The Footy Trader

Trying out another strategy here with this game. I have been using the LazIE bet function in BetIE and set it to take either 1, 2 or 3 ticks with €50 trades. BetIE puts in the first bet at the current odds and fires in a market order the specified distance away. I got to the game 5 mins after it had started and went in and out 7 times with this tactic.

Testing strategies with BetIE and no risk to my betting bank

The profit at 25 minutes into the game was as you see in the image at the bottom of this post. BUT as I was writing this there were 2 goals in the space of 2 minutes. This show that some luck is required as if I had put in a back bet part of the trade at 26 minutes I would be having a hard job of trading out. In fact it got even worse as there was a 3rd goal at 30 minutes putting Manchester City in the lead 2-1 and that under 2.5 goals market is blown out. Good job I went for a one tick difference on the last trade I did. Or I would have been caught.

The strategy I was using proved successful but could have gone wrong if I had tried one time too many. The reason for trying this is down to The Sports Trader Ray in Glasgow testing it out also. 20% of his bank with the target set at 1% on the unders and 2% on the overs. I wonder how he got on with this match ??

I also saw a blog called betbot that looks interesting, he is rolling his own betting bot. Seeing as he has a programming background he has a head start on that. I would love to be able to write a program to automate the job of making money. I saw the video of the betting bot in action on a horse race and with small stakes it was doing OK. Small winnings but regular. The bot was doing all the work and reacting to the market a lot quicker than you can doing it manually. I was quite impressed.

Picture of my winnings on the Manchester City vs Blackburn match.

Using BetIE to do some trading with the under 2.5 goals and again using learning mode due to my present lack of funds in Betfair. I have been experimenting using the hedging tool which places bets for you based on either amount of profit required, percentage movement, or a max liability.

With that tool though it tells you the prices and amounts needed for the bets to win you your desired amount next to the check box for whether you are going for a back – lay or a lay – back type of move. With what I do it is the back – lay that we need. So as you can see in the picture to make 8 euro I have to place a back bet of €72.50 at 1.8 the current backing odds and then the lay bet will be €80.50 at lay odds of 1.62. If there are no goals scored for a while in the game then the 1.62, which could be 10 or 15 minutes into the game will get matched and you have the €8 profit. If you think you can’t wait that long then you could override the lay bet and place a bet in earlier if you wish. You will get less profit though. I have used this successfully with the Spurs vs Fulham game that was on Boxing day. The first bet went in at 2.3 and the second bet went in at 2.04 with the profit target of €10 realised. Also with the Sunderland vs Man United game back odds of 2.02 and the lay odds of 1.82 going for a profit of €12.

When you are ready to set up the trade which should be right after the game has started you just press the blue Back Lay button in the hedging tool and the first of the bets goes in closely followed by the lay bet order. As you can see here in the picture to the right. You will need to monitor the situation in case there is a market suspension for a goal scored, a red card given or sometimes the market just stops and restarts for no apparent reason (that doesn’t happen often) and depending what has happened take appropriate action.

What to do if there is an early goal?

Sometimes there are early goals but if you see my last post you have good probability for no goals at 10 minutes and even at 15 minutes. The choices are….
1. Trading out straight away at the goal being scored.
2. Watching it and trading out after some time when the odds have dropped back down again if there are no more goals scored.
3. Placing a second back bet of at least twice the amount of the first hedging trade and looking to do some trading out after about 5 or 10 minutes.

If you choose number one then you are just going to accept that you have a loss and move on to another game. Choosing number  two option will let you trade out at a smaller loss or perhaps at a break even. There was a Barcelona game recently and there was a goal before I could get greened up, I left it alone and I was able to trade out to a small profit.

If you choose option three the problem with that is that you effectively have 2 hedging trades running and treble the liability if you have put in a back bet of double the original. Whether you can do this depends on the size of your betting bank and the size of the first bet. The idea is that the odds do come down nicely after about 5 or 10 minutes of no goals and you will be able to trade out completely, quicker because of the larger stakes. BUT you do have higher risk and if there is a quick equaliser then you could find yourself no where to go and with a bigger loss. It is a choice you have to make depending on the game. I often find that option 2 is a good choice.

At least you can try out the options in BetIE seeing as there is a learning mode where you can experiment with various strategies to find out what works best for you.

