The road to full time

[A Former User]

@daniel-mills yep this busy period we are away to have is gonna be quite exciting to see. The bank could sore if i get it right in terms of balancing cricket/football schedules.

[A Former User]

@darri Fantastic returns in such a short space of time

[A Former User]

Ok so im taking an early month summary here. More to do with the fact I really havent had the time (business and playing cricket) or amount of trades required to give a decent month. With so few trades variances havent been able to balance each other out. However all that is about to change.

Football:
We are now seeing games hit the filters from the summer leagues. Something that hasnt been happening for me, the occasional j-league and a-league stuff but nothing consistent. Now we are seeing norway, sweden, finland and usa all starting to hit almost every week coming.
The main leagues are starting back up. These wont hit until september but as you can tell some form of snowball method is happening with football now. Games coming thick and fast after a pretty tame summer of euros.

Cricket:
We are about to start hitting what will be the busiest half of the year for me. My priorities are firmly on the t20 action. Of which ill have several huge tournaments away to start. Iv started to think about what to do with cricket going forward. Im warming to the idea of t20 only. Means i can then plan year for when ill be busy trading. This all helps with my future plans for trading.

BTC index:
Plenty of people liking the original idea. Iv looked into this more and its something im gonna start implementing with my own trading. Any strategy that is not my own ill try my best to get on them but ill not be reliant on it just to prove a point. I do think its silly not to be doing them. Even the good traders should be, tho dependant on their max risk per day. Some traders will have high volume strats which sees a large chunk of bank used. For me with these they wont. Ill be using small enough staking to not disrupt my bank too much. Yes weekends will see a fair bit used but never enough to make me question this.

Iv improved my sheets to showcase all these changes. Why am i now doing all this? Summer wasnt as good as i expected it to be. Not enough trades due to euros and also ipl being paused due to covid. Still managed to get along fine without them both being prominent but id have wanted more. Outside influences tho are always uncontrollable and thats why i re invested into other areas to make sure im covered for passive incomes. Ill not blab on about those again as bored you enough.

Im gonna give this idea a go for the next half of year. If it works well then great if not then ill just go back to my own stuff. I am currently testing another inplay strategy. Something basic and easy to do at HT, set and forget. I will do a separate post later about this. My main plan in future is to have only my own trades. Right now tho my strategies are quite tight and until i get a new strategy going id quite like to have something ticking along, then add this new one. Future portfolio should looks like:

My LTD
SHG
Cricket
TEST(future strat)

These will then be my only trades. But for the next few months while i build the new one ill be using the ones on my sheets. Looking for a big 2nd half of year as ill be able to spend more time trading once cricket season slows down for me playing wise. That actually is the main reason iv not traded. Just cant trade weekends, which for any stage of season is the busiest stage, even more so in summer.

[A Former User]

Trade 2 will be over 0.5 slovan vs young boys: stake 13.72 @1.57

Unlucky for no goal there, runs ends and will be back on monday for the next one. Ill setup a thread for it so not to annoy people on this blog.

[A Former User]

Many people know and iv talked about it before, i got into trading because of gambling. I was a terrible gambler and a problem one. I backed with my heart and always overstaked. What iv also spoken to many about over past is i still gamble, but i use challenges. So trying to turn £10 into something bigger. These hardly touch any of my p/l and in fact iv made sure they have their own bank. Iv recently come off the back of a few big wins. These help me in culling the need to be active in markets. £10 isnt much and i restrict it to once a week.

Heres how im gonna do these. Im gonna look around the forum and select the best trades of the day in my opinion. For me that will be focussing on keiths 1.5 lays and my SHGs. Thats not to say these are the best trades more that i have trust in them.

Ill be looking to use £10 stakes and get them to £30. Then cashout. Once that bank builds to a self sustainable level we can up the starting stakes. Im looking at making this no more than 5 winners in a row. Iv attached a sheet to show this progress. Please remember its a bit of fun and iv found it cures my gambling addiction as i limit it to just the 1 £10 gamble every week. Its better than gambling remember tho because we are actually taking value instead of mug punting.

Bet 1 is malmo vs helsinki over 1.5 @1.38 with stake £10

If this loses then we wait till monday to go again. All about building discipline. I may look to start a new thread for this if it makes decent gains. THIS IS FOR FUN.

[James Woodroffe]

@darri laying SL mate in that series should be a license to print money. That Indian B team looks bloody strong.

[A Former User]

Small Cricket Update:

Sri vs Ind = +0.98 pts/%of bank

As i was playing cricket today i wasnt able to trade, shame as would have been a busy day. But still managed to eek out a pre match trade. I laid sri to win 1pt. Easy victory in the end. If im able to keep this bank ticking along nicely without much effort then im looking forward to when its busier and dont have cricket at weekends. Effortlessly passive income here.

