General Advice for all newbies

[jimibt]

i have to say that being able to use historic data to review past trades and find ways to improve will reveal lots of interesting opportunities that you may not have been aware of during the cut 'n thrust of the action. we all witness the madness of the final furlong odds but it is possible to generalise on 2-3 distinct event outcomes by studying (either via data or simple screen recording) what happens between runners when the odds gaps open up and you get (for example) a sub 1.2 odds fave spinning out to 100 odds inside 1 second etc, etc.

alas, this may be becoming more a luxury scenario (to study live markets in this way) as it would appear that practice mode is undergoing a huge inspection at betfair HQ (talk being levelled at paddy power exerting their authority - but all purely conjecture). I guess the watch word really is to ensure a good smattering of live bets if you intend to screen record (or data record) every market for post race analysis.

[edit] welshboy got it about right in his comment (7-8th down): http://www.betangel.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=14417

[Frogmella]

Apologies all.

I should have added that my advice in the original post was intended to be applied to Horse Racing markets only.

[ANGELS15]

Excellent realistic advice.

[Bluesky]

I'd advice newbies to start with small stakes and concentrate on improving there strike rate first and then do nothing whether it's winning or losing money (close to random) if your strike rate is below 50% in the long run your doing something wrong and you have to put all your effort into changing this first before you go any futher.

I don't know enough about sports trading to know if this is correct or not. I do know that in financial markets there are lots of people who do extremely well having a strike right below 50%. If your average win is twice as big as your average loss then you don't need a strike rate of over 50% to be successful.

I wonder if the very short term nature of sports markets make them different to financial markets in this respect, Perhaps others with a lot of more experience than me might comment on this. I would be very surprised if there are not people making good money sports trading with win rates of around 40% or so.

[marko236]

Your right Bluesky, traders will make profits with strike rates below 50% but i think it's best for new traders to learn to get a good stike rate first.

[Dinkydid1]

Well trying to figure of if I am an old fool at almost 70 years old I know there is no quick and easy way to make money. But thought I would have a bash at Bet Angel. I have viewed numerous videos and read reams of material but I still can’t make a few bob out of it.
I understand that you have to win some and loose some lost about £50.00 a week for the last 4 weeks don’t get me wrong I have totally enjoyed my experience. Am I just the unlucky one?
I must say I have tried all sorts of betting seem to have most luck at football but still I seem to always manage to get that 40% looser and end up losing all I have gained. Had the racing odds downloaded spent a few bob on that.
Wonder if it’s worth sending a few bob on going to one of Bet Angels courses or am I throwing good money after bad?
Well going to try another £50.00 and see if things change.
Believe me it’s not the money I am losing that bothers me

(just means the landlord of my local pub not getting my money he’s going bust and Betfair is booming) HA HA)

It’s can I really make a few bob out of it

[spreadbetting]

Believe me it’s not the money I am losing that bothers me

Only time I really started making money consistently was when I needed to. It's too easy to leak money all over the place when you have another income to cover you. I think for part timers seeing it as some hobby it's always going to be hard cos hobbies are meant to be fun so you'll subconsciously try to inject excitement into what you're doing otherwise what's the point.I know everyone's different but for me it was only when it became a full time job I upped the focus and profits I could hold onto dramatically.

[Bluesky]

Am I just the unlucky one?

I don't think so, the vast majority of people lose when they first start, unfortunately the vast majority of people lose full stop.

Wonder if it’s worth sending a few bob on going to one of Bet Angels courses or am I throwing good money after bad?

Well you have already lost half the price of what a course would cost you, so it might be worth considering. A couple of thing you might want to think about though before you look at taking some training. Its a lot to take in, over just one day, the more experience you have before you go there, the more likely you are to absorb most of it. PeterLee (very experienced trader and over all good egg) recommended having around a years trading experience if you want to get the most out of the course.

The other thing to think about though, is that virtually no one takes one of these courses and is profitable from the very next day onwards. You still have an awful lot of work in front of you if you want to make money out of trading.

Well going to try another £50.00 and see if things change.

Do you need to be trading at a level that loses £50 per week? Can you reduce your stakes to around the minimum level, or would that be too boring?

Believe me it’s not the money I am losing that bothers me

Losing £50 per week on a consistent basis even though I can easily afford it would certainly bother me.

If you can reduced your stakes so that your not losing too much, try and focus on just trading and not worrying about the money side of things. Do this for a few months and then think about taking a course.

[ShaunWhite]

It's generally accepted it takes a year(ish) to learn, but there's little acceptance of the fact that it means you'll spend the best part of that year losing.

What's important is how you lose. Mistakes happen, they cost money, that's called learning.

The aim for most of year 1 is just to lose in an orderly manner. If it's an exponential dive to disaster then quit, or quit and regroup.

I'm sure ruthlessimon won't mind me reproducing this ...

Screenshot at Jun 26 16-18-05.png

Learning will cost you money. Minimum cost varies (maybe ~ a grand-ish incl subs & tv etc), and the maximum cost is completely your choice.

