Monday 25 April 2011

Still No Real Improvement

It's been a disappointing weekend. In order to trade successfully, you need a clear head with no pressure. Unfortunately, the reason why I've been failing is I don't have the mindset I had last year. This time last year with Roland Garros approaching I had over £4k in my account which I managed to build from £500 in February 2010. Back then I did not owe anyone money and there was no added pressure of knowing that if I had a bad few days, it would not have that much of an impact.

With regards to this week, and to cut a long story short, on Thursday I had a £150 starting bank, and by the time the Super Rugby match between the Melbourne Rebels and the Highlanders had finished on Saturday morning, I built it up to £800+ again. Fast forward 7 hours and I was back down to the £150 mark again - due to losing on a market I usually do so well at. Frustrating. Frame betting on the Snooker this year has been difficult. The trick with frame betting is to look at when it appears unlikely that 'player b' will go onto win the frame. This could be because one of the key balls is on the side cushion making it difficult for him to clear up. This year, I've found top class players such as the likes of Ding Junhui and John Higgins are losing frames from near unlosable positions - when the table is in their favour and unlikely their opponent will go on to win the frame. Just through carelessness. This is only one of the differences I've found compared to previous years. A bit like the Darts, someone out there is beating the Betfair clock by a good few seconds.

Despite it being a difficult week, I've had the odd laugh or two - John Higgins having Betfred (the sponsor of the tournament) on his waistcoat. He must be laughing as well in private because it's the last thing he needed emblazoned on his waistcoat after the so called match fixing/betting scandal he was involved in recently.

Overall, we're almost at May and I've still not had any real improvement this year. I'm worse off than where I was in January. There's no point lying about things, it's not a good position. However, I'm confident things will improve significantly, so let's see what happens in the coming months.

9 comments:

  1. Have you tried LTD?
    Seems a good tactic!?

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  2. Hi,

    What is LTD out of interest?

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  3. follow my selections in a bot, with level stakes you will make 20 points a week.

    i will let you know the filters to apply to them.

    ReplyDelete
  4. You need to stop harping on about the past and figure out what works now. Markets on betfair continually evolve and what worked last year won't neccessarily work this year.

    Enough people were telling you last year that the amount of markets you were playing and your strategy meant you were heading for a fall. You've got to stop looking to make it all back in a few hits and slowly build up with something that you can repeat time after time. It's easy enough to trade a fiver a race and 200+ races a week soon mounts up week in week out

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  5. I wish I did have the mindset I had last year, as that's when I was most successful. That's why I talk about the added pressure above, last year when I made all that money, I could build gradually knowing that there was nothing negative going on in other parts of my life.

    I have a lot of catching up to do, but I won't do this by chasing. I am going to have to go as I am, and when I get to 1k again stop and think about things. I had the perfect opportunity on Saturday morning to stop as I had 830 odd pound in my account built from 150 in 2 days. If I would have took a step back and waited for an hour or two things might have been different, but I wanted to keep things going. I have no doubt I will get to that number again in the next few weeks, so it's all about doing things differently once I do.

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  6. So easy on paper isn't it.....

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  7. Thing is you've no catching up to do John. You're in front on the lifetime profit so any recent losses shouldn't make any difference plenty of us have losing weeks months etc Thinking of it as lost money only instils that chase mentality but you need to look long term not at your previous trades just the future ones.

    And yes everything is so much easier on paper but once you get that winning mindset back things will only start to look up.

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  8. You're right, I am up lifetime since 2007 - about +16k, although I am not sure of the precise figure, I will have to find out from Betfair in the week. That's no good now in truth as I spent most of it last year, probably a little carelessly in hindsight.

    I blew around 5k when I went to the US Open in NY 6 months ago, as well as The Open Golf at St Andrews and Wimbledon last year. At Wimbledon I was tipping the London Cabbies 30 pounds a time when I was there everyday last year.

    So I'm not the prolific betting loser I seem to be, although I have lost a lot in the last 4/5 months, mainly because of bank size issues. I know that I will be fine once I start using a decent bank size again (5k for example) But it's getting there that's the problem.

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  9. You built up from a bank size of £500 in Feb 2010, a while back you were stating you only needed £500, now that's upped to £5K.

    Stop looking for excuses and spend the time looking for edges, if you did it once you can do it again but not whilst you continually try and find excuses to blame things on. You've got to focus on winning again at least you spent that £16K and didn't give it back like some have.

    ReplyDelete