Happy Birthday Geek

I have not done any trading since Sunday but as I keep seeing my depressing last post every time I login I feel the need to add to the blog to help push it down towards the depths of the archive. I did make an opening trade on a footie game on Monday but scratched it for the same price a few minutes later as I just wasn't in the mood. It's funny how a big loss after such a good run can knock you for six.

I had planned to trade the Cruzeiro game which started at 11.30pm last night but I fell asleep on the sofa about an hour before the start and as I awoke a few minutes ago, I found myself as a sad and lonely user in the chat room. To put the icing on a rather depressing cake the game finished 3-0 and the timing of the goals would have been perfect for my opening AA strategy and my subsequent trades would have netted me a strong profit.

Talking about cakes and in particular birthdays, it is one year since the Geeks Toy was launched. It is excellent trading software and best of all it's free. Whenever I am in contact with fellow traders most are using GT. We are not using it because we are stingy buggers, we use it because the ladder facility is head and shoulders above it's competitors. As I have said previously I use GT in conjunction with Bet Angel as their charting is second to none and is an absolute necessity to predict short term price direction. However, things could possibly change as GT is currently testing an advance charting tool which could leapfrog it's already strong product to even higher peaks of the competitive trading software market. It is yet to be seen whether the product will continue to be available free of charge but whatever Mr Geek decides to do he has already proved that the generosity of his time, effort and lack of financial gain is second to none.

Happy Birthday Geek and thank you.

Finally I have been receiving reports of recent problems viewing my blog in Chrome and Safari. The background does not load properly and sometimes error messages appear. Please note that I have developed and tested my site on Firefox and recommend that it is viewed in that browser as it performs at it's best. It also loads perfectly on all recent versions of Internet Explorer.

Turning A Healthy Profit Into A Big Loss In 3 Hours

I suppose it had to happen. A day which started out so brightly ended with a big loss. It is a frightening example of how easy it is to let things run away with you.

After the successful very early morning games reported in my last post, I added a further green from the Spanish division two game which kicks off every Sunday at 11.00am. The football just goes from strength to strength.

Below is my P&L at 1pm.

However it was soon to turn on it's head. Firstly my laptop froze just as a race was going in play and I lost £140. It was a back bet that was left open so my chances of a positive outcome were always against me. Shortly afterwards I took a loss of £44 on the Grand Prix so by 3pm I was about £140 down and then I went into my irritating chase mode by regularly going in play with all my defenses down and at one point I was £260 down. That's a massive loss of about £305 between 1pm and about 4.20pm. Crazy I know!

I went to the shops to clear my head and returned half an hour later to start again with a clean sheet. Something I should have done two hours earlier. I managed to claw back £60 which included a correct score that was settled at one minute past midnight. I decided to include that in Sundays P&L as it meant that my loss was just under £200.

Regular readers will know that I have these bad episodes now and again. It seems to mainly be triggered when a large loss is caused by computer hardware which is out of my control. I know that I should raise above the frustration but I am only human and it's easier said than done.

I always post my line graph on these occasions to remind myself that despite Sundays awful performance I am still on an upward trend.

Get Out Of Jail Free

By the time I had sent my last post yesterday morning,  I had already traded two football matches. I didn't mention them as I was hoping to add to them but as it happened my next trades were very late and were carried over to Sunday as I had arrived back from QPR later than anticipated.

The chat room was still busy at 10.30pm and three Brazilian games were about to kick off. Most people had decided to trade the Flamengo v Palmeiras as recommended by Adster but there were just a couple of us who had decided to concentrate on Santos v Cruzeiro using the Nugget Nibble strategy which looks for a high scoring game where the goals start to appear early.

Half Time was 0-0. If I had followed the strategy to the letter I should have been out of the match by 30 minutes with a scratch apart from one large green score but I decided to continue to half time which gave me room to make a few trades without having to rely on just one large correct score. I continued into the second half praying for the goals to come and they did. Five of them in total but the problem was that most of them came late so it was past midnight that I needed to green out with a considerable trade. Unfortunately only a small amount got matched so rather than collecting a nice all green position of £59 I ended up with just £17.

 

I was very frustrated but I knew that trading late carried risks of low liquidity. That was my warning of never to trade very late. I got out with a little profit but it could have so easily turned red. However my reasoning was overcome by tiredness and I jumped straight into the fire by moving straight to Colon v San Lorenzo which had just kicked off. The strategy I was using was AA. Most of the people in the chat room had left but Razor stayed on to offer advice. This is one of the major benefits of the chat room, there are always people ready to help. He wasn't trading the game but was willing to stick with me as I think at the back of his mind he thought my decison to play this game was a mistake. It truly was but that was not necessarily because I had applied the wrong strategy, it was because the liquidity was very poor and the prices on offer were way off what they should have been.

