It Didn't Knock For Me

Gundulf, over at Betfair Football Trading mentioned the match last night between Dortmund and Stuttgart, and what an absolute corker of a game it was. Dortmund 2-0 up, then go behind 2-3, before going ahead in the final minute to lead 4-3. Game over? Nope, still time for yet one more goal to make it 4-4.

The title of Gundulf's post is "this one escaped me; but opportunity knocked for someone!"

Well, I was trading this match. Started on the Under 2.5 goals, moved up to 3.5 goals and finally onto the correct score market. At 2-0 to Dortmund, I took at look at the match odds and saw Dortmund were backable at 1.01 and layable at 1.02. There were still 25 minutes to go at that point, and I said to myself, "That's a lay at that price. One goal back and the whole game changes."

So, what did I do about it? Nothing. Don't really know why. I was busy managing my correct score positions, which considering the torrent of goals I'm absolutely delighted to have come away from with a small profit.

Still can't help thinking that popping a £1,000 on at that point (with only a £20 liability) was the right move, even if it hadn't come off. And yes, I suppose there is a degree of hindsight talking here. I just found it strange that I talked to myself about it and then did nothing about it.



Football: -£14.26 | Tote: |  Total P&L:  -£14.26 

 

Football Showing 1 - 5 of 5 markets

Market Start time Settled date Profit/loss (£)
Football / Dortmund v Stuttgart : Correct Score 30-Mar-12 19:30  30-Mar-12 21:17  15.26
Football / Dortmund v Stuttgart : Over/Under 3.5 Goals 30-Mar-12 19:30  30-Mar-12 21:06  7.81
Football / Dortmund v Stuttgart : Over/Under 2.5 goals 30-Mar-12 19:30  30-Mar-12 21:00  18.21
Football / Aachen v Dynamo Dresden : Correct Score 30-Mar-12 17:00  30-Mar-12 18:54  50.46
Football / Braunschweig v Paderborn : Correct Score 30-Mar-12 17:00  30-Mar-12 18:53  -106.00


Going out for the day soon. No trading today.

Shalke 04 Sign Fatty Arbuckle

I watched and traded a couple of Europa League matches this evening, including the highly entertaining match between Shalke and Athletico Madrid. Cracking game of football.

At the start of the second half, Shalke were forced into substituting their goalkeeper and brought on their fourth-choice keeper, a Mr. Mathias Schober.

I have to confess that when I saw him, my mouth dropped open slightly. Doubtless, being a fourth-choice keeper it must be difficult for him. It must be hard to maintain one's motivation and, ahem, fitness levels, knowing that you'll rarely - if ever - be called upon to keep goal for your team. In such a situation, I suppose it's possible to let yourself go a little bit and perhaps not visit the gym quite as often as you should - but our Mr Schober certainly takes the biscuit... Indeed I think he took the whole packet.

Here is a man who's BMI is measured in acres. He's so fat that the Met Office gives a name to each one of his farts. Yes, Mr Schober has to iron his trousers on his driveway, that's how big he is.

Actually, he did okay as a goalie, although for Madrid's third goal, he palmed the ball out straight to an opposing player who just had to tap it in.  Maybe if he'd been allowed to take some pizza on the pitch with him, he'd have done better.

Football: £100.90 | Tote: |  Total P&L:  £100.90 

 

Football Showing 1 - 2 of 2 markets

Market Start time Settled date Profit/loss (£)
Football / AZ Alkmaar v Valencia : Correct Score 29-Mar-12 20:05  29-Mar-12 22:02  50.46
Football / Schalke v Ath Bilbao : Correct Score 29-Mar-12 20:05  29-Mar-12 21:53  50.44

_________________________________

I won't update you all just yet with my post title experiment from the other day. I'll give it a week before I publish any results, but I did get a couple of interesting comments. The first was from The Sultan, who said:

I'm not sure from your post whether you are aware of this but I'll go ahead anyway; the large number of hits for Top Tennis Tips is probably down to people looking for actual tips on how to play tennis, rather than trading tennis. Will have to see how today's title fares, then we'll know more, though you can guarantee it'll probably get you more hits than usual!

