The Betfair Trader Blog is 1 today.

Wow. It's hard to believe but it really has been a year. I traded my first event for the blog on May 8th 2006. The blog is one today! And boy what a year it's been!! Totting up the totals this morning I realised that yesterday I passed the £20,000 profit mark. I'm stunned. Honestly. Over the moon, a bottle of champange chilling in the fridge and party head on for tonight. But still stunned. Fucking staggered in fact.

When I started the blog I was hoping to make a healthy contribution towards the cost of my wedding. My first day's trading resulted in a profit of £18.10, an amount I noted at the time had taken care of the first bottle of wine for the wedding! I never really expected to cover the costs of the entire event. But took the view that consistent small profits would add up to a welcome contribution. Well they have! Because the reality is with £20k profit now banked and earning interest the wedding is paid for. And we're going to have one hell of a honeymoon!

I'm actually a little bewildered by it all. And have spent some time pouring over my results to see how it has all happened just to check it has. And it has! Here's a snapshot of my profit, after commission, between May 8th 2006 and May 8th 2007. (Just click images for larger versions.)


Sure, I know the results are small fry to many. But I'm chuffed to bits with them. Betfair isn't my main income source. It's a hobby. I run my own business from home to keep the tax man and bank manager happy. Fortunately it's a business which enables me to watch a lot of sport and put a fair amount of time into my trading. I know others make far more on Betfair than me. But that's not really the point. I set out with a goal and have somehow achieved it. Perhaps the thing that pleases me most though is I've surprised myself and managed it without a losing month.


Ok, I came close to loss in October! But £39.91 is £39.91. A green number. And a profit! Looking deeper into the stats I can see I've traded 8 sports over the year. Of the eight I have a winning record on six. Here's the breakdown of my profit on each sport.


I guess regular readers of the blog won't be surprised that the vast bulk of the profit has come from trading on the cricket. Especially given the recent World Cup and my money management trial for larger stakes during it. I'm a little surprised though as when I started the blog I figured any profit would be split more evenly between cricket and tennis. And certainly during the first few months tennis was providing more profit than cricket. However, I then went on a three month losing streak on tennis, at the same time as my cricket results picked up, and ever since I've concentrated more on cricket trading. I guess my reading of a cricket match is just better than my reading of a tennis one. And from a trading perspective cricket can certainly be kinder if you find yourself in a bad position. Besides cricket and tennis, darts, snooker, rugby and football have also been profitable. Though as the figures suggest I spend a lot less time doing them and usually trade with far smaller stakes than usual.

Of course, if I traded 8 sports and won on 6 that means I lost on two. And here are the villains.


The racing loss is a prime example of why you shouldn't trade something just for the sake of it. I used to trade the favourites before the off and, bored one day, had a dip back into it with a view to perhaps trialling some new trading software in the future. The result was immediate losses. The NFL I'm a little annoyed about. Only traded a few games during the year and made a profit on most of them but had a sizeable loss on one which led to the overall negative for the year. Still, reading my write up of the loss it was some game!

Anyway, I could provide more stats but lost some data referring to total turnover and commission paid earlier this year which makes it incomplete so I'll leave it. In danger of getting all a bit stattastic anyway.

One thing that might be of interest though is that during a year of trading in which I've made over £20,000 profit I have never had enough Betfair Points to have more than a 5% commission reduction. Which seems crazy given that I can play low limits on the Betfair Poker tables for a few days and find myself on 10% or even 15% reduction. I guess that's just one of the drawbacks of my approach of small consistent profits. A costly one though. Afterall, it means I may have won £5465.97 last month. But I also paid £306.84 in commission. It doesn't take a genius to work out how much extra profit I could make over a year with a reduced commission rate and this is something I should take a look at.

Enough of the general overview though! What have I actually been writing about for a year? After all, this is my 266th post. So what the hell have I been going on about?

Well, I started out by explaining who I am, what I was doing and how I was doing it. Basically the answer was I'm self employed, am marrying the gorgeous Emma, had £1,000 and planned to win enough with it to help pay for my wedding.

I must have kept banging on about how I like to try and make consistent profits with lowish risk exposure as people started asking what my money management ideas were. I stuck with those principles until I was over £10k in profit and the start of this year's Cricket World Cup was upon us when I trialled this new money management system. After reviewing my world cup trading performance I decided the new system worked, I was pretty much happy with it and would adopt it going forward, for cricket trading at least.

So, what else? Well naturally a lot of the posts have been about my trading performances from day to day. So I've had smiles on my face while talking about my biggest individual win and my biggest winning day. While I've been banging my head against the wall inbetween facing up to my biggest individual loss and biggest losing day. Still, at least they weren't as bad as possibly the biggest Betfair loss ever!

Away from actual profit and loss figures I had a look at the beneficial effects a change in trading strategy to letting wins run longer reaped, gave my views on dealing with bad spells in a discussion on trading and psychology and had a stab at answering one of the questions I'm asked most frequently - the why don't you go full time on betfair issue!

Think I got a bit negative about the full time question and also had a downer several times on the Free Money merchants as well as giving an example that if something looks too good to be true then there's a reason. Like it is.

It wasn't all doom and gloom though. Brett Lee invited everyone to take the piss out of him, I previewed the doomed Ashes series with a look at some classic Ashes sledging and while trading the Stella Artois final last year even somehow managed to reveal how I'd once been escorted out of Queens Club by security with the helpful, if not very English, suggestion that I might like to fuck off.

On the trading tips front I haven't posted that much. Much like posting betting tips it just tends to be more trouble than it's worth. That said I do get asked a lot of questions in this area and, although there are others far better at this Betfair lark than me, perhaps should do more posts on these topics in the future.

Anyway, I did give some very basic strategies for trading tennis and rugby in the comments sections on those two links. And although most other tips were event specific I did also look at the idea behind identifying free lays, the value of simply listening to what is happening and the importance of knowing the market rules before you get involved. I'm also a big fan of learning from both wins and losses, as in the most recent learning from mistakes post. I also recommended a read of Market Wizards. And have banged on enough about the two pieces of trading software I use, BetTrader PRO and Bet Angel, that I must have bored everyone rigid on the subject!

The blog hasn't just been about what I've written though. I've had some great comments left, emails sent and MSN conversations as a result of what I write. Whether wishing me luck, asking questions or especially offering advice, I'm very grateful for them. Perhaps the most useful comment during the year was left anonymously on this post where I was discussing the difference between punting and trading. Woke me up to the ideas of, and surrounding, Prospect Theory. (see, 1,2,3 and 4 for a quick intro.)

Finally, one other thing I must get in before I wrap up the review of the blog's first year and that was my mention in the Racing Post. Very chuffed at that. Pleased they felt it's worth looking in each day. Something I hope you continue to do.

Right. Drink time! I've got a lot of celebrating to do!! :-)

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