Biggest trading win

Daily Result: £710.06

So I'm pretty pleased with the result in the 3rd test between England and Pakistan. Though I've had far bigger win and losses away from the blog in the past the £663.78 I won on the game today represents the biggest win I've had since I started the blog using a set budget. And it's a pretty sizeable contribution to the big day too!

Regular readers will know I only ever start each event with 1k in my Betfair account and usually trade in blocks of £500. And while an outright punter may well have made around 3-4 times their stake with an outright England back I'm more than happy with a 66.3% return on my capital. I guess you pay your money and take your chances. At stages during the game the outright punter must have felt they'd done their £1k. But at no point during the game did I feel I would lose a penny. The price for the less risky approach is less profit. But I'll always settle for smaller wins if I can keep them consistent.

One other figure of note is I traded £30,989.22 on the game making a 1.87% return on that. Now while that may seem rock bottom low to those that just punt for me it's high. In June, for example, including all wins and losses and bets submitted and cancelled at the same price, I made around 0.32% of total turnover. In general, if I can make 1% on an event I'm pleased. So ultimately, not only am I happy with the end result - but also with the way I traded the game. That said a Pakistan rather than England win would have seen a larger profit so there's plenty of room for improvement!

The test match itself was pretty interesting and I dipped in and out of it regularly over the 5 days. There were some shocking umpiring decisions early doors which should have led to a result far earlier but I guess that would have made the draw harder to lay on the 4th day so everything worked out fine in the end.

The last day itself was always going to be a cracker with all 3 results possible. The draw had plummeted from an overnight high of around 2.64 to to 2.4ish before a ball was bowled. The first surprise of the day was then Monty opening the bowling - though it turned out to just be to facilitate a change of ends.

Within 5 overs the draw price was 1.9!! I suspected it would fall sharply but with no wickets down and the odd boundary coming it had to be too low. OK run rates don't work the same in tests as in one dayers but with a required rate of 3.61 it was worth keeping an eye on. And even as they were seeing off the new ball Pakistan were more or less up with the rate. And after catching up with it they were actually ahead by the end of the 19th over.

The problem for Pakistan was, of course, wickets, and a couple of quite unbelievable suicidal run outs didn't help. In the end they simply collapsed and it was another result for draw layers.

Dipped in and out of a bit of the tennis after the test but was feeling tired so just levelled out and left it in the end picking up another £45 or so. Actually the first tennis trading I've done for a while so started with some reduced stakes of £250 just to get back into the swing of it. Now we have some proper televised matches I'll be returning to tennis trading more over the coming weeks and am looking forward to it after a break.

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