It's Time to Have a Bash in the Pre-Race Market!


Pre-Race Market

I tend to struggle at certain tracks, such as the SIS tracks over the jumps. Additionally, at some point I'll have to move over to Betdaq to avoid this poxxy 20% Premium Charge, which really eats into my profits. If I can make a fist of it in the pre-race markets then I'll be able to play from home, ideally somewhere on the coast, which will also help cut down on my daily expenses.
So I'll be firing up a new Betdaq account and sticking a few quid in and having a crack. If there are any good pre-races traders out there willing to give me a bit of advice then feel free to contact me! I know that Jack Birkhead from 'Sports Trading Journey' is one of the leaders in the field of pre-race market training so I'll be giving him a shout as I know that he has some new material about to be released. I've also been following the progress of Caan Berry over at 'Trading a Profit' and it seems like after a lot of hard work he's also cracked the pre-race market and is now in the process of offering 1 to 1 training.


Betdaq

Well I've already encountered the first hurdle! I've downloaded both Gruss for Betdaq and Geeks Toy for Betdaq and neither show the 'Last price' or 'Total matched' figures, which is obviously a pain in the arse. Apparently the Betdaq API doesn't return this info for some strange reason, so that's going to make things a bit tougher before I've even fucking started! Actually, I can't even believe that people can even trade with these missing, so I suppose most of the money on Betdaq is cross-matching between Betfair? I've contacted Betdaq about this issue and apparently they will be providing this data at some point in the future but can't be specific about a date.


Pre Race Dog and Horse Trading Results

The horse racing figures below are purely from where I've had an opportunity to pre-race trade in between my IR trading. The dog racing figures come from a combination of trading and also using a system I've devised which usually nicks me a few quid a day.


04/09 - won £4.03 on the horses and won £4.97 on the dogs = +£9.00. Total = +£9.00

05/09 - lost £0.98 on the horses and won £12.40 on the dogs = +£11.42. Total = +£20.42

06/09 - won £7.28 on the horses and lost £7.70 on the dogs = -£0.42. Total = +£20.00

07/09 - lost £8.24 on the horses and won £48.58 on the dogs = +£40.34. Total = +£60.34

Well, I'm only on my 4th day of trying this pre-race game and I've just fallen for the 'had it on the wrong channel and all of a sudden they went in-play!' ... whoops ... grabbed a quick £10 red and chastised myself for not paying attention!

08/09 - won £4.62 on the horses and won £29.12 on the dogs = +£33.74. Total = +£94.10

09/09 - won £28.25 on the horses. Total = +£122.35

I think that I'm also going to try to implement my greyhound system on the pre-race horse markets for small stakes to see if I get any joy. I'll run this alongside my pre-race trades and see how it goes.

10/09 - won £103.20 on the horses and lost £55.60 on the dogs = +£57.80. Total = +£180.15

I've somehow slipped back into trying to be more of a layer, despite the fact that I mentioned a while back that I was struggling with the laying but doing OK with the backing. So fuck knows what's happening, but I'm not having a particularly good day today so far!
I'm not really getting the opportunity to do much pre-race trading as I'm testing my greyhound system on the horses, and I'm currently trying this on every race that I can lay my hands on, from RSA to USA. I'll even try it on the Oz racing when I get a chance.

11/09 - won £12.82 on the horses and won £3.81 on the dogs = +£16.63. Total = +£196.81

Started OK today but then encountered a Betfair fuck-up on settlement where they took my money instead of paying me out! Quite frustrating and had to spend a while on their live chat trying to get it sorted while I missed a few races. Still waiting for my refund ... these are the sort of things that fuck with your concentration, so now I have to be double careful and play cautiously until it's sorted and I can relax again. 

12/09 - won £20.25 on the horses and lost £82.11 on the dogs = -£59.86. Total = +£136.95

Guess what? No fucking refund from Betfair yesterday because the old grey haired cunt of a judge at Redcar made a balls-up of the result and called the wrong 4th. By the time the stupid old senile fucker had realised his mistake Betfair had already settled the market and instead of winning £60 I lost £230. If I ever bump into the stupid old git in the street he'll get a good hard kick in the bollox!

