Finally, an optimistic development in the contorted divide-and-rule strategies that define our European game. Yesterday, we posted about the expansion power-grab by the G14(18)(50) and, today, we can balance that dynamic with focus on UEFA's historic agreement with Fifpro (the footballers union). Platini gushed: "In effect, this agreement is nothing more or less than the first decisive step towards the integration of all the families within football into UEFA's decision-making process". The Memorandum of Understanding covers a wide range of areas including the "equitable redistribution of wealth, collective rather than individual exploitation of wealth, a commitment to democracy, the need to preserve the values of sport in the face of growing corporate control, and the protection and development of a large and healthy professional football sector in Europe," UEFA said.
Equitable? Redistribution? Non-exploitation? Collectivity? Democracy? Try selling that one to the club power lobby!
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
Monday, 8 October 2007
Core Competencies Create Skewed Career Options
It has never been like this before and it will never be the same again - there is no better definition of the basic matrix of all financial markets. Constant evolution drives the markets forward as these multidisciplinary playgrounds are complex beyond the static realities of a pure science. That is why it is so interesting.
In parallel with the not-so-random walk of the markets, march the career opportunities related to analysts. One of the most peculiar constructs is that which has created the opportunity for market analysts to work inside football clubs as a major part of the club's proprietary competitive edge.
Sports science, psychological motivation techniques, the use of legal (and not so legal) performance enhancing substances (PESs), dietary enhancement and numerous other strategies have moved football into this brave new world. In the era of the £1 billion football betting market, the market analyst will soon become equally indispensable.
When such colossal sums of money are being laid on the outcome of just one football match, the sector develops some highly skewed incentives. And it is incentives that drive the financial markets. We have focused on the power of referees repeatedly on this blog and the advantages that analysts could bring to the Professional Game Match Officials Board (PGMOB) is marked, for example. Oh, and it would be corrupt... Similarly with working alongside bookmakers with an equivalent black market/grey market profile. I can't go for that...
But football teams are another territory altogether. When the original foundations were being laid to create a trading model that would be robust for all types of financial market, the possibility that the resulting model would have a vital significance to a team's strategy would have been simply laughable. It is a damning indictment of the impact of the malignant ones that this is now our reality. Baudrillard would have been proud...
So, why are market analysts so key to the success of football teams, I hear you ask? In more ways than would initially appear possible would be the answer of choice. Let's go there...
* The analysis, psychological profiling and real-time monitoring of referees and other officials is a key input to all matches. The determination of the corrupt incentives and linkages pre-match is combined with the in-running assessment of the game in motion. For example, we read Markus Merk (and many other officials) like a book and the value to Celtic of our input both prior to and during the Milan game last week would have been considerable - we could even have prevented the happy slapping incident as the Milan penalty could have been avoided. Joking apart, if any club wishes to optimise their performance in both domestic and European competitions, a thorough analysis of the officials is critical.
* Analysis of the opponents is another key aspect - and I'm not talking whether they will be employing a 4-5-1 system here. A disturbingly high percentage of Premiership teams are proactively involved in the global betting markets. Some of the market stances and positions being taken by these operators are considerable and, obviously, impact upon the incentives for the game ahead. Knowledge of your opponents portfolio angles is massive - players may be rested or chemical enhancements might be authorised on the basis of such information. Additionally, the fundamental analysis undertaken by analysts can nurture further advantages for a club. Dietrological use extensive configurative modelling to determine team's fitness levels, utilisation of PESs, internal morale issues, strategic focus etc.
* Infrastructural issues impact upon club's strategic horizons. All tournaments and competitions incorporate their own hidden agendas, the knowledge of which is informational dynamite. We shared one of these with you last season over the inevitability of a Chelsea versus Manchester United FA Cup Final. In such an instance, whether working with the chosen teams or their opponents, big picture politics of the regulatory organisation is a competitive advancement.
* Through modelling the financial markets that dominate our modern game, analysts are able to directly influence outcome on both their own and, if they choose the corrupt path, their competitors matches. We have demonstrated ad nauseum how conspicuous money influences outcome in markets ranging from football to horseracing, from derivatives to options. Markets may be influenced in their eternal search for efficiency by the control of information as much as by the active partaking of market positions. And, yet, when the global football markets become legal and regulated, the advantages bestowed by the best analysis will be optimal. Selective and well-timed informational releases to influence media while concurrently taking into account the complex market betting patterns that will define future realities is a multiple input operation of some significant value. The legalised trading of both internal and external matches will become THE core competency for ALL the major teams. No matter how slick the management, how good the players, how inventive the transfer policy, all of these advantages will be rendered virtually useless without top-notch analytical inputs.
* In-Running betting markets may also be targeted for edge. It varies but approximately 50% of liquidity occurs while the match is in motion - it represents the more pernicious reasoning behind the development of miked-up but non-open source officials in the Premiership. Stuff happens. Pre-match market profiles, incentives and trading realities vary with massive volatility in a market structure that is dominated by equilibrium positions. Explaining this briefly, most financial markets have pricing structures that allow incremental price movements related to the flow of money orders plus inside information and market breakpoints. A football betting market moves both incrementally and atmospherically but, additionally, by integral leaps on certain occurrences. For example, a goal scored should (but doesn't always) result in the market adjusting by 1.0 goals while a sending off generally yields a 0.10 of a goal leap for each period of ten minutes remaining. But the key route to a robust advantage in-running is pure market analysis. The incentives of all participants vary in real-time as the match progresses. Officials, bookmakers, the major professional traders, the regulatory bodies and the management and players are involved in this random walk waltz of financial opportunity. Creative structuring of match strategies using Game Theory and the like is easily utilised to influence the liabilities in the market place but, once again, the eventual establishment of white market legalised global betting platforms will transform the value of the market analyst to his/her associated club.
* The related issues of fragmented cartelisational realities and market depth impinge upon all analysis affecting both the pre-match and the in-running markets. Trading anonymously, incrementalised investment, avoidance of tilting the market against one's interests, the creative use of disinformation (in the nicest way!) to enhance profits all require a clear big picture overview of the relevant sectors.
* All analysts develop extensive databases of corrupt industry insiders together with the accompanying forensic psychology, market analysis and behavioural profiling. There is valuable input to be gained in knowing when a particular goalkeeper feels the pressures to have a Barthez-day!
* A network effect will establish even greater advantages to the clubs who are foresightful enough to work with the best analysts. The quality of output is directly correlated with the quality of input and the systemic economies of data will be mutually beneficial and mutually rewarding.
