25th Aug Games ManU and Chelsea

My Arsenal set up from last week came in so posting my next two for this week.

First up Manchester United - I fancy ManU here so have lumped more of the out come on them giving me a 40% return if the scores below come in and only a 4% if the other results come in, importantly no loss unless its 3-2 or either side score 4 or more goals.

 

 

Second up is Chelsea vs Newcastle, speaking with Fed and looking at his stats it would seem that maybe Chelsea aren't all they are cracked up to be and the 1.57 win price is very short. Here I've reversed my cover trade so that the return is loaded up on the results going against a Chelsea win.

Again, 3-2 is bad as is 4 or more goals for either team.

 

 



That's where I'm up to at the moment... you'll notice I've only gone £15 stakes here as I'm testing loading one side up. In other news, I've had some success scalping 0-0 pre KO... it would appear to be a fine art that I don't yet fully understand but I'm testing the water!

Euro 2012 is here and I'm setup ready to go.

There has been a fair amount of low key mumblings about this year's Euro comp. I'm a football fan and love this sort of even... I'm first at work to get the sweep stake under way and as I go round the uneatable talk of who people think will win starts. Of course the big names get mentioned, Spain, Holland and Germany, followed by a few maybe team, France.... um, Portugal?... England?

And so you have it.A few favourites in a field where any could win... but will they? probably not.

I've got two trading ideas here, nothing revolutionary and I expect thousands of others are doing similar.
I'm going to dutch Spain, Germany and Holland. Then back France, England and Portugal independently with the view to trade them out should they make it out of their group.

That puts me in a nice position where I'm green across the favourites. I think I'm in with a shout with at least one of those coming in. (See screen shot)


I've also had a go at the Top Goalscorer market and dutch'ed a few I fancy, RVP, Gomez, Benzema, Torres, Balotelli and Sneijder.
I've also put in Gerrard and Kerzhakov separately. If they score in their first games there is a chance their odds will drop enough for me to trade out.

My other Euro trades will probably all be in-play... hoping for some decent football. I may also do some small accumulators if anything jumps out at me.


As far as the challenge goes... well its still all about the trading. I've had a wobble but I'm still up at £228 from the £50 starting bank.
Identifying my wobble has been a little confusing. I'm putting it down to the poor football that's been on recently and me trying to chase some results. I'm going to try hard to stick to the simple trades and only go for the ones I really fancy... not just the maybe games!

 

'Rolling with the punches'

Took a hit last night. Felt a little like a punch.

What would you do if you got punched...  a proper fight and you get kaboom-ed by a wild left hook. Would you go down crying and refuse to get up? or shake it off and remember not to lean too close to that left hook zone?

Well for me I'm more a stand up and learn guy... ok, so I took a hit with a trade that lost me some money but I'm not going to let that get in the way of progress!

I've broken the £200 mark! (even with the loss yesterday)

I've learnt a lot in my first month and a bit sports trading, number 1 is that in-play stats are key.number 2 is that in-play stats are key. number 3 research is the lock the key fits into.
The sports trader who is blindly putting draw lays on every 0-0 at HT is more gambling than trading, in my opinion.
 I've had a 74% hit ratio with laying the draws at key points, with a 24% ROI which for me is £108.33 clear profit. Now this is by far my best returning strategy. That 74% hit ratio (meaning I've had a return on 75% of the trades I've entered) is down to my above points. In-play stats and research. FedSlam and I do some collaborative research on games we think might be worth a look. Then went we're with the boys at The Sports Trading Academy we are scanning in-play games to see what looks lively, Shots on target and off, attacking plays.... we weigh up if we think a goal will come.

That's just one strategy, there are many. So what do I do when I get a left hook? I take the hit, look at the bigger picture (which for me is all green) and get on with the next trade.


How am I getting on... for now I've held off the gambling as I'm concentrating on SP trading, I'm sure I'll pick it back up when Euro 2012 starts again.
As for SP trading, well... I've had some good nights recently so am relatively happy. One particular trade is standing out as my biggest earner so I've decided to up my stakes on that one only.

What a weekend... Epic

My trading account challenge has had a massive lift off in recent days! I'm pretty happy with where it is right now. Remember my starting bank was £50, I'm now up to £138.89 at time of writing this!

I'm almost at the point where I think its not worth me carrying on with my gambling challenge!

Here are the details so far.

How have I got here? well I decided to keep it simple - I stopped doing some of the feature trades, not because they aren't good but because I'm dealing in small amounts. I stuck to LTD (Lay the Draw) and EST trades - check out http://thesportstradingacademy.com/ or Robbo's blog for what that is.

I also kept the prices down and went with in game stats rather than any preconceptions of the teams.

Here is a sneak look at my LTD results for the 6th May 2012.
You'll see from those alone I made £21.40 profit from a £52.50 investment (the lay) which is a 40% ROI
I've not won big... but I've not lost big either.

To put that in perspective, for all trades on the 6th May I made a £28.71 profit from a £106.50 investment which is a 26.9% ROI and my over all LTD return is currently at 28% from 33 trades.
The 8/10 strike rate is pretty good too, I called some of those myself but some came via http://thesportstradingacademy.com/

Gambling I lost again putting me at £49.24.... there is a clear winner here I think!

Having spoken to FedSlam a fair amount about this and current tactics I think I'm going to carry on as I am until I get to a point where I'm comfortable putting a little more liability on each trade. If I can keep a ROI of above 30% long term then I'm doing well
Looking for games that are drawing or 1-0, 0-1 and shouldn't be then analysis of the in play stats is the way forward for me.

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