I want to give a little update on my scalping today. I decided to up the stakes a little today and play about with £10 stakes. All week, I’ve been playing around with £2-£5 stakes and I’m about 89p up on the week. As I hinted at in the last post though, it’s coming along great and I’ve learned an amazing amount even after a week.
Today, I decided to stop greening up and start using my little green profits to back the horse I want. This was a little experiment to see how I would go as I said in the last post that this is ultimately where I want to end up on Betfair.
I’ll post my P&L below but I got off to a dream start. I fancied that Bowder Stone would be well backed and I had it down as around a 3/1 chance. It was 9/2 and over 6 on Betfair when I started watching it on BA Pro. I then watched the money come for it, spotted the trend, jumped on the gamble, kept clicking to back (3 times) all the way down the gamble, and hoped off about 8 ticks lower with a green profit of £7. Nice work.
I then used that to back Higgy’s Boy at 13 as I thought it was now overpriced as it had drifted. I then watched in horror as Bowder Stone travelled like a dream and Higgy’s Boy was outpaced at the back and trading at 50+. Fortunately, Higgy’s picked up the bridle and finished well to go down in a close photo by a short head. I had left a lay at 2.08 and 1.5 and both got matched. Hence, a profit of £34 on the field and £47 on Higgy’s if it had won.
In the 4.00, I had a green amount of 87p and I put it on Golden Destiny which romped home at 12/1. Typical!!!!!!
In the 4.30, I couldn’t believe the price of Desert Phantom to be honest as I saw its debut run when it was heavily, heavily backed and romped home and I had it down as a possible future group winner. I managed to catch the little gamble when it was backed and then I put my green profit on it which gave me a profit of £10.
Overall, 2 winners in 8 races at prices of 11/1 and 9/4 and a second at 9/1. Overall, my scalping went great and I managed to trade very well and again, the profit is boosted by my knowledge of horseracing.
That’s surely the future strategy for me on Betfar……………
4 comments:
Well done on a green start Graeme sadly I think your new improved strategy is more flawed than the old ones :)
I can understand you doing this as the trading profits seem small but it's early days for your trading. In order to make a profit you now need both your trading and race reading skills to pay off which is probably asking for a lot at once. Using this method you'll still be at odds with the markets when trading as your race reading knowledge won't necessarily be reflected by the markets plus any race reading skill profits will ultimately depend on how well you've traded the race, what happens if you have to red up ? do you no longer back the horse you've spent time picking form reading, do you back it for less cos you only made a small profit on a race ?
There's nothing wrong with running separate systems or strategies side by side , I have separate accounts set up so diffeent bots don't clash in strategies and I can keep track of thier profits.
By all means carry on the trading and betting but keep them independant of each other you dont want to end up lumping £50 trading profit on some donkey whilst having 50p on a sure fire cert.
Hi Steve.
As usual mate, great comment and it’s good to get a different opinion….. :p
Firstly, I can really understand where you are coming from. If I had different strategies and robots, I’d do exactly as you do to be honest. I’d ensure that they are kept apart and I’d make sure that I can also track their performance separately as you do.
As usual though, I always want to do things my way! I should really adopt the Frank Sinatra classic as the theme tune for this blog…..
In my opinion (with a very limited 6 months experience I must add!), I think this strategy I want to adopt is better than any other strategy out there ‘for me’. I think the key thing is that I think it will suit me. I actually don’t think it suits many other people who use Betfair and I wouldn’t ever try to encourage someone to do what I’m attempting to do but I’m sure I can make it work.
You make a few very good points though. I haven’t fully thought this through yet but what happens when I have to red up. Obviously, I may end up with an equal red amount on every runner. What would I do? Again, I’d end up backing a horse that I feel is likely to trade lower IR and I’d then look to reduce my loss through lays IR. As I said, I haven’t thought this through completely yet but I’d need to manage my stakes effectively.
Your last point is the key point though. In a race where I earn £20 green, I don’t really want to be lumping that on some donkey which I hope shortens in running and then the following race, ending up with 83p on a 12/1 shot who wins.
Clearly, stake management is again key to this and I’d need some defined rules.
One point is that I’d like to take some of my green profit either pre-race or very early in running. I don’t want to get to the stage where I earn a green profit from trading and then throw it all away when my horse runs badly in the race. This is the sort of thing that would drive me mad and would probably start to affect the way I trade.
I’d like to think that depending on the size of the green profit, I’d take a percentage of the profit pre-race and trade IR with the rest. In races where I make a decent green profit, I bank most of it and then that can be used for races where I make a small green or even to offset the red loss.
As I hinted at in the last post, I ultimately want to end up with a strategy that is scalable and is enjoyable to implement. I don’t think I’ll ever fully enjoy scalping the horseracing markets (may change as I get better at trading?), and therefore, I need a strategy that allows me to pick winners and trade the market at the same time.
If I was wanting to do this to make my living, then maybe I’d have to go down the route of pure scalping or pure gambling. At the moment though, I’m not good enough at either and therefore, it will remain a hobby for the timebeing.
Cheers for the comment. I’m sure everyone has a different opinion on this matter and as my scalping improves, it may be the case that I shy away from trading IR and just banking the green profit every race like everyone else does. However, this means I’m not using my form knowledge in any way which seems a bit of a waste IMO!
Graeme
I'm kinda going against the flow here. I didnt think there was too much wrong with the original strategy. To be honest i cant even see how this approach differs to much from it.
The way i saw it the problem was not the strategy, rather the money management.
This is how i would play it...
You have formed an opinion on a horse and that it's likely to run close if not win and feel the price on offer is too big. Therefore i'd put in a feeler bet that should your judgement prove to be totally off you are prepared to lose.
Then wait and see what the market does if it agrees with you then go in again and back it again, follow the price down until the off or the market starts to turn against you, then green up.
If the market thinks your wrong then do nothing (aprat from the original stake) until the race goes 'in-play' if the horse does run well then you can trade out and green up, pat yourself on the back. If you were totally wrong then you are only losing your original stake, effectively a stop loss.
Hi Gary.
What you’ve stated above is basically my ‘old strategy’ that I implemented for the months of April-July and it worked fairly well. One thing I was doing though was increasing my stake on drifters as it made my exit point higher and thus easier in running.
Obviously, this is probably what killed me in July as I had far too many drifters who drifted wildly and then ran badly, meaning I didn’t get out IR for a higher stake. I had a few large losses and it caused me to have a rethink.
Now, I’m trying to learn to read the market better and this should allow me to choose my entry point much better thus making it easier for me to get a riskfree bet. In the past, I was just backing at the odds I thought were value.
However, if a horse was very weak and likely to drift, this wasn’t the best idea I’ve learnt. Hence, maybe I should have laid first and then backed to get my riskfree bet for example.
Once I’ve learnt to read the market better, it should make it much easier for me to get my riskfree bet and then that should eliminate the large losses of last month. Last month, I had £1,600 of winning trades wiped out completely by losses from pre-race trading.
As you say, I don’t think there’s much wrong with my current strategy, it just needs to be tweaked a little to maximise profits. Learning to scalp should enable me to do this I hope.
Thanks for the comment.
Graeme
Post a Comment