Monday 31 March 2008

Still Disappointed!

Daily Profit £92.81

This may sound really strange considering I’m posting a profit which is about 25% of my monthly profit but I’m very disappointed with what happened this weekend with the golf.

Unfortunately, I didn’t get an opportunity to trade the golf in-running this weekend, so I was left with trying to trade my initial back bets I made at the start of the week.

I initially placed backs on 22 players for various stakes. In total, my exposure was £47.65 going into the tournament.

I ended up with 16 players making the cut which in itself is a remarkable achievement. However, the reason I’m slightly annoyed with myself is that I didn’t exploit the opportunity nearly as much as I could have.

I could spend the whole blog writing about when I should have laid off players to maximise profits but I’m not daft enough to think that this is always possible. However, I do know that I missed far too many opportunities when I didn’t leave in lays or when I asked for lays far too low.

The only example I’ll give here is Dean Wilson. I had a return on Wilson of £493.15 and he led after round 1. I didn’t leave in any lay at the end of round 1 and I didn’t check his tee time for round 2. You can imagine my frustration when I’m at work and he birdies 2 of his first 4 holes in round 2 and he leads by 3!

By the time I’m home from work, he has capitulated and 3 shots back. I was really annoyed with myself when I found out he traded at 8. I would have happily traded in £420 of my return for £60 as I would have been riskfree.

As it turns out, I ended the tournament with over £550 return on Wilson!

Another thing that annoys me is that I ended the tournament with 3 players who still had a return of £1000+. In my eyes, this is criminal and has cost me money.

One final thing that annoyed me is that I stupidly made the decision at the start of the final round to be against Andres Romero and be with Woody Austin and Peter Lonard. I reckon this may have caused me to lose about £20 worth of profit as I had to back Romero late on in his round to get a profit on him.

Overall, I made lots of mistakes this weekend and still posted a decent profit. I’m still learning the golf market and I’m sure I could have increased this profit greatly if I spent more time trading the golf but it wasn’t to be this weekend.

One final story……

I was on the PC this morning to put in some lays for a few of my players. This was when the 3rd round had just finished for lots of players but there were still some players on the course.

I noticed that Padraig Harrington had just finished his 3rd round and traded at 13 on Betfair. There was a lay in the market for 20 which meant there was a big gap between the back and lay price. I thought about asking for a back price of 18 or so but I didn’t bother.

Someone then entered the market with £500 to lay at 19. I was staring at the screen as there was it was now possible to back at 19 and the next back price was 13! I wasn’t on BA Pro, so I was too slow in snapping up the 19 but it lasted a good 10 seconds or so. As soon as people had snapped up the 19, they then obviously laid at 14 and the £500 was snapped up at 14.

Another opportunity missed………What was the person laying at 19 for?

Friday 28 March 2008

Hardwork.......

Daily Loss £7.89

I found today quite tough going. I'm starting to understand when I don't like trading on the horses. It's days like today when the racing is poor and the going is very soft at Ayr!

I lost on 5 races at Ayr and lost a total of £28.68!

Thankfully, I did a bit better at the other tracks and managed to reduce the loss somewhat.

I've noticed that I find trading the horse-racing in Scotland quite difficult as the odds movements in some races are amazing. I backed a horse for £10 at 8 and within 5 minutes before the off it traded at 20! I let the bet go in running and it was pulled up after about 3 hurdles!

I'm not trading the horses again until Monday now as I'm working a full day tomorrow and I'm attending the football on Saturday.

I've started to look at analysing my results over the past month and I'll post up my thoughts on the first month at the beginning of next week.

I may get an opportunity to trade the golf at some point this weekend, so I'll look forward to that.

Thursday 27 March 2008

Whoops...........

OK, I’ll hold up my hands. I’ve made a bit of a cock up at the golf this week and Houdini may struggle to escape from the position I’m in……

Basically, my strategy this week was to select a few golf players and ask for what odds I wanted. I was using £5 to £10 stakes and I hoped to bet on 3 or 4 players this weekend. I wanted to bet higher stakes on a fewer number of players.

Last night, I was playing around on Betfair and was slightly annoyed that none of my bets had been matched yet. I then decided to place numerous backs on a number of random players at high prices for £2 or £3 stakes to see if I could get any bets matched.

Unfortunately, I think someone has come along and laid the whole field at the lowest lay odds. That means that I’ve managed to bet on lots of random players who I don’t know a thing about. I suppose the only good news for me is that I’ve got a decent price on all of these players as I asked for prices 10 points lower than the lowest lay price in the market at the time.

In total, I have spent £59.12 on golf bets! However, I’ve managed to lay off £11.47 already, so I’m left with an exposure of £47.65 going into the tournament!

Below are my golf bets for this week:



















Being honest, the players I wanted to bet on were Lucas Glover, Carl Pettersson, Woody Austin and John Senden. I got none of my initial bets on these guys matched, so I’ve placed a £2 bet on the 4 guys tonight at the best available back odds.

I’ll be kicking myself if one of these 4 does particularly well as I was going to be betting £10 on each of the 4 of them…….

Let’s hope that one of my random players shoots the lowest first round score and I’ll try to trade out of this position as soon as possible.

From next week, I’ll be backing 3 or 4 players max with higher stakes and not taking the scattergun approach!

Wednesday 26 March 2008

Am I finally getting the hang of this?

Daily Profit £21.34

I followed the same strategy as yesterday. Low risk and low return.

Similar to yesterday, it paid dividends as I traded on 16 races, winning on 7, break-even on 6 and lost on 3.

My largest win was only £6 on a race which isn't that great but I used £20 stakes all day today, so I'm not really complaining too much.

My golf bets have suddenly got quite interesting this week. I had initially selected 8 players that I wanted to back. However, I was struggling to get the odds I wanted, so I put in backs for numerous other players at really high prices to see if I can get them matched.

Last night, I think someone came along and laid the whole market! I noticed it was about 101% on the lay side and when I checked later in the evening, it was 95% and I had lots of bets matched for crazy small amounts. I'm left with 23p win on an 800 shot and 10p on a 1000 shot for example.

I'll post up my selections later tonight or tomorrow as I'm still looking to get some more bets matched.

Change of Trading Tactics......

Daily Profit £16.43

I changed my strategy today to a lower stakes and lower risk strategy. I used £20-£50 stakes and I didn't let any losses run past 2 or 3 ticks.

Overall, I traded 15 races and won on 7, break even on 6 and lost on 2.

