Still No Cigar

Results since last update -£2.40

After waiting for a whole week to trade and after all the charts I have studied in the last 2 weeks when I lost about £2.70 on Saturday I have to say I was 24 hours from quitting. If I had sufferred a loss today I would have.

I wouldn't have given up all this but would have restricted my self to match betting.

Anyway yesterday I lost 17 ticks in 3 races and won 7 in 2 for a net loss of 10 ticks. Today I lost 14 ticks over three trades and won 10 over 5 trades but still ended up about 30p. Today my trend/momentum system lost 14 while my ranging system won the 10. I would be easy to give up my trend system but it would mean I could have only 4 trades in a 5 hour session which would be huge waste of my time. I have found that I need to be concentrating and can't really do anything else even if I have 30 minutes between races. I would be happy if my momentum system could break even but I will give it some more thought and a few more days before I decide. Today was the first day I didn't break a single rule so I am happy about my discipline. I am also becoming better at identifying risky trades. The problem is too much time watching and not doing anything and this is a recipe for disaster for me.

Typing this I have answered my dilemma. I will just have to train myself to utilise the time between qualifying races. I will also double the stakes on my ranging system so the trending trades don't hurt me so much as I try to get them to work.

I should have won an easy £20 over this weekend from sporting index's all losses refunded mobile betting offer. Unfortunately I couldn't get my xda orbit or blackberry to run their software

Next trading day will be next weekend but after this week things should ease up a bit at work and I will be able to trade using logmein

Until next weekend good luck with all your trading

Better

Daily Result £3.51
Horse Racing £1.15
Football £2.38

All green today and it could have been much better. Going into the last 2 games I was 12 ticks up. Lost 5 in the penultimate and 3 in the last to finish just 4 ticks up. The bulk of the horse racing P&L, about 95p came from a lay of a horse i.e a non trading bet. Soccer came from a back of under 2.5 goals between Xanthi & Larissa in the Greek league.

I think the reasons for my improved results in trading the horses is because I have slowed my refresh rate in Gruss's betting assistant. This has meant I am not being stoppped out by noise. It also means I am not getting into trades as quickly as I can but overall I think this is much better for my trading.

In the last race I actually saw a 3 tick profit but queued for 4 ticks 3 and then 2 and watched as the price ran away from me. Really dissapointed and I am toying with the idea of quitting when I hit a predetermined amount but I won't as this doesn't make any sense.

I am happy because in the last 2 races I made mistakes I will eliminate.

In the penultimate race a clear favourite was drifting and I thought my chart was showing a head & shoulders formation meaning the price was about to reverse. I jumped in before support at the neckline was broken and I paid the price.

In the last race I suffered another rush of blood and entered 1 tick higher than I had planned. These are aspects of my trading I can and aim to work on.

Now for a 2 mile jog to clear the head.

Close but still not there

Result since last update £-0.75p
Horse Racing -£3.83
Football £3.08

Not a disaster but not great. The cornerstone of all this is trading horse races before the start with football & match betting as sidelines so I am very frustrated that this is not working yet. Won £3.09 on a football under 2.5 bet in the game between Nice & Auxerre and this is what dragged me back from the doldrums. The good news is loosing causes a lot of introspection. Every time I lose I spend time studying my charts and apply new tweaks to the basic strategies. One thing I have decided is that I will place fewer bets. The problem with this is that if my shortlisted races are about say 30 - 40 minutes apart in a 5 hour period there is not much I can do in between.

I feel my strategies are not far away. One thing I will do is slow down my refresh rate to about 4 or 5 seconds so my stops don't get hit. I still need the stops as I am not disciplined enough without it. I am using betting assistants sliding stop and I will keep this too for now.

Again I am seriously thinking of ordering a few meets from Fracsoft as the data I collect is about 3-4 seconds between each refresh which means strategies I design based on this data do not work in real time.

Anyway luckily I can try new things tomorrow and this will probably be my last trading day until next Saturday. I have an under 2.5 goals bet tomorrow in the game between Xanthi and Larissa in the Greek first division and hope that brings in some cash.

Premium charge delayed

Daily Result -0.95p

Today was a real struggle for me. I had not traded for a while and also woke up too late to get myself into the zone mentally. The evidence of this was I was using my £5 safety stakes instead of my full stakes and didn't even realise

I lost 12 ticks over 4 trades and won 5 ticks over 3 trades. It was one of those days where my rules did not signal any bets so in the end I started jumping in and relaxing my rules. I traded the two available meets, 1 in Ireland which I don't normally do but enjoyed. My spreadsheet is built for only about 24 runners and at least 2 races today in Ireland had 25 or more. This means I will need to rewrite the spreadsheet. Soon

One of my problems is I am not full time and my trading days are few and far between so when I have the time to trade I force myself even if I am not mentally in the zone.