* All of the practical solutions outlined above will be further developed utilising complex reactive algorithms specifically created to incorporate highly unstructured data yielding more competitive advantage in the process.
* In conclusion, it is feasible with an holistic overview to re-skew the incentives to one's own advantage without having to enter into the corrupt world of the betting markets. One is able to achieve this by offsetting the manipulations undertaken against one's interests. In the not-too-distant future, there will be other legal revenue streams to enhance this process. The clubs must take note.
Some of the simplest structures related to the above are already evident in the game - an example being the use of amphetamine-based PESs at half-time which allows a first half of underperformance (with related market drift) to be obliterated by a high energy second period resulting in both three points and a market killing. There are two prime issues related to the current state of play here. Firstly, to be able to take full advantage, one needs to venture into cowboy territory. Secondly, the current strategies are blunt and one-dimensional and, consequently, of little medium term value. This is a typical economic paradigm for a psychopathic trading system. Fortunately, the cowboys will eventually become legit or will be peripheralised and a more meritocratic global trading platform will be available. Then we'll have a proper game...
Okay, so it ain't exactly football but this conceptual framework is our future reality. Indeed, Dietrological are already undertaking a high level consultancy project for one Premiership team in a not-too-dissimilar area of concern. Such consultancies will become increasingly the norm. As football normalises, if that is in any way an appropriate word in these circumstances, to the standard sectoral template which exists throughout the spectrum of shareholder capitalism, it will become indistinguishable from any other entertainment-based product. The game will cease to be competitive as we currently understand competitive and will instead resemble those hideous happenings that spectacular society forces upon us in the marketing-induced world. You know the sort of thing - in Macau, Diana Ross sings The Supremes at a casino that is the size of a small town while the punters are fleeced and, around the corner, the Third World exist in the sweatshops which represent the true non-marketed reality of this spectacular system.
Anyway, I'm off to look for an agent...
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
In parallel with the not-so-random walk of the markets, march the career opportunities related to analysts. One of the most peculiar constructs is that which has created the opportunity for market analysts to work inside football clubs as a major part of the club's proprietary competitive edge.
Sports science, psychological motivation techniques, the use of legal (and not so legal) performance enhancing substances (PESs), dietary enhancement and numerous other strategies have moved football into this brave new world. In the era of the £1 billion football betting market, the market analyst will soon become equally indispensable.
When such colossal sums of money are being laid on the outcome of just one football match, the sector develops some highly skewed incentives. And it is incentives that drive the financial markets. We have focused on the power of referees repeatedly on this blog and the advantages that analysts could bring to the Professional Game Match Officials Board (PGMOB) is marked, for example. Oh, and it would be corrupt... Similarly with working alongside bookmakers with an equivalent black market/grey market profile. I can't go for that...
But football teams are another territory altogether. When the original foundations were being laid to create a trading model that would be robust for all types of financial market, the possibility that the resulting model would have a vital significance to a team's strategy would have been simply laughable. It is a damning indictment of the impact of the malignant ones that this is now our reality. Baudrillard would have been proud...
So, why are market analysts so key to the success of football teams, I hear you ask? In more ways than would initially appear possible would be the answer of choice. Let's go there...
* The analysis, psychological profiling and real-time monitoring of referees and other officials is a key input to all matches. The determination of the corrupt incentives and linkages pre-match is combined with the in-running assessment of the game in motion. For example, we read Markus Merk (and many other officials) like a book and the value to Celtic of our input both prior to and during the Milan game last week would have been considerable - we could even have prevented the happy slapping incident as the Milan penalty could have been avoided. Joking apart, if any club wishes to optimise their performance in both domestic and European competitions, a thorough analysis of the officials is critical.
* Analysis of the opponents is another key aspect - and I'm not talking whether they will be employing a 4-5-1 system here. A disturbingly high percentage of Premiership teams are proactively involved in the global betting markets. Some of the market stances and positions being taken by these operators are considerable and, obviously, impact upon the incentives for the game ahead. Knowledge of your opponents portfolio angles is massive - players may be rested or chemical enhancements might be authorised on the basis of such information. Additionally, the fundamental analysis undertaken by analysts can nurture further advantages for a club. Dietrological use extensive configurative modelling to determine team's fitness levels, utilisation of PESs, internal morale issues, strategic focus etc.
* Infrastructural issues impact upon club's strategic horizons. All tournaments and competitions incorporate their own hidden agendas, the knowledge of which is informational dynamite. We shared one of these with you last season over the inevitability of a Chelsea versus Manchester United FA Cup Final. In such an instance, whether working with the chosen teams or their opponents, big picture politics of the regulatory organisation is a competitive advancement.
* Through modelling the financial markets that dominate our modern game, analysts are able to directly influence outcome on both their own and, if they choose the corrupt path, their competitors matches. We have demonstrated ad nauseum how conspicuous money influences outcome in markets ranging from football to horseracing, from derivatives to options. Markets may be influenced in their eternal search for efficiency by the control of information as much as by the active partaking of market positions. And, yet, when the global football markets become legal and regulated, the advantages bestowed by the best analysis will be optimal. Selective and well-timed informational releases to influence media while concurrently taking into account the complex market betting patterns that will define future realities is a multiple input operation of some significant value. The legalised trading of both internal and external matches will become THE core competency for ALL the major teams. No matter how slick the management, how good the players, how inventive the transfer policy, all of these advantages will be rendered virtually useless without top-notch analytical inputs.
* In-Running betting markets may also be targeted for edge. It varies but approximately 50% of liquidity occurs while the match is in motion - it represents the more pernicious reasoning behind the development of miked-up but non-open source officials in the Premiership. Stuff happens. Pre-match market profiles, incentives and trading realities vary with massive volatility in a market structure that is dominated by equilibrium positions. Explaining this briefly, most financial markets have pricing structures that allow incremental price movements related to the flow of money orders plus inside information and market breakpoints. A football betting market moves both incrementally and atmospherically but, additionally, by integral leaps on certain occurrences. For example, a goal scored should (but doesn't always) result in the market adjusting by 1.0 goals while a sending off generally yields a 0.10 of a goal leap for each period of ten minutes remaining. But the key route to a robust advantage in-running is pure market analysis. The incentives of all participants vary in real-time as the match progresses. Officials, bookmakers, the major professional traders, the regulatory bodies and the management and players are involved in this random walk waltz of financial opportunity. Creative structuring of match strategies using Game Theory and the like is easily utilised to influence the liabilities in the market place but, once again, the eventual establishment of white market legalised global betting platforms will transform the value of the market analyst to his/her associated club.
