Tuppence

23 races...

I'm having the evening off to go spend my winnings...

The Easy way or the Hard way

There are many ways to make money out of Betfair...

It seems I still prefer the hard way!



On the bright side, at least I'm winning a bit more than I'm losing.

Was caught out by laying a horse (JayJay Valentine) that had no chance of winning right at the start of the race, but then money just kept pouring in and the price just kept going in and in and in... This was at the start of a 7 min race... and it had no chance of staying out in front to win (it didn't) and so there was no reason why the odds should be shortening so fast, but having already tried for a reversal twice I couldn't risk letting my liability get any bigger...

My liability by this point had I left it open was £90 and so I had no choice but to take a £22 hit and learn a lesson about not making assumptions about prices based on the bleedin' obvious.

I did manage to pull a couple of quid back, and at least I'm not one of the people who was piling thousands and thousands on the back side who probably took a much bigger loss, but it's reminded me to not take anything for granted.

Danger Zone

I've had a good couple of afternoons trading the horses, I've taken the bank back up from £50 to £95 which I seem to be able to do quite easily.

The problem usually comes when I get the balance to £100 and quickly lose £50 of it... So the next challenge for the in play trading is to get through the danger zone from £100 to £200 without doing anything stupid...

I've modified my strategy and I am now trading the short flat races as well as the jumps. It also seems to be less risky. Slightly smaller profits but removing the areas where I was making mistakes.

I've managed to figure out how to scrape the data I need for selecting the horses to trade and once finished this should save me an hour or two going through the cards manually each morning.

I can also automate the logging of form/data/results to use with the price data that the bot collects to look for more opportunities for the bot.

Made a change to have most of the races on RUK today. Slightly more delay that the ATR/BF feed but seemed ok for what I was doing this afternoon.

Database

Dentist wasn't so bad, and even though I feel fine I decided instead of trading this afternoon I'd watch Being Human and update my BF data.

It's 6 months since I last updated so I have downloaded and imported all the new data (plus the SP data) to the end of 2010.

I'm also collecting some in play data myself which will help back test anything I can work out from crunching the numbers.

I also have some training plans to write for work which I'll get finished this evening and then tomorrow I'm back to the afternoon trading.

I've decided to be a bit more aggressive with the in play trading next month. So I've set a weekly deposit limit of £25 on my account as I don't want the aggression to lose me more than £100 a month!

The Dentist

I can't really say I'm looking forwards to tomorrow.

Having a tooth out is not top of my list of favourite things I want to do...

Last time I had teeth out I didn't need to worry about it in advance.
But I guess all things considered the dentist doing it is probably better than flying over the handlebars and face planting the tarmac again :-/

Hopefully I'll be ok for trading tomorrow afternoon. If not I'll be updating my databases (which is almost as exciting as having a tooth extracted).

P&L plodding along slowly, nothing amazing but should be a couple of hundred by the end of the month.

The pre race horses are slightly in the red at the moment, but is more than covered by profits on other markets and I'm confident of turning that around in the next few weeks as long as I don't make too many mistakes.

Busy Busy Busy

Or should that be not so busy, not so busy, not so busy...

Three jumps meetings today and all three cancelled. So I decided to video some flat races and BF went down half way through the first one that I was watching.

With half an hour between races it leaves me lots of time to aimlessly surf the web and drink cups of coffee (which should be water) and play guitar hero.

Here's some cool guitaring I found when aimlessly surfing the web



[Update:]

Another hour of Knights of Cydonia...
keep crashing at 63/64%

I can do the sections in practice, just can't get past 64% on the whole song... lol

Two days

No trading today, but I have two whole days to trade, Thursday and Friday afternoons free for trading... Woohoo.

Also I should be able to trade Monday through Friday for the next few weeks.

BF went down this evening but appears to be back up again so hopefully will be ok tomorrow.

Today's Lessons

So what did I learn today...

When you lay a favourite it wins, when you don't it loses...

Trading 2+ horses at the same time in running is not a great idea

Trading races with 4 or less runners is not a great idea

Listening to Timeform radio can be distracting

Getting out late isn't much better than not getting out at all

Get out Early!!!

Remembering to drink water is not as easy as it sounds

It was a bit of a roller coaster today, most races threw up difficulties and then a big mistake in the 3rd race from last took away the small profit I'd managed to scrape together by that point.

On the plus side I am happy with most of my decisions and some quick closing of trades meant it was a small red rather than a big one at the end of the day.

It was a good day for learning what doesn't work so great...

