The road to full time
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@alastair-todd sounds like you may have quite a strict criteria for matches? Maybe relax it a bit and allow for more games this will give you a better picture. Sometimes you might be surprised that certain filters and strategies dont always need such heavy stats criteria. So for example my SHG on it i have a stats based criteria that actually the higher i put the expected goals the weaker it performs yet a lower amount actually makes it perform way better. Dont just come up with the perfect filter straight away. We often bombard the filter or set it up too tightly. I always start by doing market overview. So the basics. If its a SHG im looking for im then just simply inputting H2 over 0.5 is >=70% and then the following that set everything else i want to add and track set that to >= 0. This way youll amass a huge data set very quickly and once a certain thing hit says 100-200 look to see if it works and what tweaks can be done. One by one tweaking each thing that hits certain data points. So for example a HT scoreline hits 100-200 games, we can then see if it has a good strike rate, what leagues does it work in, whats the p/l etc. Slowly but surely after each step you start to make it more tight and dont just jump to opinions let the data tell you if it works or not. The stats software criteria you kept at >= 0 you can then have that recorded to tell you whe this = this it does this etc. Slowly making your filter better.
Hope that helps. Definitely think a clear video would be good. It doesnt take time tho mate, its not a quick fix. But if you relax your filter a bit you can build it faster to a good benchmark in which you can earn while you tweak. Im still tweaking but also still trading cause mine got to a good stage and showed very good consistency. But i waited for around 200 games to qualify, it took most of the winter to start it. Thats why im saying use this summer to work and prepare for the winter leagues again in october.
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@alastair-todd said in The road to full time:
As usual, an excellent thread with lots of sensible thoughts to make traders more successful. I thoroughly endorse the one key strategy approach as otherwise, as a novice, you never concentrate sufficiently while spreading yourself too thinly across a number of partly-successful (or not) strategies.
However, it would be really helpful if someone could point me in the right direction and give me some tips on how to "amass loads of data" and do the correct analysis on it. Currently my filter throws up a number of matches (none at the moment) which I can then track and record goal times, odds etc but these only run into several tens of matches over a few months. At that rate I will have retired before I get off the start line. i suppose my question is, how do you actually get all this date and start analysing it properly? It would be immensely helpful if one of the experts could actually demonstrate how to do it. @ryan - is there a video in there somewhere? I'm really not asking anyone to do the work for me, just point me in the right direction and I'll do it myself, willingly, because it will undoubtedly be the best way to learn.
I just started collecting data for my filter in December and now I have over 1200 matches. It builds quicker than you think.
I can only find use for around 400 matches in that presently but to me that's not nothing.
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As usual, an excellent thread with lots of sensible thoughts to make traders more successful. I thoroughly endorse the one key strategy approach as otherwise, as a novice, you never concentrate sufficiently while spreading yourself too thinly across a number of partly-successful (or not) strategies.
However, it would be really helpful if someone could point me in the right direction and give me some tips on how to "amass loads of data" and do the correct analysis on it. Currently my filter throws up a number of matches (none at the moment) which I can then track and record goal times, odds etc but these only run into several tens of matches over a few months. At that rate I will have retired before I get off the start line. i suppose my question is, how do you actually get all this date and start analysing it properly? It would be immensely helpful if one of the experts could actually demonstrate how to do it. @ryan - is there a video in there somewhere? I'm really not asking anyone to do the work for me, just point me in the right direction and I'll do it myself, willingly, because it will undoubtedly be the best way to learn.
