The Footy Trader

I was reading Ray the Sports Traders’ blog a couple of weeks ago and he stated that if you could do 1% per day as an increase of your betting bank then at the end of one year you would have €3,778.34 at the end of that year due to the compounding effect.

So here is the challenge to myself and my readers – Let do it !!!

As soon as I have the 100 in the betting bank at Betfair to get it started, which will be in a couple of days time I will document the rise of the bank from the 100 to the €3778 in 365 Trading days. Note that it is trading days that I am talking about, it is only fair after all to have a day off now and then. I am so keen to start today that I may just go for the 1% of €100 with the betting bank that I have already of €17.09 Euro.

I will be trading on the football as per usual and when there is no football I will have to find another sport that I can use to make the 1% per day. On 92 days I should have a betting bank of €249, half a year it will be €617 and on day 274 I expect to see €1527.76 sitting there.

The plan is to aim for 2 or 3 percent for the day but be happy if I make the 1% which will be the daily target.

I will tell you the total of the bank for the day and whether I am ahead of the target or behind by how many days. It would be great to see in the comments if there are fellow traders working the same challenge, so get posting if you are doing it too. I will be using Betty the betting bot for my trading, and probably testing other software for my readers along the way too.
Good Luck to us and good trading.

Seemed to work a little strange this evening with the Blackburn vs Villa game and indeed with all of the games of the Champions League too. The games are still running and I have bets on the Valencia game still to do the job and also a loss on the Villa game. I just decided to trade out of a losing position with 4 Euro at risk and leave it so that if it is under I lose 89 cents and 2 Euro if another goal is scored. Villa are winning 2 nil away from home.

I did have a small profit there and decided to go one more spin with the back and then lay after the first goal and the second goal went in before I could seal in the profit.

But what is strange is that the liquidity didn’t seem to be in the markets for the unders today. Many times I looked and there was a gap of 5 or 6 ticks in between the back and lay prices. So when you place a back bet you have to wait for the lay side to come down 6 or 7 ticks before you can see some profit instead of 2 ticks. I looked at the chart/graph show showing the movement of the prices and the first part of the match the wasn’t the usual downward trend of the prices that I expect to see. Weird

It is important to show that you can deal with a problem and protect your betting bank

stuff. I think I will have to make use of BetIE with the learning mode in a few games to see if this is going to be a regular pattern.

Update

The Valencia game ended so I have a small profit there. I had some profit from the Liverpool game and the Villa game will make it either a day of no profit of a small loss.

That’s OK though because it is important to show that you can deal with a problem and protect your betting bank.

Well Villa scored a third and that leaves me with the small loss of 1.17 Euro overall for the day, no worries though as it could have been worse if I had not acted upon the situation.

I have plumbed the depths with the losing the money on that horse race last week but I have been working the 2.5 goal market again and had a series of winning trades. I have been able to increase the betting bank from the low point by a small amount of Euros but a nice percentage. Better to work with a proven profit strategy than to go the very risky route of trying to win back losses too quickly with unsound practices.

19% increase in the betting bank in 3 days of trading

The percentage increase in the betting bank since the low point has been 19% approx. I am happy with that because looking at it terms of percentages makes it scalable to when I have a larger betting bank to work with.

I have been assessing more betting software and of course I make comparisons with BetIE the betting software that I have been using for some time now and find to be very competent. Why look at other software then? Well there is never anything that can be all things to all men (or women), each of the software programs I have looked have strengths and weaknesses. BetIE is a good allrounder and particularly good with the horse racing. Very good options in BetIE for dutching, hedging and basic trading.

For more advanced trading I find that there are other programs that do it better, though mostly it is the addition of a longer trading ladder that makes most of the difference. BetTraderPro I have been trying and I do like the way it works for the trading. The trade off (pun intended) is that it costs more to own or use. You have to either buy minutes of use or pay monthly. BetIE is great in that you only have to buy it once and you have good software that works with good support and no monthly costs.

BetAngel is a pro software that I have as a back up for when I want to do a greening up and BetIE sometimes struggles with that task. I have the free version of BetAngel and I plan to try out the test that is available for 20 days.I will be able to give a fuller report on what I think of BetAngel. It does look to have some great charts to help with the trading as well as the ladder interface.