Razor did his best to guide me through an exit strategy but the prices were just not there and I had resigned myself to a £37 loss. Razor left with about 10 minutes to go and with time fast running out and the score at 1-0, one of the few options open to me was to lay the U1.5 market.  I did this with 5 minutes to go and my lay was matched with 2 minutes gone of the 4 minutes added time. The lay price was far higher than it should have been but 30 seconds later Santos came up with the goods by scoring the important goal.

I had just used my get of jail free card and the lesson has been well and truly learnt.

So today I am currently £34 in profit and with so much sport still to come I am determined  to significantly build on that. Easier said than done!  My plan today is to get involved with Elche v Valladolid  and then concentrate on this afternoons horses. It will be the first time in quite a while that I have been able to devote time for an entire horse session and I am looking forward to getting back to what was my core trading sport and attacking those ladders over the five meetings. I also want to do something with the Singapore Grand Prix but I am not happy with the prices on offer so will follow the early laps before deciding what to do. If I am still in the mood I will join the chat room in the evening for possible Spanish football trading.

I will try to write an entry tonight with the final results of the day.

Just Got Back

I had another successful trading session on the US horses on Tuesday night but I have been in Paris since Wednesday. That meant that I was unable to log onto Betfair. I did do a couple of things on iBetmate on Thursday but nothing serious. I will be back to trading the footie tonight so perhaps I will see you in the chat room later.

25 Minutes of Heart Stopping Hell

Early this morning I had already decided to trade the Deportivo Getafe match and my strategy of a slight variation of AA was confirmed when I checked all the odds 30 minutes before kick off. 

The one thing this strategy needs is a steady stream of goals and things could have been better at half time with the score 0-1 but it wasn't necessarily a bad position to be in. I had been doing a few little bets here and there throughout the first half to keep my position as strong as possible. The best scenario for me was a score of 2-1 about midway through the half but I wasn't really expecting it as Getafe were the better team. However two penalties in quick succession converted by Deportivo overturned the score into my ultimate position of 2-1 at 57 minutes.

As you can see from the above, I was in a very strong position for my staking levels and I could green off both 2-1 and 2-2 and other scores which would have given me about £100 across all the future scores plus I had a profit on the over 2.5 market. 

I was in heaven........but wait......it was still suspended. My heart missed a beat, It was like someone was watching me and saying oh no you don't!  Fate had shown it's hand and I was left high and dry and totally helpless as the game was being playing out and there was nothing I could do about it. Apparently the Betdaq market was fine so I am not sure what the problem was.

3-1 and I would be well and truly stuffed. 2-2 was good but I would lose out on the greening up of 2-1. On 70 minutes my heart sank as Getafe equalised. It would still be excellent profit if the game stayed 2-2 but because I was not able to put in a few bets on other scores my position was weak if another Getafe goal went in. Why does it happen to me!

The suspension continued until 80 minutes when suddenly it was lifted. Hooray! I just needed to wait for about a minute so that the market could settle then I placed my closing trade.....8......7......6......5.....4.....3 suspended again! By this time I was screaming obscenities at the computer and typing them in the chat room. It didn't make me feel any better and then my wife came into the room and had a go at me for my bad language and to stop acting like one of the kids! I told her to get ready to call the ambulance if I keel over in the next few minutes!

Three long minutes had passed and the suspension was lifted again and I had to go through the hell of waiting for one minute before finally getting my final trade in to secure £75.

The game ended 2-2 and after all that happened I said to myself, it was a shame that the suspension was lifted as I would have won £123. I still see that 2-1 and think what a waste of a profit. I wasn't the only one using the AA strategy so at least we were all in this hell together but everyone else in the chat room was very supportive. Unlike on the Betfair forum where abuse is part of the furniture!

Adster and Bingo run the Trading Football service but they were not in the chat room tonight. They don't need to be there all the time as the service continues with all members supporting each other in their individual strategy. Their latest post states that they have the best Football chat room on the net. You would expect them to say that but it truly is.

You only have to look at my  football results in September to see how things have changed. That's why it is so important to keep records.

By the way don't ask me what the AA strategy is. You will have to pay £25 like everyone else to find out but it's cash well spent!

Winning Isn't Everything.....Is It?

Blogging is all about sharing information. Had I not subscribed to Trading Times I would never have discovered about the website Bettor Logic.  An absolutely marvellous tool for instantly examining almost every football stat possible. Perfect for my recent restructure of my football strategy. Thanks Eddy.