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@darri Good post and lots of valid points. I was asking myself the same question about the 1 strategy thing and I think Ryan and Stuart rightly pointed out that there’s nothing wrong with having one main strategy so I’m sticking primarily to LCS. Whenever I’ve been looking at multiple strategies in the past I’ve had mixed results, since focusing on just one I’ve had a massive improvement. And it didn’t take anything spectacular to do - just focus and attention on that alone. Also I had a second filter for LCS which was doing OK overall but not exciting, I revisited it this month and refined it slightly and it’s been really really good - so I definitely echo some of your points here
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@steve-sandell said in The road to full time:
@darri good little post there
. For me yes keep it simple and learn to take a loss or multiple losses in a row. If you feel uncomfortable with the loss lower your stakes. It took me discipline and dedication to turn the corner not just a good bankThis is a great point and one that affected me. It’s ok running a data set and saying ‘this makes 10pts per month’ but what is the variance like. Sometimes you could hit 4 or 5 losers in a row and start to get affected- if so then either a) you’re overstaking or b) you don’t have enough confidence on the strategy yet. You need to be able to keep placing the next trade regardless of the result of the last trade
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@darri great couple of posts today mate and as usual a great deal of food for thought for guys still finding their feet.
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@matt-wood Thanks bud!
If you can take opinion out of trading and rely on data your winning! This next few month we have just summer leagues. Between now and october so once main leagues have had a few rounds of games, you could have amassed a larger data set that can tell you what score lines are working, what odds ranges are working, what filter criteria works etc everything. From there you can have a base going into the next season with a good benchmark, which over time you can still tweak but it will have so much behind it.
If you have good data telling you this thing works it does wonders for mentality and confidence behind a trade. Pulling the trigger without hesitation. or the other way knowing it will rebound if your on a slump.
Trading is very simple you have to back or lay prices that you think the market has over or under priced, hence the saying there is a trade in every game. Its your ability as a trader to find ways to get yourself into that position and be right more than not. Its like people just expect to cross or take a freekick like beckham. Yet he spent hours and hours everyday training it. As traders we might hit a few good ones early on and think i got this yet when we start to miss a few we need to know why and data can be your best friend here. Its why clubs pay heaps on data centres and analysts now.
Its all very easy to talk about but actions speak louder than words and i hope people have a read of that post id did because it will help long term not short term. Which this whole blog is about. I always try to get people to stop thinking of this as a bet/gamble/trade, imagine this was a business decision you wouldnt be doing it so lightly or on a whim. Youd be number crunching to get the most p/l, so why not with trading, i always treat it like a business, whilst also being aware that every trade doesnt need to be some military op its just a trade which is part of the whole process. They just add up over time the good and bad ones and end of month you see massive differences.
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@darri good little post there
. For me yes keep it simple and learn to take a loss or multiple losses in a row. If you feel uncomfortable with the loss lower your stakes. It took me discipline and dedication to turn the corner not just a good bank -
@darri Cracking post Darri, some more nuggets in there
I am starting to find that following data with my testing is going to lead to a MUCH less stressful trading experience. For me this is largely due to the fact that all of the decisions about a trade are made well in advance and driven by your data (excluding team lineups and motivation etc).
I am also finding that it really doesnt take all that long to build a data set, its just not done in a month like you said
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In these periods of quiet take the time to learn and read all the resources there are on here. Over the last year iv seen a lot of new traders come and go. Its always the same thing. They log onto here thinking im gonna crack this, give it one attempt and end up in the red after the first month. They go away back to their family, friends and workmates and go nah everyone is right this isnt a profitable venture. Yet they gave it 1 month! Over time those that have perhaps been a member on here for least say almost 3 years its amazing to see the originals and those who manage to make this work. Its actually not as many as people think. I look at all the chats iv had with people and one by one they are no longer a member because they gave in. It takes time and effort to do this. Its not a get rich scheme.
Its not just new members either. I was once in this very same bracket. Rash decisions, ditching strategies that made a loss yet only gave 1 month. These arent new to traders they happen to a lot of us. They keep popping up for members still! But there are ways to tackle this.
