End of first month

P/L since last blog: £42.20
Monthly P/L: £320.60

After messing up on the Liverpool game by leaving the game too early I was hoping for profits of both the Man Utd and Chelsea games tonight. I didn't have long to wait and traded out after the first goal in both matches (both fairly early in the first half) for a profit that neutralised yesterdays loss, increased my bank and gave me plenty of time to catch the second half of the Arsenal-Tottenham match in the pub.

Its been a month since I started trading and its been brilliant so far with over £300 profit. I've traded 23 games and made profit on 19 of them. The games I've lost money on have been:
Aston Villa-Chelsea - Lost money because I didn't cover 0-0 and hung on for Chelsea goal far too long.
Tottenham-Newcastle - Got out at half time because I had things to do.
Man City-Sheffield Wed - Messed about with Bet Angel and placed bet accidentally
West Ham-Liverpool - Got out at half time because I had things to do.

So from the 4 I can put the first error down to inexperience (since then I have covered 0-0's so that any losses are cut down), the Man City match down to being stupid, and the other two because I didn't give myself time to trade the whole match (both had goals before the 60th minute). So I could really have avoided (or cut down) losses on all of the games if I had been more sensible.
That said the only 0-0 that I traded on all month was the Villa-Chelsea game so I probably did get a bit lucky with my choice of games.

So why is noone else doing this??
The majority of other trading blogs I've read have said they avoid football, or trade on overs and unders to make their profits.

Have I just got lucky? Someone posted a comment on this blog the other day asking if I have system for choosing the games that I trade on. The answer is not really. I try to trade games with Man Utd, Chelsea, Liverpool etc who are likely to score in the first half and unlikely to lose their lead. So far this has worked better than expected.
But, as I have only been doing this for a month, I am far from being experienced and would appreciate any links to other blogs/forums where people have made (or lost) money from using this system just so that I can know what I am letting myself in for. Any feedback is welcome.

But as they say 'Make hay while the sun shines' which I intend to do for the time being and look forward to another profitable month in February.

I'm not about this coming weekend so trading will have to be put on hold for a bit, but with plenty of internationals next week hopefully the month will get off to a good start.

A small loss

P/L since last blog: £23.00
Monthly P/L: £275.40

I traded the West Ham-Liverpool game tonight, but I was going out at nine oclock and had only really intended trading up until about 60 minutes anyway. However I left to go out at half time, taking a loss with me, just to catch a glimpse of Sky Sports when I arrived in the pub to see that Kuyt had scored. If I'd have hung on for a minute longer I'd have been looking at a profit, but had just missed out. A bit disappointed but its not the end of the world.

Technical Difficulties

P/L since last blog: £37.70
Monthly P/L: £298.40

This past weekend should've been a good one for trading with three televised FA Cup games but after switching on my laptop before Luton-Blackburn I discovered my Internet was down. Blackburn went on to dominate and this would've guaranteed me a profit. After speaking to an NTL 'Technical Support' representative whose lack of knowledge of English was only matched by his lack of technical knowledge I arranged for an engineer to come to sort it on Tuesday morning.
I watched the Man Utd-Portsmouth game at a mates house and managed to trade on it. Although this is where my 37.70 profit came from I wish I hadn't traded it. I felt that United would destroy Portsmouth within the first half, but after 2 disallowed goals and a 0-0 scoreline I was staring a big loss in the face and was in two minds whether to stay in or leave taking a big loss. The longer I hung on the more certain I was United would score but with less than fifteen minutes left I could've lost a lot. Fortunately Ferguson bought on some chubby scouser who managed to knock one in and I cut and ran straight away. I didn't really care about the win, and was more relieved that I'd avoided the loss.
Still feeling a bit dodgy after the United game I decided just to watch Chelsea-Nottingham Forest without trading and enjoy the match.
Anyway the engineer came this morning and sorted my broadband so might trade West Ham-Liverpool tonight.

