Second Place

It was disappointing to see Murray lose the Australian Open Final. It was looking like Federerer would take the match right the from Set 1 with Murray making mistakes and you could see from the expressions on his face that each point he lost was getting to him.

I would have liked to see Murray win, and it would have been great to have a British winner, the first since Fred Perry I think it would have been.

Second place is probably the hardest position to end up in, so close but left with nothing. He is only 22 so he has plenty of time to get it right if he gets his head straight and believes in himself.

He did better than a lot of people expected (myself included) so all credit to him for that, but I doubt that is much consolation to him at the moment.

I have been working this weekend so haven't had time to trade, although I hear that Betfair is still having problems, so maybe not a bad thing that I wasn't wanting to trade today.

Hopefully it will be up tomorrow afternoon for some horse trading.

Half Way

Had a better afternoon today than yesterday.

Traded about 10 races for a £5 profit. The markets seemed fairly predictable and I was able to green or scratch all of them.

Only one troublesome trade which I eventually turned around for a 4p profit.

Sounds a bit rubbish to only be making £5 in a day after 9 months of trying to trade, but I do feel that I'm making progress.

I've heard people say that it takes 18 months before you crack it, and I'm a lot more inclined to believe that now than I was six months ago.

I think writing this blog has been very useful to me to record my thoughts and progress, but also a problem at times, for example when I used to do a daily P&L I'd sometimes made bad decisions simply because I didn't want to post a losing day, often making things worse.

My thought for today is that if it takes me 18 months to crack this I'm already half way there...

Hmmm

Traded the first two races and completely messed up both of them



Lost £2 on the first and £8 on the second...

That's a sure sign that I shouldn't be trading today so I'm going to do some gardening instead.

I know exactly what I did wrong. First race I chased my entry and got stung when it turned, the second I didn't close out on two ladders expecting a switch that never came leaving me with a large red that I closed 10 secs before the off...

The plus points that i can take from today are:

I know what I did wrong
I didn't go in play
I'm not chasing my losses
I'm not bothered by the losses
I know that I still need to keep my stakes lower

And I get the afternoon off...

Hope you had a better afternoon trading/betting than me.

Big Money Horse Trades

Made a whopping £3 on the horses this afternoon

Only one losing race in the whole afternoon (2 hours) and using £10 stakes I mostly made about 20p-30p per race



Off to work again now, more tomorrow (maybe even a video)

Out In The Fields

BF was down again

Haven't made any losses, but was still a bit disappointing to not be able to trade the last two days.

My bot has been ticking over, and has managed to cope with the BF errors and server absences, but with the reduced liquidity and crashes it hasn't done as much in last few days. Next week I'll have a months worth of actual data to compare with the historical data and find out whether they match or not...

Was surprised that Murray got through to the Aussie Semi's and it's a shame that Nadal retired, but haven't been following the tennis as it's on at the wrong time.

Got car insurance quotes today and for the first time ever my renewal quote was actually cheaper than anything I could find on Meerkats.com or anywhere else. Still too expensive, but makes a change for the renewal to be at a competitive price.

Got a new guitar today (well actually I got my old guitar back) so have been able to spend the afternoon Jammin' and annoying the neighbours while BF was down.



As the neighbours live 1/2 a mile away, I think annoying them was impressive!

A short video from Gary Moore & Phil Lynott (playing guitars)

BF Down

Betfair went down so I decided to re plant some trees instead of trading.

Maybe Tomorrow!

Up and Down

Markets going up, and markets going down.

If nothing else the P&L from the last few weeks is helping me decide which markets I should concentrate on, and I 'currently' have a small profit for January, so can't complain.

Too much work on at the moment, so I haven't done any trading today (unlikely to do any tomorrow either). I'm hoping to get some time Monday afternoon.

Am doing some tests with VB threading, and although I'm still quite keen to learn C# I will probably end up going down the VB route simply because it will be quicker and easier to use a language I already know.

hasta mañana

C#

I've decided to learn C#

The VB bot is getting unresponsive retrieving market and bet information as I add more markets, especially since I added the Australian exchange.

It needs threading, and I think it's worth the investment in my time learning C# now.