I found today much more enjoyable and I was glad to see flat racing returning to the screens. I'm a huge fan of flat racing and this is where my form knowledge lies. I found a couple of really well handicapped horses today and both were backed off the boards accordingly (in the morning and pre-race). Unfortunately, both were just beaten but I managed to trade out of both quite easily in running as they traded at below 3.

I should probably have traded out for a profit but I thought both were going to win with a few furlongs to run, so I was happy to keep the large riskfree bets I generated pre-race from trading.

I don't really have any exciting stories to tell as it was quite a straightforward day. I will happily take a few boring days as long they are winning days!

I'll keep my stakes low for the next little while as I was probably increasing my stakes too quickly and this may have been the reason that I wasn't enjoying the trading too much.

I've tried to place a few bets on the golf again this weekend, so I'll post up my selections later in the week.

Tuesday 25 March 2008

The Application of the Dornbusch Overshooting Model to the Betfair Golf Market

Firstly, I apologise slightly for the forthcoming post. I feel like I have learnt an unbelievable amount from trading the golf over the weekend and I’ve decided to share my thoughts on the blog. I did think about not sharing these thoughts on here as I know that others can ‘piggy back’ on my findings but being honest, I don’t think one weekend’s trading on golf makes me an expert, so I don’t think other golf traders have much to worry about!

OK, so what is the Dornbusch Overshooting Model?

To quote from Wikipedia, “The Dornbusch Overshooting Model aims to explain why exchange rates have a high variance. The financial market will initially overreact to a change in money in order to achieve a new short-term equilibrium, but over time goods prices will also respond, allowing the financial market to dissipate its overreaction and the economy as a whole will settle on a new long-run equilibrium.”

In layman’s terms, the Dornbusch model was an attempt by an economist to explain a phenomenon that was always witnessed in the exchange rate market. Basically, when something occurred in the economy (for example a change in interest rates), the exchange rate market would have to adjust accordingly. However, the exchange rate market would always over-adjust to the change in the economy and then over time, the market would adjust to reach its new equilibrium.

Anyone reading this may be thinking, “What the hell is Graeme talking about tonight?”

Well, after watching the golf market very closely over the weekend, I’m 99% certain that the Dornbusch theory applies to the golf market on Betfair.

I’ll try to explain what I mean. I spent 2 days trading Tiger Woods’ odds movements and once I’d picked up on this phenomenon, it became quite easy. In the golf market, a player’s odds will move every time that they strike a ball. In the early holes of the tournament, their odds will only adjust for birdies and bogies etc. but in the final 2 rounds of the golf tournament, the odds on a player will move every time they strike the ball. This is especially true for someone like Tiger Woods……

I think there was something like £8m matched on the golf tournament. Around £5m of this was matched on Tiger Woods alone which is an amazing amount on one player!

So, what exactly is it that I noticed this weekend? Well, every time a player makes a good shot, the market automatically over adjusts and all of the available odds are snapped up by backers down to a certain price. However, after 5 seconds or so, the market slowly adjusts upwards and the back price is pushed up as the layers start to lay the odds which have become too low.

The phenomenon is even more apparent when a player makes a bad shot. I had to rub my eyes some of the time when I could see what was happening in the market. I really couldn’t believe it and being honest, I didn’t exploit it even close to where I could have. I was more interested in watching what was happening instead of trying to exploit it as there will be plenty of chances to put what I have learnt into practice in the future.

I took notes on numerous examples but I don’t want to bore everyone with examples and graphs, so I’ll talk through 2 specific examples.

Good Shot Example

Furyk was trading at 28 with around 4 holes left. He was 3 off the pace. He played a good shot into the green and was left with a very good birdie opportunity. His odds moved from 28 to 8 and within a few seconds, all of the available 8 was snapped up down to 7 and he settled there. He then made his birdie putt. Within 5 seconds of making the putt, he was trading at 16! All of these odds were available for £50 plus, so it’s not like I’m talking £2 stakes. It doesn’t take a genius to work out that the market had over-reacted to his shot into the green and the odds of 8 were far too low.

The amazing thing from what I could see is that traders couldn’t recognise that 8 was a false price and were snapping up the 8 and lower! 16 was the correct price and the market quickly adjusted to this price after 15 seconds or so after he made his putt. I could have laid £50 at 8, backed £50 at 16 and hedged for a £25 profit. This could have been done in the space of 2 minutes.

Bad Shot Example

I struggled to believe my eyes with what happened here! Vijay Singh was 2 shots back with 5 to play. He was trading at 12 or so. He had bogied the previous hole and appeared to be going through a sticky patch. He dropped a shot on this hole also and this meant he had dropped shots at the last 2 holes and was now 3 back. OK, he was 3 back with 4 holes to play, but clearly, Ogilvy was not going to birdie any of the remaining holes as he was getting tight, so Singh wasn’t out of it.

Walking off the green, Singh was available at 200 for £10. Once someone had snapped up this amount, he was available at 250 for £50! I stared in disbelieve……

Before I could click the mouse (I wasn’t on Bet Angel Pro), he was trading at 50. He then went on to birdie 2 of the next 3 and was trading at 10 on the final hole for large sums and could have been laid off easily at 11.

By the time I had realised what had happened, I was kicking myself for just watching it and not taking advantage of the situation.

Without teaching anyone to ‘suck eggs’, I could have snapped up the 250 for £50 and then laid off £50+ at 50. I could have then laid off the remaining amount at 11 or just let the free bet run. He finished one shot behind Ogilvy and could have made a playoff!

So, my main learning from this weekend is that the golf market over-reacts to the shots that the players make. I’m going to spend some time over the next few weeks developing a strategy to try to exploit this situation and once I’m comfortable with my strategy, I can look to increase my stakes and exploit the situation fully.

There are other numerous things I’ve learnt from watching the golf closely this weekend. Here’s a question for everyone who watched the golf this weekend:
What did Vijay Singh, Jim Furyk and Retief Goosen all have in common this weekend?

· Last year, they were all in the top 10 in the world. True but so what!
· They all finished tied 2nd at this weekend’s golf tournament. Again, true but so what!
· They were all matched at 1000 on Betfair during the tournament for £50+ and they were all matched at 5 or less during the final round for huge sums. Clearly, some people made an absolute killing from these players and this was simply due to the market over-reacting to the fact that Tiger Woods was top of the leaderboard during round 2.

There were also simple lay opportunities to trade on Tiger Woods if I had a larger bankroll. For example, when Tiger Woods had finished his round, he was trading at 200 on Betfair and people were snapping that up! He was 2 shots back and in 5th place with no holes left to play, he should have been a 1 million to one shot and not a 200 shot. After a few minutes of people snapping up the 200, he was available at 1000 for a huge sum and the opportunity was gone.