This is why I may give up trading but only after 30 bets each on all systems, hopefully by the end of January. To clarify I will still trade but I will have to be very selective. I trade the over/under 2.5 market very well sometimes having no bet in 2 weeks however when I sit in front of the PC I can't stop myself placing speculative bets or gambling.

Found a few blogs today and it seems almost everybody is making at least £200 a day some about £1,500. Good news is that this is proof that the money can be made and also I may be able to pick up a few tips from reading them.

For now I will spend the next 2 hours doing some more graphical analysis, basically looking at all horses that drift or steam more than 15 ticks in the 10 minutes before the off to see if the charts yield any clues.

Lucky Winnings

Profit since last update £21.41

Above looks very good but came from a match betting error and under 2.5 goals bet.

I placed a qualifying bet on Panseraikos on their game vs Iraklis originally scheduled for 3rd January, backing at Interwetten and laying at betfair. The game was postponed and since betfair hold on to your cash for 3 days (the bet stands if the game is replayed in this period) and Interwetten like most bookies cancel the bet, I made a mental note to remember to back if the game was rescheduled to be played within 3 days. Very busy at work and completely forgot, looked into my account today and I had won £18.16 after commission. I am happy I won the cash but not happy that I wasn't on the ball as this could cost me a lot in the future.

The second was more straightforward. Backed under 2.5 goals in the Braga vs Bellenses game which finished 2-0 to Braga.

Not much has happened on the trading the horses front as I have been busy at work and didn't have the time to try to use logmein from work.

I did do my research on a strategy I had used previously to win about £150 over about 30 bets. I then tried to improve the profitability of the system by increasing stakes lowering my strict entry rules and lost about £200. Tried very hard to get back to the initial strategy but just couldn't.

One reason I tweaked the system was that you could spend two days watching the races and not find a match. I tried to find a way to bet more and also win more per bet and the result was a disaster.

I needed to do a big review as I knew I could get back to the original system. I thought of getting some data from fracsoft initially to do a review of about 100 to 200 races but I decided to first use the data I had collected no matter how small. The results were impressive

Wins 12 bets/25 ticks
Not matched 15 bets
Break Even 7 Bets
Losses 1 Bet/ 4 Ticks

Above is the best case scenario and timing of the exit is crucial . Some of the break even bets could be 1 tick losses and some of the wins were 1 tick wins and could be break even in real time but no matter what I believe the strategy will be profitable if I can stick to the rules. I also believe I will find up to 2 - 5 qualifying races daily assuming there are at least 3 meets.

My next trading day will probably be Sunday as I am very busy at work until Saturday. Also from next week hope to be able to bet using logmein from work.

I am busy at work for the whole of January and I know if I try to trade it will cost me but I will use this strategy which doesn't require too much time on the computer as I simply select the races in the morning and set a reminder about 15 minutes before the start. I will need logmein and Gruss's betting assistant as I will need to use stop losses and ladder interface and also excel logging to see my indicators.

On to matched betting. I have placed my last qualifying bet to enable me complete the wagering requirement at Interwetten as I just couldn't stop winning. At first I was irritated by this but then I realised it is actually a good thing as this will stave off betfair's premium charge. Only for some time I hope.

Disaster at the Dogs

Daily Result -£3.93p

With only one low quality meet today I should have walked away but honestly this did not even cross my mind. Since I was home and after today my next trading day would not be until Sunday, I decided to trade the meet at Lingfield then go do a few chores. All the races were not the kinds I like to trade with few runners and/or clear favourites. After 3 races and a total of 1 hour 30 minutes at the computer with no single trade the inevitable happenned. I started trying to force trades. i couldn't find one single system trade and all the trades I took today were purely based on WOM. I actually won 3 ticks from 2 trades and lost 6 ticks from 3 trades for -3 ticks & -0.95p overall

I had a list of things to do like dry cleaning, haircut etc however since I was down for the day and after reading a post on a forum today which suggested that you could trade greyhounds just using WOM I switched over. 2 hours later I had lost £2.98p. I won't make any excuses and say it doesn't count. I just hope I have learnt my lesson as if I have £4 is a very low price to pay. The greyhounds came thick and fast and I just couldn't drag myself away. Also stupidly instead of trading with £2 or even £0.50p I traded with £5 and paid the price.

Like I say this lesson will serve me for sometime before I get it out of my system as I can't imagne I won't go on tilt again but hopefully not for a while

I don't think the dogs are too difficult to master but I have enough on my plate with horses, matched betting and football.

