Day 22

A lot of action on Saturday as you'd expect, although not as profitable as Friday, mostly because of Real Madrid!

Again things went great with the horses. Only one red at the end of the day.

 

As you can see I had a big red there on Real. As I mentioned in my previous post, sometimes you'll get caught by a goal trading the correct score market. That is exactly what happened. I noticed Atletico had scored  (although I only did so a few minutes later) and thought it would be a great opportunity for scalping as the market would probably be all over the place unsure of how to react. And so it was, I actually scalped a few ticks quickly and had a profit of around 5 euros when I decided to go for one last scalp. I got greedy and decided to move my lay bet one tick down just seconds before being matched - and seconds before Benzema got tripped in the area by the Atletico goalkeeper. Greed got the better of me again there - I had a very good profit already, and now that the market was becoming less jumpy I should have just moved on to another match, especially with Real playing. Anyway I still managed to recover some of the loss after the other Real goals.

Here's the bank at the moment:

I am surprised by myself really. I wasn't expecting this challenge to go anywhere as well as it has so far. These last 3 days have been excellent, and regarding the horse racing in particular I definitely feel as if something has clicked and I feel like a robot now as opposed to overthinking all my moves and almost taking a market move against me personally! I don't want to jinx it though so onto those 500 Euros...

Days 20 & 21

Thursday was not a very eventful day:

Not much to say about the football, there wasn't a lot of action. I was quite happy with the fact that I had only one red in the horse racing though.

Friday was my best day trading the horses though:

Not a single red! I actually really feel much more comfortable scratching a position or taking a two or three tick loss now than when I started the blog. I guess it's just a habit. Before I was afraid of a red screen, now I know that it's better to take a loss early when I see the market turning against me - not only will it avoid a bigger red screen most of the time, it also gives me more time to turn it around.

A decent day with the football too. I have to say although HT scalping is low risk, scalping straight after a market reopens (after a suspension because of a goal, red card etc) is much more rewarding. Generally I am in for only a few seconds and can take advantage of the huge gaps. I know people who scalp the correct score throughout the whole match but this was is simpler and less stressful for me - I hear a goal on live score and act as quickly as possible. Obviously I'll get caught a few times but hopefully way less times than I manage to win. Anyway...

 Friday was by far the most profitable day since starting the challenge. Not a bad way to start the weekend...

Day 19

Today if all goes well I will be able to reach 200 Euros after a good day at the office yesterday:

The horses went well - again, when I am patient enough to only enter the market at the best times it usually goes better as you'd expect.

I was watching the Porto match last night - they needed a win and got it - and traded a few others, the most successful being Milan - Barcelona. There were many good opportunities for trading with so many goals scored but I kept it simple and with only 2 or 3 trades made a decent profit. Regarding the Celtic match I wasn't sure on whether to trade that one or not. I decided to do it and got caught by a goal when I had an open position backing the current score at the time. I actually got my back bet matched at a great price, but due to the low liquidity couldn't get all of my lay bet in. Perhaps I got too greedy as there were prices available that would have guaranteed a decent profit.

Not a lot of footy on today, so I'll trade the horses in the afternoon and then see what happens in the evening.

That's my bank this morning. I've been thinking about my end of year targets. I think I'll be a bit ambitious and aim for 500 Euros until December 31st, with view to withdrawing 100 Euros and officially leaving this blog in profit - it stands as a scratch right now as I already withdrew the original deposit as you know, so at least a no loss position is assured. I say ambitious because the bank won't grow as fast from now on (if it keeps growing at all of course) and also because I don't expect to have a lot of time in the last 2 weeks of the year, with family duties and a lot of work coming.

Day 18

Didn't have too much time yesterday for the CL football (only watched the 2nd half of Man Utd - Benfica) and the horse racing trading was not ideal, red followed by green followed by red, but still ended up with a small profit.

I ventured into the greyhound racing again and again I think it's not worth it. It's just too stressful and I can't act quickly enough most of the time. As for the football my only loss came from the straight back of Inter I suggested here yesterday: I decided to stick with my original plan of trading out with 20 mins left if Inter were winning, so when they took the lead in the first half I let it run, although I knew a draw would be enough for them. As you will know it ended 1-1 with Trabzonspor getting the equaliser shortly after.