One I am looking at now it MarketFeederPro. Like BetIE it has a learning mode which I find invaluable for testing out possibilities to see if they will work. It has a ladder interface which I don’t like as much as the one in BetTraderPro, but useful all the same. Another good point in favour of MFP is the fact that you can buy it outright and not have monthly expenses. A negative is that it does cost more than double the price of BetIE. But….. It does have a very interesting quasi programming or scripting that means it can be used to do things automatically. I am still finding my way around this, so you will have to wait to get more comment on this aspect of the program.

With MarketFeederPro you can tell it to look at all horse races for the day and apply certain criteria to the betting on those races. You can set up your own ideas as a script that will run independently once you set it in motion. Obviously while this is a benefit it is also something that could be quite dangerous and hazardous to your betting bank if you get it wrong. At least though you can test it fully with the learning mode though. I have the trial period with this until the 5th of next month so I will be able to tell you more as we go. I have been trying out a set of triggers with the under 2.5 goal market and it needs a good bit of tweaking to work that way I would want it to work. With the horse racing I have been having success with hedging on the favourite. There is a nice thing that sets up a greening up on Betfair trading based on a percentage target that you put into the settings.

I will tell you more about MarketFeederPro in the next few postings here. I suggest you have a look for yourself also. So you can see what I am talking about. There is a nice long testing period, which is totally necessary due to the complexity of the program. More so that you can test things out than you need to struggle with the interface though as it works in a similar way regards backing and laying.

Racing Place

The last 2 days have been profitable for the RacingPlace with just over 27 points of profit reported. Seems like they are getting back on top of things there. The last 7 days shows a profit of 38.28 points which would be 382.80 if you are using a stake of a tenner.

Yep thats right I had one of the hard lessons today. I am a fully paid up member of the TWIT club. I had a couple of successes with the trading of the horses then I did one and could have left it with a small loss of 60 cents but I went on to try and turn it to a profit even if it was going to be small and I end up losing about 75% of my bank which is my worst day of trading ever. What I have left is not enough to trade with and I and bloody annoyed with myself.

I used the green up button and the software did all the damage for me, but it was my own silly fault for not leaving it alone. The one that did most of it was a lay bet with 7.59 at odds of 8.20 and of course the horse went on to win. I pressed the button to do some greening up and I should have left it alone. I blame myself for using BetTraderPro live and in running not realising all the trouble I could get myself into. The horse race was a long race of 4 miles and that was part of it too. The horse was in the leaders at the start then the odds went long – up to about 20 or so and should have been OK to lay but in this race he had plenty of time to get back into it and win it.

I should have stuck with BetIE and I would have been safer I think. .

So what do I do now? Well for a few days at least I will be using the learning mode in BetIE because of having no funds hardly in my account. I was looking at the possibility of moving to Betdaq. The reasons being the lower minimum bet and also the lower cost of commission. The only problem with that is the lack of software to do the trading. I like using Betty the betting bot and I actually like the BetTraderPro software also. I am considering learning how to do some programming and make up my own software to use Betdaq and also be native on my AppleMac. Now that would be nice, even though I have Windows inside Parallels on my iMac I would rather not have to run Windows at all. I think there is certainly a need for some betting software for the Mac and also for Betdaq.

I was looking at some other software called MarketFeederPro and it looks very interesting although today when trying to run it to make some test bets in its learning mode it wasn’t working as it had been earlier in the day. What I like about it is the way that you can do triggered betting with a mild form of programming which is kind of like using the Automator that’s in my Mac OSX operating system and is pretty easy. I have a suspicion that it is written as more or less an Excel scripting language and I don’t think it is robust enough for professional use.

Another good point for it is that it is available for a once off price although it is more expensive than BetIE. It also has a ladder interface in it but it is not as nice as the ladder interface in BetTraderPro. The learning mode makes it worth spending some time looking into a little more as I have a test version for 14 days for assessing properly.

So was the day bad enough losing most of my bank – No not really, to put the icing on the cake England have to lose at Wembley to Croatia putting them out of the Euro2008 competition. At least I wasn’t trading on the game. I had seen Croatia play in the last World Cup and I knew that were going to be a tough side to play against but England only had to draw. Going 2 nil down inside 14 minutes was a bad start and even though bringing back to 2-2 was some compensation they could keep it and let in another goal.

