The Footy Trader

I am pleased to announce the latest in my series of Podcasts – Wizardcast 33. In this one I talk about matched betting. I give tips and hints on how to get started doing matched betting.

There are Free bet available on the Online Bookmaker sites and all you have to do is to know how to lay the bets off so that you can claim the money Risk Free.

The bookmakers don’t mind because they keep on giving free bets to get new customers and they add Terms and Conditions to make sure they are not abused. In fact for us if all goes well they bookmaker ends up with money in the pocket they wouldn’t have had otherwise because what we want is for lay bet to succeed at Betfair rather than to win at the bookie and have to withdraw from our bookmaker account.

You can use software to do this or you can work direct on the Betfair site. I can recommend BetAngel, BinarySoft BDI and BetIE very highly. Each have strengths and unique points to appeal to different types of Betfair traders.

Please head on over to iTunes to add a comment about the podcast and go to Digg and any other places to add Wizardgold Blog and podcast.

Thank you my loyal listeners. I just checked my stats with Libsyn which provides the bandwidth for the Podcast and my podcasts have been downloaded over 27 thousand times in all. Sweet !!

Tags: Podcast, Wizardcast, Wizardgold, matched betting, free bets, Betfair, betting exchange, Betdaq,

I have a trade running  on the Borussia Dortmund vs Hertha Berlin at the moment on the under over 2,5 goals market. I have a bet running on one side of the market on WBX and the opposite position on the same market on Betfair trying to take advantage of a matched bet with a bonus from WBX. This stemmed from trying to get the WBX account funded and have no luck with the credit and debit cards.

I will trade out of the position late in the game if the goals stay the same as it is now on all at 72 minutes. Then if there is a very late goal I could end up getting paid on both sides of the position.

I also have a position running on the Swansea vs Millwall game – Millwall scored in the first minute and I could do with Swansea winning this one even though this is also a matched bet.

Update

Millwall won the game and I have that cash in WBX.   On the German bundesleague game I made the money on the unders in Betair. I have an increase of about 4 or 5 % on the betting bank even though the funds are getting split up. Looking forward to using WBZ and see if it is a good alternative to Betfair. Nice that they have a smaller minimum bet amount than Betfair.

In fact I have just seen that the extra bonuses from placing the  I have done already are there waiting for me already. Cool -  I like it…..

I thought it was high time that there was a video showing how this software works. The concept is different in that instead of using the Betfair odds 1.87 or 3.45 or something like that, you have zero to one hundred. The closer you get to 100 the closer you are to the event happening. 99 for example would be equivalent to 1.01 in Betfair odds.

With trading you would buy at 55 for example and sell at 56 or higher to make money on the trade. Or you could sell at 66 and buy at 65 or lower to make money. It just depends on which way the money is going. For me at the start of a football game the odds head down or come in (in Betfair terms) and with BinarySoft the number goes up.

What I like to do is to buy at the start of a game and take my profit at 5 or 10 minutes into the game. I even think it is a good idea to set the sell to take just a couple of ticks of profit and get out quickly. Maybe it seems a little strange just reading about the concept, it took me a while to get my head around it, but once you see it in action you will understand it better and see the logic in it.

Just have been trading on the Ajax vs Rotterdam game with the under 2.5 and the under 3.5 goals markets. I was lucky to have all my trading finished before the 34 minutes goal spree that saw the scoreline jump to 5-1 before the half time whistle.

I have my 1% trading profit in the bag already with trading on that game and also the Schalke vs Wolfsburg game. I am taking a cautious approach with my trading at the moment and it seems to be paying off. It is nearly half time with the Schalke game and it is still nil-nil. I probably could have taken more from the game but after the initial trades I have decided that I should wait until a goal is scored before having another go. If I do I might even go back in on the under 3.5 goals market on Betfair and keep the safety in the trading.

Today I am trading with BinarySoft BDI which has a 3 month trial period and I like to use because I can use it native on my Mac. I am totally impressed with BetAngel and can do more with it such as dutching, hedging, , bookmaking, making a market and just about everything. It even links up with Excel the spreadsheet and can do automated trading. I don’t have Excel on this machine though. The graphs on BetAngel’s enhanced ladder tab are just great because they update live.