Still might have a few football trades tonight.

[Matt Wood]

@darri Thanks Darri, I had wondered on this for a while as one of my tests uses a 65% for a scope of 5 games and I couldnt work out if it was 5 games total or 10 games total as you have pointed out here. Cleared up for my slow brain now thanks

Niggles are a part of life when playing any competitive sport unfortunately, we learn to play around them though Two games will be a test indeed. I am sure you can use some in game management to protect your bowling shoulder and knees/ankles. Pull back a little if the game situation allows and save your 100% for when the game calls for it. I think too many people have a tendency (my younger self very much included here) to just go 100% all the time in a match.

Best of luck for the games

[A Former User]

@matt-wood hi mate, when using the last 5 scope, you add up the last 5 home and last 5 away. So in total that is 10 games. So im looking for 9/10 games to have gone over 1.5. I use 5 game scope for goals strategies due to form cycles in a season. Using anything more like 10 game scope you can often be fooled by teams dip/spike in form. Its all personal preference for me with that tho. Im sure there are some great trends to pick up with either scope. 5 is my fav for goals and anything else is usually 10 game scope.

I have always got a small niggle that im nursing but they are manageable now. Think start of season after being rather lazy in lockdown times i rushed it all to get back to bowling fast. Now 8 games into season and fitness is back and all is good. 2 games this weekend so big test of the body.

[Matt Wood]

@darri Morning Darri, all good I hope. No cricket injuries that are too bad as well?

A quick question about that filter you just kindly posted. The first line, over 1.5 >=90%. If you are looking at the last 5 matches surely the %s can only be in 20s? If so does that really mean your first line is asking for ALL last 5 games to be over 1.5?

[A Former User]

Ok so i mentioned earlier about a strategy i was looking at. Actually i just did a deep dive and found a pretty cracking set of stats for a 1.5 strategy instead of 2.5. Yes these are everywhere right now. While id love to offload this in terms of following keiths, sadly i log onto this forum irregularly now. I used to be doing this solely full time. Now i check in morning and then at different points throughout day. So for me i really need to find a way of picking my own games for this strategy. That means ill need to build up data.

So why not use this and show people how im building this. Below is the filter:

Leagues: Main league unless state otherwise
aus, belgium, brazil, china, croatia, czech, denmark, england and champ, finland, france, germany, ireland, italy, japan, netherlands, norway, poland, portugal, romania, russia, scotland, slovackia, slovenia, south korea, spain and laliga 2, sweden and superettan, swiss, turkey and usa

Plenty of leagues for this one. Once we get stuck into this leagues will come off. This wont be a from scratch type filter as most are pretty high stats rating wise, so not much can be changed. Avg will be a decisive factor and will be our only variable that ill be looking to improve on. Iv added a sheet for everyone to follow with. Im not trading these. The p/l is just for tracking. Im curious to test this as a replacement for my SHG. Id love nothing more than to have a pure football set and forget. The LTD and SHG are both set and forget but SHG requires me to be getting on at a certain time. If i could have football trades all placed in the morning and be done id love that. Lets hope this matches it or betters it. Ideally i want only 1 goals market strategy, iv really liked the balance of having both my 2 main strategies totally in different markets. Not keen to add liability to similar markets. Plenty to look at as this goes on. UPDATES will follow at certain milestones of data.

[A Former User]

Cricket Update:

Zim vs Bang = +1.61
Eng vs Pak = +2.14
Total p/l = +3.75pts/%of bank

Could not have asked for an easier day. Both games going as planned but the betfair markets failing to see the momentum switches fast enough. Zim looked solid with both taylor and chakabva at the crease. In fact a few loose overs chopped and changed the price heavily. Shakib came back onto bowl and this was when i entered. Nicely timed too wicket early doors and then spin started to dominate. Zim kept losing wickets and a collapse ensued. Nice trade here.

Pak played Eng at their own game. relentless cricket seeing them smash +230. I honestly could not believe those odds. Still tho i assumed it was due to the boundaries being smaller than usual. So i decided to wait inplay and see how england went. They smoked it early on and as ever in england games when momentum happens betfair markets crash hard on them. I backed Pak. They were not bowling badly at all and england would need to force it even more. The run rate crept above 14 and from then on was just a case of wickets in hand. I backed again when livingstone hit a couple boundaries in one of his remaining overs. I just felt the hype/atmosphere was shadowing what was actually happening. Pak on top and england chasing it and losing wickets too quick.

Great games to watch and cricket as iv been saying for months now slowly becoming my best traded sport. Football is now totally passive and set and forget now. Just too much money to be made with skill at reading games and prices in cricket. But the seasonality of both are so complimentary that my trading is super solid now. Ill say it again, HUGE 2nd half of year incoming lets try hit that target!

