David's Diary
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Hi folks, time to start up a bit of a blog to keep me accountable and sticking to my plan as I get up to speed and develop as a trader.
As a bit of background, I am 34 years old, from Belfast, Northern Ireland. I'm married with two kids - for as long as I can remember I have been obsessed with sports. Having trodden the usual path of matched betting several years ago and having my bookies accounts shut down, I had a brief spell flirting with trading before I gave up. At the time I thought that I would have to spend countless hours at the computer screen trading horses pre-off and simply couldn't commit the time to it. Now that automation is so much more accessible and user-friendly I decided it was high time to jump back in so joined up at BTC.
So let's get down to business - what am I going to do?
For football I have chosen Ryan's Split Stake Strategy and will be running this automated through BFBM. I will split a total stake of 4% across two entry points at 30/50 mins. This should lead to an average win of 1pt and an average loss of approx 2.5pt. Strike rate is almost 80% so this should in theory go well and seems to have done for a few years now. The basic strategy is to maintain this bankroll strategy above all else. As a favourite investor of mine Joel Greenblatt says, "If you don't lose money, most of the other options are pretty good." Therefore protecting the bankroll is numero uno and I won't deviate from this staking. Once this is up and running confidently I will build in another strategy.
For horse racing I am running the preset strategies again through BFBM. I have been tinkering with the setup of these strategies and I'm now reasonably content with how they are setup. In the bank building phase I am using the backing strategies at 2% each with a separate bank for each strategy. I plan to scale this back to 1% once each bank reaches £1000 - this is an arbitrary figure but is a nice round number.
The lay strategies have been a bit more complex. I have realised that laying to 2% is effectively suicide as it only takes a few high priced horses winning and the bank is wiped. I trialled (briefly) laying to a fixed liability but this doesn't make a huge amount of sense to me mathematically, as we end up laying a lot less on the very horses most likely to lose. I have therefore implemented a "Maria" staking plan which is built into the BFBM software. This keeps liability under control without restricting us too much on the higher priced horses. I reserve the right to change this if it goes tits up or someone shows me a major flaw in this plan.
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Results from yesterday/today - can't be bothered typing them all out anymore!
Strike rate thus far is 64% so still a way to go to hit my long term strike rate of 78%. Still confident if we get up towards that S/R that this will be a profitable system, and generates a fair amount of picks so might compound up quite nicely.
Overall Profit & Loss FHG : -£14.25
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Today's Selections
22/04Bolivia: Primera Division : Royal Pari - Blooming (1.42 - WIN)
Austria: 2. Liga : Blau-Weiß Linz - Dornbirn (1.24 - LOSS)
Sweden: Allsvenskan : Hammarby - Varberg BoIS (1.41 - WIN)
Norway: 1. Division : Hødd - Åsane (1.47 - WIN)
Eng. League One : Derby - Burton (NO TRADE)
Sco. Premiership : Celtic - Motherwell (1.22 - WIN)
Eng. Championship : Burnley - QPR (1.46 - LOSS)
Eng. Premiership : Liverpool - Nott'm Forest (NO TRADE)
Czech Republic: Czech Liga : Sigma Olomouc - Teplice (1.4 - WIN)
Norway: Eliteserien : Brann - Vålerenga (NO TRADE)
Czech Republic: Czech Liga : Slavia Praha - Bohemians 1905 (1.36 - WIN)
Switzerland: Super League : Young Boys - Servette (1.3 - WIN)
Peru: Primera División : Sport Huancayo - ADT (1.48 - WIN)Overall Profit & Loss FHG : -£10.25
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Today's Selections
21/04
Bulgaria: Parva Liga : Ludogorets - Lokomotiv Sofia 1929 (1.23 Entry - LOSS)
France: National : Red Star - Bastia-Borgo (NO TRADE)
Eerste Divisie : Roda - FC Den Bosch (1.35 Entry - LOSS)
Eerste Divisie : Willem II - TOP Oss (NO TRADE)
Premiership : Arsenal - Southampton (NO TRADE)
Bolivia: Liga De Futbol Prof : Independiente Petrolero - Nacional Potosí (NO TRADE)Overall Profit & Loss FHG : -£15
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Today's Selection
20/04 No SelectionsOverall Profit & Loss FHG : -£5
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Today's Selection
19/04 No SelectionsOverall Profit & Loss FHG : -£5
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Today's Selection
18/04 Eng. National : Wrexham - Yeovil (pre-match odds 1.3) LOSSOverall Profit & Loss FHG : -£5
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@david-milligan following with interest
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17/04 Paraguay: Division 1 : Libertad - Resistencia (Win - pre-match odds 1.29)
No Trade - First Goal 3 mins.Today's Selection
18/04 Eng. National : Wrexham - Yeovil (pre-match odds 1.3) -
Hi everyone, thought I would check in and update the blog with some progress notes.
Horse racing has been bouncing along between profit and loss - I increased the bank size for LTBF prior to a bit of a horrible run for that strategy but overall I'm roughly breakeven. I'm still confident that perseverance coming into the summer will lead to better returns for these strategies and I haven't altered staking at all.