* The related issues of fragmented cartelisational realities and market depth impinge upon all analysis affecting both the pre-match and the in-running markets. Trading anonymously, incrementalised investment, avoidance of tilting the market against one's interests, the creative use of disinformation (in the nicest way!) to enhance profits all require a clear big picture overview of the relevant sectors.
* All analysts develop extensive databases of corrupt industry insiders together with the accompanying forensic psychology, market analysis and behavioural profiling. There is valuable input to be gained in knowing when a particular goalkeeper feels the pressures to have a Barthez-day!
* A network effect will establish even greater advantages to the clubs who are foresightful enough to work with the best analysts. The quality of output is directly correlated with the quality of input and the systemic economies of data will be mutually beneficial and mutually rewarding.
* All of the practical solutions outlined above will be further developed utilising complex reactive algorithms specifically created to incorporate highly unstructured data yielding more competitive advantage in the process.
* In conclusion, it is feasible with an holistic overview to re-skew the incentives to one's own advantage without having to enter into the corrupt world of the betting markets. One is able to achieve this by offsetting the manipulations undertaken against one's interests. In the not-too-distant future, there will be other legal revenue streams to enhance this process. The clubs must take note.
Some of the simplest structures related to the above are already evident in the game - an example being the use of amphetamine-based PESs at half-time which allows a first half of underperformance (with related market drift) to be obliterated by a high energy second period resulting in both three points and a market killing. There are two prime issues related to the current state of play here. Firstly, to be able to take full advantage, one needs to venture into cowboy territory. Secondly, the current strategies are blunt and one-dimensional and, consequently, of little medium term value. This is a typical economic paradigm for a psychopathic trading system. Fortunately, the cowboys will eventually become legit or will be peripheralised and a more meritocratic global trading platform will be available. Then we'll have a proper game...
Okay, so it ain't exactly football but this conceptual framework is our future reality. Indeed, Dietrological are already undertaking a high level consultancy project for one Premiership team in a not-too-dissimilar area of concern. Such consultancies will become increasingly the norm. As football normalises, if that is in any way an appropriate word in these circumstances, to the standard sectoral template which exists throughout the spectrum of shareholder capitalism, it will become indistinguishable from any other entertainment-based product. The game will cease to be competitive as we currently understand competitive and will instead resemble those hideous happenings that spectacular society forces upon us in the marketing-induced world. You know the sort of thing - in Macau, Diana Ross sings The Supremes at a casino that is the size of a small town while the punters are fleeced and, around the corner, the Third World exist in the sweatshops which represent the true non-marketed reality of this spectacular system.
Anyway, I'm off to look for an agent...
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
Saturday, 6 October 2007
The Bully Taunts The Brave
If you're going to do the corrupt thing then at least you should have the intelligence to do that corrupt thing well.
The following are the inputs of the Sky talking heads prior to the game and during the first half hour of today's Manchester United versus Wigan Athletic match.
"Score early and they'll get a hatful" - Richard Keys.
"United, going forward, scoring lots of goals" - Keys again.
"Wigan have gone 17 games in the Premiership without getting as much as a point off any of the Big 4 teams" - Keys monotony.
"The goals have got to happen soon" - Keys pushing his luck.
"Will this be the day when United run riot" - Alan Parry.
"The Champions are ready to go" - Keys introduces the kick off in a blinkered stylee.
"He [Rooney] has got a very good scoring record against Wigan that their fans will not need reminding of" - Parry continuing the good work.
"The only previous visit of Wigan's manager Chris Hutchings to Old Trafford was as manager of Bradford City when they lost 6-0" - Parry getting hindsightly irrelevant.
"Look at their side, you must be frightened, you must be frightened at how much they are going to come forward at yer" - Duplicitous David Platt.
"United must be so used to these games where the sides come not to lose" - Parry scraping the barrel bottom.
"United played 28 games at Old Trafford last season in all competitions and won 23 of them" - Parry matching the market price with a further load of piffle.
So, what was all this nonsense about?
Throughout the opening stages of the current Premiership season, the marketplace has been characterised by fractious fragmented cartelisations. Betting companies alternately ally with and undermine competitor companies in a desperate scramble to gain psychopathic and absolute control of events. Absolute control is critical as such a degree of leverage removes probability from the equation and an omnipotent bookmaker may exert market stresses on their competitors by thoroughly exploiting this corrupt advantage. Sky's trading team are analytically considerably out of their depth in this marketplace even with the games in which they claim ultimate control. Man Utd and Wigan was one such game. We pointed out yesterday that Mike Riley was officiating on a Sky live match for the 5th time this season and the Sky traders were very keen on a home win pre-match. But the market was not so simple in reality and nor is Sky's self-confidence very high as they have repeatedly had games snatched from their ownership this season - remember United against Chelsea? As a generalisation, it is very rare for teams involved in highly competitive Champions League events in the midweek (and Roma was one such game) to score rampantly on the following weekend. Furthermore, all trading rooms were aware of the incentives towards avoiding Man Utd being ahead at half-time and full-time as this is a mug's route to getting a better price on very short odds-on favourites - Riley was never going to give either of United's first half penalty shouts. So, all the "hatfuls" and "6-0's" and "running riot" and "being frightened" were quite simply rampant disinformation. The chances of United doing any of these things would have appeared to any skilled analyst to be highly improbable, particularly with Riley doing his utmost to ensure that the interval was reached at parity.
A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. If Sky had been psychologically comfortable in the marketplace in recent weeks, they would no doubt have been able to stick to their corrupt trading strategy. But, being a second tier company with a lack of trading nous, they blew their advantage. Following the substitutions of Vidic and O'Shea, Parry and Platt audibly changed tack.
"Wigan will be delighted, the sending off of Vidic has taken the sting out of United's performance" - Platt's platitude.
"They must be starting to believe that this might be their [Wigan's} day" - Parry (yawn).
"There are a lot of very talented, very expensive players unavailable to Manchester United at the moment" - Parry getting suitably peripheral.
"Wigan have done very well in the first half. If they continue in the same vein, there's no reason why they can't get something out of it" - Butch Wilkins.
"United scored over 100 goals in all competitions last season but only seven in eight and a half games in this campaign" - Parry exactly one minute before the floodgates opened.
