Sports Trading: the £20 challenge

Thanks for the kind comments.

The peculiar thing is that I neither enjoy it (but it beats sitting in front of the TV - it is intellectually stimulating in that you have to analyse carefully before taking a trade) nor find football that interesting (except when EN-GER-LAND are playing). It may be this attitude that means I haven't done badly.
 
Opening Balance: £129.64

This week has been mildly annoying. I took one hit due to the low liquidity meaning I couldn't get out of a trade quickly enough and one hit due to bad luck so spent three or four days making back my losses. I guess it's the way things are. It's sometimes tricky to judge when the liquidity will dry up during a game where there isn't much liquidity in the first place but once the season starts again, things will be better.

Anyway, since my last report, I've made £54.49 having traded 80 games, comprising 657 bets and 1217 cancelled bets. I'll trade most matches if I see an opportunity and the liquidity is there - international friendlies, Women's world cup, Under 17s, J-league, Bundesliga... When it comes down to it, I just have to keep churning the money out and expect the occasional loss. I've proven that I can do it. Am currently doing £50 bets. And will probably step it up next month.

Note: next week is the last week of the 6 month £20 challenge that was started on PistonHeads.com back in February. I will continue to sports trade, though, as it's something to do when I'm not working, going out, training etc. As I see it, it's free money.

Total P&L: £54.49
Current Balance: £184.13
 
Last edited:
Opening Balance: £184.13

Well, today is the last day of the Pistonheads £20 Challenge and I don't think there are any games I want to trade tonight. It's been a fairly straight-forward week with a couple of scares as the market suspended mid-trade but it was for injuries and such so no impact on my profit.

It's been both an adventure and an intellectual challenge, going from outright betting based on statistics and team research to pure trading, across several markets (match odds, under/over x.5 goals, total goals, to be placed etc) and several sports (horse racing, greyhound racing, tennis and football) as I tried to find one that worked for me. I estimate that I've taken over 8,000 bets in the six months.

Interestingly, it certainly looks like I have got this sports trading lark nailed and it could be a nice source of beer money and maybe a side income. I am trying to figure out ways of increasing profitability - in any given game, I am only taking a handful of ticks (what I consider the obvious ones) and I can see there is plenty more available from the price movement as traders go in and out. However, I know that I can continue to churn it and take my money, which I will do as it's like free money sitting on the table ('scuse the pun).

So, how did I do this week, and more importantly, what did my £20 turn into in the end?

*drum roll*







Total P&L: £56.15
Final Balance: £240.28
 
Hey Shadowninja.
I think that's pretty neat.
So your basically trading the order bnook much like one would when trading a futures contract from the DOM for example?
I find it all quite interesting, but honestly wouldn't know where to start. Do you just need a betfair account and that's it? Or do you also have other software?
Do you plan on explaining the 'trading' process a little more at some point, especially for people like me who really have no experience whatsoever with this type of 'betting'?
Would be quite well receieved i imagine.
All of my 'betting' so far has just been on FX etc. I always looking for other way to risk my money :)
cheers
 
Yes, I'll find a video that shows the kind of thing I do.

I use A Geek's Toy (free) which connects to the Betfair exchange. PM me if you want a free £25 bet as I have a code you can apply with.
 

As you can see, you get DOM with the odds and these odds move due to fundamental and technical reasons ie FA and TA. This is pre-race (horse racing), I think. I prefer to trade football as I already know the structure of the game. I also prefer to trade in-game but sometimes trade pre-kick off and during half time.
 
Thanks, SN.
I was just thinking, it's never occured to me before, but is there a way to 'demo' this type of sports trading, like one would with a simulated account through a spreabet firm for example?
cheers
 
AGT allows this BUT if you do it more than a handful of times, Betfair will invoice you for data and assume you're using it to trade with a rival company.
 
looking good. Nice and consistent gains.
I'd quite like to learn how to do that though sports trading. Could you expand on your methodology at all?
Im Sticking with trying to learn futures at the moment though - but maybe something to look into in the future.

cheers
 
Thanks. It's just the same - identify a trend, jump on it, cut losses/scratch trades.
 
firionicable said:
Hi there. This offer seems to be interesting. How can I start with it? By the way, I can't reply to your message. Don't know why..
Click to expand...

Not sure why. When you sign up to Betfair, quote "WYEPD3DNH" and you'll get the £25 bet.

Good luck!
 
A thread bump for those looking for opportunities over the weekend... and because it's charity fundraiser time again.

The Geek is running another fundraiser for BBC Children in Need. Some great prizes up for grabs, so well worth checking out.

For those of you unfamiliar with Geeks Toy, it's completely free software for betting or trading on Betfair.

Don't be fooled by the price though, as it's as good as (if not better than) other trading software that you'd have to pay a subscription for! The recently released 1.2 Beta 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.

Geeks Toy - Probably the best Betfair trading software in the world!




Oh, at some point before the end of the year, I'll put up another video going into more detail about trading but for the moment, check out this video someone's kindly posted on YouTube.

Footy Inplay.avi - YouTube

(I'll be giving a commentary on that to explain how traders take advantage of the price movements.)
 
Oh, boy. I'm a gnat's whisker from the big £1000. Not bad considering it's degenerate gambling. ;)
 
Just an update:

I've got fed up of trading in-game for a tick whilst trying to avoid taking a big loss, then taking a hit and spending a whole week or more trying to earn it back while avoiding taking another loss so I decided to just stick to half time trading. I had done well with that in-game system and had dramatically grown my account (all relative) so have a very nice pot to play with but the stress was not enjoyable at all. With my HT trading, the growth is slower but more consistent with no crazy-arsed drops or rises due to "good" or "bad" goals and red cards. And dare I say it, it's almost enjoyable. It feels a bit like a game of chess.

I suppose I could have carried on with that in-game system via a bot to remove the stress/anxiety as I've proven to myself that it is a winner but I don't have the technical ability.

I'm also working on another system that risks lots of ticks but aims for lots of ticks; only risking £1 a trade but it has so far proven to be limited in its downside. :) The snag is that I'm looking for a very specific set of events that may only occur two or three times a week. Still, there's always good liquidity so if I'm satisfied that I have something that works, I could risk a few hundred pounds (or even thousands on the big games as putting £5k on a Premiership game ladder is a drop in the ocean) and make a few hundred per game with the overall expectation of more winners than losers. At the moment, I don't have the confidence with it; I could have made a nice bit of profit with the Birmingham game a couple of nights ago as I was tempted to go in, with an 8:1 reward to risk ratio as the game ticked a lot of boxes in my checklist but I'm still not convinced by my system. My "Too Good To Be True" alarm is honking still. Time will tell.

For the mathmos amongst us, the new system appears to have a high probability (80%-90%; only monitored the outcome of about 30 trades so far hence not 100% convinced) of being right with on average a 1:1 R/R (being modest as I suspect it could be about 3:1 reward/risk with some basic adjusting).
 
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