My understanding is that there was a huge panic on the afternoon of May 7th which led to a huge amount of selling by punters who had long CON buy and LAB sell positions. This led to a change in the prices reducing the CON lead on the market from 25 seats to 19 seats.
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An interesting market on the day which I had a tickle in was selling Alex Salmond's % - I thought Miliband and Cameron were shoo ins to get more than him, and the bet was more or less level providing at least one of them did. Far easier market to make money from than this one.
Again, though, these betting moves do suggest an element of revisionism in the claims that everyone with a blue rosette always knew they were cruising to victory.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/football/fifa/11653273/Fifa-scandal-live.html
I think one version of me is more than enough for the world! The exam past papers really are repetitive. They love questions such as:
- on driving, figuring out the average speed/how many miles someone went et al
- a question on ingredients 'does xyz have enough ingredients to make say, 16 cakes'
- tangent to a circle
- nth term
-stratified sampling
- cumulative frequency
-box plots
You know that these kinds of questions are a dead on certainty to come up in the exam. It's like other topics are invisible to examiners.
Algebra is one of the biggest topics, where you are encouraged to see factorisation, quadratics, substitution, expressions etc. all as unique little subjects, rather than interconnected. It's why, I suspect many get the basics of all Maths topics - but understanding the more advanced stuff is where they fall down.
It's a video from a German comedy show about Brexit.
Wilders to show cartoons of Prophet on Dutch TV http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/faith/article4460745.ece
Dutch broadcasting authorities can't stop him as it'll be in a PPB.
That's a tremendous return.
(As the Netherlands has four parties all with around 20% vote shares, this is not a big percentage drop.)
Probably ends the meme that the spreads are dominated by rich over optimistic Tories.
FWIW I was confident of the Tories winning the most seats and votes for a while, somewhere around 305/310 seats.
Even when a Tory majority seemed likely betfair still had a Tory majority at around 2.95.
I would love to know how he gets that much on, given how quick the online bookies are to close down anyone who is routinely profitable. I assume his syndicate must have to go either into shops with bundles of cash or hang around racecourses?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/football/fifa/11653273/Fifa-scandal-live.html
If you want a really fascinating glimpse into this crazy world, do some reading about Haralabos Voulgaris, one of the worlds most successful basketball bettors.
Seen the photos?? That takes 'punching above your weight' to a new level
On May7th, I began to think that Ed could fool enough of the people all of the time and I was totally wrong. But undaunted, I'm making a confident prediction about the referendum.
There are three main groupings among the voters. The federalists who welcome closer integration with the EU on all levels, the outers who want away and won't be interested in any titbits from Cameron, and finally, the largest group of all. These are the voters who like the idea of a common market, but may jib at the idea of political union. These are the decisive voters.
So it all depends on the honesty of the campaign. 'In' will major on the economic risks and the potential job losses, and may say nothing about the final destination. OUT will struggle on economics and will try to make the political intention stick.
I've been to EU meetings (on the science side) and the reasoning is that political union is necessary for "a level playing field". I've never seen that. Regulations and Directives made into UK law do not make a level playing field. Some countries sign up to these EU laws and enforce them. Some happily sign up to them with no intention of ever enforcing them. You can make a speed limit 30 mph but if everyone knows that it's never enforced, many will drive at any speed they like
Will the federalist talk about political union, their final goal? I doubt it. They will talk about economic risk. Political union? That will take massive treaty changes and will never happen. The honest ones will be drowned out.
So, in 2017, IN will win and it will be taken as the green light for closer integration.
Now, where are the best odds?
"Haralabos Voulgaris is among them. He makes his living outsmarting oddsmakers. And his is a very comfortable living, indeed. One of a small handful of people who turns a large yearly profit betting solely on the NBA, Voulgaris is known to move the lines with his action, which can sometimes be as high as $80,000 a game. He has built up a network of employees, a database of statistics, and predictive models that far surpass what many NBA franchises have available to them. And aside from a small break he took from gambling a few years ago to try to land a job with a team, he has earned his living this way for over 15 years. Haralabos knows. And while he isn’t telling, he is talking."
http://www.businessinsider.com/sweat-in-the-game-a-gamblers-grind-in-the-nba-2011-4?IR=T
Christ someone's getting optimistic on Corbyn.
I am puzzled by the MPs withdrawing support for Burnham and going for Corbyn. I don;t see what that move achieves at all.
That's me blowing my chance to win a fortune at poker I'd beaten odds of ~ 10,000-1 to win the seat though
Yebbut he can't win, right?? Plus you really annoy Burny and look very shifty into the bargain
Bit like the old -'People laughed when I told them I wanted to be a comedian - they're not laughing now!'
