politicalbetting.com

The ramper/impersonator exposes a vulnerability

Those who were on the site at about 6.30pm last night would have followed the attempt of a ramper to influence the Ken and Boris betting prices by creating exchanges as though they were by regular posters here.

The “dialogue” started with him creating what purported to be a comment by me saying I had information about an exit poll saying things could be quite close. It then went to cover quite a few regular contributors and these looked like genuine posts. There was, of course, no exit poll.

Looking at the Ken and Boris prices during that period it did appear to lead to some laying of the Tory and betting on Ken with the result that the prices moved a bit. Some people commented last night that they had changed positions as a result of what was being said.

To stop this happening again the only posts that will be accepted for instant publication will be from those people that our server recognises as having contributed here before without problem. So the name and the email address must match up with previous posts.

If there is a discrepancy the post will be put into moderation to be approved/rejected when I get round to checking it. I will be giving Paul Maggs the facility to approve/reject such comments as well

Most contributors will find that they will not be affected by the change. If you are please be patient.

We cannot be operating 24/7 and there might be periods where posts by new contributors might be blocked for some time.

The important thing to remember is that one you have had a comment approved then you will be publish instantly provided you operate in a proper manner.

Mike Smithson

The Irish bookie relents and the winners get paid out

On Tuesday Peter the Punter (Peter Smith) reported on a battle that he had had with the Irish bookmaker, PaddyPower, over a bet on Mike Huckabee in the GOP caucus in Kansas on February 9th when Mitt Romney was priced as the hot favourite to take the state.

It will be recalled that the first indication here of a possible upset came at 8.11pm (GMT) with Jfsl posting - “Fox predicting Huckabee will win Kansas.” At 8.22pm, Caveman posted that Paddy Power were still offering 6/1 Huckabee. At 8.28pm, Peter took £20 of that 6/1 and had a further £20 at 3/1 with the same firm at 8.35. quite a number of site visitors also got money on.

Paddy Power took the market down around about 8.40pm, which was the time the result, proclaiming Huckabee the winner, was given on the official Republican website. Unfortunately the bookie decided that those who had got money on had made what is termed “late bets” and these were voided.

Peter Smith took this to the Independent Betting Adjudication Service (IBAS) which “acts as an impartial adjudicator on disputes that arise between betting/gambling operators and their customers.” Alas this proved fruitless with the panel adjudicating “in favour of the company who were within their rights to stand or declare the bets void.”

On Tuesday Peter reported here on what had gone on. The result has been a quick change of mind by the bookmaker.

This is the message that Peter was sent: “Having recently reviewed past customer queries/trading decisions we have come to the conclusion that a decision to void your bet placed on Mike Huckabee in the Kansas Caucus was incorrect…I can confirm that your bet (placed on the 9th February 2008) has now been settled as a winner and not a void selection…On behalf of Paddy Power please accept our apology for the initial decision to void this bet and for any inconvenience the delay in rectifying this matter has caused you..On top of this I have credited your account with a free bet of £50 as a token of good will..We hope this matter has not deterred you from continuing to bet with us as a valued customer and hopefully you’ll back a few more winners!” - Neil Macdonald, Customer Support Deputy Supervisor

Well done to Peter for all his did pursuing the case. Well done to Paddy Power for seeing sense. A black mark to IBAS for the decision it took.

Mike Smithson

Peter the Punter looks at possible new developments (1)

The day after Super Tuesday, Mike and small group of us PB camp followers met in a café near Leicester Square and despite suffering election night fatigue, alleviated only slightly by some rather nice red wine, a number of ideas emerged, the more sensible of which Mike asked me to mention here.

Social Events PB Parties have proved very popular and been well supported. Naturally we are not limited to one a year and we propose another in early summer, probably at the National Liberal Club again, especially if we can book the terrace overlooking the Embankment. Technically I suppose PB resides in cyberspace but the NLC has become its unofficial home on earth and for very good reason. Not only is it a superb building but it provides ideal accommodation and sustenance at reasonable prices. We will probably be using it increasingly, and not just for parties.

We would like to organise some smaller get-togethers: perhaps a dinner, or simply drinks. Again, the NLC suggests itself as a suitable venue but there are plenty of alternatives. These are easily arranged and need not necessarily involve Mike or me, but if people want to use me as a conduit, I am happy to assist. It would be nice if some of these events could take place out of London, but it would need somebody local to arrange them and so far nobody has stepped forward.

We also thought there might be a demand for some small seminars and talks. The PB community includes a number of journalists, pollsters, MPs, media people and the like who I am sure could be prevailed upon to offer their services at a modest cost. Again, the NLC or possibly the House of Commons suggest themselves as venues. Such events could easily be combined with suitable sustenance and I am sure would be very enjoyable.

On the betting front, some will recall that I promised in an earlier thread to set up a syndicate that would place hypothetical bets and win a notional £20,000. Morus quickly pointed out the flaw. A bet simply isn’t real unless it’s for real money. We have decided therefore to see if we can find about, say, ten people willing to pool their money to get this venture off the ground. Results would be open for all on PB to see, though obviously only syndicate members would have access to the funds and the authority to bet with them.

Mike and I will be very interested to hear everybody’s views. We can then we can make a few announcements once we have gauged the response.

Finally, we haven’t forgotten about revamping Formal Wagers Corner. This has been delayed by some minor technical hitches.

And even more finally, we have been kicking around an idea to promote PB in the wider media, but I’ll deal with that in another htread thread.

Peter the Punter (Peter Smith)

All those who enjoying coming to the site, and not just those who post, will be most welcome at the fourth PBC party a week tonight.