It may distract from the manual trading a bit, but I reckon I can still fit in a couple of hours most afternoons.

I can see definite opportunities to make money with a bot that would be difficult to replicate manually, not by speed, but by recognising rules/indicators for entry points and sticking to a strategy over an extended period of time, days, weeks, months. The human mind is too easily influenced by recent and often non significant events, while a bot will quite happily take wins/losses without emotion and stick to a long term strategy.

This is especially true when looking for black swan trades where the hit rate is low.

Whilst I can see possibilities in horses I'm going to steer clear of them with the bot. Instead I'm going to manual trade the horses.

So my three strategies are:

- Manual Trade Horses and Dogs (pre race)
- Lay/back Dogs at silly odds just in case I ever get matched
- Bot Trade Other Sports (in play markets)

I'm going to try and put more emphasis on my manual trading in the blog, as there's only so many posts about 'my bot did this' and 'my bot did that' and 'my bot made/lost £x zillion quid' before it becomes uninteresting.

Tuesday

Australian Open was good to me last night, I pulled back some of the losses I made on the Tennis markets last week. I'm rapidly (well slowly really) thinking that I should avoid tournaments that don't have big prize money. I think I said that in November.

If players have more at stake, they will try harder (possibly) and there will be more movements and swings in the odds (possibly) which gives more opportunity for trades (possibly).

The manual trading is still going ok, and still using small stakes. It is good that I seem to be making one step forwards one step backwards now, instead of one forwards and TWO backwards.

Happy Mondays

Not sure why I'm happy, but have been in a good mood all day today.

Looked at some horse markets this afternoon but decided not to trade, and I just watched what was going on.

Made a few quid on the Australian Open while I was asleep last night.

I can now put my full weight on my left leg and have been doing calf raises to strengthen it, walking (and even running) is no longer a problem. I'm going to be careful for a few more weeks as I don't want to rip it again but I reckon it's almost back to normal even if still slightly swollen.

Sunday Morning

Blog Links

I'm going to tidy up my blog links sometime soon, e.g. remove blogs that haven't been updated for > 3 months and seperate the list into two categories, one for trader blogs and one for systems/betting.

If you have a blog and want me to add a link to it then let me know and I can add it in one of the two sections. I'm happy to add blogs as long as they are not full of affiliate links or selling anything.
No trading today, but I did get time for a few beers

Working again all day tomorrow so next trading is Monday afternoon.

Here's today's video of the day today:

Horses and Tennis Balls

Have dropped the horses from the bot, and quite pleased that as I'm writing this post it's come back into overall profit.

Have lost over £100 on the horses in the last few weeks (I'm probably going to look at doing the same strategy but avoiding all weather tracks) and the Australian tennis has been bad this week as well, -£75, I'm hoping the tennis picks up next week with the Open so I have left that running for now. But if it doesn't make a profit in the open then that will be pulled and re analysed as well.

I'm getting good returns on other markets. £80 football, £80 Basketball, £70 ice hockey, a few quid on Handball and Volleyball so no point sticking with markets that aren't profitable if they stay unprofitable for too long.

No manual trading today as I was too busy this afternoon, and unlikely to get much done over the weekend so looks like Monday.

Today

Finished adding the Australian account functions to the old (current) bot.

The swelling in my leg from the ski crash a month ago has finally gone down to almost normal and I was even able to do jumps on the bike without it hurting when I landed.

Managed a couple of hours of manual trading this afternoon, nothing amazing, a few profits and a few scratches and lots of loud music. Seems to be getting easier as I'm no longer trying to hit targets, just trading the markets if/when I see an opportunity.

The bot is sitting at about -£10 since yesterday and about -£50 for the week, mainly because the horses are still doing very badly. I'm giving them until the end of the week and if they don't start to pull back some of the loss I'm dropping their stakes right down or perhaps stopping them altogether.

At the moment it seems to be Baseball, Soccer, Basketball and Ice hockey that are consistently doing well, horses doing badly and everything else is +/- a few quid.

Do Betfair keep changing Football to Soccer and back again or are there two separate categories? It seems to come up different every day in the P&L but they must have the same Sport_ID otherwise the bot would only be trading one of them.

