Over-round in a box

Daily P&L -£4.65    September P&L £106.87

That's it for September!

A much better month than last month, and despite the small loss today I still think I am making good progress now. £100 profit for September is a step in the right direction after the problems I had last month... And £200 next month would be even better...

The loss today was just a result of sticking to my tennis strategy which has pulled in over £50 profit in 5 days. There might be opportunity to refine the match selection criteria to get a better hit rate, but will keep it as is for now.

Today I found out that Vista has a program called Magnify, so I've been able to use this to get the Over-round displaying on the ladder screen (like the countdown timer)



If you haven't got Vista there are free programs that do the same sort of thing, just search on gooooogle.

I also used it as an excuse to get do some more trading video, nothing spectacular I made about £5 over 6 races, but you can see how I set up the over round box and see how it works on the ladder during trading.

	Low Quality 11Mb version
	Higher Quality 140Mb version

Travelling to the UK tomorrow (where I will be for the next 2-3 months) so I might not be able to get much trading or blog updates done over the next couple of days.

Here's the P&L for today

Swings and Roundabouts

Daily P&L -£9.88    September P&L £111.52

Monday I win on the Tennis and lose on the Horses, Tuesday it's the other way round... +£15 Horses, -£25 Tennis.

Despite loss on the tennis I'm very pleased with how Tuesday went because of the pre race trading.

The red on the tennis when taken together with yesterdays £70 green and the previous 2 days profits still leaves me a return that is higher than predicted based on the trades I've made this week, so I'm not concerned although I do like green days better...

The big plus for Tuesday was the +£15 on the horses

It's been a long time since I had a good consistent (no drama) day like that, it was way back in July when I was starting to make some progress and had a string of good days before it went a bit tits up.

Lets hope I can keep repeating it this time...

More Tennis

Daily P&L £63.95    September P&L £121.40

Funny how I've made more in 3 days of Tennis trading than 2 months of pre race horses...

I feel that I'm making progress on the horses and it's a challenge that I will eventually crack, but it's still not very profitable yet and I can't increase the stakes until I'm more confident... as can be seen by today's P&L...

I'm only using one type of tennis trade for the last 3 days, it has a slight variation for men's/women's matches, and so far it's getting a good return on both.

3 days is not long enough to make any definite conclusions, so lets see how it goes over the next few weeks.

Boats and Spiders

Daily P&L £13.03    September P&L £57.45

Made it back from the regatta in time to do a couple of horse races.



No gold medal this time, but they came second.

Trading was short but green... and very laggy...
Pulled in £1 from 4 horse races and £12 from the tennis.

Early days yet, so can't make any assumptions, but my new tennis strategy has got off to a good start

Found a big spider outside the back door this afternoon, have named him Boris... that seems as good a name as any for a spider.

Not sure what to feed him, he didn't seem too keen on chocolate flapjack or beer so I will have to look up on google what spiders eat and hope that I can find it at the supermarket tomorrow.

Horses and Tennis

Daily P&L £11.04    September P&L £44.42

Managed to find time for some trading this afternoon.

Slightly better profits than recently, but most of it came from 5 mins in the tennis markets.

I did green 6 out of 7 races this afternoon which is good, a penny under £3 from the pre race and I never got in to any problems with the trades even if they went the wrong way.

I was slightly more selective about which races I traded, and I even went as far as looking at the cards on the Racing Post site this morning to decide in advance which ones were worth looking at and trying to trade. I think it helped...

Off out now for a few beers back on Monday.

Enjoy the rest of your weekend!

Chickens and Eggs

Bank £233.38 Daily P&L £5.61 September P&L £33.38

Haven't really figured out what to do with the over-round yet

It still seems a bit like the question of the chicken and the egg... Do the prices react to the over-round or does the over-round react to the prices, and what does it actually tell me that I can use to my advantage when trading?

If anyone knows feel free to enlighten me!

