90 Day Football Trading Challenge

[Alexander_99]

This might seem like a rip-off this thread: viewtopic.php?f=2&t=22665, but in truth I wanted to do something similar in spirit for a while. I trade football daily, or almost daily, so the idea is to document my daily profit / loss as a % of my bank. I am not setting any particular stupid challenges for myself like "make X profit per day", though.

I am trading / betting inplay on match odds and over / under goal markets only, when I am watching the live match. I am not using any "historical" stats as such, rather simply attempting to read the flow of the game and decide if it's worth it to get involved. However, I do know and follow the recent performances of teams, which does help me make a decision.

A part of the reason for doing this is that although I am making a profit, I do have discipline issues. Namely, that I tend to lapse into betting or scalping on "unders" market, quite often when the match is unsuitable for doing so, in an attempt to make some "easy" money - which proved very costly, time and time again. So the aim for the next 90 days would be to either abstain from, or at least minimise, backing "unders" market, and concentrate mainly on match odds and backing overs.

I typically stake anything between 1% and 10% of my bank per trade, and I tend to enter multiple markets on certain games - hence in one such match, I could be risking up to around 12% of my bank at once. My betting approach has a huge variance - on some days, my bank increases by 100-200%, only then to encounter large losses and barely break even. So let's wait and see.

This thread is also for anyone who also wants to share their daily achievements (or failures).

[Derek27]

I'm usually flexible with my staking but for football, as I'm relatively new to the game and a goal can turn your position upsidedown, I strictly limit myself to a fixed maximum liability that I decide on before the match. The Soccer Mystic scenario tool comes in handy for that and I keep it visible for most of the match.

Increasing your bank by 100-200% in one day sounds great but it's hard to imagine doing that without over-staking, and as you point out it can result in heavy losses. Good luck.

[Alexander_99]

I'm usually flexible with my staking but for football, as I'm relatively new to the game and a goal can turn your position upsidedown, I strictly limit myself to a fixed maximum liability that I decide on before the match. The Soccer Mystic scenario tool comes in handy for that and I keep it visible for most of the match.

Increasing your bank by 100-200% in one day sounds great but it's hard to imagine doing that without over-staking, and as you point out it can result in heavy losses. Good luck.

Out of interest, what is your fixed max liability (as % of your bank)?

[Derek27]

I'm usually flexible with my staking but for football, as I'm relatively new to the game and a goal can turn your position upsidedown, I strictly limit myself to a fixed maximum liability that I decide on before the match. The Soccer Mystic scenario tool comes in handy for that and I keep it visible for most of the match.

Increasing your bank by 100-200% in one day sounds great but it's hard to imagine doing that without over-staking, and as you point out it can result in heavy losses. Good luck.

Out of interest, what is your fixed max liability (as % of your bank)?

It's not a percentage of my bank. I started off limiting my liability to £10. I soon put it up to £50. The main reason for this is that I'm used to winning nearly every day on the horses (not necessarily a lot) but thought soccer could be more up and down, so a fixed maximum risk would be a better guide as to whether I'd be profitable with football. I've found football isn't as risky as I thought, losses can be limited if you look ahead to the prices after the next goal, never had more than two maximum losses in a row (they're not really maximums because they're offset by whatever green I had), so I'm thinking when I get more serious, somewhere in the region of 5% of my committed bank would be about right for me. But bear in mind the best % stake is strategy dependent - the higher you're strike rate the bigger % you can use.

[Alexander_99]

I'm usually flexible with my staking but for football, as I'm relatively new to the game and a goal can turn your position upsidedown, I strictly limit myself to a fixed maximum liability that I decide on before the match. The Soccer Mystic scenario tool comes in handy for that and I keep it visible for most of the match.

Increasing your bank by 100-200% in one day sounds great but it's hard to imagine doing that without over-staking, and as you point out it can result in heavy losses. Good luck.

Out of interest, what is your fixed max liability (as % of your bank)?

It's not a percentage of my bank. I started off limiting my liability to £10. I soon put it up to £50. The main reason for this is that I'm used to winning nearly every day on the horses (not necessarily a lot) but thought soccer could be more up and down, so a fixed maximum risk would be a better guide as to whether I'd be profitable with football. I've found football isn't as risky as I thought, losses can be limited if you look ahead to the prices after the next goal, never had more than two maximum losses in a row (they're not really maximums because they're offset by whatever green I had), so I'm thinking when I get more serious, somewhere in the region of 5% of my committed bank would be about right for me. But bear in mind the best % stake is strategy dependent - the higher you're strike rate the bigger % you can use.

I assume you are mainly scalping the correct score / unders / the draw?

[Alexander_99]

Done for the day, after a ten hour marathon session.

Had a difficult afternoon. At one time my bank was over 20% down, including a single match that took 11% from me.

All worked out nicely in the end. Finished the day with 18% bank growth.

[Trader724]

Done for the day, after a ten hour marathon session.

Had a difficult afternoon. At one time my bank was over 20% down, including a single match that took 11% from me.

All worked out nicely in the end. Finished the day with 18% bank growth.