Once again it will be held at the National Liberal Club, Whitehall Place, London SW1A 2HE. The date - Friday 25th January 2008, from 6pm until about 9.30pm, or when thrown out if sooner.

There will be a cash bar and a £5 entry charge, payable on the door, as a contribution towards sandwiches and nibbles. Ladbrokes have donated £150 towards the event, thanks to the influence of regular poster Matthew Shaddick (Shadsy) of The Magic Sign.

Since it is pay on the door, no firm commitments are necessary but it would be helpful if you could give an indication if you are intending to come. We have worked on the basis of about 50 attendees, but if it looks like being much more or less, we may want to alter arrangements. Name tags showing stage names will be available but are strictly optional.

Thanks to Peter the Punter (Peter Smith) and Augustus Carp for the work they have done setting this up

Well done Ipsos-Mori: Last Saturday I had a bit of a rant about the way non-voting intention questions are reported. It will be recalled that the commissioning newspaper, the Sun, was making a big deal about Brown’s ratings as a PM in a poll that had his party 10% behind. The reason was that the voting figures are just based on those who are certain to turnout while the other questions related to everybody in the survey.

In its detailed data the pollster has now included comparative data and on all the questions, bar who would be best in a crisis, Cameron beat Brown amongst the group on who the voting share figures were based.

Politicalbetting point gets raised in Parliament. The CentreRight CONHome off-shoot had a piece by MP Greg Hands earlier in the week based on a story here about the unusual betting on the afternoon Gordon U-turned on the November 1st election. He wanted to know what the rules were about “insider trading” and got back a fairly inadequate answer.

Sean Fear’s Friday Slot will not be appearing this week.

FT REPORT A finger on the political pulse

by Ross Tieman, Financial Times - Published: Dec 07, 2007

Mike Smithson is on a roll. Britain’s foremost political spread betting aficionado is profiting from the opportunity bonanza offered by political upsets in the UK and the US presidential race. “It’s been a great autumn,” he says. “I have got a hefty wadge that has been transferred into my bank account. Since October, I have done about £6,000 [of profits].”

You can’t make a living from political spread betting, says the author of The Political Punter- how to make money betting on politics , but you can certainly turn an interest into a nice little earner.

The end of Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s brief political honeymoon and the campaign-trail upsets of candidates for the Democrat and Republican nominations are meat and drink to Mr Smithson, a former political journalist.

He has been betting on politics since he was at school in 1964. But it was only in 2004 that his fascination with political betting led him to set up www.politicalbetting.com, a discussion platform and information service for political gamblers.

Feeding the development of political gambling is in his own interest. Mr Smithson estimates that there are as few as 1,500 regular political gamblers in the UK, although the number swells to millions on the eve of an election. US constraints on online gambling have impeded the development of a political gambling market there. But Britons are just as happy to bet on US elections as their own. Mr Smithson says British wagers on the 2004 presidential election totalled £35m, against maybe £25m of bets on the UK Parliamentary election the following year.

So what’s going to happen at the next UK general election? “I don’t know,” he says. “I am betting on what I think the market will think.” It is a vital distinction. The liveliest bets are currently on how many seats the Conservative party will win at the next general election, whenever it is held.

The Labour party needs to win 325 Parliamentary seats for a majority in the House of Commons. As Labour’s fortunes have waned, political gamblers, who seem in the majority to be Conservative supporters, have bet on the Conservatives winning an increasing number of seats. By anticipating that they would back their rising optimism with bets, Mr Smithson has made money.

Mr Smithson plays for modest stakes - typically £100 a seat, and closes his positions inside three weeks. In November, he bet on a rising market in Conservative seats at 291-293 and the spread rose to 295-302, giving him a five-point gain. He watches opinion polls closely. He tries to anticipate the political betting market. “For the next month I know where it is going,” he says. Does that apply to the US race too? “I am quite heavily committed at the moment,” says Mr Smithson. The market is moving fast as perceptions of candidates change rapidly in the run-up to the January 3 Iowa caucus. “I think Hillary Clinton is not going to do as well as people are expecting,” says Mr Smithson. “I am a Hillary seller at the moment.”

Among Republican candidates, Mr Smithson is a bull of Mike Huckabee, an old-fashioned conservative from Arkansas. “I think he is going to do quite well in Iowa.”

But is the political betting market any good at predicting real-life outcomes? “I think it is,” says Mr Smithson. But if you want to consistently profit from it, he says, you have to exit before the actual elections arrive.

The above has been reproduced in full from today’s Financial Times

Is it as “devastating as we were led to believe?

Earlier this evening this appeared on the Daily Telegraph blog - “Tonight’s YouGov poll for the Telegraph is, to quote our polling guru Anthony King, ‘one of the most devastating I’ve ever seen’. That’s quite a verdict from a man who has been looking at these things for four decades.”

This set peoples’ imaginations racing especially as the last poll to publish, ComRes on Tuesday, had the Tories 13% ahead with Labour down at 27%.

This evening shares with changes on the last YouGov poll a weeks ago are: CON 43% (+2): LAB 32% (-2): LD 14% (nc). So not quite on the scale of ComRes but still the biggest ever Tory lead recorded by the internet pollster.

The changes that appear on the paper’s graphic, above, are not the same as those in our comparison which looks at the last YouGov poll and not just the last one to appear in the paper.

In many ways I consider this to be better for Cameron than ComRes. That had the Tory share down a point while this latest YouGov survey has them up two at a record 43%.

If these levels were repeated in a general election then the Tories could be looking towards an overall majority of 58. Very workable.

For punters the big question is whether this will shift the spread markets? My guess is that it will but not by that much.

Mike Smithson