After 8 months of trading and betting on Betfair I have learned quite a lot, but I'm still far from being a successful trader. In the first couple of months I was laying horses and greyhounds with mixed results, then moved onto trading horses, which is why I joined Betfair to start with. In my first couple of months trading, things were going well, I was over £500 up during August and September last year. I think it went too well though, it probably gave me too much confidence and I started losing it. I would often leave a bet to go in play instead of take a small loss and most of the time lose my full stake (£20).
Another thing I got into was football, which gave big rewards to start with and seemed to be going well, but like horse racing I soon started losing money there too.
Another thing I got into was football, which gave big rewards to start with and seemed to be going well, but like horse racing I soon started losing money there too.
When my total loss got over £500 I decided I really need to sort myself out, I couldn't keep blowing my bank. I have tried to be more careful since and improved things slightly. I'm now down by around £400 but still I'm winning and losing too much every day. I know for a bank of my size (currently around £150) I should only be staking 2-4% on each trade, but my stakes are always either £20 or £40 on horses. On football I often risked larger amounts, sometime up to £100 liability on one game, I've got this down to around £40 now, but still this is too much. I've had days where I've made over £100 and days where I've lost over £100 (normally the day after I made it!) which clearly is far too much.
My aim is to become more disciplined, reduce my liability in any one football match to around £20. I don't plan to reduce my horse racing stakes though, I tend to have more winning trades than losing trades on horse racing. One of my common mistakes on horse racing is backing big outsiders and seeing them go to 1000, then not being able to lay, losing my whole stake. I would like to avoid these large odds, but they have in the past paid off, sometimes I can 'green up' for £30-£50 profit. I'm sure in total though the amount I've lost when they go to 1000 will be more than I've made, so I will try to avoid these. Also when I do have a couple of good days in a row, it seems to affect me and I go on a losing run.
Back in August when I was doing well I had a 10 day winning streak, averaging around £20 profit per day. This is really what I would like to get back to, but it's hard working full time and only having racing on weekends, apart from the odd couple of races on weekday evening. The lack of racing during winter is partly to blame for my downfall I feel, it has driven me to bet on more football, often teams I've never heard of just in the hope of returning a profit for the day.
Hopefully as the full evening cards return I can become more consistent and focused on horse racing, and get myself back into profit, that would be nice.
Hopefully as the full evening cards return I can become more consistent and focused on horse racing, and get myself back into profit, that would be nice.
Anyway I think I'll stop there, this is getting a bit long.
I'll post todays results soon, looking like a loss!
Hi, what kind of trading are you doing on football? I assume you're trading in play? Are you laying the draw, unders/overs etc? I'm doing some football trading myself and getting better at it but it can be very risky if you let your liabilities get too large... And it's very important to trade out to minimise losses if things look to be not going your way.. good luck
ReplyDeleteHi,
ReplyDeleteYes mostly in play markets, often laying the draw and laying under 1.5 or 2.5. Sometimes go for something a bit more like unquoted on the correct score market or over 4.5.
Most of the time now if I have layed and the odds are higher during the game I will back enough so that my P/L is 0 on the outcome I have layed, but leave the remaining profit on the other outcome/outcomes.
What I still struggle with is reducing my losses when things aren't going my way. It's really hard because I'm always thinking a goal now would change everything. I would hate to minimise my losses then have a goal go in a minute later, but I guess in the long run this is the best thing to do.
You will see in the update I'm about to do now that I had a really lucky escape last night when I was being silly trying to chase losses.
Good luck with what you're doing, hope you will keep in touch.
Mark.
PS, Also trying multiples in football, picking 2 or 3 very likely results to get total odds around evens, starting with £10 for bet 1, then £20 for bet 2, £40 for bet 3 etc...
I've been inspired to try this by reading the Betfair forums, if you got on there under 'General Betting' there is a thread called ' £10 x 7 evenish money shots. All in every time.' He's done really well with it and others have done too so I think it's worth a go for a £10 outlay. Started last night but let down by Lyon beating Real Madrid. Better tonight though, but only just, backed Bayern and Newcastle. Tomorrow I'll be looking at another 2 or 3 selections and a stake of £20.