Decided to try Bet Trader Pro on the UK markets on Friday night, which was interesting to say the least. Could only manage to trade one race (...was stuffed by midnight...) in the UK market which had extraordinary amounts of money flowing through it.

 

Found it very easy to trade this market using my measly AUD$6.00 bet size. No doubt, will be a different story once we I start betting over AUD$100.00 bets. I won't be so cocky.... But, I think I got the theory right, watch the amounts of money coming in on either size, and then make your move.

 

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Saturday, was a piss awfull day, trading the Australian horse racing markets. I didn't realise that my cable internet connection was stuffed, and seemed to be working at only 28kbps speed (at times). I actually lost money due to this problem, as I couldn't lay off a horse, after backing it. Of course, the horse lost....

 

Checked the Optusnet website, which had a message posted about slow browsing on some international sites. Their engineers were investigating the problem. As of this entry date, this problem has still yet to be resolved.

 

Tried experimenting with setting up an arb bet for the Hantuchova / Williams tennis match on Saturday night. I had to call Betfair to place the bets, as our stupid 'save us from ourselves' and 'protect our betting industries interests' government won't allow betting in-running on the internet. Wankers. Made $1.00.

 

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Sunday - still no luck with the internet. No wonder these professional traders have backup ADSL lines and extra modems / equipment , phone line to Betfair and prayer mats, just in case things go awry.

 

Am currently reading a book by the title of:  'Chance'

 

 

Learn't something new whilst trading tonight:

 

The amount of back and lay trades must be accounted for, due to BTP software not calculating your true market position. You must remember where you were in your last trade; If you have completed a back trade, you must complete it by laying off at lower odds, reducing the indicated profit amount while retaining your account balance before the start of trading.

 

If the price moves against you, you must cut your loss or scratch the trade or back or lay taking a small loss. With the prices moving swiftly, it is easy to panick and lose track of your market position.

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Made another crucial, but glad I'm trading low stakes mistake before ending my day's trading. Somehow managed to get caught up in the excitement of the trading game, and stupidly positioned myself in a race, basing my position on the NSW Tote. I have to get out of that habit. I'll quite looking at this website.

 

I prices where extremely volitile for this race and managed to creep $2.00 up, higher than the Tote price, ending up around the $6.00 mark. I thought I'd try and out maneuver the market, positioning myself above the Tote price. Guess what, the market moved higher when I placed my back bet. I had 30 seconds before the start of the race and had to lay back at higher odds. Luckily, my horse didn't win the race, and I broke even.

 

At this stage, I can't imagine trading the UK horse races, trading 400.00 pound bets; I would most likely die of a heart attack.

 

I shall persist; this is the task and career choice I have set myself. I endevour to be actively trading the UK Horse Racing markets by April 2006.

 

Oh yeah. Forgot to mention, tonights profit was AUD$3.72 based on AUD$6.00 back and lay trades. Not bad, since I only started a few days ago.

Well, had an interesting couple of hours training, using Bet-Trader Pro to trade the Australian Horsies on Betfair.

 

This program is not without it's fault, being in it's beta testing stage. The first fault, I'm already aware of, is that problems will occur when you don't move on to the next horse race, once the market has been suspended and you have unmatched bets still on screen. These bets will remain on screen and the program needs to be restarted in order to clear them.

 

Also, BTP is not capturing the Australian horse racing markets after 7.00pm. I will need to send an email through to tech support to ask why and will also check out the Racing Traders forum on Yahoo. This will be particularly annoying, especially if I want to learn how to use the program on the Australian market, in more sociable time periods.

 

The liquidity of the Australian horse racing market, is PALTRY compared to the UK Market. But, none the less, in my view it's relative to the amount I am prepared to trade at the moment, which is a maximum stake of AUD$6.00 per back and lay trade.

 

Also registered as a member of the Betfair API Developers forum, which put me on to an interesting blog site, named 'The Degenerate Gambler'. I will be studying this site, as this person has trodden a path I've set myself (http://blog.rai.com.au), although, that being said, I would like to make the following statement;

 

As opposed the Degenerate Gambler, I consider myself to be a trader, risk averse for 90 percent of the time. I have realised that the spread between trading and gambling can converge into outright gambling.

 

For example, whilst trading (training) last night, I compared the price of a favourite on the NSW online TAB, 30 minutes prior to the start of the race. I assumed that prices on Betfair are 20 percent more favourable than the TOTE, I decided to speculate back and lay odds, and thought I might place my bets prior to the race. Big mistake. This is speculation at its worst, especially for a trader not familiar with horse or other runners in the race.

 

My style of trading that I would like to become extremely proficient in, is scalping each race for incremental gains on each available race. To do this, one should monitor the pressure of money available for both backing and laying, and trade as more money comes into the market. Assuming the concept of supply / demand is at work, the price will shorten or drift accordingly, allowing traders to take advantage of price discrepancies. To gain an extra edge, it might be worthwhile monitoring how much money is available above and below the markets current position as well as the POM indicator.

 

I suspect that there are market makers trading manipulating prices, and keeping prices within a certain trading range, picking off unsuspecting mugs (like myself) as they consider and re-consider swapping their day jobs for this line of work.

 

 

Well, after pumping up my Betfair account with a few extra spare dollars (meaning, you have spare cash?....), I decided to get my hands dirty, and trade the Australian horse racing markets, backing and laying.

 

You need numb balls of steel, especially to trade in increments of 400 pounds, such as Adam Todd of RacingTraders.com. I was only trading minimal stakes of AUD$6.00 on favourites with low odds. Managed to make one sucessful trade of .54cents without hedging. Lost a few cents on the next trade, as it quickly went against me. I managed to trade out the position, but at a slight loss.