Bettor Logic has a 14 day trial period and after that it is £20 per month. This tool and my monthly subscription of £25 to Trading Football plus a load of their videos is a significant investment and not one that I have taken lightly but £45 is my target profit for each game. Football and particularly my high flying QPR is my passion so it is only sensible that I really hone in my trading skills in this sport.

I am enjoying it
while it lasts!




In stark contrast to this is the unbearable torture of what is US horse racing. Having said that I suppose it can't be totally unbearable if I continue to watch it but it comes pretty close. There is no doubt that I have a good skill at it as I am consistently profiting but unfortunately the satisfaction of profits doesn't outweigh the non enjoyment of the sport. I accumulated £44 for about two hours work between 10 and midnight but I don't want to be doing this every late evening. I am not desperate.

UK horse racing as a sport doesn't ring all my bells either but the various types of racing (flat, hurdles, chase, short and long distance) the buzz of the fast moving ladders, the decent pre-race commentary and the occasional ability to delve in play makes it a totally different experience to the US format.

Don't Trade Tired

I was working late Wednesday night and just caught the end of the Webinar which was trading MK Dons v Southampton which went well for the followers. They were also trading the CL game at Arsenal and made their profits very early on in the game.

Naturally after the footie loss the previous day I felt a little left out so I decided to do some late night footie trading. There were some Brazilian games starting at 11.30pm so I chose the Gojas v Botafogo game as it had the most liquidity. These games tend to be high scoring so I thought that 1.94 for over 2.5 goals was pretty good. Having said that I did no research so I am sure there was a valid reason for the price. I placed my first trade 10 minutes before the start and  thought that I would hold off doing anything on the correct score market for about 10 minutes just in case there was an early goal. However I found a new strategy that would net me £90. It's called falling asleep!  I dropped off for about an hour then the realisation hit me that I had left a rather large open position. I quickly looked at the screen and to my massive relief discovered the market had been suspended as the half time score was 2-1. It's not the best strategy in the world. The market settled after midnight so my profit was recorded on Thursday.

I worked late again on Thursday so popped into the chat room. There wasn't an official trading session but there were plenty of people chatting which just goes to show what everyone thinks of the service. I caught the end of the Wolverhampton meeting so continued on into US racing whilst chatting and picked up a useful £30. I also delved very briefly into the Snooker league.

There are quite a few people that have an opening trade of backing under 2.5 goals. Personally I think it's the wrong move. Trading this way means that your opportunities are limited. If three goals go in within the first five minutes then your stuffed before you have settled comfortably on the sofa. However if you trade the over 2.5 goals it could be 0-0 after 80 minutes and you could still have a chance of three goals going in or at least two and trading out.

The Late Session

A combination of two quick goals by Tottenham, a mix up with the stakes of one trade and a speculative bet outside of the recommendations meant that I lost £32. Had I kept to the instructions as set in the the Trading Football chat room I would have ended with an 80 pence loss. There were over 50 people in the room and as expected if you were not quick on actioning the instructions the price would move quite considerably and there would be far more questions from the attendees which would confuse the conversations. This was the first time I had got involved with their 'Trade of the Day' and in future I will use those matches as a learning excercise rather than a serious attempt at trading. The chat room is open 24/7 and there are always games being traded with less people and that works well. As I get better at this I should be able to trade more independently which will make things easier.

After the football I was looking at what opportunities were available to claw back some of the loss so decided to trade the eight or so US races that were left and I did so well I ended the day in profit. You will see from the screenshot of one of the races how it is possible to make money with low liquidity. There is something I have been doing which really helps which you can understand I don't want to give away but it does help achieve about £5 per race. The problem is that I don't want to be trading late at night with such a boring market but it definately is worth getting involved with if you have had a bad evening and you want to recoup some losses. 

However, there is always a big risk hanging over you when trading US racing. The best opportunities are close to the off and sometimes the market suspends early and you can be left high and dry as there race doesn't go inplay.

Collecting My Own Nuggets

I know I have started to fall into my old habits of long periods without posting but to be honest the week has gone very quickly and it feels like only yesterday that I had my big win. I owe that big win to the nugget crew over at  Trading Football because I left an open position while I was following the conversations in the chat room and it is with them that I am convinced is the way forward for me during these Autumn & Winter evenings. I traded the horses on Thursday as I was not working and I continued right through the US racing. There was also the weekend but there has been little opportunity at any other time and I must find another sport to concentrate on. I have been trading some of the greyhounds quite well but it's boring and not really for me.

You will probably think I am obsessed but I have spent most evenings in the football chatroom, studying their videos and learning the strategies. I have really put all my energies into making this work and the people there are so accomodating.

The Betfair Guru left a comment in my lost post which says:

Good steady growth and a decent set of results.
Although if the football profits are anything to go by, I think I've done well to avoid the nuggets this long!!

He has totally missed the point. The football P&L he refers to was using my poor strategies. It has only been since Monday the 6th September that I have joined the nugget service and my whole concept of trading the footie games has been totally overhauled. I have been using lower stakes this past week and the results have been positive. On Wednesday the football profit was £67 and tonight I reached just over £100. I have looked through my football data since I started this blog in April and the highest profit I acheived before this week was £46 on the 12th June. I have passed that total twice this week. That is no coincedence.

One of the regular guys on the football site has a blog http://soccercompounding.blogspot.com. He has an interesting challenge where he is trying to reach £2000 by the end of the year starting with just a £100 bank.

Just to show that there is no motive for me singing the praises of Trading Football, please try it out if football is your fancy by going through the above blog. There is a link to Trading Football although for some reason it doesn't show if you are using the new update Firefox 3.9.

Earlier this week I received an email from Betfair inviting me to a free advanced course of trading held in London. The first is on 7th October with one in November and December. There was nothing discussed on the Betfair forums and no other blog that I subscribe to has mentioned it either. I am very curious as to how many of these invites were mailed. It seems a very unusual thing for them to do. Unfortunately when I applied I was too late as all three days were full.

The email read:

We would like to invite you to attend a free training seminar, the sessions are designed to be fun and informative, giving you a chance to meet Betfair representatives and like-minded fellow users. We appreciate your continued loyalty and would like to thank you in person. So please take time to look through the information provided and book yourself on the course of your choice.

Pre Requisites
To attend this course you should have a good knowledge of the Betfair betting platform and be accustomed to placing bets on it, with a decent working knowledge of the settings and functionality of the site. You would ideally understand the fundamental differences between Betfair and the high street bookmaker and how an exchange operates. You will need an awareness of the theory behind trading, either backing and laying the same selection or multiple selections in the same event.

Course Content

• Sports Trading Environment - Learn the ideal set up for betting or trading from home, everything from internet connections, TV subscriptions and suggested channels  to computer specifications and just about everything required for the ideal home set up.
• Betting Banks - We explain how a relatively small daily percentage profit on your capital can be achieved. 
• Preserving capital - Learn why winning is less important than not losing. Why preserving capital is far more important than winning a bet.
• Hedging – Green book - Learn how to turn a potential profit into a certain and guaranteed win. Learn how to reduce, minimise or even eliminate a potential loss.
• Price leverage - Find out how to average your position and how it can drastically improve your odds and results.
• Laying or backing multiple selections in the same market – Horses and Football -  Using the percentages to your advantage. How to bet on multiple outcomes and secure profit no matter which one of the outcomes is the eventual result of the event.
• Cold trading. This is trading an event before it starts. It shows the differences between pre event betting and in play betting and the differences in market behaviour
• Graphs - Learn how to read graphs and trends what information you can gain from using them.
• Signals - Learn how the markets move and why and what events will create movement. Learn to read the signals and market trends and discover how to recognise resistance points and the top and bottom of the market.
• Trading Mentality - We explain the correct thought processes for making sound decisions. Take the emotion out of potential mental minefields and dilemmas and have a more methodical approach.
• API Products - Learn the basics of the various API products. What they are, what they do, how to use them, how to access them and discover which product suits your style and technique. API products are like cars, they all do very similar things but are quite different under the bonnet. 
• Volatility - Find out which markets are volatile and fast moving and change direction in an instant and which are slow and steady and only move one way until an event occurs that changes them. 
• Analysis - This is the process of researching an event and coming to a conclusion on which position to take during the event. We take you step by step through the process of researching and analysing various upcoming matches and how to take advantage of what  you find out.
• Knowing your sport - Teaches the benefits of having thorough knowledge and the advantages of focussing on one specialist sport and becoming an expert on that subject or the versatility of spreading your knowledge across a wide range of sports and markets to take advantage of the many opportunities that arise daily.  
• Short Priced favourites - Watch and learn how to take a position on a red hot favourite and make money after the event has barely even started.
• Danger signs - Find out what the danger signs are. When to stop trading, when to take a break and when to walk away. 

Specific SportsWe will be exploring the various Betfair markets and the idiosyncrasies of several mainstream  sports and how their markets differ in behaviour before and during the event.  Some examples are cold trading, volatility, liquidity, liability and other market related techniques. 

