More of the same... maybe a tactic change needed?

I'll start with the football betting side of things first... Swansea Wolves was a draw and so  was West Brom Villa... that put me out of winning anything.... Current balance is at £53.24.
Need to pick some winners... My Sports trading has opened my eyes to other leagues so may have to have a look outside of the big prem and euro games.

Sports Trading, Sat and Sun I made a total of 19 trades and came out 45p up!! Balance £68.84
I took a hammering on a couple of trades, a Dutch on CS for RIo Ave v Benfica being one of them, turns out Rio are better that we thought!

What did do me well and made me back some of the red was with EST trades. I netted a total of £28.77 from them alone, 9 trades with 8/9 hit rate. In other words I only lost money on 1 of the 9 trades
I did two dutch CS trades and came out £1 in the red.

So from here on I'm going to do simple trades. Like EST and LTD to see if it changes the way my trading graph looks.

If you want to know more about what these trades are take a look at http://thesportstradingacademy.com/

As you can see... I had a dip but made it back. I think they call that variance!

Over all there is still a clear winner.... more to come!

I Lost £5 I Won £5, that's just how it goes.

Gambling Challenge £55.24 - 9.5% ROI

I put £5 on Barca to beat Chelsea and Luton to beat Gateshead (how much further away from each outer could those two games be!!) anyway, Barca did me an injustice but being next to useless. The late equaliser from Torres meant the bet went out the window. so £5 down.
Whilst I was trading I noticed a good bet for this challenge during some Serie A games. I put £1.64 on Juve to beat Cesena, Milan to beat Genoa and Inter to beat Udinese. All of which came in so I netted £6.86 making a nice £5.22 profit.

Looking ahead to the weekends game I've decided to pick the following bet. I'm effectivly going on team I don't think will get a win and betting against them.

Swansea v Wolves - Swansea win @ 4/7

West Brom v Aston Villa - West Brom win @ 11/10

Tottenham v Blackburn - Tottenham win @ 2/5

They are all home wins which hopefully will go in my favor. £2 bet will return £9.24 if it comes in. 

Trading Challenge £69 - 38% ROI


Made a few trades over the last couple of days... to many to list individually. Again I'm only doing it with small amounts.


A highlight is a strategy suggested to me by Robbo over at www.thesportstradingacademy.com called Goals Galore. I won't go into details as it would be worth joining just to find it out. I only played it with half stakes but still came away with a nice £10.50 profit. The game involved Haken v IFK Gotenborg and required there to be goals in the game for a decent return. Stakes were placed pre KO and during once a specific event happened.

A low light is the Barcelona v Chelsea game. When the red card happened I traded out for a loss of £7.84 across all bets. I had CS on for this and none of them 2-2 so selling them on was a good move!

I had a couple of decent LTD (lay the draw) results, Shinnik v Ural and Milan v Fenoa which keeps up my trend of LTD having the best return so far (110%)

Not sure what I'll be putting on coming up but I expect it will be something.

Progress Graphs

Up and Down

OK so I'm going to start off with the gambling side of things as that didn't work out so well for me this weekend.

Gambling Challenge

I went with Newcastle to beat Stoke and Spurs to beat QPR... bankers, right? wrong..
Newcastle did their stuff and comfortably beat Stoke... but Spurs, oh dear dear me.
I'd have thought they would have been right up for this game, pushing had for 4th but I guess you shouldn't underestimate a team fighting relegation!
£5 lost

Trading Challenge

Trading... well, this is where the up and down comes in. Good news, I ended the night on £3.47 in the green. I was up to £19.91 at one point but a few results went against me and traded out in the red. But still managed a green over all.

I made a total of 15 trades but not on my own this time. I signed up to group called The Sports trading Academy (www.thesportstradingacademy.com) who are a friendly bunch giving tips, suggestions and help on what to do.

I'm not going to report on every single trade I do as it would take up too much room and I don't expect anybody cares... but I will summarise what I do. Happy to give details if asked.

Below are some details on my ROI and how much... as you can see I'm playing small

I traded on 3 LTD (Lay The Draw) suggestions they gave and all 3 came in. I'm not playing with big money here but came out with £14.72 from that little lot.

I also got some good green from Laying a team 2-0 up against stronger opposition then trading out when they equalised.

I lost out on a few CS (Correct scores) and laying under 1.5 goal (Liverpool v West Brom)
I'm not too keen on the CS options so will watch others doing those for a few runs before I have another go.

Reports & Graphs

Standard Trading vs Gambling Chart

An new chart which shows the same as above but per trade rather than date

And the Final results - Clear winner at the moment.

Doing well so far...

Sports Trading Bank @ £61.58
 I had a good crack at some basic low value sports trading last night and came out £11.59 in the green!

I'm no expert at this sort of thing so I'm keeping it simple and using a basic strategy of laying off the team winning when I think there is a chance the other team are going to come back into it.
I try not to expose myself too much either so use low amounts.

As you can see I even had a go with the Darts when The Power Taylor went into the lead. Defending Champ Lewis always had a chance of coming back.

Sports Gambling Bank @ £55.02
The Gambling challenge was matching it blow for blow, the above amount includes my latest punt.

I've decided to go £5 on Spurs to beat QPR away and Newcastle to beat Stoke at home.
Spurs will know they need to win games to fend off Newcastle's challenge for 4th and I don't think QPR have it in them to put up a real fight.
Newcastle in the same vein will want 4th and with Cisse and Ben Arfa on fire Stoke shouldn't have much of a chance here.

