New blog!

Right here:

http://jackofallbetfairtrades.blogspot.com/

The end and new beginning

I've started trading Betfair in January and started this blog soon after. I've learned a hell of a lot in that time and the more I learn the more I know nothing yet.

The way I've setup this blog with the name, the targets and the way I share my results have more and more started to feel like a ball and chain.

I'd like to continue in a different blog with a different name and share my adventures in a different format. Less P&L's and working towards targets and more on what I'm learning and how I think. I'm planning to trade a lot of different sports the coming year and become a jack of all trades. Guess it's going to be an expensive year for me :-)

I'm on holiday now and will come up with a new name once I get back. I'll post the link here as soon as it's setup. Hopefully some of you have been interested enough in my rants to follow me there!

Wall of text again

My apologies for the wall of text below but somehow Blogger is not in a good mood.

I made the original post with alinea's and when I saw they didn't make it to the message I edited to post to put them back again. But strangely enough all the spaces between alinea's have disappeared again and probably make it quite hard to read.

Hopefully it's worth it!

Wimbledon starts for me tomorrow

Not my best month!

Can't hide behind not having enough time. The time I did have I spent on making some bad decisions.

On the other hand I've been learning a lot again and as you can see have gotten my feet wet on a number of different sports.

Wimbledon has got me excited and I'm stoked about trying out some ideas I have about tennis trading. My last bet on tennis got me in red for over $33,- (ouch!) so the strategies certainly need some work but I'll be using much smaller stakes.

Here's a post I did on www.racingtraders.com/forum concerning my tennis activities up till now. I think it pretty much sums it up and could be of interest to people reading this blog:

I find tennis tricky in the way that it's hard to get out cheap if things go wrong.

The ticks move so much that it always hurts.On the other hand if you get it right the profit is also big.

I'm not succesfull at tennis yet so I can only tell you where I cock up.I've been trying to learn some extra strategies besides the TS one.

Seeing as the TS opportunities are not many and with the volatility in odds going on I just have to get in.

My lessons so far:Don't get greedy. I've managed to cock up a number of nice green screens just by getting in that one last bet in a situation where deep down I know I'm starting to move from being a trader to being a gambler.

Example in two sets for the win match:5-4 in sets I lay the server. If he holds his serve I can get out for about the same price, if he gets broken it's bingo. Worked well up till now. There is some timing involved as you want to get in at the price it'll end up if he HOLDS his serve. I use the Betfair graph for that.Then there's the tie break and I take a position. This is silly! It's a pure gamble. If he wins the tie break it's halleluja, if he loses I'm screwed. They are not even for nothing up till then! This has cost me.

But then I do the dumbest thing, I put in another stake because I want to make up for the tick loss. So I double my liability, get out of my comfort zone and the game has to turn (such a good idea, betting AGAINST the flow of the game..) for me to get even or maybe a bit of green. Pure n00b move!I should've taken the red on the chin and decide on wether to get in again or not based on the information at hand and not let myself be crippled by the old bet still being in there and feeling I have to compensate for that.

What I'm working on is finding more situations where there's a big upside and little downside. I suppose these are to be found more in the first half of the match then in the last half and if the green screen is there with a decent amount I should quit while I'm ahead. Also I have to teach myself to vary my stakes depending on the risk/reward ratio of the situation. Good example would be to use max stake in a TS situation as it's a proven strategy and use minimal stake in my experiments. Somehow I get caught up in this urge to maximise profits and I forget that by experimenting with max stakes I also maximise my losses and they are to be expected when starting a new discipline.Hopefully someone will learn something from the mistakes described above and I hope to be able to post some things you should do soon rather then what you shouldn't.

I've linked the thread discussing the TS strategy in an earlier post. So if you wonder what that's all about you can find it. If you're starting out trading tennis I'd say it's the best place to start!

So let's hope Wimbledon will be the start of a profitable tennis trading carreer. I am prepared to pay learning money though to try out several tactics and suss out where the money is and where I have to stear clear.

Where does the time go?

June is just whizzing by and I've had/made little to no time for trading.

But with the start of Wimbledon I'm going to get stuck in again. I'll be using the TradeShark manouvre as described in an earlier post with full stakes but will also try to make the most of all sorts of movement with smaller stakes. The TradeShark technique is great but the opportunities for it aren't always there and the volatility in a match is so high that more money is to be made there.

