Cran the Trader

Dank für alle Fische

2012-01-18T15:46:00.006Z

I haven't done any trading for ages...

The Bot is still ticking over on a VPS and paying for my beer and a few toys.

Will be working (skiing) in France until April so unlikely to be able to do much manual trading before Easter even if I wanted to.

I may or may or may not decide to have a look at In Running trading again in the summer depending what I'm doing and where I am.

I'll still be on The Geeks Toy forums, but I think the blog has served it's purpose and there's nothing else to add to it, so it won't be updated any more.

Thanks for reading and I hope some of it has been useful over the last few years.

Glück

Here's some Rammstein to finish off with

Snow

2011-12-13T11:28:00.002Z

After arriving in the Alps with no snow and sunshine just over a week ago, there was a big dump last week and a few of the lifts/slopes were opened this weekend a week ahead of schedule :)

Was working all day Saturday, but made it up to the slopes on Sunday and the snow was really good.

It's going to be hard sitting at the PC trading the afternoon races for the next few weeks...

I guess it'll just have to be when the weather is bad.

Also GF just got a new job, so thinks are looking ok at the moment.

No Snow

2011-12-02T16:32:00.003Z

Started my new job in the Alps today

It's a fantastic location in The Grand Massif and I have a cool apartment (with fast internet) and I get 4 days off a week to go skiing.

The only problem is there is no snow!!!

So I guess I'll be doing more trading than I was expecting for a while...

Thanks thatwasthepension for the picture!

Dodgy Trader Warning

2011-11-30T23:20:00.004Z

Post Removed by request, and benefit of the doubt, as says he is not the same person and not charging for his advice...

If he's not charging and not the same person then I apologise.

Best get your IP address sorted though to avoid confusion as several of your recent ip addresses are the same as the ones listed.

Children in Need

2011-11-19T17:32:00.004Z

Breaking news from Geek Towers

Well actually it broke yesterday but I was too busy getting drunk to notice and I've been out on my bike all day today (seeing as the weather was quite good and my back wasn't hurting much and I could actually ride it, it is quite stiff now though)... Anyway I digress... but that's why the breaking news is over a day late...

The Geek is running another Children in Need appeal

Geeks Toy - 2011 Charity Fundraiser

So get over there and for one small donation (or large if you prefer, and lets face it a large one is better) you can enter prize draws and there are also auctions for all sorts of great stuff

Betting System Notes (prize draw)
£200 Cash (prize draw)
Handy Andy's Homer Footie Strats (prize draw)
Geeks Toy Betdaq Version (Prize Draw)
2 Kick Ass Trading & Education Bundles (Auction)
£2000 Betfair Personal Anual API subsription (auction)
Celtic FC Signed Jersey + 4 Ticket Hospitality Package (Auction)

Geeks Toy just keeps on getting better

The more observant amongst you may have noticed that one of the prizes is pre release use of the Betdaq version of The Toy.

Yes that's right!

Not only does the next release of Version 1.2 Beta with Stop Loss, Dutching, Bookmaking, Multibet tool & the new In-Play interface arrive on Monday, there is more to follow soon...

The Future is bright, the Future is Purple!

And let's not forget:

Geeks Toy, Probably the best Betfair Trading Software in the world!

Geeks Toy
Geeks Toy Forum

Back to Black

2011-11-08T13:59:00.000Z

Decided to do a bit of trading this afternoon...

Cue a completely messed up video feed from Betfair.

Oh well I made over a quid from the first two races before it stopped working, and I'm now having the rest of the afternoon off to eat ice cream, and do some back exercises (probably not at the same time)

I've ordered a book from Amazon which will fix my back and give me a pain free life, so that's something to look forwards to.

Here's one of my favourite back songs

Back on Track

2011-11-07T19:48:00.000Z

Have not done a massive amount of In Running trading over the last few days/weeks, but I have made back the loss from a couple of weeks ago and added a small bit of green.

Have only been doing a couple of races a day (if that) as most of my time was spent upgrading my Betdaq bot and adding a couple of new strategies.

Betdaq bot bank has grown from £20 to £311 over the last 3 months, which is faster growth than my BF bot had when that started, but it does have the advantage of some strategies to copy rather than having to do everything from scratch.

If it could get the same growth rate and go from £300 to £4500 in the next 3 months I'd be quite pleased, but I have more realistic targets and will be looking to push the bank through the £1000 mark if things continue to go well and the liquidity allows it. I'll be very surprised if it does much more than that.

I've knackered my back, which is not ideal with the ski season only weeks away... But I have a Physio booked and hopefully I can get it fixed fairly quickly. If not I'll be on the piss more than on the piste.

Plan for this week is 1-2 hours of In Running each day, depending on cards and weather. Starting tomorrow... as I forgot to check the cards today until it was too late...

Here's a video about Winter

So much for that...

2011-10-25T14:44:00.000+01:00

Ok, decided to be more aggressive and try using bigger stakes for the In Running...

Didn't really work out... 4 races... £30 down the pan... and that's 40% of my bank gone.

Not a problem in the big picture, and was unlucky with the timing, two of the horses were put out the race by other horses obstructing them, and two just didn't run well and gave me no chance to scratch... but as I don't top up my bank I can't risk any more of it...

I'm going to have to go back to small stakes to build it back up again.

That won't be until tomorrow as trading after a 40% loss is not a good idea...

Another day I could have been £30 up at this point...

On the plus side it's now beer o'clock

A place for non runners

2011-10-23T21:43:00.001+01:00

Having found what I thought might be a profitable lay system for the place markets I started some test bets last week.

But it's not given the returns that the data suggested it would, and today I discovered why when I investigated why my actual P&L didn't match the P&L suggested by the downloaded data for the week...

It seems that Betfair pay out on place markets based on the number of entries, not the number of horses that actually run the race, so for example in a 16 horse race if 6 of the runners withdraw the place market still pays out on the first 4 places...

Apparently this is to be fair to punters, but it is different to every other place market in the universe, and probably beyond.

Oh well, I made a huge £3.27 finding out, but now that I've rerun the analysis with non runners included I've concluded that it's not a viable strategy, so it's in the bin and I'm back to the drawing board...

I might check how the Betdaq prices compare tomorrow, as they do discount the non runners so if the prices are similar it might still work over there.

Income or Hobby

2011-10-18T18:12:00.001+01:00

In Running Trading is fun, and I make a couple of quid most days, but my dislike of risk means that I often miss the larger profits (I guess that also saves me from larger losses) and I'm not convinced that I should be spending all week trading for less than I can earn in half a day working as a builders mate...

I also have a job for 5 months and lots of skiing to do starting in a few weeks time...

So I think it is going to stay a hobby until April just doing a couple of days a week when I have nothing else to do for between £5-£20 stakes, after which I will decide if there is any future in it as a proper income.

What I have found by pure chance is that one of my selection systems for Back to Lay produces a fairly steady gradient on the P&L chart for the last 24 months with no significant drawdowns.

So I'm going to be starting with a £200 bank and trialling it using 1% stakes (ratcheted up after each day, min £2 max £50)

If it continues to be successful I might decide to post up my selections one day a week or something.

I will still do some more In Running Videos once my stakes are up to £20 level.

Reverse

2011-10-12T15:35:00.002+01:00

One of my selection analysis graphs has a nice smooth P&L line based on backing to win, which is much better than erratic ups and downs...

The only problem is that it goes the wrong way... and makes a nice steady loss...

No Problem...

I'll just lay instead of back

It's great when a plan comes together, even if I haven't got a clue what I'm doing!

In Running

The In Running markets have changed from what I have seen the last two days, whether this is because I'm expecting them to change and seeing what I want to see, or whether they have really changed is probably debatable, but on my selections the prices have not always been moving as expected based on the previous weeks...

For a bit of fun I've backed today's selections to win and then at the end of the day I'll empty my bank and switch to training mode for a few weeks while things settle down.

Maybe laying the lowest price horse as they get to the 2f stick might be profitable...

I'll test that out tomorrow with play money.

Here's some Gary Newman

Whiplash

2011-10-11T13:25:00.004+01:00

New whip rules have been introduced...

I'm not going to read too much into just one day, but yesterday was interesting and if it makes a significant difference to how the races are run, then I might need to re assess my in running selections and strategies.

Change brings opportunity, so it's just a case of adapting and evolving... or something...

As seems to be required quite often these days.

In Running Video Feeds

2011-10-06T19:40:00.002+01:00

Big problems with the Betfair Video feed again this afternoon :(

I had a quick look on the BF forums just to check it was a common problem and not just me, and today someone mentioned that the Betdaq feed was working fine...

