Betfair scalping for beginners

We were all new to Bet Angel once. Ask any question you like here and fellow forum members promise not to laugh. Betfair trading made simple.
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dannycutts
Posts: 71
Joined: Sat Sep 17, 2016 9:10 pm
Location: West Sussex

A very useful thread... best spent 2 hours this week so far :D
Bluesky
Posts: 420
Joined: Mon Sep 19, 2016 9:26 pm

mugsgame wrote:This is a post I put up somewhere a while back.
It may contain some stuff that may relevent.

I don't know if this is any use to anyone, but this is my style of trading pre race and a few pointers that I use.

Try to be more selective about which races to trade.I know of many who go from race to race like a loony. You can make a few quid race after race and on the last race lose the whole days earnings and some. Look at trading less races that have a good "shape". If you have the patience (which is the most important and most overlooked aspect of trading IMHO) you can watch 20 races and then trade 1 and win a days wages.
A suggestion for those struggling is maybe find a race where the market thinks it is a 2 horse race. I'll set up a fictitious race.
The prices are 2.02, 2.76, 40, 44, 50+ the rest (another 6 runners).
You will find 2 or 3 races a day like this. You can pretty much forget the rags, although you need to keep and eye out in case 1 moves in significantly. So concentrate at the 2 at the head of the market. There are 2 scenarios here.
1) 1 or more outsiders move in and not a lot happens at the head of the market except a small drift.
2) 1 of the favs moves in which means..............yes that's right! The other moves out. The trick is waiting until that happens then jumping on the gravy train to untold wealth.

Try to get a grasp of how a market works, that is fundamentally the most important thing you need to learn. An efficient market is at 100%, the way this is calculated is by dividing 100/the odds. So a runner trading at 2.0 would be 100/2 =50% of the book. (remember the book adds up to 100) that means the rest of the field will add up to 50%.
If 1 runner is 50% of the book and the other is 36% (100/2,76) that means that 86% of the book is concentrated on 2 runners. They dominate the market and another runner would have to move a huge amount to impact these 2 prices. Which leaves us to concentrate on 2. What you are looking for next is a sign that something is going to happen, like i said it always will. So what are the signs?

Look at the range of prices that the runner has been trading at, if you look at the ladder you will be able to see this. The critical points are the bottom and top (resistance points) When it gets there something will happen, if it "breaks through" then it will almost certainly go much further. If it doesn't then it will "bounce". It rarely just sits at the end of the trading range dormant. What usually influences this is the other horses. Remember what happens to 1 has to effect all the others, the one most likely to be effected is the next shortest price runner (2nd fav in this case)
A good trade would be if the fav has reached the bottom of it's range, which means punters are reluctant to take a lower price that this, and the 2nd fav if near the top end of it's trading range, which means punters are reluctant to LAY a bigger price. If the fav were to hit the bottom and "bounce" the 2nd fav would stream in, this will gather momentum, don't be greedy and don't use a stop loss. It is not unusual for the prices to jump around. It is the medium term trend (swing) you are trying to capture.

With practice, patience and enough matched you can make a living trading 1or 2 races a day.
This is simplistic and there are things that can go wrong. Watch the market and try to understand what the market is doing. See how the movement of 1 runner effects the others and in what proportion. This is KEY. Some use the excellent graphs BA has. For me all I use if the BF market graph within BA with a 10 second refresh, the ladder tab with both horses on, and TELETEXT live shows. Don't over think it, don't over complicate it. It really isn't rocket science, and that's the main issue for most I fear. Take a step back, use low stakes to practice. Trading horses at odds on a 10 tick wrong decision will cost you a fiver (to give it some perspective). Before you make every trade you need to set a point that you will exit, don't set this too tight. A 2 or 3 tick's is no good. But you need an escape route. Letting it go and hoping it will come back or even worse letting it go in play is trading suicide and amateur. Don't do it!

If you spend enough time watching the markets and understanding what's happening you will crack it eventually.

I have talked a fair bit about perspective, and here is something to think about. Good traders will earn more that a doctor does (which is frankly disgusts me), that doctor spent maybe 6 or 7 years learning his trade. It doesn't take that long to learn to trade, but you need to put the hours in for sure. The other thing is that doctor didn't get to operate on a patient after a few days did he? He learnt the procedure and maybe practiced it in the classroom lots and lots of times, until he became so good at it when he did finally have a patient on the operating table in front of him, he had the skill and confidence to do the business.
There are no half measures here. To a certain extent, if you can trade with £50 you can trade with £100 or £1000 (as long as the market is liquid enough) The level of skill is exactly the same, the reason you entered and exited the market should be the same. Once you can effectively trade on 2 runner markets like this and your confidence and experience grows, then more complex markets can be tackled.

