Football Correct Score Lays - After 6 Weeks This Is How I Am Doing

[brimson25]

... Provided those all go to plan.

This is impressive progress (I'm jealous!). But isn't the danger pattern this:

1. slow and steady progress.

2. Catastrophic wipe-out when one of these unlikely scores cops.

3. slow and steady progress (and only if you keep your mindset right)

4. Catastrophic wipe-out when one of these unlikely scores cops.

5. Repeat forever.

I suppose my question (which I ask in a friendly spirit, and not at all trying to be a dick is):

How do you manage the risk of the wipeout? Has this happened? How close have you been?

I have done things like this before, hence my curiousity. Because of course, it's the NET effect which matters. If I trade 6 matches, and my P/L looks like this:

1.+10
2.+10
3.+10
4.+10
5.+10
6. -60

Then despite my five winning matches, and excellent strike rate, and generally winning feeling, the only stat that REALLY matters is that I've ended with -10.

And may as well not have bothered.

If you can make sure the loss (when is comes is 20 or 30, then that's a different matter!) Isn't that where the skill is?

[aidenrn810]

You need to be prepared to trade out for a loss if during the game it is going against you at about 70 mins or even beyond. Totally avoid keep going and then regret it if the 3-3 or Any Other Away Win comes in.

I avoid cup games and less popular leagues as I consider strange results are more likely. I have no facts here, but perhaps the 5-5 score mid-week confirms this?

Selection of the game is obviously important. Either low scoring predicted by stats or home team dominance expected. It can still go against you so be prepared in-play to get out for a loss. I've traded out a few times in my current run, but not more so something must be ok in my game selections.

2 to start today :

Atalanta this morning should be dominant.
Valladolid v Mallorca should be low scoring.

So for me both are good candidates to lay the usual correct scores I lay against.

I would agree though Luke that if you are able to get 7% a game, then this is a great success and consider the slowandsteady build up of profit- but be prepared to trade out if your under 5.5 goals strategy is going against you early in the match.

By all means message me directly if you want to compare notes on how we both select low scoring games as that seems to be common between both of our approaches.

[Naffman]

225% just isn't feasible long-term but good to here you're disciplined and actually watching the match.

I would expect some big draw-downs in the coming weeks

[aidenrn810]

I agree that some losses will come and yes the % is only important after a much longer period, but for 2 months all is going better than I expected.

Discipline is the key and definitely the hardest part of being prepared to take a loss when necessary and not think you are untouchable.

Real Vall game is at half-time. 1-0 and no shots on target yet for the away team

[Kai]

Discipline is the key and definitely the hardest part of being prepared to take a loss when necessary and not think you are untouchable.

Aiden have you discovered scalping in general yet? That was the game changer for me years ago, instantly dropped any sort of laying strategies and practically tried scalping most liquid sports both preoff and inplay.

[aidenrn810]

Explain more please on what you mean by scalping.

[greenmark]

Explain more please on what you mean by scalping.

How about googling "scalping betangel". Just a thought.

[Kai]

Explain more please on what you mean by scalping.

As in looking to profit from 1-2-3 tick price movements?

[Speculator_3]

Explain more please on what you mean by scalping.

As in looking to profit from 1-2-3 tick price movements?

I have dabbled in scalping markets manually on occasions. However I always felt somewhat uncomfortable with say, risking £100 to make £1. What I found is that that, for majority of the time, I have to hold my position for a couple of minutes at least to get the ticks to drop (or increase) by say 3 points. And a lot can happen on a football pitch in those 2 minutes to make you lose that £100... To get situations where the odds decay fast, one typically has to get on the market very late in the match (say after 80 min), however this is precisely the sort of time in the match when teams tend to become desperate in search for goals and all sorts of madness can happen.

I also don't understand why people say 1-2-3 tick movements. Given the commission charge, if the price moves by 1 tick and you trade out, you've made no profit (probably small lost in fact). Trading out when price moved by 2 ticks is basically like picking up pennies in front of steamroller. So surely to make any sort of reasonable profit one needs 3 ticks or more?

So I with aiden on this one - Kai, can you please explain the process behind finding suitable matches to scalp?

[Kai]

I have dabbled in scalping markets manually on occasions. However I always felt somewhat uncomfortable with say, risking £100 to make £1.

