Well first of all my experiment to increase turnover did not go well. I had a handful of good priced winners to start but after my final weeks prem selections failed to profit, I went on quite a streak of losers. The prem selections have been very profitable this season and finished with a more than respectable 17.88% and had QPR held out an extra 90 seconds I would have been well in profit for the day and looking at a final ROI of near 25%. As highlighted by this game, the difference between winning and losing can often be very marginal and betting is no different. The losing bets that followed this weren’t random bets, they were bets from profitable tipsters but whom were on a poor run and together with a poor run of my own saw a big loss after 4 days betting and a loss of about 15% of my betting funds, I halted proceedings. I wasn’t wasting hours trading but there was still some cost, putting the bets on and investing energy checking results etc.
Obviously I didn’t give this long enough and my fortunes could well have turned around the next few days or by the end of the week /month but I realised that 2% of my bank on a bet was too big for this approach and that it wasn’t for me. I read on the betfair forum that one user who turns over 3 million a year and bets 0.02% has lost half of his bank before despite betting such a small % and even though it turned around for him pretty quickly and he has a 2% ROI, I realised that this method is not for me. I don’t think I could cope with such huge swings even if long-term I did prove to have an edge.
So I begrudgingly decided to go back to the tried and tested tennis trading as I had a couple of free days. Low and behold I made all the money back that I had lost and won half again, making a profit in 15 out of 16 markets. This was by no means risky trading as I had a fixed liability on each match and this was no one-tic trading but taking advantage of pretty decent swings in the markets. I am actually really enjoying the tournament in Rome and it’s enthused me again about trading, especially as I have realised it suits me better and I find it much easier to profit short and long-term. I do wish that I didn’t have to spend quite so long doing it but I have figured if I can continue to do so well, then there’s no reason why I can’t up my fixed liability and make the same or money trading less markets.
I think the key is to be selective with the trading. It’s easy to get all obsessive about trading every match but the fact is there are 1000s of tennis matches per year and you really can’t trade them all. From now on I will only trade if a) I wanted to watch the match in the first place b) If I’m not doing anything else or don’t have anything else I need to do with my time. To do well at betting you have to turn over a lot of money. You can do this by getting the best price on a handful of ‘dead certs’, which I don’t have the balls or funds for or grind away making 1000s of small bets to show a decent return and I don’t think I have the patience or confidence that I can do this. My stats tell me that if you gave me £100 and I had to turn it into £200, I would be very confident of doing this trading in a short space of time with sensible liabilities but betting to achieve this would take me a hell of a lot longer. For me trading is definitely more lucrative than betting and aside from my tip of the day and prem selections I shall be betting no more!