24 profitable games in a row now, while there have been losing trades in those games overall iv come away with a profit in all 24

[A Former User]

Iv actually looked at data from some of these strategies and actually im interested in my own 1.5 strategy. Ill talk about it above.

[A Former User]

I followed these for a

[Nick Terracciano]

@darri Thats a really great post thanks

[liam willis]

@darri great post mate i think the ego thing is a very big point. everyone wants to do it their way and say to themselves "im successful" but in reality it takes a hell of long time for most people to find their feet and create successful strategies for themselves, im talking from experience believe me. this platform gives a huge advantage in the fact you can use proven strategies to build your bank while learning, as you say it would be criminal not to use that advantage.

[James Woodroffe]

@darri this is a great post mate and something I think as per usual a lot of newer traders will get something from.
I was working on a lay U1.5 myself but quickly realised I was getting to busy with work to keep the proper data and really do it any justice. Decided that till the end of the year most likely I would just follow Keith’s and I could stick to LCS in the 2nd half which has been my major football strategy and will remain going forward. Great idea to split the bank and something I’ll look at from August.

[A Former User]

You will have seen me advise this on several posts now and I thought I should explain my reasons for it. What id call the BTC index fund.

The strategies:

Keiths 1.5 lays
Ryans split stake
Johns dobs/trobs horses
Stuarts away LTD
My LTD

You will have seen me post this idea on a number of posts now saying to just trade the btc strategies until you master your own. So to start with to build a strategy like these above it takes time. Time and effort. You have to first build a selection criteria that often means numerous amounts of games and match situations need to be played out before you can see how best to select games. So for example what odds, what score, what leagues etc for entry. That could be hundreds of games. In the meantime your bank wont be ticking up on a consistent basis and actually you are risking your bank when putting money into untried strats.

The above strategies are all set and forget. Ryans/Johns being the exceptions as they require a bot but still its automated so still set and forget thanks to alan/john. That means you can place these in the morning or when they are posted and just forget about them. No need to be sat around staring at the screen. Its as close to an index fund as you can get. Whats better it returns better than an index fund. Id say these over the course of a year will be hitting on average at least 25% bank growth every month if you did them all the way they are presented by from the traders.

While these tick your bank along you can be building your own strategies. This takes pressure off them. Often we rush our own strategies so that we can start trading. We see long green runs and go damn i need to get on this only for it to then flop and you sack it off thinking it bad. When actually you just entered on the bad variance cycle. All strategies will hit a few losers. Taking the pressure off means you will give it time to breathe. You can then get more data than normal. Then once it gets to a stage of you can tweak it for better anymore you either add it to your trading if it is matching or better than the btc ones or ditch it if its still not as good.

I still believe your own strategy will be your best way to learn to trade but its criminally stupid to your bank not to be using these tried and tested strats that are super consistent over the months. Just an idea for people. Perhaps split your bank in 2. Put 1 half to inplay trades and your own strats. Put the other half towards the above strats. Over the next 3-4 months see whats making more money consistently. These strats can be your ticket to a passive income from trading. While I dont do all the above iv been trading for a while so i know my own strats are good enough to compete. Dont take it as an ego thing. Accept that it takes time and just use them in mean time.

Just an idea especially for those new or still at stage of not knowing if they are consistent yet. Use these until you are 100% confident. They are all great strats.

[A Former User]

Cricket t20 Update

Eng (w) vs Ind (w) = +1.32pts/%of bank

Nice and easy trade here. India set a very healthy target. With the opener out for england at an early stage I was just going to bide my time and wait for sciver to settle. She did and with wyatt also looking set time to enter. England never looked off pace and could really have chased more if needed. Had wickets fallen the markets would have been against backing india so i was always in a good side of the market. Cause if it went against me id still have been at a safe loss before markets would turn. Happy with this and cricket now really ticking along again after a small break from it.

[A Former User]

Cricket Odi Update:

Ireland vs SA = +1.33

Damn I was far too defensive here! Ireland got themselves into such a good position. Scoring +290. SA were still massive odds on. I watched the first few overs and it was swinging massively. While the batsmen remained unset i entered my first stake @1.33 as a lay of SA crazy low odds. Wickets fell but they were on point with the run rate and slightly ahead of where Ireland was at same time. Them wickets tumbled. Once both malan and van der dussen got out in close nick i entered the other half of my main stake onto ireland. Wickets kept tumbling and the markets started to realise Ireland the massive underdogs hadnt done anything wrong all game and started to properly favour them. Sadly i exited. I had training and so hedged too early. This would have been a huge win. Still tho its profit and further builds confidence on my game/trade management, something you dont get with football, the ability for you to manage a trade. Really enjoying cricket trading now feel like iv started to get tests and odis read correctly trading wise. Good signs for when i bump up my staking on them after this summer