Creatures of habit/Back in the Black

From when we wake up right up until we put our head on the pillow, we are creatures of habit. The food we eat, the drinks we drink etc. We are comfortable  with what is comfortable, unless we forcefully change something in our lives our trend of the norm will continue, day in day out until we drop. 

As Biggie Smalls once said, "we can't change the world, unless we change ourselves" 

This habit or routine in which we are comfortable applies to all aspects of life, from brushing our teeth, doing our food shop, making tea/coffee and it even applies to trading on Betfair. If we become habitual losers trading, we will be habitual losers trading, unless we forcefully change the way in which we trade. 

By change the way in which we trade, I mean we have to sometimes go outside our comfort zone. An example of this would be to test out different trading opportunities. Be it by trading differently (stake size, swing trading/scalping, picking different spots in which to trade) or even experimenting with different sports. 

I myself have forcefully changed the way I trade. Up until a few months ago my main sport on which to trade was horse racing. Overall I was in the red. I could go 3/4 months winning on the pre horse race markets, but all it took was a string of bad trades to lose all my previous winnings. This was a ongoing cycle in which I was fed up with! 

As of 6 months ago I have forcefully removed trading horses from my routine and I have seen the benefits. I now trade on cricket, tennis, NBA, golf and football. I had traded on all the sports listed before apart from cricket, but they were mainly my secondary sports on which to trade on. The biggest boost in my trading P&L has come from cricket and tennis. There was a steep learning curve for myself as I had never really been into cricket so I had to learn the rules etc from the beginning, it's an on going education but one I am enjoying thoroughly. 

By removing horse racing from my trading routine I have had 6 months of pure bliss. I'm officially back in the black. 

New Twitter Account @TradingKO

Just a quick one. I've set up a new twitter account, I think it will be easier to share my views and trades via twitter. So feel free to add me

@TradingKO

Horse Tip

One horse tip today:

15:20 Yarmouth:  Virginia Galilei

Have backed him at 5.9 and have put a lay bet in @ 1.8

Should be held up 3/4 of the way back, then do all its running in the last 3 furlongs.

Learning the Tennis trade

Managed to trade about 3 days this week, mainly on Wimbledon but managed to get some horse races in to.

I haven't really traded tennis "properly" before, it was more guess work than anything but this week I've managed to learn the trade (as much as you can in a week).

Here's a few rules that have helped me:

• If trading on woman's tennis and the match goes to a third set don't trade on it, unless you have been watching from the start, and with half stakes. As there are much bigger swings towards the end of the match, which is understandable.
• Men's tennis definitely favour's backing the server.
• A lot of people fancy laying the first set winner, so far I haven't seen anything wrong with this. You can sometimes take advantage of this by laying the winner straight after the set point, the price usually gets pushed up 2-3 ticks by people trying to lay the winner of the set, so you can definitely capitalise on this.

Hopefully manage to trade on the rest of Wimbledon to learn a few more tricks of the trade! Won't manage to trade tomorrow as I've got a simulator session, I'm currently completing my Instrument Rating down in Waterford (Ireland). 

Right and on to tonight.......I have no idea what is going to happen (Spain v's Italy) 

I've just had one cheeky bet....on......Italy....first corner! 

And i've also managed to get a free bet on Italy 2-1, so will see what happens!

So you think....

Pure and utter class! I tried to get more matched but he was getting backed like crazy during the race! Also had a nice winner with Joviality earlier on to. No trading today just pure punting!

England V's Ukraine

Here's my screen at Half-time. The only bet I have placed is £4 on 1-0 England, the others I managed to trade them.
England are playing shocking at the minute (or Ukraine are playing really well, it's arguable) "Wayne" look's like he hasn't touched a ball in a long time......

If England come out parking the bus again Ukraine might be able to knick one.

Trading wise: I'm going to stick with what I have set up at the minute, I may top up the 1-1 and 1-0 but that's about it.

Ciao back to the game!

Holland Game

Just a shot of my current screen. I'm going to leave it for now and enjoy the match!

Blog is back....

Right it's been awhile......

I've spent the last year living in Florida completing my Private Pilot's License, Commercial Pilot's License and ATPL exam's. (excuse me if that's all jiberish to you). Basically, everything went swimmingly!
Now I'm out the other side, back in Ireland, I'm just in the middle of doing my Instrument Rating. Which i should have completed by the end of August (weather permitting!)
But the "bad" side is I currently have a lot of down time. So to keep myself occupied i have deposited a nice round figure into Betfair of £200 and as of today i have started trading again.

Day One: Overall went very well, just getting into the swing of things again. I've got a bit of a new preference regarding graphs and my set up but I will talk about that in later post's.

If anyone is still following the blog just give me a quick comment below to let me know your there :)

Ciao for now.

First solo!

Wow well what a few weeks! They certainly flew by! Excuse the pun!

Just a quickish update with some nice fancy pictures :)

7 weeks here have gone so quick and today i just completed my first solo flight! This basically involves doing 3 landings and take-off's, all which are done in the "pattern" which is basically a rectangle.