BinarySoft BDI is supposed to be getting graphs soon also, only today there were upgrades to the interface which I found very welcome. The windowing is good, even though I prefer not to have too many window scattered all over the place. I found that all I need to tear off, to have separate, is the market selection window. Then when I have the markets chosen I can hide it away.

Last weekend I recorded a video of the software in action but I may have to start again as the interface looks a little different now.

Racing Place and 80/20

80/20 recommend that you should have 30 times stake as your betting bank

The results not great so far today but there is still the Wolverhampton races to finish yet. I have been setting up the bets using BetIE and keeping score in a spreadsheet. Using the RacingPlace tips and the 80/20 today has been a poor day altogether and unless something good happens in the last 2 races half of the good start we had on day one will be wiped out. This is why they recommend that you should have 30 times stake as your betting bank. So for me with this test that would be 30 times 20 = €600.

Thank goodness for the learning mode in BetIE that’s what I say!!

During the day I set up the bets for the Racing place tips but again with the 80/20 staking plan. Didn’t go as well today and the day ended -€5.76 which is -0.28 points. The profit overall is still 7.65 points at €153 after Betfair commission.

I bet on 21 horses, there were 4 winners and 5 placed which is quite poor as a strike rate. Taking that into consideration I would say that the 80/20 place was the saviour of the day, bumping up the overall profit.

I have set up 17 bets on horses out of 18 selection for today, on one horse the odds for the place bet  was below the 1.27 minimum on Betfair. So lets see how things work out for today with BetIE.

Football Trading

Last night I traded using BetAngel and Soccer Mystic on the Brann (Norway) vs Everton game and also the Rangers vs Panathanaikos. I got the 1% of profit and shut up shop. Both of the games finished under 2.5 goals. Everton winning by 2 goals and nil nil with Rangers, so I could have possibly made more on the games with bets later in the games and without trading out particularly with the Rangers game, but 1% is the target and I plan to stick to it.

And I will not be able to do much with it as it is the weekend of Carnaval on the Costa Brava and in particular today in Platja d’Aro. Heading out to see the parade in about 15 minutes and all the games start in 30 minutes time, so I will be out and will miss them. But sometimes you have to have a life too.

I did do something with the one game that started at 13:45 between Manchester City and Arsenal. I had a go with the unders after the first goal was scored by Arsenal at nine minutes into the game. I put one the back side at 2.32 and traded out at 2.26. I had not set it to green up and the profit was all on the unders. I was using BetAngel / Soccer Mystic to do this trading. It was a good job I didn’t do much else with the game as the second and third goals came with in a couple of minutes of each other at about 26 minutes. That finished off that market and I toyed with the idea of looking at the under 3.5 and the under 4.5 markets but it was lunchtime and I wouldn’t be able to concentrate on the matter in hand.

The fulltime score just finished was 1-3 to Arsenal and with that I would have lost with the correct score market, if I had put money on it. I was only able to dutch it in learning mode today anyway. If I was doing it for real I would have put something on the possible 1-3 as it was not covered by the unquoted scores part of the dutch. I would have been able to reduce the loss by a few euro anyway.

After my disappointments with the interface of Soccer Mystic yesterday , I thought I should actually read the user guide. It is good to try out software without doing that first because you get a better idea of how intuitive it is, and mostly it worked well enough. I didn’t need to have the Confirm Bets checkbox checked to make sure that the software didn’t lose me some of my betting bank when I clicked on something I wasn’t sure about. It is all pretty straight forward.