New Blog & the story so far

After setting up a blog on MySpace, I realised that it was a bit rubbish as you have to be signed in to make comments and my PC seemed to run slowly when I was posting/previewing blogs so I've moved here. My previous blog entry here is an archive of all my old blog entries from my MySpace blog.

If you can't be bothered to read all of the stuff from the MySpace blog here is a bit of an update.

On Boxing Day I was introduced to trading on betfair by Mark (see his site here), who trades on a number of different sports. As he had made quite a lot of money off it I decided that I fancied a piece of it and began looking into ways for beginners to get into trading. I don't own Sky in my flat and can't be bothered with watching hours of sport just for the sake of trading (never been very interested in horse racing anyway). So I decided to trade on soccer, which I would probably be watching/listening to anyway.

My tactics are simple. I choose my match, and lay the draw before it starts (I know some might say its better to wait for 5 minutes for the odds to drop, but I don't want to end up ruing a missed opportunity because of an early goal) and then wait for a goal, and then bet on the draw, after the odds have increased. After a mishap on the Chelsea-Villa game which ended 0-0 I now also put a small bet on the no score draw to cover any losses.
As a rule I won't trade past 60 mins, but have stopped trading before and after that point depending on how I feel about the game.
After my first weekend of placing small bets and getting comfortable with Betfair I began trading 'properly'.
This was about 3 weeks ago now, and so far I am £260.70 in profit. This is despite a number of mishaps (not covering myself on the previously mentioned Chelsea-Villa game and messing up a bet by losing concentration while using BetAngel) but you only learn from experience. Some good results have given me a nice bank to trade with, and so I hope this blog will be showing a lot more green in future.
I know some people might say this isn't proper trading because I'm not trading on a constantly fluctuating market like horse racing or American football, but its working for me so far and I'm happy with the way its going. A number of televised FA Cup games coming up this weekend so I'll post then once I've traded on them.

Old Blog Posts from MySpace

Daily P/L: £26.99 Monthly P/L: £260.70 Before the Tottenham-Arsenal game I'd decided just to trade to the first goal or bail at half time if it was nil nil. The odds were close on both teams which virtually guaranteed profit matter who scored first (and I covered myself on 0-0 result), although it would probably be a fairly small profit. I laid the draw at 3.5 and waited for a goal. Once it had gone in I hung on a bit for odds to settle and then bet at just about 4.6 to make a small profit. As I did Tottenham got a free kick. I cancelled the bet (fortunately still unmatched), Huddlestone whipped it in, Baptista got his first of 3, I bet back on the draw at much better odds and took nearly 30 quid profit for just over 20 minutes listening to the football. Fortunate that I got as much as I did but can't complain. 11:51 PM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment - Edit - Remove

Tuesday, January 23, 2007 Never in doubt Current mood: productive Daily P/L: £21.35 Monthly P/L: £236.71 Despite everyone saying how bad Chelsea were and the potential banana skin in tonights game against Wycombe, I had a feeling Wycombe wouldn't be able to perform at the Bridge. Layed the draw and took my money and ran after Shevchenko's first. After the weekend off trading its nice to be back winning again. Arsenal-Tottenham tomorrow will hopefully carry on the trend. 9:06 PM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment - Edit - Remove

Wednesday, January 17, 2007 Amateur Current mood: relieved Daily P/L: £18.35 Monthly P/L: £215.36 Since the last post I've traded on 2 games both in the FA Cup 3rd round replays. Today Newcastle v Birmingham and yesterday Man City v Sheffield Wednesday. I should've posted yesterday but was too pissed off with myself with the mistake I'd made. Basically my browser was having problems refreshing pages on Betfair during the game so I was using Bet Angel Basic to keep up to date with the odds. Because the game was a bit slow I started to mess about with the Bet Angel interface which I haven't really used before. At some point I must've selected the green button next to either Sheffield Wednesday or Man City by accident. I looked back 5 mins later and realised that I had potential to lose quite a bit if it was a draw, even though I'd still be in profit if either won. I bailed out, and lost a bit of money on it. About 30 seconds later just to rub salt in the wound Man City scored which would've guaranteed me another 18 quid profit no matter what the result. So todays result was bittersweet, mainly just trying to cover yesterdays mistake. I was planning on stopping trading at half time in todays game anyway, for a small profit, but Birmingham carried on well and popped in another just before that to make me a bit happier about the situation. Lesson Learnt! 9:30 PM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment - Edit - Remove