It was a great feeling after the first landing, just knowing i had flown the plane all on my own with no input from my instructor. So off with the old epaulettes and on with the new one striped ones!

On the trading front, i actually have managed a few sessions which have been ticking me over nicely! Thanks to a "UK" ip address!

That's all for now but i will hopefully post some more photos/videos soon so watch this space. Hope your trading is going well.

Ciao

And it begins....

Flew over to the sunny states on Saturday to start my pilot training. So far its all been induction and paperwork, so have had time to catch some rays and get to know the place. All great so far and the sun is shining everyday, better than back home! Will hopefully try keep the blog updated as much as i can but obviously it will be to do with flying instead of trading as betfair is banned out here!!!!! Anyone any tips how to have a bet please let me know!

That's all for now but will try get some pics ups/video over the coming months.

Best of luck to everyone trading!
Ciao for now

Eurovision!

Just a quick one! 

Here was my set up for trading the Eurovision winning market.....Brother on one laptop with map of europe open and my laptop open with the market open.

My overall plan was to back countries that were close to the country giving the points out.......as easy as pie!

Made a tasty £90 for 20minutes work!

Same time next year me thinks!!

France were favourites @ around 2.7 before the start.....when i saw them sing i wondered why the hell where they! And the voters agreed!

Anywho off to play some backgammon (more like learn how to play, because betfair have recently added it to their arcade)

Time for some Green tea

Up early today and trying green tea for the first time. Have heard all the benefits it can have, so I've jumped on the bandwagon! Please god don't make it taste crap!

Managed to trade the Boston V's Miami game last night in the playoffs. What a game it was. Miami trailed for 99% of the game then Lebron managed to kill the game at the end and somehow they won by 10. I managed to make £22 on the game in the 3rd quarter, so was happy just to watch the rest of the game. In the first quarter i was down £14 but manged to crawl my way back into the green scalping on timeouts and on breaks. There is so much room to this in basketball its crazy especially in the 2nd half as the swings are more drastic if the game is within a few points. Generally the price will move 5-6 ticks correcting itself on timeouts. As people sometimes over estimate the swing in-play. Have a go at it, if you have time you will see what i mean.

Anyhow, I'm off for a run now on the treadmill. Time to sweat!

Will be trading both the tennis and horses later, my bank at the minute sits on just over £100. I will be building my bank from now on and wont be withdrawing any of it, as i am off to Florida in 9 days to start pilot training so won't be needing the money from betfair. Hopefully i can make it up to a decent amount.

Ciao.

Off across the pond

Driving home to Ireland today from London.
So i miss all the racing! Nice 6 hour drive awaits me!

I've had one solid bet today that i thought i'd share with you all.

18:40 Punchestown

Carrigmartin (6.2) Win

Will finish very strong, have put a cover bet E/w just incase.

Ciao
x

EW Multiple Take Two!

1 Bath 28th Apr - 14:10 Backing: Haulit @ SP
2 Bath 28th Apr - 14:40 Backing: Green Pearl @ SP
3 Bath 28th Apr - 15:10 Backing: Bateleur @ SP
4 Bath 28th Apr - 16:10 Backing: Rohlindi @ SP

EW Multiple Come on you beauties!

1	Ascot 27th Apr - 14:00 Backing: Magic City @ SP
2	Ascot 27th Apr - 14:30 Backing: Hezmah @ SP
3	Ascot 27th Apr - 15:05 Backing: St Moritz @ SP
4	Ascot 27th Apr - 15:40 Backing: The Betchworth Kid OR Askar Tau @ SP
5	Ascot 27th Apr - 16:15 Backing: Libranno @ SP

£2 EW multiple

Returns: £498

Come on you beauties!

Betfair you pile of....

Just an email i sent to Betfair, waiting for their standard lame copy paste response, something along the lines of....

"We are working hard to fix this technical issue bla bla bla...."

 

Hi 

Can you give an approximate time as to when the betfair site will be back up? 

p.s. can you give them lads up in engineering a slap as these technical issues are beyond a joke!

Thank you :)

Just a quicky...

I'm off to the land of Nod in a moment so i will make this quick!

Not the best day for my cheeky bets at Cheltenham! But all is hunky dory in the land of trading!
Was a scrappy day for me trading, i started the day not focused and it quickly resulted in a loss on the first race! So i went off, shook myself together, had a cold shower (not that i wanted one! The boiler wasn't working!) and had a quick "energy" snack. I managed to recoup my losses and make a small profit of £34.80 for the day, just in time to as i had football.

Haven't had time to look at tomorrows card properly so will give my cheeky bets a miss. I'm going to try and make these quality bets from now on, not just hit and hoppers (there will be some reason behind them! May it be the horses name sounds good? I joke!)

I fancy a good day for Graham Lee at Ayr tomorrow! And Jim Goldie normally has a good day up there.
So i will look to have some E/w bets when the two are combined.
Lets see how they get on!