Tennis is also a bit disappointing at the moment, but is only on a small loss, and I'm hoping it will pick up when the Australian Open kicks off next week.

Main thing is that the bot is overall in profit still, but it would be a lot more profit without the horses losing every day. I'm still thinking it could be to do with All weather tracks and the bad weather, it is going on a bit long now for it to be just random distribution. Maybe my trades are just wrong...

[Edit/Update:] Bot has just made £21 on the volleyball since I posted earlier so will possibly end up with a small profit for today. Checked P&L and horses lost £15 again this afternoon so they are now switched off while I re analyse the data and figure out the problem.

Triskaidekaphobia

No trading today as we had crew selections which took all day and most of the evening. Up again at 6am tomorrow for training

Bot made a small profit, despite not being able to trade last night while BF was being re-re-re-repaired.

Nothing much else to say so I'll just leave you with a video:

Horses

Was a good afternoon today. First time in a while that I've traded the horses.

Went quite well and I found the markets a lot slower than I remember them. Was mainly looking at the money on the 2nd-4th horses trying to work out why it was there and how it was effecting (or trying to effect) the market. If I was confident that I knew why it was there and what I thought would happen next I'd open a trade, if not I just watched and waited.

Got it right more often than I got it wrong (which is good) and also made a small profit (it was never going to be a big profit with £2 stakes). There's no point having a high hit rate if you still make a loss...

Having the bot running on the same account is helping in some ways, as I can show the available balance, but because the bot is making trades on other markets it goes up/down and I have no idea what my running total for the manual trading is. This gives the benefit of knowing I have the available funds to cover stakes/liabilities but without the pressure of knowing the actual P&L and chasing losses or targets

Having 5 ladders open side by side and the LTP bars on the left of each ladder is really useful.  I personally find this a lot more useful and easier than having charts on a separate screen.

If you haven't already tried The Geeks Toy then you really should.  It's Awesome!

I've started working on logging bets and then matching up to the P&L through the API, so I can keep track of P&L with the bot and show manual trades separately. I also want to track P&L on individual markets so that I can have a virtual bank for each market and let the profitable market banks grow more quickly.

I've started designing new API and database I/O classes for my next bot program. I'm also going to code in things like a switch for API version to optimise API requests and throttling without data charges and some pre race and in play data logging for horses and dogs.  Might take a while as I'm working most mornings and trading afternoons at the moment, but I reckon I should get it done by the end of February.

Here's a Shakira video for your entertainment

Loba

Distribution

Have just downloaded the betfair data for November and December and loading it into the database. I will have a full 4 years data instead of 3 years and 10 months, which I'm sure is good. It makes me feel better anyway.

Having a few problems with the horses at the moment, they are not giving the expected returns, and I'm not sure if it's just random distribution or something I've done wrong in my analysis...

Only one way to find out... just keep going and see what happens.

Computer says YES but the current results are not looking like they should do. I'm still £80 up in a week from the sports that I'm trading (quite a few) and I'd expected to be making about £10 a day based on the stats for the stakes and number of trades I'm currently doing so it's not all bad, but the horses have just totally underperformed.

Maybe it's just to do with the weather and the lack or races/liquidity.

Basketball and handball and soccer (I mean Football) are doing much better than expected.

Obviously a week is way too short a time to prove anything...

Green All Over made a good post about stats and systems recently http://green-all-over.blogspot.com/.../slots-of-money.html
It's interesting to compare my thoughts when I check the bot every 5 mins compared to when I let it run for 24 hours before checking.

Two losing days followed by five winning days was interesting. I'm sure this is going to be a big help my manual trading to see the ups/downs of the bot knowing that it is not the least bit interested in whether it's on a winning or losing streak and just doing what it does and sticking to the long term strategy regardless.

