The Sports Trader

Monday 20th November 2006

I have had a very slow day on the racing front, mainly due to too many interruptions but enjoyed watching some very close finishes again. I had no trades on the first @ Ludlow and probably just as well because I did try to get on Secret's Out at low odds just before he fell at the last. Plenty of money was bet on this horse @ 1.02 and 1.01. My first successful trade was to back Backboard in the 13:50 @ Ludlow @ 3.00  then lay back at 2.20 and 1.26 to leave a small profit. In the 14:00 @ Wolverhampton I backed Three Boars and layed Laurolie to net me £30. Apart form a couple of other very small trades that was that on the racing front. So the pressure was on for tonights football.

I backed the unders market in the Hartlepool V Rochdale game as normal @ 1.84 for £500 before the match started and again @ 1.62 for £788, I then gradually layed back in £100 tranches and finally greened up with a lay @ 1.02 with 15 minutes to go to leave a profit of £150 whatever the result. I am having problems writing this tonight as I have got Offside on the TV and it is brilliantly funny. Anyway I finished the day with a profit of £210 which considering the slow start is a good result.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank all the visitors to this Blog which is a week old today. To date I have had nearly 1500 hits  and they come from 15 Countries including America, Australia, New Zealand , Japan, Estonia, and many European Countries. See you all tomorrow.

Sunday 19th November 2006

I had a good day today with only four losing trades which in total only amounted to £27. My first significant gain today was in the 13:10 @ Towcester where I Layed Wee Anthony for £60 @ 3.00, this was a case of fastest finger and computer first as I layed when I saw J W Farrelly unseated. In the very next race, the 13:15 @ Punchestown I backed Blueberry Boy for £112 @ 1.66 just as the second last fence was jumped. He hadn't been jumping that well but appeared to have plenty of stamina left and he duly went on to win by 2+ lengths. In the 13:30 @ Aintree I layed Hakim for £50 @ 4.00 again as he fell at the eighth fence. The best race of the day for me was the 14:45 @ Towcester where I Layed Posh Act four times to the tune of £215 at prices from 1.40 to 2.21, this horse was taking a very keen hold in the rear of the field early on and  when Barry Fenton let the brake off he set sail to lead but very quickly had to be ridden hard to keep going, then started to weaken before falling at the second last fence. I had a few other trades for small amounts in the last few races.

I then turned my attention to the Blackburn V Spurs match, whilst also making the dinner for my kids so instead of my usual style of trading on the unders market I went in heavier than normal and took a quick profit. This netted me £38 on this match, which considering the very little time spent on it, was a good result. Later, after getting the twins to bed at 7:00,  I  did some research on the Deportivo La Coruna V Celta Vigo match and could not see many goals being scored, although I thought the odds on offer at the start of around 1.58 too low, so I waited to nearly half time and backed the unders with 4 minutes left on the clock @ 1.17 then layed back soon after the restart @ 1.14. I then had another go after the Celta goal was scored in the 74th minute. In total this netted me another £31.

We are now exactly a third of the way through the English Premiership season and to date the stats look very interesting with 129 matches played, 63% of all games have ended at under 2.5 goals / match, with an average of only 2.16 goals / match, which is lower than usual. All these facts and more can be accessed via the SoccerSTATS website.

Well to finish I ended with a profit of £520 for the day which makes a total of £1688 for the week. In total my commission payable was less than £30 due to the brilliant  0% commission offered by Betdaq on in-running racing markets.

Saturday 18th November 2006

After such a good day yesterday I suppose I was due a bad one. Things started OK with small backs on Duncliff in the 12:30 @ Ascot, on Halcon Genelardais in the 14:20 @ Haydock and on the superb College Ace in the 14:30 @ Huntingdon. I then started to get things wrong and in the 15:55 @ Haydock I backed Nevertika to see it headed near the line. At this stage I was still just in front and decided to back Mystery Pips in the 17:40 @ Wolverhampton in the final furlong to see it come in an eventual 3rd in a very close finish with the first three all within a short head. I did have a couple more small wins at Wolverhampton to again get me just ahead.

Then the football - I did as normal in that I backed the unders market in the Sevilla / Valencia, although I did expect a few goals in the match. I backed £500 @ 1.65 just at kick off and then set about gradually greening up. I was almost all green when the first goal came so I backed the unders in the re-formed market @ 2.20 and then started laying back. I was just about out and with half time approaching I backed another £320 @ 1.64. The price remained pretty static for an unusually long time as this was a very open match and with Valencia down to 10 men there where lots of chances for goals. The third goal came and left me with a loss of £488. I then entered the under 3.5 goals market and backed the unders for £1000 @ 1.72 with 19 mins left before the final whistle. Within 5 mins I started to lay back and eventually layed  around £500 at 1.42 and the rest to average 1.35, if only I had waited a few more seconds I would probably not have layed that last £500 as there was a serious injury to a player and the game was already in the last 3/4 mins. I managed a profit of £345 on this market to partly offset my loss on the under 2.5 goals market. So I ended a very disappointing day with a loss of £131. I do attribute some of todays bad trading to my frame of mind, which has not been great today because of a couple of personal problems. I find you really have to feel right to do this job properly and that if you have anything to worry about you either do not concentrate properly on the job in hand or worse if you are in the slightest angry about something your judgement and logic can be all wrong.