Football has been hit or miss, I haven't had a lot of success with Split Stake strategy and needless to say I started following Tomasz's Lay U1.5 strategy just as it hit a bad patch of form.
I have been toying with some FHG filters and my calculations suggest that my shortlist should have a strike rate of 78%. This would mean needing min odds of 1.3 to profit on the FHG market. I plan to try to automate this strategy and will update each day with selections.
Entry point between 5-30 mins if still 0-0 and odds >1.3
17/04 Paraguay: Division 1 : Libertad - Resistencia
I'm also going to split test with another bot using 4 SOTs as a precondition before entering the market.
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@david-milligan said in David's Diary:
Update - Tuesday 28th Feb 2023
My trading has been pretty solid the last few days - I have achieved my goal of 0 unplanned bets and have largely just left the bots to work their magic.
Split Stakes is +3pts overall - I did feel a bit robbed from a scratch trade in which 1st and second goals were scored in the 50th and 70th minutes! However so far so good and should remain a nice solid workhorse for the portfolio.
The change to Maria staking for the longer odds horse laying strategies has definitely settled the swings down a lot - the lay strategies are now ticking along nicely and a few good wins for Back the Fave means it is the best performing, up a solid 16% over 49 bets.
In other news I'm now (hopefully) fully set up on VPS so I can adjust the bots on the go and update selections etc from my laptop if I'm away. This will be the long-term strategy and should hopefully work well - I think I have it set up now that I can access through both laptop or even my phone if I'm stuck. I took @Adam 's advice and set up with EUKHost which has been pretty straightforward.
I'll keep the blog updated through the week with results and any problems I experience. No bets today on Split Stake - the Dutch lads were too eager last night so didn't get any bets into the market before the goals started crashing in.
David
Mazel tov, David
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Update - Tuesday 28th Feb 2023
My trading has been pretty solid the last few days - I have achieved my goal of 0 unplanned bets and have largely just left the bots to work their magic.
Split Stakes is +3pts overall - I did feel a bit robbed from a scratch trade in which 1st and second goals were scored in the 50th and 70th minutes! However so far so good and should remain a nice solid workhorse for the portfolio.
The change to Maria staking for the longer odds horse laying strategies has definitely settled the swings down a lot - the lay strategies are now ticking along nicely and a few good wins for Back the Fave means it is the best performing, up a solid 16% over 49 bets.
In other news I'm now (hopefully) fully set up on VPS so I can adjust the bots on the go and update selections etc from my laptop if I'm away. This will be the long-term strategy and should hopefully work well - I think I have it set up now that I can access through both laptop or even my phone if I'm stuck. I took @Adam 's advice and set up with EUKHost which has been pretty straightforward.
I'll keep the blog updated through the week with results and any problems I experience. No bets today on Split Stake - the Dutch lads were too eager last night so didn't get any bets into the market before the goals started crashing in.
David
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@david-milligan like the 0 unplanned bets!
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Day 2 - Friday 24th Feb
A good disciplined day today and a bit of a step forward with significant improvements made to my bot setup. These changes will hopefully a) allow Split Stake strategy to run largely automatically and b) help the bot pick up more trades on the horses which it was missing. Football trades were made manually today which was no big problem but unsustainable for me in the long run.
Football - Ryan's Split Stake Over 1.5 Goals
FC Eindhoven v De Graafschap : Over/Under 1.5 Goals
Stake: 4 points
Profit/Loss: + 1.64 pointsHelmond Sport v Jong FC Utrecht : Over/Under 1.5 Goals
Stake: 2 points
Profit/Loss: + 0.94 pointsRaith v Ayr : Over/Under 1.5 Goals
Stake: 4 points
Profit/Loss: - 2.84 points.Overall scratch on the day. A 0-0 with missed penalty in the Scottish match meant that one missed out.
Horse Racing - Member Preset Strategies
Overall Profit/Loss: + 6 points
Sadly I missed quite a few winning lay bets due to what I think was an incorrectly set up bot. However, there will be more winners to come and I'm content enough with how things went today. Fingers crossed that now the setup will look after itself to a large extent.
Unplanned Bets
None :white_heavy_check_mark:Here's to a good weekend's sport!
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@david-milligan good work!
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Day 1 - Thursday 23rd February
Decent day today - automated Horse Racing strategies did well enough and we were close to a few big winners in the Newcastle meet.
Took an opportunistic Lay The Draw in the United-Barca match after the United equaliser, another goal was absolutely inevitable - as my Dad would say a blind man on a galloping horse could have seen it coming. Wide open and both teams going hell for leather. Great finish from Anthony to make it 2-1 United and a nice profit for me! Up the Reds :flexed_biceps_medium-light_skin_tone:
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@keith-anderson I thought you might be a glens man - the signature is a giveaway!
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@david-milligan said in David's Diary:
@keith-anderson Neither, never really got into the football at home. Die hard United fan though. Big match tonight!
As long as it wasn’t Linfield! I’m from East Belfast
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Nice on the Maria staking front for the horses.
I’ve done a further deep dive of the data and came to the same conclusion that it’s better for me right now than simply laying to liability. The added bonus is that it’s easier to place trades, when doing manually as well
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@keith-anderson Neither, never really got into the football at home. Die hard United fan though. Big match tonight!