Now that the Tennis Database is organized I've had a bit of time to do some pre race trading this afternoon.

Was a mix of watching the markets and a few small trades.

I was only using small stakes and didn't really try that hard (maybe that's a good thing), but some of the swings today seemed quite easy to spot and once they started they kept going (unfortunately without me as I was either just watching or greened up way too early).

Only £5 but it all helps...

Not sure if I can do any trading over the weekend as I'm out biking tomorrow and gf is doing another Regatta on Sunday (picture of last week below) so it will probably be Monday before I get time to trade the horses again.



Here's today's P&L



Hopefully with a few days left I should be able to make more this month than I lost last month!

Databases

Sorry for not doing many blog updates this week.

I've taken a temporary step back from trading and have (since last Friday) been making video of markets and indicators for the pre race horses so that I can start looking in more detail at the over-round (which I so far haven't really used).

Whilst doing that I've been busy importing and converting Betfair excel data files into a proper SQL database to analyse the Tennis markets.



It's not as easy a task as I was expecting, there are millions and millions of records, all sports (apart from horses) lumped together in hundreds of separate excel files, and as well as importing then filtering out just the sport and events you want, they also need additional work to add useful fields like favourite, start odds, lowest odds, highest odds, match type (mens/womens/mixed/singles/doubles) etc.

The main problem is simply the size of the data and the time it takes importing and then organising. Once that is done the analysis is relatively quick and easy.

I'm finally now at the point where I think I have some useful in play Tennis Data and have already identified a couple of potential opportunities which I hope to be able to verify and start exploiting by next week.

It's only a couple of weeks until I have coaching work, so my trading time will drop and I need to be more efficient and profitable with the time I have.

That's not necessarily a bad thing as I often make a profit for 2 hours and then tread water making and losing, so if I only have 2 hours each afternoon it might save me a lot of hassle...

Here is a really really really bad video to amuse you...

Tennis Live Pictures

Just to illustrate the advantage you can get from live pictures (or the disadvantage from just using slow score feeds) I've made a short video of the Murray Davis Cup game.



The TV pictures are digital so will already have some delay in them, but the Bet365 scores are way behind, and the daviscup.com scores are even later.

Obviously you can't trade this game anyway as Murray started at 1.01 and there is no money laying him at all... But if this was a tradable game it could make a big difference to the chances of getting your opening positions matched or not.

If you can watch the match on TV then do it!

30 Pence

Bank £227.77 Daily P&L £0.30 September P&L £27.77

Is my own fault for complaining that I don't make enough profit...

30 pence...





More ranting about score boards...

The score doesn't change for 2 mins but the odds do... so you refresh...

it's 40 40 and then you refresh again 5 secs later and it's 15 40...

Its ****ed!

I've given up on the Bell Challenge, it's not even worth making video of the odds movements with no scores.

Is so annoying to get some tennis at a decent time of day but for it to be untradable

Annoying Score Boards

Was making a Tennis video this morning, but the live score pages are about as useful as a chocolate teapot at the moment and you need to manually refresh them by clicking the match...

Unfortunately this resets the screen and if you are half asleep like I was you end up looking at the scores for a different match with no idea why the odds are moving the 'wrong' way...

So not only are the players completely unpredictable at the moment, the score boards don't update either...

Think my Tennis trading might have to wait a bit longer as I can't be arsed with clicking the score board every 2 seconds to get the scores..

Re Horses I'm starting to get a bit pissed off with the amount of time I'm putting in to still be seeing next to nothing in my profits. But I guess I should be pleased that my results tend to be small greens rather than big reds.

Short Session

Bank £227.47 Daily P&L £3.96 September P&L £27.47

Only 4 trades today as I had other stuff to do, but it was a better hourly rate!

scratched 2 trades and made a bit of green on the other 2.

Might get back in time to try some Tennis later but I doubt it.