While reading the user guide I found myself thinking ‘Wow thats cool’ a few times and being impressed with the tricks it has up its sleeve to help me make money. Some of the things were a different way to do something I can do already in another part of the software, but with the control over what happens being set differently. For example in the Bookmaker tab (which only places lay bets) I can set how much I want to stake, how much I want to have as profit or just go by the minimum bet amount and then by using the Margin Maker checkbox on the unders side of the market, see what odds I need to have the lay bet go in at to make the money. It is similar to making a back bet on the unders then laying off as the price comes down when no goals are scored at the start of a match. The difference being that the back bet part of the trade is replaced by making a lay bet on the overs side.

impressed with the tricks Soccer Mystic has up its sleeve

I also tested out the Make Market button on the One Click tab. This can be used in the time leading up to the start of a game when there is not much movement in the prices. I clicked the button when the back price was 2.12 and the lay price was 2.14. Soccer Mystic then places bets on the wrong side of the market as it were. So orders went in for a back bet of 2.14 and a lay bet of 2.12. When both of these orders are filled there will be a profit due to the spread between the prices asked for in the order. I did it with the Spurs vs Arsenal game about 20 hours before the game was due to get under way, and left it overnight. In the morning both of the bets had been matched and there was a small profit from the minimum size bets Soccer Mystic had placed for me. The only thing is that you don’t have any control over which bet gets matched first and you might need a plan in case one of them doesn’t get matched when the game goes to in play. I expect though that doing this well before a game is due to start there would be only a small risk that it doesn’t work out as it is supposed to.

Another area of interest is the correct scores or even the match odds for dutching. With the correct scores there are certain scores that happen more regularly than others, so by making a bet that covers those scorelines you can have a good chance to make money. I think I would prefer to test that theory though by seeing how many times I need to win that type of bet compared to how often it loses and what effect that has on the betting bank. The strategy can be enhanced though by covering a correct score possibility that is unlikely to pay back smaller or not at all if it happens. The effect of this is that you get a better percentage profit overall while having a smaller risk. There are about 7 scorelines that happen more than others. I will give you more about that in another posting.

Soccer Mystic can also be connected to Excel the spreadsheet to make automated bets if you know how to do that in Excel. I don’t know enough about that to comment right now but will perhaps look at later.

The ability to have the stake size determined by the price you want to make per tick is useful too. This is because of the tick sizes not being equal. In the table you can see that the smaller odds have smaller sizes in terms of movement too. So if you want the same amount of profit per tick at the smaller odds you will have to increase the amount of the bet. With this you can make the same amount of money under the odds of 2.0 as you do with the odds between 2.02 and 3.00

I didn’t expect this in Soccer Mystic as I thought I would only find this in the BinarySoft program.

Looking forward to this evening and the game between Spurs and Arsenal and increasing my betting bank some more.

Couldn’t get the Price Predictor working again today with Soccer Mystic. Still think it is something to do with the time zone thing. Despite that, I made a 3.5% gain on the betting bank by trading on the unders 2.5, 3.5 and even the under 4.5 goals. The first in and out trades on under 2.5 went well and I was on target for profit by 15 mins into the game. Then I went for one more dip and of course a goal went in. When the market reformed I put in the same amount again and then waited until I was in profit again. I saw a similar amount of profit on that market as I had initially and I was out of the market when another goal went in. I had a total of 14 trades before the under 2.5 goals was settled.

I decided to move to the under 3.5 goals market and had eight back and lay trades and I was out of it while it was still safe and I had by then moved to the 4.5 goals arena. I just did a small trade on that and perhaps could have let it run but with the game at 2 -2 I went for caution and traded out before end of the game.

I was still more comfortable with BetAngel than with Soccer Mystic, maybe if I had got the Price Predictor working I would have been happier. I still think that there ends up too many windows especially if you are working with multiple markets and even though I dare say you would get used to it if using the software on a long term basis, I don’t like the clutter. Tabs would be better, although there are quite a few tabs in the windows that present themselves anyway. Maybe I would be less annoyed if I was just using one or the other rather than trying out BetAngel and also Soccer Mystic at the same time.

OK – Just looking at what we have in Soccer Mystic in the first of the windows, the one where you select the markets you want to work with. There are tabs for Odds, Unmatched Bets, Matched Bets, Log and Soccer Desktop (the browser which shows you the Soccer Mystic web site)

So I choose the game and click on the button for trade and another window comes up with a new load of tabs – One Click, Ladder, Manual Bet, Dutching, Bookmaking, Matched bets, Saved bets, Excel, Log and Rules. I decide to use the ladder because that’s the best to use with trading and I need to see more of the ladder so I expand the tab so I show more of it. Guess what – Yep thats right – Another window to fill my screen.