The problem for Sky was that they started to believe their own disinformational hype - they frequently are in possession of nuggets of valuable information but are unable to optimise the profitability of these nuggets as they cannot judge their trading horizons. In the very active half-time trading window, the Sky traders were desperately trying to hedge their liabilities by encouraging punters and professionals to take the best price around on a United victory. Fulsome control of both the pre-match and in-running markets was Sky's for the taking and they blew it. One of our contacts at Sky informs us that there has been numerous ruptions within Sky over their inability to nail their manipulations to the goalposts of profit and that Andy Gray's window of convalescence is linked to his poor input to the original market making combined with this lack of market savvy. Murdoch's men will still have made profit on their book but they simply had not got the balls to see their corruption through. The words "hoisted" and "petard" spring to mind...
This match was a £225 million pre-match market and there was a global television audience of half a billion people. Being one of only two Premiership games on the day gave the match a level of kudos that it did not deserve. Earlier in the week in The Guardian newspaper, Richard Scudamore slimed his way to the justification for such an unbalanced weekend timetable - it was all simply a result of four English teams having UEFA Cup games on Thursday apparently. Well, that does explain why four of the matches were to be on Sunday but what about the other four? The UEFA qualifiers were known months prior to the release of the fixture list and Scudamore's pitiful attempt at economy of truth was a forerunner of Sky's disinformation today. Now economy of truth is Scudamore's strong suit and, as with Platt, Keys and Parry, the reality can usually be best understood by inverting everything that oozes from their mouths. Of course, the actual reason for the imbalance in the weekend's Premiership fixture scheduling is the coincidence of the Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe - the kick off of the Fulham v Portsmouth game has even been delayed by ten minutes so that punters might "enjoy" the action from Longchamp. This is indicative of the likelihood that the hot favourite Authorized is probably going to get turned over in a nice little earner for the bookmakers.
The Manchester United versus Wigan game provided a very clear resolution of the different paradigms employed by the Asian and European market makers. The Chinese, being used to a pictorial language, are able to define and create the realities of other cultures in an holistic manner. When combined with the strategic thought processes that underpin all of their analytical input, these competitive advantages allow the Far East analysts to produce highly tuned models of other people's realities. The Europeans, in contrast, possess all the subtlety of a lump hammer.
Its akin to the innovation behind the game of Go versus the thuggery of conkers.
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
The following are the inputs of the Sky talking heads prior to the game and during the first half hour of today's Manchester United versus Wigan Athletic match.
"Score early and they'll get a hatful" - Richard Keys.
"United, going forward, scoring lots of goals" - Keys again.
"Wigan have gone 17 games in the Premiership without getting as much as a point off any of the Big 4 teams" - Keys monotony.
"The goals have got to happen soon" - Keys pushing his luck.
"Will this be the day when United run riot" - Alan Parry.
"The Champions are ready to go" - Keys introduces the kick off in a blinkered stylee.
"He [Rooney] has got a very good scoring record against Wigan that their fans will not need reminding of" - Parry continuing the good work.
"The only previous visit of Wigan's manager Chris Hutchings to Old Trafford was as manager of Bradford City when they lost 6-0" - Parry getting hindsightly irrelevant.
"Look at their side, you must be frightened, you must be frightened at how much they are going to come forward at yer" - Duplicitous David Platt.
"United must be so used to these games where the sides come not to lose" - Parry scraping the barrel bottom.
"United played 28 games at Old Trafford last season in all competitions and won 23 of them" - Parry matching the market price with a further load of piffle.
So, what was all this nonsense about?
Throughout the opening stages of the current Premiership season, the marketplace has been characterised by fractious fragmented cartelisations. Betting companies alternately ally with and undermine competitor companies in a desperate scramble to gain psychopathic and absolute control of events. Absolute control is critical as such a degree of leverage removes probability from the equation and an omnipotent bookmaker may exert market stresses on their competitors by thoroughly exploiting this corrupt advantage. Sky's trading team are analytically considerably out of their depth in this marketplace even with the games in which they claim ultimate control. Man Utd and Wigan was one such game. We pointed out yesterday that Mike Riley was officiating on a Sky live match for the 5th time this season and the Sky traders were very keen on a home win pre-match. But the market was not so simple in reality and nor is Sky's self-confidence very high as they have repeatedly had games snatched from their ownership this season - remember United against Chelsea? As a generalisation, it is very rare for teams involved in highly competitive Champions League events in the midweek (and Roma was one such game) to score rampantly on the following weekend. Furthermore, all trading rooms were aware of the incentives towards avoiding Man Utd being ahead at half-time and full-time as this is a mug's route to getting a better price on very short odds-on favourites - Riley was never going to give either of United's first half penalty shouts. So, all the "hatfuls" and "6-0's" and "running riot" and "being frightened" were quite simply rampant disinformation. The chances of United doing any of these things would have appeared to any skilled analyst to be highly improbable, particularly with Riley doing his utmost to ensure that the interval was reached at parity.
A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. If Sky had been psychologically comfortable in the marketplace in recent weeks, they would no doubt have been able to stick to their corrupt trading strategy. But, being a second tier company with a lack of trading nous, they blew their advantage. Following the substitutions of Vidic and O'Shea, Parry and Platt audibly changed tack.
"Wigan will be delighted, the sending off of Vidic has taken the sting out of United's performance" - Platt's platitude.
"They must be starting to believe that this might be their [Wigan's} day" - Parry (yawn).
"There are a lot of very talented, very expensive players unavailable to Manchester United at the moment" - Parry getting suitably peripheral.
"Wigan have done very well in the first half. If they continue in the same vein, there's no reason why they can't get something out of it" - Butch Wilkins.
"United scored over 100 goals in all competitions last season but only seven in eight and a half games in this campaign" - Parry exactly one minute before the floodgates opened.
The problem for Sky was that they started to believe their own disinformational hype - they frequently are in possession of nuggets of valuable information but are unable to optimise the profitability of these nuggets as they cannot judge their trading horizons. In the very active half-time trading window, the Sky traders were desperately trying to hedge their liabilities by encouraging punters and professionals to take the best price around on a United victory. Fulsome control of both the pre-match and in-running markets was Sky's for the taking and they blew it. One of our contacts at Sky informs us that there has been numerous ruptions within Sky over their inability to nail their manipulations to the goalposts of profit and that Andy Gray's window of convalescence is linked to his poor input to the original market making combined with this lack of market savvy. Murdoch's men will still have made profit on their book but they simply had not got the balls to see their corruption through. The words "hoisted" and "petard" spring to mind...