One of the main things iv always said is work on one strategy at a time and master it. I honestly still dont understand why people cant get into that mindset, but in a way i do because sometimes you have to experience it for yourself to believe it. Why not during this quiet period while the euros are on just attempt one strategy. Track it on a spreadsheet and then after the summer without trading it have a look at the data. What influences this strategy, really amass a huge amount of data and then set yourself up for the new season. We are forever looking at P/Ls of testing and ditching things before we understand the ways in which to improve it. Take for example my post yesterday. MY new SHG set and forget only made a small profit in 2 months. In the background i did a massive data collecting phase. I did leagues, score lines, filter setting i tracked the lot. I could quite easily see that the things i had been doing wrongly. Now here is me a full time trader at a stage when im trying to move away from pure inplay trading, something that has built my entire bank and life in the past 2 years. So i feel like im back at the same stage most beginner/intermediate traders would be at all over again. If you look at my trades done in the past 2 months, from 89 trades it made 3.22, thats a measly 0.03 per trade, absolutely useless for efficiency in that respect id need to be doing this daily and loads of trades to make it worthwhile. Yet actually looking at it without this whole picture syndrome we typically have, i spotted certain scorelines and certain filter and league criteria that wasnt working. This has led from it making just 3.22 points after 89 trades to around 22.38 points after only 33 trades! Lets hope this tweak continues in that vain.
Those are pretty huge changes yet done with just data collecting and honestly minor tweaks. People say sport cant be judged on data yet almost ever single good team is using data. The old fergie era of the eye test is moving on. Players like kante are being unearthed because of good data. Have you ever watched moneyball? I think its now on netflix give it a watch. Data runs most of my trading now. I feel i needed the inplay watching and seeing how the markets reacted to understand the basic concepts. Now im understanding what it takes to improve on that efficiency wise. Data does that. If im doing it at my level why arent you with yours there is no difference and no barrier between us. The biggest difference is that ill follow a more disciplined style and allow data to say if im wrong or right not opinions or some fancy p/l result from just 2 months. Im always thinking long term, even if that means short term my consistent late goals strategy needs to be stopped for this to be mastered. I know long term this strategy will outperform and in turn give me more freedom. It doesnt matter too much that ill make less money because if it was money i needed id be upping stakes and only late goal trading and become selfish. Theres more to this than just money iun the short term, would i rather see a huge spike to my money now and later on fall victim to variance or start slow and in those same years as the other scenario build something that will make me money consistently and compound that every so often forever? Please look at my table on my results sheet, you can be doing standard months of profit and still end up with a huge bank at the end. You dont need some golden strategy to get you there just basic ones.
So basically dont just give up on things too early. In the next few months before we return to winter leagues use this summer to try out that new strategy and test it. Once you get to a good amount of data send me a link and ill look at it, or post it on the forum and we can all give good advice. Dont look at the £ signs. There is always a way to improve on things. Remember this takes time. You dont just jump into being the biggest sports team without time and effort, you dont just become jeff bezos level amazon on day one, why on earth do you think you can with trading? If it were that simple every single person would be a member on here with a far bigger wallet than yours. Its not easy because its like any job/craft you have to gain skills over time. As someone who has done that journey i can only advise the right paths to take, i cant teach you exactly how to trade because trading isnt done that way. Slow and steady and please work on ONE strategy at a time. If someone looks at a few strategies at a time they will just ditch the underperforming one yet it could have been the best one if you had given it time and effort. Could that LTD have been done at HT instead of pre match? Could you have queued for better odds? All these questions need answered how on earth are you doing that with multiple angles. Its exactly why we have been trying to tell some traders on the site to stop trying to be so fancy with data and trading. Just keep it simple. The best traders do, there isnt one good trader right now who is doing something massively fancy, there is a reason for it! Ill not go down the route of saying what i think certain traders should or shouldnt do that is 100% individual specific on what they want, but if advice from all the main traders is less is more and keep it simple, why are people trying to invent the wheel when we already have solid strategies for people to look into and adapt to themselves.
STOP chasing this! Allow strategies to breathe. Cycles of variance happen all the time. Even on good strats. In testing we never know at what stage we are at with it. Just give it time. Why are we always in such a rush? Easy for a 28 yr old to say that but truly why? Im hopefully gonna show how a small bank can become a large one in just a few years. Are you really gonna be that impatient for that rewarding life you could have in 2-3 years just because something didnt work for 2 months. Always look to improve.
