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.
Monday, 10 March 2008
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?)
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!
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.
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:
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......
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!
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!
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)