This match was a £225 million pre-match market and there was a global television audience of half a billion people. Being one of only two Premiership games on the day gave the match a level of kudos that it did not deserve. Earlier in the week in The Guardian newspaper, Richard Scudamore slimed his way to the justification for such an unbalanced weekend timetable - it was all simply a result of four English teams having UEFA Cup games on Thursday apparently. Well, that does explain why four of the matches were to be on Sunday but what about the other four? The UEFA qualifiers were known months prior to the release of the fixture list and Scudamore's pitiful attempt at economy of truth was a forerunner of Sky's disinformation today. Now economy of truth is Scudamore's strong suit and, as with Platt, Keys and Parry, the reality can usually be best understood by inverting everything that oozes from their mouths. Of course, the actual reason for the imbalance in the weekend's Premiership fixture scheduling is the coincidence of the Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe - the kick off of the Fulham v Portsmouth game has even been delayed by ten minutes so that punters might "enjoy" the action from Longchamp. This is indicative of the likelihood that the hot favourite Authorized is probably going to get turned over in a nice little earner for the bookmakers.
The Manchester United versus Wigan game provided a very clear resolution of the different paradigms employed by the Asian and European market makers. The Chinese, being used to a pictorial language, are able to define and create the realities of other cultures in an holistic manner. When combined with the strategic thought processes that underpin all of their analytical input, these competitive advantages allow the Far East analysts to produce highly tuned models of other people's realities. The Europeans, in contrast, possess all the subtlety of a lump hammer.
Its akin to the innovation behind the game of Go versus the thuggery of conkers.
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
Friday, 5 October 2007
The Bum Ref Index 2007/2008
Based on The Economist's Big Mac Index which utilises the economic fallacy of purchasing power parity to determine which global currencies are over/under-valued, Football is Fixed introduced the Bum Ref Index last season. This assesses the negative impact that Premiership referees have on the games in which they officiate together with our proprietary individual psychological profiling and the institutional and individual manipulations relating to bookmakers, clubs and other corrupt power loci. The early season ratings for season 2007/2008 are provided below. It should be noted that, as with the early season league tables, there may be some rogue positioning due to the small numbers of games officiated. Taking it from the bottom with the worst officials listed first.
17. Riley 4.70
16. Webb 4.52
15. Dean 4.50
14. Bennett 4.48
13. Foy 4.31
12. Stroud 4.20
11. Tanner 4.09
10. Styles 3.85
9. Atkinson 3.63
8. Clattenburg 3.39
7. Wiley 3.32
6. Halsey 3.30
5. Dowd 3.23
4. Walton 2.67
3. Marriner 2.53
2. Probert 2.20
1. Mason 1.87
Neither Knight nor Rennie have yet refereed a match and the ratings of Mason, Probert, Tanner, Stroud, Dowd and Marriner are statistically volatile as they have all officiated in three games or less.
There are several interesting features that we feel are worthy of note.
* Its déjà vu all over again, and again... When one removes the officials that have been scarcely utilised, the current season's top five officials are Walton, Halsey, Wiley, Clattenburg and Atkinson which is virtually identical to the top five officials in season 2006/2007, namely Clattenburg, Halsey, Gallagher (now retired), Atkinson and Walton (see: http://footballisfixed.blogspot.com/2007/05/bum-ref-update-20062007.html). Similarly, the worst officials show elements of constancy too with Webb and Bennett being persistently poor. This should not be a surprise. Absolute power corrupts absolutely and, once a referee forms inappropriate links with external malignant forces, a continuum of coercion is only to be expected.
* We have frequently bemoaned the corrupt infrastructure that enables a pool of currently just 17 officials to control the Premiership. This roster is merely 40% of the average when compared with other leading European nations and, by its restrictive policies, the Professional Game Match Officials Board (PGMOB) has created a template that is seemingly designed with corruption in mind. Taking a look at the highly liquid televised games is particularly revealing. Eight referees are yet to be given the chance to strut their stuff on the Sky/Setanta stage and, yet, following this weekend's games, 24 of the 34 live events have featured just 6, yes six, referees - Riley has controlled 6 games, Webb 5, Halsey 4, Styles, Dean and Clattenburg 3. Over 70% of the televised matches are under the influence of this core group of whistleblowers - Sky seem particularly keen on Mike Riley as tomorrow's Man Utd versus Wigan extravaganza is the fifth time that the Yorkshireman has officiated a live Sky event in the first nine rounds of matches. This obviously has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that Skybet's offices are in Harrogate while Mr Riley hails from Leeds.
* With Uriah Rennie off the radar, there remains a selective apartheid underpinning the PGMOB group. For a sport that is totally dependent on the skills of Black players, it is an outrage that there isn't one Black referee or linesman for the Premiership - almost as outrageous, in fact, as the racist bias exhibited by more than one of the PGMOB officials on the pitch. Masonic forms of corruption are dependent on an enclosed group of insiders to limit leakage and maximise control and it would appear that a colour bias is a necessary part of this process. As an aside and taking Paul Ince out of the equation, the lack of Black faces in managerial posts, boardrooms and in the corridors of power in the game is equally unsettling.
* The changing of officials to cater for specific betting market patterns has continued into the new season. The PGMOB secretly names the referees for the weekend matches early in the week although finding this vitally important information takes Columbo-esque detective skills. If a market becomes too hot or other causes close to the PGMOB's hidden agenda are compromised, then the simple solution is to change the referee. Last season, this ploy was produced on sixteen occasions while this season has already yielded six occurrences, five of which were for high profile televised games on Sky/Setanta. As we have pointed out previously, this is a very English disease. I am able to count on the fingers of one hand the number of times such a machination has happened in the Champions League, Serie A, La Liga and the Bundesliga over the last decade - the PGMOB would already need a six-fingered conclusion to the human arm for the first one and a half months of this current season alone. These are not even related to illness or travel issues - they are just manipulations of the matches that cause major issues for market participants who are unaware of the scam. It is probably also well worthy of note that, of the 22 occasions where the PGMOB have changed their collective minds, Mike Riley has been involved in six of the events.
