Archive for March, 2010

That’s more like it! Today was easily the best day of the week so far, but not without it’s cock ups.

In the first race I was pushing for a decent total, but successfully went in-play, again, when I forgot to SP my final orders in the market, Doh! I had some frantic sorting out to do, but escaped. It was entirely my fault and I felt a bit of a wally. Things got better from there though and I had easily my best day of the week so far and a better day than last year. I also managed to get my biggest race of the week and the biggest turnover, so things are building nicely for today.

The feature race yesterday looked to be a good dry run for today. The markets look fairly similar and hopefully they will trade in a similar manner but whether that happens is another thing. I don’t think Cheltenham has been easy this year, but it’s been far from a disappointment.

My foray onto Betdaq continued again yesterday on the early races and it was a bit of a eureka moment when I managed to beat my Betfair total in the early race. While overall matched bet volume is lower on Betdaq, that seems to help in these markets. I think it’s the Goldilocks effect, not too much, not too little, just about right. There is so much money on Betfair that the fill rate, a key trading component, is very long and you end up taking a lot of risk. If the market is too thin, a common occurrence on Betdaq, then your exit becomes a problem. What you need is volume, but not too much and a decent fill rate. If you can’t get on with the overflowing Betfair markets then give Betdaq a go as that seem particulary conducive to trading at Cheltenham.

I’m really looking forward to the Gold Cup today. Let’s hope if performs from the trading perspective as well as a racing spectacle. There is some good daily analysis going on in the forum that you should check out if you are interested.

Good luck whatever you are doing!

Well I don’t think I will reach last years peak after another tougher than average day. I think I have too much ground to make up now in the remaining days. But it’s still going to be a good week, just not as good as it could have been! You can’t win them all.

The difference between yesterday and the Tuesday was that I really struggled to get any traction in the markets. By traction I mean you need to get a few decent orders through before you can really let rip and that rarely happened yesterday. I beat my best result from Tuesday so I am still moving up nicely to getting a really big individual race total, but my strike rate on the non Cheltenham cards was miserable. I often don’t do the interim races but having achieved a clean sweep on Tuesday I felt confident I could do the same yesterday, I was wrong.

Huntingdon was my complete nemesis yesterday and I only managed to win on one race. A truly dreadful result and quite rare to be honest. I don’t know why it didn’t perform but I will have a look this morning and try and understand why. It will make me cautious today for sure. I think today could be a little tricky, we have two cards standing out all on their own and that’s not helpful. But the actual races look quite well defined from a trading perspective, so I hope I can dig out a few decent results.

There was a huge positive out of yesterday. Back in the office and behind multiple monitors with Betdaq’s “We matched £21m” ringing in my ears, I gave the Cheltenham markets a really good bash on Betdaq and they worked a dream! Where the Betfair markets were stuffed with cash and hardly moving with low fill rates, the Betdaq markets were much more conducive to lower risk trading and my orders were getting taken comfortably and the  profits fololowed. As there are no transaction or premium charge the figures look pretty good when you put them next to the Betfair figures. I strongly suggest you give it a try as you may find it more suitable than the tougher Betfair markets. You can run both Betdaq and Betfair versions at the same time if you wish.

As always, good luck whatever you are doing.

Well that was interesting to say the least. Half an hour before the first race of the day my internet connection suddenly goes down. Up till that point it was a carefully planned day, but with that, a chaotic period ensued. The internet going wasn’t a major problem as I have back up plans. I have a laptop with mobile broadband, just in case. But I also have back up locations I can switch to. The chaos was simply that I went from a comfortable environment to an uncomfortable one and I only had minutes to do it!

The day was fine overall but it took a little while for me to get into my stride and that meant I fluffed the first race and didn’t get a decent result out of it. But on the day I had a clean sweep on all races including the lesser cards. I got nothing stunning out of the day, depending on your definition of stunning, so I failed to match last year. But given the circumstances, I am pretty pleased. My best individual result I’ve posted below. Even that wasn’t without drama, as the total would have been bigger if I had exited correctly. As it was, I managed to go inplay on that and dropped a little on the total.

Got a mailer from Betdaq last night and they reckoned they matched over £21m yesterday. When I return to my usual workplace today, I’ll be sure to give them a decent stab. I only had two screens to work from yesterday so I didn’t get the opportunity! Today includes seven races, so that will be interesting. But the first race doesn’t look like an opportunity.

Best of luck whatever you are doing, hope you have a good one!

Well it’s here again, but what does it hold in store?

To be honest I have no idea and I try my best not to set any expectations ahead of an event, I just try do my best. It’s nice to have a few clues as to how you are going to trade something, but these big events come around so infrequently you only really know how it ‘s going to behave when you are actually in the thick of it. I think you are much better off focusing on doing a good job at the time rather than trying to out think it.

Last years was blinding though and I smashed my best ever total for a week, something I haven’t seen since. I think I will dine out on the memory of last year for some time! If you remember my post from last year, I had a bit of a cock up on day one when I busted my exposure limit on the account I was using. No risk of that this year as I already phoned Betfair to whack it up to some ridiculous limit. After that stalled start last year, the rest of the week was a breeze.

In hindsight though, I think me and market just fell into the right place last year. I say that because I had some sticky points during the rest of the year. Royal Ascot was below expectations and it sort of showed me that I can’t going in all guns blazing unless the market is willing to respond. Prior years at Cheltenham have been up and down. 2008 was plagued with bad weather and that ruined things big time. 2007 was fairly comfortable but I wasn’t adventurous enough. This year I have a few new tricks up my sleeve, so it will be interesting to see if I can perform well. One thing I am not going to do is set myself a target of what I achieved last year. I need everything to fall into place for that to happen and I don’t think that’s a realistic expectation.

I’ve had a good preparation in the build up to this week. I was having a rough time at the start of the month but have settled down now and my strike rate has started to climb. I peaked at the end of last week when I managed to get a really nice run of 49 consecutives winners. I had a chilled weekend with a party on Saturday night and the kids staying with my brother in law overnight. We all went out for lunch at a posh restaurant on Sunday, were hopelessly pampered and then we all watched a film in the afternoon before pottering around the garden. I feel really chilled and in the perfect mindset for a good week. Let’s hope it delivers. Good luck whatever you are doing!!!