Overall, I feel like I learnt a huge amount from the golf this weekend and I’ll be hoping to use some of these learning’s in my future golf trading.

At the end of this month, I’ll discuss where I see The Experiment going and provide a review of the 1st month. I’m trading Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday on the horses this week, so I’ll look forward to that again.

Monday 24 March 2008

Beginner's Luck?

Daily Profit £158.54

I didn’t trade today on the golf or the horse-racing, so it’s maybe slightly unfair to state that the above is a daily profit as it has been accumulated over the last 3 days, but I only went all green on the golf today, so it is today’s profit.

It has been an absolute roller-coater ride over the past 3 days and I’ll try to explain how……

I made the decision at the start of the week to lay Tiger Woods at 2 for £200. This was purely due to the fact that I thought he was too short at 2 to win this week’s golf tournament.

During his round on Friday, Woods was effectively involved in a 3 horse race and in my eyes, he looked like he was very likely to win the tournament. I made the decision on Friday to trade out of part of the bet and reduce my exposure on Woods to £100.

Very early in the round on Saturday, I took the decision to lay off the rest of the bet as I thought Woods represented value at around 1.6 to win the tournament. I was left with around a £20 loss on every player from my initial bet.

I then made the decision that I would trade Tiger Woods for the rest of the tournament. I’m not sure why I decided to trade the golf but I decided I would only use £50 stakes as I wasn’t sure how easy it would be. This was my first ever attempt at trading the golf in play and I thought £50 stakes were a good size of stake to practice with.

From using my £50 stakes, I managed to turn a £20 loss on every player into a £158 profit on every player. This is a return on investment of 350% which is amazing by anyone’s standards!

Towards the end of the tournament, I started trading other players apart from Woods and again, I found it quite easy.

I plan to write a detailed post later about what I have learned from trading the golf and how I think I can use it going forward. I’ll save my thoughts on the golf for a bit later.

Lastly, I’d like to respond to a comment that Leon posted a few days ago. Firstly, from reading over my post again from Saturday, it was probably a bit harsh from me to say that I’ve not been enjoying the trading on horse-racing. I was slightly annoyed on Saturday when I wrote the post as I’d just traded out of the Tiger Woods bet and he had just fallen back from the leaders, so I was kicking myself for not letting the loss run! Looking back, I made the right decision to get out of the Woods lay when I did as he was looking good at that point.

My comment on the horse-racing was again driven from the fact I lost on Saturday. I managed to lose out in the last race for a win of £180 on the Placepot at Doncaster and I was annoyed at that also. Overall, I was just on a bit of a downer on Saturday and it probably caused me to write a downbeat blog post. One thing I would say is that my blog posts are always quite honest and sometimes the mood of the post depends on how good or bad the day went. I think that’s the point of the blog in a way as it gives an insight into how I feel at any particular time and I will continue to be as honest as I can.

Leon also seemed shock that I could consider stopping trading the horses as I’d have nothing else to trade. Anyone who’s been tracking my daily P&L will probably realise that the split of my months profit is skewed towards Golf and not horseracing!

Obviously, the whole point of my blog and The Experiment in general was to trade horse-racing but I feel I’m struggling to find an ‘edge’ in this form of trading. I struggle from lack of discipline and I’m far too much of a gambler. I let losses and winnings run for far too long and it’s only a matter of time before I get caught on a race for a large sum of money. I’ve been close a few times and it’s not good for my heart!

My ‘edge’ on the horseracing was meant to be my knowledge of the form book but so far, that has proved to be my biggest downfall as I struggle to understand the odds movements and they have nothing to do with a horse’s chance of winning.

I sometimes wait for ages on the horseracing to find a horse that may change in price by 4 or 5 ticks. From trading the golf these last two days, I was able to find 4 and 5 tick movements quite easily and it has started to raise doubts in my mind about why I’m trading horseracing.

Due to my lack of Betfair experience and trading experience, I don’t know if this happens in every golf event but I feel like I need to spend some time on it to try to understand it better. I’ll discuss this later when I post up about the golf.

One other thing I need to bear in mind is that I can trade golf in the evenings as it happens in the USA. This means that I could do it in my spare time and get my ass back to work to increase my salary and take some pressure off my trading.

I’m not giving up on the horse-racing just yet, but I’ll keep thinking things over. Do I have an ‘edge’ in the golf trading or is it just beginner’s luck?

Sunday 23 March 2008

Zero concentration today on the horseracing.....

Daily Loss £17.24

I spent most of today watching the golf and I was trying to trade the odd horse race when the golf was off for a break! Clearly, I was never concentrating or in the zone today, so I should have left the horseracing well alone. Instead, I traded a few races and gambled on a few races and ultimately, I managed to lose a few pound.

I'm starting to understand the way the golf markets work now though, and I've managed to turn the golf sitaution around by trading quite well. Annoyingly, Woods has started to play poorly and just when I've traded out of the position, Woods drifts from 1.8 to 2.4 in around 30 minutes!

It's all a learning curve though, so at least I'll be posting up a profit tomorrow night whatever happens, so I should be happy with that.

As you can maybe see from my posts, I'm starting to lose my enthusiasm for trading the horse-racing a little and unless it returns soon, I struggle to see why I can justify being off work most afternoons. I find trading the horseracing quite boring and I'm not sure I'm suited to this style of trading. I'll keep trying to work at it though.

I'll be trading the horseracing on Monday again, so I'll see how things go then. Hopefully I'll manage to turn things around quickly!

I'll try to post up my profit from the golf tomorrow night.

Saturday 22 March 2008

Quick Golf Update

I'm trying to dig myself out of a massive hole at the moment as Tiger Woods sits at the top of the leaderboard!

I feel the decision to lay Tiger was slightly vindicated due to the fact that he traded at 2.26 quite early in the 1st round. However, I was out on Thursday night and when I got home, Woods was trading at about 1.6! Not very good considering I laid him for £200 at 2.......

I've managed to trade my way out of the situation slightly and I now have a Red £100 on Woods and about £90 green on the rest of the field. Obviously, I could bail out now for a guaranteed loss but I feel that there is still a chance that Woods may have an offspell at some stage, so I'll look to reduce my exposure in the final two rounds.

Overall, if I manage to get away with a break-even on the golf this week, it will be an acheivement! I need some help from Geoff Ogilvy and Adam Scott is that is going to happen!

