The Pyckio Blog

A Tipster’s Manual of Style

by Daniel Mateos · No Comments

manual de estilo del tipster

Even taking into account that a Tipster’s statistics are the main element to be analyzed by any punters trusting a third party, there are other factors that should be considered in order to improve the selection process and minimize mistakes while deciding which Tipster to trust. This is what we have called “Tipster’s Manual of Style”, which is focused mostly on the communication from Tipsters towards their followers or subscribers, whatever platform is used to send their regular picks, own blog / web, or social media.

Read more…

The new Rating of Pyckio

by Daniel Mateos · 14 Comments

rating

Today we are announcing the introduction of a change to the algorithm that calculates our Tipster Ratings at Pyckio. We know there will be tipsters who will be harmed by these changes and therefore won’t like this modification. However, our intention is to make our tipster evaluation as representative as possible of the quality and skills of the tipsters themselves. Moreover, our new Rating has been designed taking into account our future Sports Betting Fund that will feed on Pyckio tipsters/analysts to place its bets. In fact, our new Rating includes bet liquidity as a factor, something vitally important to manage a portfolio that has sports wagers as an asset.

Read more…

The Good Tipsters Decalogue

by Daniel Mateos · No Comments

buen tipster

If you want to prove your betting skills as a Tipster at Pyckio, here are a list of guidelines you should consider following to generate, as a PRO TIpster, the maximum confidence in your followers and potential subscribers. Ultimately, it all comes down to do things well and reassuring your picks’ followers. This practices are our opinions that we think every good tipsters should follow:

Read more…

What are investors but natural bettors?

by Daniel Mateos · No Comments

financial markets betting

As happened on the night of the Brexit, the evolution of the financial markets and the bets odds on the next president of the USA have gone hand in hand since the first results of the polls began to be known at dawn on November 9. In fact, the more or less sudden movements began before, in the heat of the surveys that were published or the news that was known about the private emails of Hillary Clinton.

“A priori” the equity markets and the dollar looked badly a victory of the American tycoon. The uncertainty about the policy that would take place would not like the investors, who would sell the American currency and the stocks due to the doubts that their future management at the head of the White House would generate. Therefore, as it was known that Trump had many options to win the state of Florida (one of the keys, with 29 electoral votes) the dollar began to fall against most currencies and futures on indexes that anticipate the behavior of the stocks indexes fell with force. Asian stocks, open, also suffered heavy losses. For example, the Japanese Nikkei-225 index fell a steep 5.4%.

This is a clear example that financial markets are also betting markets. The investors take positions in the different financial assets betting on a certain event, that Clinton won or that Trump won.

In principle, an investor who wanted to benefit from a Republican victory could have done so by selling index futures or buying almost any currency against the dollar, among multiple options. Or what is easier, betting directly in favor of Trump and against Hillary in a bookmaker or exchange. Actually, this 2nd option is preferable, to bet directly on the event, since the uncertainty about the reaction of the financial markets to a certain news is not always clear. Although the expected reaction to a hypothetical Trump victory was the fall of the dollar and the stock markets, we have seen that after a few hours both assets turned over. Therefore, those who had sold dollars or stocks to benefit from a potential win of Trump and had not closed the operation, now would be in losses. And what is more serious, having guessed the initial hypothesis, that Trump became president.

As for the betting markets, only on Betfair Exchange more than € 200 million were matched, betting on the next president of the USA, of which more than € 65 million were negotiated on the electoral night. As can be seen in the chart, Trump was paid at odds close to 13.00 in the Matchbook exchange market during the first minutes of the electoral recount. Anyone who had trusted Trump’s victory could “have bought him” at high odds. He could even have traded and “sold” him at low odds to make cash and guarantee a sure profit, when it was already discounted that it was very likely that the multimillionaire was going to be the winner.