The main problem with this is if you have a limited time to trade on your day off from work, sitting there all afternoon and not making any trades is tough, and the discipline that requires is rare to find. But what is better, sitting there and not losing half the wages you have worked so hard for or feeling a bit frustrated but living to fight another day. My priory is not to LOSE and PROTECT my bank at all costs. The rest comes I promise.

Summary:
1) Keep it simple
2) Be patient
3) Have realistic expectations
4) Be patient
5) Understand the market
6) Have a reason to enter the trade and a reason to exit it
7) Have an escape route planned, and stick to it
8) Be patient
and finally........ Be patient

Does this make sense to anyone?

Disclaimer:
I don't have all the answers, the way I trade suites me and my attitude to risk. It works for me but it may not work for you. Take out the bits that make sense and discard the rest. Eventually you will form you own style. There is no "holy grail" and there is no easy road to Betfair nirvana. I wish you all well.
This was posted over four years ago, but unless I have missed something important, I think the information given here is still excellent advice. Does anyone think markets have now changed meaning this strategy is now out of date?

I can't think of a reason why this should not be still a good area for new traders to operate in, but I am aware that markets change continually, and what worked at one time can stop working in the future.
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LeTiss
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Joined: Fri May 08, 2009 6:04 pm

Teletext live shows :lol:

That sounds like something from Jurassic Park now
kerberus
Posts: 366
Joined: Mon Aug 05, 2013 3:28 pm

But amazingly, that's not the end of the teletext story. A small band of geeks have managed to resurrect the old format, and have recently launched a brand new teletext service. Seriously - a new teletext service has launched in 2016.
LeTiss is still getting potty-training - have patience with the young whippersnapper. :D :lol:
Aaah the good old days. :(
Trevtherev
Posts: 6
Joined: Thu Nov 03, 2016 7:40 pm

Hi I've been using the Practice Mode. I have used the make market button to start a trade and the lay bet has been taken before the back bet. A couple of times the back bet has failed to be taken rirht up close to the start and I'm showing a loss. What's the best strategy? Should I move the back bet on the ladder? How do I minimise the loss?
Any advice appreciated.
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SeaHorseRacing
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Joined: Fri May 20, 2016 7:06 pm

Trevtherev wrote:Hi I've been using the Practice Mode. I have used the make market button to start a trade and the lay bet has been taken before the back bet. A couple of times the back bet has failed to be taken rirht up close to the start and I'm showing a loss. What's the best strategy? Should I move the back bet on the ladder? How do I minimise the loss?
Any advice appreciated.
Research and practise, practise, practise.
Trevtherev
Posts: 6
Joined: Thu Nov 03, 2016 7:40 pm

A couple of times I have made a trade and the lay bet has been taken quickly but the back bet has not been taken.How does one avoid making a loss on the trade?
Thanks
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Dallas
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Location: Working From Home

Trevtherev wrote:A couple of times I have made a trade and the lay bet has been taken quickly but the back bet has not been taken.How does one avoid making a loss on the trade?
Thanks
Use fill or kill to only place the offset when opening is matched, and/or try directional scalping
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lW8umchN0kw&t=42s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VdL5HBUQF-E&t=33s
threedogs
Posts: 79
Joined: Mon Jan 20, 2014 10:24 am

I am also struggling to understand the markets and on the theme of noticing recurring patterns I have noticed that all indicators will at one time favour a lay bet and then it seems as soon as i put a low stake on the market immediately drops 5 and 6 ticks away from my price straight into a loss situation from which it rarely recovers and when I check the indicators are still showing to lay even though by doing the opposite and backing I would have made a good profit .. I cant understand why it does that....any ideas ??
cybernet69

threedogs wrote:I am also struggling to understand the markets and on the theme of noticing recurring patterns I have noticed that all indicators will at one time favour a lay bet and then it seems as soon as i put a low stake on the market immediately drops 5 and 6 ticks away from my price straight into a loss situation from which it rarely recovers and when I check the indicators are still showing to lay even though by doing the opposite and backing I would have made a good profit .. I cant understand why it does that....any ideas ??
Reason being...

You are taking money off someone else who has offered money on the back or lay side of the market.

Very often these are called market makers and run some very dedicated/sophisticated bots which will shift the odds in their favour to complete their book and make a profit overall. What their bots are doing is not possible in BA or other commercially available products.