* At least UEFA are aware of the volatility and private agendas of the PGMOB mob. Out of the last 93 games in the Champions League since Platini came to office, only five have featured Premiership referees which is markedly less than all the other top and, even, second tier countries. The unfortunate aspect is that the two English officials who have been allowed to officiate in this season's group phase are none other than the worst two referees in our Bum Ref Index - Riley and Webb. Priceless. Proof of "the shit always rising to the top" adage, I guess.
* There remain rumours that the PGMOB wishes for an inner sanctum of just ten officials who would referee ALL Premiership matches. Last year the ten most frequently chosen refs covered 72% of the season's games while this season the figure has increased to 74%. When three-quarters of the Premiership games are covered by such a minute grouping of individuals, there is evidently something not quite right. All logic is suggestive of increasing the number on the roster to undermine corruption and, preferably, using two referees in each match on the pitch to improve key decision making. A little bit of video technology might also meritocratise the game too. But, instead, we will have to get used to the omnipresent Mike Riley, bullied at school, bullied by those nasty supporters, bullied by the bookmakers, and selling his soul to rip out the soul of the game. Heroic...
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
17. Riley 4.70
16. Webb 4.52
15. Dean 4.50
14. Bennett 4.48
13. Foy 4.31
12. Stroud 4.20
11. Tanner 4.09
10. Styles 3.85
9. Atkinson 3.63
8. Clattenburg 3.39
7. Wiley 3.32
6. Halsey 3.30
5. Dowd 3.23
4. Walton 2.67
3. Marriner 2.53
2. Probert 2.20
1. Mason 1.87
Neither Knight nor Rennie have yet refereed a match and the ratings of Mason, Probert, Tanner, Stroud, Dowd and Marriner are statistically volatile as they have all officiated in three games or less.
There are several interesting features that we feel are worthy of note.
* Its déjà vu all over again, and again... When one removes the officials that have been scarcely utilised, the current season's top five officials are Walton, Halsey, Wiley, Clattenburg and Atkinson which is virtually identical to the top five officials in season 2006/2007, namely Clattenburg, Halsey, Gallagher (now retired), Atkinson and Walton (see: http://footballisfixed.blogspot.com/2007/05/bum-ref-update-20062007.html). Similarly, the worst officials show elements of constancy too with Webb and Bennett being persistently poor. This should not be a surprise. Absolute power corrupts absolutely and, once a referee forms inappropriate links with external malignant forces, a continuum of coercion is only to be expected.
* We have frequently bemoaned the corrupt infrastructure that enables a pool of currently just 17 officials to control the Premiership. This roster is merely 40% of the average when compared with other leading European nations and, by its restrictive policies, the Professional Game Match Officials Board (PGMOB) has created a template that is seemingly designed with corruption in mind. Taking a look at the highly liquid televised games is particularly revealing. Eight referees are yet to be given the chance to strut their stuff on the Sky/Setanta stage and, yet, following this weekend's games, 24 of the 34 live events have featured just 6, yes six, referees - Riley has controlled 6 games, Webb 5, Halsey 4, Styles, Dean and Clattenburg 3. Over 70% of the televised matches are under the influence of this core group of whistleblowers - Sky seem particularly keen on Mike Riley as tomorrow's Man Utd versus Wigan extravaganza is the fifth time that the Yorkshireman has officiated a live Sky event in the first nine rounds of matches. This obviously has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that Skybet's offices are in Harrogate while Mr Riley hails from Leeds.
* With Uriah Rennie off the radar, there remains a selective apartheid underpinning the PGMOB group. For a sport that is totally dependent on the skills of Black players, it is an outrage that there isn't one Black referee or linesman for the Premiership - almost as outrageous, in fact, as the racist bias exhibited by more than one of the PGMOB officials on the pitch. Masonic forms of corruption are dependent on an enclosed group of insiders to limit leakage and maximise control and it would appear that a colour bias is a necessary part of this process. As an aside and taking Paul Ince out of the equation, the lack of Black faces in managerial posts, boardrooms and in the corridors of power in the game is equally unsettling.
* The changing of officials to cater for specific betting market patterns has continued into the new season. The PGMOB secretly names the referees for the weekend matches early in the week although finding this vitally important information takes Columbo-esque detective skills. If a market becomes too hot or other causes close to the PGMOB's hidden agenda are compromised, then the simple solution is to change the referee. Last season, this ploy was produced on sixteen occasions while this season has already yielded six occurrences, five of which were for high profile televised games on Sky/Setanta. As we have pointed out previously, this is a very English disease. I am able to count on the fingers of one hand the number of times such a machination has happened in the Champions League, Serie A, La Liga and the Bundesliga over the last decade - the PGMOB would already need a six-fingered conclusion to the human arm for the first one and a half months of this current season alone. These are not even related to illness or travel issues - they are just manipulations of the matches that cause major issues for market participants who are unaware of the scam. It is probably also well worthy of note that, of the 22 occasions where the PGMOB have changed their collective minds, Mike Riley has been involved in six of the events.
* At least UEFA are aware of the volatility and private agendas of the PGMOB mob. Out of the last 93 games in the Champions League since Platini came to office, only five have featured Premiership referees which is markedly less than all the other top and, even, second tier countries. The unfortunate aspect is that the two English officials who have been allowed to officiate in this season's group phase are none other than the worst two referees in our Bum Ref Index - Riley and Webb. Priceless. Proof of "the shit always rising to the top" adage, I guess.
* There remain rumours that the PGMOB wishes for an inner sanctum of just ten officials who would referee ALL Premiership matches. Last year the ten most frequently chosen refs covered 72% of the season's games while this season the figure has increased to 74%. When three-quarters of the Premiership games are covered by such a minute grouping of individuals, there is evidently something not quite right. All logic is suggestive of increasing the number on the roster to undermine corruption and, preferably, using two referees in each match on the pitch to improve key decision making. A little bit of video technology might also meritocratise the game too. But, instead, we will have to get used to the omnipresent Mike Riley, bullied at school, bullied by those nasty supporters, bullied by the bookmakers, and selling his soul to rip out the soul of the game. Heroic...
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
Wednesday, 3 October 2007
What's Yours Worth?
An investment banker once told me: "If you have a minority paying for the majority, you aren't going to get a vote for change". So it is with gambling. A prime example of this is provided by the attitude of the vast majority of European betting firms to in-running markets.