I did make money on the short sprints at WOW trying out something new, but it was small stakes and so didn't help the daily P&L much. A promising start though.

Weekend

Unfortunately I couldn't do any horses over the weekend as I was working while the racing was on.

Tomorrow and Wednesday are the last days I'm working in the afternoons for a while so I should be able to get back into a routine and continue in my quest to crack the in play horse markets.

I have a few ideas to try out on the flat races, so will be monitoring the markets and then testing them with small stakes.

I'll continue to use £30 liability on the jump markets and see if I can keep more of my profits instead of giving them back...

My basketball trades had a very good weekend after a slow start to the year.

A week on Monday I have to have a tooth out, so it's nice to have something to look forwards to!

My challenge for this week is to drink water during the day instead of coffee.

Friday

No big screw ups today. A faint glimmer of progress maybe.

A few losses a few wins and a green total. Nothing spectacular but green is green.

My current strategy seems to work ok for jumps but I don't have any confidence in the short/flat races. I'll need to work something out for those if I want to trade the flat season.

It is possible to scalp the noise on shorter races, but the risks are quite high and is too easy to get burnt for my liking.

So the current question is... How to profit from the 5f/6f/7f flat races?

Boom!

Well that didn't last long...

How many races did I not lose more than £3... none... the first race and I completely screwed up!

Oh well I made most of it back again to end up only £5 down on the afternoon, but I am getting fed up of doing this... I know the rules and if I's stuck to my rules I'd have taken a small green instead and been £30 up today...

I think I need to wire up some sore of electric shock system that shoots 450 volts through my chair when I make stupid mistakes.

I guess the fact that it's hard to beat the natural instinct to not scratch or cut losses straight away is a good thing as it means if lots of others are doing the same then there is opportunity to profit from it in the markets, and eventually when I'm not doing it any more I might be making more profit.

Right... next challenge... Which is slightly harder... See if I can remember to open doors before I try and walk through them.

Hope you had a more productive afternoon than I did.

Race video feeds

I noticed that the ATR and RUK video is more delayed in the UK today than it was in Switzerland, ATR is effectively useless at 25 secs, and RUK is quite bad at 16 secs compared to 6-10 in Switzerland.

The BF feed seems about the same and is hard to tell exactly as it has no clock.

Unless ATR improves drastically in the next few weeks I'll bin it. Even if the BF feed is not available the ATR one is no help at all for the way I trade. To be honest I don't really need video at all, but it just reinforces what I'm seeing on the charts and lets me know if anyone has fallen etc.

Today's Video



and a bonus video from Sports Punter

One of my favourite songs on Guitar Hero

Part time

I have work for the next 5 days until mid afternoon which means the trading will be part time, last 4 or 5 races only.

Nice to get some regular cash coming in, and it might be a good thing to have less races for a while so I don't have to concentrate for so long.

Whether working effects the trading is another matter, so if I don't feel 100% I'll just skip the trading.

Next week I'll be back on mornings for five or six weeks and will have the full day available for trading.

breaking the habit

I'm still wasting too much time with occasional big losses that take me all day to get back. I've limited my liability and it doesn't happen as often as it used to, but it is a bad habit and it has to stop...

win £35 lose £30 win £35 lose £30 win £35 lose £30... not ideal...

My current challenge starting tomorrow is to see how many races I can trade without getting any one loss of more than £3.

Then the next challenge will be to beat it. No prizes for guessing the one after that...

1000-1

Only made £8 Tuesday, it should have been £38 but 3 races from the end I layed a horse that was being ridden hard and looked like it was dying at the back of the (4 runner) field and then watched the price drift all the way out to 1000.

Not a bad lay I thought... Then the stupid jockey decided to keep trying and was hanging in a few lengths of the back of the field and a few sips of coffee and a look out the window later, it was suddenly back into the race and managed to win...

On the plus side it only cost me £30 and taught me to keep concentrating until the end of the race. It must have made and lost a few people a lot more than £30.

A few races earlier the clear leader fell at the last fence...

No trading today as I have to go back to the UK for a couple of months and I'll be driving all day.

Mistakes

I like to make things difficult for myself it seems...

Decided to lose £29 in the first two races this afternoon and then spend the rest of the afternoon trying to make it back. I finished only a couple of quid down, but if nothing else I didn't start chasing the loss or change what I was doing, I just carried on steadily making it back...



All I need to do is stop making the stupid mistakes and I might be making a profit!