At the moment Betdaq do not have a under/over market on 4.5 goals as Betfair do. But I have an interesting theory if they did. We all know exactly what to expect the price to do in this unders/overs market, in that the price will gradually keep dropping until it reaches 1.01 within the last 15 -20 mins of the match if no goal is scored. If a goal is scored it will start off higher then drop at a faster rate until the end of the game or another goal is scored. Its all very predictable. So knowing this you can keep going back into the market after every goal as eventually the final whistle will go and you will win. The only possible downside would be if a goal was scored in the last minute of the game and there was not therefore enough time to form a new market.

A great source of statistics on football from all the major European leagues is SoccerSTATS.com they even give predictions as to whether the game should be an under or over 2.5 goals. You can find just about every conceivable stat you could ever want at this site.

Friday 17th November 2006

I had a really good day today and it could have been a lot better if I hadn't made a mistake in the 15:20 @ Ascot where I managed to lay the eventual winner, Harris Bay, to the tune of £523. My day started with me backing Minella Tipperary in the 12:35 @ Exeter for £440 @ 1.25 just inside the final furlong with no fences left to jump and this was only possible because the commentator seemed to think the horse was under pressure from the runner-up, but from what I could see my horse had already won. In the 13:00 @ Ascot I backed King of Angels for £125 @ evens again with the help of the commentary. The best part of my day was the 13:35 @ Ascot where I layed Swing Bill for £700 whilst just in front and going towards the final fence, I only had to sweat for a few seconds as it weakened quickly and eventually finished 4th. In the 14:35 @ Kelso I backed Silver Jack for £182 @ evens and laid off within about 15 seconds at 1.50 to net myself another £90, I could have held out but I thought I had probably already used up all my luck for today so I just greened up. Of course my luck was to run out less than an hour later as detailed earlier on this thread.

I finished the day off in style with 87 mins on the clock of the Cardiff/ QPR match this evening. Immediately after QPR had scored I managed to back QPR to the tune of £1465 @ 1.20 when I thought the true price should have been more like 1.08. I did lay off just over £500 @ 1.1 within seconds and let the rest ride as QPR seemed to be well in control. Have you ever noticed just how slow the clock ticks when you are willing the ref to blow up for the end of the match?

So I have had a great Friday where I ended with a profit of £745 after commission and only had to pay commission on the football due to the 0% commission offer from Betdaq on in-running horse markets.

Thursday 16th November 2006

A decent day today where I have just finished trading on the snooker and ended with a profit for the day of £191. I started well with the 13:10 @ Market Rasen where I backed Junkanoo just as the horse had jumped the final fence at 2.02. In the 13:30 @ Wincanton I got it all wrong and ended up backing Rebel Raider and Femme D'avril and laying the eventual winner Slick. In the 13:50 @ Hereford I backed Brave Villa @ 1.50 and then traded off @ 1.06 to leave a healthy profit. My best result of the day was to back Senorita Rumbalita in the 15::00 @ Wincanton. Later, again @ Wincanton in the 15:30 I backed Tana River for another profit. I consider myself very lucky not to have backed Mantle in the 17:20 @ Wolverhampton, the horse was well clear coming into the straight and was backed at 1.01 for several thousand pound when breaking down lame. I finished off the day with a few trades in the Premier League snooker which netted me around £40. See you all tomorrow.

Wednesday 15th November 2006

Well normal service was resumed today and I ended the day just over my daily target at £201, having said that I am still a little disappointed as I lost over £250 on some very close finishes. It was Red Scally that done for me in the 13:50 @ Hexham  and I layed Trinity Rose in the 2:30 @ Southwell around a mile out when it appeared to be travelling very badly but Greg Fairly somehow managed to  waken up his mount to get it to the front around 3 furlongs out and this coincided with my telephone needing to be answered so I was unable to ltrade out. I made £100 on the Holland/ England match on the unders market. I only saw the second half and started betting the unders at around 1.55 with 55 mins on the clock and got out within 10 minutes at around 1.24, I then went back in after the equalising goal at 1.20 and traded off at 1.04 around 4/5 minutes later. After everything I have said about only trading this is the one market that I am normally happy to bet on. I like to think I specialise on the unders market. I tend to have a bet on unders before the kickoff then gradually trade my way back out in the first 20/30 mins. If I get caught with a goal before I am out, I tend to go back in, as soon as the goal is scored when often prices are artificially high and trade back out. This is the one market where over time you tend to know exactly what the price should be at any given time and score. I will often use this market even if a high scoring match is expected as if you can get say 2.40 before the match, the price will fall very fast and as long as no goals are scored in the first 10 mins you will make a decent return.