Anyone starting will also know that you might never get that money back, as few succeed. It's no different to paying to go to Uni, and then maybe never getting that well paid job.

..bottom line is, why are so many learners moaning about losing? Losing is what you signed up for when you chose to give it a go.

[Dinkydid1]

Thanks for coments Chaps.
perhaps need to get my head in gear before i decide to one click.

think before i act
Back to the drawing board

[JPK65]

Speak for yourself, Shaun, losing is NOT what I signed up for. Constantly losing is soul destroying. I would advise anyone who is serious about learning this to NEVER accept losing as a way of life. Sure I accept that there will be some losing trades, but surely if I (or any other relatively new trader) just blindly accept that we are going to lose consistently for a number of years we are just making a difficult task more difficult. Although I am a loser at this stage, I think that it is of great importance that we learn from each and every losing trade. We have to fight to change our bad habits and strive to turn things around as quickly as possible. After a little experience, we can all spot trends that can make us a little money. The hard thing to learn is when to spot a trend that looks similar to our winning opportunities but is likely to turn quickly and cost us our day’s winnings (and more). Hence we need to scrutinise each and every losing trade so hopefully we can avoid falling into the same trap again (or in my case due to a gambling spirit time and time again).

[ShaunWhite]

Speak for yourself, Shaun, losing is NOT what I signed up for. Constantly losing is soul destroying. I would advise anyone who is serious about learning this to NEVER accept losing as a way of life. Sure I accept that there will be some losing trades, but surely if I (or any other relatively new trader) just blindly accept that we are going to lose consistently for a number of years we are just making a difficult task more difficult.

I'm obviously not saying that you should accept a reducing balance as a way of life long term, and yes you should obviously look at each unusually big loss (and just as importantly each unusually big win) and learn from it ideally.

But I don't understand how losing while you're learning is soul destroying? Let's say you're a 5 star pupil and learn to trade a consistant profit after just 6 months....what are you doing for that 6 months? You're trading unprofitably. ie losing or at the very very best breaking even. Making those occasional mistakes that cost you a day or more's winnings, less and less often.

Until you can trade, you can't. You can't defy logic. If you won regularly before you've learnt to win regularly, you'll rip a hole in the space/time continium or something. Like I said it's how you lose that counts, hopefully a nice steady curve that goes from losing, to breaking even, to being in profit, to being Peter.

How long did you think it was going to take to learn to trade profitably JPK? Your predicted balance curve from start date until that date, must by definition have been a downward trending one? It can't be anything but that. Your only target is to stay above that line and ideally lessen it's gradient too.

Losing is only soul destroying if you constantly lose more than you expected to lose, but if you lose less in a month than you've planned, it's a reason to celebrate as the tipping point moves closer. You certainly don't get all stressed, destroyed and distracted by it, that would be illogical and futile.

[Bluesky]

I'm obviously not saying that you should accept a reducing balance as a way of life long term, and yes you should obviously look at each unusually big loss (and just as importantly each unusually big win) and learn from it ideally.

But I don't understand how losing while you're learning is soul destroying? Let's say you're a 5 star pupil and learn to trade a consistant profit after just 6 months....what are you doing for that 6 months? You're trading unprofitably. ie losing or at the very very best breaking even. Making those occasional mistakes that cost you a day or more's winnings, less and less often.

Until you can trade, you can't. You can't defy logic. If you won regularly before you've learnt to win regularly, you'll rip a hole in the space/time continium or something. Like I said it's how you lose that counts, hopefully a nice steady curve that goes from losing, to breaking even, to being in profit, to being Peter.

How long did you think it was going to take to learn to trade profitably JPK? Your predicted balance curve from start date until that date, must by definition have been a downward trending one? It can't be anything but that. Your only target is to stay above that line and ideally lessen it's gradient too.

Losing is only soul destroying if you constantly lose more than you expected to lose, but if you lose less in a month than you've planned, it's a reason to celebrate as the tipping point moves closer. You certainly don't get all stressed, destroyed and distracted by it, that would be illogical and futile.

Absolutely excellent post and is the way I look at learning to trade too. No one is going to be profitable from day one manually trading. Might be different if they are using automation and have done a lot of testing before going live with real money.

[Dinkydid1]

Yes I am a newbie I admit I make mistakes. what to me is soul destroying is example last night I thought I would have a little flutter on a football match odds lay bet done and sent the greening at 25 ticks labiality bet £17.00 on a £7.00 bet. all to 2mins from start of match only about £2000.00 in volume then guess what Betfair suspended it from start to the end of game even at half time so all I did was loose me £17.00 was not able to cut my losses now that is real Dog muck.
See what I mean am I just a sore looser.

[spreadbetting]

You need to make yourself aware of the rules of the markets you're playing, £2000 matched seems very low so I'd guess it's minor league stuff that was never going to go inplay anyway. If you want to make money at this you need to cut out the random markets and oh fuck it type bets just because your balance is low may as well platy the lot etc. There's no point picking up pounds when you do things right if you're going to thow it away ten fold by doing things wrong.