matchbook trump

How far do we want to go? Very easy, financial markets are betting markets, but with a better public image; it’s composed of bettors with suits and ties. Obviously these presidential elections are a clear example in which financial markets and betting markets price the same information, who is the president of the USA. But leaving these elections aside, the evolution of the different financial assets is also always based on the bets made by investors. Will interest rates go up? Will this company be able to increase its profits? Will there be mergers in the sector? How will a weak pound affect the exports of British companies? How will time affect the corn harvest? Everything, absolutely everything, are bets and the prices of the assets are created based on the individual bets of all the investors that make up the market. Investors constantly bet when they make their buying or selling decisions, just like when you decide to bet on a football team or a tennis player. The reality is that the investment has a positive image, a connotation of sophistication, while the bets have a connotation of play, of roulette, of flipping a coin. In addition, as we have seen previously, the reactions of financial markets are often unforeseen; you think you may be taking a position in an asset whose behavior will be favorable if your hypothesis / bet is met but then move in the opposite direction to what you expected. This can be seen in the Eurodollar chart. During the electoral night the dollar fell sharply (it went from 1.10 to almost 1.13) but when the victory was confirmed it practically returned to the starting point. Whoever sold dollars in the middle of the night is losing money.

eurusd

The writer has managed money in both worlds and I can clearly say that for me it has been less difficult to make money betting on sports than in the financial markets, which for me for years are more a Casino than anything else, by much technical analysis or fundamental analysis you know. When trading machines, programmed by complex algorithms, cover most of the operations, it is not easy to beat the market, quite the contrary. It is true that in general, when sports betting the probability of making money is lower because the margins of the bookmakers are higher than those carried by financial brokers. The piece of cake that the operators take is higher in betting. But basically both worlds are similar, it’s all about betting. Performing a fundamental or technical analysis to buy and sell shares has more cache than analyzing the information in order to bet on a match. The first thing usually done by men with ties who earn a salary for it, the second by young guys who want to earn extra money; but in the end, it is absolutely the same, betting.

In short, what are investors but natural bettors?

Daniel Mateos

Co-founder/CEO de Pyckio.com

What you should know before blindly trusting the “star” tipsters

by Daniel Mateos · 3 Comments

Antique Greek OratorWinning in long-term sports betting is difficult, very difficult. The bets are a zero-sum game in which what the bookmakers win is lost by the bettors and vice versa. Only a small percentage of punters is capable of winning in the long term. The importance of the bookies where you bet is critical, because the higher the margins of these, the harder it is to win. In addition, the vast majority of books limit the players who win sooner or later which makes the task more complicated. In countries that have implemented a Gambling Law, it is even more difficult because the best bookies like Pinnacle Sports or some betting exchanges with international liquidity like Betfair Exchange or Matchbook are not available to bet. It is important that any bettor is aware of this before they venture into this world.

The ratio par excellence used by tipsters and bettors to measure performance in betting is the Yield. The Yield represents how much is lost or won for each euro or dollar wagered. In this article we explain the relationship between the Yield, the number of bets and the return you can get to your betting portfolio. Although it depends on the liquidity of the sport and the markets we can say that in the long term it is very difficult to obtain yields higher than 10% and practically impossible to overcome 15%, whether you bet on your own or follow the best tipsters on the planet. In reality it is not easy to find tipsters -with verified statistics- able to obtain yields higher than 5% in more than 2,000 bets.

The above assumes that if you make bets for a total value of € 1,000 per month, you can be more than satisfied if you win € 50 of profit per month and you will be very lucky if you win € 100 or more. We talk about average profits. In a given month even my German shepherdess could get a yield of 30%. That is, there are no tipsters with a crystal ball capable of winning every month. Surely those tipsters with so many followers in Twitter that you trust are not able to generate a yield of 5% in the long term.

On the other hand, one thing is the yield published by the tipster and another one the yield actually achieved by the followers. Bookies move the odds according to demand. If a tipster has many followers the bookmakers will lower their odds severely after the tipster submits the pick and a published yield of 5% can become zero or even negative for the bettor who follows the tipster. The odds drop is more or less evere depending on the sport and the markets. In a World Cup final, liquidity is practically infinite; in a 1st round match of a WTA tournament liquidity can be very low and a tipster tipped price of 2.20 can be transformed into less than 2.0 for the bettor who follows him, thus losing the bet all the value, if it existed.

The explosion of social networks in recent years and the world of tipsters has generated an excellent breeding ground that has been used by many to make a big business, posing as great gurus able to make you swim in bills if you bet what they recommend. They are what I call star tipsters or preacher tipsters. We must recognize that they are really gurus, but in marketing.