Monday, January 15, 2007 League 2 risks Current mood: chipper Daily P/L: £17.16 Monthly P/L: £211.16 After debating whether to trade on the Walsall-Grimsby game and weighing up the chances of a profit (Walsall almost certain to win, and have been scoring regularly in the first half so far this season) against the fact that I couldn't actually follow the match live (My flat hasn't got Sky Sports and BBC online coverage is a few minutes behind the live game), I bit the bullet and decided to trade on it, hoping that Walsall score early so I could take my profits and leave. They got the goal after 27 minutes, so I got out straight away (could've hung on for more profit but too risky without being able to see the game live), taking just over £17 profit regardless of the result, and taking my overall winnings since the start of the month back past the £200 mark. Nice. 8:51 PM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment - Edit - Remove

Sunday, January 14, 2007 First week of trading Current mood: thoughtful Weekend P/L: £81.37 Monthly P/L: £194.00 I began trading on Betfair just over a week ago, last Saturday. After making about 18 quid off small bets, and beginning to get comfortable with what I was doing, I upped my stakes and have since had a very profitable time. Before yesterday and the first weekend of Premiership trading I had made £112.63 on the FA Cup and midweek games. Yesterday Liverpool, Chelsea and Man Utd all did the job for me taking my profit to slightly over two hundred pounds. I felt a bit dubious about trading on the Tottenham-Newcastle match today, as I had a feeling the odds could go a bit flat, as it should've been a close game (as it turned out it was). But I put money on it anyway and could've made money on it if I'd waited for a couple of minutes more, but backed out early making a small loss on it. However with weekend winnings of over £80 and overall winnings for just over a week of trading standing at nearly £200, I am very happy with the way things are going so far. Next week doesn't have too many good games for trading on, so it might be a while before my next post. But the Walsall-Grimbsy match tomorrow evening could be tempting... 7:47 PM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment - Edit - Remove

Jumping on the bandwagon Current mood: optimistic After a month or so of looking at other people's MySpace decided to make one of my own. As you can see its a complete waste of a website but I'm hopefully gonna make good use of this blog to make up for it. Most of the people reading this won't care about anything after this point so you may as well stop now. Anyway, as the story goes... I know a guy called Mark, who like me, likes the thought of making easy money. He's been into gambling on horses and sports in general for a while now. I saw him on boxing day and he introduced me to trading on BetFair. He'd signed up for it a couple of months ago and had made a good amount of profit so far. I was interested and he explained how its done - basically there's no bookmaker, just people betting against each other and specifying their own odds. You don't just have the option of betting on an outcome but also laying (betting against it). Mark bets on a lot of different sports while they are in play, and while this seemed like a good way of making money, it is also time consuming, and the markets are often too volatile for beginners. (If you want to have a look at his site go to www.markiverson.com. His blog's quite interesting if you fancy getting into this sort of thing and is kind of what I want to achieve with this blog). Anyway, I looked into less time-consuming ways of trading on BetFair and found a method of betting on football that basically is: Before a game lay (bet against) a draw. If someone scores during the game then the odds on the draw will get bigger. At this point bet on the draw. This means that you are betting both for and against the draw, and so whatever the outcome you will make a profit. Its obviously not as simple as just that otherwise everyone would be doing it already, but with a bit of common sense and not being greedy you can make a lot of money off it. Just like I copied the rest of the world in making a MySpace page, I'm going to copy Mark by making a blog detailing my profits and (hopefully no) losses of trading on BetFair. Enjoy!