A couple of nice recent results have really helped to fire my enthusiasm. The hours that I spend actually trading are usually OK and still quite fun, especially when I'm winning. However, it's the boredom of keeping my horse notes up-to-date that sometimes gets on my tits.
My recent couple of days down on the coast coupled with a break from the gym and the slightly improved weather have give me some time to recharge my batteries. I'd been meaning to take a closer look at the pre-race trading videos put up at ItsAMugsBlog. Now I have spent many hours looking at material from Jack Birkhead and Caan Berry but I've never really been able to give it my undivided attention, as most of the time I would be trading in-running whilst the next pre-race market is forming.
Well over the last few months my trading has been more focussed on playing early in the win market and then I sometimes jump into the place market for the latter half of the race. So now I often find myself opening a market with 2 or 3 minutes to the off, and this is where maybe I could be trading, but I have always found it hard previously to get a grip of what is happening with only 2 or 3 minutes to the off.
So last night I finally had the chance to look at some of the videos posted by ItsAMugsBlog and they seemed to make sense. This guy approaches the art of pre-race trading in a slightly different angle from what I have learnt from Jack and Caan and the combination of all of this information made me rethink the way that I had approached pre-race trading in the past. So what I'm going to do is have a play over the next few days, for small stakes of £5 a click, and see whether I can make any progress.
29/05
May Total = +£2210.79
+£49.57. It felt like I had a good day today and I was a bit surprised that I only made just under £50. It was maybe that I felt pretty comfortable during a few pre-race trades, albeit for only £5 a click. So although I didn't win that much I felt as though the day went well and was pretty productive in terms of my foray once again into the pre-race market.
30/05
May Total = +£2520.12
+£308.33. One race made the day today! Late on in Ireland and I spotted a horse that was tiring but hanging on in fourth place over the last hurdle (the place market was first four) and I tried a crafty back for £50 odd at 1.5. So I was pleasantly surprised when I got matched at 7.0! Happy days! So happy in fact that I then had a quick dabble in the evening greyhound markets and nicked an extra £5!
31/05
May Total = +£2545.40
+£44.28. Not a particularly good day, especially for a Saturday. I think that I prefer the more volatile markets and the stronger Saturday markets don't really seem to suit my style of trading.
PS My mathematics failed somewhere along the line when adding my monthly total so the last few days don't add up correctly but I can't be bothered looking back to see where my maths went wrong.
Hi,
ReplyDeleteI've been following your blog for a while now, I was wondering what strategies do you use? Do you just do inplay, back and then lay it off?
Hiya Duncan.
ReplyDeleteI'm mostly in-running at the moment. I tend to trade in the win market in the first half of most races and then switch to the place market for a late back or lay.
If you look at my results for 29/05 you'll see that in the 20:50 @ Sandown I won £9.59 in the win market which was an early back-to-lay trade and then won £4.62 by backing something late on at short odds in the place market. That is my usual plan of attack but I've also dabbled with the pre-race market and as you can see by my last posts I'm trying to give that another shot when time permits.
Hope this helps - Dave.
Dave, do you have any advice on trading on the Grand National? would you advise limbering up with a quick run round the city in a black bin liner, followed by a Chicken Phal and then getting your wife to place the trade for you?
DeletePhil
Hi Phil.
ReplyDeleteYou should only ever run around the City in a black bin liner at around 03:00 in the morning. Just make sure that the Extel FS tape is mounted and the rest just runs automatically. But remember to wake up in time to run SMF and Logrec before the day shift arrive.
How's the swing big boy??
Cheers - Dave.
When i use it, still finding the canal :) - Greg put me on the trail of your blog, he was not sure what it was about but as a fellow Betfair user, it all made sense when i saw it.
ReplyDeleteBe good to catch up sometime and have a gas and a beer (or two) I still work in city in IT, dropme a mail to, and sorry about this, i could not resist the temptation, hallodandywinsthenational@gmail.com
PHIL
I think that it always cost me £10 for the round and the same for the number of balls that I always lost!
ReplyDeleteYep I haven't see Greg for yonks. I suppose that the fact that he is in Oz doesn't help.
It's always good to find another Betfair user, hopefully you're smashing it to bits?
I noticed that you attended one of the reunions a couple of years back (saw the pics) and that youth serum is working well!
Yep we'll arrange a sherbert or 2 for sure. Do you keep in touch with any of the other 'faces' from back in the day? I've popped down to The Angel once or twice for a couple of beers and have run into Jason Cooper, Julian Pitt, Nick Coull, John Glombek, Ian Balfour and all of the usual suspect. However a few of the guys haven't been seen for years.
Blimey Hallo Dandy eh? Fuck me that was 1984!!
Cheers - Dave.