Consistent (boring) day

Bank £223.51 Daily P&L £6.02 September P&L £23.51

Another consistent day, lots of small greens, 15/17 hit rate.

Almost took a stupid loss in the last race so after pulling it back I decided it was time to stop for the day.

Racing UK is getting a bit dissapointing as they don't cover most of the races.

Hopefully Bet Angel or Bet Trader or Green Up Radio will get some sort of horses loading and 15 secs to off type warning working soon as that is all I really want it for. Then I can go back to using the radio or listening to music.

I saw Redden chuck Fallen and then drift today but didn't put a lay trade on it, so the pictures won't really help me anyway if I'm going to ignore them

Ooops

Looks like Federerer messed up...



Hope you ended green if you were trading the match

Skis

Bank £217.49 Daily P&L £4.11 September P&L £17.49

Good weekend, had no time to trade but found some cool mountain bike routes and on Sunday my GF won two gold medals at the Regatta.

Great trade this morning on a pair of skis

If you want new skis, now is probably a good time to buy them while the shops clear out last seasons models.

Picked up a set of brand new K2 Apache Stryker skis for £150



Other trades today were less spectacular, I made a bit (+£4.13) on the dogs and just about broke even (-2p) on the horses for a massive hourly rate of about 50p...

At least it's green! Green is good!

Looks like there is some European tennis next week, so maybe I can actually start my Tennis trading career without having to stay up all night.

Good Day

Bank £213.38 Daily P&L £5.24 September P&L £13.38

Today went very well, it would have been good to make a bit more, but I was only using £10 stakes to keep my head focused on trading and not the +/- £'s which I think was a good thing. Was a lot more confident and relaxed than I have been.

It scales up to £52.40 if I was using £100 stakes

100% hit rate today, every race greened up for a profit (which is good). I scratched quickly when I needed to, and each time I was then able to make it back with new trades rather than just watching the screen get redder and redder hoping it might come back as has been the case in the past sometimes...

All scalps today, and I think that is the way it has to be for a while, as it's when I go for bigger profits that it goes tits up.

Can't trade the tennis again as out this evening (is a hard life) but there should be some money to be made on clijsters v williams. I will be taking video to look at scores/odds tomorrow which I guess is better than nothing.

Hope you are all in the zone and greening up

Tennis Video

I didn't get to trade the Del Potro v Cilic match as it started late and I had to go out, but if anyone is interested in how the odds moved as the score changed I took a video of it.

I've speeded it up so the first 2 sets only take 9 mins.

What to Trade

I've not done any trading the last couple of days as too many distractions in the appartment, instead I've been busy reviewing videos and looking back at my P&L and watching markets and have come to a few conclusions:

Greyhounds

Ok for beer money but is never going to pay the bills.

conclusion - something to do between 11am and 1pm if nothing else happening but not a long term money maker.

Horses

Can make reasonable money sometimes, but I'm also losing too much as well. So although it is making small profits, it's not profitable enough at the moment.

conclusion - I need to find out which types I can trade consistently, trying to trade every race is too hit and miss at the moment.
Will also drop the stakes back to £10 for a bit (i.e. as if using a £100 bank) until I can consistently make £10 green each day from that, then I will gradually increase with the eventual goal of making £100 a day.

Tennis

I've watched prices for 3 or 4 matches (would be more if they were in the day time at the moment) and can see a lot of potential.

conclusion - I need to start trading tennis asap.

Will start with the Del Potro v Cilit Bang match this evening. My strategy (thanks Tradeshark) is going to be to lay De Potro before the match (and/or shortly after the start) for a liability of £10-£20 and probably green (or red) up towards the end of the first set.

After that will try and scalp a few more quid.

I'm off to the bar straight after so I won't be posting the P&L until tomorrow.

Too Hot

Bank £208.14   Daily P&L £12.11   September P&L £8.14

Would have been green apart from a minor disaster this morning...

