Matched Betting - Moving On

[sniffer66]

What sports have you tried trading ? I was struggling on horses and footy for a while but hit on tennis a few months ago and it suits my style better. Movements are more predictable due to the mechanical nature of the pricing\scoring. It's been a decent success story for me so far.
I've also been able to build winning automation for it, nothing spectacular but it hoovers up a few quid each day.

That's the kind of thing I'm after, I'm not looking to make millions I don't have the desire or discipline for that. I understand pros like Peter Webb can make thousands in a day, I'd be happy with £1k a month! I've tried Horse racing both pre off and in running and football. I like the idea of pre race but the odds movements just don't make sense, I can be going along nicely making a few ticks here and there and all of a sudden someone comes along with a huge order the price spikes and never recovers or sometimes it does!?

I'll give tennis a blast, from what I can see it's mainly just backing the favourite if he/she is a set down in the first set or scalping the serve or backing a break.

Maybe Kai is right, maybe I'm just an old washed up arber now with nothing else to do than go and live in the woods and whittle wood all day

If you are looking to get started and get some decent advice in tennis trading you won't go far wrong taking a look at Trade Shark and investing the one off cost of £39. There a lot of scammers out there but Paul is the real deal. Lots of trading vids, analysis, guides and a free Skype chat during matches which Paul is on daily. Down to earth, plain talking Yorkshireman who trades for real. No bullshit and no hard sell or ongoing costs
I know guide sellers get short shrift on here but he's taken me to profitable tennis trading from starting a few months ago. You can check out his vids on YT for free as well. Was useful in getting me up and running.

And no I'm not affiliated

[Diacritical Quark]

What sports have you tried trading ? I was struggling on horses and footy for a while but hit on tennis a few months ago and it suits my style better. Movements are more predictable due to the mechanical nature of the pricing\scoring. It's been a decent success story for me so far.
I've also been able to build winning automation for it, nothing spectacular but it hoovers up a few quid each day.

That's the kind of thing I'm after, I'm not looking to make millions I don't have the desire or discipline for that. I understand pros like Peter Webb can make thousands in a day, I'd be happy with £1k a month! I've tried Horse racing both pre off and in running and football. I like the idea of pre race but the odds movements just don't make sense, I can be going along nicely making a few ticks here and there and all of a sudden someone comes along with a huge order the price spikes and never recovers or sometimes it does!?

I'll give tennis a blast, from what I can see it's mainly just backing the favourite if he/she is a set down in the first set or scalping the serve or backing a break.

Maybe Kai is right, maybe I'm just an old washed up arber now with nothing else to do than go and live in the woods and whittle wood all day

If you are looking to get started and get some decent advice in tennis trading you won't go far wrong taking a look at Trade Shark and investing the one off cost of £39. There a lot of scammers out there but Paul is the real deal. Lots of trading vids, analysis, guides and a free Skype chat during matches which Paul is on daily. Down to earth, plain talking Yorkshireman who trades for real. No bullshit and no hard sell or ongoing costs
I know guide sellers get short shrift on here but he's taken me to profitable tennis trading from starting a few months ago. You can check out his vids on YT for free as well. Was useful in getting me up and running.

And no I'm not affiliated

Thank you I might just check that out. Is it anything to do with Trade Shark on another API similar to Bet Angel. Before I started matched betting I used to use an API (I'm not sure of the rules here so I'll call it Nerds Play) where you could turn on 'Trade Shark' on markets with only 2 outcomes such as tennis. It would place say your back on selection 1 and automatically place an equal lay on selection 2. Can't be a conincidence their called the same surely?

[sniffer66]

That's the kind of thing I'm after, I'm not looking to make millions I don't have the desire or discipline for that. I understand pros like Peter Webb can make thousands in a day, I'd be happy with £1k a month! I've tried Horse racing both pre off and in running and football. I like the idea of pre race but the odds movements just don't make sense, I can be going along nicely making a few ticks here and there and all of a sudden someone comes along with a huge order the price spikes and never recovers or sometimes it does!?

I'll give tennis a blast, from what I can see it's mainly just backing the favourite if he/she is a set down in the first set or scalping the serve or backing a break.

Maybe Kai is right, maybe I'm just an old washed up arber now with nothing else to do than go and live in the woods and whittle wood all day

If you are looking to get started and get some decent advice in tennis trading you won't go far wrong taking a look at Trade Shark and investing the one off cost of £39. There a lot of scammers out there but Paul is the real deal. Lots of trading vids, analysis, guides and a free Skype chat during matches which Paul is on daily. Down to earth, plain talking Yorkshireman who trades for real. No bullshit and no hard sell or ongoing costs
I know guide sellers get short shrift on here but he's taken me to profitable tennis trading from starting a few months ago. You can check out his vids on YT for free as well. Was useful in getting me up and running.

And no I'm not affiliated

Thank you I might just check that out. Is it anything to do with Trade Shark on another API similar to Bet Angel. Before I started matched betting I used to use an API (I'm not sure of the rules here so I'll call it Nerds Play) where you could turn on 'Trade Shark' on markets with only 2 outcomes such as tennis. It would place say your back on selection 1 and automatically place an equal lay on selection 2. Can't be a conincidence their called the same surely?