How often do you have a 20% drawdown?

[Alexander_99]

Done for the day, after a ten hour marathon session.

Had a difficult afternoon. At one time my bank was over 20% down, including a single match that took 11% from me.

All worked out nicely in the end. Finished the day with 18% bank growth.

How often do you have a 20% drawdown?

Quite frequently...my betting / trading style is very volatile. One particular bad drawdown was several weeks ago which took over 30% from me. I should point out that a reason for this is because a substantial part of my "trades" are actually rather straight bets, without intention to close my position; hence I guess it is natural to encounter bad losing runs.

[Trader724]

Done for the day, after a ten hour marathon session.

Had a difficult afternoon. At one time my bank was over 20% down, including a single match that took 11% from me.

All worked out nicely in the end. Finished the day with 18% bank growth.

How often do you have a 20% drawdown?

Quite frequently...my betting / trading style is very volatile. One particular bad drawdown was several weeks ago which took over 30% from me. I should point out that a reason for this is because a substantial part of my "trades" are actually rather straight bets, without intention to close my position; hence I guess it is natural to encounter bad losing runs.

This kind of challenge is suitable for those who want to gamble and obviously the luckiest will make the most profit but it's not the most effective way to take advantage of the edge you have and I personally think the healthiest is to try to move away from the tendency to gamble when you know for sure that you will make a long-term profit through trading that ensures both financial and psychological stability especially if we talk about large banks.

[kascello]

I Have had a similar experience with staking on the same markets and I'm now instead trying to automate most of my goals trades and look for incentive and good odds for doing match odds manually. I think 1% loss of bank is the way to go as a maximum until you have kept your own data judging on how profitable a strategy is, and selection is key. Why make a long term investment in something you aren't sure is profitable , or how often you need to win to turn a profit consistently.

[Derek27]

I assume you are mainly scalping the correct score / unders / the draw?

I'm scalping the draw but consider other opportunities at the same time.

Had a difficult afternoon. At one time my bank was over 20% down, including a single match that took 11% from me.

All worked out nicely in the end. Finished the day with 18% bank growth.

That's basically the reason why I decided to limit my liabilities to a fixed amount while experimenting with football. If you're backing horses at even money the maths is quite simple - get more than 50% winners and you've made a profit. Trading a volatile market like football, you can make a profit without realising the risks you were taking, like, backing horses at even money, getting 40% winners but just happening to have a big bet on one of your winners, leaving yourself with a false impression of your results.

It's pointless making money trading if your methods mean you can lose it all and more the next day! Just putting an appropriate % limit on your liability for each market and stabilizing your trading should put an end to difficult days like the one you described.

[Kai]

Generalizing here but I've found that with value betting in football you sort of have to grind out that edge, while with pure trading approaches you have to grind out the profit

Usually the purer your trading is the less variance you get with your results and vice versa, so entirely up to you how you want to approach it, ideally you'd like to get the best of both worlds to smooth out both the scaling part and the variance part, but it's a very difficult (and a luxurious) balance to strike.

I started off on one side of the spectrum, then made the long journey to the far opposite side, and I've yet to come back closer to the balanced middle, in part because my market attention span is that of a 10-year-old

Good luck with the challenge.

[wearthefoxhat]

Here's a useful/interesting site for most things, including overs/unders.


https://www.thestatsdontlie.com/overs/

Stats1.png

[Alexander_99]

Generalizing here but I've found that with value betting in football you sort of have to grind out that edge, while with pure trading approaches you have to grind out the profit

Great comment Kai. You've articulated my thoughts exactly... A long time ago I realised my approach is essentially more or less value punting, rather that "trading". And this approach involves ups and downs that can be scary to a pure trader. I've thought about trialling separate strategies with different banks - one strategy more value betting based, another more "pure trading", I might yet implement this in the future. Having said that, grinding out tiny profits - which is what pure trading seems to be - isn't really my cup of tea, especially since it seems I am simply not good at it.

[Alexander_99]

DAY 2: finished with 3% bank growth - so 21% total increase on my initial bank. Again, have experienced roughly 10% downturn before getting back to profitability. Overall, losses on match odds were compensated for by wins on goal markets.

I am disappointed with myself though. I said I will not be doing any backing unders / scalping, however yet again I lapsed into it in an unsuitable situation and paid for it (losing 5% in one match). And I am also disappointed that sometimes, instead of sticking to one of my strategies I employ (viewtopic.php?f=6&t=21953) and letting my bet ride out to the end, I sometimes hesitate and trade out for a loss / partial profit early.

Case in point: I was watching Portimonense vs Farense, and I felt it was value to bet on over 1.5 goals at 2.8 odds and also to back Portimonense at 2.44. And then I looked at Portuguese league table, and saw that Portimonense was rock bottom, and both sides have struggled for goals... Hesitated and decided to close both of my positions for a small loss. Had I faith in my initial assessment of the game, I would have won both bets (since final score was 2-0) and would have finished the day with 14% bank growth instead of 3%..

This again proves to me that I should IGNORE league tables, stats and just have complete faith in my match reading skills. However it's easier said than done.