I'm loving the snow, there's a few roads and farm tracks that haven't been gritted near me that also have no traffic on so are great fun for playing around in the car

Random Numbers

5 4 4 2 2 5 1 5 5 5 1 3 6 5 3 6 6 1 6 3 4 5 1 4 3 2 4 4 2 2 5 5 4 6 6 2 5 6 2 4 1 6 5 1 4 1 1 5 2 1 2 3 2 6 6 3 2 1 1 4 3 3 5 2 4 2 2 4 1 3 6 2 5 3 2 6 4 4 3 1 4 5 6 6 1 4 6 3 5 4 4 3 3 3 2 1 2 6 1 3 3 3 1 3 2 4 4 1 6 4 4 3 1 5 3 5 4 5 1 2 1 1 2 1 1 4 4 4 5 1 2 5 3 3 1 5 6 4 1 5 3 3 3 2 2 1 4 2 6 1 3 2 6 5 2 5 2 1 1 2 5 2 2 3 2 3 1 3 2 6 4 5 6 2 4 1 4 3 6 1 6 4 3 1 3 2 6 1 1 3 4 6 4 3 6 5 5 5 6 3 3 3 5 2 3 4 5 4 3 4 2 4 3 5 6 3 2 2 1 4 2 4 3 6 3 2 5 5 4 5 1 5 2 6 1 1 5 3 3 1 1 2 1 5 4 4 2 3 5 5 3 6 5 1 4 5 1 3 3 2 6 5 5 3 5 2 3 3 6 1 4 3 1 2 1 3 6 4 3 6 2 3 3 2 4 1 4 6 4 6 4 3 5 1 5 5 3 1 2 2 5 1 4 5 5 2 6 5 5 6 6 3 1 6 5 5 3 1 2 1 4 3 1 2 4 6 3 2 6 3 2 5 2 3 2 6 4 3 3 6 4 6 4 2 6 2 2 2 3 1 5 6 2 5 3 5 5 3 1 3 3 5 2 5 1 4 6 2 6 1 6 4 4 6 4 2 6 1 3 5 2 3 3 4 2 4 2 1 6 1 4 6 2 6 6 3 3 5 6 3 2 2 3 1 4 1 2 5 4 2 6 3 1 3 2 5 6 5 2 1 1 1 3 2 6 6 4 5 1 2 1 5 5 5 2 3 4 5 4 2 2 3 4 3 4 3 4 1 4 2 6 6 6 6 3 5 6 2 2 5 1 3 5 1 1 2 3 4 2 2 5 2 3 3 6 3 5 4 3 6 4 4 2 4 5 3 6 2 5 6 2 3 1 2 6 5 4 4 2 4 5 6 1 4 3 1 3 5 3 3 6 6 4 4 4 1 2 2 1 1 3 4 4 5 1 3 1 2 4 4 4 2 6 5 4 3 5 1 1 2 5 6 3 5 5 1 5 3 2 4 6 6 4 1 4 6 1 6 1 2 4 5 1 1 4 2 3 4 5 3 2 1 3 4 5 4 4 5 3 5 5 5 5 2 5 1 2 6 5 2 2 2 6 2 2 5 4 5 5 2 5 5 6 2 3 4 3 2 4 4 1 1 4 6 4 3 2 3 6 5 3 3 4 5 1 4 6 3 1 3 5 3 3 5 3 5 4 2 2 1 6 2 4 2 6 2 5 2 2 1 3 3 4 1 2 1 2 5 4 6 5 4 4 2 6 2 4 4 5 5 5 5 2 4 4 4 2 3 3 6 4 4 3 1 3 1 4 1 2 3 1 4 5 3 3 3 5 2 1 6 1 3 5 5 5 2 3 6 5 3 3 3 2 5 4 4 4 1 5 2 1 2 6 2 4 3 3 2 2 2 3 4 2 