What Betdaq feed?

So I logged into Betdaq, and sure enough they have a video feed... :)

When Betfair was back up I did a side by side comparison and there's not much in it, BetDaq was about 1/2 second ahead of Betfair on the two races I checked.

But Betdaq only have ATR and not RUK, but as Ayr was abandoned it wasn't an issue today.

Just had a quick look at RUK site for live feed and it's £115 a year to subscribe, so now I'm making some more consistent profits I might sign up for that if the BF feed keeps being pants.

Had another easy day of uneventful trades, just under £20 so far, still a few races to go, stakes now up to £7.50.

Virtual bank is £150 (I've taken a ton out this week as there's no need to have more than £50 actually kept in BF)

Still cutting some trades too early when the prices don't match what I'm reading, but I guess it means I get caught less as well... But that's probably the thing I need to work on at the moment as there's some nice profits to be had for relatively small risk if I can get the balance right.

Keep your IP address hidden if VPN disconnects

2011-10-05T18:44:00.012+01:00

If you are using a VPN it does a good job of hiding your real IP address and country, but what happens when the VPN disconnects...?

Normally your network traffic will just keep on going and get routed through your ISP and in doing so reveal your ISP IP address and location...

This wouldn't be good if for example you are on holiday in France and using Betfair...

There are programs that will monitor the VPN connection and in the case of a disconnect they can shut down applications to try and prevent this (assuming they can do it fast enough)

But a safer (and easier) solution is to edit your PC's routing table so that it will not send data other than via the VPN.

And Thanks to Pulsar on The Geeks Toy forum for helping me work this out!

First you need to remove the entry for 0.0.0.0 to your Gateway from your routing table as this is the default route for ALL network traffic.

Step 1: Open a command prompt (run as admin if using Vista) and type:

route print

This produces the following output, and in my case you can see that the 0.0.0.0 entry uses Gateway 192.168.1.1

So we need to delete this route from the routing table, but then what happens after the VPN drops and you need to reconnect?

Unless you can access the internet you can't log back into the VPN, so having removed all the routes you need to add a new route table entry just for your VPN server so that it can get to your gateway.

Step 2: Use ping to find out the IP address of your VPN server:

Step 3: Make sure your VPN connection is set up to use the IP address rather than host name (and if the IP address ever changes you'll need to do this again)

Step 4: Delete the default routing

At the command prompt type:

route delete 0.0.0.0 192.168.1.1

Step 5: Then add a route for your VPN server IP address (e.g. 83.170.76.128) to your gateway (e.g. 192.168.1.1)

At the command prompt type:

route add 83.170.76.128 mask 255.255.255.255 192.168.1.1 metric 1

And that's it... All network traffic goes via the VPN and if the VPN disconnects nothing gets out until it is reconnected...

Summary

To force all traffic to use VPN:

route delete 0.0.0.0 192.168.1.1

route add 83.170.76.128 mask 255.255.255.255 192.168.1.1 metric 1

To unforce (i.e. allow traffic to use your ISP again) put the default routing back:

route add 0.0.0.0 mask 0.0.0.0 192.168.1.1 metric 1

You can optionally use the -p (permanent) option to have your VPN IP route stay in the table without having to re-add it every reboot as it will not cause any problem having it there when the default route is enabled.

route add -p 83.170.76.128 mask 255.255.255.255 192.168.1.1 metric 1

If you do this with .bat files remember to run them as administrator if you are using Vista.

And in case you need more routes...

Green Card

2011-10-03T18:07:00.001+01:00

Luckily I'm not going to America, but I had a fully green card today with no losses on the In Running horse racing.

I'm still building my bank and focusing on not getting caught, and I could have been a bit (lot) bolder, but I'm learning how to read the races better and what I can get away with without taking too much risk. Before much longer I should be using larger stakes and making more/longer trades to bring my daily profits up to something worthwhile.

Stakes are up to £6 (will be £7 tomorrow) and I took £13 from 13 races with only 30 betting clicks of the mouse... (how boring is that...)

Some good races to watch today, my favourite being Medal Of Valour in the 5:10, not the smoothest of runs, but put the favourites well and truly in their place by dominating the race from start to finish.

Worth watching the replay on RP or RUK if you have access to that.

Here's a green day video:

Japanese Jellyfish

2011-09-30T13:16:00.006+01:00

A bit of a kerfuffle as I've not had a proper phone before, but I've now rooted and rom'd my Orange San Fransisco (ZTE Blade) . I decided on Android 2.2 Japanese Jellyfish RLS9

I even used Clockwork to remove Orange

It's actually quite easy, so if I need to do it again it will only take about 15 mins (now that I've deciphered the various instructions/guides and worked out what you actually need to do...)

The phone works properly now all the Orange crap is gone. It is a really good value entry level android phone once you've cleaned it up.

Trading was a bit lean yesterday, mainly because I was trying to sort my phone out between races, I had an amazing amount of winners from my back to lay selections yesterday and if I'd simply backed them all I would have made a nice profit of about 400%, but it's not always like that and needless to say I scratched most of them just before they made their move for the front... still green but not green enough...

Today I can focus on the races without distractions, so hoping for a better profit.

Anyone got any suggestions for good SatNav app (with the maps on the SD card so they don't need to download on the move) to install on my phone?

Ideally I'd like to be able to plan routes sometimes rather than just put in the destination and let it take me where it wants to.

[Update]

Not a bad afternoon, I traded 18 races and had a nice trickle of greens, only annoying race was quite early on when I stuck a lay bet in by mistake as my finger twitched and so my original back bet just cancelled that out and as the horse went on to win I made p's instead of £'s, but apart from that it was very uneventful and boring steady afternoon.
£25 profit from £5/£6 stakes. IR bank now up to £120 (from £20 starting bank last week)

2:30

2011-09-27T19:02:00.002+01:00

Not much trading today as I had to go to the dentist, but made it back in time for the 16:30 and made a few quid from just 5 races.

Would have been more races if they were all on time instead of running over the next race.

Car is in for MOT tomorrow, so I'm hoping that is cheaper than the dentist!

[Update]

Car was a lot cheaper than the dentist...

Stakes

2011-09-27T12:28:00.000+01:00

Having thunked a bit about how to increase my profits I've decided to introduce a more aggressive staking plan.

I'm going to stake 5% of my bank and ratchet up at £10 intervals.
Minimum stake £5 and maximum £30.

bank £100 -> £ 5.00 stake
bank £110 -> £ 5.50 stake
bank £120 -> £ 6.00 stake
.
.
.
bank £600 -> £30.00 stake

There will be no reduction in stakes for losses unless the bank falls below £110, and if it does that the stakes will reset to £5.

Once the bank reaches £600 I'll withdraw each day as I don't see much to be gained from staking higher than £30 (but that might change).

I might even have a virtual bank, as there is not really any need to keep more than £100 in the bank even with £30 stakes.

Bank is currently at about £80.

I've also decided to not get involved in the market before the off as this sometimes works, but other times doesn't and is more of a distraction than a help.

50K

2011-09-26T23:53:00.000+01:00

Not £50K unfortunately, but 50,000 page views...

I'm guessing that at least half of them were not me...

Should be a close call which comes first... 1 million blog hits or PC3*... Both will take well over 20 years...

I can't even imagine living that long. The blog will be gone long before then.

* I'm really not sure if it's PC2 or PC3 as I've seen it referred to as both... it's the one where you make £250k and then they screw you for 60%

Targets

2011-09-26T20:08:00.002+01:00

Today I had no losses and I traded better than last Monday... I was also using double the stakes of last week...

But I made less profit per market.

So how do targets fit into trading horse races...?

If I had a target to make double my profit from last week, would I have made mistakes trying to get more out of the markets? Or would I have been more focused and able to get more out of the markets?

There needs to be some balance. I like to have goals, and setting targets can be a good way of motivating and monitoring. But at the same time it is difficult to set profit targets on markets that I have no control over, and I don't want to be trying to hard to take more than the market is offering me by taking unnecessary risks with my bank.

At the moment my targets are more about reading the markets, reading the races, how I feel, and trading well. They are more about not making losses than about how much to make.

Take what I am given, nothing more nothing less.

At some point (soon) I need to start pushing the stakes and profits a bit harder... What sort of targets will help me do that?

£10 a day is ok for beer money, but it won't pay the rent.

I'll have a think about how best to approach this and set some targets this week. It will probably involve ramping up the stakes faster.