Bit of a long post, cricket has been a bit boring past few days so thought id do a decent post and the saw a few members blogs and posts so thought this was a good time to talk about this. Remember not everything works how we hoped it would and it takes many cycles of testing and tweaking to get right. Amazon didnt make profit for 4-5 years! Now look at it! I used this on a previous post but it rings true. In a more modern example and one thats more relatable look at my SHG example. 3.22 points profit from 89 trades is useless, yet one or two tweaks and its now looking like a 22.38 points profit from just 33 trades. From a measly 0.03 points per trade im now looking at 0.67 points per trade. Based on that i only need a few good trades a week to amass a good compounding effect to my bank! Its the same with my LTDs a newer strategy that will evolve over time yet in the background i did a huge testing phase before even committing money to it. Dont be too eager to make money and chase this dream. If you cant manage that emotion with a £100 bank how you gonna cope with a £1k with same discipline? Try to be like those members on here we all like to follow and listen to, there is a reason they have stuck around and a reason other fall away, its discipline and that drive to always be improving. In turn money comes from that!!
Hope this resonates. Use this time to learn and read the good info people provide, the best traders have given some absolute gold on this forum over time. Invest in yourself and dont just be defeated by self gluttony when things dont appear to be working fast. Sometimes all it takes is that one lightbulb moment and boom your trading takes off. For me that was when i worked on one strategy at a time. Others have since done this too and boom trading takes off. Is that a coincidence or actually a working way to trading profitably?
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So ends the first technically losing month despite it being a small one in i think 2 years, its still counts as a red on the sheets. Im going to assume this was because of the huge rise last month and somehow somewhere they wanted to return my increase back to something more reasonable.
Couple things:
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No cricket trades at all in may. ZERO! Was meant to be my full on ipl window and continue raking in the profits that we had already started. We were also moving to more run friendly wickets that would have made match reading less risky. I cant sit here and moan about me being out of pocket when india is getting hammered by this covid. I have loads of friends via cricket with family and friends over there and i hope they do whatever they can to stop this spread. Some things are bigger than money. However, there is light for cricket trading, the english summer of cricket is now in full swing. This potentially could be a huge couple of months to get stuck into. Like iv said this summer will be my last with smaller stakes, if we come out of this with healthy gains ill up them to normal and in turn this will most likely make cricket my main traded sport/focus.
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I stopped doing late goals. This transition wasnt as smooth as i wanted. Probably not wise to have moved from a inplay orientated strategy to a set and forget in this period of the season. However this year for me is all about efficiency. Im happy to be taking a less intense look into trading and if that in turn means less money then thats fine. I managed to reach a healthy data set on the SHGs and that allowed me to make some pretty great tweaks. Its still not fully what i want but they wont be as drastic changes anymore. From now on it will just be leagues and scorelines. Finally in a happy place with set and forget trading, remember something i havent been doing all these years. Missing out on lates which on minimum made around 10-30% every month. It just didnt fit into the lifestyle i was after anymore with trading. Yes it made money and was probably my best earner but it made me a slave t trading and the time taken was too much. I have too much else going on and building other things outside of trading, funnily the only reason these other things are growing is because of the late goals, so not much to moan about!! I just dont want to have all my eggs in the trading basket and want a more passive income life. Already feeling the positive effects it has on you mentally and physically.
Couple of good things to also note. Iv made a few tweaks to my main strategies. From testing these would absolutely smash my late goals over time. So despite the slow start i needed that data boost to realise this potential. LTDs are a new strategy and so far in the latest data run since i made the tweak it is now 32 trades and 31 winners so would have been 27.63 points profit. SHGs in it new data set is also now 32 trades and 30 winners so profit of 21.40 points. So in its new data set these would have made +49 points from just 64 trades so per trade entered that would = 0.77 points profit if laying to win 1pt. These figures are huge. Trumps all iv done before. Excited to bring this to realisation. They still arent even optimised yet!! Also traders are always adapting even the ones you follow all the time. Keith is now mainly laying unders, if you had joined 2 years ago he was mainly lcs. I was late goal only, im now doing 2 set and forgets and mainly cricket! I believe ryan had a similar way he started with horses/football, now he is mainly tennis/football. We all have these paths to take and always improving. Even the pros are still tweaking and improving albeit small tweaks compared to newer traders, but still always looking at getting better. Dont lose faith if you have a few bumps in the road, keep learning and keep writing it down so you dont forget. Who knows in 2 years that info could lead you into better strategies with that understanding.