I probably would not have been greened up by the time the first goal went in either. I would not have made any money on the under 2.5 goals market even if I had some money to trade with………

I tried out the plan to trade with nearly all of my betting bank right at the start of the game with the Under 2.5 goal market. I bet 85 euro on the unders and got odds of 2.06. Just as the game started the odds went up one tick then started on its way down. I laid off 60 of the trade at 2.02. The I laid off a fiver at 1.98, tenners at 1.97 and 1.95. So at ten minutes into the game I was in with a profit of 4.80 approx on the unders. I then greened up to leave me with 2.48 whichever the final score was.

So the final result for the day was 2.89% increase of the betting bank. A good result I think.

My internet let me down again. The day started off OK and I was able to log in an make a post in the blog but when I went back to do some more there was no connection. I was thinking that I would have to some ringing of the provider and complaining on Monday morning again, second time in 2 weeks. But hey presto here we are again back on line, totally mysterious…..

Racing Place

Just checked out the results for yesterday and they showed a loss of nearly 14 points, not too healthy.

Yesterdays Results Profit = -13.95 Points
Races Bet on = 28
Races Won = 7
Strike Rate = 25 %

As can be seen in the monthly stats they started off well April through to July but went kind of downhill after that. You have to hope they are going to see a turn around some time soon.

I think I will just keep on watching Racing Place for a while longer.

Football Trading

I would have traded on the Northern Ireland game and possibly the Scotland games yesterday. The NI game would have worked out well but there was an early goal in the Scotland game. The 3rd goal came on the 90 minutes so it would probably have been OK in the end but would have taken some time to get to a trading out level I expect.

Lets see what happens today then….

After taking a day off from working the horses and also the football I was able to get into it yesterday and actually feel like I was getting the hang of it. I traded eight horse races, on two I made nothing and I got profit out of the other six. I was being cautious though and didn’t make big money with it, but I feel that the doing it and increasing the bank without any losses was more important for the day.

The first race was the most successful when I layed a horse called Baharah at 1.22 with €25 and backed it for €25 at 1.28 just before the off. The I used the hedging button in BetTraderPro which does a trick so that I can back at less than minimum of €4 to green up fully. It fired in a bet at 1.30 of €1.15. So you can see that the price when up a couple more ticks after I closed out for profit at 1.28.

The next best amount of profit was on a horse called Angle of Attack which I layed €20 at odds of 4.5 and backed it €20 at 4.7. Then when I greened up the software put in the bet of €0.82 at 4.90. So I could have had more profit on this one also but maybe it was getting close to the off and I needed to finish off the trade before the race got under orders.

There was racing in the evening but I didn’t bother with it preferring to sit down and relax for a while with a film on the TV, although I did trade on the England game in the under 2.5 goals. I had a profit out of it but could have made more if I had been concentrating, towards the end of the game I could have put in the bet which would have released the money I had greened up. The game finished nil – one for England and I was greened up by 10 or 15 minutes. I started with a back bet of €20 at 1.76 wishing I had caught the 1.81 that was there before the game started. The I layed off a couple of fivers at 1.72 and 1.71 before greening up at 1.68.

I may try the tactic of using more of my bank to capture a couple of ticks at the start of a game before laying off most of it to work with the more cautious amounts I prefer. I would have those couple of ticks cleared away in the first few mins of the game and then be greening up gradually until 15 mins.

The overall result for the day was only €3.64 but as a percentage of the bank is good enough at 4.43%.

I also used BetIE in learning mode to test a strategy with the England game. Before the start of the game I backed the over 1.5 goals with €100 at 1.38. The plan being to lay at lower when the goal went in. Well it worked out so that I layed at 1.28 just after the goal and that left a nice profit of €5.64. The danger to this strategy is the game with nil nil or with a single late goal. Given that nil nil happens only in 8% of games and that around 40 minutes is popular for scoring the first goa, it could be an idea worth following up.

Yesterday was a migraine headache day and not a good day to be trading. You have to be able to think straight for trading. Besides there were no football matches to get excited about anyway. Probably will have to wait until Saturday for some good football games to trade on. I might have a look at the horses later today with the BetTraderPro software although I don’t have too many minutes left to use up. I think the best value is to pay for a monthly subscription if you are going to go monthly rather than use BetIE which is a one off payment.

Just had a look at the Racing Place and I see that they had a poor day and lost all of the profit from the day before. Well that happens to be best of us. Still only half way through the month and there could still be a profit by the end of the month.

I will probably have BetIE opened up today to do some trading in learning mode to practice a little perhaps.