San Fransisco

2011-09-24T20:29:00.002+01:00

Finally decided to get a new phone...

The Orange San Fransisco PAYG Android phone for £100

The main reason I decided to change was I need a new Sat Nav and it makes sense to buy a phone with Sat Nav when it only costs the same for the phone and GPS software as I'd spend on just a sat nav...

With £10 credit, 6 screen protectors, a leather case, a car charger and windscreen sucker mount thing it still came to only £120 total.

Obviously I won't be using the Orange sim once I've used up the £10 credit, as it's quite easy to unlock.

Betfair had a few issues today and I had a hard time with the in running this afternoon. Ended up slightly in profit overall but the IR horses made a £10 loss.

Funniest bit was when I missed the jump in the 20:50 at Wolves and decided to trade without video anyway, I was on Resplendent Ace at 30.0 and I held on till quite late in the race and eventually scratched for a 10p loss... the price then nose dived to 1.01 and it won the race... lol

Still 2 more races, and I've only had 6 beers so I might as well give them ago... :)

More Betterer

2011-09-23T22:12:00.001+01:00

Mostly had a good day of racing today (threw away £6 in one race by getting too confident and losing full stake on 2 horses by not paying attention but the rest of the day was ok).

Have upped my IR stakes to £3!!!

May not seem a lot, but it made a tad under £39 profit and I'm getting a lot better at reading the races, even with the video feed delay.

All my trades are on horses that are pre selected, but I still need to read the race to know when to scratch and when to let it run a bit longer.

Apparently it's the end of the world as we know it... REM have split up, which explains why I was treated to 2 hours of non stop REM on the radio the other night whilst driving through France

Then if that wasn't enough, there was a program on the Stranglers next...

The speakers were on full volume with the pedal to the metal and speed cameras flashing for 3 whole hours.

IR Video

2011-09-20T17:53:00.002+01:00

I made a video of In Running trading yesterday.

I should have stopped at about 4:30, but I carried on to complete most of the races apart from the last few jumps races at Ballinrobe.

Is using minimum stakes and a small bank, the selections were all picked in advance as candidates to shorten in running.

There are two versions, the first is normal speed edited down to 40 mins and the second is speeded up to double speed (and yes you guessed it... 20 mins).

The shorter version can be found here

I haven't done any IR for a month or so, so am a bit rusty.

The first half was better than the second half which was pretty poor, but stayed green. I made a nice green upto about 4:30 but then I was getting bored and scratching too early towards the end and cutting my profits (on the plus side I was cutting losses as well).

TT can get very laggy when running Camtasia, so sometimes when I'm clicking like a muppet it's not because I'm a muppet it's because clicks aren't registering... :D

Was using £2 stakes and a small bank (started at £23 and took it up to almost £40) just to get back into IR with not much risk for the first week or so.

Should be back to £20 stakes before too long and then I'll make another video.

Purple Haze

2011-09-16T13:37:00.001+01:00

Had a good day on the Purple Place earlier this week and my bank is now into triple figures and I've doubled my stakes to £1

Will be starting up the In Running trading again soon, just putting the finishing touches to my race cards and selection system and it'll be ready to go, hopefully before the end of racing this afternoon.

The In Running will need to stay on BF at the moment, but I might put some straight bets in over the road as well, as a horse with a good chance of shortening in price should (in theory) also have a chance of winning, or why would it's odds shorten...

Code

2011-09-13T08:42:00.000+01:00

Have had a few weeks off chilling out and drinking beer and doing marathons (watching obviously, I wouldn't be silly enough to try and run one...) and I am now back in Basel (for a whole two weeks) so have started work on my coding again.

The horse race database is up to date and the next step is to do some testing with my new in running selection scoring system.

I've had my bots running on a VPS for the last month and it's a lot better than having to keep a PC or laptop turned on 24/7 at home. Should have set that up ages ago, but I was waiting for my bank to grow a bit bigger and the first half of this year was a bit lean.

I can recommend the Tagadab VPS500 if you are thinking about a VPS for a bot, was quick and easy to set up, even on a Sunday afternoon, and has a weeks trial for about £2.

http://www.tagadab.com/uk/virtual-private-servers/VPS_500

I'm running the windows 2008 64 bit server and my bots are mostly written in C# 2010 and an older one is VB 2008.

The Betfair bots are currently still pulling in a few quid a day from the UK server and I've also started trading more of the Australian Server markets. These are harder as I can't find much data on the Australian horses and dogs to help determine what the prices should be but I'm not losing anything which is a good... The new Betdaq bot has made about £15 so far... but it's a start...

I've pretty much given up looking for a job in Basel at the moment. Apart from my lack of German, and I haven't had a job as an employee for 5 years... I've already got a ski job fixed up starting December for 4-5 months in France, so only have 2 months before that starts, so not really worth it.

As well as lots of skiing time it will also give me time to trade (or code) during the week as the job is 30 hours but all at the weekend.

Once I get back in April I'll do an intensive German course for a few months and then maybe think about looking for work again... Or I might just do some more cycling...

It's a tough life...

Coincidence?

2011-08-18T18:23:00.006+01:00

Since the new PC charge was introduced my bot has started making money again...

Coincidence?

Who knows, but the end of last month I started making a bit (after a slack 6 months) and I've now beaten my largest monthly profit just 18 days into this month. Not necessarily expecting it to last long, but not complaining.

From my PC statements I've still got about £5000 of profit before I start paying charges, but my total charges % is coming down, and based on recent %'s I'm not sure that I can do much to stop it dropping down under 10% in the long term. Luckily long term is still a long way away.

And it will take me a good few years to make £250K, so not worth worrying too much about it at the moment.

I've also made a few quid botting on Betdaq. Not a massive amount as I'm only using 50p stakes, but it looks like the liquidity is increasing enough to make some strategies profitable and if it keeps improving then might be an alternative.

The in Running trading... How's that going?

Well to be honest since I finished downloading my horse race data (a few weeks ago now) I haven't done anything with it.

I've had some problems that mean I can no longer eat wheat (or any grains at the moment) and also need to avoid dairy foods and chips, and so it has been a bit of a hassle getting used to a completely different diet.

I am starting to get into the habit of eating loads of fruit and salads (which is probably a good thing to do anyway), and luckily I'm still able to drink beer...

Also the weather has got a lot better, so mountain biking and sunbathing at the lake have taken priority over trading.

I will be back in Basel in about 2 weeks, and that is when I will finish my horse racing application and resume my In running trading, so hopefully some more interesting blog posts then.

This is where I'll be staying for a few days on the way back to Basel

What's Occurring

2011-08-06T12:46:00.002+01:00

Haven't been doing any trading this week.

Not really motivated by Betfair at the moment, have heard a few stories of people having their accounts suspended and getting big PC bills because BF say their accounts are linked to other accounts...

I guess now is a bad time to find an edge and start making some money... you risk losing it (and more if they take your money to pay someone else's PC).

I've taken 75% of the money out of my BF accounts and just have the bare minimum for my bot to keep ticking over, and I'll be withdrawing profits (if there are any) every week/month as there is not much benefit (and some big risks) to having a big bank at the moment.

My Horse data is now downloaded back to 1st August 2006, which is as far as I need to go to be able to use 2 years worth of data for selection and then back test that to 2 years (4 years total), so I've now started building my own form and race cards and working on rankings for betting and for Back to Lay trading to run through my tester (when I've finished coding it, should take a couple of days).

The selection is pretty much what I have been doing for the last 3 months, but with the benefit that I can back test as well as paper trade or test with low stakes. The problem previously was that I can't get race cards for old races in the same format as today's race cards... now I can...

Might give Betdaq another go next week, maybe even resurrect the betdaq bot that I started working on a while back, once the horse database testing stuff is finished.

Other news:

I've found a flat in the Grand Massif for the coming ski season, and I have a couple of job interviews lined up. Given that jobs are easier to get than accommodation I'm confident that I'll be in the Alps this year. Even if I don't get/take one of these jobs there's plenty more so I'll just turn up and wing it if I don't get anything fixed up in advance...

I'm hoping I can stay out there after April and do something Mountain biking (and/or road biking) related work once the ski season finishes.

Has been the wettest July in the history of the Universe in Girona this summer... almost like being back in the UK apart from it's better scenery and cheaper and I know the neighbours, so now that there is a bit of sun today I'm going to sit outside drinking beer for the rest of the afternoon.

Apparently it's International Beer Day today, not that I need an excuse.

Also it's International underwear day, so maybe drinking beer in your underwear is in order...

What Time?

