Monday, May 22, 2006

Something is better than nothing

Daily Result: £14.46

Hey, don't knock it - that's nearly enough to buy a jug of Pimms at the wedding!!

And considering I was around £170 down after trading the first of two tennis matches today I'll settle for any green today.


Annoyed to have lost on the first match. Wasn't even going to get involved today but Ginepri v Karlovic just seemed a no-brainer. Ginepri with little decent form of late and a loss of confidence. Karlovic nicely rested up with his service arm fresh to smash a succession of aces. So what happens? Karlovic gets broken early, and seemed so disinterested he may as well have not turned up. Even with the opportunity to level at one set all he lost a service game to love. Anyway, I was left with a hefty red early doors and worked it down to a more manageable figure. Took a risk at the end and increased my Ginepri red laying at 1.04 hoping for a couple of tiebreaker points for Karlovic and the chance to end all green but it just cost me more. Sigh. Still, the important thing was I kept the red manageable and didn't chase.

Made the money back on the next match - doubles between USA and Croatia - which again involved Karlovic. OK, the Bryan brothers are the bollocks when it comes to doubles at the moment but 1.12? Against Ljubicic and karlovic. With their serves? Couldn't be anything but a lay really. And although I had the twins green for their break in the second a £192.56 profit on the game was more than satisfactory.

Anyway, a big thankyou to Phil over at Smiling Assassin for being the first person to link to my blog!

And a big WTF to Sky Sports. Who spent all week bragging about their live and interactive tennis service on the Hamburg Open. And then failed to show the final live yesterday. Preferring instead to screen recorded boxing, recorded cricket and rain interrupted golf. Nice one.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

How much money do you use to back a selection with before trading it, please?

The Betfair Trader said...

Hi Mark,

Thanks for reading. Like it says in the What's it all about section (top right) I have a starting bank of just £1k for this blog.

As I didn't want to blow a lot of this too early, and I'd had some time off from trading because of my mother's illness, I started with blocks of £250 max. I've upped this to blocks of £500 max now. Once I have (hopefully) built up a little more green I will increase this further until eventually I'm playing with £1k a trade where liquidity allows it.

Of course, it's not only important to look at the size of trades but also the style. I don't like to leave positions open and be exposed for very long at all. And this is reflected in my profit compared to turnover. In the past I have been around the 1% to 1.5% mark.

It's early days with this blog but I have noticed I am a little more cautious than normal and suspect this return will dip a little but there's just too little data to conclude that at present.

Good luck with your betting.