Not sure if I'll be trading the horseracing tomorrow as I may have other plans, but I'll see how I feel.

Good luck if you are trading tomorrow!

Thursday 20 March 2008

Least enjoyable day yet......

Daily Loss £17.11

Not sure why, but I didn't enjoy today at all. I traded on 15 races, only winning on 6 and losing on 9. If it wasn't for 2 decent wins at the end of the day, I'd be posting up a £30+ loss which would have been disapointing.

I really struggled to get in the zone today. I don't think I was ever there to be honest. I seemed to be on the end of some sudden price movements which I struggled to understand, but that's no excuse. Pretty annoyed with my performance overall and after a good day yesterday, I've let half of the profit go in one day.

I'll get a little break from the horse-racing trading now as I'm at work for a full day tomorrow again. My next day's trading should hopefully be on Saturday, so I'll look forward to that.

My Tiger Woods lay this week is my only bet on the golf. I've laid at 2 and I'm looking to bail out at around 2.5 for a £65 riskfree profit on each other player if Woods doesn't win. Fingers crossed!

Wednesday 19 March 2008

An Erratic Profitable Day.....

Daily Profit £34.87

Well, I increased my trading stakes slightly today to £100.

As I expected, my trading was again pretty erratic but I suppose the main point is the fact that I made a profit today. Again, the profit was not huge but for the size of stakes I'm using, I'm quite pleased with this profit.

I traded in 17 races, winning in 10, losing in 6 and breaking even in 1. I had 3 very healthy wins of £30 or so but this is negated slightly by the 2 losses of £35.

Obviously, with the size of the profits and losses I'm experiencing, I know I'm trading too much in every race and I know I'm not stopping my losses quickly enough but I'm hoping these skills improve with time.

I'm a bit tired tonight as I was concentrating quite hard today as I was conscious of the fact I was using higher stakes today and I know that things can go wrong quite quickly if you get caught on the wrong side of price movements. It happened to me twice but thankfully, it was after I had made a good profit in previous races, so I wasn't overly concerned.

I know that I need to learn to have more discipline when I'm trading as I wouldn't feel comfortable doing the number of trades I do every race with much higher stakes. I like the fact that I do trade a fair amount in every race as it means I do have many opportunities to profit but also, this increases the risk greatly as I can get caught out too many times for my liking!

I'm trading again tomorrow afternoon, so I'm looking forward to that already!

I've thought long and hard about the golf this week and I've taken the decision to lay Tiger Woods for £200 at 2. My itention is to trade out as early as possible this week as I don't want this bet going into the final day. I'd like to trade out and then use the riskfree bet on Woods to lay Woods to lose, so I'm trying to generate a riskfree lay on Tiger Woods!

If Woods get's off to a good start, I'll probably be posting up my first golf loss but that's a chance I'm happy to take.

Monday 17 March 2008

The Great Escape from Tiger....

Daily Profit £20.43

The profit above doesn't really tell the whole story. As you know, I laid Tiger for £30 at the start of the week and I've just watched him hole a great putt on the last to deny Bryant a playoff.

I ended the tournament with £20.43 on Woods, £41.10 on Bryant and £67.46 on every other player. When you take into account that none of my initial picks made the top 10, that profit is one hell of a good achievement for this week's golf tournament.

The one error I made was not bailing out of Woods at an earlier stage than today! I was out last night with friends and I was kicking myself when I saw the leaderboard in the pub. Woods was top!

I thought about backing Woods on Friday night as he was on the drift (due to him playing crap!) but I decided against it. I wanted to stick with my plan to lay Woods every week and I didn't really think he would win this weekend.

Looking back, Singh appears to have chucked the tournament away when he dropped 5 shots in 4 holes on Saturday, so laying Woods was probably the correct decision in this tournament.

Overall, I'm pleased to make a profit on this tournament as I've managed to turn a red £37 on Woods into a green £20 over the 4 days, so I got to be pleased. This was mainly possible due to the start that Henry and a few of my other players made. Disapointingly, I still finished with huge green numbers on lots of my initial picks, so I got to learn to lay off more of my profits at an earlier stage but this will come with experience.

I could have made slightly more profit on Woods tonight but I wanted to continue to lay Woods right up until the final hole, so I delibrately kept more profit on Bryant.

My next trading day on the horses is Tuesday and I'm already looking forward to it!

Saturday 15 March 2008

Cheltenham Day 3 - A profit at last!

Daily Profit £21.78

After 2 luckless days at Cheltenham, I made the decision to decrease my stakes slightly and just play for fun. I decided against doing a placepot as it didn't appear suited to my style and it was ultimately the correct decision as it was quite an easy placepot to win and I would have lost!

The only race I won on today was the Gold Cup as I traded on Denman before the race. In total, I did 20 £50 trades for 1 tick and then laid part of the riskfree return off on Kauto Star. Ended up with a £33 return on Denman which was nice.

I had £10 win on Kicks for Free in the Coral cup for a return of £140 but it just got touched off in a photo. I traded out for a riskfree bet in running though, so not a disaster but could have been much nicer with a £100 profit on that race alone!

Overall, I've quite enjoyed this week at Cheltenham but I'm really looking forward to getting back to trading next week.

My next trading day will be Tuesday as I'm away on business on Monday for my work. I'm attending the football tomorrow and this could be the game that decides the promotion battle, so should be fun!

My golf is going great and I've traded out of the Woods lay bet already. I'm green on everyone (exc Woods) for around £45 at the moment but I can hopefully improve on that as the weekend progresses. I've a £5 return on Woods also, so going to be a profitable weekend whatever happens!

Good luck for the weekend!

Friday 14 March 2008

Quick Golf Update

Don’t want to congratulate myself too much at the end of Round 1, but the golf players I have picked this week are playing out of their skin.

As I stated in my earlier golf post, I was annoyed with the fact that I laid off Points at such an early stage as I knew he was wrongly priced at 1000 on Betfair on Monday night. That view hasn’t changed considering he is T12 at the moment.

My best golfers are:






I suppose the only thing I got to do now is make a decent profit on the event. Not sure what the best strategy is as I’d like to keep as many of these bets running as possible but then again, I’m not sure I can realistically expect 1000/1 shots to beat Tiger Woods in golf tournaments!

Incidentally, my lay on Tiger is looking OK at the moment as he is 5 shots back. I may look to lay this off slightly tomorrow afternoon as I expect him to do better in Round 2 as he was probably quite rusty in Round 1 as he hasn’t played for a few weeks.

After seeing where each of my players are placed, I will be really annoyed if I can’t make a decent profit this weekend from these players.

