Saturday 2 February 2013

A Tangled Webb

I am sure Peter Webb means well, but for some reason he is not being totally forthcoming about the ease of posting comments on his blog. 

I'm beginning to think that it is as impossible to post a comment on his blog as it is to lose money when trading!

While the invitation to leave a reply on his posts appears to be there:
Must - Verb, be obliged to - or not
the requirement to login is clear. "You must be logged in to post a comment". And when you click on the 'logged in' part of the message, you are taken to the following:

Foggy Landing Screen
I suggested in my last post that this was something of a restriction. Not all of us are registered with WordPress and have no desire to be, but according to Peter:
You don't need to be a wordpress user. In fact you actually embedded the key link in your post. I've asked the guys to see if they can mod the landing screen to make it clearer.
So you must be logged in to post a comment but you don't need to be a WordPress user. Clear as mud?

Well, not to me, and while I have my denser moments, I'm usually able to work these things out with my sharp mind, logical thinking - God made me an atheist after all - and years of experience in the IT business, but this one baffles me. Then we get this rather snippy, patronising little comment from the great man:
While I am grateful for the for the huge amount of extra publicity I am getting at the moment. There is really nothing very complicated about how to post a comment.
Now if Peter's posts were all attracting several comments from non-Word Press users I would concede that I am missing something, but if there really is nothing very complicated about how to post a comment, then how come I can't recall seeing any over there?

This issue was also mentioned over at The Sultan's blog, where Peter claimed that:
"I do take comments on the blog, but you are also welcome to visit the forum to chat which is where most of my interaction takes place."
And The Sultan replied:
I have often wanted to comment on your posts but have never been able to do so as they've always been closed off (maybe I need to be a member?). If I'd been able to, I would never have written a blog post in the first place! Over to you, Peter :)
Indeed, over to you Peter, and please, would you spare us the sarcastic and patronising attitude next time, even if we're missing something incredibly obvious? It is unnecessary, it is not becoming, and it does nothing to enhance your reputation as the trader's friend, already a little tarnished following the, in the opinion of several people, at best poorly phrased, and at worst, intentionally misleading statement, that there are events where:
you should have struggled to lose money if you were trading.
That is simply not true for reasons The Sultan has detailed, and I have touched on. I can lose money on ANY event, and so can anyone else. Exchanges work that way - winners need losers and vice versa. we can't all 'not lose money'. 

Comments welcome by the way - and I've had 2,847 so far, which makes me reasonably confident that you can do it. After all, there is really nothing very complicated about how to post a comment, is there?

11 comments:

Peter Webb said...

Sorry Cassini, I am not at all being sarcastic or patronising. I really am actually trying to help. I really don't understand why you feel I am not. It's all a bit bizarre to be honest.

Because you got confused when you went to post I asked the guys to change to logo to replace the Wordpress image to try and make it clearer. I guess you are looking at a cached version?

If you click on reply it asks you to log in, of course you don't have a log in, so you click on register. If we don't ask people to register we get deluged with spam.

You appear to have read much more into this than you really need to?

AL said...

Perhaps Peter meant that it was difficult to lose money if you were using Tennis Trader - free with BetAngel...

Traders have always wanted to know, “Where are the odds going and how much risk am I taking?” Now, thanks to Tennis Trader, you can have all the answers in real time right in front of you on your trading desk. No longer do you need to guess where the odds are going, Tennis Trader will tell you!

Tim said...

I can't see the problem? I've just had a look and registering was easy. It's normal to have to register for posting comments isn't it? It seems to me like you are just searching for another axe to grind.

AL said...

Tim. Please post a comment on Webbs blog. I've never seen one and im registered with WordPress.

WhyAlwaysMe said...

Clearly there is a problem somewhere because there are never any comment's on Peter's blog. It would be great if it could move to a moderated format like Cassini has done. I've often had questions in the past and it would enrich the blog if there was more clarification at certain points.

Regarding the sentance that has caused so much fuss - 'you should have struggled to lose money if you were trading', perhaps he was saying that this was a game that fitted the trading strategy - if you were doing say 20 probabilistic trades in the match the risk/reward ratio was so favourable you should struggle to lose money. He didn't say you would win necessarily but that conditions were very favourable. Like if you did 20 trades and you were getting 4/1 when the true odds were 2/1 then you should struggle to lose money. That's what I think Peter was trying to say.

BigAl said...

Most of the entries I have read on the Betangel blog are written in riddles, presumably designed to generate interest in his product.

I did take a look at his tennis trader thing once and the way I understood it to work missed probably the most important concept of all.

Anonymous said...

I tried to sign up, to be able to post on the blog. Still waiting for the confirmation mail - and yes, I did check the spam filter.

Best regards
T

Little AL said...

I have to agree with BigAl. Most of the entries are riddles and some random posts about how Peter is connected to the markets with VPS, Desktop PC, Laptop, Tablet, Mobile using broadband and a mobile phone connected to the Betfair API and also the website.

I also believe Peter is constantly gathering data from the markets and making graphs, calculating probabilities and making strategies. His first strategy was where he decided to enter a back and a lay bet in the horse markets.

bossman said...

I use the Blogger platform, and comments can be filtered for approval before publication.

Web crawlers or whatever, send me spam incessently .. dunno what they are trying to achieve, but, I think pre-registration, or some method of filter, is a must.

Bossman

Anonymous said...

hi

Unknown said...

hi :)