Also something I have learnt is everytime I read a new idea in a blog, forum post or ebook I always want to try it out. There is nothing wrong with this but the best way probably is to back test and if not possible trade with very small stakes

The availability of the dogs can be a positive or a very big negative. They can be used to earn daily cash but also can be used as an escape from boredom when your main trading events are not available like today. This is one of the reasons I am happy I am writing this blog and hopefully never again will I waste time and money on the dogs

Recharged

Profit since last update £0.12

Yes. The above is over two sessions and is not a typo. Overall I won 4 ticks & lost 3 ticks. Also couldn't find any high quality sitable horses to lay.

I have had a lot of enforced time off as I have had to work & also because of all the meet cancellations that have happened in the last few days.

I have used the time really think about how I want to take this forward. I have been wondering why I traded with £5 stakes for about 2 months and I believe the reason is I do not have enough confidence in my systems without statistical historical support. That's why when I read eBay systems I am never convinced. I need to see things like 50 races identified in the last 2 months, 80% strike rate & 20% yield with a listing of the races. The ebooks always show a few winning selections but what is always at the back of my mind is how many losers and at what odds.

So I decided to do some back testing. My initial plan was to get the data from fracsoft.com but I balked a bit at the price. I would have to pay about 70p per meet so 100 meets equates to £70.

Not a huge amount and I can & probably will pay this amount eventually but since I am not yet in profit I am trying to keep my costs as low as possible. That is why I use gruss' betting assistant at £6 a month instead of bet angel. To digress a bit I really like bet angel's soccer mystic and can think of so many uses for it but i am not quite convinced about the long term viability of inplay trading since betfair's premium charge so I hesitating to invest in it.

Anyway I know I have close to 200 races I can use for review. If I find my systems are as profitable as I think I may even double my stakes. Also if I find my laying system is not profitable I will drop it. So looking forward to the results.

Looks like I will be trading tomorrow as I have to work from home. My daughter doesn't go back to school until Tuesday 6th.

Dissapointed, Bemused, Optimistic

Daily Result: £3.28

Dissapointed
Where do I start. I lost 10 ticks today but won £3.28. This is where the disappointed and bemused comes in. Today was going to be tough as I was trying to trade with about 4 people around me and also taking my turn on the Wii. Excuses I know but most of the races were not the kinds I like to trade. Apart from Cheltenham, liquidity was either very low or there were very clear favourites with no rivals within 40 ticks. Even then there was usually no contest also for second place.

Lost 3 ticks on the first race which went 1 tick beyond my stop then rebounded to break even. 2 break even races followed then won 2 ticks. After this it was a disaster. Lost 9 ticks, 3 each on the next 3 races to finish 10 ticks down. the last 6 ticks lost were particularly disappointing as I wasn't concentrating so broke my rules.

So where did the cash come from. On the last race I layed a horse at a whopping 15.5 to win about £1.50. Risky but met all my criteria so took it. Don't know how long this laying system will last as the odds I lay at are quite high. I have a £50 bank for this split into two and will just see how far I get with this as this is just a fun sideline.

Bemused
I then logged on to betfair to see my P&L and saw I had won £2.50 on another horse in the earlier race at 2:10 that I layed at 6. How this happened I can't begin to imagine as I say it was a full house. So won £4 altogether which is £3.80 after commission. This means I lost about £1.50 trading on my testing stakes of £5 per bet irrespective of odds

I had actually planned to start using full stakes today being a new year and I now plan to take this seriously after the testing period. I believe this will just be a matter of how disciplined I am as discipline and money management is 80% of the battle.

Optimistic
Anyway my battle plan for 2009 is for split into two phases

Jan 09 targets
30 bets in my 3 different trading strategies to use as an indicator of whether I can successfully trade the strategies. I expect to be break even as even if I lose I will recoup from matched betting. Any profit will be a bonus


Mar 09 targets
To make this thing a bit more professional - betting consistently 5 days a week, leaning to lose & not chase, learn to deal with losing starts to the day & get used to the fact that trading is long & slow way to build cash. basically to learn how to deal with greed & fear.At the end of March I should have had at least 90 bets in each strategy so if I am not profitable after over 300 bets I will pack this in & move into trading forex.

My trading strategies all revolve around laying weak favorites 10 minutes before the race starts.
I will keep my 3 tick stop loss and take profits if I feel race is going against me but always expect to make at least 3 ticks.

In addition to trading I have a system for laying horses, laying under 2.5 goals and matched betting

My starting bank will be £200
Staking will be odds
under 2 £40
2-3 £20
3-4 £15
4-5 £10
5-6 £10
6 & over £5

My goals for 2009 are to
make some extra income and eventually enough to give up day job or at least go part time
buy a new car for my 40th in September
make enough to take the family on a holiday as they have to put up with a lot when I am trading
and also have some extra for good causes

Good luck to me and everyone else betting/trading out there