Lastly, this blog was not set up with the intention of giving out golf tips every week. I don’t mind people following my players and backing them if they want, but don’t write comments on my blog saying thanks for the tips as I am not giving out tips. The only reason I’ve posted up the players each week is so people can see who I have backed. I have no knowledge of golf and no strategy, so please don’t think I’m giving out tips every week……..

Cheltenham Day 2 - I Hate Placepots......

Daily Loss £11.31

Going to keep this short tonight as I’m a bit annoyed that I made a loss today. As the title suggests the placepot was again the cause. More accurately, the 1st race was again the cause….

I picked 4 in the 1st race as it did look difficult. I picked the eventual favourite, 4th favourite, 6th favourite and an outsider. The first three home were the 2nd fav, 3rd fav and 5th fav.

Similar to yesterday, this was the only race to beat me. Annoyingly, I then got 2 placed in 3 of the remaining races. Overall, I would have got 80p of the PP. It paid £147, so the first race cost me £117.60.

I also lost on a few bets in the first race, so I was £45 down after race 1. I then managed to win the majority of it back before disaster struck in the Stayer’s Hurdle.

Like everyone, I thought that Inglis would win but I thought it would trade much higher in running. I chose to lay it and at no time in the race did I think it would win until it touched down over the last hurdle. A £17 loss in the race. Ouch!

I then tried my best to win it back and nearly got all of it back by the last but suffered a small loss on the favourite.

Overall, another loss on the day which is disappointing. My P&L for Cheltenham isn’t looking too great at the moment but I’m hoping to win some of it back tomorrow……

In the select a stable game, the fall of Pomme Tiepy will ultimately cost me my chance of 1st prize. At the moment, I have had 4 winners, 2 seconds and a faller. My 3 remaining are Francheok, Denman and Kauto Star. If it goes to form, I could finish the comp with 6 winners, 3 seconds and a faller. Nightmare…..

The golf seems to have got off to a good start again for me. I have 3 players in the top 20 and Woods has only had an average start, so my lay is OK at the moment!

I better get past the first race on the PP tomorrow or my post tomorrow night won’t make nice reading…….

Thursday 13 March 2008

This week's golf bets

After hearing that Cheltenham was postponed today, I quickly arranged to work all day at work (8am to 5pm) to enable me to leave early tomorrow and Friday.

My plans for the remaining 2 days are to do a Placepot each day and to back a horse or 2 in each race. The Placepot is my main aim as it looks fairly difficult tomorrow and Friday but I’ll hopefully have more luck than on Tuesday!

Below are my golf bets for this week’s tournament. My exposure is £59.71 at the moment as I’ve taken the brave decision to lay Tiger Woods for £30. I could actually back him now and get a small riskfree bet on him and reduce my exposure, but I’ll stay true to my word and lay Woods this week (and every week!).


















A quick point on the golf. I don’t want to give away too many secrets of how I pick my golf players but I noticed a player this week called D.A. Points. He was trading at 1000 for £30. I was very close to snapping up the whole £30 but I decided that I would settle for a £6 bet. This was on Monday night.

On Tuesday, there hadn’t been much activity on him, so I thought I’d bail out at 840. Annoyingly, my instincts were right and he is now trading at 560. I could have laid my £30 off at 820 though as the liquidity was there, so I could have had a risk free £5k return on the guy to play around with this weekend.

I’m starting to quickly understand the golf markets and what makes the odds move, so I’ll be looking to exploit this even more in the weeks to come.

I hope everyone enjoys the racing at Cheltenham tomorrow. I can’t wait…..

Wednesday 12 March 2008

Cheltenham Day 1 - What a way to spend £50!

Daily Loss £50.97

Ok, before I get started about today, I just want to say that today was probably the most enjoyable day I’ve had watching the racing for years and was worth every penny I spent.

Ultimately, I’ve managed to lose more today at Cheltenham than I’ve ever lost in any day in my life, but this was partly down to my poor decision making and more accurately, my aversion to risk.

I was gambling today, not trading, so I expected it to be a bit of a rollercoaster.

I got off to the worse possible start and lost an obscene amount of money on the first race. My losses totalled over £50 and I was on a downer. I spent a large amount on a Placepot and I backed a few horses in the race.

I selected 5 horses (yes 5 horses!) on the PP in the first race and my best finisher was 10th! Basically, I narrowed the race down to 9 horses. I picked 5 and the other 4 I didn’t choose were the first 4 home. I know this sounds a bit like I’m taking the pee but it’s God’s honest truth. Andrew (who comments on my blog!) and my work colleagues can vouch for this as I shared my picks with them!

As usual, the first race was my only losing race on the PP and it cost me 40p of the £1 return. The return was £350, so the first race cost me £140 return and £100 profit on the PP. Tomorrow is another day…….

I then made the absolutely craziest, craziest, craziest, craziest, craziest (you get it by now) decision ever to reduce my stakes for the rest of the day. I was £50 down and my risk aversion took over. I will ultimately live to regret this for a while……

I won peanuts as I laid Noland and backed Tidal Bay for tiny stakes. Mistake 1! (6/1 winner)

I then won smaller peanuts backing Katchit and then laying off on the home bend! What I was doing with Katchit I’ve no idea as I love the horse and have thought it would win the Champion Hurdle all winter, but after a £50 loss in the first, it made sense for that split second to lay off my bet. Mistake 2. (10/1 winner)

I then backed New Alco and Abragante for decent stakes in race 4 as I started to chase my losses. For some unknown reason, I didn’t put any lays in the market (New Alco traded at 1.36) and I suffered a decent loss on this race again as they both ran their heart out to just get beat at the finish. Enough to wipe out my profits on races 2 and 3…….Mistake 3

Race 5 – I backed Ivoire De Beaulieau for huge prices and decent stakes. Was sitting with a huge green (over £900 at one stage on it!) as it cruised through the race. Again, I was drawn in to watching the race and just for a little while, I thought it would win…… I laid off for a break even and kept a huge profit on it. Had lots of opportunities to get a hedged profit but no, it was cruising. Just as I’m about to lay, Garde Champetre appears from nowhere and suddenly my horse is trading at 100. Mistake 4.

Race 6 – Missed this race as I was out picking up Denise. Laid Ashkazar for a win and Place. Somehow got my stakes mixed up and laid more for a place than a win. I know, what the hell was I doing????? Mistake 5. (But still a profit!)

So, the summary of the day is that I had a great day, picked a 6/1 and 10/1 winner of the 2 biggest races and made a £50 loss. What the hell was I doing today?