I looked at the Chelsea game to see what I could do with it. The plan was to put in the back bet in at the start of the game for 90 Euro and then lay off a third at 5 minutes and another 3rd at 10 minutes then green up at 15 minutes. The odds were slow to come down I thought but I still had it with 6 Euro profit on the unders when all the laying off was done. I put in an extra lay bet on the unders to leave it at about €3.80 on either side under and over. I did this with BetIE and in learning mode.

I also looked at the European games on but the liquidity was low on those games and I was not impressed the way the odds were moving. I did one of the games with 100 on and greened up at 15 or 20 minutes leaving a profit of 7 Euro. It was Bayern (Germany) vs Aris (greek) in which the final score was 6 – nil. The first goal didn’t go in until 25 minutes so it worked out prety good.

I wanted to make a video today of the  but I left it too late, the 20 day trial was up unfortunately. I will set it up when I put in some more money into Betfair at the beginning of January. In the meantime I have been looking at the stats for the first goal in Premiership games. Using the Soccerstats.com site I put data into a spreadsheet for the first 17 rounds of the season. This is what I have come up with….

At 5 minutes 93% of games are still nil – nil
At 10 minutes 82% are still nil – nil
At 15 minutes 68% are still nil – nil
At 20 minutes 61% are still nil – nil
At 25 minutes 56% are still nil – nil

So you can see that trading in the first five minutes should be great for making money. Only 7% of the games have a goal and that doesn’t mean that the back bet placed at the start of the game is lost. Unless there is a very quick equaliser it is possible still to trade out after a couple of minutes and reduce the possible loss. Or you can place a bigger back bet after that goal and trade out as quick as you can after that to bring it even or perhaps make a profit. It needs a larger back bet maybe 3 or 4 times the original so that you are making more per tick of movement after the market reformed. Or you could leave the initial trade running and be able to trade out when the odds get back to where you started.
It all depends on the game and some knowledge of the teams would be useful too.

My next move is to watch how the odds move in the next couple of rounds of the Premiership and see what sort of movement I can expect and the money I should win when things go right compared to the money that could be lost when the goals come thick and fast. I want to know if there is an optimum level of odds for the first back bet – how fast do the odds change and how many ticks the market moves on average at the start of a game and also after a goal has been scored. I will want to see what number of ticks it is usual for the market to move to when the goal has gone in. So that if I trade out straight away what level of loss will I lock in.

I am determined to use the stats to see if I have enough of an edge to make money from this strategy. Is it best to let all games go 15 minutes and green up or is it best to lay off in 5 minute intervals. Instinct makes me think that laying off gradually is going to be a best option as the first goal gets more likely as the minutes tick by. I think that the stats will give me the best strategy for making money with this market in Betfair. I expect that the gradual lay off and a re-entry into the market after a goal is scored to make some extra trading a few ticks and maybe to add a little more at the end of a game when there is still a nil nil scoreline. There is also the under 3.5 goal market to turn to on some games which could sweeten the pot a little also.

The other statistic worth noting is that so far the percentage of goals at the final whistle that are under 2.5 goals is 53% and in combination with making sure that I have a back bet at a value price then the under 2.5 goal market will be lucrative enough.

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See the new video today

Yesterday I was doing OK. I tried trading on a snooker game and was finding it to be fairly good because of swings in the market and where there is movement there is money to be made. Then I go and spoil it all by choosing the Rangers game for the evening trading. The first goal went in and I wasn’t greened up at all and I bought another position in the reformed market. I let it run and by half time I was just about greened up. I think it was at about 80 mins I decided to give it one more shot to make it a profit and wouldn’t you know it there was a goal in the 85th minute. Not only that I decided in my infinite wisdom to go all out seeing as had most of my betting bank locked into the game, to put in the rest. There was a chance that it would finish 0-2 to Lyon when there was only 4 mins left of the game. What happens but Lyon put another in the net at 88 minutes and that ladies and gentlemen finishes off the betting bank. There is €2.53 left there and that is not enough to work with.

