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?