Tuesday 14th November 2006

Not a great day, still just plodding along. I had many interruptions starting with helping my son to fit a new battery to his car, which would normally have been straight forward but he has an imported Toyota Celica GT Sport and the battery terminals are half the size of standard ones. Then I had the school run to do for my 3 younger children and Mother-in-law stopped by for a chat and, to top that, tonight was parents night for one of my 6 kids and may I add I am separated so have to look after the kids and do all the cooking and washing up etc. So little time to trade but I did manage to make £92 mainly trading in the 13:40 @ Folkestone where  backed then layed back on Superrollercoaster, then on the 13:50 @ Southwell where I backed Formidable Will to win £40 and later a couple of small trades at Wolverhampton. This has been a slow week for me so far but I know it will get better.

I am a little concerned about the newspaper article at the weekend where it is reported that the Gambling Commission is to look into fairness of the in-running markets. We all know that if you have SIS you do have an advantage but it doesn't stop me and probably thousands of other like minded people from using and still profiting from these markets. We are all warned that transmissions are not always as live as we would expect them to be. Many are attracted to this type of gambling simply because of the instantaneous nature of the market, it is possible to get in and out of the market with a profit or loss within a few seconds. I hope they leave the market alone but if it is changed we will all just have to adapt ourselves to other opportunities within the market place.

See you all tomorrow.

Monday 13th November 2006

Well - in my first post on this Blog I did state the only way from here is down, after a weekend where I made as much as my best month to date, today I started off well by laying Sweet Pickle in the 13:30 @ Southwell for £157 and backing Cesc in the 13:50 @ Lingfield to a £134 profit, along with a few other small wins I was up £320 by 2 o'clock but then I made a mistake in the 14:10 at Leicester and ended up losing most of my gains. However I plodded on and then traded in a small way on the two live football matches tonight and ended the day up just £70, which is not too bad and is around £15 better than it could have been as Betdaq are still charging no commission on in-running horse racing markets.  I must say that I rarely get the urge to chase loses now as I know that over the next day or two I will make all my loses back and more.

How I Trade Horse Racing

One thing this Blog is not is a tipping blog. As a trader on horse races I rarely ever take a view on the race before it has started. I used to look at form and try to come to an opinion on the likely outcome of the race, but decided that on many occasions horses just did not run true to form and, of course, it is not surprising due to the way the handicap system works. You can read into that what you will. There are many pundits and TV personalities with far greater knowledge than me on the subject of form and they still get it wrong more often than not! When I started out as a part-timer 6 or 7 years ago I used to try to select favourites to lay but found I could not even do this.

I now just watch races and I suppose have developed the skill of race reading. I will often bet in-running on the favourite and then lay off shortly afterwards to make a margin early on in the race, but as the race gets into the last few furlongs my race reading skills takeover and I look for both horses that look likely to win and others that look likely to lose. It sounds simple but that is all I do. There are no magic formula's and no inside information I just trust my eyes to pick out those tiny signs that a horse is either travelling well or not. I do have my favourite jockeys and that does help to form my opinion in races.

I know that some readers will call me for after timing when I tell you how I have done each day. All I can say is that I will always tell the truth and how can I tell you before a race what is going to win or lose when I don't have a clue until the race is being run.

My IT set up

In April 2006 I decided to invest in a super computer (well fast anyway). After many days of research on the subject I bought an AMD Athlon 64 X" Dual core 4800+ processor form America, which at the time was not available in the UK and was one of the fastest processors on the market, it cost me about £420. I went for AMD for many reasons but the main ones being that AMD machines are less prone to attacks by viruses and they were proven to be faster than Intel. I then looked around for a good quality motherboard and decided on an Asus A8N-SLI Deluxe motherboard and also an Asus eXtreme N6600GT graphics card. I took all this to a friend of mine that happens to be a brilliant computer technician and he built the computer for me. I also bought a pair of HP vs19x flat screen monitors. This whole set up cost about £1200 and is a whole lot better than you could buy off the shelf. I have the ability to have both monitors showing different web pages or the same web page spread across both monitors. It is pretty impressive when you see it all in the flesh.

I have an 8MB Bulldog Internet connection which normally connects at around 6.4mb and an impressive 580kpbs upload speed, which I believe to be one of the fastest available. I have few problems with the connection and only then after a long day of trading it occasionally disconnects and then reconnects at a slightly slower speed.

The other vital component is my Toshiba 23WL56G LCD TV. Its not the biggest but it sits on a shelf at the back of my desk and is only about 3/4 feet away so it is plenty big enough.

I have sky plus and subscribe to the RUK/Setanta package and, of course, get ATR. I know the one thing that I don't have that would still make a big difference is SIS. I have recently been trawling around my home town of Glasgow looking for an independent bookie that either has a spare room or with an empty flat adjacent or above where I could link in to his SIS and possibly start an exchange shop, or just use the SIS myself.