90 Day Football Trading Challenge

Football, Soccer - whatever you call it. It is the beautiful game.
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Derek27
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Joined: Wed Aug 30, 2017 11:44 am
Location: UK

Alexander_99 wrote:
Mon Jan 04, 2021 1:19 am
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.
Alexander_99 wrote:
Mon Jan 04, 2021 1:21 am
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.
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Kai
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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 :D

Good luck with the challenge.
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wearthefoxhat
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Here's a useful/interesting site for most things, including overs/unders.


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

Stats1.png
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Last edited by wearthefoxhat on Tue Jan 05, 2021 9:46 am, edited 1 time in total.
Alexander_99
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Kai wrote:
Mon Jan 04, 2021 11:12 am
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
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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.
Last edited by Alexander_99 on Tue Jan 05, 2021 1:14 am, edited 2 times in total.
Alexander_99
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Kai wrote:
Mon Jan 04, 2021 11:12 am

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.
Kai, any advice on a "pure trading" approach? What do you mean by this?
DarkPrince87
Posts: 6
Joined: Fri Dec 04, 2020 4:01 am

I am just starting out in trading, and figured I would jump on board as a mechanism to track my progress.

Day 1 - 7/7 Trades - $110 Total Staked - $14.09 Profit
Day 2 - 4/6 Trades - $160 Total Staked - $6.39 Profit
Day 3 - 8/8 Trades - $85 Total Staked - $9.89 Profit

Still trying to bring myself around to increasing stakes, the first time I increased my stakes (on Day 2) I experienced my first loss which shook confidence a bit.
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gazuty
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Location: Green land :)

DarkPrince87 wrote:
Tue Jan 05, 2021 5:40 am
I am just starting out in trading, and figured I would jump on board as a mechanism to track my progress.

Day 1 - 7/7 Trades - $110 Total Staked - $14.09 Profit
Day 2 - 4/6 Trades - $160 Total Staked - $6.39 Profit
Day 3 - 8/8 Trades - $85 Total Staked - $9.89 Profit

Still trying to bring myself around to increasing stakes, the first time I increased my stakes (on Day 2) I experienced my first loss which shook confidence a bit.
My 2 pence worth, which is not a personal attack and just an opinion.

Why worry about scaling up so soon?

If a person scales at 10% a week it’s 1.1^52 = 142

If a person scales at 10% a fortnight it’s 1.1^26 = 11.91

....

Prove out an edge and then scale gradually. Unless one is going to die in 90 days where’s the hurry. Get rich slowly.
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Derek27
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Location: UK

DarkPrince87 wrote:
Tue Jan 05, 2021 5:40 am
I am just starting out in trading, and figured I would jump on board as a mechanism to track my progress.

Day 1 - 7/7 Trades - $110 Total Staked - $14.09 Profit
Day 2 - 4/6 Trades - $160 Total Staked - $6.39 Profit
Day 3 - 8/8 Trades - $85 Total Staked - $9.89 Profit

Still trying to bring myself around to increasing stakes, the first time I increased my stakes (on Day 2) I experienced my first loss which shook confidence a bit.
If you set your basic unit stake or whatever you want to call it (obviously stakes vary) to a percentage of your bank then you don't need to worry about when to scale up - it happens automatically. I would never recommend doubling your bank and then doubling your stake. That gets quite disorientating, especially if you have a few (double) losing trades.
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Kai
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Alexander_99 wrote:
Tue Jan 05, 2021 12:59 am
Kai wrote:
Mon Jan 04, 2021 11:12 am

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.
Kai, any advice on a "pure trading" approach? What do you mean by this?
Well, it's quite simple, some people trade football directly while others want to trade the volatility around football ("order flow trading", "pure trading", "ladder trading" etc), there is a big difference in approach. The perfect football trader should ideally do both, with the value-based approach you get that big scalability and with pure trading approaches you smooth out the variance around it, it makes the overall work much easier and gives you something to do while you wait for goals etc :)

There are good examples out there, but take Derek and yourself here. He says here to be scalping the noise around the draw price and doesn't care about who's playing and how, while you try to read and anticipate the actual game of football in order to place straight bets on the potential outcome. Notice the difference. Which type do you think Peter is, is he betting on certain runners based on stats or (pure) trading the volatility around them? :)
Alexander_99 wrote:
Tue Jan 05, 2021 12:39 am
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.
It's a common misconception, but (pure) trading isn't strictly limited to 1 tick scalping where profits can be tiny with small stakes, it can appear "tiny" compared to catching a goal and the massive swing of price that follows it, but profit from catching bigger swings and price corrections or just recycling many smaller scalps all falls under the trading category, because obviously there are clearly defined entries and exits.

