Ongoing "Trader of the week" results - Week 3 (week ending 19/07/09)

[munk]

Please post all entries for this week's trader of the week prize in this thread. Entries for the week ending Sunday 19/07/09 must be posted here no later than Tuesday 21/07/09. The winner will be announced on Wednesday 22/07/09.

NOTE
All prize winning entries must be for trades placed entirely on your Betfair Trading account using BetTrader and must be in the spirit of the challenge.

Winners will be chosen on merit of their explanation that they give as to how they generated the profit, what strategy they used, how they found the experience, whether they'd do it again, if they'd change the strategy in future, etc etc etc NOT just on the basis of who made the biggest profit.

Please ensure you 'green up' on the market you have traded so that you make the same profit no matter who wins (click the green H button in BetTrader to hedge it before the market closes) - all entries that are not hedged will be calculated to work out the hedged profit/loss at the average prices for the purpose of winning prizes.

Trade of the Week Prize Entry Submissions
Please provide as much detail as you can when submitting your prize winning entries. The profit you made on the trading session is important, but not as important as the details as to how you managed to generate the profit. Anyone who just posts 'I made £xx' with no explanation stands exactly zero chance of winning any prizes! Please provide as much detail as possible about the strategy you used to generate the profit - the more interest/debate you generate the higher your chance of winning prizes.

With your prize submission please include a screenshot of the Betfair profit & loss page for the market you made your trades on:

1. In BetTrader, click Betfair > My Account.
2. Click 'Betting Profit & Loss'.
3. On the P&L page, find the market that you made your profit on (to see all your entries click on 'last 30 days' in the 'Period' drop down list and click 'Get P & L' and from there you should find the market).
4. Take a screenshot of the P&L for the market you netted your prize winning trades on - IMPORTANT - please make sure you have the 'average odds' turned on - this is the default anyway so it should be fine. You can also take a screenshot of the p&l page with the average odds turned off, although if there are more than 20 trades you won't see them all on one page so this isn't so important as the average odds screenshot. I would recommend Gadwin PrintScreen if you're after dedicated screenshot software.
5. Upload the screenshot into your post reply (see here for more information on uploading screenshots to the forum).

Current highest profit and loss for a single market in the week ending Sunday 19/07/09:

1. wndllll - £57 (reported profit is £10.6, actual hedged profit however would have been £57!) DOES NOT COUNT, MARKET SETTLED ON MONDAY, SUBMIT THIS FOR NEXT WEEK!!!
2. foofi22 - £23.75 (16/07)
3. wndllll - £19.75 (reported profit is £28.3, hedged profit would have been ~£19/20 net)
4. Andy - £16.02 (16/07)
5. Grandthrax - £2.22 (note, only using £3 stakes though!) (17/07)

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Official Week 3 Results
Congratulations to foofi22 who won this week with his live trading on the over/under market for the europa qualifiers, hedged profit of £23.75 - he gets the much coveted TGT mug! Wndllll had another good week with a solid £20 profit (calculated hedged profit) - he will receive a one month topup sub on the BetTrader ladder. I'm just awaiting confirmation of Andy's trades who will receive £10 for his unconfirmed £16 profit.

I will contact all of you by email now to confirm everything.

NOTE:
Andy has kindly donated his £10 winnings back into the pot, so Grandthrax will now receive that £10 for his brilliant non-live trading - one of the few that seems to be having fairly consistent results trading the horses before the off. Well done, will contact you now.

[Andy]

+£16.02 from an In Play Soccer match last night is my best so far this week.

[munk]

I'm trading on the cricket this week for the trade of the week comp.

Day 4 of the cricket and England have a good lead 425 vs Aus only 215.

England take up the innings with the task of putting on as many runs as possible to extend their lead and knock Australia out cheaply to take the match.

With this scenario Australia were quite long at around 15 or so as they went in to bowl against England in their 2nd innings. I backed Australia at 12 just after England's first wicket had gone looking for a quick wicket as Australia got on a roll.

This happened as well, Australia took another quick wicket and the price fell from 12 to 9 very quickly - nice £18.75 profit. As it goes I layed too quickly, I layed £50@9 when I should really have waited a few seconds as the dust settled because the price actually came right down to 8, could have had £25 profit right there.

I kept with this strategy, backing £50@8-10 and laying £50 for a few ticks profit each time. Unfortunately Australia seemed to ease off a little bit and the price started to go out... so I had a go with the stop loss tool, setting it up so that when the LTP went to 9, the stop loss would kick in and auto-queue me a lay bet of £50@9. This worked perfectly so stopped the loss (actually 'limited' my profit rather) to £15 profit. Nice.