This article is aimed mainly at the newly initiated bettors who have begun to follow these tipsters who promise great benefits and self-proclaiming the best tipsters in the country; to the bettor who believe that these tipsters are experts who are almost always right and that if they have so many followers it is because they are so good; to the bettors that tell their friends “I know a tipster who is a guru, with whom I will make a fortune”; to the bettors who are also very grateful because the tipster does not charge a euro for their tips; to the bettors who see how the tipster timeline they follow is full of pictures or screenshots of bets won with hundreds or even thousands of euros of profits and no lost bets, to the bettors who think that winning in betting is very easy because the tipster transmits that to him; to the bettors who ask for the tipster’s statistics but who are not able to get them for various reasons or directly because they do not exist …

We have to be satisfied with the great digital marketing professionals that the tipsters market is giving us, not so much with their tipping skills. They are able to sell their product in an amazing way. They are experts in conveying emotions and enthusiasm in the product they sell and in the packaging. As a consumer, I have always distrusted this type of aggressive sellers, even when it is about products that I did not know. But it is a fact that the masses like it because they are able to generate a really high fan base. Although many do not usually charge anything directly for their tips, their profit is obtained by the affiliation fees obtained by referring users to the bookmakers. Some have gone too far and have even bought thousands of followers, something that anyone can detect with the Twitter Audit tool.

The objective of this article is that as a novice bettor, you have to be careful and know what the reality of this world is. We hope that by reading this article you will gain time, because sooner or later you will discover the reality for yourself. I’m not going to tell you that you’re going to lose all your money by following them because I do not know if it will be like that. Nor am I claiming or ruling out that some of them are not good bettors. But I do suggest to be careful and distrust people who make you believe that making money by betting is easy. The best tipsters are those who are aware of how difficult it is to make money betting and approach this world from a realistic and cautious perspective, those who do not overly presume their results or promise profits, those who they recommend betting reasonable stakes of your bankroll, those who do not blame constantly the luck when they lose a bet, those who do not show the bills they have won, those who have some statistics behind and if they are verified much better. Both in Pyckio and other platforms you can see the statistics of different tipsters and you can consider paying for their tips, as long as your bankroll is high enough to justify the payment of a subscription fee. This does not guarantee at all that you are going to make money following them but it certainly increases the odds. Follow tipsters based on their historical results, do not let yourself be seduced by marketing alone.

Tennis world rocked by corruption allegations – This is how it works

by Daniel Mateos · No Comments

tennis corruption

We have all had the negative experience of betting for the favorite player, only to see that quotes go through the roof just before the match. The match hasn’t even begun, but you already know that you will lose that bet. In those cases, protecting yourself betting for the adversary player will not be interesting, as quotes are already too low by the time you realize what is going on.

In most occasions when this kind of abrupt quote movements happen, the match is won by the player whose quote has suddenly dropped. Even so, it is not a good idea to bet large quantities of money to that player because we can also suffer an “snowball effect”: a player with a previous history of match-fixing starts experiencing a sudden rise of the quotes. This is noticed by punters who start thinking that the match is fixed, bringing quotes higher. The more those quotes raise, the more the market will think that there is something fishy going on. In this case, movement in the quotes, even normal movements generated by the market, will generate additional movements in the same direction. The player whose quotes were raising wins the match, and punters that bet based on suspicion of match-fixing will lose their capital. We can also find the situation when punters with enough liquidity try to generate this initial movement to take advantage of the lower quotes.

Read more…

Sports Betting as an investment

by Daniel Mateos · 7 Comments

apuestas deportivas como inversión

Can sports betting be considered a serious investment? Here our opinion.

Although there are different types of financial assets, we will give as an example the stock market to argue our claims. If you invest in a portfolio of shares, either on your own or through an investment fund, the final return will depend on the following factors:

Read more…

Is it really the bookmakers who set odds?

by Daniel Mateos · 2 Comments

Oodds for betting online

I often hear or read comments that show surprise at the odds a bookmaker has set for a particular sporting event. Of course, bookmakers will make errors at times, especially those who are the first to set prices before the market is fully formed. But generally speaking, it is us as bettors collectively whose are those that set the odds, not the bookmakers.

Read more…

Th concept of “Volatility” in sports betting

by Daniel Mateos · 1 Comment

volatility

The volatility is a term widely used in financial markets to measure the risk of the different assets. The higher the volatility the higher the risk and vice versa. A rational investor will only want to take more risk and therefore assume a higher volatility if the expected return is higher and therefore he is rewarded for that higher risk.

Read more…
Top 10 Sport Sites