You can see why I wanted Cheltenham excluded from The Experiment……

Looking forward to tomorrow though and let’s hope it’s as much fun as today!

P.S. I entered the Select a Stable competition in the Racing Post. 2 runners, 2 winners. Katchit (10/1) and Tidal Bay (6/1). I could do with the £20k first prize in this game to cover my Cheltenham expenses.

Monday 10 March 2008

Quick Golf Update

Additional Profit £25

Anyone who read my blog earlier may have got a little excited by seeing that Sean O’Hair has gone on to win the golf tournament and I still had a return of £100 on Sean at 19.30pm.

Unfortunately, myself and Denise had already arranged to go to a friend’s house to see their newborn baby tonight, so we left our house just after I posted at 19.30pm. At this time, Sean was 3 shots back in 3rd and was trading at 10 on Betfair. Since I’d guessed I wouldn’t be back in until the golf had finished, I had to decide whether to let the bet run and win £0 or £100, or trade it in for a guaranteed amount…..

I put lays in the market at 6, 3, and 1.8 for decreasing amounts. In total, I swapped a risky £100 for a guaranteed £25 as O’Hair went on to win the tournament.

The fact that it appears that O’Hair has won quite easily is slightly annoying but I still think I did the right thing at 7.30pm. If I was staying in to watch the golf, I’ve no doubt I would have won more but it’s difficult to trade on something when you are not watching the event or at a PC!

Overall, I’m happy with this profit as I would have settled for this at the start of the day.

Golf Update, Review of 1st Week, Cheltenham 08

Daily Profit £38.15

As you can tell from the title, I’ve got a little catching up to do today.

Golf Update

I’ve still got over £100 return on Sean O’ Hair to trade with so this profit may increase but I’m currently up £38.15 on the golf for this weekend. This is made up from laying Ernie Els at the start (£20) and from profiting on some of my initial bets (£18.15). Overall, a good second golf tournament for me.

Review of 1st week

It’s been a bit of a strange start to The Experiment for me. At the start of the week, I didn’t have a clear strategy for the next 12 months and I was desperately searching around for some ideas. After the nightmare of last Monday, I decided to ditch all my ideas of Dutching, Bookmaking, gambling etc. and just concentrate on trading. I was initially against the idea of just trading as I was unsure if it would play to my strengths but after the last week, I think trading is the path I have to follow over the next 12 months.

I’ve learnt an unbelievable amount during my first week and hopefully I can learn from these mistakes and improve as time goes on.

I think I need to quickly look to increase my stakes as I’m conscious of the fact that I am trading far too much in every race and making too many errors but part of this is simply due to the size of my stakes. If I see a horse that I think is getting backed, I’ve got to click that mouse a fair amount of times to get my bets matched to generate a decent return. If I just added a zero onto my stakes, I wouldn’t have this problem!

I’m going to keep my stakes low for the time-being though as I wouldn’t feel comfortable using £500 stakes just yet. I was using £20-£50 stakes on Friday and I felt OK with these amounts, so I’ll only look to increase my stakes as I gain more experience.

I suppose the bottom line from the first week is that I am around £59 in profit. I’m pretty pleased with this profit but I’m not too pleased with how it has been generated!

Golf - £54
Horses - £5

Clearly, the whole point of The Experiment was to use my horse-racing knowledge to trade on Betfair, but so far, I haven’t done that great. However, after my practice attempts on Betfair, I’m pleased that I’m in profit and haven’t suffered a large loss!

I’ll continue to use my strategy on the golf. For anyone who doesn’t know, my strategy on the golf has been to pick 5-10 players at massive prices and back them all for small stakes. I’ll then look to lay them off for profits as the tournament progresses. If the opportunity arises, I’ll also look to lay a short-priced favourite at the golf at the start of the tournament as I don’t think short-priced favourites represent value in golf tournaments. I’ll lay Tiger when he plays and is a short price. This week I laid Els after he won last week’s tournament and it has won me an easy £20, so I’ll continue to use this strategy every week also.

Cheltenham Week

After giving it a bit of thought, I’ve decided to exclude Cheltenham 08 from The Experiment. The main reason for this is because like most keen racing fans, Cheltenham is the one meeting that I love to watch and gamble on. I’ve found that trading on races spoils my enjoyment of the racing a bit as trading is purely a numbers game to me. Therefore, I don’t want to trade at Cheltenham this week.

In addition, I have adopted the same betting strategy at Cheltenham and other large race meetings over the years. I always look to do a Placepot every day which will be a high multiple bet for low stakes. I think Placepots represent great value at large meetings as a large part of the pool is made up from punters who don’t do their research on the racing and who only follow the favourites in every race.

Over the years, I have had great success with Placepots at Cheltenham and Royal Ascot and have had a few four figure wins. My strategy is pretty straightforward for these meetings. I will look to get the short priced favourites beat as often as possible. On most days at Cheltenham, the Placepot will pay over £500 and on some really difficult days, the Placepot can pay up to £5,000 quite frequently. Obviously, I will be using stakes of 5p, but depending on how many runners I get placed, I can make a decent return.

A few years ago, a Placepot at Royal Ascot paid £10,000 and I got a 20p share, so I ended up with £2,000 return. This was from a bet which came to 288 bets @ 5p each, £14.40! A nice profit…..

One issue I do have with my strategy is that when the favourites are all placed at a meeting, I am likely to not win back my initial stake and in many cases, I won’t actually win the Placepot as I will have not chosen the favourites. This doesn’t bother me as I know that my strategy will win more in the long-run.

In case anyone is wondering, the reason that I don’t do Placepots all the time is simply due to the fact that they are too much hard work. There have been times when I have spent 4/5 hours coming up with my Placepot selections, staked my £20-£50 and then have got beat in the 1st race as the first 3 in the betting fill the places! Also, Placepots can be the most annoying bets of all time when you lose in the last race or when you get 5 races right. That one race may have cost you a few hundred or a few thousand and it starts to affect you and how you pick your selections.

I still figure I can make consistent profits from Placepots but not sure if they are worth the effort that I put into them. I don’t mind spending time on Placepots at Cheltenham or other big meetings as when I get it right, it’s definitely worth it. However, trying to sort out handicaps at Southwell or Lingfield every day would be enough to drive me up the wall!

Every night, I will continue to give an update of my day’s gambling at Cheltenham but I will exclude the P&L from the 4 days from The Experiment’s P&L. I don’t mind losing a few quid at Cheltenham as it only comes around once a year and therefore, that’s why I’m not going to include any profits and losses in The Experiment.