5 4 4 1 1 1 2 3 4 2 6 6 4 3 1 2 1 4 6 2 2 6 1 4 4 4 5 6 1 3 5 2 5 3 6 3 6 2 5 6 2 6 6 6 4 4 3 1 4 4 6 3 1 4 1 3 3 2 6 1 4 4 4 1 5 2 6 2 3 2 3 2 4 5 2 4 4 6 6 2 5 5 3 4 3 3 1 6 2 4 5 1 4 5 5 3 1 3 4 1 3 1 1 2 6 4 2 3 3 1 3 3 6 2 2 4 3 4 3 2 1 4 3 4 6 3 4 3 1 1 1 1 5 2 1 1 5 6 4 5 6 4 1 4 2 2 5 3 3 2 6 1 3 4 4 5 1 2 1 5 6 2 2 6 2 3 3 2 6 4 4 1 6 1 5 5 2 6 3 5 3 2 4 4 3 4 5 1 1 1 1 4 6 2 3 6 3 2 6 1 1 6 6 5 6 2 4 4 6 3 1 6 1 2 4 3 4 6 4 6 5 3 5 4 3 1 1 3 3 3 4 2 3 1 6 2 1 5 5 2 5 6 6 2 3 6 6 4 6 4 3 5 5 6 1 5 4 6 6 5 5 3 5 4 1 2 3 6 6 3 6 4 6 3 5 2 1 6 4 6 5 5 6 1 5 2 2 1 6 6 2 4 3 2 2 1 4 4 6 1 2 4 3 2 6 2 6 3 5 5 4 3 4 4 4 1 6 1 1 2 3 3 6 1 6 2 1 5 1 1 5 2 6 2 2 4 4 4 1 6 3 3 1 6 3 3 6 2 4 1 5 3 4 3 1 5 2 2 2 3 5 1 3 5 4 5 2 1 4 4 5 3 4 1 6 3 5 1 3 1 5 6 2 3 4 1 4 6 1 5 1 6 6 5 5 2 2 6 5 6 1 1 2 1 2 6 2 5 5 1 5 5 2 1 4 1 4 3 6 2 2 4 2 2 1 1 6 5 3 3 3 6 3 5 3 3 2 2 1 5 5 2 3 6 5 3 6 3 1 6 4 5 4 3 6 3 2 2 5 6 1 6 4 6 5 2 4 5 1 5 3 4 1 1 6 6 1 4 6 1 3 3 6 2 5 4 2 1 6 3 5 1 1 6 2 6 3 2 2 5 6 2 3 6 6 3 4 2 6 2 1 2 4 3 4 5 5 2 1 2 2 6 2 4 6 2 2 5 5 3 1 4 1 2 6 5 3 4 2 1 2 6 1 6 1 5 2 6 1 4 3 6 3 5 5 1 4 4 5 3 6 1 5 5 5 3 6 6 2 4 2 6 5 3 1 4 1 5 2 1 4 4 4 6 6 2 1 5 5 2 6 5 3 4 3 4 3 4 5 2 2 6 2 1 1 2 2 4 6 3 2 5 2 5 2 1 6 2 5 6 3 3 3 5 2 6 5 3 1 2 2 6 1 2 5 2 2 1 2 3 6 1 5 1 4 5 5 3 5 2 6 2 1 2 4 1 6 1 3 6 3 6 3 5 5 2 1 4 6 5 4 3 2 5 2 5 4 2 6 5 4 1 3 1 4 5 3 1 4 4 6 2 2 4 3 4 4 4 1 5 6 5 6 1 2 5 2 6 6 6 6 2 6 1 5 5 6 3 6 2 3 3 4 1 3 5 1 2 1 6 2 5 6 5 3 5 2 1 3 2 3 2 4 3 6 3 3 4 5 6 1 4 1 4 2 3 3 6 4 5 2 6 6 2 6 4 2 6 3 6 1 6 6 2 2 3 5 2 6 2 4 1 6 1 3 3 1 1 3 1 6 6 4 1 4 5 3 4 1 5 2 4 6 4 6 3 4 1 5 5 6 5 4 2 3 4 1 1 6 2 6 4 2 6 2