That's how the bank stands at the moment. Think I'll stick to the scalping tonight as nothing appeals to me in the evening games for a straight bet.

Day 17

A good start to the week with a decent profit in both the horses and the football:

It's not unusual for me to start the day with a relatively big red on the horse racing. More concentration is needed from the start there.

Everything went smoothly with the football. Only one red as the market at half time barely moved so I was forced to take the loss before the restart.

Here's the bank at the moment:

Champions League tonight should mean that there will be a lot of opportunities for scalping. I've been doing well without any punting / CS dutching lately, however a straight back of Inter looks appealing tonight at odds of 2.7. They have beaten Lille and CSKA away and Trabzonspor have been rather poor since their opening win in Milan. Inter should put out a strong team as they're not through yet and a loss here might make it a nervous last day. I will look to trade out if they are winning by one goal with 20 minutes or so left.

Days 15 & 16

A profitable weekend, although it was rather frustrating at the same time. A couple of silly mistakes wiped away a big part of the profits. This is what happened Saturday:

A big red on the horses there due to one race in which I was convinced there was some spoofing going on, so I let the red grow expecting the money to disappear on the lay side and to secure a healthy green. The money just kept coming in though and when I decided to red up (around 1 minute before the start) the numbers were already fairly high. The slight plus is that again I didn't let it go in running.

An excellent day on the football made sure I finished the Saturday with a decent profit. However it could have been a much better day if not for the Academica - Porto game as you can see. Academica were leading 1-0 and I was following the game on a live score service. Around the 81st minute it shows 1-1, however the market stays suspended. The live score correct it to 1-0 - as it turns out Porto had a goal disallowed. The market reopens shortly after and I'm quick to back the 1-0 to get a good position in the queue. However, as the 8 seconds start counting I see that someone already wants to lay it at 1000. I go to the live score and see it's 2-0. What happened was that Porto had a goal disallowed on 81 minutes, and Academica scored in the following attack. I should have waited for some money to show up in the ladder and not to follow the live score so blindly, especially as the suspending was behaving strangely and taking too long. Anyway, things like this will happen once in a blue moon probably (or so I thought) and I carried on.

Thankfully the Vasco game was like free money (I love Vasco games!!). As you can see I had a big green on that game straight after the Porto game. And there was no chasing involved whatsoever - the price was simply bouncing between 9s and 7s throughout the whole half time. It was all done scalping at half time. What happened was that there had been a red card in the first half, so I think the market didn't know how to react to it. After a very unlucky moment in the Porto match, I got very lucky to take advantage of this one.

Then this happened on Sunday:

I'm still not sure what happened in the Valenciennes match. I just noticed some money missing on my Geeks Toy and went to check my bets. As it turns out I had backed the 0-1 at a time when the score was already 2-1. I must have clicked it by accident surely, as I remember opening the market at one point to see what was going on and deciding not to do anything and move along.

Other than that everything went well, but I definitely wasn't happy at another costly mistake following the Porto match! Someone will be happy out there having taken the free money...

Anyway, onwards and upwards! Here's the current bank at the start of this week:

Geeks Toy - Children in Need

As most Betfair traders will know, software for trading the markets is essential if you want to be successful. And which software out there is better than The Geeks Toy? None in my humble opinion. It does everything most other trading programs do (and does many things better), for FREE! It is a must have tool for newbies and pros alike. I can't recommend it highly enough. You're free to donate whenever you want to help with the running costs and to show your gratitude to The Geek. He will often participate in fundraisers to which you're free to donate as well.

 

Well it's charity fundraiser time again, and The Geek is running another fundraiser for BBC Children in Need. Some great prizes up for grabs, so well worth checking out.

The recently released 1.2 Beta of The Geeks Toy now has Dutching, Bookmaking, stop loss, a multibet tool, support for Betfair video, and a new kick ass in play interface being released on Monday.

And if that's not enough there is a Betdaq version due in the coming weeks as well.

They also run a great trading forum too, so well worth checking out.