This is undoubtedly true and something I hadn't really considered. I also got this from Gundulf, who even googled my title on my behalf:

Had to do the experiment:

"guaranteed winning strategies betfair" = number 1 on google
"winning strategies betfair" - halfway down the first page on google.
Eddie's blog strike rate = through the roof!

I can assure you that my strike rate is not through the roof, but it has been interesting. Thanks for doing the experiment though.

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Spent most of the day drinking with my work colleagues yesterday, and even managed to catch the sun whilst sitting out in the beer garden of our chosen pub. Fantastic day and glorious weather, but today I've come down with something (not a hangover) and feel that weak, achey feeling when you've caught a bug. I'm also horribly bunged up. Consequently, I'm going to have an early night tonight and hope that I feel better tomorrow. I normally enjoy trading on Fridays as there are some good leagues playing and usually plenty of opportunities. I just hope I feel up to it.

Guaranteed Winning Betfair Strategies!

It's not too often that I bother to look at the stats page on my blog, but I couldn't help noticing that one of my most popular posts was that concerning tennis - which is something of a surprise considering this is essentially a football blog. However, this same post keeps getting regular hits day after day, week after week.

There can only be one reason for this regular traffic to this page; it's certainly not the content as anyone reading it will instantly know that I am something of a tennis trading novice, so it can only be down to the title of the post:

Top Tennis Tips

Hmm, I suppose this shows the importance of a good title as it can increase traffic considerably. This simple phrase is obviously being googled and my unassuming little blog is getting hits as a consequence.

This current post has nothing whatsoever to do with winning Betfair strategies, I should make that clear - but it will be interesting to see if the title makes it more popular than it deserves to be over the course of the next few weeks.

I suppose the worrying thing about all this is the type of searches that might be made that will result in my "Famous Genitals" post popping up in Google! The mind boggles. If this post should move up and start heading my top four, then I may have to remove it.

________________________________

My P&L for tonight and last night is undeniably pathetic but, as always, there is some interest behind the puny figures. I won this evening and lost last night, but funnily enough I was more pleased with last night's trading than I was this evening's.

Last night, after my normal trading of the Unders market, in the second-half, with Man Utd pressing, I assumed a second goal would be scored and so layed 0-0 for £60. This wasn't a standard lay however. My intention was to use £200 scalps when the risk was low to steadily lower my potential red as the game progressed, while leaving the full liability in-play during parts of the match where goalmouth action was taking place. My initial potential red was over £220 and I slowly worked this all the way down to £131.

I think this strategy works quite well, and there were several chances for me to have won my bet outright last night. Next time, I need to better match my liability with my red reduction stake so that by the end I will effectively have a scratched trade if no goal is scored. This is a decent low(ish) risk method of laying the current scoreline, with a decent upside.

BTW, the Bundesliga winner market on my P&L was part of a dutch that I did right at the start of the season (also did one on the EPL). Presumably some of it has now been settled as there are teams that cannot mathematically win anymore.

________________________________

Overall, I have to conclude that this month has been something of a disappointment. I started the month really well and thought I was going to be heading for a £2,000 month, but it soon turned a bit pear-shaped. I haven't had a losing month for seven months straight, and this month will also be profitable - but I can't help feeling rather disappointed by the way it's ending as it's all been a bit flat.

I'm going out on the piss tomorrow night so there will be no trading.


Football: £2.29 | Tote: |  Total P&L:  £2.29 

 

Football Showing 1 - 5 of 5 markets

Market Start time Settled date Profit/loss (£)
Football / Sunderland v Everton : Correct Score 27-Mar-12 20:00  27-Mar-12 22:01  50.36
Football / APOEL v Real Madrid : Correct Score 27-Mar-12 19:45  27-Mar-12 21:38  49.62
Football / Bundesliga 1 : Winner 2011/12 05-Aug-11 19:30  27-Mar-12 17:05  4.59
Football / Man Utd v Fulham : Correct Score 26-Mar-12 20:00  26-Mar-12 21:56  -131.30
Football / Man Utd v Fulham : Over/Under 2.5 goals 26-Mar-12 20:00  26-Mar-12 21:54  29.02

Back When Laying

Nothing to do with betting, I'm afraid. My poor old back is aching like there's no tomorrow after spending a day laying my sister's laminate flooring - and it's still not finished. If anyone's got an old spine that they don't need, perhaps you could send it to me in a jiffy bag. Mine's completely knackered. I wouldn't mind, but I don't even like laminate.