Ongoing, still debating whether to carry on with this strategy right now because Australia really seem to be coming off the gas right now and England are extending their lead right now... KP hasn't given his wicket away either!!!

It's quite difficult actually trading on longer odds because if you feel the price going out, you can't lay £50@9 if your float is only £76!!! Only alternative is to back england and wait until their price falls... but their price isn't moving as quickly/erratically as Australia's right now... doesn't seem to have moved from 1.56/1.57 at all England's price all through their 2nd innings despite the few wickets that have fallen.

UPDATE 1615:
Had a bit of a cheeky little bargain just now. Backed Aus £50@12 just as England seemed to be getting on top of the Aus bowling. There was a caught out decision that went to the 3rd umpire and somehow I managed to get my cheeky queued lay bet £50@9.6 matched ... finally the decision was not out as well hehe

So far then £26.99 hedged profit on this market, I think I will leave it at that now and not tempt fate! Will add my Betfair P&L when the market settles tomorrow.

[Grandthrax]

Throughout this competion I have been getting increasingly jelous of everyone's big wins. But before starting I said I would master horse race trading before moving on to other markets. Anyway here is how i've been doing:

I have been trying to trade on the three favourites simultaneously in about 15 minutes before the race starts. I watch all three and try and dertermine how they are effecting each other, ie one goes up another goes down, and when I get 2 or more signals I go in. The hardest thing I have found is getting out. It is easy to get out when you are in profit but i still have the mental barrier which doesn't like exiting with a loss. I am trying to condition myself to enjoy taking small losses (with the logic that it means i didn't take a big loss) and have set myself a few rules: If I have an open position and there is one positive signal then I try and exit 1 tick out. If there are more than one positive signals I wait and see what happens. If there are no or negative signals then I exit at the current price. I also stop trading around the 4 minutes mark, one reason so i have no temptation to take it in-play and secondly I am not fast enough to keep track of my positions and notice signals on one horse let alone three when the market is gets volatile towards the off. My motto is don't be greedy.

I started off just using £2 bets and a couple of days ago promoted myself to £3. Occasionally I still see the red mist decend (a few times loosing more than 5 pounds on a race when i let it go in play) but the losses i occur from that are outweighed by the profits i'm making from following my rules. The race I'm most proud of was the 14:00 at Newbury yesterday in which I made £2.22 after commision from £3 stakes. I still think I was quite lucky there in that my decisions all turned out right. The one in which i think i traded the best was the 14:15 on Tuesday in which I made 40p profit after commision trading with £2 stakes.

I have attached the screen shots.

I know they are nowhere near Andy's profit but I thought I'd post them anyway as i'm quite proud of myself.

[munk]

Well I think you will be in with a chance for giving a great explanation of your strategy Grandthrax. Let's see what everyone else comes up with.

[Grandthrax]

Well I think you will be in with a chance for giving a great explanation of your strategy Grandthrax. Let's see what everyone else comes up with.

Cheers Munk, although I won't hold my breath . Anyway here is my p&l for today as I think it is a better representation of how i'm doing than just 2 races.

[munk]

Cheers Munk, although I won't hold my breath . Anyway here is my p&l for today as I think it is a better representation of how i'm doing than just 2 races.

So what stakes are you using there then, £2? If so then that's a fantastic result... I'd be well chuffed with a 100% return on investment for a day's trading!

PS also are you using the ladder and are you finding it useful?

[Grandthrax]

So what stakes are you using there then, £2? If so then that's a fantastic result... I'd be well chuffed with a 100% return on investment for a day's trading!

PS also are you using the ladder and are you finding it useful?

That's using £3 stakes at the moment (although i might move up to 4 today!) so i think that's pretty good. But i we be really crank up the stakes until I can cut down on the number of stupid things i do. For instance the race yesterday in which i got -0.28p (15:45) in should have been my best result, i was 40 something p greened but then a trade went wrong and i didn't get out as quickly as i should.

The ladder interface has been really good, in fact vital. Even with the free interface it wouldn't be fast enough to get on some of the most profitable trades (especially with the one click trading on the ladder). Also on the free interface it is a lot harder to tell what is happening (well personally I find visualizing it a lot harder). Another thing i like such is the way you can centre all three ladders which makes it easy to tell when on of the selections is drifting/steaming.