I think the main thing is to know when to back off. I got in trouble one match when I started betting the first tie break in a 2 set match. And as soon as I popped the bet in I realised I had more to lose then to win in that situation and that if it went bad I'd have to be extremely lucky to get it back again. Extremely lucky I was as it went south but I could get out end of the match. But it definitely wasn't skill I was displaying there.

Up till then I had been doing pretty well betting the games but all my profit went down the drain and all because of Mr Greed.

Football is scaring me a bit. Somehow I don't have a clear image how to trade it yet although more then enough info is available on the forums. I probably just have to get stuck in and run with it from there. Small stakes is the key.

My interest in horses is fading a bit becuase of all these sports that I can watch and actively trade whilst being ingame. We'll have to see if I come back to it again, it is without a doubt the best sport out there to bet on if money is your sole motivation, but seeing as this is a hobby to me I'd rather dedicate the little time I have to trading stuff that amuses me more.

No P&L this time, just look at the one below it'll be quite similar to that one as I've been really inactive.

P&L May and some tennis

Here's my P&L for May:



Not entirely what I was hoping for at the start of the month but considering the very limited time I've had not a bad result.

I haven't had any time at all for US horse racing in June as my business partner is on holiday and I'm working 7 days a week and having to work to closing time in the bar every night. Seeing as I'm not in a position to let my life revolve around my sportsbetting (yet! :-)) I'll have to let my sportsbetting revolve around my life. So expect me to delve in a number of different sports coming time trying to make sure that I can make some cash whenever I'm free.

Here is june up till now:



I got a quick bet in at baseball and darts just to get a feel for it. I believe they both can be scalped. My subscription to the extra cable sportspackage is going to earn itself back easily I hope :-) A whole lot of new sports opening up to me.

The loss on horse racing is me coming home tired. Rushing to get in on the last race of the evening, not finding a situation I normally enter the market on and then force myself to "see" an opportunity elsewhere. With a $ 17,80 red as result. Serves me right. Good thing is that it made me more determined to lesson my dependency profit wise on the US horses and broaden my horizon.

My tennis strategy is really easy to learn and apply and wasn't thought up by me. This excellent beginners tactic was gallently provided to us by TradeShark on the racingtraders.com forum and seeing as I believe that credit should be given where credit is due here's the thread:

http://www.racingtraders.com/forum/showthread.php?t=2282

Excellent starting point!

I made $ 7,77 after comission on the women's final today using a $30,- stake. That's a whopping 25,9% return on stake! It's the first match I had the time to sit down, watch and bet on from beginning to end. The rest of the tennis profit from June and May has been made by quickly trying to get some bets in between running to work, walking the dog, having breakfast, etc etc etc. I'll be sure to be ready to rock during Wimbledon. If this strategy keeps as consistent as it has been up till now I'll up the stake also to the level reflecting the state of my totall bankroll.

I've noticed that a LOAD of players on the Wimbledon men's winner market are available to back at 1000 on Betfair. I wish my bankroll could sustain a little gamble backing them all as quite a few of them are bound to play each other and make it into the second round. If a couple then also play each other I'd say there's value to be found. But seeing as it's a theory and I'd have to devote nearly all my bankroll to proving it I've only backed 5 of them. Of which 2 are already shortening.

The 5 players I've backed at 1000 are:

Mikhail Youzhny (currently available to lay at 980 and back at 820)
Robert Ginepri
Jurgen Melzer
Igor Andreev (currently available to back at 800)
Rainer Schuettler

Let's see how they do. Max $25,- I can lose on this so no biggie and a nice experiment.

My exit strategy is very dependable on their 1st round opponents and the prices offered closer to the tournament.

Ideally 4 of them would play each other and the 2 of them that make 2nd round will play each other then :-) I should be able to trade out a 3d rounder nicely if he was first available at 1000. Also in the 3d round I'd hedge him over lesser remaining players giving me a higher guaranteed profit.

To give you an idea, Soderling who is in the RG men's final against Federer was available at 1000 too before Rolan Garros started! And was matched for $2200,- ! So someone will be having sweaty palms tomorrow afternoon as he'll stand to lose $2,2 million if Soderling beats Federer.

Tennis Tennis Tennis

This trading on tennis has really opened my eyes to how fun it is betting on sports you like whilst it being in play.

I'm swamped at work so I'm still overdue a good post but I promise that I'll make up for it next week with some tactics I learned you can use on Wimbledon.

I wish I had more time to get stuck in Roland Garos but such is life.

More to follow, just wanted to give a small sign of life!