Status Quo

Hello everybody,

Today I want to share some thoughts about the way I am thinking about trading sport events.

During the last six month my view of trading has changed significantly. When I started trading on sport events I was fascinated to have the opportunity to be all green even if the sport event is still in progress. It was also my main goal, to be green when the sport event is still in progress. 
During the last months I recognized that this “idea” is not that bad, but it does not raised my profits. Too often I cut my losses too early or I got out of a trade too early, which cut my potential winnings. I also thought trading is the only way to make profit.

My horses lay selections showed me, that it is possible to make money with pure punting. It is all about value. Yes, many of you now will think “That’s what everybody is talking about”. But it is important to understand the concept of getting value on your selections you place bets on.

Making profit on trading and betting on sport events is not about posting all green screenshots. It is about the long term view. A single selection does not decides if you are making profit or loss. I am not talking about the new holy grail on trading or betting, but I am getting more and more aware of value betting and long term view.

If you are a regular reader you will have noticed that I am not writing in detail about my tennis results anymore. At the beginning of my blog I wrote many blog entries about identifying good entry points and exit points, also about the bad ones. I wrote about looking at match statistics and how you can take advantage of that. I stopped writing about my tennis trading in detail, because I do not want to bore you with the same again and again.

During this year I struggled a little with my tennis trading. At the moment I am break even. There is one thing I have really problems with: When I watch a tennis match (via TV or scoreboard) from the beginning to the end I can not identify good trading opportunities. But if I turn on the laptop and look at the scoreboard and the odds while the match is already in progress I can tell you easily if a price of a player is too low or too high in a current match situation.
I recognized this ability when analysing my style of trading the fastest lap market on Formula 1 races. I am doing the same there. I know which odds are right and wrong and place bets depending on what is going on. And I am placing many bets during a race. I do not have problems to lay high odds of 6.0. I am feeling confident about making the right decision.
When I trade tennis matches from the start I often can not trust my thoughts about the possibility of a comeback of a player when he is a set or a break down, because the odds move steady.

I know I need to change my view of trading an betting. It should be a view of investing. Investing on the outcome of sport events. The tennis season is on its final stages. I do not expect that much improvement, but I want to have a look on the matches with the view of an investor. Taking snapshots from matches from time to time and invest in the outcome depending on the situation, that means looking for value odds in play.

Another reason to change my style of trading on sport events is lack of time. I am also working on various ideas about automated and semi automated betting and trading.
Currently I am working on a Betfair API framework for creating bots for some strategies I am investigating at the moment. The framework is in its final stages.
If this work is done I will start to create a bot for doing the baseball selections for me. Most of the money comes in a few minutes before the matches start and mostly this is during night in Europe. So I need someone doing the work for me every night.
I also have some more ideas about the horses. Therefore I will create some software doing some work on data mining and bets placing.

Another promising project I have started is a trading system for over/under markets in football. At the moment I am tracking my trades via Excel, but I am sure I will start this with real money soon.

The goal for the rest of 2009 for me is to progress on the software front and get one of the bots running to post some nice green figures on the blog. Hopefully the hard work will pay off.

Cheers, Loocie