13/09 - lost £7.59 on the horses and won £89.60 on the dogs = +£82.01. Total = +£218.96

There was a possibility that the weather was going to be OK this weekend, which meant that I could have had a final bash on the beers down on the coast. But the forecast has changed and Betfair nicked my spending money on 11/09 so looks like I'm going to have to spend the next 6 months beavering away in front of the screen..
Stop press: fuck me if Betfair didn't only go and put my £290 back into my account!! Good old Betfair eh? Fucking lovely!! All we need now is a couple of sunny days this weekend and I'll be back on the piss down by the coast. 

14/09 - lost £27.64 on the horses and won £214.02 on the dogs = +£186.38. Total = +£405.34

Just having one of those days where I'm seriously lacking in concentration. Keep finding myself watching Gordon Ramsey on CH4 and wishing my kitchen was that big and nice!

15/09 - lost £2.48 on the horses and lost £31.70 on the dogs = -£34.18. Total = +£361.16

16/09 - won £3.93 on the horses and won £6.98 on the dogs = +£10.91. Total = +£372.07

17/09 - won £5.47 on the horses and lost £54.71 on the dogs = -£49.24. Total = +£322.83

18/09 - won £0.55 on the horses and lost £63.72 on the dogs = -£63.17. Total = +£259.66

19/09 - won £9.04 on the horses and won £114.80 on the dogs = +£123.84. Total = +£383.50

Every time that I lay something early in a race I seem to do my dough. Maybe I'll have to have a closer look at some of my recent bets to see if this is true.

20/09 - won £1.19 on the horses and lost £27.30 on the dogs = -£26.11. Total = +£357.39

21/09 - lost £6.51 on the horses and lost £78.83 on the dogs = -£85.34. Total = +£272.05

22/09 - won £9.01 on the horses. Total = +£281.06

23/09 - won £5.02 on the horses and lost £4.24 on the dogs = +£0.78. Total = +£281.84

24/09 - lost £29.83 on the horses and won £32.77 on the dogs = +£2.94. Total = +£284.78

25/09 - won £0.41 on the horses and lost £2.60 on the dogs = -£2.19. Total = +£282.59

Just downloaded the 'Geeks Toy' and paid for a 3 month subscription. I've used it briefly before, but it'll probably take a few days to get the screen setup nicely.

26/09 - lost £27.46 on the horses and lost £0.79 on the dogs = -£28.25. Total = +£254.34

OK, I've been using the Geeks Toy to trade some pre-race horses and dogs (in between my usual IR punts) and this is what I've learnt:
  • you can't fire in 1 tick offset bets at random judged on BF graph price movements. It's quite obvious that any big price swings more than eradicate the small winnings of a few scalps. I think that I knew this beforehand but still had to try!
  • a technique that did work was to use the BF graphs to spot a drifter and fire in a lay bet at the head of the queue with 3 tick offset
  • trying to monitor and play on too many horses in each race makes my head explode!
  • entering bets a few ticks away from the action seems to work OK. It seems to be more effective when you let the action come to you instead of chasing prices?
  • in theory if something doesn't work then that should make it easier to find a technique that does work?
  • trying to do pre-race dogs, pre race horses and IR is impossible, so something will have to give
  • how do you avoid getting caught by a swing that goes against you?
  • my trading is haphazard at the moment ... I need to be more analytical
  • fuck me this pre-race game is impossible!!
  • no point trading the dogs ... just stick to my system
     
27/09 - lost £0.06 on the horses and won £356.44 on the dogs = +£356.38. Total = +£610.72

Well yesterday was an interesting day to say the least! I fired up the 'Geeks Toy' and was hammering in bets left, right and centre without really knowing what I was doing or having any clear plan. However during this frenzy I managed to compile a few notes (above) and these should help me to improve my game over the next few days. I also had a quick look at the 'Geeks Toy' forum to see if I could pick up any snippets of advice and stumbled across this post which is quite interesting.
There are 4 meetings during the day today so pre-race trading opportunities may be low as I'll be playing IR most of the time. However, my aim today is to be more focused, patient and analytical in order to string a few winning trades together - let's see how it goes! PS I'm currently on £6 a click.
 