From the perspective of the punter, in-running markets offer many benefits. All pre-match imponderables resolve themselves in front of your eyes in real-time and, additionally, the playing field is considerably levelled by the fact that the market makers are seeing pretty much the same visuals as the leisure traders. Obviously, the bookmakers incorporate advantages into this more meritocratic environment - live streaming of games on Betfair is delayed by up to thirty seconds, for example, and trading rooms have access to a multiplicity of camera angles to bestow the seeds of benefit. A further tilt to the bookies is that inside information relating to the match may remain hidden from leisure viewers until the explosive nature of such information explodes into reality via a penalty kick or a Michael Owen special. But, despite such provisos, the action is analysable to all.
Now, bookmakers despise meritocracy in the same manner that Shinawatra does financial probity. Prior to a game, the bookmakers and brokers have an informational advantage that is only replicated by top notch market analysts and insider traders. By the time kick off comes around, any layer worth their salt is aware of the corrupt mechanisms underpinning an event. But, in a world of fragmented cartelisation, the ownership of the outcomes of events is a battleground where the individual power lobbies fight for control of the match, the market and, ultimately, the profits. For this reason, all but the most psychopathic of the trading firms are forced into taking hedging positions in the period leading up to kick off UNLESS they have total control of the match in question. This bookmaker's dilemma influences their in-running strategy.
Trading in-running is more akin to a poker market than a football one. Trading must be undertaken at speed and bluff positions analysed intuitively using market memory and aspects of forensic psychology. The difference in strategy between the European and Asian firms is palpable. All of the Asian firms offer highly liquid real-time in-running markets with minimal margins that enable all traders to operate without the presence of industry-generated financial millstones. They also offer the choice of the 3-way fixed odds markets (home/away/draw) and the 2-way Asian handicap markets (buy/sell). The European firms, in contrast, do not allow any 2-way markets without prohibitive margins that are sometimes as high as ten times those offered in the Far East. This leaning towards a three runner race rather than a two runner event is indicative of the European layer's general attitude. The Europeans are pitiful in their in-running analysis - as Schecter said: "The more they watched, the less they knew". When bookmakers are not able to entirely corrupt an event, there are three fall-back strategies available to them. Firstly, they would choose to randomise the event as the horseracing industry does with the handicapping system that penalises historical good performance. Their second option is to nudge punters in the direction of financially inappropriate markets. For example, last night Dietrological had one of our rare losing positions - it was on the Lyon versus Rangers Champions League match. Pre-match, we were with Lyonnais but, by the interval, we were convinced that Rémy Vercoutre had been taking lessons from one Fabian Barthez - the Glaswegians had only three shots on target in the game and Rémy was conspicuous by his absence from the ball's proximity in each case. During the half time interval, we wished to hedge our position. In Europe, we were flummoxed by the bookmakers who only provided us with the option of trading either on the draw or backing Rangers. We had no view on the eventual outcome and merely wished to get off Lyon. The only manner that this hedge was able to be enacted was via a mixture of trading on the handicap markets in Asia and on the spread markets (despite their horrendous margins) in London. The third option utilised by bookmakers on events outside their control is to either refuse to price the event up in the first place or to refuse to pay out winnings based on an assessment that if you know something that they don't, you must be privy to inside information. The bookmakers have a highly bipolar relationship with inside information - in their hands, it is creative criminality to enhance returns to shareholders; in the hands of anybody else, it is a travesty of justice.
The liquidity of the in-running markets is massive - as much money is traded while the game is in motion as in the week leading up to the match. Aside from the incidence of an internally controlled event, the level playing field presents an opportunity for the most professional market participants to succeed to the detriment of the less skilled competitors. On the professional and profitable side, you have the top analysts and the Asian market makers; on the other side, you have the European bookmakers and the leisure punters. Unable to compete with the former, the European layers are forced to target mug money for their in-running bookmaking.
Dietrological utilise inside information, neural networks and our Unified Trading Model (UTM) to analyse events. Our pre-match portfolio is created incorporating each of these elements with inside information being responsible for approximately 50% of our stances, black box technologies 15% and the UTM 35%. We have developed in-house a specific neural net for live events which is currently of minimal value to our trading operation. This is outrageous. The European firms either refuse to offer the markets without scandalous margins or they refuse to allow professionals to trade - try ringing around Ladbrokes, Chandler, Paddy Power, Hills and the rest of them asking if they close winning accounts. Unless you are backed by muscle, Asia is an equally challenging environment. We use just one market maker in the Far East that we have developed a trusting relationship with over the years. This company is the exception that proves the rule that all Asian accounts are likely to be compromised by non-payment or a timely disappearance underground as they oscillate between different territories paying backhanders to the likes of Shinawatra so as to be able to bank their illicit gains. Earlier this year, leading Asian layer Pointbet ran off with the money of their clients and, several years ago, 3StarBet did the same only to continually reinvent itself anagrammatically as Bet3Star, StarBet3 and 3BetStar! All leisure punters must take care with any firm that seems to offer in-running Asian handicap markets without a prohibitive margin. A prime example of this is 10Bet. Despite their London address, 10Bet are based offshore and, similarly to Pointbet, they utilise a ghost address in Europe to disguise their geographical location. The only way to get your winnings and, indeed, any deposit back from these charlatans is to threaten legal action, a baseball bat or both!
So, what are we to do? We have created an amazing in-running black box trading model and, yet, there is not one publicly-available environment anywhere on the planet that allows a non-criminalised, financially meritocratic platform for trading our model.
In a final lunacy, our beloved government has brought to law The Gambling Act 2005, which has allowed the bookmakers access to the airwaves to promote their addictive but corrupt wares, but does absolutely nothing to protect punters. For instance, the current Ladbrokes advert which enables Ian Wright, Ally McCoist, Jimmy Hill, Chris Kamara and Lee Dixon to sell their collective souls for a dollar makes no mention of the fact that Ladbrokes (like all casinos and traditional bookmakers) do not allow winning accounts which effectively means that any visit to such an establishment (online or off) represents an acceptance of voluntary taxation to the private sector. Entertainingly, in the advert the lads discuss the merits of Liverpool, Chelsea and Newcastle winning the Premiership which creatively omits the only two teams that are likely to win the title. Such adverts depart a significant distance from the truth.
The government has proactively provided a foundation for an underworld, a cartel, a massive corruption, a reality with a particularly sinister template - depending upon where you stand, the British gambling sector may be any or all of these things.
In the twisted world of governmental marketing, that is your fondest dream in case you haven't noticed.