They are usually built to do one thing and overall they do it very well. Obviously.

You can still do it but you need to be very fast at entering TRUE scratch trades asap if the market does move against you. This means effectively you end up backing/laying at the same odds/amounts to get a ZERO outcome where needed. Again, that is not possible (automated) in BA or alike etc.

However, what you can do is OFFER money into the market on both sides when the price has been stable for > 60 seconds and the current WOM is between 45 and 55. You would probably need to do that in Excel automation has you really only want to compare the WOM for the current back/lay amounts offered and not the 3 best on either side etc.
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ruthlessimon
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threedogs wrote:I am also struggling to understand the markets and on the theme of noticing recurring patterns I have noticed that all indicators will at one time favour a lay bet and then it seems as soon as i put a low stake on the market immediately drops 5 and 6 ticks away from my price straight into a loss situation from which it rarely recovers and when I check the indicators are still showing to lay even though by doing the opposite and backing I would have made a good profit .. I cant understand why it does that....any ideas ??
this is a prop trader @ futex. look what he's using: 1. ladder 2. volume profile. notice he isn't using WOM, MACD, stochastics & god knows what else. (also algorithms are 90% of the markets he's trading). all he's watching is the price & orders entering the market.

i saw recently someone say, "when prop firms hire new traders, first they teach them how to read order flow. once they're profitable, then they're allowed to use charts"
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threedogs
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THanks for both answers and I learn every day
Mr.rabiD
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Joined: Mon Feb 06, 2017 3:25 am

rion6791 wrote:Hi all,

I am a complete novice in the world of trading.

I am using the 7 day free trial of Bet Angel Pro, and watched the following video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMs3SfXiV8U

The second part shows the user 'scalping' using the one click screen, he makes it look so simple as though there's no brain power required at all.

I thought seeing as the trial was free. I'd give it a go using £2 stakes. I tried it once to lay the favourite but ended up losing 0.35p, I then went to the next race and did the same process, all the this time I spread the profit over all runners and ended up with 0.04p profit.

I just wanted to know whether there is some sort of signals to look out for or a time frame to place the lay bet?

I should note I had all the same options as the guy in the video selected with just smaller stakes.

I realise I'm probably falling at the first hurdle and the majority reading this will probably be amused at my apparent 'stupidity' but trading is something I am really interested in learning and perhaps one day mastering.

So if anyone can spare a minute and advise basic pointers to get me on my way, using very small stakes (I understand this will only result in potentially small profits,but that's fine for now)it'd be brilliant!!

Thanks in advance
I feel exactly how you do mate. So far i have lost £60. "tuition fees" I had some odd shit happen when i thought i closed the market. But the loss kept going up! It went till the race ended and i lost £23. So - so far i am doing really shit at this. I have watched loads of the videos and trying to learn. As like you i really want to get this working for me. Bu when you are making 2p -4p profit and loosing like 5-20p its very sole destroying indeed. I am guessing that you need to be playing with £100 stakes to make a realistic profit on this game. Very frightening.
Bluesky
Posts: 420
Joined: Mon Sep 19, 2016 9:26 pm

Mr.rabiD wrote:I am guessing that you need to be playing with £100 stakes to make a realistic profit on this game. Very frightening.
I think its a good idea just to try and learn how to trade well and not worry too much about making money when you first start out. If you become proficient then the money will come anyway.

Some people say you should trade with money that means something to you, however I think this depends on the individual. If you can trade with minimum stakes and take it seriously, then that's what I would suggest you do.

Someone posted something along the lines of the following recently on this site, and I 100% agree with them, they said.

If you cant make money with small stakes then you certainly wont make money with large ones.
cybernet69

Bluesky wrote:
Mr.rabiD wrote:I am guessing that you need to be playing with £100 stakes to make a realistic profit on this game. Very frightening.
I think its a good idea just to try and learn how to trade well and not worry too much about making money when you first start out. If you become proficient then the money will come anyway.

Some people say you should trade with money that means something to you, however I think this depends on the individual. If you can trade with minimum stakes and take it seriously, then that's what I would suggest you do.

Someone posted something along the lines of the following recently on this site, and I 100% agree with them, they said.

If you cant make money with small stakes then you certainly wont make money with large ones.
It can be done but it is difficult at times. Also depends allot on what markets you are trading.

If horse racing then stay away from non hcap races as they tend to be better for swing trading.

Also, you need to be lightening fast at scratching your trades for zero p/l if things go pair shaped. However, there is a way of automating this.
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