There are a couple of extra functions i would like such as being able to place a 'green' exit point. So instead of having to hedge afterward it hedges as you trade. Also if you only get partially taken on your entry there is a handy button which changes your stake to match what was taken. The only problem with that is that i normally hedge after every trade, and using that button undoes all the previous hedgeing. I'd like to be able to edit that button to simply be the amount of money that was last taken.

[Cloverleaves]

Time to report back on activities during the week. Wasn’t sure whether to put in general chat or trader of week, but plumped for latter (as is discussing weekly activities), however, I’m sure some of my activities will be considered outside the scope of this challenge, and I certainly don’t expect to be in line for any prizes.

I am very envious of other people’s large wins, as my current balance is still only £47.42 – and that’s despite quite a lot of hours at my computer. However, I am still not down and out, so that’s got to be good.

I have now moved my current activities mainly to tennis, as I simply could not get to grips with the horse racing, try as I might. Over the past few weeks I have traded in 98 separate horse races (quite active trading at that!) and managed a grand total of a £4.19 loss. I think we can agree this is not my field!

In addition I managed to lose £4.95 on Tiger Woods (may fleas forever nest in his armpits). The irritating bit is I looked at the odds the morning the tournament started, and thought they seemed too low and were worth a lay bet. But decided to wait until later in the morning (story of my life), couldn’t get to the computer, and then got on to find Tiger at 6.4. So I thought to myself (should have known better by now!) “well, maybe that’s a value back bet after all – it is nearly doubled since this morning. I’ll stick a fiver on to back him.” Then he sort of sat there, odds just a little bit higher than 6.4, and I thought “I’ll wait till after the cut, then I’ll make a decision…..”. Well, we all know what happened then! The weird bit was that AFTER he was out of the cut, I still managed to get a 5p lay bet in at odds of 700(!!!), so I did at least green up for a loss of £4.95 all round – Munk, you would be proud of me!

I also currently have a £10 lay on England for the Ashes, placed yesterday at 1.7 (managed to get that in just before the odds dropped to about 1.56 – clever, huh?). My thinking here is that these are quite low odds for a side who have been known for snatching defeat from the jaws of victory (sorry if there are any cricket fans reading this), and when there are still – maybe – a couple of days to go. I have a hedging back bet currently placed and waiting at 3.7, in the hopes that we may get closer in to a draw, and the odds will start shooting around like last time. If that goes today, that will be great. If not, I’ll rethink this evening. This strategy is with the sole intent of getting back my Tiger Woods fiver! I’ll keep an eye, and if England’s odds get seriously low, I’ll just bail out, but for once I’d like to be the one snatching victory from the jaws of the (Tiger) defeat. This is probably technically trading (taking a risky position, waiting, closing out later…) but I have to say I don’t think it’s in the spirit of the challenge really. It’s just chasing my losses. (Not that I’ll be saying that tomorrow when I’ve managed to get a back in at 850.00!)

Now on to the tennis.

I did a bit of dabbling at Wimbledon and a couple of matches afterwards, with mixed results, but decided to take a serious look this week after I realised the horses just weren’t for me. So this week I traded on 12 different markets, and made a net profit of £5.07 so far (this doesn’t include my Tiger loss, or my – all-too-probable, darn it! – Ashes loss). So not fantastic, but a profit is a profit, particularly if you have my history of unerringly picking the wrong bet!

I have been using several different strategies, depending on the time of the week. At the beginning of the week there are a lot of very unequal matches, most of which are going to be won by the favourite. As the week goes on, the players who survive have all shown that they are playing well and have a better chance of beating the favourite, and of pulling back from what looks like a guaranteed loss.

So at the beginning of the week there are tons of matches, often very unequal. I keep an eye on all of them on Betfair Live Tennis – which shows which matches are in play, and roughly what the current score is. When I see a match coming to the end, and it’s fairly clear from the score/odds who the inevitable winner is, then I “drop in” on that match, back the favourite at maybe 1.06, and green up at say 1.02 (mostly all my tennis bets at the moment are at £10). It’s only a few ticks, but IMO pretty safe money. I don’t bet against big-time favourites, even if they’re almost two sets down (they are the ones most likely to pull back from an almost inevitable loss). I don’t bet on matches which have gone to a third set, as they can turn too quickly. I only bet on matches which are almost certainly already won, and will be won in two sets. Worst case scenario there (barring a broken ankle by your favourite) is that the loser fights back and the match goes to a third set, in which case you have plenty of time to decide on your exit strategy. Sometimes, because you’re betting so close to the end of the match, your lay doesn’t get taken, and the odds go from, say, 1.05 to Suspended. Which, although not in the spirit of this challenge(!), is no bad thing. The nice thing about this part of the week is that it is quite quick. You scan, you drop in, you back and lay, and you leave. Job done (well, most of the time!).