Ciao

Cheltenham take two!

Had a good day yesterday with my selections so have had another look through the card and picked out a few more cheeky bets......

14:10 2m1f Nov Hrd

Waiting till tomorrow to see what the place odds are on Higgys Ragazzo. 2.48 Place, 2nd WIN

Can't personally see Third Intention winning this race.

Will probably be a battle between Ruby and AP.

No big bet for me. Small Place on Occasionally Yours ( will take SP ) LOSS, Pushed along from along way out

14:45 2m5f Hcap Chs

Win bet - Ravethebrave (7/1) LOSS

E/w bet - Mr Syntax ( 13/1)   ODDS CHANGE (19/1) LOSS

15:20 2m5f Hcap Hrd

Win bet - Ocean Transit ( 7/1 ) ODDS CHANGE ( 9/1 ) LOSS, Didn't travel well at all.

 E/w bet- Diklers Oscar ( 15/1 ) ODDS TAKEN AT 15/1 now 8/1 LOSS, well backed before hand but didn't jump well

15:55 3m1f Hcap Chs

Win bet - Bellflower Boy ( 4/1 ) LOSS 3rd

E/w bet - Bai Zhu ( 5/1 ) LOSS 4th

That's all for me for Cheltenham for now may edit post tomorrow if i see any other opportunities.

Thankfully trading the races before the off normally covers my bets so its a win win.

(ODDS SUBJECT TO CHANGE)

On another note: When i was trading on Newmarket today (in-running) i noticed there was a pretty strong bias for the inner stalls (1-3), this applied to most races under 7f.

As a tester i am going to back all 3 inside horses from the off on the ;

15:35 6f Listed

Stall 1 - Himalya (13/1)

Stall 2 - Brave Prospector ( 36/1 )

Stall 3 - Poets Place ( 18/1 )

I will put a lay bet in @ half the odds and see where it gets me.

This will more than likely go Pete Tong! But hey ho worth a go!
All horse's traded lower than their SP's however none traded @ half there odds so small loss but made it back by trading pre race.

As for todays racing i made a tidy some of £93.80 trading.

I also made £9 trading the Chicago @ New York Basketball game.

Plus i made £12 trading 2 tennis games around midday.

So a good day all round.

Hope it goes as well tomorrow!

Couple of Cheeky Cheltenham bets today

Just decided to a have a few cheeky bets today on the first 3 Cheltenham races. I've picked one horse to win and one horse E/w in each race.

14:10 2m4f Nov Hrd

Win bet - Bold Addition ( 4/1 ) WIN

E/w - Bottman ( 8/1 ) 2nd WIN

 14:45 3m4f Hcap Chs

Win bet - Toby Jug ( 5/1 ) LOSS (FELL)

E/w - Shammy Buskins ( 7/1 ) 2nd WIN

15:20 2m4f Hcap Hrd

Win bet - Kings Legacy ( 5/1 ) LOSS 2nd

E/w - My Shamwari ( 17/1 win bet on Betfair, 5/1 place bet Betfair) 1st WIN

Lets see how they get on!

Best of luck everyone trading today.

Midnight tennis

Couldn't get to sleep so had a look to see if there were any decent tennis matches on to trade. Thankfully there was! So that kept me occupied for 20minutes or so. Have greened out for £5 just now, decided not to be greedy!

Here's a quick print screen of my set-up: 

Aside from starting to trade tennis more frequently, i decided to play around with The Geeks Toy a bit more.

I've been right clicking all over the shop and have been looking at all the different options that are available. I really don't know why i didn't do this in the first place because the standard layouts (which can be accessed by right clicking on the ladder) are just awesome! I now use different layouts depending on which sport i am trading on. In the snapshot above i am using the In-Play layout, which is a great asset for tennis trading as you get to witness the swings more accurately and also you can green up on the ladder itself by clicking just to the right of the odds, which is a great feature.

The layout which i have found most helpful, surprisingly to me, is the Financial layout. I use this solely for pre horse race trading. I have started pre horse trading again since i have found this layout and it has helped me leaps and bounds, having the graphs directly under the ladder and candlesticks to the side of the odds of each horse is great. Everything is in clear view and you can process the numbers a hell of a lot quicker. 

To summarise, the geeks toy is quite possibly "the best in the world".

In my last post i said i would upload another video, however camtasia crashed on me and started having an epileptic fit on my screen so i was forced to remove it as it had clearly had to much to drink and had to be escorted off the premises. But all is well! As i have found a new piece of kit which records just as quick and also doesn't cause my screen to lag which is great! So will try and get a video up as soon as.

Regarding the pilot training front, i have to go to the US embassy Thursday to go for a interview for my visa. When i was filling out the online form there was one Question that made me stop and just think......really?

Q. Have you ever been involved with a terrorist organisation?

       (   )  YES

       (   )  NO

.....what terrorist in their right mind would tick yes.........i think the Americans have been watching to much of Liar Liar!

Anywho off to bed!