Laptop decided to overheat and turn itself off

Unable to close down my open trade as was about 15 secs from the off, luckily it was a back bet and only £19.40 liability (£20 less a bit of green on another dog) but needless to say it lost.

Took a walk into town to find a laptop cooler pad, but no luck, so I made my own:



Bit of polystyrene packing (free) and a desk fan (about £6)
And I'm back in business

Bit of a Racket

Bank £221.29   Revised Daily P&L £10.40
September P&L £21.29

Had a look a the Tennis last night, I was just planning on taking video of the ladder and score board to check out how the price movements work. I ended up placing two trades and made just over £1 from a £5 stake

Price movements... Talk about over reacting... Not sure if it was just the games I watched but they were up and down all over the place.

There must be some good opportunities to make (or lose) money here.



Updated P&L

Monday

Bank £220.25   Daily P&L £9.36   September P&L £20.25

Almost a Tenner!

Slightly better profit per hour today, although there were a couple of tricky moments that could have upset that had I not kept my cool.

Today's trading was accompanied by (amongst others) Muse



It wasn't accompanied by Racing UK... Bit surprised they don't have any horse racing on today, I haven't used it for a week or so but I decided to put it on today as I have a 2nd laptop I can use for it. What is the point of paying for Racing TV if they don't show the racing...?

Thought of the day: One of the things with scalping is that sometimes after you close the trade you watch the price shoot off into what would have been a nice big green... Would be good to spot that might happen in advance...

I will get the hang of swing trades as well... eventually!

Switzerland

Made it to Basel, with a nice detour through some very minor roads, including a few dirt tracks at one point. They shut the road heading out of France towards Geneva and the diversion route was going at 1 mile a day, so I made my own route over a mountain instead...

9 hours driving, and I only fell asleep twice... both times I woke up before I hit anything

Not trading today, but everything is set up ready for tomorrow (or Monday if the weekend is too good) and I've been making making a few videos.

The main thing I've noticed is that my response times are about half what they were in Spain, which I guess makes sense seeing as Basel is half as far away from the UK as Spain is... Maybe that will help me not miss quite so many entry's!

Biggest problem with today is that it's raining!!!

I want the sun back!!!

I have the UK winter to look forwards to in October/November...

Hard Work

Bank £210.89   Daily P&L £2.40   September P&L £10.89

Sometimes you just can't see the wood for the trees...

£2.40 from 22 races... not ideal...

Not sure if I'll be trading tomorrow, I have an 8 hour drive to Switzerland and so I might take a day off.

Way out of the zone

Bank £208.49   Daily P&L £3.80   September P&L £8.49

Today started off ok, but then just got worse and worse...

Mutts were better than the Horses. Some good bits in there, but not enough of them... It's a long way to the top if ya wanna Rock n Roll...



After the first few races I started making stupid mistakes and kept having to get myself out of the red, meanwhile missing opportunities.

A couple of times I went deep in to the red as I didn't scratch quick enough, I was lucky both times that it came back again eventually, but I then scratched only for the odds to carry on where I had originally expected so missed out on a big swing... twice in a row... Had I scratched originally I'd have possibly got on the next move, who knows, it certainly wasn't good to let them go quite so far into the red, even with the market looking like it should turn and be going my way.

A combination of bad entries, not scratching, hanging on to bad positions, and generally misreading the markets made today's trading extremely poor, I'm not at all pleased and I need to do much better if I'm going to make a living out of this eventually.

I think I was a bit lucky to come out green today.

Also one of my trades didn't fully close out, I did close it but a couple of quid didn't get matched and went in play, but my liability on it was small and I got away with it. But was too close for comfort, I have to be more careful about that.

I've got another video to go with today's P&L, but these are taking a long time to edit and load up to the web, and I'm pretty sure no one wants to see them every day. I'll probably just do one or two a month. Maybe a compilation of the good, bad and ugly from each week or two.

I suppose today's video is a good example of how you can mess everything up and still not take a massive hit on the bank.