  • I've changed the chart that I use from the Betfair graph to a streaming chart displaying the last traded price with a chart range of 240 seconds (4 minutes). This seems to give a more accurate representation of price movement over the standard Betfair chart.
  • I'm gradually becoming more and more convinced that I am now more efficient as a backer rather than a layer. I've mentioned this fact in previous posts, but I sometimes still have to remind myself during the race!
  • I'm wondering whether or not it's an advantage to know who are the main gambling stables? Stuart Williams landed a touch today so I'll put him on my list
  • I also need to understand the best  times to enter and exit the market with regards to proximity of the off time?
     
28/09 - won £1.04 on the horses and won £38.43 on the dogs = +£39.47. Total = +£650.19
  • started betting/trading a few dog races this morning and gave decided to stick with my system on the profitable tracks and trade on the others.
  • I need to find a way to access the bookmaker dog shows.
  • Pallasator - missed this opportunity as the favourite sweated badly and played up at the start. Price drifted from 3.0 to 3.8 in a flash!

29/09 - lost £1.08 on the horses. Total = +£649.11

30/09 - won £0.38 on the horses and won £11.50 on the dogs = +£11.88. Total = +£660.99

Had a few beers last night and now feel like a sack of shite! I'm trying to persevere and nick a few quid, but it's hard when you're nursing a hangover.













September ... time to bet like a MAN!!


Well it's September already and we've already seen the best part of the year in terms of the number of UK races per month.

So, after an alcoholic fuelled Summer I've decided that it's time to knuckle down (well after one more visit to the coast) and start betting like a man.


Outside the 'Foresters' @ Deal


Time to Start Backing

Over the last few months I've gradually become more of a backer, so I've tweaked my Gruss buttons and will now be looking to get involved earlier in each race, especially once I get back into studying some race replay videos and getting to know the form a bit better. This will be crucial at tracks like Wolverhampton where the track mongrels have a distinct advantage as they have the absolute live pics, but it seems that many  don't get involved until they can see the whites of the leaders eyes.


Studying the Form

Having previously studied hundreds of hours of race replays I've realised that it can be time consuming, tiring and pretty boring. I started the year coming into the office at 09:00 'ish each morning, but eventually noticed that I was knackered and making mistakes, especially during the evening meetings. So my new strategy will be to concentrate on studying the running style of just the favourite in each AW (All Weather ... Kempton, Lingfield, Southwell and Wolverhampton) race by watching the race replays. This will mean that I can probably condense my AW study time into maybe 90 minutes per day. I should really be doing this form study in the evening, especially as we approach the months were the UK racing finishes by 17:00, however, I might decide to trade the USA racing in the evening, I'll have to think about this over a few beers this weekend. Additionally, I also need to get a basic grasp of the jump form, as I did get caught quite a few times earlier in the year laying horses that looked well beat only to find that they were dour stayers that rallied towards the finish, and sometimes even won the race when I had layed them for a place! So I need to complete my glossary of abbreviations that I use, i.e 'R' indicates that a horse generally runs on, 'F' indicates that a horse finds little or nothing in a finish, etc. This should help me making some of the basic mistakes that I made earlier in the year.


Betting Like a Man

I've found it hard to shake off my risk adverse style of betting, so once again I'll be trying to focus on becoming a bit more aggressive.


Leisure Time

I'm obviously not going to try and spend all of my time fucking about with horse racing. There are 2 leisure pursuits that I have in my life at the moment and that's weight training and playing the guitar. I train in the mornings, usually before I get into the office. Now that the beer drinking season is over (well for me anyway) I really need to get the training and diet back on track as I've put on a few kilos of lard over the last few weeks.
I think that I'll probably aim to get into the office about 2 hours before racing starts in order to get ready for the day. Might even bring my guitar in and have a little practice between studying the form (I'll post some videos on YouTube of my guitar practice and we'll see how I progress) ... any requests?