On the betting front, I managed a couple of cheeky (and if I'm honest, naughty) trades on the Chelsea game via my phone while in my sister's house, and then also got home for a quicky chinese takeaway and a little trading on the Man City game. In truth my heart wasn't really in it (the trading, not the Chinese!) as I was too tired, but I plodded along on autopilot and lost a little bit of money.

Overall today, an insignificant and very small loss - but then again I didn't really do much, so it hardly matters either way.

Football: -£16.16 | Tote: |  Total P&L:  -£16.16 

 

Football Showing 1 - 4 of 4 markets

Market Start time Settled date Profit/loss (£)
Football / Stoke v Man City : Correct Score 24-Mar-12 17:30  24-Mar-12 19:31  -51.48
Football / Stoke v Man City : Over/Under 1.5 Goals 24-Mar-12 17:30  24-Mar-12 19:08  17.33
Football / Chelsea v Tottenham : Over/Under 2.5 goals 24-Mar-12 12:45  24-Mar-12 14:41  12.26
Football / Chelsea v Tottenham : Over/Under 1.5 Goals 24-Mar-12 12:45  24-Mar-12 14:41  5.73

__________________________________________

Just a last update on the P&L debate before I leave it alone. Mark Iverson wrote:

In my case I can only say that I stopped posting my p&l due to the income I was generating becoming more than just a hobby. I didn't want people who knew me 'in the real world' looking at me differently because I'd lost or won x amount in one day. in addition, as I became more serious I also didn't want to draw attention to the Inland Revenue about how you could make money on the exchanges.


Afterall, if someones onto a good thing, there can be a sense from some quarters that something needs to be done about it.


For what it's worth though, I love reading blogs that post p&l's!

As I replied to him, these are two reasons that I hadn't even considered when I drafted my post. Both valid points.

Friday Business

After the frivolous and rather childish post from yesterday, today I'll just report that it was back to business with a couple of small trades that went okay for me tonight. I find that I generally do well in the German leagues and so it proved again tonight. Had a good quick result in the Bundesliga 2 match, and then followed that up soon after with the Wolfsburg match, which yielded some safe, steady profits also.

Unfortunately, tomorrow I've been seconded into laying my sister's laminate flooring, so I suspect that there will very little in the way of trading for me. Sunday also looks like a washout, as we're heading to Brighton for the day.

This tends to happen as the weather improves - my trading shrinks. This of course is no bad thing. It's always good to get out in the sunshine and enjoy.

If I don't trade over the weekend, I hope you all have a good one.


Football: £105.74 | Tote: |  Total P&L:  £105.74 

 

Football Showing 1 - 3 of 3 markets

Market Start time Settled date Profit/loss (£)
Football / Wolfsburg v Hamburg : Correct Score 23-Mar-12 19:30  23-Mar-12 21:25  50.03
Football / Wolfsburg v Hamburg : Over/Under 2.5 goals 23-Mar-12 19:30  23-Mar-12 21:03  4.97
Football / Dynamo Dresden v 1860 Munich : Correct Score 23-Mar-12 17:00  23-Mar-12 18:54  50.74

Famous Genitals

Just a quick update on yesterday's post, before I go ahead and try to explain the bizzare title for this evening's post.

There was this well-thought out comment from The Sultan (Centre Court Trading), who said:

Hi Soccerdude, agree with pretty much everything you've said. I think the vast majority of us are curious and want to see how much everyone is making, even though it's probably not the best thing to be doing because it can make us feel inadequate.

I don't think it's any coincidence that those blogs which have shown the most regular P&L profits have been the most popular (Psychoff, Adam Heathcote and Mark Iverson spring to mind). Of course, they also wrote a great deal of interest too, so that helped.