I arrange the windows so that the ladder is on top and the trade window underneath with the matched bets showing . That way I can see what was the latest bet to be matched . Would be better to have that info in the ladder window as it is in BetAngel. Good that you can choose how many rows of ladder you want, might as well show as many as you can fit in vertically to get the most information. Good to have access to the charts with the button but I still like the BetAngel charts on the enhanced ladder view.

There is only one green up button on the ladder tab for each side of the market of the unders, one for under and one for over. I prefer the extra options in BetAngel and I like to use the manual close button on BetAngel that lets me work out what odds I want to aim for to get whatever profit is there. Or see how far the odds have to come down if I put in the last back bet just before a goal was scored and I need to wait to be able to trade out.

Update:- I see that there is a Trade Calculator in Soccer Mystic that does the same as I was able to do in BetAngel. Just need to have it pop another window to get it working……

I have not worked out the Make Market button on the One-Click tab yet. I will look in the users guide soon – I promise. I know I am complaining a lot about the software but I feel sure that if Peter at BetAngel is reading the blog he might have a think about the feedback here and make it better for all users. I know Soccer Mystic will get better over time anyway. My blog is not to sell the software blindly to my readers but to inform about the pros and cons as I see them. I reckon that if I wax lyrical without mentioning the parts I am not so keen on then the blog becomes less credible.

As it stands with the Soccer Mystic right now, I recommend taking advantage of the trial offer for the 30 days and see how it fits your trading style on Betfair and decide for yourself whether to keep with it.

Good Luck from Wizardgold – Will be working with Spur Arsenal game tomorrow

I got my hands on BetAngel and SoccerMystic and as soon as I have has a bit more time with them I will make a video about using them. My first impressions on the whole are positive. First of all I have to say I was pleased that the support team were on the ball. I had a few questions revolving around the non functioning of the Price predictor in SoccerMystic. Seems that the problem lay in the fact that I am here in Spain in a different time zone – GMT+1 and I had to set my computer to the GMT to make it work. Still not getting full service with it but then I might have to make the same setting in my Betfair profile to get it all to tie in.

Out of the two pieces of software I preferred BetAngel professional, I felt it was more sophisticated because it had been around longer and probably had more testing. The both softwares are from the same stable and I still think Soccer Mystic has a great future ahead of it for the footy fans. I can’t really do the horses as I can’t get the horses on the television here, so having SoccerMystic and it being a one trick pony in terms of which markets it is good for in Betfair doesn’t bother me. There are plenty of tricks it can do within the confines of the football markets anyway.

Another difficulty I had today was that it wasn’t updating in real time for a while and I had to keep pressing the refresh button. I think that was more to do with the internet connection here today than with the software as it was happening with both softwares and the problem was intermittent.

I liked the thing in BetAngel where it showed me what I would win if I was to green up with the odds that were there. The choice of the normal green up and the reverse green up was useful too, especially when the market was bouncing around the chance to put in the lay bet at the back price which was more stable meant that I wasn’t going to suffer making a lay bet a too high a price if the market changed in the split second when I was clicking the button. That practice allowed me to grab one more tick of profit also.

I liked the compactness of BetAngel and the tabbed interface compared to SoccerMystic which comes up with new windows when you hit the price Predictor or the trading button. I liked in BetAngel there were charts updating in real time when it was showing enhanced ladder window, though it took me a while to work out that I could see more of the ladder by expanding the window. I didn’t need to see the light green part at the top which was for setting up offsetting or scalping along with stop loss configuration. I wonder if it is possible to change the priority of that??

I would like to comment more about the Price Predictor but I didn’t really have it working enough to be able to use it properly. What I can say was that if the signal strength was showing that it could give a fairly accurate idea of how the prices would pan out, then the predicted price was close to actual prices. I checked it a couple of times and I need to look at it a few more times to comment on this with confidence.