Week 1

The first week (after a not quite so good first two days) is green to the value of £80.35 mainly thanks to consecutive profits in the last 5 days.

Especially pleased about the last two days as £50 days have been rare for me recently (well ever in fact).

I had a couple of good days at the end of December, so it was slightly annoying to then get reds on the first two days of January as I was about £15 in profit since I started back after Christmas but then realised that I was £50 red for January.

But losing days are to be expected, so nothing to worry about... I hope...

Down £10 in the Australian markets, but not done much there yet so hopefully that will be in profit by the end of the month too.



UK P&L



Australian P&L



My new strategies seem to be going mostly to plan, and the weeks profit means that I've been able to increase the maximum stakes on the bot from £20 to £22 today.

I'll continue to manual trade with small £2 stakes as planned. Hopefully have some time to make a few videos of that in the next few weeks.

P&L&P&L

Not sure how best to log my P&L when I have both manual trading and automated trading and to make it even more hassle now I've started Australian markets which are on a different page in the BF P&L.

Is it possible to have two Betfair accounts?

Just to make things even more complicated I'm looking at the BetDaq API to see if my automated trades work on the Purple markets. No plans for manual trading there, but a bot might be worth a go.

One thing I noticed from an initial look at the Betdaq API docs (I may have missed something as I only took 3 mins on it) is that Betdaq don't seem to have a separate server for Australian markets.

Anyway, I'm just going to log overall P&L for now until I get round to programming the bot to work it all out for me.

Started two months of part time non trading work today, so had to drive through the snow this morning. I still have the snow tyres on from trip to Switzerland so it was quite fun, but a bit annoying at times following people driving stupidly slowly on slicks, but I guess it's better that they drive slow than crash into each other.

Back in time for 2nd half of the racing but there isn't much...

I think I may be going slightly mad... I've just set up the database to import and analyse the historical data for a few of the sports I haven't looked at yet including: Sumo wrestling, Hurling (I reckon under/over 12 pints might be worth a look if it's what it sounds like), Bowls and Floorball...

I've never even heard of Floorball.

Looking at some of the crap you can bet on I'm surprised there isn't a sport_id for gurning and morris dancing.

           

Over Fifty

Not a bad day today (so far) current P&L is at £53

Been a while since I had a £50+ day, so quite pleased with that. Still a few trades to go so hopefully won't mess it up...



I said I was going to start 2010 with a £200 bank, but I worked out that I should really have a larger bank to stake, so instead of dropping the stakes, or having to top up later, I've added some funds to the bank to make it up to £500

I hope that increasing the bank instead of reducing the stake doesn't bite me!

I'm staking up to £20 (4% of bank) depending on odds and strategy, and the plan is to withdraw to 50% of profits and increase the maximum stake to 4% of remaining bank each month or each time it has grown by a significant amount.

I've also had to move some of the bank to the Australia wallet for trading the Australian tennis. For some reason I never considered that the Australian Tennis would be different to any other until I started trading it this week.

It's Arrived

I can stop worrying and sleep peacefully at night again now that it has safely arrived...



My Racing UK 2010 Diary

I've never had a horse racing diary before so this is a very special occasion for me, so much so that I'm already celebrating with cheesy chips and a glass of Red Wine.

Another pleasing afternoon in the Betfair arena's today, pulled in £10 with no major incidents.

Looking back at my last few months P&L I have now traded (or tried to trade) quite a few sports:

American Football, Baseball, Basketball, Boxing, Cricket, Darts, Greyhounds, Golf, Handball, Hockey, Horses, Ice Hockey, Rowing, Rugby Union, Snooker, Soccer, Tennis

I also ran a simulation of coin tossing which finished today (it started yesterday and took about 20 hours, I should have used something a bit quicker than excel...)

From 100,000,000 throws
It came up heads 50000050 times and tails 49999950 times
With a maximum run of heads 25 and also tails 25

So I rekon if you have a bank that can double up 25 times you should be fairly safe using a stake recovery staking plan betting at evens...

The only downside is that to cover this for the BF minimum £2 stake you'd still need a bank of £67,108,864.00

There may also be a few minor problems getting matched if you have a long losing run

I realised today that my bot wasn't placing bets in the Australian Tennis... Doh!

Have made a few quick additions to the code (luckily the references and header stuff was already in there, so it is just cut and paste of the BFUK server code from two functions with a few extra lines too add the Australian events/markets so only took 5 mins) and all working now.

Am going to rewrite the whole thing soon, now it's all working how I want it to (and I know what I needed to know before I started writing it) I can do it properly and also make it more efficient.

Ok start to the year

Have two months work starting Thursday, so I should be able to get back to regular trading in the afternoons again.

The trading I have done so far this year has gone ok. A few greens a few reds, and overall it's in profit.

Short post today, but not much else to say and I need to head off to the airport in 5 mins.

Hope 2010 is going well for you!