Just a co-incidence. It's purely manually traded tennis advice

[Derek27]

Actually whilst I'm thinking about it, any thoughts on strike rates and win:loss ratios. What's the general consensus, the two go hand in hand, I guess if I don't like losing I should probably aim for a system that gives high strike rates which usually mean the occasional big loss.

If you don't like losing you need to either change your mindset or don't trade, because losing is part of the game.

Strike rates are completely meaningless when comparing one trader to another or one trading style to another style. Sniping 1.01s in-running will have a massive strike rate but ultimately lose, whereas laying them will have a tiny strike rate and potentially win. You need to gear your trading around maximising profits, not easing your emotions.

Surely it's better to lose small amounts regularly than consistently win and lose it all with the 'occasional big loss'.

[Derek27]

Perhaps a better analogy; if you buy a car you want a vehicle with a comfortable seat and air conditioning. But if you get into a formula one car you forget about comfort and expect to be sitting uncomfortably in 50 degrees heat, because the car only has one purpose.

If you can make money trading you're a formula one trader. As Peter often mentions in his videos, there are very fine margins between losing, random trading and profitable trading. It may just take a small amount of tweaking to turn a losing strategy into a profitable one, and those profits could easily be wiped out for the sake of comfort.

[Diacritical Quark]

Perhaps a better analogy; if you buy a car you want a vehicle with a comfortable seat and air conditioning. But if you get into a formula one car you forget about comfort and expect to be sitting uncomfortably in 50 degrees heat, because the car only has one purpose.

If you can make money trading you're a formula one trader. As Peter often mentions in his videos, there are very fine margins between losing, random trading and profitable trading. It may just take a small amount of tweaking to turn a losing strategy into a profitable one, and those profits could easily be wiped out for the sake of comfort.

Well I managed to cobble a bot together that trades in running, with £1 stakes on each race it managed to make £.40p overall today which is a great result that I'm more than happy with.

The only issue is as you've said above, that was without a single loss today, unfortunately it's £1 stakes not £1 liability. The bot is only set up take positions under 3.0 however it will only take 1 loss to obliterate pretty much 2 or 3 days profit... at the minute. Will monitor the strike rate and see if I can turn this into an F1 car rather than skateboard at the minute

[Diacritical Quark]

I've been matched betting for a couple of years, I've made a good few thousand from this, well matched betting and a few arbs here and there. It's at the point now where it just isn't worth doing anymore, the vast majority of my accounts are gubbed from arbing, the rest are with some pretty shady bookies who just don't offer the kind of offers I need to make a living.

I've tried trading on Betangel for a couple of months now, I have tried trading in the past too for a few years before I found matched betting. I honestly don't think I have the psychological make up for it. I am, at heart a gambler. I chase losses and can't handle losing. Matched betting appealed to me in so many ways as it gave me the opportunity to move away from this sphere.

My question is, is this it!? Is this the end of the road, trading soley on the exchange brings back so many bad memories of losing, I get far too involved emotionaly in the trade. I think my last remaining hope is someone on here says that's it's possible to make a nice side hustle arbing between exchanges?

Any help from anyone would be much appreciated.

Today I've just taken a £50 account over the £200 line. Can't believe I actually wrote the above!

[ShaunWhite]

I obviously need to find something that works manually before I can automate it. .

Obviously? This misses the key difference between manual and auto. Yes you can do it that way but the automation will badly underperform because the human element of the manual strategy adds considerable value. When people consider automation they should think about what it can do that you can't do manually. That's primarily scale or speed or complexity. Forget looking at things that apply to a handful of UK races and think in more general terms. That way you'll find out much more quickly how the results look, achieve scale to counteract the missing human angle, and fail fast which is the key. I automate trades on iro 8000 dogs and horses a week, it's going to take a year of running something on UK horse favourites to get the intel I can acquire in a week. Automation is a completely different approach not just in execution but in mindset.

Speaking of mindset that's key too, it might not have the immediacy issue manual trading has but working for months on an idea that ultimately fails, or finding one successful idea in 10 takes a certain stoisism. And then once it's implemented you'll have the almost daily anxiety of wondering if it's failing or not, because one day it probably will and you'll be back to square one. Manual traders die by the sword but automated traders die by Chinese water torture.

[Diacritical Quark]

...Manual traders die by the sword but automated traders die by Chinese water torture.

What a great analogy.

I hadn't thought to look at automating a strategy in the way you described either, you have raised a very good point. Before now I thought it was a case of finding something that works manually then turning it into a bot. I hadn't really considered what automation gives you that manual trading can't.

Definitely food for thought there

[LeTiss]

Automation is probably the way forward for you.

Devise a strategy and test it.
Write a bot that will replicate what you were looking for and ultimately doing - Check the bot for any holes, check it again

Reduce your bank down to a fairly nominal figure, just in case there mistakes in your automation that you hadn't thought of, or encountered when trailing it

Set it up and WALK AWAY. Just leave it

Bots don't get angry or emotional. They do what you ask them

If the results are bad - you can blame your strategy, or the scripting of the bot, NOT yourself