2011-07-28T17:05:00.000+01:00

Having just highlighted a name problem in my previous post I've now found a new problem with matching horse races...

What time is the race?

The same race can apparently be run at different times...

Back to editing code again...

Which Horse?

2011-07-28T15:11:00.000+01:00

It's hard enough picking winners before the race, but sometimes it's not easy even after the results are published...

I guess a few errors are to be expected, but it doesn't make the scraping any easier when linking data from multiple sources...

The form seems to be mostly consistent, and it doesn't really matter if RP have a different name for the horse now I've figured out the problem (has happened twice in 30000 horses so far) and have allowed for it in my horse id matching code.

I'm mostly using Timeform data and only collecting dob and breeding info from Racing Post, which all seems to be correct if you ignore the name and can make the correct match.

Loading...

2011-07-24T12:16:00.005+01:00

Seem to have solved the C# browser control 'Memory Access Violation' error that pops up every few thousand pages...

It's great fun debugging when you get errors in someone else's (Microsoft's) code and it only happens once or twice a day...

I've sorted out refreshing invalid pages and 404 errors and all that stuff that happens from time to time. So I'm now able to download my database without having to keep checking/restarting it when the web sites mess up or go off line for maintenance (like RP does quite often).

It maybe won't take quite as long as it says in the picture, but on current progress it will take about 20 hours for each year of race data, so I'll probably only get the last 5 years for now.

BetUnFair

2011-07-23T23:40:00.002+01:00

Not been doing much trading the last few days.

I've been re writing my horse database and enjoying the hills of Girona on the bike.

There's a lot of talk at the moment about Betfair PC3 and people moving to Betdaq. I think it will be a good thing if people do move over and I'm experimenting more with Betdaq myself.

Betfair used to be a good company with a good idea, and when they stuck to this idea I liked them, but now they have become arrogant and too greedy and in my opinion have underestimated their customers and made a very big mistake. They are starting to look like just another large American, full of bullshit, company with no legitimate values or integrity (though they will no doubt think they do have these things) very similar to the company I worked for a few years ago that drove me away from working in IT.

So my own opinion is that I hope this stupid decision bites them in the Arse.

Even if it causes me some extra work swapping exchanges or costs me a few quid in the short term.

I have so far kept my commission just above 20% and so I haven't even paid any PC2 yet, but that's not the point, this is just a completely dumb decision by Betfair and they have lost any loyalty that I might have had.

They have also strengthened my resolve to switch from trading to betting and to find value bets which can be made anywhere, rather than trades that need liquidity to trade out.

I will happily switch exchanges tomorrow if I am able to make the same profits.

Certainly by the time I get anywhere near £250k I'm sure things will have changed a lot.

Interesting Times.

Gears

2011-07-18T22:37:00.000+01:00

Watching Tour de France has inspired me to head for the mountains on the road bike, and there's a few good climbs near Girona... but unfortunately my bike only has a double ring so is not ideal for cat 1 and 2 climbs...

Next bike will definitely have a triple.

I made it, but it hurt like

This is the climb I did today.

Ryder does it in 29:09... not sure where his start is, mine from 13.5km away at the start of the road was a very pedestrian 50 mins (although I did get held up by some sheep for 30 secs).

Even grinding a heavy gear it was still 15 mins faster than I did on the mountain bike last week.

Coming back down only takes 10 mins!!!

Bot Tastic

2011-07-16T20:31:00.008+01:00

Not sure what has happened, but my old bot that used to make decent money, but then spent the last 6 months just ticking over churning bets and breaking even (but keeping commission % high) and sometimes making a few quid (10-20) a month, has made more than it's made all year in the last 2 weeks... and if it makes the same in the next 2 weeks it will be a good month, even compared to when it was bringing in good money.

On top of that I finished downloading data and analysing my dob selections for the past 12 months historic data (based on what I've been doing the last few weeks) and it seems I've made £200 on a losing system... lol

Sometimes you just get lucky...

Anyway, it seems (with a few filters) I might now have a decent laying selection system :)

Won't be doing much trading (not manual anyway) for the next few days as I am taking a holiday... no point being in Spain and working all day...

A bit of mountain biking, a bit of sculling, a bit of beer (well a lot of beer) and then maybe towards the end of next week I'll get back to work and start on my next project.

Next project is looking at non UK/IRE horses/dogs and Australia markets.

I will also be re writing my scraping code and horse race database at some point to make it faster and more efficient, now that I've figured out how I should have done it in the first place...

Hind sight is a wonderful thing... if only you didn't need to wait for it.

Free Bet

2011-07-13T15:58:00.002+01:00

Had a free bet today courtesy of Betdaq prices being screwed...

Not seen it before, and I wasn't prepared to risk lumping on a huge arb in case they voided the market or something...

Backed 6.3 ish on BF and layed 2.3 on BedDaq

The first three runners on Betdaq were all trading around 2.0

Something went wrong with something... and surprisingly not many layers were taking advantage, but the races are quite tight for time today so maybe a lot of people skipped that race or something.

Guaranteed profit of £9 if it won, 50p if it lost...

Guess which it did... lol

-78p

2011-07-12T21:29:00.001+01:00

43 races... Total P&L -78p

Not quite as good as yesterday.

Biggest winner today was only 14/1

Would have been nice if Ooi Long had come in at 300/1.

I'm not sure if I should change my blog title to Cran The Gambler as I didn't trade much today, apart from a couple of races it was just straight back bets to win.

Good Day

2011-07-11T21:46:00.002+01:00

Had a good day today

Bot made a few quid (£30.95)

Backing dob selections on Betdaq (50p stakes) made a few quid (£61.61)

Trading my dobs on BF (£2 stakes later races) made a few quid (£19.82)

Daily profit £112.38

First time I've made over £100 in a day in a while...

Purple Profits

2011-07-11T14:52:00.004+01:00

Decided to back my dob selections on the Purple Place to see how it goes...

Have been checking odds against BF to make sure I'm not taking lower prices, and have had a nice start with Lady of Burgandy coming in at 86.0 in the first few races of the day.

So I've already doubled my £20 starting bank even if I get no more winners today

The only downside is that even though I checked prices when making the bet... the Betfair SP was 350.0!

Maybe I shouldn't have been so keen to get my bets on early this morning...

Betdaq don't have a SP option, so no idea what price I'd have got nearer the off.

200 Races

2011-07-10T22:33:00.003+01:00

Have compiled the results from last week, and from 200 races (a very small sample) the best strategy so far seems to be to back to win rather than dob...

The dobbing % is the % reduction on the scale starting price (0%) to 1.0 (100%) which means that 100% is a straight bet, as 1.01 is the lowest odds you can hedge at.

So from 200 races at 1 point per trade, blindly backing every dob selection gives a 300+ point return, and hedging at anything > 50% below SP gives a profit.

Maybe I should start a tipping service... lol (not going to happen)

Seriously though 200 races is nowhere near enough to draw any conclusion, but if I was trading with £2 stakes rather than paper trading I'd have had a very good week...

If backing to win does continue to be the best strategy then backing on Betdaq with 2.5% commission is going to be the thing to do.

The results above are after deducting 5% BF commission.

Powerful Wind

2011-07-08T19:28:00.005+01:00

Had a £4 green on Powerful Wind... To take my daily profit up to £20...

So I thought...

Unfortunately it ended up as a £37 loss because it won and the back bet had a reduction factor applied but the lay bet didn't...

So my balance is now negative... and it turned my best daily profit (since I started the £10 bank a few weeks back) into the biggest daily loss...

Today's thought of the day, today

Be careful backing before the Off as it's not easy to spot a withdrawal if it happens just before the race starts and since the runner doesn't get added to the non runners the software has no way to apply the reduction factor into the hedge calculation...

I did wonder why the price shot down so quick at the off, I'll know not to hedge next time that happens...

It could have been worse, and £10 isn't a massive daily loss...

It does mean I can't trade for 2 days now as I have a daily £10 deposit limit set on the In running account.

So Weekend off and it starts now!!!

Maths

2011-07-08T11:22:00.001+01:00

Slight error on the P&L calculation yesterday made the winners stats slightly more impressive than they should have been...

Having fixed the formulas, currently (on limited data) the best % drop to aim for with my recent dobbing selections is between 85%-90%

so for example if the BSP was 10 you'd hedge at 1.5.

Will see how that looks after a few weeks/months of data when it's more meaningful.

To DOB or not to DOB?

2011-07-07T23:21:00.004+01:00

It's VERY early days yet, but I've been setting up the analysis of the stats on my dobbing selections to find the optimum hedge price based on % of BSP.