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
From the perspective of the punter, in-running markets offer many benefits. All pre-match imponderables resolve themselves in front of your eyes in real-time and, additionally, the playing field is considerably levelled by the fact that the market makers are seeing pretty much the same visuals as the leisure traders. Obviously, the bookmakers incorporate advantages into this more meritocratic environment - live streaming of games on Betfair is delayed by up to thirty seconds, for example, and trading rooms have access to a multiplicity of camera angles to bestow the seeds of benefit. A further tilt to the bookies is that inside information relating to the match may remain hidden from leisure viewers until the explosive nature of such information explodes into reality via a penalty kick or a Michael Owen special. But, despite such provisos, the action is analysable to all.
Now, bookmakers despise meritocracy in the same manner that Shinawatra does financial probity. Prior to a game, the bookmakers and brokers have an informational advantage that is only replicated by top notch market analysts and insider traders. By the time kick off comes around, any layer worth their salt is aware of the corrupt mechanisms underpinning an event. But, in a world of fragmented cartelisation, the ownership of the outcomes of events is a battleground where the individual power lobbies fight for control of the match, the market and, ultimately, the profits. For this reason, all but the most psychopathic of the trading firms are forced into taking hedging positions in the period leading up to kick off UNLESS they have total control of the match in question. This bookmaker's dilemma influences their in-running strategy.
Trading in-running is more akin to a poker market than a football one. Trading must be undertaken at speed and bluff positions analysed intuitively using market memory and aspects of forensic psychology. The difference in strategy between the European and Asian firms is palpable. All of the Asian firms offer highly liquid real-time in-running markets with minimal margins that enable all traders to operate without the presence of industry-generated financial millstones. They also offer the choice of the 3-way fixed odds markets (home/away/draw) and the 2-way Asian handicap markets (buy/sell). The European firms, in contrast, do not allow any 2-way markets without prohibitive margins that are sometimes as high as ten times those offered in the Far East. This leaning towards a three runner race rather than a two runner event is indicative of the European layer's general attitude. The Europeans are pitiful in their in-running analysis - as Schecter said: "The more they watched, the less they knew". When bookmakers are not able to entirely corrupt an event, there are three fall-back strategies available to them. Firstly, they would choose to randomise the event as the horseracing industry does with the handicapping system that penalises historical good performance. Their second option is to nudge punters in the direction of financially inappropriate markets. For example, last night Dietrological had one of our rare losing positions - it was on the Lyon versus Rangers Champions League match. Pre-match, we were with Lyonnais but, by the interval, we were convinced that Rémy Vercoutre had been taking lessons from one Fabian Barthez - the Glaswegians had only three shots on target in the game and Rémy was conspicuous by his absence from the ball's proximity in each case. During the half time interval, we wished to hedge our position. In Europe, we were flummoxed by the bookmakers who only provided us with the option of trading either on the draw or backing Rangers. We had no view on the eventual outcome and merely wished to get off Lyon. The only manner that this hedge was able to be enacted was via a mixture of trading on the handicap markets in Asia and on the spread markets (despite their horrendous margins) in London. The third option utilised by bookmakers on events outside their control is to either refuse to price the event up in the first place or to refuse to pay out winnings based on an assessment that if you know something that they don't, you must be privy to inside information. The bookmakers have a highly bipolar relationship with inside information - in their hands, it is creative criminality to enhance returns to shareholders; in the hands of anybody else, it is a travesty of justice.
The liquidity of the in-running markets is massive - as much money is traded while the game is in motion as in the week leading up to the match. Aside from the incidence of an internally controlled event, the level playing field presents an opportunity for the most professional market participants to succeed to the detriment of the less skilled competitors. On the professional and profitable side, you have the top analysts and the Asian market makers; on the other side, you have the European bookmakers and the leisure punters. Unable to compete with the former, the European layers are forced to target mug money for their in-running bookmaking.
Dietrological utilise inside information, neural networks and our Unified Trading Model (UTM) to analyse events. Our pre-match portfolio is created incorporating each of these elements with inside information being responsible for approximately 50% of our stances, black box technologies 15% and the UTM 35%. We have developed in-house a specific neural net for live events which is currently of minimal value to our trading operation. This is outrageous. The European firms either refuse to offer the markets without scandalous margins or they refuse to allow professionals to trade - try ringing around Ladbrokes, Chandler, Paddy Power, Hills and the rest of them asking if they close winning accounts. Unless you are backed by muscle, Asia is an equally challenging environment. We use just one market maker in the Far East that we have developed a trusting relationship with over the years. This company is the exception that proves the rule that all Asian accounts are likely to be compromised by non-payment or a timely disappearance underground as they oscillate between different territories paying backhanders to the likes of Shinawatra so as to be able to bank their illicit gains. Earlier this year, leading Asian layer Pointbet ran off with the money of their clients and, several years ago, 3StarBet did the same only to continually reinvent itself anagrammatically as Bet3Star, StarBet3 and 3BetStar! All leisure punters must take care with any firm that seems to offer in-running Asian handicap markets without a prohibitive margin. A prime example of this is 10Bet. Despite their London address, 10Bet are based offshore and, similarly to Pointbet, they utilise a ghost address in Europe to disguise their geographical location. The only way to get your winnings and, indeed, any deposit back from these charlatans is to threaten legal action, a baseball bat or both!
So, what are we to do? We have created an amazing in-running black box trading model and, yet, there is not one publicly-available environment anywhere on the planet that allows a non-criminalised, financially meritocratic platform for trading our model.
In a final lunacy, our beloved government has brought to law The Gambling Act 2005, which has allowed the bookmakers access to the airwaves to promote their addictive but corrupt wares, but does absolutely nothing to protect punters. For instance, the current Ladbrokes advert which enables Ian Wright, Ally McCoist, Jimmy Hill, Chris Kamara and Lee Dixon to sell their collective souls for a dollar makes no mention of the fact that Ladbrokes (like all casinos and traditional bookmakers) do not allow winning accounts which effectively means that any visit to such an establishment (online or off) represents an acceptance of voluntary taxation to the private sector. Entertainingly, in the advert the lads discuss the merits of Liverpool, Chelsea and Newcastle winning the Premiership which creatively omits the only two teams that are likely to win the title. Such adverts depart a significant distance from the truth.
The government has proactively provided a foundation for an underworld, a cartel, a massive corruption, a reality with a particularly sinister template - depending upon where you stand, the British gambling sector may be any or all of these things.
In the twisted world of governmental marketing, that is your fondest dream in case you haven't noticed.
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
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