Quick Update

I’ve been off work sick for much of this week, so it gave me some more quality time to think about how this project is taking shape. Unfortunately, I was far too sick to even think of playing around on Betfair but I did get to watch a fair bit of racing and take some notes on new ideas for The Experiment.

In summary, I’m quite pleased with what I’ve learnt from my brief Betfair experiences so far, so I’m still as keen as ever to give this project a go. I still haven’t received a date from my work yet as when I will be able to start this project and I seem to increasing my workload by the day, but I’m still looking at a start date of the beginning of March sometime.

Thanks again for all the comments over the past week and the encouragement and support for what I am planning to do over the next 12 months. I think that I’m maybe coming across as having a ‘screw loose’ which was definitely not my intention when I started this blog but I’d like to answer a few of the comments and suggestions that have been posted over the past week.

Firstly, I don’t ever intend to be fully exposed to losing my £15k bank at any point of this project. I think I’m starting to worry some fellow bloggers with my intentions to start with a £15k starting bank. My current day-to-day role involves me analysing and pricing different types of insurance risks, so I’m not exactly risk-loving in my nature!

I originally wrote that I would be splitting my £15k into 3 banks of £5k and I would only be exposed to losing £5k at any one time. After taking on board various comments from fellow bloggers, I agree that I was maybe setting the bar too high to begin with. I now intend to start with 15 individual £1k banks at the start of this project. This will obviously limit my earning potential somewhat at the beginning of The Experiment, but I can adjust my bank accordingly as my experience increases. If I lose my first £1k, I will start again with my 2nd £1k and so on. Obviously, the plan would be to not lose my first £1k but this all depends on what betting strategy I'm implementing at the time and how quick I can learn about Betfair.

One of the key points that I think may have been missed by some readers of the blog is the fact that I’m not doing this project in my spare time. I am planning on giving up around a ¼ of my job for 12 months to allow me to carry out The Experiment. This obviously has severe financial consequences for me and must be factored in to the cost of this project. My girlfriend and I currently have a mortgage of circa. £140k which is a large mortgage for a 24 year old and a 26 year old, so we will definitely miss a ¼ of my salary!

I hope this may also help some people understand why I have chosen to borrow £15k and not £5k for this project. Being honest, it would be great to give up a ¼ of my work and sit in the afternoons learning to play on Betfair with £2 stakes until I’m comfortable with what I’m doing. However, I wouldn’t be able to earn enough to make it worth my while and the whole project would be pointless. Therefore, circumstances have dictated that I need to play with larger stakes and that I need to earn a decent amount for the project to be deemed successful. As I’ve said previously, if I don’t turn over a £10k profit in the 12 months, I struggle to see how this project can be judged as a success from my point of view.

One of the things that I’ve picked from the comments is that I think people wish I was gaining more experience of Betfair. Being honest, I wish I was gaining more experience but it’s very difficult for me at the moment. I’m currently working full-time which means I am out of the house from 8am-6pm Monday to Friday at the moment. I have upcoming exams for my professional qualification in April and I’m spending all my spare time in the evenings doing my continuous assessment course and studying for these exams.

It has been suggested that I could practice my trading skills on the evening racing but I honestly don’t have the time. At the moment and until The Experiment starts, my only opportunities to practice on Betfair are at the weekends (only Saturdays really as I like to spend Sundays with my gf!). Therefore, I’m more aware than anyone that I am going to be starting this project off with absolutely zero Betfair skills and zero confidence in my trading ability. However, my lack of practical experience is not getting me down.

One thing that may not be apparent (or maybe it is?) is that I have put a lot of thought into how I can make this project work for me. I’m not the sort of person to do something without doing my homework first and when I first discovered the way that Betfair works, I started to do my homework. I have been reading and sleeping Betfair manuals for around the last 6 months and have built up a very good theoretical knowledge of how Betfair works. Clearly, trying to implement what I know in practice is the very difficult part but time will tell if I can manage it.

On Saturday, I intend to dabble into the world of trading in running for my next practice day. I’ve read lots on this and would like to see how things work in practice. I’m having some issues with my internet connection at the moment and it has been proving painfully slow, so this may well put a dampener on my attempts at trading in running but I’ll no doubt learn more after Saturday.

After Saturday, I will have practiced Trading before the event, Dutching and Trading in running which completes my repertoire of things I wanted to practice before The Experiment starts, so I’ll be raring to go……….

Keep voting by the way. My confidence is at all time low........ It's becoming a little skewed towards the <£10k for my liking!