The problem with P&L blogs is that some of them only have the P&L and not a lot else and almost all of them never show a losing day. If you are going to do it regularly, you have to show the bad days too, otherwise you are essentially lying to the reader. I can actually name several blogs that only ever post green screens and I know of at least 3 that are still going which have pretty much nothing to say other than a brief line or two (not gonna mention them here but they do exist). Most of these blogs dissappear after a short time (could be why you don't notice them), I imagine because they are not only boring to read but boring to write.

I always used to post up my bad days aswell as my good days, so it does annoy me when you get P&L blogs that never show losing days. I stopped posting them a while back now because I realised that being focused on monetary amounts is detrimental to me, so I don't even look at my P&L till the end of the month now.

The Sultan's point about P&L blogs that only ever show winning days was also echoed in Dave's blog HERE, where he mentions bloggers who suffer from what can "euphemistically be termed 'memory lapses' (ie. they blog the 'P' but not the 'L' :-))"

I think we must all be in general agreement here on this point. But let's not water it down; this kind of blogging is just bare-faced lying and who likes a liar? The other point about these kind of people is that they must also be trying to kid themselves that they are better than they are, and that's probably the saddest aspect of all.

As mentioned yesterday, for me a P&L doesn't have to be a profitable one to be interesting. Often the opposite is the case, and to watch someone struggling with a bad downturn and to see how they cope with it can often be more revealing and informative than someone who wins all the time.

______________________________________

Okay, as promised, I'll try and explain my unusual title. It concerns Rob The Builder's entry from a couple of days ago HERE, where he tells of being lucky enough to stumble upon Sugar Ray Leonard at a book signing.

I felt a bit jealous of Rob, for Leonard was one of my heros when I was younger and he was in his hay-day. Leonard really was a superstar in his sport and without doubt one of the greatest boxers we’ve ever seen. His hands were like lightening.

Unfortunately I don’t really have anything to compete with Rob's excellent sighting. I went to the same school as Glen Hoddle, although we weren't there at the same time - and that's about it as far as famous sportsmen or women are concerned.

Moving away from sportsfolk, I can boast that I've seen the genitals of both Richard and David Attenborough at the same time, and I’ve also smelled Robert Maxwell’s shit (before he fell off his yacht).

What? was this some bizarre celebrity homo orgy that I'd attended? Thankfully no. Both of these things happened on separate occasions and in innocuous circumstances. The first occurred when I went to watch a screening of Ghandi at the National Theatre on the South Bank. The movie was introduced by Sir Richard Attenborough himself. As the film was long, there was an interval half-way through, and I duly went to the toilet. Following me in, and positioning themselves either side of me was Dickie and his brother, who were happily chatting across me as if I wasn't even there. Well, I'm embarrassed to say that temptation got the better of me, and I did take a sneaky peek at both of the Attenborough's crown jewels - you know, just to check if they were any different to us mere mortals. The results of said inspection I shall keep to myself, but let's just say it's a shame there were no camera phones in those days.

My "personal" friends, the Attenboroughs

So what of newspaper mogul, Robert Maxwell? Again, completely innocent. I was watching a recording of a Jonathan Ross radio show, which was being broadcast from Ronnie Scott's jazz club in Soho. Guest of honour was Mr. Lard bucket himself, Robert Maxwell. There were a few "satellite" guests on before him to help pad out the show, so I again nipped into the toilet while one of these boring peripherals was busy bigging himself up.

Now please don't think there is a pattern emerging here. I'm not in the habit of hanging around lavatories with the intention of spotting celebrities. It's just the way it happened.

Anyway, when I opened the main door to the toilets, the most inhuman, fetid waft of air immediately assaulted my nostrils, and I almost ran screaming back out the door. This was either the Devil's familiar, or a rat had crawled up someone's arse and died. At that moment, one of the cubicle doors opened and out strode Maxwell, his head held high, brazening out the disgusting reek that hung in the air like death itself. Of course I wanted to rebuke him or swear at him, but to my shame I said nothing.

Right, so you're probably all getting mightily bored now and wondering where all this is leading. This is a football trading blog, for fuck's sake, I hear you shouting. What the hell has this got to do with anything?