My usage of the word "grind" doesn't necessarily imply tiny profits, the biggest of traders have to grind out their profits as well, just like everyone else.
Alexander_99
Posts: 95
Joined: Mon Jan 06, 2020 12:48 am

DAY 3: 10% increase of my bank from yesterday, and thus 31% growth of my starting bank.

Konyaspor vs Galatasaray was a crazy match which gave me nice profits. Could / should have earned much more on it, but I watched in intermittently on my mobile while outside so betting on wasn't that easy.

Have to say that Turkish super lig is very entertaining to watch. There are always some bizarre / unexpected incidences happening. Serie A very interesting too.
DarkPrince87
Posts: 6
Joined: Fri Dec 04, 2020 4:01 am

Derek27 wrote:
Tue Jan 05, 2021 12:33 pm
DarkPrince87 wrote:
Tue Jan 05, 2021 5:40 am
I am just starting out in trading, and figured I would jump on board as a mechanism to track my progress.

Day 1 - 7/7 Trades - $110 Total Staked - $14.09 Profit
Day 2 - 4/6 Trades - $160 Total Staked - $6.39 Profit
Day 3 - 8/8 Trades - $85 Total Staked - $9.89 Profit

Still trying to bring myself around to increasing stakes, the first time I increased my stakes (on Day 2) I experienced my first loss which shook confidence a bit.
If you set your basic unit stake or whatever you want to call it (obviously stakes vary) to a percentage of your bank then you don't need to worry about when to scale up - it happens automatically. I would never recommend doubling your bank and then doubling your stake. That gets quite disorientating, especially if you have a few (double) losing trades.
Majority of my trades to date I have been risking <1% of my bank (until I get a better feel/confidence), as of yesterday I increased this to 2% of my bank.

Once I find a % that I am comfortable with, I will do as you suggested and scale up slowly based on overall bank growth.

The silly thing is, when I was doing matched betting and playing Same Game Multi's I was more than comfortable with putting down a $50 with a 50% chance of success...yet here I hesitate to put in a stake of $50 (in which $5-$10 is at risk) to make a profit of $5 with a seemingly 90%+ chance of success.
DarkPrince87
Posts: 6
Joined: Fri Dec 04, 2020 4:01 am

DarkPrince87 wrote:
Tue Jan 05, 2021 5:40 am
Day 1 - 7/7 Trades - $110 Total Staked - $14.09 Profit
Day 2 - 4/6 Trades - $160 Total Staked - $6.39 Profit
Day 3 - 8/8 Trades - $85 Total Staked - $9.89 Profit
Day 4 - 9/11 Trades - $260 Total Stakes - $20.21 Profit
Alexander_99
Posts: 95
Joined: Mon Jan 06, 2020 12:48 am

Just logged off my betfair account for the day, after trading for nearly 9 hours. Watched / checked out 26 matches and traded in 19 of them.

DAY 4: 14% bank growth from yesterday's amount. So 49% increase on my starting bank.

Still pissed off, because still chickening out of potential opportunities that would have increased my profits for the day even more (by additional 12%). Damn. It's like I am missing out on half of potential profits on a daily basis .
Last edited by Alexander_99 on Wed Jan 06, 2021 10:05 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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goat68
Posts: 2019
Joined: Tue Jun 30, 2020 3:53 pm
Location: Hampshire, UK

Alexander_99 wrote:
Wed Jan 06, 2021 9:53 pm
Just logged off my betfair account for the day, after trading for nearly 9 hours.

DAY 4: 14% bank growth from yesterday's amount. So 49% increase on my starting bank.

Still pissed off, because still chickening out of potential opportunities that would have increased my profits for the day even more (by additional 12%). Damn. It's like I am missing out on half of potential profits on a daily basis .
Really mate forget the whinging, that sort of growth is amazing, I'm not even achieving 0%!
To be honest, if you're for real,I'd be seriously worried you're going to blow it.....just keep positive thinking.
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