It would obviously be possible to stick some money on any of the big favourites at this stage of the week and simply wait for them to run away with the match, and then green up. I don’t like to do that because in practically every tournament some seed or other seems to get dumped in the first or second round, and I don’t want my money on that one!

Later on in the week, it seems to me much more likely that even if someone is almost two sets down, they may quite likely fight back and get to a third set. Even then, there is a reasonable chance they may still lose two sets to one, but in the meantime the odds have moved a hell of a lot, and you’re stuck with the difficult decision of whether to bail out with a moderate loss, or hang in there, and risk losing a lot more, but maybe winning. So my policy here has been to watch the match if possible (Betfair Live Video) or at least get a decent in-running Live Score from the ATP / WTA site, and bet on the match as it plays out.

I always keep my bets on the current favourite, as there is more money available to me to take, and the gap between the odds is usually quite narrow. So if I want to bet on the non-favourite, I will lay the favourite instead. Yes, the odds on the non-favourite shoot around A LOT, so you can make some very substantial gains if things go your way, but if they don’t you can also find it quite hard to get out of your position, and since BetTrader can only hedge using the player you’ve backed/layed, it can be hard and expensive trying to hedge a bet on a non-favourite. If during a match, one player moves from being the favourite to the non-favourite, I will switch the player I’m betting on.

Here are some of the tactics I’ve been using:

(1) If one of the players plays really badly to start with (say the odds double within a few games) I will often back him or her at that stage. These are all very competent players by this stage in the tournament, and often stage a comeback. Then I lay them when the odds have dropped again.
(2) Similarly, if a favourite with starting odds of, say 1.2 or below, does very well in the first set, I often lay them at that stage. Yesterday, for example, Robin Soderling came down to lay odds of 1.03 and 1.04 early. Given he was playing a semi-final, it was pretty likely that he wouldn’t be that low all the way through the match. And if he did carry on winning anyway, I wasn’t really risking a lot at those lay odds. Because I’d already laid him at 1.12 before the match (a mistake – I should have waited to see how the match was going first), and because his opponent didn’t really fight back until quite far into the second set, I only greened up for 9p each way, but by that stage I was grateful for a profit rather than the loss I was beginning to expect.
(3) If bet goes against me, my tendency, rather than to immediately hedge for a loss, is to let it ride for the time being, and move on to another type of bet. For example if the player I have backed is now being whooped hollow, I try to make up some ticks in play. Often the odds will come back again. If not, my loss is somewhat covered by the little profits I’ve been making in the meantime. I imagine in reality it doesn’t make a lot of difference from hedging the loss immediately, since at some time you have to pick up any loss anyway, but psychologically I find it more helpful: I’m making profits, rather than just reducing my losses.
(4) When a player is serving, their odds often drop a tick or two by end of game, assuming they hold serve. If a player is playing well, I back before his game, and lay a tick or two lower during the game. Obviously the big problem here is if he/she is broken, when the odds move a lot against them. So in general I’d only do it when the player is looking good (video helps a lot here).

I like betting on tennis because I understand the game enough to have some feel for what may be possible, because there is time enough to rectify any nasty little mistakes in judgement() and because the odds move enough to enable a decent profit, but it’s all over within – at most – a couple of hours. So I shall do some more trading today on the available tournaments, and see how it goes next week.

Sorry this has been such a long post. Skip if bored! Best of luck to all, and hope you’re all enjoying it still. Commiserations to all who have bust out/dropped out. The only reason I’m not there with you is because I’m just a wimp who doesn’t like to risk a lot – and she who doesn’t risk, doesn’t win!

[Procrastinator]

Great post Clover, wish I had that much to report, but a combination of a busy week at work, travelling to a wedding and a lack of sports I'm happy with has meant I have done very little.

Going to end up with a bit of a loss as after floating round here, I saw conversation about woods being value at 6+ and so thought yep, I'll have some of that. This was a mistake as I couldn't actually follow the cricket as I was at work. I looked back later in the day to find he was at 29-1. Decided it must have been bad and closed for an £8. Loss. Wasted some of the green I had built up on this test, but will still make £5. So overall I will have made a loss this weekend.

The profit I did make on the cricket is coming from the same place each time. Day 1, the market imo goes a bit nuts and overreacts to day 1. I didn't go in for too much, but backed aussies at 6.5 and then laid them again at about 3.5 later that day.

At least I now have no extra green on oz so I have been able to cheer on England!