I have worked really hard to generate my £59 profit in the first week of The Experiment and I could easily lose this if I don’t get a Placepot up at Cheltenham over the 4 days, so you can see why it makes sense to exclude this from The Experiment.

Good luck to everyone for Cheltenham and I hope you all manage to make a few quid across the 4 days. If anyone has any strong views on any of the races, feel free to post up any tips by way of a comment.

C’mon Denman (or should that be Kauto?)

Saturday 8 March 2008

Rollercoaster of a day....

Daily Profit £7.11

As you can tell by the title, today was a bit crazy. I think what is happening is that I’m getting more comfortable with trading and I’m probably getting a little too complacent trading with these stakes. Today I increased my stakes slightly to £20-£50 and I did OK but I'm clicking that mouse far too much. When I read the race correctly, the profits are great. When I misread it, I'm liable to run up large losses.

I had my biggest win today and my biggest loss, so was a bit of a rollercoaster. My biggest win was very pleasing and I managed to generate £20 hedged profit on a race as I read the betting perfectly. However, I was quite sure the 2nd fav would win, so I put £10 on that so that I had more on that and less on the field. Thankfully, the 2nd favourite won and my return was £50.

I lost £32 on a race though and I was mightily disappointed. So much so, I’ve decided to stop trading any horse out with the first 3 in the betting completely. I was trading on a 4th favourite as it did appear to be getting backed. I then followed it all the way up as it doubled in price. I was using £30 stakes, so was a bit of a disaster. Created a massive liability on the horse which I partly laid off before the off and then laid off the rest in running by backing it. A total disaster and a £32 loss. Ouch!

Overall, I’m pleased that I made a small profit but I need to stop doing crazy things in certain races as it’s wiping out my profits every day.

I’m not trading tomorrow as I’m at the football, so my next day will be Tuesday as I’m working on Monday. That happens to be the 1st day of Cheltenham. I’m thinking of not trading at Cheltenham and just gambling like I would do every other year as trading spoils my enjoyment of the racing a little bit I'm finding. I wait all year on Cheltenham, coming around, so I want to be able to enjoy it and not worry about trying to trade every race.

I’ll write more on my plans for Cheltenham if I get a chance this weekend.

Lastly, my golf is going great this week. I laid Ernie Els twice at different prices and he has missed the cut. I’m currently all green at the moment which is great but I’ll post up my winnings once the tournament is over. Sean O' Hair is also keeping the flag flying for me at the top of the leaderboard, so could be another decent profit from the golf.

Good luck to everyone if you are trading and gambling this weekend!

Friday 7 March 2008

2 lessons learned!

Daily Profit £3.81

Similar to yesterday, I did pretty well in most races but I made 2 massive errors which wiped out most of the day’s profits.

I don’t always want to dwell on the negatives, so a quick word on the good things today. I traded 11 races, won 7, lost 3 and break-even on 1. Out of the 7 winning races, 3 races created hedged profits of £6 or more.

Again, doesn’t sound spectacular but I only used £10 or £20 stakes all day. On one race, I did 8 successful trades on the favourite at £20 each and I created £16 risk free on the fav. Once I’d hedged, it gave me about £7 profit.

This was easily my most satisfying race thus far from trading. If I could just do that on more races, I’d feel much happier with increasing my stakes and looking to gain higher profits but I’m still liable to throw in the odd nightmare of a race.

I suffered 2 nightmares today. For any people reading this who are pretty good at trading, you are going to chuckle at what happened to me……

Firstly, I traded a race tonight and only had a profit of about £1 on the race. So, I thought I’d watch the race and look to back a horse in running if one appeared.

So I was watching the race and I thought I’d back a horse at about 1.5 as it was cruising with 2 furlongs left. I quickly tried to snap up the 1.5 available. All of a sudden, a positive £10 appeared against every other horse in the race! I had somehow managed to lay the horse instead of backing it….

I forgot that I was using the 1 tick profit function in BA Pro and when I placed my bet, it automatically tried to lay it off for 1 tick lower! I didn’t get my 1.5 bet matched but not surprisingly, I got the lay at 1.49 matched! WHOOPS!

Well, it was another lesson learned and it cost me £5 as the horse did go on to win in a photo. This was the 1st race at Wolv last night. I got most of it back in the next race though, so I stopped the day there and kept my small profit.

Earlier in the day, my other error was again in a big field. I think I’m starting to learn to stop trading these large fields until I gain more experience. I was trading the front 2 in the betting and I missed the fact that others were being heavily backed. I ended up with a few large red numbers on the front 2 which I traded on and I hedged this for an £8 loss. Again, lesson learned!

I’m glad to say I can end this post on a high note. I’d like to say thanks to the person who laid me £2 at 1000 for Todd Hamilton. It’s true that Hamilton’s pretty poor nowadays but he was due a decent round. Also thanks to the person(s) who snapped up my lays from 70-120. He was in 2nd place at one stage yesterday, so they maybe thought he would do OK. After they snapped up my lays, he then decided to plummet down the leaderboard…..

My exposure on the golf from my initial bets (£21) is now £2 although I have placed a £10 lay on Ernie Els. He seemed far too short a price when he kicked off his round last night and now he’s twice the odds!

I will now be disappointed if I can’t now make a small profit on the golf from this position!

Trading tomorrow again on the horses, so I’ll see how it goes. If tomorrow goes OK, I’ll look to increase my stakes a little from next week as it’s slightly frustrating winning small amounts from trading knowing that I can scale these up from using higher stakes.

Wednesday 5 March 2008

A profit on horse-racing? Surely not.....

Daily Profit £15.90

I don’t know where to start….

At first glance, the profit above looks pretty poor. However, let’s get this into perspective. After 5 losing days in a row on horse-racing, to post any sort of profit is good in my eyes. However, it was about so much more than just the profit today….

I lost £23 in 2 races today. Add that back to my profit and wow, I had a good day. Take into account that I only traded 12 races and that I was using £10 stakes and a £16 profit is pretty good.

So, what went wrong (I mean right) today…..

After taking on board the advice of Leon in particular and other comments from Andrew, Cassini and a few anonymous people (you know who you are!), I decided to try out trading today. By trading, I mean pure trading. Not Dutching, not gambling, not risk free bets, not bookmaking, not any other type of gambling I’ve tried recently!

Pure trading. I basically read back through Leon’s blog and decided that I would try to follow his method. I would concentrate on the first 3 or 4 in the betting, study the relationships between the odds movements of each horse and then look to trade. I looked at 18 races today and traded only 12. This is probably the most discipline I’ve showed thus far, so I am learning!

