I'm Still Here

Hi All

Just a quick post to say I'm still around. I haven't traded since the last post and, in fact, I've hardly touched the PC for over a week.

It's been tremendously busy at work and Cornwall, being a holiday area, is seriously affected by the seasonal influx of holiday makers. I also had to undertake a 3 day Fork Lift test so ended up only working and sleeping for the last 7 days or so.

Rest assured I should be back this week, I'm hoping for Tuesday but that is looking very busy so hopefully by Wednesday at the latest.

Catch you soon.

Andy

Very Quick Post

I found it difficult trading today but had some good results, and one bad. I attempted to trade 3 selections at the same time and lost myself a bit (and a quid!). Never mind I’ll put it down to my (lack of) experience.

Base Level £10.00 / Ave Per Race -£0.02 / Return -1.10%

Turnover today £372 with a loss of 0.03%

I hope to get some trading in tomorrow but, as always, the weekends are now dictated by Mrs TG’s arrangements.

Whatever happens have a good weekend.

Cheers

Strategy Adjustment

I’ve not traded since last Friday again, partially due to the time I’ve (not) had and partially due to my lack of consistency when making trades.

So I’ve spent a bit of time, not enough really, reading some trading literature and watching a few of both the Bet Angel and Racing Traders videos again.

Whilst, in my opinion, the Bet Angel software is far superior to the Bet Trader equivalent, I find many of the Bet Trader videos more helpful to me as a beginner.

Having spent some time doing “homework” I’ve sort of gone back to basics with my trading, in so much that my general strategy has returned to that which I started with back in January. The main difference now is that I am applying my increased knowledge of trading to those strategies.

In an effort to monitor my consistency I need to develop a measure that is quantifiable and for this reason I have reduced my trading level to 1/30th of my bank in order to make mistakes and keep the damage to a minimum.

Should my consistency improve I will raise my trading level and see how things progress. The only issue that annoys me a little at the moment is that my trading time has become somewhat limited but I hope to rectify that in the near future.

Any ideas from the trading fraternity as to what would be a good measure of consistency will be gratefully received but as a start I will measure my average race profit as a percentage of my base trading level.

And so on to today, I had very little time again but managed to get a few races in at the end of the afternoon. It is interesting, for me, that all three races started with a losing or scratch trade but all three ended in profit. This gave me a profit of £0.75 over the three races.

So using my new “consistency” measure, well at least for now…

Base Level : £8.00, Ave Per Race : £0.25, % Return : 3.12%

Hopefully I’ll be back tomorrow and as I’ve got Friday off again, normal service should be resumed…

Cheers

What Happened?

As I don’t have a great deal of time to write this today I’ll go straight in.

I achieved a loss of £12.02 today but I am still at a loss to understand why. I wasn’t having a particularly favourable day but I expected to be, at the vey least, breaking even.

I nipped out to the local garage around 15:25 to get some munchies and when I returned I refreshed the BF balance to find it was about £14 less than I was expecting. So I checked my account in Betfair to find there was a loss of £10.51 on the 15:00 Newmarket, a race where I had a full green book of at least £2.30 shortly after it had gone in-play.

It transpires that Rule Four came in to play over Tropical Paradise being withdrawn. The mystery to me is, according to my Bet Angel log (next picture), that I placed a back bet of £2 @ 50.0 on Tropical Storm some 38 seconds AFTER the race went in-play (15:07:48) and it was matched a couple of seconds later (15:08:26).

Despite individual horses showing red profits from time to time, this was the final back bet, the only one made in play, in a series of successful dutching attempts I made as the book was consistently under 100% in the few minutes before the race went off. I then went on to green up the excess profit to give me a fully green book.

The next picture is my Betfair “Voided” list, this may help explain something, I don’t know!

Now, can anyone explain how the rule four works? I’ve tried to understand it but can’t seem to grasp exactly what happened in my case. Also, is it possible that a horse can be withdrawn after the start of a race or is this just some anomaly that occurs on occasions?

