Reappraisal of Strategy

Spent some time today studying where I am and how I am going to move forward.

The things that are going well are tennis trading, football goals trading and NBA basketball trading. In the neutral camp has been NHL Ice Hockey and American Football, problem with the NHL markets are the lack of liquidity so I intend to sadly drop that from my strategy. With the Superbowl on Sunday the American Football exits the scene until September when I may revisit if I'm still going.

Negative aspects have been 2-fold, the first being my propensity to gamble with certain markets and bets where I have followed my heart (occasionally my brain) and ended up losing moderate but accumulating sums. The second negative has been my trading on horses. Having studied my results I have identified what I believe are the problem areas. These are basic problems, failure to accept a loss and trading to close to the wire and ending up going in-play. More worring is the issue of concentration in as much as I build up a reasonable profit on the day and then become over confident and end up wiping that profit out and worse. My best days on the horses have all involved an early loss and the need to rebuild.

To this end I have decided that I am now going to set myself a small target each day and stop trading as soon as that target has been reached. I will be using betangel and setting a horseracing target of £20 each day for the next week.

If I can achieve this along with some modest trades on the football I can hopefully pull ahead. I'm not setting a specific daily target for football trading but will look for around about the £10 mark which will vary this depending on the number of suitable games to trade on. I'm basing this target on profits of £24.91 (4games) on Sunday, £5 (1) Monday, £9.35 (3) Tuesday and £11.53 (3) today.

Trying Out Some Football Strategies

Early last week I read this post by Ronnie2ticks at Betfair for Fun and Profit. Until this point I had to be honest never paid attention to the over and under football markets. Not wanting to dash in I studied a few games for the rest of the week and by Saturday felt ready to take the plunge.

I identified 3 games at different times I felt were liable to be low scoring affairs Rangers - Aberdeen, Doncaster - Villa and Man Utd - Spurs. Having made a couple of quid each on the first 2 games I was feeling rather pleased with myself as the Man Utd- Spurs game kicked off. Disaster Spurs score after 5 mins with no lay being matched leaving me with a £30 deficit. Unperturbed I ploughed on and managed to reduce this to just under £20 before Utd equalised. Thankfully I hadn't re-entered the market before the third goal went in leaving me with a loss of £19.86. Not the most auspicious of starts.

As the game settled down into the second half I regained my now slightly dented confidence and started trading in the under 4.5 goals market. Backing and laying repeatedly I managed to turn a £6 profit reducing my first days loss to just under a tenner.

Despite this setback I pressed on trading the 2 Fa Cup ties and the Sevilla - Racing and Inter-Sampdoria games on Sunday all for small profits. Another fiver on tonights Burton - BArrow game on Setanta and my profit for the 3 days stands at £20.18.

So thanks to Ronnie2ticks for opening my eyes to the potential of over/under trading on football.

Up and Down the Liquidity Issue

Learned a valuable but expensive lesson about liquidity on Friday morning.

Viewing the Mens Doubles at the Aussie open I backed Huss/Hutchins against the two Poles when they were a set down. Despite the fact that they went on to win the 2nd set I couldn't get enough laid off and ended up with a £20 loss when the Poles won the final set. Lesson learned pay attention to the amount of money in the market before entering the fray.

I manged to claw this loss back and having taken last night off am still the £50 up on the Tennis this week.



Had a mixed couple of days on the horses after racing ahead on Friday following on from Thursdays profits I allowed myself to become distracted with some domestic issues and ended up with a couple of losses and slightly down on the day. Had a losing first race today but managed to turn it around with a more concerted effort that led to a small profit on the day.

Been trying a few new strategies which I'll blog about later.

Good Day At The Office

After a few days of plunging confidence regarding trading on the horse racing today proved to be one of my best yet with a profit of £50.77. This was despite to losses of over £20 each. I revised my strategy slightly today by reducing the initial stake which left a reasonable pot with which to recover any slight adverse market moves. This proved quite fruitful and has done much to restore my battered faith in my ability to turn this trading lark into an oncome source.

After the Mauresmo-Baltacha game last night I only traded one other game that between Serena Williams and Gisela Dulko. Turned a profit of £8 on that one giving a £13.27 profit on the night. I'm now £56.05 up on the tournament.

Quite a few tasty looking matches tonight starting with Del Potro v Muller right through to Federer against Marat Safin in the morning. So hopefully another profitable night in store.

