Matched betting vs Trading

Bought a trading book off amazon the other day titled ‘Sports Trading On Betfair’ by Wayne Bailey for £9. I’m about a third of the way through it (slow reader), and would deffo recommend it to anyone who thinks they may be interested in trading.

If you have done a bit of match betting, then you are not going to find it at all difficult to understand, but if your new to match betting I would probably leave it until you have got a few offers under your belt.

The author has a nice writing style which is easy to read, and he does not try and hide just how difficult sports trading actually is. There are a few strategies in the book which I would imagine would either need to be adapted or executed with lots of skill in order to be profitable.

Do I think anyone could spend nice quid on a trading book and be instantly profitable trading sports markets, of course not. I am sure the info in the book can be found in several places on line, but its nice to have it all in one place in an easily digestible format.

If anyone else has read the book what did you think of it?

I attended the Racing Workshop on Friday.I haven’t had time to put what I ive learnt into practice yet as this time of year my part-time job becomes full-time until around mid November.

However as the workshop training revolves around Trading the final 5 to 10 minutes leading up to the start of the race. I should be able to squeeze in at least a few races a day and im really itching to get started.

The morning up to early afternoon (1st race time) was spent with Dan explaining and drawing charts on a board as well as showing us the software to use through individual monitors in front of us so we could see how he likes to operate. He’s a very funny guy and has a great ability at making himself understood.

He explained how he prepares himself in the hours leading up to the 1st race and why certain races will stand out to interest him to trade by looking out for certain indicators, market conditions etc .He also explained what indicators/conditions to use/look for to enter and exit trades.

The afternoon was then spent with Dan trading the afternoon race cards to show exactly what he had taught us in the morning. He also gave his reasons for why not to enter trades. One of the other guys brought in his own laptop to follow Dan’s Trades with moderate success.

During the day Peter Web would be in his office next door and was popping out between races to show printed screenshots results of the horses he had traded. At around 5pm he let us ask him any questions we like witch was most interesting.
Dan also gave us his personal email address so we can ask him any further question’s related to the workshop.

Will this workshop course make me a profitable trader? I have no idea yet. The way I look at it is I have only used a very small part of my matched betting/online poker profits to attend this workshop to try and learn something im glad to have stumbled across and really enjoy. Hopefully this will become another side-line for myself to earn a tax-free income ,all done from a Laptop.

Once I have Traded a reasonable amount of races,I shall post on here my results and general thoughts.

@ss112 thanks for producing a really excellent write up, I have booked a course with Steve Howe towards the end of next month. I shall do a similar write up once I have completed it. I have been watching lots of his and PWs youtube videos and things are becoming a little clearer now, but I still feel there are several pieces of the puzzle I am just not getting. I’m not sure if this is my fault or (I’m hoping) some information is being deliberately held back in the videos otherwise no one would bother taking any courses.

Like you I have not spent my MB profits and so have plenty of money to spend on some sports trading education. I have to admit I find trading far more interesting that match betting, even though its much easier to make money match betting than trading.

I will look out for your up date once you have had some time to put in to practice what you have learned, good luck and I hope it goes well for you.

Steve is mainly a swing trader from what I have seen on his videos, he has done PWs course himself but this was a few years after he had been trading successfully full time.

I can pretty much guess who the people where who you were advised to avoid if you were thinking of getting further training. I don’t think its a good idea to mention their names on a public forum though as I don’t want to get Matt into trouble. I don’t think its possible to send PMs on this site, at least I don’t think it is anyway.

Steve used to post a lot on the Betangel forum, but I think he stopped once he started doing some trading courses himself. I guess you could say he offers some competition to PW so it would be a bit cheeky to be posting on your competitors forum. I think he also has had a hand in developing Gruss trading software.

I am probably going to try out the Betangel interface even though its twice as expensive as Gruss, I believe its the industry standard. I would also one day like to delve into some of the automated trading systems, and there seems to be a lot of support available from BA for doing this.

Have you ever read Adam Heathcotes blog, if not give it a go when you have some time available, its quite inspiring what can be achieved if you are a gifted trader.

I can see how making a few trades before attending the course may be useful ss1412, but I doubt I will. I wouldn’t really know what I was doing so if I won or lost money it would really have just been down to luck, and although lets say I was to lose £50 or £100 I am not sure what I would learn from that really.

I understand what you are saying about its only when you have real money on the line that you will really learn, I do get that however I intend to approach trading the same way I did on line poker years ago.

I started playing one line poker for play money (this was mainly to learn the rules and the software), however I also said to myself that if I cant win when using play money then I wont bother ever using real money. As it happened it was extremely easy to win using play money as most (not all) of the players did not take the game seriously.

I then started playing at the smallest limit stakes then available (this was 1 and 2 cents) and carried on moving up as my skills improved. The highest I used to play at was $10/$20 limit where most of the player were better than me (this was six player limit holdem) but if I could get position on one or two really poor players I could usually do well. Most of my money however came from the $5/$10 and $3/$6 tables, most tables I could manage at one time would be four but usually three.

Over about a three year period I made tens (not hundreds) of thousands of dollars this enabled me to become debt free.

My intention is to follow a similar path with trading. ie. start off in practice mode using play money. If after a period of time I am just losing, then pack it in. Hold my hands up and admit trading is not for me.

If I have done well in practice mode then move on using real money, but very small stakes so that the wins or losses don’t mean very much. If I am winning then gradually increase the stakes and carry on. If I am losing again pack it in, and accept I am like the 95% of people that try sport trading.

I like learning new things, and I have had an interest in trading for many years. I failed when I tried financial trading, but in all fairness (at that time anyway) you couldn’t start with small sums of money you always had to put a lot on the line. This meant that I was always scared in most of my trades and looking back I had very little chance of succeeding.

Some people say using practice mode (except for leaning how the software works) and using tiny real money stakes is a waste of time because you wont take it seriously. Its only when the money means something that you will really lean how to trade. Now I think this is probably true for some people, but I think the way I learned to play poker, as explained above, showed that I can take trading seriously even if its either only play money or a few pennies on the line.

I am in no hurry to be making lots of money from sports trading, if it eventually happens then great I will be very happy. If it doesn’t then I wont be gutted, I will give it my best shot and if I fail so what. I will then look for something else to occupy myself.

@ The wall. I don’t know for sure because I’ve never tried laying the draw, but from what I have read although this strategy was at one time profitable over the long run (when the exchanges where in their infancy), soccer markets are now so efficient this in no longer the case.

If you have been doing this strategy successfully over the long term then fair play to you, perhaps its possible to still work if you have a really good football knowledge, and or access to reliable up to date soccer stats.

I think there is a thread on this site somewhere about this, but I look at lots of forums so it may have been somewhere else I read it.

@Dave_Jones ive only managed to get in 7 days trading since the 7th and only 3 of those days i have had the time to follow a whole afternoon of races.The other days ive only followed up to say 6-8 races. Ive felt my best trading has been when ive followed a whole afternoon,so jumping in and grabbing races just because i have a free hour is not the best when learning.Hopefully this will change once work slows down and i get into a routine.

Ive got Friday and Saturday off so shall try find some time to write up on my findings.

Your strategy of trading races with two fairly short priced favorites is good enough to help you notice patterns etc until you have attended your course