Well, you have my wholehearted apology. There isn't any football for me to trade tonight, so unfortunately my little story has absolutely nothing to do with anything.

Whoops. :-)

Show And Tell, Or Just Tell?

Tonight, I thought I'd have a little brush with controversy and discuss the thorny subject of P&Ls. Those of you who may just have happened onto this blog by accident should know up front that this is most definitely a P&L blog. Unashamedly so. Whether I win or lose, I will always try to post up the end result of each day's trading. So take it or leave it.

When it comes to betting blogs, it seems people are divided between those who like to display their P&L and those who don't - and by the same token those who like to read about P&Ls and those who don't. Those bloggers that do not display their P&Ls, for some reason, seem to hold a good measure of dislike - hatred even - against those blogs that do show precisely how they have fared. I'm not quite sure why, but a good many of the betting and trading blogs out there, some of which are well-establish and well-written blogs, tend to look down their noses at us P&L blogites. But why exactly do P&L blogs attact vitriol?

The main accusation is that P&L blogs are boring - a damning accusation indeed. But is this really so? If a blog displays ONLY an individual's P&L and nothing else - perhaps accompanied with "tonight I made/lost xxx" - then I would probably agree that this doesn't make enthralling reading. However, I don't know about you, but I don't personally know of any such blogs, although I'm sure they'll be some somewhere in the world. All the P&L blogs that I am aware of mix things up a little. The P&L is most assuredly there, but there is also opinion, views, the usual highs and lows, trialling of various methods and so on and so forth. The P&L bit is only one small aspect of each blog posting that I read; and as just one additional facet of the overall blog, it doesn't seem to detract from each individual post. Far from it. I think it helps to pull a blog into sharper focus.

Okay, so what else do people hate about blogs that put up their P&L? In truth I'm not really sure. What I do know is that there are a lot of bloggers out there who are disingenuous on this whole subject. There are some blogs who, even though now long established non-P&L blogs (no names, no pack drill) actually started out regularly presenting their P&Ls to their readership each day or each week. However, after a period of time, they mysteriously stopped doing so and changed their blogs into non-P&L versions. And now that they are a long way down the road of blogging, they now take it upon themselves to casually attack P&L blogs as though they are the devil's creation. Why is that? Is it because their own P&Ls became something of an embarrassment to them, so they sneakily stopped displaying them, covering over their poor performances by brazenly stating that P&Ls are "boring" or not worth reading? Maybe. I don't really know.

As mentioned, my own blog does regularly have my P&L posted up, and I will continue to do so. Along with these summaries of each day's trading, I also try my best to mix things up a little and have tried to post up entries hopefully to entertain and inform any readers. I try to share and disseminate information and methods that I feel will help, or offer my views of outstanding events.

My blog is still relatively new. It only really got going at the back end of last year and I have less than 20,000 recorded visitors to my pages. It may be, therefore, that as a newbie, I don't fully understand the true nastiness of showing one's P&L, or perhaps I'll just "mature" and grow out of the practice once I've seen the light. Then again, I may not.

Personally, I like to look at other people's P&Ls. Not only does it show me the level they are betting at (which as a nosey person is interesting to me), but it also adds an additional dimension to what they have to say about their experiences of that particular day, pulling it all into focus. Afterall, the money is what it's all about, so why on earth shouldn't we be interested? I don't mind if someone is successful or whether they are enduring a long series of negative days or weeks. Blogging is not about being successful, it's about sharing our views, opinions and experiences of betting or trading, whether they are good or bad. But let's not talk about profit and loss as though they are dirty words. Mention of it is not vulgar or crass; it's what each and every one of us is interested in.

______________________________________________

Well, after me singing the praises of the P&L, it's slightly embarrassing that I don't have one to show you tonight! Instead of trading this evening, I went down the pub to watch the Man City match, which was only okay-ish. Nothing special to watch. I wish instead that they'd shown the QPR v Liverpool match, which sounded amazing. I'm just about to watch that game on MOTD.

Once again, I don't want to discuss anything where the sentences have the words Spurs or Arsenal contained in them. Got it?