Whatever, I need to understand what happened and whether it applies to Bookmaking in the same way as well or would the reverse happen and you make more profit? I’ve absolutely no idea.

I’ve “handcrafted” this spreadsheet to use both Dutching & Bookmaking in certain types of race and was planning to test it a bit more soon. On the race above I didn’t use it, but used the Dutching tab in Bet Angel.

I think Mrs TG is out tomorrow afternoon so I may well get some time to trade and if so I will post again tomorrow. If not then have a good weekends trading.

Cheers

Another Busy Week

No updates for nearly a week. Unfortunately I’ve had no time to trade whatsoever, which I find very disappointing. I’ve said before that if I could achieve a minimal income from trading that would be perfect (well nearly anyway). But it is also an enjoyable “hobby” for me so I do miss it when other commitments call.

At first glance I wasn’t too impressed with my figures for today, and I guess I’m not really anyway. However, I didn’t realise until I looked at the P&L that I’d only traded for about 90 minutes. Shortly after that the telephone rang and there I stayed until around 18:00. It wasn’t too long ago that I would struggle to make today’s profit in an afternoon, so I guess that £1.64 in 90 minutes is my daily positive (I always try and have at least one!)

Ok, so £1.64 is not a great deal but when I started this “journey” I’d be happier with less. The one thing I found today is that you can get out of practice, certainly for me that is. I haven’t traded since last Friday and I felt a little “rusty” today.

Once again I have tomorrow off, so a bit of reading, a bit of relaxation and, hopefully, a whole afternoon of trading!

Cheers

Just Not Disciplined Enough

I will probably take the weekend to do some reading, Profitable Betting Exchange Strategies, provided by Peter Webb at the Betting Exchange Academy course.

With a well disciplined start, being a little more selective with the races I traded, adjusting stake and strategy to match my abilities etc. etc. the first few races went according to plan.

After that I went a bit awry, I carried the 15:15 in-play and was staring at a mind numbing £68 red before the race finished. Fortunately it worked out ok for me in the end with a profit of £44.78 in the race.

With this indiscipline I quit for the afternoon, considering myself to be extremely lucky that I was over £50 up instead of £90 down. However, the pull of trading, despite the stress sometimes I still really enjoy it, got me back at the PC just over an hour later. This time I did exactly the same thing and it didn’t work out.

Why is it? Your mind knows the correct thing to do but it also prevents you from doing it, despite the most obvious dangers. 7 weeks I went without taking a trade in play but it still catches me now. Fortunately the loss was so much less than the win and I ended with a profitable day.

If I had exited at the correct time on the 2 races my net P&L for the day would have been around £6.00, if both had gone wrong for me my net would have been a loss of about £92.00. As it happens I ended the day nearly £42.00 up and feel I need to do some work on my mindset.

So, I doubt I will trade over the weekend, I think I’m too dangerous for my own good at the moment and will come back refreshed on Monday / Tuesday next week.

Have a good weekend.

Cheers

Back With A Whimper!

Last time I posted, Friday 1st May, I didn’t think it would be 5 days before I got a chance to trade, and only just today.

It’s been a hellish few days at both work and home and I haven’t had time to do much at all, but I did manage to get a few races in today.

Nothing special to report but I still managed to make a small profit of £2.68 trading 3 races late afternoon / early evening.

I suspect I may not have much time tomorrow but, with the day off, I’m hoping to get a full afternoons trading in on Friday.

Cheers

Up ‘n Down

I didn’t get a chance to trade yesterday so I was really looking forward to today, knowing I should have plenty of time to give it a real go.

It turned out to be quite disappointing with a very mixed day today. I started off quite well but couldn’t get it quite right after the initial impetus and really tailed off after that.

In particular the 15:40 Southwell just didn’t work for me at all. Every trade I placed almost immediately went in the opposite direction and my usual tact is to close the trade and reverse my position. Virtually every time I did this the odds went back the other way. I guess had I started trading 15 seconds earlier it could have been totally different :-).

So today ended at a loss, albeit a small loss of £3.24 so we’ll move on and see what tomorrow brings.

Cheers