 

I then assumed that it would be possible to quickly take a loss if need be, and got cocky on the next trade. The whole idea behind Betfair and the software Bet-Trader Pro takes some getting your head around. I'm still getting comfortable with the whole process. Anyhow, I experimented with seeing how quickly I would get matched, if laying, and got the position filled somewhat quickly at 2.62. I then watched in disbelief as the market dropped away to 2.30 and stayed around this figure. I assume that if need be, I could get my order filled at this price rather quickly and left it too late (.30 seconds) before trying to close out the position with a slight loss. Unfortunately, I couldn't do this, and had to take a 9.62 loss. Ballocks! I then sat there watching the NSW TAB online results, which, sure as hell, the horse I layed won the race. Ballocks!

 

Oh well, we are prepared to pay for this tuition, and hopefully it all pays off in the end.

 

I also would like to mention that I was tracking the NSW TAB prices an comparing them with Betfair. I'm sure everyone else is doing the same thing, as well as the other bookmakers. This could be a deceptive useless method of trading, basing my trades on the NSW Tote. We will see....

This weekend was spent trying out Bet-Trader Pro on my desk top computer running Windows Millenium. As previously mentioned, my current desktop is CRAP, and can't process and run the program sufficiently enough.

 

I then had to use my wife's laptop, which had an out of date 'Norton's Internet Security' subscription. This thing had heaps of virus's as well as adware and spyware. I've renewed the subscription (the least I could do...) and had to uninstall and install the program again. I then ran a rather lengthy virus scan to try to get rid of these bastard things. Norton claims the computer is still infected with 6 virus's. Great.

 

Anyhow, this seemed to fix up the program with the slow processing speed of the laptop, as it is running perfectly now.

 

I was then able to trial Bet-Trader Pro on the laptop.

 

A few interesting notes to make about BTP. You need to log into the Betfair site; reason being, is that the program syncs with your logging into Betfair, to use your default currency that you place your bets with. In my case, Australian Dollars as opposed to UK pounds. It would have been annoying to find that you can't use any other currency in this program, other than pounds. Anyhow, a large amount of people would be using Euro's, so....

 

The Betfair interface for horse racing defaults to the top three horses with the lowest odds. This is not the case for the Australian horse racing market. It isn't in any particlar order. That means you need to drag the particular horse or horses' that you want to trade, across the trading screen.

 

Also, you can't have the same selection up on the screen more than once, as only one screen will operate.

 

It's interesting to watch the movement of cash coming into and out of each race, and espeicially before a race starts. Also, I don't think there is enough liquidity to sufficiently trade the Australian markets. Shame.

 

 

Will start trial of Bet-Trader Pro today, after funding my dwindling Betfair account. I must admit, you cannot trade Betfair by just using the standard Betfair trading interface. You need a faster program. The subscription price for Bet-Trader Pro is 29.00 pounds per month or about AUD $70.00.

 

I have looked at various other programs, which just give you the provision to back and lay using a preset staking amount. The seemingly good feature of BTP is that you can quickly jump into a position when you see money coming into the market. You can get out pretty fast too.

 

Very soon, I will be looking at upgrading my crappy computer that I was suckered into purchasing for AUD $2000.00 in December 2000, which is currently running Windows Millenium. This thing is crap - and more times than often, flashes the dreaded 'Blue Window of Death'.

 

I have decided that when I do start trading, to pursue a fixed daily amount to cover my daily living expenses using Win Trades (profit irrespective of the horse winning or losing) and once this figure has been met, to trade Safe Stake Trades (profit if horse wins, recover original stake if horse loses). Safe Stake Trades can win more money provided the horse (favourite) wins the race. I would also like to place in running bets on Tennis, Boxing, Rugby Union and Ice Hockey - that should make sport more interesting to follow, especially tennis. All profits from Safe Stake Trades will be spent on lollies, blingage, anything else the heart desires.

 

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Well, it is 6.45pm at night and I have just paid PayPal for a subsription to use Bet Trader Pro. I had some mucking around to do, as I'd already openned 2 other PayPal accounts, one using the credit card I wanted to make the subscription payments with. PayPal won't allow you have operate different accounts using the same credit card. I'd clean forgot that I openned these other dormant accounts.

Anyhow, after successfully registered my PayPal account with my preferred credit card,  I assumed that this would grant me instant access to BTP. Bling Bling!!Think again! Sent an email to RacingTraders.com to see when the account would be available for use.

The only problem that I am facing, is that I will have to trade the UK Horse racing markets, as the volume money flowing through each race is astounding. One horse race saw eight hundred thousand pounds flow through it. Amazing. So, will have to be up from about 10.00pm to 1 or 2am in the morning, Sydney time.

 

Received another email from Adam Todd of RacingTraders.com concerning his recent distribution of a 38 minute trading video detailing some trades on UK Horse racing.

 

I must say that I am impressed with this style of trading platform for Betfair and can't wait to trial it. I have been rather busy for the past three weeks, checking out other programs designed by various traders and companies for the Betfair API.

RacingTraders.com received a number of complaints from irrate subscribers, due to poor technical support. The technical support seems to have been outsourced to another company to handle.

When I first stumbled across Bet-Trader Pro (RacingTraders.com) and viewed the training video, was quite surprised and amused by the authors seemingly unprofessional approach in trying to promote the program for subscription. The F word was used frequently, as was a tirade of verbal abuse of the authors dog. Amusing. Adam must have realised that you can't conduct business in this manner, and decided to re-release more sanitised training videos, hence the email. Amusing.