I've done £5 double on both results, Suprs at 19/20 and Stoke at 8/11 which means £5 will return £16.84

all odds are from paddypower.com

Overall Graph

Here is how the Challenge is looking so far... I started SP Trading a lot later so I haven't had as much chance to lose yet. Time will tell but I expect it to be more of a steady up than the gambling line which will probably continue to fluctuate.

They call it going Green! I call it a Win!

Had my first proper go at a bit of sports trading last night (excluding that first test fail I did)

I was working late on call for my real job and had a look at a Brazilian Cup game.

Arsenal FC vs Fluminense

Fluminense looked like they were going to score so I laid Arsenal FC early for £10 at 3.2 (£22 liability) then when Fluminense scored I backed them for £4.71 at 8 giving me £32.97 if they won.

Fluminense won the game so I walked away with £5.29 profit (see screen shot)
 I could have made more by holding out for a bigger price on Arsenal FC, they went to 12 at one point but they also pulled a goal back a dropped so I did the right thing.
I used www.betfair.com and the Cash out option... I'm yet to use Geek Toy in anger, I'm waiting to learn the principles before taking on the tool

So I'm off to a start with my Sports Trading... will be looking to make small amounts as often as I can.

Here is how the challenge is looking so far.

Epic Fail!!

My little test was indeed an epic fail.

ManU vs Villa I came up 50p in the red
Sunderland vs Wolves I was £3 in the red
Norwich vs Man City I was £1.14 in the green

So a total loss of  £3.36

Had Wolves or Sunderland nicked a goal I would have been in a good place. It also goes to show that it's not worth it with odds so short, such as Uniteds.
I made a fundamental mistake when working out the returns on the bets and not taking into account the cost of putting the bet on! school boy error 

Current status for my betting £50 challenge.
Balance    £60.02
P/L    £10.02
P/L %    20%
Won    £72.09
Lost    £62.07


I had a go at some sports trading with the Chelsea vs Spurs game. Laying off Chelsea for the win at 0-1 with a liability of £5.30
When Spurs scored to make it 1-2 I had the chance to cash out at a loss of 14p but stayed in for the education. I ended up losing it all but I learnt something so it wasn't a complete loss.
 I'm going to take that from my £50 Trading pot... so I'm at £44.70 for my Buy/Sell
I've had a good chat with Fed (check his blog out) around what I did and why it happened so I have a rough idea going into my next trading adventure what I want to do and when I should pull out.

All betting odds are paddypower.com and all trading are betfair.com

Change in tactic today

Change in tactic today... I thought I'd try something a little diffrent. I've decided to try doing some cover bets. This might turn out to be stupid but I thought I'd have a go.

£1.00 - Prem - Man U v Villa, Villa @ 12/1
£2.00 - Prem - Man U v Villa, United @ 1/4
£1.00 - Prem - Sunderland v Wolves, Wolves @ 11/2
£2.00 - Prem - Sunderland v Wolves, Sunderland @ 8/15
£1.00 - Prem - Norwich v Man City, Norwich @ 5/1
£2.00 - Prem - Norwich v Man City, City @ 4/7

So...
If Villa win I get £13 back minus the £2 it cost me to bet on United  = £11 profit
If United win I get £2.50 minus the £1 is cost me to bet on Villa = £1.50 profit
If its a draw, I'm out of luck and lose £3

Similar story for the other matches. Worth a try I thought.

All odds are paddypower.com

United have done me!

As per my last post I put £5 on the below triple accumulator.

Prem- Wolves v Arsenal, Arsenal win @ 4/9 Prem - Wigan v Man U, United win @ 2/5 Prem - Man City v West Brom, City win @ 2/7

Arsenal beat wolves, City beat the baggies... and United.... unbelievable.
They lost 1-0 to wigan. wigan!!, who haven't beaten them or even taken a point of them in the premiership, ever. So I guess that's why they call it gambling... but come on, really?!?

So where does that put me? Still in profit for one, £63.38 which is an ROI of 27% so its not all doom and gloom. Will take a look at what's coming up at the weekend and post again. Must remember to stay away from Aintree!

On a side note, I bottled trying some football trading last night, sorry Fed.
I launched the application to give it a go. I get the principle behind some of the basic strategies but when the software is up in front of you and its your money on the line it suddenly becomes a little daunting!
I'm using some free  software called GeeksToy which is recommended highly by a few keen sports traders. Still trying to get my head round it but once I'm there I'll start to post what I'm doing.

A few Premiership games on tonight... a few 'bankers' in there in my opinion so it would be rude not to have a punt on them.

I've put £5 down on a triple accumulator which will return £13 if it comes in.

Prem- Wolves v Arsenal, Arsenal win @ 4/9 Prem - Wigan v Man U, United win @ 2/5 Prem - Man City v West Brom, City win @ 2/7

I might also use one of these games for my test on football trading. Fed's blog has some good info on it which I'm looking to have a go at.

It's been a few weeks since I last posted... Holidays seem to have gotten in the way a little bit. That said the experiment hasn't stopped and below are my latest update.

I'm up to £68.38 making a profit so far of £18.38 or 37%

I was up to £83.44 at one point after winning £35.06 from £6.62 on Arsenal, Barcelona & Everton to win in a triple accumulator.
I also won on Phil Mickelson placing at the masters.

Here is a list of my bets so far... hopefully you can read it.- all odds are via paddypower.com

 

A friend of my has introduced me to Sports Trading - I'm going to take a look at this, try and understand it then invest one of the other £50's I have for this experiment. More too follow on that.