Well it is a shame that it has worked out like that because I really liked the BinarySoft BDI software for trading with, totally excellent piece of software, but now though for a while I will have to use BetIE because it has a learning mode that will allow me to practice my trading skills without costing me my betting bank. Betty is not set up so well for trading as it has a small ladder in trading mode. Also I will be back to using the Betfair digital odds and frankly the Binary trading was just great. I think I will give the automatic hedging facility in BetIE a try out. I know it works well in horse races and I reckon it could be good in the under/over 2.5 goals market.Looking at this with hindsight I think I have thrown caution to the winds too many times and suffered the consequences. It could have worked out for me but the goals and the luck were not kind. It goes to show that protection of the betting bank is of the utmost importance and if I get doing some more I will take heed of my own advice.

On a happier note – Forex Trading

I also trade forex and this week I have seen the profits climbing through use of the Forexforsmarties.com robot. I have had a 17% increase of the balance that I started the robot with and it has been working really sweet. This version 2 of the robot has some enhancements that I like. There is a trailing stop working on the grid orders and the repeat grid orders. I have a trade working now on the Usd/Chf pair that bought at 1.336 and the price hit a level so that it automatically put in a Stop Loss at 1.336 a few minutes ago. The price rose some more and the stop loss has moved to 1.357 so that I would make a bigger profit from that trade.

The grid trades keep on adding small profits to the balance while there is either a profit less than 5% or it is in drawdown and then the robot is set so that if the unrealised profit hits 5% of the starting balance it closes all of the open trades and orders to add the money to the balance and opens up a new position automatically, compounding the profit as it does that.

I did some sums with the forex trading and worked out that with a 5% profit per month I could have a balance of over a million in about 5 or 6 years. Pretty exciting I think. Money management is needed with forex trading as with Betfair trading and it is a good idea to only trade with what you can afford to lose and when there are profits there to take some of it out and have money to spend that is not tied up in a trading account.

At the moment the forex looks very good to me compared to trading Betfair as it just adds money to the balance when using the Forex For Smarties robot, automatically and I don’t have to make decisions that could wipe out my bank totally. In comparison it is a little boring, but it is nice to see the balance growing 5 days a week and get the weekends off.

I have a demo account running without the robot and using only minimal trading. I check it once or twice a week usually although I did forget about it for about 2 months, that started with 10,000 dollars and the balance now is at 14,055.75 dollars with the equity at 13.500. It was started I think during the summer maybe in June. That works out to a 35% increase if I was to stop the account right now and take the $13,500. I wouldn’t do that though because I want to see what it is going to be worth in one year of trading. This is with the Non Trading Method, all you do is to put in a pair of trades of the right size and ratio to each other and leave it alone. If when you look at it, on your weekly or monthly check and there is a profit figure, then you close the trades down to add the profit to the balance and recalculate the next trades.

Have a look on the forexforsmarties site for the videos which show you how to set it all up.

I just chose the wrong game again. I should have gone for Chelsea but went for trading on the Marseilles vs Liverpool as it was on the TV. The first goal was so quick that no way could I be greened up and then the second goal went in as I was in the process of reducing the liability. I was doing it in stages so that tere was a chance that I would be at the point of getting out of a position when a goal went in, but it worked the other way around and I had just bought in and Torres scored the second. Such is Life.

The only thing left was to try and trade out as best I could. At first I was looking at a loss of 20 euro approx but I decided to go for the lay bet on the unders with a hope and expectation for another goal. If the 3rd goal had come in soon enough I was going to get on the Chelsea game to grab some profit to make the day look a little better. No good though and I had to settle with the loss of 9 euro. Seems to be a couple of steps forward during the last days and now a few steps backwards. Ah well all part of the fun of trading on Betfair.

Some point in time soon I will get away from the starting blocks and have some money built up so that I can take a small hit without going backwards.

More news tomorrow…..

I did just 2 games today Le Havre vs Montpellier with a profit of 0.80 and Prague Vs Plzen. With the French game I could have had more as it ended nil nil but I wanted to just do a quick in and out type trade just after half time. The Sparta Prague game ended 3 – 1 but I was greened up well before the first goal came at 27 minutes. The Swansea game in the FA already had goals when I got to look on the results web page so I didn’t bother with it. The final score of 6 – 2 make me think I would not have made money but the first goal was not until the 20th minute so I would most likely have been green by then.