Scalping is easy to understand as a concept but a difficult skill to actually master. However, it's a universal skill and an integral part of trading overall (just like swing trading), if it was easy to execute without any risk whatsoever then everyone would be doing it regardless of skill level

But you don't have to necessarily risk your whole stake every time you go for a single tick, a big part of scalping is knowing when and where to get your scalps for minimum risk or no real risk at all, depending on what market you're scalping and whether it's in play or not. In order to do that effectively one would need very good order flow reading skills and advanced knowledge of ladder mechanics both in general and of the market in question. Not every tick is worth the same amount and not every price range moves/decays at the same pace. Also, not every goal kills your entire stake, you can also randomly catch a goal if you're smart and good with your scalping positions.

What I found is that that, for majority of the time, I have to hold my position for a couple of minutes at least to get the ticks to drop (or increase) by say 3 points. And a lot can happen on a football pitch in those 2 minutes to make you lose that £100... To get situations where the odds decay fast, one typically has to get on the market very late in the match (say after 80 min), however this is precisely the sort of time in the match when teams tend to become desperate in search for goals and all sorts of madness can happen.

I could never recommend scalping late in a match unless you knew exactly what you were doing. Some basic advice for scalping football during play would be not to take the prices on offer, ideal scenarios would be to get matched at good prices so that you could exit right away in a few seconds instead of a few minutes.

This is a random example of Psychoff scalping a volatile under 3.5 market despite some goals flying in : https://twitter.com/psychofftrading/sta ... 5567931397

I also don't understand why people say 1-2-3 tick movements. Given the commission charge, if the price moves by 1 tick and you trade out, you've made no profit (probably small lost in fact). Trading out when price moved by 2 ticks is basically like picking up pennies in front of steamroller.

I think it's a common misconception that with scalping you can only pick up pennies in front of a steamroller, if you can repeat a decent number of scalps then they soon add up, a good trader can actually scalp certain markets for 100 pounds (hedged profit) per tick. You've probably seen Peter posting up bigger results from big prerace Cheltenham markets over the many years, those were mostly achieved by scalping actually.

So I with aiden on this one - Kai, can you please explain the process behind finding suitable matches to scalp?

In the context of football usually best markets to scalp would be volatile markets with a lot of market noise in general, as a scalper you ideally want random punter bets to match your scalping stakes at good prices. Stable and slow moving markets are more difficult to scalp, unless maybe you had very fast pictures and were in full control over the timing of your entries and exits. If you're doing it randomly like people most often try and do it then you're probably right, the risk is probably not worth it.

In short, it's up to the trader/scalper to find effective and creative ways to scalp the markets with acceptable risk levels.

[aidenrn810]

Great detailed explanation Kai.

My first thoughts are that it would mean more time is needed to actively trade in and out for the x ticks profit each time. The benefit of my current strategies is that I don't need - or have enough spare time - to continuously watch 10's of markets each day.

It may become beneficial to others, but I'd say scalping is against my 3-3, 0-3 or Any Other Win strategy - where I get goal alerts and check at half time & 60/75 mins only.

It may be more beneficial for Luke to consider this with the 5.5 goals, etc. swings to lock-in ticks of profit, but still more time is needed continuously watching or certainly playing more games.

I like to put effort in to choosing the right games and going from there.

Great advice and food for thought though.

[Kai]

I was only asking whether you've tried to do some scalping (or swing trading) yet Obviously laying is just a betting strategy. I was curious since my own path took me from laying to scalping to swinging, but I guess everyone has their own path.

[Speculator_3]

I have dabbled in scalping markets manually on occasions. However I always felt somewhat uncomfortable with say, risking £100 to make £1.

What I found is that that, for majority of the time, I have to hold my position for a couple of minutes at least to get the ticks to drop (or increase) by say 3 points. And a lot can happen on a football pitch in those 2 minutes to make you lose that £100... To get situations where the odds decay fast, one typically has to get on the market very late in the match (say after 80 min), however this is precisely the sort of time in the match when teams tend to become desperate in search for goals and all sorts of madness can happen.

I could never recommend scalping late in a match unless you knew exactly what you were doing. Some basic advice for scalping football during play would be not to take the prices on offer, ideal scenarios would be to get matched at good prices so that you could exit right away in a few seconds instead of a few minutes.

This is a random example of Psychoff scalping a volatile under 3.5 market despite some goals flying in : https://twitter.com/psychofftrading/sta ... 5567931397

I also don't understand why people say 1-2-3 tick movements. Given the commission charge, if the price moves by 1 tick and you trade out, you've made no profit (probably small lost in fact). Trading out when price moved by 2 ticks is basically like picking up pennies in front of steamroller.