Just to cast everyone’s minds back, I had only tried trading once before in my life. The first day I started to look at Betfair I tried trading. I lost £60 in 1 hour and it scared the living daylights out of me. Never again I promised myself…..

However, today may go down as a pivotal day as part of The Experiment. I may have found something I like doing and just maybe (a big maybe), I can become good at it.

I won’t describe every race and how it went but I traded on 12 races, won on 7, break-even on 2 and lost on 3. As I said earlier, 2 of the losses were large (£11 and £12) but this purely down to my lack of trading skills. I got slightly confused in these races.

The most pleasing thing though was when I managed to combine my knowledge with a bit of trading. For the first time today, I didn’t use the racing post or sporting life when trading the markets. I just tried to follow the money, which seemed to work OK.

However, the 2.50 at Newcastle was different. It was basically a 2 horse race and I knew the form of both horses pretty well. When I clicked on the race at about 2.40, I say that Noble Alan was 1.5 and Kealshore Boy was 3.5. I was amazed. There was no way that Noble Alan should have been this short. I personally thought it would win but it was never going to start at that price.

I had decided earlier in the day to increase my stakes to £10 trades, so I got clicking. I laid Noble Alan and backed Kealshore Boy for one tick profits. I did this continually for the next 5 minutes. I lost count of how many clicks I must have done, but I just kept doing it until their prices converged. I think they started something like 1.8 and 2.5. When I looked at each horse, I had created £12 on Noble Alan and £16 on Kealshore Boy. I was amazed. After 5 days of trying I had finally managed to create a decent profit from trading…..

I chose not to green up and it cost me a little as Noble Alan won but I was still pleased. If I was using £100 stakes, that would have been an £80 profit on the race. Obviously, I can dream about £500 stakes but let’s not get too carried away. I read 1 race correctly…..

So, in one race, I had managed to use my knowledge of form and trade for a profit. That’s what I’ve been striving for over the past month!

It wasn’t all great today. I got in a mess twice simply due to my lack of experience and how you go about greening up. In one race, I was trading the first 5 in the betting from about 10 minutes before the off. However, I had missed the fact that 3 outsiders were being heavily backed and this would impact on the odds. I got in a bit of a muddle and ended up with lots of large greens and reds on my screen. I then went to the ladder page to see what would happen if I opted for a current close on each horse. I started to look to manually trade out of the position but the race went into play.

Undeterred, I continued on my passage to manually backing and laying my way out of the situation and then one of my green horses fell at the first hurdle. Whoops…..

I was panicking a little and just greened up on each horse at the current odds. It could have been a disaster (would have been with higher stakes!) and I got out with a £12 loss. A few races on, the same thing happened pretty much where I was too busy concentrating on the odds movements and forgot to green up before the off. I was trading 4 horses and was doing well on all 4. However, the race went into play, I chose to green up after they left the stalls and unfortunately, 2 of the horses started badly and drifted wildly just before I laid them. Cost me £11.

I’m not too worried about these errors as these are the sort of errors that inexperienced traders make. I only have 2 days experience now, so I know I’ve got much to learn. However, I’m keen to learn and I’ll be trading all the time from now on hopefully.

I’m off to London tomorrow for a meeting, so that’s my full-time day at work. I’ll be back trading on Thursday afternoon though.

I’ve placed my bets on the golf for this week. I’m changing my strategy slightly this week as I’m going to look to trade the bets off in-play and not before the event starts. I know this increases the risk greatly but it probably cost me a good bit of money last week not letting my bets go in play, so we’ll see how I do this week.

Below are my bets for this week:




My target is to get my £21 back on the first day so that I’m riskfree and then look to trade to make a profit from then on.

Tuesday 4 March 2008

Mr Consistent

Daily Loss £22.89

Well, if Paul Mckenna can sell books teaching people how to lose pounds, then I could be on my way to writing a best-seller!

5 days of trading on horse-racing, 5 losses.

Being honest, today was not about trading. I actually did Ok trading and I'm slowly starting to get the hang of this. My problems again concerned my Dutching.

I gambled on 19 races today, and only won on 7. As I've said previously, I can't expect to make a profit when my strike rate is this low. In reality, I did pretty well to only lose the amount I did as I was playing with very small stakes, so it could have been much, much worse. I actually had 8 straight losses which is quite an achievement. The average odds of these 8 bets came to around 6/4, so it's quite a poor run.

The only thing that gives me a bit of encouragement was that I was slightly unlucky in one of the races. I managed to create a riskfree bet on a horse which returned around £50 (was 20/1) but it finished 2nd. I did lay off a little part of the bet in running for a small profit on the race but if that had managed to win, I would have made a decent profit on the day.

Clearly, my confidence at the moment is at an all time low with regards to picking winners through Dutching, so I'll maybe have a break from Dutching tomorrow.

I still feel I can make decent returns from Dutching but it's just not happening for me at the moment. I can't pick a winner.

I'll look to try to trade tomorrow as it's lower risk and I'm really needing to try to get a profit to get me some confidence.

I made the decision to start off with very small stakes for The Experiment and it's probably proving a good decision. If I had been playing with the sort of stakes I ultimately want to, I would have bust my £1,000 bank on the first day as 8 straight losses at 6/4 would wipe me out no matter which staking plan I was using!

I'm starting to chuckle to myself about how bad this horse-racing gambling is going, so things can only get better.

Bring on this week's golf......

Monday 3 March 2008

First Profit

Daily Profit £16.15

A quick post to say that I'm currently sitting with a profit of £16.15 on the Golf. I'm quite pleased with this as it appears that none of my players will finish in the top 4, so to generate a profit is pleasing.

If I had taken this golf tournament more seriously, I could have made a little more as Davis was 3 clear on Friday night and I could have laid him off but I wasn't watching at the time....

Seriously though, a £16 profit for about 1 hour of work spread across 3 nights at the start of the week is quite a good return. I'd settle for this every week!

I'll be trying out the same tactic for next week's golf tournament, so watch this space!

I'll be trading on the horses on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday this week. I'm in London on Wednesday for a meeting, so that will be my full day at work.

I'm quite looking forward to tomorrow and to this week in general. I see this as The Experiment starting for real as the intention has always been to trade on horse-racing. The golf trading has been fun but I've been quite lucky this week with picking 2 guys who are likely to finish top 10, so I doubt I can do that every week!

I'll post tomorrow night with an update of how the day goes. Fingers crossed I can make a small profit!