Well worth a quick read.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/general-election-2015/politics-blog/11654167/Jeremy-Corbyn-and-his-acolytes-are-simply-in-denial.html
We also had some excellent intel posted on here that Amber Valley and various adjoining East Midlands seats were looking very good for the Tories.
I also posted on here that CCHQ believed that The Gower was possible - another BattleBus destination, along with Brecon and Radnor.
That said, I was seriously amazed at how perfectly all the pieces fell into place....
And long may they be in the ascendancy.
Indeed. No wonder there was a twitter spat. Hodges proposes what labour should have done all along. Stop pretending the likes of Jones are mainstream.
"Veteran left-winger = daft as a brush for decades"
http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2015/05/letter-trade-unionist-britains-trade-unionists
Whoever knew about the massive Tory majority wasn't investing enough to move the markets, even though there was huge profit to be made.
At best, betting has poor predictive power because insiders prefer to keep their knowledge private in spite of strong returns from betting. Alternatively, those insiders didn't know there would be a majority at all.
I also find the Conservative campaign, and the manifesto, to have indicated an expectation of a protracted period of horse-trading if they won enough seats to return to government.
Is there any research on the size (or diversity) of a Crowd which can claim to have inherent Wisdom? I guess political betting types may not be numerous enough, and very possibly not representative enough of those going to actually participate in the election?
The spreads at GE2015 and GE2010 were wrong in opposite ways, and wrong by a distance as the thread points out.
Despite reading this site most days, I have never bet...this just makes it even less likely i ever will!
But do not underestimate how much the polling and the modelling was dragging the market back towards the centre - especially the weaker markets like constituencies and over/under lines.
The headline market of Tory Most Seats was (arguably) showing a much clearer win than the modelling and subsidiary markets (maybe 300-260) and the fact that a Tory Majority [also a highly liquid market] was always a respectable possibility (in the 5-10% range, true) was also at odds with the models quoting it at 0-1%.
This isn't always the case - even in 2015 there's the example of "smart" punters having their moment on the SNP while others subscribed to the more received wisdom that SLAB would be beaten, but not routed.
I wonder if in 2020, on-the-ground reports might carry a little more weight? Sure, they will go through the healthy skepticism filter. But there were nuggets of detail to be mined there.
Ditto Cameron hitting every LD seat in Surrey, Sussex and the SW.
Pinnacle will certainly be back though, just a matter of time - they're already setting it up legally. Their new owner also owns Sporting Index, btw.
I wonder if PB on-the-ground reports look prescient because of the Tory tendency among most active political people here. The Labour ones certainly weren't prescient.
Further information regarding the Rothwell Ward election and the Rothwell Town Council Tresham Ward election
Pathetic and insane.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3112219/Harrowing-footage-girl-7-running-barefoot-shop-asking-drink-hours-dead-50-injuries-years-cruelty-hands-aunt-grandmother.html
The result of yesterday's @KetteringBC election for the Rothwell Ward: TALBOT (CON), SUMPTER (CON), MILLS (LAB) elected. Turnout 31%
The Ashcroft analysis will be during my stint as guest editor in a few weeks time, is quite comprehensive, and will be split over several threads.
No Labourites could articulate what their policies were in a simple list. I copied one straight from an CCHQ email and stuck it on here. Was that LHQ failing to do the same for their ground troops or an unwillingness of Labourites to share? The former I suspect.
Surely Labour have spies on CCHQ mailing lists or they need shooting - we weren't sharing secrets, it was common knowledge - or should have been. 100 000 participated FFS.
Ditto Team2015 activity. We weren't shy to talk about our stuff. @MarqueeMark talked about his canvassing as did several others. Like @bunnco. Bar the rather wide of the mark reports from NPXXXMP, we had hardly a thing except the fantasies of @IOS
It strikes me that Labour navel-gazed a great deal and didn't have anywhere near the quality ground game they pretended to have/couldn't believe that anyone would volunteer for Team2015 who didn't have a blue rinse.
Very stupid. And conceited. I don't exempt the LDs from this either. We have a fair number on here and I don't recall anything much from them either.
Awesome...
@schofieldkevin: Former Ed Miliband spinner Katie Myler will be director of communications for Andy Burnham's Labour leadership bid.
That would have confused everybody.
In hindsight, the worst thing that happened to the Lib Dems in the last parliament was the following
i) Winning the Eastleigh by election
ii) The Lord Ashcroft constituency polling
It gave the Lib Dems and others the perception of being bullet proof.