• Horse Racing
• Football
• Cricket
• Tennis
• Golf

Learning Outcomes

Anyone that takes this course will leave at the conclusion with the following learning outcomes. They will be taught how to do everything below in detail and be shown live examples of the vast majority of subjects.

• Optimum  time to Back
• Optimum time to Lay
• Hedging
• Offsetting
• Scalping
• Using Software
• Select trades - Analysis
• Manage positions
• Utilise trading tools
• In play trading
• In running race trading
• How markets move and why
• Discipline and Mental approach.
• Associated markets
• The different methods of trading relating to market type. I.e. Elections and X – Factor v Football and Racing

Conclusion

The Advanced Sports Trading course will transform your Betfair experience by giving you knowledge and confidence to improve your performance in markets you are currently active in and enjoy. It will give you the courage and desire to explore new sports and markets that you may previously have believed you did possess the ability to enable success. It will teach you that sports trading is not just for those with years of experience, it can be mastered and enjoyed by anyone armed with some knowledge and confidence and a little bit of training. To succeed at most things in life we need to be trained and shown how to do it properly using every advantage available and this course will give you the tools to become a highly proficient sports trader. If going full time is not your goal, the course will allow you to drastically improve your strike rate on winning trades, allowing you to stay in the game for far longer and get a much more enjoying experience from your trading activities.

Food and beverages will be supplied on the day.

It sounds really good. Maybe I got an invite as Betfair could see that I have real potential. Perhaps they think I can get to a position of paying the premium charge!

If anyone else has received this mail or better still have made it onto the course I would be very interested to know. It will be good to hear a report on how the day went.

Secret Gold

My horse racing activity continued to be solid as I reached £70 from a good afternoons racing. I was trading the first at Wolverhampton while at the same time chatting over at the Trading Football site. My multi tasking skills leave a lot to be desired and like a couple of days ago I left an open position and by the time I realised it the race was over. I was expecting the deserved loss to wipe out my afternoons efforts. However this time the coin flipped in my favour and I collected almost £200.

It's nothing to be proud of but it's about time that these stupid mistakes come out on my side for a change.

I spent the evening watching a batch of footie trading videos that I purchased from the Nugget Crew and it opened my eyes to the wonderful array of options that are available during the course of a match. From tomorrow I will be testing these strategies and hopefully my days of consistent footie losses will be a thing of the past.

Take a look at Trading Football for yourself. It costs £25 a month and even if you only pay one month and buy a few videos and spend time in the chat room it will be money well spent. They are a great bunch of guys over in the chat room and they really do make you feel at home even if you are trading with £2. There is nothing in it for me but just take my word for it.

Red Alert

 

 

Three days into the new month and three daily losses. At the end of Wednesday evenings horses I had made another solid £61 profit but beyond this my positive results went downhill rapidly. Losses on the Tennis and Football meant that the day ended £11 down.

The following day saw me make a mistake but I really don't know how it happened. I left a liability of £170 when I went onto another race. There is no excuse as I should have noticed that my bank was lower than it should have been.  Had the horse won I would have been very pleasantly suprised. I didn't do much yesterday but still managed a small loss. 

Looking at my line graph I don't seem to be able to push upwards beyond £2,000 and I seem to dip as soon as I consider whether to withdraw some of the bank. Hopefully I can show some green today as I trade the horses this afternoon.

I subscribed to the Trading Football Markets a couple of days ago at £25 per month. I will start to get involved in their trades over the weekend but I must say that info being shared in the chat room has been very good.

A Consistent End To August

When I got home about 6.15pm last night there were only five UK races to trade but there were enough large swings in all of them for the greens to add up. I also did a little on the US racing. I am going have to rely more on the US rading as the UK meetings start to dry up.

The day before I had a go at the Tennis for using the Bet Angel odds predictor as a guide but unfortunately that didn't work out. I obviously need some tuition in that area.

As the month ends I can look back with a degree of optimism. I only traded sixteen days  in August so I am more than happy at achieving £519 with just one red day. Well over half of this was achieved in the last five days and if I can continue at £55 per day  then I will reach my original target of £9,000 by the end of the year. Easier said than done but at least I have a positive attitude.

I started following blogs in 2008 and one of the first trading blogs that I continually read was Bet Your Life Sports Trading. Alistair's positive experiences was one of the reasons why I started trading so it is sad to see that he has been struggling of late. We all hit a bad patch at some point so I am sure that his fortunes will turn around soon. It will be a shame for him to pack it in after all this time.

I notice that Mudflaps at Betting for a Living has stopped blogging but he leaves us as a successful trader. He went full time a few months back and is going to concentrate his energy on the trading rather than the distraction of keeping up the diary. I perfectly understand this and wish him all the best for the future.