Tennis Trading I'm Beginning To Like It

I started writing a post just before midnight discussing the Australian Open Tennis but unfortunately ran into the update and lost the post.

I had written about the fact that I thought the 1.25 about Amelie Mauresmo looked a bit tasty and how despite the fact I remembered Elena as a young kid when her Dad Sergei played for St Johnstone, I expected Mauresmo to be to strong.

Well 2 and a half hours later I have been proved right but how close to being wrong I was with Elena taking the first set and even going a break up in the third. Mauresmo traded as high as 2.32 at one point before winning the last 6 games on the trot. Fiver profit on that game but there were a few heart in the mouth moments.

Tennis is proving quite profitable to date with another £15 profit on day three and with the latest win my profit for the tournament is just short of £50. Might drop the horses and concentrate on tennis as an income stream. Even though I know that a loss to dent my confidence might be just around the corner.

All Goes Wrong In The Last

A tidy £13.50 profit on the Tennis despite struggling to find good trading matches last night and having greened out at over a fiver on Andy Murray to win 3-0 when Pavel called it a day voiding the market.

The days Horse Racing was going very well was just over £20 up going to the last race at Southwell when a disasterous market plunge cost me all the days profit. This loss was especially annoying coming in the last as it left me fretting about it for hours afterwards as there was no way to get back in grove immediately. Not only that it reduced the pot for trading on tonights tennis.

Good thing is I'm already a couple of quid up on the Ivanovic and Petrova matches. Think it might be time to see if a Safina comeback is on the cards!!!

Australian Open Day One

Well made a profitable start to the Aussie Open Tennis with a £15 profit before I had to call it a night and get some sleep.

Was happy with a small £7 profit on the horses today after losing just shy of £17 on the first race I successfully cut my losses on that one and instead of letting it get to me slowly clawed my way back over the next 7 races before heading off into town to try unsuccessfully to acquire a new phone.

Hoping for some trading tonight on the tennis but not sure about the opportunities on tonights early games. Might try my luck on Andy Murray winning in straight sets.

Day at the Races

Had a day away from the computer screen at Haydock yesterday courtesy of Racing UK. Have to say that the Racing UK club is a nice bonus part of the Setanta Sports Pack, in addition to a few days out at Haydock, I've had free to tickets to Aintree, Chester and Bangor-on-Dee over the last couple of years. Going to try and fit in a visit to Cartmel this year if possible and maybe venture as far as Yorkshire.

A couple of 7-1 winners in Cloudy Lane and Coe meant we came home with more money than we left the house with. Pity the placepot went down by about 1/2 a length but all in all a pleasant day out.

Two words beginning with C

Two words beginning with C have become the centre of my thinking. Concentration and Confidence. Over the last week I have built up a nice profit on the various tennis tournaments down under, not sure if it is the on screen video that helps or not. Basketball has provided a good trading option throughout the week although a mini disaster with Cleveland losing to Chicago in overtime proved costly wiping out much of the gains.

Here is the crux of my problem, despite realising that this wasn't going to plan I failed to get out with a small profit when it was possible and whilst I did eventually cut my potential loss, when it all went pear shaped I lost most of my basketball profit. This then dented my confidence and I cut out of a lot of profitable situations too early on last nights games.

My lack of concentration on the horses has meant that whilst I am making a profit on 70% of races a few spectacular losses have severely dented the pot and affected my confidence. In this regard I think I need to keep at it but cut the losses and ensure I'm out before the off as most disasters happen in running. I am finding myself guilty of going for just one more trade which I don't get matched and then having to recover the situation after the off. This sometimes work but occasionally when a horse shows no interest or falls at the first leaves me spectacularly down.

Back In The Saddle

Not posted for a couple of weeks as I've been back in Scotland for a couple of days. After a few bad days on the run up to Christmas with the UK snooker. Seem to have got things together since getting back in the groove on Sunday.

Made a small profit (£17) on Sunday, followed by a larger (£45) profit on Monday. Hardly earth shattering amounts of money but as I'm not a large pot trader I'm more than happy with that.

Basic premise would be stay away from sports I know little or nothing about ie Darts and Snooker and stick to those I do ie American sports, Football (only leagues I follow) and Racing.

Very happy that I managed to turn a small profit on every race yesterday even if there were only 6 races!!!