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Days 13 & 14

Day 13 proved to be a good day. I only traded the horses as mentioned in my previous post, and managed to reach the 100 Euro mark. I promised myself that as soon as I reached 100 Euros I would withdraw the original 20 used for this challenge. And that is exactly what I did:

This means that from day 13 on I'm only playing with the profits. This made me feel very positive and it showed yesterday:

Hardly any reds which I was very happy about. In the CSKA match I was trading the correct score at HT. Unfortunately, the market turned against me and I didn't want to let it go in play, so I closed with a loss. In the Dutch match I was trying to trade the CS in play after a goal but there was hardly any liquidity so I gave up shortly after for a 9 cent loss.

Only one straight bet yesterday (everything else was scalping), and it came in the Benfica match: Benfica were 0-0 at HT against Naval. Their lineup was fairly strong despite being a cup match against a team from the second tier, so I took the 1.71 available for a Benfica win. They eventually scored with a few minutes left and I let it run as I didn't think Naval would get back into it.

Days 11 & 12

Not a lot of time to update the blog yesterday due to family reasons, but here it is... For Tuesday:

 

As you can see I decided to experiment with trading the greyhounds and some low liquidity horse races. I was never successful with these in the past and apparently nothing has changed. Managed to come out with a 4 cent profit on the dogs, and in the horses I blew away most of the profit I had built through the day in the UK races. I'll stay away from these in the future.

It was a very good day for the football though - not a single red and no punting. Mostly scalping the CS at half time and also in play, but in play was only on 2 or 3 of these.

Yesterday there was almost no footie, so most of the action was on the horses. Not a lot of time so only a few races:

I felt very relaxed and calm yesterday and this showed. Only one red trading the horses. I was patient enough to wait for the best opportunities and it paid off. Traded a couple of football matches - the Hungarian one at HT, and the Brazilian one pre-match. Misjudged that one but only got involved because there was nothing else on. Not the wisest decision.

I've been saying this often these days but today there really is NO football on today. Unless you count one English and one Ukrainian reserve matches. So, for the first time since I started the blog I really won't get involved with the football today. Maybe some horse trading in the afternoon.

Current bank:

Day 10

An interesting day yesterday:

As you can see there is a large loss there on the horses, although I could still come away with a profit at the end of the day - just. However, I thought it was very positive. Despite being a very big loss, I managed to think long term and didn't let it go in play. What happened was that I was trading at odds of around 60-65 (I usually trade on odds between 10-30) and was trying to spoof despite the small bank... Unfortunately someone came in with a LOT of money and took all my stakes. Here I didn't act as quickly as I should, as I was hoping it would come back down - basic mistake as the market was clearly against me. After waiting a few more seconds I realised I would lose even more money and took the red.

Most things went well with the football. I guess I'm just not very good at punting, despite studying the matches in detail I still lost both punts yesterday in the Belgium U21 - England U21 and the Cayman Islands - Dominican Rep matches (ok, I have no clue about the teams in that second one but the stats clearly pointed to a Dominican Rep. win). Since I started the blog, these bets are down by 3.86 Euros.

The scalping once again went well. I got caught by the 2nd goal in the Ireland-Liechtenstein game, but I still reduced my red there at HT. I was trying to scalp the current score in play using small stakes, as there were huge gaps between the prices, and the prices were at very high odds.

Current bank:

A lot more opportunities in the football today. I'm unsure on wether to try some CS dutching as despite being clearly in profit since I've started, scalping has been working very well and doesn't require a lot of pre-match analysis. There are some good opportunities for some dutching action in the Asian games as usual, so I  will decide later. I was going to mention N. Korea - Japan but sadly it had just started!! Maybe I'll start the day with some scalping here then, just in time for HT...

Edit: Apparently all monkeys are still sleeping at this time so N. Korea - Japan hasn't gone in play... Ah well, free morning!

Days 8 & 9

Plenty of stuff to do this weekend so not enough time to update the blog yesterday.

Here's Saturday's results:

Not a lot of action on Saturday as you can see. Two obvious mistakes though: backing my team to win despite knowing we were missing a few important players and it being a cup competition; getting involved with the England - Spain friendly just because everyone else was getting involved too. Still a small profit on the day thanks to the horses.