I am currently make a profit after 5% BF commission (based purely on my rating score with no filters applied, i.e. blindly backing my highest scoring dobbing selection at BSP in every race) at 8%-14%,19%-21% but the interesting thing is that I make a much bigger profit (15 times bigger) by not hedging at all and just letting the bets run...

Probably just randomness as I only have a few hundred races logged, and I need to develop some filters, but something to keep an eye on as I build up my data over the next 10000 races.

I guess it's reasonable to assume that horses with a good chance of shortening odds also have a good chance of winning... otherwise why would they end up in a position where their odds shorten...

Beer And Gambling

2011-07-06T20:25:00.001+01:00

Thoughts of the day today:

1) Starting on the beers at 11am is not good for an afternoon of trading on the horses...

2) Going for 100 ticks will have a lower hit rate than going for 10 ticks...

Tobbing and Qobbing

2011-07-05T15:50:00.008+01:00

I've noticed that quite often the selections I pick for dobbing go much lower than half the starting odds...

So I've decided to try some 'Triple or Bust' and 'Quadruple or Bust' to see how I get on. The risks are higher, but so are the rewards...

I guess the next thing on my to-do list is to identify criteria for choosing between Dob/Tob/Qob.

Also the odds quite often drift at the start before coming in... Assuming my selection process is correct that means I am getting much better value at the higher price and should be lumping more money on... or it could also mean the horse is running like a donkey...

Thought of the day

I still tend to scratch as the price drifts, but often it's just before the price shoots back in again... but obviously if I don't scratch the price continues to drift and takes my whole stake...

Anyway, that's enough thinking for one day... A few more races and then it's beer o'clock

Here's the final total for today...

Not too bad for £3 stakes and 8 races...

My selection process seems to be working better, when I stick to it... If I stay focused and don't 'play about' betting on markets that I shouldn't (like I did yesterday).

Still haven't really figured out if it's best to place a bet at (or just before) the off and risk it drifting, or after the off and risk having to chase the price down the ladder to get a bet on... I'm looking at the Pattern Form data to see if it can help with this by backing front runners pre off and hold up runners 25%-50% into the race.

Race Timer

2011-07-04T21:52:00.003+01:00

Finished tidying up the in running race timer.

If anyone wants to give it a try I've put it on the interweb at http://www.nielda.co.uk/bf/data/

It only works for UK/IRE horse races and needs the Geeks Toy running to pick up the race distance and start.

So if you are not using Geeks Toy or not trading In Running don't bother to download it :) There's no buttons to click and it's about as useful as a chocolate teapot on it's own.

Had a good afternoon, but then the evening races were a bit rubbish, so I made a small loss on the total for the day by messing about in races that I should have not bothered with... as you do...

It was cheaper than going to the bar for more beers, so swings and roundabouts...

And I'm now going to the bar for more beers

España

2011-07-03T10:08:00.001+01:00

Am now in Spain, sat on the balcony in the sun drinking my first beer of the day...

Managed to get here in 8.5 hours without picking up any speeding tickets, and the beer is in the fridge, and the computers are all set up and ready to go... once I've had some sleep...

Probably here for about 6 weeks and then I'll be back to Switzerland to look for a job.

Job?

Yeah, a job... BF have basically put the final nail in the coffin with their latest premium charge announcement. To be fair I was already planning on getting a job anyway, as it's much easier making a few hundred a month from gambling with no pressure than trying to pull in enough to pay the bills.

For anyone who is interested the Race timer is almost ready to release, thanks to the people who asked about it the other day I've got round to improving a few things and it starts automatically when the race starts now, just need to figure out how to auto set the race distance and then it's done. Hope to get that done tomorrow.

Obviously I'll be mountain biking and swimming and sun bathing first...

[Edit] The race timer is done, so I'll test it out tomorrow afternoon and then assuming I don't find any problems I'll make it available as a .msi installation.

It does require The Geeks Toy because it picks up the race distance from the Toy's market overview window and auto starts when it goes in play. The other option would be to use the BF API but that would involve user names and passwords and data requests.

Only does UK/IRE races, but they are the only ones that go in play I think.

Dobbing Video

2011-07-01T23:01:00.000+01:00

Don't get too excited, but I've made a video of the last race today, mainly to test Camtasia on my new PC.

you might need to right click and download it to computer before playing

Started with a bank of £3.93, and made £7.58 over a few races this afternoon to finish up with a bank of 11.51 ready for some big stake betting tomorrow.

That £250k of profit to put me in the new Premium Charge zone is getting closer every day...

The last race was one of the easier trades of the day and I was fairly confident that the price 'should' come in, although (typically as I'd just increased the stakes to £3) it did take a while and I was already quite a few ticks in the red before the race even started.

It's a thin line between scratching too early and missing the profit, or letting it run a bit too long and losing the whole stake...

This is a good example of not scratching too early. I'm getting better at picking the right horses (mainly because I've automated it) so I'm more confident about hanging on for the green.

I probably shouldn't watch the races once I've put the closing trade in, but unfortunately I still sometimes like to jump in early and take a smaller green than I should or settle for a small red just before the price shoots down past where my lay bet was waiting... as I did several times today. The key is selecting the right horse and the right number of ticks in advance, as it's almost impossible to scratch once it goes wrong anyway, and I lose as much in greens as I save in reds by intervening.

I've added some music to the video, because it's bloody boring otherwise, and I reckon there can't be more than about 6 mouse clicks in the whole thing...

I placed the back bet quite early (about 10 mins before the race) just because there was nothing else happening. Sometimes I start the trade before the off, other times I wait until the race has started. Not very scientific, but that's what happens...

I'll do a longer video of more races next week when I'm in Spain (and I'll speed it up so it doesn't last too long).

WTF

2011-06-30T14:22:00.000+01:00

What are Betfair smoking these days?

Not happy with introducing cross matching on most of their markets to take 90% of my bot profits, they now want to make sure that if I can actually still win anything they'll have 40-60% of that as well...

Having been forced to look at new angles since the cross matching came in, many of my strategies now rely on finding value, and guess what... I can find the same value on Betdaq...

So what is the point of winning on betfair when I can do the same elsewhere and have a 40% better return.

I'm not packing my bags just yet... because I'm not even close to £250k, but if I get to £100k profits I'll be seriously looking at shifting stuff elsewhere.

They don't have a great future if they persist in screwing us over for short term and short sighted profits.

The Betdaq API is easier than BF so it won't be any hassle to switch.

I tried Betdaq in the past and the liquidity wasn't there for what I was doing at the time, but now, as I'm mainly betting rather than trading with the bot, I don't need to be so concerned about being able to close trades so it's not such a big deal.

BooM!

2011-06-26T15:17:00.002+01:00

Shouldn't trade while drinking beer and watching the Grand Prix...

Bank down to 49p so I've reloaded it to £10 and will try again next week...

Stupid mistake, I've not used fill or kill much and was experimenting with it yesterday. Wasn't concentrating today and I thought I had fill or kill switched on, but I didn't, so a £6 profit turned into a £15 loss when two bets were taken in the last 1/4 of the race that shouldn't have still been there...

Man Flu

2011-06-24T13:14:00.000+01:00

The first week after I finish working and I get some time to myself and some time to look at trading again... I get Man Flu!

The last three days haven't been great, but yesterday was worse, mostly spent wondering when my head was going to explode, drinking lemsip and generally feeling crap.

19 hours of intermittent sleep later and I reckon (hope) I'm over the worst of it, but still not anywhere near 100% probably not even 50%...

Before I got ill I was able to automate the adding of recent races pace data to my horse trading assistant, so this makes it quicker to narrow down selections for back to lay or Dobbing.

That's not my only in running strategy, but it is something I'm looking at more seriously at the moment.

Had a mention on Cassini's blog the other day for referrals, he has passed the 250,000 hits mark, which is still a long way off for me. I don't know the exact figure from the start of the blog, but since I installed a counter it's around 40,000.

Well done to Cassini for reaching the 250,000.

The blog is Green All Over and is in my blog links. Well worth a read, updated frequently and has lots of interesting topics, ideas and advice. Check it out if you haven't already.

The Plan

2011-06-22T16:51:00.000+01:00

Good start to the day, but not sticking to the plan (too greedy) in the last two races turned a green day into a red day.

Bank down to £8.70

I have a stinking cold and feel quite rough so that's it for today.

Roller Coaster

2011-06-21T21:22:00.004+01:00

So I made a profit, but it wasn't exactly a smooth ride... and it won't buy a Ferrari.