I was looking for the market anomalies again with the Sparta game but with a 8 second in play lag I didn’t get on any of them quick enough.

Profit of €1.65 which brings the betting bank back up to €41.63. It is going to take some time to get it back up to where it should be but I will surely do it – You watch me……

Racing Place
Just had a quick look at the stats so far for this month on RacingPlace and it seems they are doing better than last month. For the month 0.94 points which is not that good I suppose but the last seven day have been decent at 21 and a half points of profit. I wonder if you should have a rule with Racing Place that you stop betting for the day if you get to a certain level of profit. I one comes in the placings at a higher price and the running total for the day is higher than the best you can normally expect on average from the system then, why not stop and get back in the next day.

When I am trading football though I think that having a target for the day is OK but if you stop when there is more left to trade onwards, are you losing out on possible profit? The good reason to stop would better along the lines of having traded a long period of time and you are getting jaded and not making the best decisions. I mean if you stop just based on a target then you have to start again the next day anyway. In a run of trading what is the difference between 30 mins between trades and one day? – Just a thought – What do you think?

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The day was successful yesterday, Sunday because first of all I got a profit and secondly because I managed to recover well from an early goal in the Barcelona game. Fancy going down a goal in the 2nd minute at home to Deportivo ???

Earlier I had worked a nice profit of about 5 euro and I was looking to add more to it in the final game of the day, I placed the buy trade before the game started and there was no chance at all to trade out with such an early goal. I was fortunate that I was able to do some trading after the market reformed to reduce the liability. I brought it back to 13.09 Euro when the goal went in from Barcelona at 41 minutes to equalise. I decided to leave it alone at that stage and do some trading in the under 3.5 goal market. I further reduced the liability buy locking in another 3 or 4 Euro. Then I went to the under 4.5 goal market when there was 70 minutes on the clock and bought a position with the view to hold it as long as possible and let the position expire at 100 on the BinarySoft BDI and take all of the money.

BinarySoft BDI has a nice what it slider thing where you can move the slider to see what you need to get a certain profit of loss on your current position. Even without that I could see that I would win €5.47 if it ended under 4.5 goals. I ended the day with €1.12 which isn’t a huge amount but as a percentage is good. Like I said I think being able to recover to a profit after the early goal is a super lesson. Still very pleased with the way that the BinarySoft BDI works. One thing that I have found to be really ice is how easy it is to spot anomalies in the market. What I mean with this is that sometimes there is money available on the lay side at a lower price than the the current best back price. It is nice to be able to put in an order and have it filled then immediately put in the next order and have an instant profit. These don’t last long but if you are quick it is easy money.

There have been a few games where I didn’t really want to trade because the liquidity was low and the prices don’t move so fast . I am not keen on the matches either where there is more than a tick between the back and the low price. Although sometimes it is possible to put in an order which is the best price on the back side and then when it does get matched put in an order on the lay side which is going to be the best lay price available and get it matched reasonably quickly.

And especially tough for supporters of Birmingham City. I was doing great today and I had just about got back to level after the couple of bad days I had during the week. Then the trading today was working great I traded on 4 games and the profit was coming on nicely. Then I was working the Birmingham City game, they were playing at Newcastle. I was greened up before the first goal but I felt I could get a bit more. Of course there was a goal right after. I reckoned that there was a high probability of a third goal and I was right.
The only trouble was that at 88 or 89 minutes I chickened out and traded out the position to take a loss of nearly 60 Euro. Boy was I miffed when the goal went in at 90 minutes. The only thing I should have done after trading out of that position would have been to put in a lay bet on the draw. I could have put in a large enough bet on there not being a draw and at that stage of the game in the market it would have not cost much if it stayed at the draw. For example if I got it at 1.01 then the 100 bet would have a liability of 1 Euro.
So my betting bank is way down now and instead of being a few days behind target I am sixty days or more behind target. I will still make the target in the 365 days of trading but this is certainly a bit of a set back.
The other thing I perhaps should have done is to have taken the 20 Euro hit after the second goal and then watched to see what was happening with the game. Decisions, decisions.

I will let you know more but now I am going out for the evening so all trading is on hold for the evening.

Would be great to hear from my blog readers. Drop me a line to let me know what your favourite markets are on Betfair, what software you use and what you are having success with.