I think it's a common misconception that with scalping you can only pick up pennies in front of a steamroller, if you can repeat a decent number of scalps then they soon add up, a good trader can actually scalp certain markets for 100 pounds (hedged profit) per tick. You've probably seen Peter posting up bigger results from big prerace Cheltenham markets over the many years, those were mostly achieved by scalping actually.

So I with aiden on this one - Kai, can you please explain the process behind finding suitable matches to scalp?

In the context of football usually best markets to scalp would be volatile markets with a lot of market noise in general, as a scalper you ideally want random punter bets to match your scalping stakes at good prices. Stable and slow moving markets are more difficult to scalp, unless maybe you had very fast pictures and were in full control over the timing of your entries and exits. If you're doing it randomly like people most often try and do it then you're probably right, the risk is probably not worth it.

In short, it's up to the trader/scalper to find effective and creative ways to scalp the markets with acceptable risk levels.

From the Psychoff screenshot I see that he's been scalping under 3.5 market, so I don't see how a last gasp goal at 96 min would have affected him?

Thanks for pointing out about aiming to get matched at a higher / lower price than that is on offer - that's what I thought about already. Will try to implement this more in the future/

[Kai]

From the Psychoff screenshot I see that he's been scalping under 3.5 market, so I don't see how a last gasp goal at 96 min would have affected him?

Thanks for pointing out about aiming to get matched at a higher / lower price than that is on offer - that's what I thought about already. Will try to implement this more in the future/

Can't obviously speak for him but I think he was anticipating a late goal and has placed a lay bet, probably somewhere around 2s and probably on the correct score market or on Betdaq, whichever one was more liquid. When the teams are separated by only a single goal then the game can obviously completely open up because teams become desperate to try and change the result. So it the price is right (big if) it makes more sense to catch a goal in this situation rather than when a team is leading 3-0 because the goal incentive drastically drops off from either team since the game is effectively over.

Obviously when you place a lay bet there is not much else to do other than wait for the goal, so if a good trader has the ability to safely scalp any market then why not scalp in the meantime, once the price on the current under drops below 3.0 the tick size of course becomes smaller and the higher number of ticks makes this price range more suitable to scalping, that is a clever way to apply 2 separate strategies on the same market, and if the goal doesn't come then Psychoff can at least count on the scalping to get something out of this particular game, although in this case both strategies seemed to deliver.

Hopefully I am not revealing any of Psychoff's trading secrets, I think those are just basic market mechanics There are of course many ways to scalp different markets, hundreds probably, it can definitely be a powerful edge in itself because like I previously said, it's a universal skill and well worth investing the time to develop.

[Speculator_3]

From the Psychoff screenshot I see that he's been scalping under 3.5 market, so I don't see how a last gasp goal at 96 min would have affected him?

Thanks for pointing out about aiming to get matched at a higher / lower price than that is on offer - that's what I thought about already. Will try to implement this more in the future/

Can't obviously speak for him but I think he was anticipating a late goal and has placed a lay bet, probably somewhere around 2s and probably on the correct score market or on Betdaq, whichever one was more liquid. When the teams are separated by only a single goal then the game can obviously completely open up because teams become desperate to try and change the result. So it the price is right (big if) it makes more sense to catch a goal in this situation rather than when a team is leading 3-0 because the goal incentive drastically drops off from either team since the game is effectively over.

Obviously when you place a lay bet there is not much else to do other than wait for the goal, so if a good trader has the ability to safely scalp any market then why not scalp in the meantime, once the price on the current under drops below 3.0 the tick size of course becomes smaller and the higher number of ticks makes this price range more suitable to scalping, that is a clever way to apply 2 separate strategies on the same market, and if the goal doesn't come then Psychoff can at least count on the scalping to get something out of this particular game, although in this case both strategies seemed to deliver.

Hopefully I am not revealing any of Psychoff's trading secrets, I think those are just basic market mechanics There are of course many ways to scalp different markets, hundreds probably, it can definitely be a powerful edge in itself because like I previously said, it's a universal skill and well worth investing the time to develop.

So you are saying he was simultaneously scalping "unders" market while having a lay bet on correct score?

Am I correct in thinking that scalping can be used essentially as a sort of "insurance"? In the sense that you are anticipating a goal to be scored (so you have an open back bet on the "over" market"), while at the same time taking advantage of the decay in the "under" market by scalping that? (Which is kind of what I've been doing recently).

So if the goal goes in, you've made profit both from "under" and "over" market. While if the goal doesnt go in, then you've managed to reduce your loss by a (very) small amount.