I'm a little bit rusty and made some stupid mistakes, but luckily none of them involved staring at the headlights, so my losses were mostly quite small, and a couple of times I just didn't make as much profit as I should have...

Connection wasn't great, lots of lag until I switched the UK VPN on, and didn't notice any more problems, but I was on my 6th can of beer by then.

Bank is up £2.41 (24.1%) to a whopping £12.41

Office

2011-06-21T09:25:00.001+01:00

Nice easy drive down to Basel on Sunday, and yesterday was spent moving into my new office. Well it's more of a living room than an office... but it's got a desk and a PC...

Had a look at a few races, and the first one I watched had a couple of 20 second API freezes... just what I need to build up my confidence in Betfair as I'm about to start trading again...

I set the UK VPN running on the laptop to see if it was anything to do with the connection route, but didn't see any more lag after that so I don't know.

Nothing worth posting re the trading, just had a go on a few races with £2 stakes and played a bit of Guitar Hero (not had the guitar for a few months, so was good to get it back).

Next stage of programming for the bot starts today, and also I'll aim to do about 10-15 In Running horse races each afternoon using The Toy.

Starting bank for the In Running £10

Yeah I know it's a HUGE bank, but I figured I might as well make sure I don't blow too much when I make the inevitable mistakes getting back into it.

Back In Play

2011-06-15T09:40:00.001+01:00

I have 4 days of work left, and then I'm moving out to Basel.

When I say moving to Basel, it probably involves a couple of months in Spain so I won't be in Basel properly until August/September.

As I haven't got any work lined up until December I figured it would be worth having another go at the in running trading thing, and probably once or twice a week I'll post something up on the blog.

It might be about trading or it might be about mountain biking and drinking beer.

Now I have swapped the laptop for a new PC with a proper graphics card and more memory, it might even have some videos.

I had a quick blast yesterday afternoon on my day off, and I made over £1 from just 6 races, so I'm pretty confident that I can be a millionare by Christmas.

Probably won't be anything interesting to say until middle of next week as I'm working Wed-Sat and then travelling Sunday and probably sleeping Monday...

Hasta La Vista

He's Not the Messiah

2011-06-03T20:58:00.006+01:00

He's a very naughty boy

Seems there's trouble at Mill... Well at The Geek HQ anyway...

What kind of trouble? Well I don't really know, but there's plenty of rumours flying about on the web, BF forum, Twitter, a couple of blogs, not to mention the Geeks own forum. Has he sold out to Betfair? another vendor? is he going to charge for The Toy?

One of the most respected Mods, Mickey Pearce, has resigned in outrage, and although Mickey has high principles, he is not known for over reacting, so I'm guessing it's more serious than people think.

http://www.geekstoy.com/forum/showthread.php?t=5402

It has come to my attention, from a very reliable source, information that is very disturbing indeed.
So disturbing that I can't talk about just now. I want to sleep on it and digest it in the cold light of day.
My god, why is it, that the closest to you, can cut you so deep?
Feckin unbelievable??????

This was soon followed up with a second post

I'm going to keep this brief, cos I'm still fuming over this.
This person has cut me to the core.
I personally looked up to this individual because I believed he was a man of great principles.
A true philanthropist and tireless champion of good causes. Raising money for various charities, over a great number of years. Providing a great service without recourse to monetary gain.
Then I get hit with this bombshell and find out that he is a complete sham. A charlatan, who chastises others for their lack of moral fibre and in turn, at the first test of his character, shows his true colours.
I just can't believe it. I really can't.

Hopefully we will find out what it is soon, although I'm not sure I want to...!

I've had a look on Wikileaks, but they don't seem to have any inside info on this one yet.

I'm not going to add to the speculation about what it might be that The Geek is doing, but I rekon if The Geek is selling out then it will probably be the best selling out in the world...

In The End

2011-04-07T17:16:00.003+01:00

I'm having too many problems with the API and it's impossible to have confidence in placing bets or greening up at the moment.

Enough is enough. I've emptied my second account and I'm going to go back to just working on the bot.

I may give the In Running another try in July if BF have sorted their servers out, but don't hold your breath.

I don't think it's my ISP because I was having problems in the UK last month as well. I seemed to start having problems after they moved over to Ireland. Maybe that's just coincidence.

Anyway, I'm not going to be making a decent living at this any time soon so there is no point wasting any more of my time for +/- a few quid a day.

I will try and add a few In Running strategies to the bot and see if it gets on better than me.

I'm going back to the UK next week as I've got two months work and then I'll probably take a few weeks holiday in Spain before coming back to Basel. Then if I can't find a decent job in Basel by October I'll be working in a ski resort over the winter probably in France or Switzerland. So plenty of things to keep me busy.

There doesn't really seem much point in having a blog when all I'm going to be doing is developing the bot, so I guess that's it for now.

I've made about £2000 since I started two years ago, most of that in the last 12 months, it isn't a lot, but it's paid for a few extras, and if I can keep bringing in a few hundred a month to pay for beer and lift passes I'll be happy with that.

Big thanks to The Geek for providing the best Betfair Trading Software and Traders Forum on the web.

www.geekstoy.com/forum/search.php?do=getdaily

Big Thanks to everyone for reading, and for all the comments. I hope you have found some of it useful.

Good Luck!

I'll leave you with one of my favourite songs from Linking Park

API Lags

2011-04-05T20:59:00.000+01:00

Since the BF Servers moved to Ireland (and possibly before, but I wasn't trading much the month before the move) I have noticed big lag(s) as the races approach the last minute or two.

The prices stop updating, bets don't get cancelled or placed for about 5 to 10 seconds (sometimes longer) and this happens in a lot of races.

This happened in the UK, and it happens in Switzerland both on a UK VPN and with the standard Swisscom connection, so on three different ISP's and locations I suspect it is a problem at the BF end.

Needless to say it can be quite annoying...

BF Video

2011-04-01T16:52:00.000+01:00

Last few weeks have been quite busy and numerous other issues have meant that the trading has had to take a back seat, but I have been doing a bit of trading this week, and I'm getting slightly (well very) annoyed by the problems with the BF video feed.

Haven't been able to trade anything since 2:40 today so only 4 races...

At least I made a few quid on the first three, but I've finished now and by the time you read this I'll be on my way to Saas Fee for a weekend of skiing.

Hopefully a few more regular updates on the blog in the coming weeks.

Time Management

2011-03-20T13:51:00.006Z

I had a bit of a rough week before my last post and due to various issues and I've had to empty more than half of my bot account into my bank account to pay some bills, but that's not a major problem, it will build back up again in a few months.

I also messed up on the horse due to unlucky timing, probably not not helped by a sticky API.

It wasn't entirely my fault, well actually it probably was, but hopefully it has taught me a valuable lesson...

What happened was I backed a horse and placed the hedge lay bet, but then decided to move it a few ticks, and in the process of placing the new hedge and cancelling the original bet, the first one was matched before it cancelled, and the 2nd was also matched, leaving me with a £140 liability lay bet that I hadn't intended on a horse that started steaming in!

So my back bet was correct and my hedge was correct, but I got screwed over for £115 because of bad timing. Then I couldn't scratch for anything sensible because the price went into free fall...

Unlucky, but that's the way it goes.

This means in future I will make sure a hedge is cancelled first before re submitting it at a different price, or just drag and drop the existing bet to a new position.

Lesson learnt (I hope) and with the bank almost emptied, I'm starting again on Wednesday.

Anyway, as I'm starting back at this trading lark in a few days I've decided I need to up my game so I'm going to be using time management as shown below...

picture courtesy of xkcd blog

Timing

2011-03-12T21:27:00.001Z

Looks like I picked a good week to take of if today is anything to go by...

I spent a few hours adding Adrian Massey ratings to my race card analysis program, only to find out the site is closing down in about a week... So that wasn't quite so good timing.

There's a few other things I want to add, so plenty to keep me busy until Tuesday when I head off for the mountains.

Hope that BF sorts itself out soon. I've turned the bot off at this afternoon as last time there were problems I lost most of my profit for February.

Have a Break

2011-03-11T21:51:00.000Z

I've finished work now until 14th April, and although I had planed to go straight into full time trading for a few weeks, I'm quite tired, I made some stupid mistakes yesterday, and I'm not in the right mood for trading at the moment.

So I'm taking at least a week off to go skiing and mountain biking and then I'll start trading again sometime after that.

Stress

2011-03-10T14:52:00.000Z

Don't trade after people have pissed you off...