Main thing this next month upcoming is the int comps. Copa is a doubt now but euros and summer leagues in full swing. Could be interesting with the euros and how my new way of trading works. Im looking forward to the good prices upcoming but also im gonna be making sure not to get carried away. Last few int comps iv made over 10pts from each. That was with late goals. So it might mean i trade these cautiously and reduce staking for them. Going against what i normally do but its all about building discipline for this new set and forget style of trading.
In terms of bank progress we are still ahead of where i should have been. However that cushion from the first month is no longer as nice. So steady profit each month is now needed. Thankfully iv now got 2 fantastic strats and cricket coming back to help drive this along and back into the regular routine. This was always gonna be a quiet month for me.
ON another note awesome to see some other traders posting their trades and blogs. Cant take credit for it all, but great to see the likes of @steve-sandell now posting his trades and recording his progress o his blog. I remember him posting saying he liked one of my posts about it and kicked him into gear to give it a go. Now look he is having profitable months with full accountability. You just dont get that anywhere else online in our space. People hide behind paid stupid strategy names and sell the dream, yet on here we all share our stuff and this so called edge protecting is a complete lie. If you cant share what your doing your edge aint that good then. This place gets better all the time with this side of things. Im sure there might be even more influx when the horse racing stats come through too.
Have a good month guys! Also :scotland: at the euros
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TRADES! Jeez finally some things on the filters!
Pre match LTD:
Kashiwa vs sapporo
Ill update these when im back from cricket today
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Yes mate all good seeing your boys losing last night lol. I use Crypto.com
@matt-wood said in The road to full time:@eamonn-hogan Evening mate, all good I hope
What platform are you using to hold those Eamonn? -
@eamonn-hogan Evening mate, all good I hope
What platform are you using to hold those Eamonn? -
@darri said in The road to full time:
OK so in the last trading summary i posted saying id start to show my trading angles not just on betfair. Iv been vocal before on here about crypto and how i managed to invest a decent size of my old betfair bank into it. I then made profit and got out and looked to assess.
Well iv just re entered again and starting the portfolio of it. Unlike others for me im only really focused on a couple of the coins. Those are bitcoin, ethereum and cardano. What you can see if your read up on these is that each of these is at different stages. Bitcoin is the founding father and the other two are next generations of each other. Bitcoin we all know about. So ill not discuss. Iv balanced this to be worth 40% of my portfolio for crypto. Because im not being so diverse with the coins its a decent exposure.
Ethereum and cardano are competing against each other. Ethereum has the upper hand at present, its got the rep and most day to day investors will likely be ehtereum buyers rather than read up about cardanos plans. Cardano are doing a massive drive right now with updates the team behind it involves the co founder of ethereum, instead of making it market ready he is instead playing the long game and making it as solid as possible before fully marketing it, this unknown potential is why iv added it to the portfolio and why iv staked the way i have with it. How iv balanced these 2 coins is 40% is etherum and 20% is cardano.
So 40% bitcoin, 40% ethereum and 20% cardano
From here ill now be looking to add around £100-£200 depending on how well my trading is doing and doing so in those percentages. This is just part of my investment strategy right now im dividing my investments between crypto and index funds. End of each month im assessing what looks like a good time to enter either and doing it that way. As my main income starts to snowball ill then probably look to add the both equally over time. Just right now its probably better with smaller amounts to be using it in crypto and taking advantage of the current media hype both in selling high and buying low. Huge reaction recently to media and im entering at this stage.
As for how much im investing its £500. Ill create a spreadsheet that a little more readable than the one i have currently for it and look to add it to the results sheet i share with you all in the link under my signature.
Hope this whole transparency angle will make it easier to see what im thinking and why im trying to retire before im 40, currently 28.
I’m currently holding ETH and XRP coins. If XRP win this court case it could be a cracker.