I nailed a few more songs on Guitar Hero so despite the small loss it was overall a good afternoon.

Trading in play (or pre race) is like a lot of things... you need to practice...

When you practice you get better and you make less mistakes, eventually you get good or you give up...

But if you don't try you'll never know.

I've got 6 months before I need to make a living at this or get a job, and losing £50 or £100 some days at the moment is insignificant in the big picture. What matters is that I give it a go and find out if I can make a proper income from trading.

Here's today's Metallica video

Building The Bank

Had a reasonable afternoon on the horses, only pulled in £8.83 but that's because I had a stupidly small bank to use...

I've identified a few things (people) that make a big difference to how I trade, and will make sure I only trade when they are out of the house and there is no danger of getting distracted!

It's also easier now I'm back in Switzerland. The internet connection is better than in Spain and I have a better office to work in.

Forgot to test ATR against BF video, but will try and do that tomorrow.

Guitar Hero

one step backwards then two steps backwards

Following getting caught by early suspension last night, this afternoon I had problems with video feed, and with horses not doing what I wanted and very unreasonably catching me badly for significant reds 3 races in a row...

This means my bank has gone from £110 down to £8.

Never work with people or animals!

Some of it might be because I have a stinking cold, but it's more likely just me not sticking to the plan and staying in the market too long when I should bail...

Looks like I might need to use some of my monthly £25 deposit allowance to top up the bank again.

Won't be doing that until Monday though. Will see what I can do with £8 for a few days first as would be better if I don't need to make a deposit.

At least I've made £80 on the dogs so is not too bad overall.

Rest of the afternoon will be Guitar Hero!

US Races

Had a quick play with the US races this evening, thought it'd be ok with the live video on BF...

Had a couple of small greens and then a race suspended early costing me £50

I won't be doing them again in a hurry...

Has cost me most of the last 2 days profit!

ATR v BF

Another good afternoon of in running, not so many races as yesterday but still added to the P&L with another 9/9 greens.

I ran a comparison of BF video and ATR video side by side today and was interesting that ATR was about 5 secs behind BF!

So I just used the BF feed after the first few races, which doesn't need vpn.

What is the point of subscribing to ATR if you get the same feed faster for free from BF?

That was in Spain, I'm back in Switzerland on Friday so can see if it is any different there and then a week later I'll be in UK so can test from there as well.

When I move permanently to Switzerland in June I'll probably look at getting cable/satellite rather than internet pictures.

The In running trading is going much better than I expected and I'm getting more confident each day. Hopefully not just beginners luck!

Not a bad start

First afternoon trading of 2011 went quite well.

I earned more than minimum hourly wage (which is nice) pulling in £41.53 from 3 hours of horse races.



I'm not going to post my P&L screen shots every day, but I've put this one up as it's a good start for the first afternoon of the year, and to compare with how I'm doing later in the year.

I didn't need to top up the bank this month, and instead I pulled out some funds to take it back down to £40 so doubling it today was quite good. It wasn't a target it just happened that way.

I'm only trading horses In Play and have stopped trying to make anything from pre race as I find it too unpredictable. I have my staking set to a maximum liability of £30, so usually I'll not get near that but if for example the internet crashed and I couldn't close out a trade I'll still not be able to get a massive loss.

The current plan is to get the bank to £300 and from there to keep my maximum liability at 10% of bank.

Bot is still working away on the other account bringing in £10-£15 a day.

One of my targets when I first started trading was to make £50 a day...

I thought it'd be easy...

18 months later and I can see that it is now possible to do that with some consistently, if I don't screw up, but it's taken me a long time to get here.

Even at £50 a day (and IF I could do that 25 days a month) it would still only be £1250 a month so doesn't yet compare with a full time job...

But it's getting closer!

2010

I'll try and keep it brief...

Lost some money
Won some money
Made some mistakes
Made some mistakes again...
And again...

Made a £2.3k profit for the year most of which was in the last 6 months.

I now feel confident that I 'can' make money on a regular basis...
Whether I do or not is another thing...

I need to start bringing in a bit more income otherwise I'll need to get a proper job in July (and I really don't want a proper job).

Goals for 2011

1) make £1000 in a month
2) make £2000 in a month
3) Earn enough from Trading to not need any other income

4) Do a back flip off a ski jump
5) Start snowboarding

Not done much trading the last weeks as some races have been cancelled and then I've been on holiday in Spain.

I did try some this afternoon, but gave it up as a bad idea when I kept getting interrupted. Hopefully will be able to start tomorrow.