Am taking the rest of the day off while I am still up for the week and before I blow another £50

Lunch

2011-03-09T18:38:00.003Z

A nice easy day today with 17/19 greens.

The Naas races were a bit annoying and I didn't bother with most of them... 28 runners and none of them with any form...? What is the point of that, might be good practice for the horses, but it's no good for betting or trading unless you're in the know.

Started losing focus around 3:30 so stopped for a short lunch break (only one pint though) before finishing the afternoon card.

I was a bit more patient with some of my trades today, sometimes the price goes the wrong way before coming back to where it 'should' be going, which is always a bit worrying, but sometimes the prices just don't reflect what is happening in the race at all, and if confident it's often worth waiting rather than scratching. Maybe there are a lot of people just trading the prices without pictures.

Breaking Even

2011-03-08T20:08:00.000Z

Sometimes it's good to break even...

For example, when you have two bad trades at the start of the day putting you deep into the red... Making it back to even by the end of the afternoon is quite good for confidence.

But tomorrow I'd prefer not to have to do that :)

Horses

2011-03-08T00:29:00.000Z

Another good day on the horses...

I had one rough race where I took a hit at the 2nd fence, but interestingly I'd made it back by the end of the race. I seem to be able to make much better profits when I'm fighting to recover a loss. Perhaps that means I'm normally too lazy and not trading hard enough...

Had a few red markets, three in total, but that's to be expected, especially in the sprints where you only have seconds to get in and out of the market, and a few decent greens will more than cover those. Wasn't an amazing profit, but green is green and it's all adding up.

I'm tempted to raise my stakes again, but I'm going to wait a while longer. I want to take a bit more out of the account first.

I'm having trouble thinking of interesting stuff to write in the blog, so I might have a play with the greyhounds this week and make some videos.

I would video the horses, but my laptop slows down too much and sometimes freezes if I try to use Camtasia to record while I've got the BF or RUK race feed running.

I'll see if I can get the race pictures on another machine at some point, but it probably won't be any time soon.

API Lag

2011-03-06T16:45:00.001Z

My radiator temperature control dial started sparking and caught fire this morning, luckily I was in the room so I was able to unplug it at the wall and dump it in the garden before it burnt the house down.

The trading was much less exciting.

I did ten races, but the API was getting a bit laggy and I'm quite tired from last night, so I called it a day before BF crashed or I made any mistakes.

Hopefully a full afternoon tomorrow.

Sunday Trading

2011-03-05T09:15:00.000Z

Today is my last full day of work for a while so I can do some horses next week, starting from tomorrow.

Not sure that tomorrow will be the best trading day ever, as I will have a massive hangover! But if I'm up in time I'll probably give them a go with small stakes ready to get back into it with full stakes on Monday.

I've managed to get to the gym every day for the last week before work, and if I keep it up for another 6 months I might be able to get back to not being a Fat *******!

I also want to do some sculling races in the summer, and at the moment I'm about 15kg too heavy for my boat.

So the plan for next week is to cut down on the beers, increase the gym time and get some profitable trading done in the afternoons.

Fab Feb

2011-03-01T12:25:00.003Z

An absolutely amazing month...

Finished up with a huge £14.36 profit, which is over 50p a day.

There was one bad week, after the betfair problems, where my bot lost more than it made in the other three weeks, so I guess the lesson there is turn it off for a week (or reduce the stakes significantly) after BF outages.

Typically it coincided with increasing the stakes :)

Last week it was fine with the larger stakes, so I'm reasonably confident that it was not stake sizes causing any problems.

Could have just been a random bad week... But I will reduce the stakes next time the API has any major issues.

The manual trading went well and I pulled in an average of almost £15 per day from the horses, which I'm happy with for the stake sizes I'm using.

So although I didn't really make any money, I still think it was a good month. I learnt a useful lesson (at not too much cost) and I had good results from the horses which is what I need to be doing if I want to be regularly pulling in £1000+ a month any time soon.

I get a few weeks without work over Easter so I can see if I can get consistent results trading a full week.

Average

2011-02-24T19:22:00.002Z

I seem to be having a lot of average days recently.
Fortunately my average is a bit better than it was 12 months ago.

It does make it harder to find things to write in the blog... Today I traded X races and made £Y and didn't have any problems... Doesn't really make for exciting reading...

I thought In Running was supposed to be exciting and dangerous, but I seem to be missing out on all the huge £1000 wins and losses and blown banks that I've read about.

After a slightly bumpy start I've filtered things down to a few boring strategies for taking small steady profits with not too much drama.

Some of the races are quite exciting to watch, and that makes up for the trading itself being mundane.

No more regular trading until a week Monday as I have work in the afternoons tomorrow and most of next week, so that's about it for February.

¿Donde esta el video?

2011-02-22T18:12:00.005Z

The BF ATR feed wasn't working for the first few races today.

I should have known better but I still tried to trade with the ATR website feed, and as always it was just too slow. I made a few quid on the RUK races, but was a long gap between so I foolishly blew £38 by trading ATR anyway when I should have been doing something useful like playing Guitar Hero!

Managed to get about half of it back by the end of the afternoon, but it was a good (not too expensive) reminder about what I shouldn't be doing :)

The last race was unusual as it ended with the profit spread fairly evenly over 3 horses... I had three possibles to trade from the form analysis, and I expected to settle on just one of them as the race got under way, but the moves timed such that I was able to move from one to the next to the next... then sit back and watch the end of the race with a nice green (and a beer).

A good end to the afternoon, if only it was always that easy...

Ups and Downs

2011-02-21T18:06:00.004Z

Has been a strange month, the bot had a bad first week, then a quite good second week, then a very bad week last week (after I increased my stakes) and is currently at about +£1 for the month. Not sure if it had anything to do with the BF problems or the stakes... I guess I need to check the bet history and see if it's anything unexpected or just randomness.

I suppose I should have expected to start a downturn when doing something stupid like increasing stakes :)

The In Running trading on the other hand has been going well all month, with another clean sheet today and a nice return for my bank/stake size.

Even the bad days have ended up a few quid in the green and I've been taking money out the account rather than putting it in.

I've had to skip the last two races today as the BF video feed is currently running about 6 seconds behind which is far too much.

I'm much better at NOT trading when I'm not sure (e.g. when the video feed is to far behind) and this seems to be helping avoid needless losses.

Not sure how much I can increase the stakes for the In Running, but I can probably double them without too much problem. If I can 4x them then I might even be able to make enough to live on.

Trading more days per week would help as well. But at the moment I have a contract, so I guess I can't complain too much, as at least I know I'm going to make a profit from the days I'm working.

Saturday

2011-02-19T19:31:00.000Z

Missed the first half of the afternoon due to work, and I didn't trade the Gowran Park races due to races overlapping (the one race I did trade there was the only race I lost money on).

The rest of the afternoon was very straight forwards, I wish every day was that easy.

Not sure if Saturdays are always like that, as I don't usually finish work until 6pm on Weekends so don't trade them very often.

Off out now to spend my winnings on beer and chips :)

Here's some Stevie Nicks

In the Red

2011-02-18T19:11:00.000Z

Late start today due to a problem with my BF account following a withdrawal to PayPal yesterday that for whatever reason got withdrawn twice and put my in running account in to the red.

Not the greatest start to a day's trading to see your account balance come up with a negative balance...

A phone call to BF sorted it out and I was trading again just before I needed to head into town.

Eventually got going properly about 4:30pm...

Currently 20p up with half hour between races and a fridge full of beer...

Could get messy!

So Slow

2011-02-17T17:28:00.002Z

Just couldn't find many nice trades this afternoon, probably only entered about half the races and only made anything on half of those.

Was never in danger of making a loss, but the profits were hard to find. Horses changing silks doesn't help, I missed out on one trade because I couldn't see my horse...

Hope that this evening at Wolves is a bit easier.

[Update] Wolves was no easier...

Much more betterer

2011-02-16T18:20:00.003Z

Had a much better afternoon than yesterday, increased the stakes slightly and pulled in just under £30 from the afternoon races.

Decided not to do the evening races for two reasons, first the RUK feed was too delayed and more importantly I've had enough for today and wanted a beer!

I'm starting to see a few recurring patterns, some where it is easy to trade and others where it goes wrong very quickly and not in line with what is happening in the race. Once I've done a few more months I expect I'll be a lot more selective about which races I try to trade.

At the moment I'm still trying things out and a few losses have to be expected in that process.

