Saturday, June 02, 2007

New tennis trading idea

Yesterday's result: £43.14

For a while now I've been sat there watching the tennis markets, looking at player stats and scratching my head trying to work out some new approaches to my tennis trading. Nothing particularly wrong with what I already do but I guess us striped blazers should always be looking for ways to improve. Fine tune and discover better spots to get involved in the market and all that.

As part of this process I've been spending some time simply asking myself what an ideal trading situation might be. At what moments in a tennis match I'd like to get involved if all conditions, but especially stats, price, and game scenario, were in my favour. So in between all the daydreaming on it I managed to come up with some realistic scenarios and today a match cropped up that I knew would give me the opportunity to put one of them into action.

Monfils v Nalbandian was the match. I knew I wouldn't be able to do the whole game but made sure I got the chance to catch a set and a half or so and see what happened. I suppose the good news is I made a profit! More importantly, I made a profit from the trades I was particularly interested in - the ones based on the new idea. Early days of course, and far too soon to judge whether it will work long term, but it's an idea I will continue testing.

To be honest I'm hoping I might be on the right tracks as it was noticeable that I'm definitely not the only one to have hit upon the idea. There was clearly money hitting the market with mine at the price I wanted at the specific moments I'd identified to get involved. I'm sure the proper shrewdies out there have identified lots of potential profitable trading opportunities, including the one I was trying today, and are sat there patiently waiting to pounce.

Anyway, I guess the point I'm trying to make is it pays to study and not rest on your laurels. Actively seeking out new opportunities has to be a good thing right? I can't see any real negatives to improving trading strategy! It just seems that recently, in tennis at least, I've been guilty of concentrating too much on what I'm doing, happy with it, and not enough on thinking through how I could possibly improve what I do.

The spark for all this was looking through my annual results and realising the size of the gulf that has grown between my cricket and tennis trading results in the last year. Cricket trading now accounts for a far larger proportion of profits than it used to. Sure, I use bigger stakes on cricket now. But that decision was made because I felt comfortable with the increase given long term results.

That got me thinking that I should just raise my tennis stakes. But I found I couldn't do this for the simple reason that I just don't have the same confidence in my tennis trading that I do in my cricket trading. Examining the reasons for this I realised that in terms of complexity, for want of a better word, my cricket trading is more advanced than my tennis trading. Put simply, I think I'm better at trading cricket than tennis.

The trouble is my cricket trading may well treat me nicely. But there's a hell of a lot more televised tennis matches than there are cricket matches! Feel equally proficient in both and in theory I should be able to turn a much nicer profit. So inevitably this is how I got to thinking about how to improve my tennis trading. Which led to my coming up with the idea I tried today.

I don't know. There's a long way to go but I feel today I started down the path. I'm not going to lapse on the cricket side of stuff but I plan to actively put more effort towards improving my tennis results. Perhaps then I'll have the confidence to increase the stakes and reap the potential rewards.

All good in theory anyway. But today the reality is it's just too sunny so I've been outside rather than stuck in doing the French Open. I also saw Emma off on another business trip to China today and wasn't particulary in the mood for a trading session. Still, it should give me more time to have a look in over the next week or so. Best of luck if you're invovled today.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Blimey, you're on a decent run here, Wiltshire-based 34-year old called Dave, you dont wanna go to Sri Lanka, there's a war on. All the best, dont start thinking you've got the game beat tho, eh.

Prekladatel.

ruthcarys said...

Hi, Just wondering if you had any advice for a newbie? I trade mainly on tennis but have looked at other markets. Tennis is a game I know and like watching so that helps. I started a few weeks ago and am hoping to accumalate rather than put the same amount in each day. I put £10 into my betfair account and luckily got upto £100 quite easily, however this seems to be beginners luck as now I am just staying around the same amount. Losing then winning, then losing again so going nowhere fast. Do you have any tips on when to back and lay? How do you read a market?
Many thanks
Ruth Bennett
PS Sri Lanka and Maldives is a great combination for honeymoon, my husband and I did it two years ago and it was amazing.

The Betfair Trader said...

Prek> Thanks for the good wishes. As for thinking I've got the game beat it's a good warning. I've been bitten enough times to hopefully know you've never got it beaten though and aim to keep up the process of evaluation to find mistakes and look for better opportunities.


Ruth> Wow. Glad you enjoyed the honeymoon. We know Sri Lanka pretty well from previous trips but any advice for there, and especially the Maldives, would be most welcome. We're a bit worried about the worsening situation but this time are not planning to go North but stay in the Hill Country, south and south west. Well, with maybe a quick trip back to Sigiriya. :-)

As for the tennis. £10 to £100 in a month is a considerable profit % wise! It's not clear from your message but I'm assuming you're playing in running rather than just betting at the start and leaving it?

In the past I've tended not to explain the finer points of how I trade. But I have explained a basic method previously so am happy to point you towards that. (See the comments at the bottom of the post. There's a useful link for stats there too.)

To be honest though I always find the best way to learn these things is to just open the market up and watch it. Watch how it behaves as a match progresses. Ask yourself why it is behaving like it is. Get used to predicting where the market will go if a point goes each way / if a player gets broken etc. My approach has always been understand the market and you'll spot opportunities. This is especially true if you start taking more and more stats into consideration. This is a process I'm going through again myself at the moment as a recent post explained a little.

Hope this helps and best of luck with your trading. :-)