Well I had the use of BetTraderPro with minutes that I bought and I set to work on the days racing. I tell you what I really need some practice. At the end of the day the betting bank is about 9 euro lighter. There were not enough races where I made decent profits to offset the ones where I got it wrong. I won on about half of the races and the losses were just bigger on the ones that lost me money.

There were a couple of races where I had a profit ready but tried for some more and ended up with a loss. I think there is a lesson in that !!

In the evening I turned my attentions to the football and that didn’t go too well either. These were Copa del Rey games here in Spain and out of 3 games I made money only on one of them. The other 2 I came out even which was OK but I had to take a chance betting on 2 more goals being scored in both matches that had early goals. In one of the games the first goal came in the third minute. What I did was to place a lay bet on the unders so that if there were 2 more goals I would be saved. I decided to do that as these were poor teams against top teams. Fortunately Villareal and Levante both came up with the goods. The other game was with Zaragoza who were beaten by the lower team, that was the one that I made money on.

Anyway back to the trading on the horses. I was trying to read the weight of money to help decide which way to go with it and worked out that in BetTraderPro green indicated upward pressure and red indicated downward pressure of the prices. Not as simple as that though as one second there is a green and the price starts to coome in and you are left to decide, Should I scratch the trade or wait it out. If you scratch and take a loss it will probably go off in the direction that you thought it would in the first place and if you don’t scratch the trade it will just go against you further leaving more of a loss. What a choice.

In the last few minutes before a race the prices are all over the place and even if it is going down you have no idea if it is going to bottom out and start coming back up again. I did miss on a few movements by putting in the first trade at the end of a queue and it not getting matched, the price then heading off in which ever way it was going and I wasn’t on it for the ride.

The other thing is that buying minutes is OK if you are an occasional trader but I quickly got though the minutes and there is not many left after my day of trading. I think I will have to make contact with Dave and Nessie of BetIE and ask what they can do to improve the interface in BetIE. I like Betty but a better ladder interface for trading would be great and I want tabs also so that I can easily keep track of more than one market.

Racing Place

Yesterdays results were good again and shows a profit for the last week also.

I decided to bite the bullet and buy some minute for the BetTraderPro trading software. I liked using it last week and I wanted a bit more time to evaluate it so that I can pass on my thoughts to my blog readers. Obviously the first difference is the ongoing cost of it compared to BetIE, which is just excellent value for money whichever way you look at it. I do like the trading ladder in BetTraderPro though and it makes it really simple to trade on the markets. Having said that though I can’t say that I am totally used to trading at the moment and I had a small loss at the end of the day. I would have made up what I lost on the horses if Betfair hadn’t go offline for a couple of hours when I wanted to do some work with the Football games that were on. In fact the main loss was 5 euro on one race and if not for that I would have had a profit again today. No worries though I am still on target for the 1% per day.

OK I watched the video when Adam shows how a complete idiot could trade on the horses if you follow a couple of rules. 1. let the wins run and have a larger profit and scratch the trades that go the wrong way to

I turned around small losses on a couple of races to small profits

take a small loss or break even. I was pleased that I was able to do this and I turned around small losses on a couple of races to small profits by doing that. I was only using small stakes and would have done better if I had been using more of my bank. Thought it best to take it nice and easy though. I did find one race with a run away drifter though and I was disappointed I hadn’t got more money on it.

Definitely need more practice with it though and I will keep you informed as I use up the 500 minutes that I bought. Should last me 5 or 6 days. I can switch to the grid mode often though and not be using the minutes when doing that. This version 4 seems to be fairly stable so far and has a pretty interface to work with. If nothing else you should consider downloading it to try it out for yourself. OK so BetTraderPro hasn’t got a learning mode like BetIE but thats not so bad if you use small stakes and like me you will be able to make small profits and on a bad day maybe have it cost you less than 3 euro as it did for me on my first day live with it.

Racing Place

Small Profit today with the Racing Place. At least there was no loss there. I sometimes wonder if it would be a good idea to have more than on account at Betfair so that you could use one for Football betting and another for trading on the horses and another just for using with Racing Place for example. Would be really easy then to see where the profits lie. Although you would lose out on gathering the points and getting the reduction in the commission costs.

OK so that that worked out then , just keep it all in one account. Still a good idea though to have a Betdaq account for those days when Betfair is playing silly devils. Like today, although that was a planned downtime that happened today.