When I started I found the sprint races difficult and too random, I now find them a lot easier. As long as you haven't chased your entry point there is a fairly big window in the first half of the race where you can get out for a reasonably small loss if your horse isn't running to plan and some nice profits to be made if it is. The key for me seems to be pre race selection of horse and then either trading or not trading depending if it runs as expected.

I'm not looking for a winner, I'm looking for a horse that will shorten in price or a horse with low odds that isn't good enough. I only trade that one horse and only if the horse and market are both moving as they should be. I still take a few losses, but the wins are usually bigger.

My problem at the moment is I quite often cut the winning trades too early, or scratch just before the move I wanted starts (that's quite amusing/annoying) and also the price often goes the wrong way for no apparent reason forcing a scratch only to then go where it should have been going.

I am finding the In Running more interesting than pre race, and I've also started to sometimes make a few quid in the Pre Race market while waiting for the start when I see obvious moves (which I never seemed very good at spotting when I was trying to pre race trade). Maybe it's to do with the timing, i.e. coming into the market the same time as lots of others as the previous race finishes, who knows...

Managed to do an hour at the gym today, and I need to get back in the habit of going every day before I get too unfit!

Treacle

2011-02-15T18:21:00.001Z

Was a slow afternoon, much like running through treacle... Not a huge amount of races and most of them were hard work.

I had a lucky escape when I closed a trade about half a second before the horse fell in one race, and I did end up in profit at the end of the day but my hourly rate was very poor.

Still haven't made enough for the new PC. I don't want to drop my bank down too low so I'm only taking out a percentage of profits each month and I need to withdraw another £700 or so before I can buy it.

I could stick it on a credit card, but that wouldn't give me any incentive to increase my profits quicker. so although I'm pleased with the last six months and with being in profit most weeks, I haven't increased my profits anywhere near enough. Now that I'm making less costly mistakes I think it's time to be a bit more aggressive with my staking.

I hope I can do that without messing up!

I'm not going to set targets as the markets will dictate what is available to me, but I am going to try and use higher stakes/liabilities in trades where I can.

Sleep

2011-02-14T19:20:00.001Z

The problem with getting up at 5:30am every morning is that (for a non morning person like me) after about a week I just get incredibly tired.

Nothing for it but to go back to bed when I got back in from work this morning, which meant I missed half the races by the time I'd woken up again. But I had a good 2nd half of the afternoon.

I messed up the last race and took a few quid hit because after the false start I switched to a different horse (no idea why I did that, as my original plan on Downhill Skier would have worked to perfection).

Apart from that (and losing the RUK pictures in one race) it was quite a relaxing afternoon and as well as catching up on 4 hours sleep I made a few quid.

I seem to be avoiding problems and anticipating horses/market moves earlier, I guess just a result of watching more races.

Really pleased that I've made a profit every day and had no significant losses for over a week now, but obviously tomorrow is jinxed now I've said that!

I increased my swap file size to 8Gb today and it seems to have helped Guitar Hero run a bit better. I was able to complete Number of the Beast without it lagging.

Database

2011-02-11T12:12:00.004Z

Have finally finished coding the data collection routines for the Timeform, Betfair and Racing Post data, so this all gets loaded automatically into the database in the mornings, with price updates every half hour.

There's a few more bits of data I want to add, tipster selections and also distance/going/class information to the form to show how relevant it is to the current race and conditions.

Next step is to work on the presentation so that I get the information shown clearly for each race.

At the moment it just gives a very basic list of races with the ratings and an overall score that I calculate for each runner. Not surprisingly I tend to back the horses with the highest scores and lay the ones with the lowest scores (subject to suitable odds and how the race pans out).

I also use a race timer with colour coded progress bar to help time my trades, but this is currently set and started manually for each race. The next step is to build it into the database application and auto set the timer to the race distance and conditions and then start it on market suspension using the BF API.

Racing Post sent me a nice picture of Kauto Star this week.

Losses

2011-02-05T18:35:00.001Z

Being self employed has certain financial similarities to trading... You can never take anything for granted and losses can come out of the blue... I'd got a couple of jobs lined up for this weekend, but because it got windy they were cancelled.

Despite the lack of work I didn't do any trading today, so no losses there, I'm making some changes to my Horse Racing data scraping application and I want to get those finished asap.

The prototype seemed to work quite well, so I'm making it a bit more robust, adding a few extra bits of data and improving the presentation.

I've now hooked into Timeform, Betfair, and the Racing Post for the race cards, form analysis, ratings, real time prices and price trends. The results and in running prices for each horse are also recorded from BF.

This should allow me to do what if analysis on my selection criteria as well as keeping a record of how well the current selection methods are working.

The biggest benefit at the moment is that 90% of the pre race preparation that I was doing by hand is able to be automated, and all I need to do is load up the card a few mins pre race to quickly read the comments on the highlighted horses to verify what the numbers are telling me about what and how I might be able to trade.

Having a day off does have some benefit... I've cracked the Knights of Cydonia on Hard!!!

Finally nailed those pesky triplets to get through the middle section and it was all over...

I look forwards to playing it again on Expert level!

10 Seconds

2011-02-04T18:49:00.001Z

I had a late start to the afternoon but everything went really well for the first 6 races, I was even finding time to do stuff between races and got a bit too confident...

Then the inevitable combination of distractions and lack of focus left me on the wrong side of a double lay (I'd placed a second as the price moved up and not cancelled the first), at which point the price rapidly headed south taking both the lays and putting me on a big red.

Three days profits gone in 10 seconds flat!

On the plus side my car insurance has only gone up 30% from last year...

Das Model

2011-02-03T18:09:00.003Z

Last 3 days have gone quite well, but the short flat races are only making me a fraction of what I'm making on the jump races.

I am still making a small profit on the sprints, but limiting my liability and not taking risks in a race that lasts about a minute aint easy at the moment... It relies on picking a horse in advance and then trading ONLY if the opportunity I'm looking for arises at the right time (or doing nothing if it doesn't). Even when I get an opportunity I often end up scratching or taking a small green/red if it doesn't go to plan quickly, so it's not making me millions at the moment. The good thing is that I very rarely take a loss and if I do it's usually not too bad, so I guess that's more important than taking chances.

With the jumps I have a few more strategies that I use, some are planned in advance, and some just take advantage of market moves that I think offer value and/or opportunity to nick a few quid based on what I've seen in the markets over the last few months.

My in running bank is now at £157. I haven't needed to top up for a while so I'm using a maximum liability of 25% with a ratchet increase of £5 liability for every £20 in the bank. No more deposits required on the account unless something goes badly wrong.

If I take a loss I won't reduce the staking liability unless I lose half the bank, at which point I'd drop it down to 25% again (but hopefully that won't happen too often).

I might get a couple of hours on the horses tomorrow afternoon from about 2:30pm but that all I can do then until Monday as I have a fun packed weekend of work lined up.

January

2011-02-01T12:46:00.001Z

My best January P&L ever!

But that's not difficult, seeing as last year was my first January and I lost £97... This January I made just over £335.

That includes losing a bit on the in play horses, but that's training expenses

My RP screen scraper is running now in it's first test version and this is giving me a quick overview of horses NOT to lay and which ones might be worth backing in the sprints. The next stage is combining BF results to the Postdata to look at price movements in previous races for finding horses that have potential to shorten in running.

A quick look at this and the race card just before the off gives me an idea of what might be available... then it's a case of waiting for the right opportunity to show up, and if it does take advantage of it.

I'm not taking many losses in the first few races now (the last week), but I still find after about 10 green races I can get too confident and trade when I shouldn't, and this is where I can still lose money.

I'm thinking along the lines of not trading more than 10 races before having a 1/2 hour break to see if this helps.

I want to be a bike courier!

Tuppence

2011-01-28T16:55:00.002Z

23 races...

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

The Easy way or the Hard way

2011-01-27T18:21:00.003Z

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

2011-01-26T19:02:00.002Z

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

2011-01-24T16:32:00.000Z

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

2011-01-23T19:35:00.002Z

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

2011-01-21T14:58:00.005Z

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

2011-01-19T21:47:00.000Z

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

2011-01-18T18:55:00.001Z

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

2011-01-16T17:22:00.001Z

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

2011-01-14T18:22:00.000Z

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!

2011-01-13T17:14:00.002Z

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

2011-01-12T22:02:00.001Z

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

2011-01-12T07:52:00.002Z

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

2011-01-08T16:38:00.002Z

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

2011-01-07T18:49:00.000Z

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

2011-01-05T15:08:00.001Z

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

2011-01-04T21:11:00.002Z

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

2011-01-04T18:33:00.002Z

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

2011-01-03T16:13:00.001Z

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!