Sunday however went a lot better. The best day since the start of the blog:

Again only had 10 minutes for the horses, but with plenty of time last night I decided to do some scalping. The only exception was the Huelva - Las Palmas match (I dutched the CS on that one but unfortunately didn't go well). As you can see the scalping went good. The Brazilian matches have always been a gold mine for me personally when scalping. There isn't a lot of liquidity, which means that there are plenty of gaps to be taken advantage of, even at half time; but at the same time, the liquidity is just enough to keep the prices moving and not leave you with your position open for too long.

Today I will probably have some time in the afternoon, so I'll probably scalp the horses again. As for the football yet another poor day, with only the U21 qualifiers looking interesting.

Here's the bank at the end of day 9:

Day 7

Green in both the horses and the football yesterday:

Started the day on the horses with a relatively significant loss that could have affected my confidence, so I was proud to keep my cool - clawing it back after only a few races.

Onto the football: I am happy with my predictions from yesterday: the N. Korea and Portugal scorelines came in, as well as a simple backing of Ireland. 

Only the Ireland correct score let me down - I guess no one expected Estonia to collapse so spectacularly. Still I only have myself to blame for that one. I could have traded out for around 100% ROI when Ireland were still 1-0 up in the second half but decided to let it run as I had 0-2 and 1-1 covered. However, I should have just taken the profit as Estonia were one man down. That wasn't my worst decision though! The worst decision was when Ireland took a 0-2 lead and, with the 1-2 covered but not the 0-3 I let it run. I wasn't intending to let it run until the end, but with my potential ROI coming down to around 20% from 100% before the goal, I got greedy and wanted to wait for a bigger profit again. Needless to say Ireland made it 0-3 shortly after and there wasn't much I could do at that point.

At this point I was happy with how the day had gone though, but still had a look at the South American games. I couldn't believe the odds on the over 2.5 for these matches. As with the Ireland odds earlier, very very generous. The Uruguay game had odds of around 2 - both teams have been scoring for fun, past H2H with goals, Chile missing half of their key players last night... No brainer! In the other 2 games the over 2.5 wasn't such a no brainer, but again looking at past H2H I though they might be worth a punt, especially when I checked the prices and they were at around 2.4 (!) for both games. Paid off in the end, with only Colombia letting me down - still it was close at 1-1, so I think these 3 were all good value bets.

Don't have any plans for today in regards to trading - I've got family over from Portugal visiting, so probably won't trade more than a few horse races if I find the time and space to concentrate. I'll also take a look at the FA Cup games in-play I guess. You only need a few minutes to scalp at half time!

Current bank:

The target I set for November (doubling the starting bank) has almost been reached. 56 cents away now! I could probably have been more ambitious, maybe I will reassess my target for the month in a couple of days.

Day 6

Another productive day yesterday: mostly on the horses again, but the football was also green, thanks to some CS trading in the Turkey U21 - Italy U21 match.

Today the football looks a bit more promising: I will be looking to dutch some CS in the Uzbekistan - N. Korea and in the Bosnia - Portugal matches. For the Uzbekistan - N. Korea match the stats indicate a low scoring game: The last two meetings between the teams only saw one goal in total, and in this qualifying round all of N.Korea's games have been under 1.5. For Uzbekistan, their last 3 matches ended under 2.5.

The Bosnia - Portugal game is a bit more complex. Firstly, because Portugal are involved and they say you shouldn't get involved in matches where the team you're supporting plays. Also, Portugal seem to be unpredictable at the moment. But I just can't ignore the facts: last time these two teams played each other both games finished under 1.5 goals. Portugal tend to play better when the going gets tough, and their defence is very solid against the better sides. I will probably be dutching 0-1, 1-1, 1-2 and 0-2 on this one, scalping 0-0 at the start and possibly 1-0 if Bosnia take the lead.

One more game that looks interesting is Estonia - Ireland. Estonia have been the surprise package of the competition so far, but I think that Ireland won't blow it in the playoffs this time. With Trap at the helm I expect Ireland to be tight at the back once more and keep a clean sheet. I am undecided on wether simply backing Ireland to win and looking to trade out during the match (the odds are generous - 2.4 at the moment), or dutching a few CS around the 0-1 scoreline (pretty much the same ones as in the Portugal match).

Current bank: