Telegram community

[marketraisen]

Over the years I've been a part of a few groups similar to the ones theorised on here but sadly theres a long term problem of engagement with any gambling related community, in that most people go broke at some point and never return.

I've been in gambling groups with dozens of people and in the crypto and poker worlds into the thousands, with the passage of time whittling the numbers down to 2 or 3. I'm sure theres a similar pattern with users engagement on this site and I know there was in the past on the Betfair forum, gambling communities can only survive on recruitment.

It would be nice to imagine a small hardened group of people able to survive in the long term all helping each other fleece money from the markets (or scam them by the sounds of this thread ) but we all know how likely that is given the % of actual winners out there.

[Kai]

Over the years I've been a part of a few groups similar to the ones theorised on here but sadly theres a long term problem of engagement with any gambling related community, in that most people go broke at some point and never return.

It would be nice to imagine a small hardened group of people able to survive in the long term all helping each other fleece money from the markets (or scam them by the sounds of this thread ) but we all know how likely that is given the % of actual winners out there.

This isn't a gambling community but I do get your point. There are more long term winners out there than it seems for sure, they just stopped hanging out on forums like this, if you glance at the forum member data you can see that most people get a bit "fed up" past a couple thousand posts on average.

[spreadbetting]

It would be nice to imagine a small hardened group of people able to survive in the long term all helping each other fleece money from the markets (or scam them by the sounds of this thread ) but we all know how likely that is given the % of actual winners out there.

Sadly the people who need the advice are generally the one's on forums giving it on and the one's who have the knowledge are usually sitting around in the hope someone let's skip their golden goose. I can't see an open telegram group changing that, most worthwhile advice is kept outside forums or large groups.

[ruthlessimon]

It's easy to bash communities, but to be fair, there's a lot of very very good traders on here (unnaturally high number imo).

That said, yah, they never "genuinely" talk edge publicly, tend to be lurkers, tap people on the shoulder, & want everything face to face.

[Kai]

It's easy to bash communities, but to be fair, there's a lot of very very good traders on here (unnaturally high number imo).

That said, yah, they never "genuinely" talk edge publicly, tend to be lurkers, tap people on the shoulder, & want everything face to face.

Probably more botters than (manual) traders so there's not much left to discuss in greater detail, you can copy someone else's work as easy as clicking copy/paste which you can't really do with manual trading. But I don't blame the veterans for not hanging around for too long, they've heard it all before for the most part, sadly there's not much to learn on the forum directly past a certain point. Like you say, for that purpose it's better to hang out with fellow traders in private both IRL and online, you can compare results and discuss things in much greater detail etc, that's how I've learned by far the most actually, although I've done my fair share of sharing too.

I sometimes try to instigate a bit more detailed discussions but not many takers and always end up a bit disappointed, so I just give up and end up trolling instead But that's getting a bit old as well, as much as it amuses me at times.

[marketraisen]

There are more long term winners out there than it seems for sure

In my sadly all too extensive experience, its been my impression that the opposite is true and theres even less long term winners than even the skeptics or realists might imagine, an awful lot of the people I've met who consider themselves long term winners are simply long term breaking even'ers (which for me is anyone who is just a little bit up or down over time).

I guess it depends on how loose you want to get with the term winner, I mean obviously a hell of a lot of people are banned from the old bookmakers but that doesnt take much effort at all, the bookmakers are basically just giving money away for free a lot of the time with stupid prices. The only real gauge of somebodies ability to make money for me is what they can do on Betfair, over the years I've met all too many who just get chewed to bits having been banned by the books and believing they can just transition into a new arena and succeed.

I guess playing and how profitable somebody is in poker is another good environment to judge, works in a similar pvp environment where people arent just cut off entirely for winning, its also a sector where theres a million people talking about the game endlessly and think theyve got it cracked while only breaking even long term. Almost all of the most famous long term 'winners' in the world have been in debt, gone bust, been flat broke etc at some point, even well after their delusional 'education' period they think exists.

None of this has anything to do with getting together in groups and talking strategy or whatever, thats always a good thing, this forum especially has proven to be valuable for me of the past few years.

[firlandsfarm]

If a 'long term winner' previously went bust and started again do you deduct the amount of the bust when evaluating their long term winnability? I bet most don't and like many, just boast about their latest winning bets/streak!

[Kai]

There are more long term winners out there than it seems for sure

In my sadly all too extensive experience, its been my impression that the opposite is true and theres even less long term winners than even the skeptics or realists might imagine, an awful lot of the people I've met who consider themselves long term winners are simply long term breaking even'ers (which for me is anyone who is just a little bit up or down over time).

I find that point of view interesting since I don't come from a gambling background. The definition of a long term winner should be pretty self-explanatory, if you're able to live off trading for a good number of years then you should easily fall into that category. My own definition would be slightly different, if you're able to successfully attack the market from a variety of angles and are able to adapt to most market circumstances and biases then that's a real long term winner for me.

That's exactly why I try not to be a one-trick pony and overspecialize too early. I think this approach suits my personality as well, besides my natural thirst for knowledge I actually find the process of learning something new fun in its own way. Everyone will say that best results are found in specialization and that may be true in the short term but I disagree with that in the long term, I don't really care about money directly, I only care about having the actual skill that can extract money from the market at will. Money will always come as a consequence of good work and good trading, I think that obsessing too much about money directly can be very counter-productive in more ways than one, which "coincidentally" a lot of newbies do. You could almost say that the less you care about money the more chance of success you'll have, and vice versa, or that's at least how I feel, that money alone is a terrible and empty motivator.

So if I'm really in it for the long term and not looking for the quick cash like most people, then I have to sort of play it safe and cover my bases. Meaning that let's say hypothetically for whatever reason I somehow lose my edges overnight, along with the ones I've not yet had the time to utilize and exploit, and if I lose all of the ability to adapt as well on top of that, then in the worst case scenario I would be only left with the mechanical ladder skill (like scalping etc) which you can't really lose since it's part of how the markets are structured. So in the absolute worst irrational case I'd still be very confident of at least making an average living without too much grinding if I pick and choose the markets where I can nick a decent amount of ticks. I mean, if you're good and confident enough on the ladder you can scalp your way to a three figure result in a few minutes on a suitable marekt. Some people like Psychoff are comfortable doing that regularly on inplay markets as well, people only see his flashy jackpots but there's more to his trading than that, he also has genuine pure trading skills in his portfolio and is far from a glorified value seeking gambler like he often gets portrayed.

If a 'long term winner' previously went bust and started again do you deduct the amount of the bust when evaluating their long term winnability? I bet most don't and like many, just boast about their latest winning bets/streak!

Can't really fault people for boasting, it's a normal part of psychology and nobody is really immune to some type of self-praise, we all require some form of validation at the end of the day. I like to take most things with a pinch of salt by default because you can see right through that. For me personally, the most socially acceptable form of boasting is through humor, since it provokes the least negative feelings and reactions, while humblebragging is probably the worst way to go about things. Boasting in the context of trading is a good thing imho, since it highlights where the opportunities are and people have a habit of oversharing some of their work, which then gives you the option to add it to your own work if you want to, to expand your portfolio. You can't really get that specialist knowledge that everyone craves on every single sport/market through your own work, that would take decades, you have to be clever and use the work of others to fuel your own, hence my networking bias.

[marketraisen]

If a 'long term winner' previously went bust and started again do you deduct the amount of the bust when evaluating their long term winnability? I bet most don't and like many, just boast about their latest winning bets/streak!

Only if it happens multiple times, I'm not saying that people dont learn lessons, we obviously have all had to, theres just an awful lot of online 'experts' who have busted themselves a dozen times in the past with course and distance form saying that theyre likely to do so again.

Of the good and proven success stories I've met online over the last few years, only one of them has had to go through the turmoil of learning the hard way, the others hit the ground running. One bloke I know who absolutely decimates the golf markets on a regular basis has been churning out profits from day 1, in a decade theyve barely had a down month never mind a year.

[marketraisen]

My own definition would be slightly different, if you're able to successfully attack the market from a variety of angles and are able to adapt to most market circumstances and biases then that's a real long term winner for me.

I think this is vital as well, even if theres events or markets we never touch, we should still need to have a rough idea of how they normally play out, it doesnt necessarily need to be as nuanced as whatever you naturally gravitate towards or specialise in but you should know enough to recognise unusual activity.

Edges come and go, the playing field can change fundamentally in very obvious ways, without change the markets would be impossible to beat by this stage given that aslong as an environment isnt shifting around us, then markets naturally move to peak efficiency and thus cannot be beaten considering commission.

Theres a million examples of rule, law and technology changes forcing people into new activity, you have to have some dexterity to make any of this pay long term. Its why youll often find the most successful people in gambling are often a success in other fields, ultimately being able to judge value is an abstract process that extends into all walks of life and is rewarded everywhere,.
Pattern recognition and extrapolating out potential consequences from different scenarios is sadly something that not everyone has the ability to learn, its innate, others can follow like a parrot or brute force their way through trial and error, before stumbling upon a winning strategy but then theyll have to do it all again when the time inevitably comes to move on.

I've spent half a lifetime watching and trying to understand people so I dont want this to sound trite or dismissive (to anyone this might offend) but it seems to me that making money long term in any field just comes down to some blokes 'having what it takes', whatever the fk that means.

The advice I always give people when thinking about longevity is to be honest with themselves in assessing their path to wherever they are right now, even if theyre profitable they should look back on how long theyve spent chasing their tale in circles struggling and then move forward by correlating future investments stability in line with how much time theyve wasted trying to make it.
For example, if somebody has spent years losing and constantly having the rug from being pulled out from under them, with long recovery periods thereafter, then look to invest in long term strategies even if they arent as sexy. Owning car parks in small towns has proven to be profitable even with the death of the high street, arable land has never gone down in value, activities like eating, wearing clothes, travelling or getting sick are not things people are about to stop doing anytime soon and all of them can ride out volatile markets. If on the other hand, when you lose an edge and you can recover quickly, then it makes more sense to concentrate on areas where you can turn money over faster, such as in seconds/minutes gambling or trading, medium term it could be property or short term financial trading, maybe its starting a business building fireplaces or a skydiving school, who knows whats available. It just seems crazy to me that theres people out there constantly banging their heads against the wall trying to force something theyll never be able to make work as sad a story as that might be for them.
Winning on betfair is like winning at the olympics, how many on this board are about to take on 6foot3 body builders from the Caribbean at sprinting? we all know not to even try.

[Kai]

Theres a million examples of rule, law and technology changes forcing people into new activity, you have to have some dexterity to make any of this pay long term. Its why youll often find the most successful people in gambling are often a success in other fields, ultimately being able to judge value is an abstract process that extends into all walks of life and is rewarded everywhere,.
Pattern recognition and extrapolating out potential consequences from different scenarios is sadly something that not everyone has the ability to learn, its innate, others can follow like a parrot or brute force their way through trial and error, before stumbling upon a winning strategy but then theyll have to do it all again when the time inevitably comes to move on.

Those are some very good points, I think a lot of the skills are transferable from market to market, even from field to field. Once you get to know your main market inside and out it gets that much easier to attack a new market since there's only so much left unknown still, and there's sort of a snowball effect since a lot of the different markets have some of the same or similar main characteristics and only differ in certain details. Some trading styles have barely anything in common, but they still operate within the same ruleset.

I've spent half a lifetime watching and trying to understand people so I dont want this to sound trite or dismissive (to anyone this might offend) but it seems to me that making money long term in any field just comes down to some blokes 'having what it takes', whatever the fk that means.

In the context of trading I think for the most part it boils down to problem solving, I think ultimately it's a mathematical and a psychological puzzle. And a puzzle is nothing more than a game, a problem that needs solving, so you sort of have to both learn the rules and then play by them to solve it. I feel that's why bruteforcing it doesn't work, if one doesn't have the patience to learn all the rules/mechanics then to put it bluntly he's just going to suck at the game, be it a board game that they play with their family or something as complex as trading. You can try and make up your own rules but the market is pretty adamant and brutal about it so that's probably not going to work and it will keep winning over you, the market is just doing its thing so you're the one that needs to adapt to its rules and not the other way around.

That's probably my favorite analogy, because I was an avid (and competitive) gamer for 20 years and it's still one of my casual hobbies, it's fair to say that I've gone through this process (of solving complex puzzles) a hundred times. Nothing can even remotely compare to trading but I still feel it's very good practice. Some play just for fun or the social aspect of playing with others, but the most satisfying way for me was challenging myself to learn everything about the game and its hidden mechanics, until I crush it and lose interest when there's no challenge left. That is ultimately what attracted me to trading in the first place, from the outside it looked like a very interesting game that kept rewarding its best players, so of course I wanted to play as well. Tbh had no idea I was in for such a ride, but I approached it like any other game and got absolutely hooked right from the start

[marketraisen]

In the context of trading I think for the most part it boils down to problem solving, I think ultimately it's a mathematical and a psychological puzzle. And a puzzle is nothing more than a game, a problem that needs solving, so you sort of have to both learn the rules and then play by them to solve it.

Nothing to add to that, everything youve said is right, the best players can be rewarded huge if they can prove themselves but circling this back onto my first post itt, the cost of losing for everyone else can become too much of a burden to make playing the game miserable enough that they simply cant go on.

[Kai]

In the context of trading I think for the most part it boils down to problem solving, I think ultimately it's a mathematical and a psychological puzzle. And a puzzle is nothing more than a game, a problem that needs solving, so you sort of have to both learn the rules and then play by them to solve it.

Nothing to add to that, everything youve said is right, the best players can be rewarded huge if they can prove themselves but circling this back onto my first post itt, the cost of losing for everyone else can become too much of a burden to make playing the game miserable enough that they simply cant go on.

Well, not much one can do other than share some of the experience, opinion and maybe some advice as well. Like I said many times, the more people do that the less people will struggle. Never claimed anything is easy, I've had my fair share of struggle and have seen firsthand what types of struggles some of my friends and colleagues have to endure. I consider myself very lucky in that aspect, of having a suitable background with a lot of free time without external family pressure to give trading a real go, although there is a decent argument that I've also created most of these seemingly perfect circumstances on purpose, to give myself the best chance of success. Sometimes it's less about ability and more about timing.

To circle back to your first post, there are several large closed groups of fulltimers from Portugal on football and racing, so such communities really can exist. Some of them share their daily results and even hang out through voice comms whilst they trade.

[gstar1975]

With a few exceptions, most of the groups I've seen have been appalling. There is probably room for a decent one, but I doubt many full-time traders would be able to contribute as it's tough enough to keep focus when actively trading.

The advantage of the Telegram group is you can get instant feedback/responses whereas in this forum it seems it takes forever to get an answer.

[jamesg46]

With a few exceptions, most of the groups I've seen have been appalling. There is probably room for a decent one, but I doubt many full-time traders would be able to contribute as it's tough enough to keep focus when actively trading.

The advantage of the Telegram group is you can get instant feedback/responses whereas in this forum it seems it takes forever to get an answer.

You have to take into consideration the quality of that feedback. Shops sell instant coffee, I dont buy it because it tastes like shit.