So how is it in use? First of all it is easy to get the games you want into the first window of the SoccerMystic, thats important when a match is due to get started and you want to get in there as quickly as possible. then you choose the game and hit either the Price Predictor or the Trade button. Like I said next you get another window and I would have preferred to see a tabbed interface which is easier to navigate around. Speed is important when you are trading.

I will go into the software more as time goes by and I will make a new video later this week, but for now I can tell you that I saw profits this weekend despite some early goals. yesterday I increased the betting bank by 11% and today 1.5% which is respectable, especially with a small betting bank. Today when I had to work with the  goals  in the Wigan Everton game I was able to trade out by using the under 4.5 goals market. I did have some profit after the first goal and was greened up, then I thought I would try one more shot at it and then the second goal went in. The 3rd goal was early in the second half also so I just had to take the loss on the under 2.5 goals. I was pleased that I was able to get back most of the loss bar a few cents with the under 4.5 goals market.

Then I decided to do the Manchester City vs  West Ham and they only played a couple of days ago in the FA Cup, a very boring game with few goals. Today though there were goals at 8 minutes and 16 minutes. With 2 goals in there I went for the under 3.5 and the under 4.5 to bring in a small profit. I could have waited on the under 2.5 market as the final result was only 1-1 but I had traded out for a loss of €11.09. I still made a profit on the game of a few cents. What was most pleasing was the strategy that I worked with it by moving to the other markets and leaving them to get as much profit as possible first from the under 3.5 and then moving to the 4.5 goals.

So look out for the video podcast to come about BetAngel and Soccer Mystic. I know I am looking forward to using them some more.  They have some great trial offers so that you can see if they suit you and the way you trade.

I was doing the quick in and out thing with the Reading vs Spurs with the LazIE button in BetIE and just after the second back bet went in to have another go at it the game was suspended and there wasn’t much I could do about it. The options were to leave it and wait for the odds to come back down again to be able to trade out or to put in some more at the higher odds available and trade out as it comes back down. The second option is a bit more risky because there is more money in there possible to lose, but so long as there are no goals it is quicker to get to the trade out position.

I went for the second option and I traded out half of the extra after about 5 or 10 mins and took 5 ticks. Considering the ticks are worth more at that level it can be the best option, I traded the second part of the extra another 4 ticks down and the liability was looking OK at that stage. The game was still at nil one to Spurs. I let it run some more and got to a stage where plenty of the game had passed and I had only a small liability with a winning amount nearly double the liability.

No worries about the risk level at that stage because I had the possible loss covered with the gains from the Barcelona vs Sevilla Copa del Rey game. In the end I had a profit from the trading for the evening of 8.1% of the betting bank. Not too bad of a result I think.

I also used BetAngel this evening because it does such a good job of greening up with small amounts

Forex Trading

The dollar is moving up and down loads today and the draw down on my position is now at -33% with the balance growing from the grid trading on the position. Working well within the expected confines of the robot setup.

Last year I started a demo account for the ForexforSmarties no trading method. What happens with this method is you buy a position using 2 trading pairs in the right ratio and let it run to take the money from the interest or swap payments. I had a great start with it and in the first month I closed the position a couple of times to take the profit when I was checking it on a weekly basis to add 4000 to the 10,000 balance. I forgot about it for some time and it has been in drawdown for some months now. About a month ago I could have closed the position and still had a good overall profit of 2,500 on the 10k position. The plan is though to let it run for a year to see what sort of profit can be made on such a trading method.

At the moment it is in the doldrums with the draw down at 9,500 and the equity a lowly 4,500. I would be wondering about the margin level at the moment which is at 400% and there is a chance that it could hit a margin call despite there being about 1000 dollars of interest on the position. Lets see what happens, how safe is this method with the dollar being so volatile and weak right now. So long as there is no margin call I have belief that the system will make a profit when the year is up, even if it needs an extra month to hit the target, seeing as you don’t close a position if it is in drawdown and have to be prepared to wait until the profit number comes back.

I’ll Keep you posted …..