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OK so in the last trading summary i posted saying id start to show my trading angles not just on betfair. Iv been vocal before on here about crypto and how i managed to invest a decent size of my old betfair bank into it. I then made profit and got out and looked to assess.
Well iv just re entered again and starting the portfolio of it. Unlike others for me im only really focused on a couple of the coins. Those are bitcoin, ethereum and cardano. What you can see if your read up on these is that each of these is at different stages. Bitcoin is the founding father and the other two are next generations of each other. Bitcoin we all know about. So ill not discuss. Iv balanced this to be worth 40% of my portfolio for crypto. Because im not being so diverse with the coins its a decent exposure.
Ethereum and cardano are competing against each other. Ethereum has the upper hand at present, its got the rep and most day to day investors will likely be ehtereum buyers rather than read up about cardanos plans. Cardano are doing a massive drive right now with updates the team behind it involves the co founder of ethereum, instead of making it market ready he is instead playing the long game and making it as solid as possible before fully marketing it, this unknown potential is why iv added it to the portfolio and why iv staked the way i have with it. How iv balanced these 2 coins is 40% is etherum and 20% is cardano.
So 40% bitcoin, 40% ethereum and 20% cardano
From here ill now be looking to add around £100-£200 depending on how well my trading is doing and doing so in those percentages. This is just part of my investment strategy right now im dividing my investments between crypto and index funds. End of each month im assessing what looks like a good time to enter either and doing it that way. As my main income starts to snowball ill then probably look to add the both equally over time. Just right now its probably better with smaller amounts to be using it in crypto and taking advantage of the current media hype both in selling high and buying low. Huge reaction recently to media and im entering at this stage.
As for how much im investing its £500. Ill create a spreadsheet that a little more readable than the one i have currently for it and look to add it to the results sheet i share with you all in the link under my signature.
Hope this whole transparency angle will make it easier to see what im thinking and why im trying to retire before im 40, currently 28.
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Still nothing really coming up on the filters
just waiting till the euros before i trade anything away from them. Internationals are excellent for SHGs and also we have the Copa America too. Also we have the return of cricket and i cannot wait to get back to trading it. For me currently ill still be mainly looking at t20s but will be using smaller stakes on the one day games and tests, this will probably be the last summer of smaller stakes before i use full ones on the other formats. Then cricket will i guess become my most traded sport, making football very much a set and forget only traded sport for me.Once games start popping up ill resume posting just nothing showing so far. There is a SHG for tomorrow will see if it qualifies, ill try post it inplay. Just looking forward to the main summer leagues hitting filters
then itll be back to normal service and routine with trading after this quiet period for me -
First game of the season today
did have a look at the stats software but only one game popped up and its not that important a game so no point posting it. Ill see if i can trade tomorrow and will post then. But for now away to take advantage of a rare sunny day up here i swear if only you could have seen what it was like yesterday, biggest surprise to be told game was on today. Shoulders feeling good done some workouts this morning and we are ready to go.Ill be back tomorrow and will look to post when i get involved. As iv been repeating a lot this month, for me it was always gonna be a quiet one. The football for me at this stage of season limits my trading. Like i keep saying every trade i enter i want to be able to justify it. If there is one thing saying maybe not then i avoid. Got to be a 100% confident trade, so motivation plays such a key role in that. Then add to that the ipl halting due to covid was always gonna mean its a quiet one for me. Summer is around the corner now tho and its actually a very busy 2nd half of year with all these extra tournaments.
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@darri Fantastic news that it helped out
I know all to well how shitty it feels to have to pause or stop doing something you enjoy due to an injury.
Treat the cheat sheet the same way mate, its a lot of stuff to ask of your shoulders that they have not done before in that quantity so little and often to begin with. You can always add more reps or more time to an exercise later but you can never take them away if you have done too much.
You have a great season with no injuries or stoppages from a global pandemic! -
Good for you two, nice to see some collaboration in other areas too! I know who to come to @Matt-Wood , I had a wrist operation last August and I neglect doing my stretches and stuff on it so its basically not much better than pre-op!
