Biggest win on Betfair

2nd Test Result: £3049.08

Wow. That's a big win for me. Certainly my biggest since I started the blog nearly 18 months ago anyway. And one that's left a rather large smile on my face. Sure, I know it's smallfry to some of the pros who make a living off Betfair. But these things are all relative and I'm chuffed to bits with it.

I made the profit on the 2nd test match between England and India. Enjoyable game to watch for the most part. Great to see Michael Vaughn back in form with a superb century and the match was also notable for Sachin Tendulkar becoming only the third batsmen to pass the 11,000 test runs mark. I kept meaning to do daily updates for the test to outline my thoughts and what was going on but am just really busy with a work project and trying to get everything ready in time for the wedding. I'll try and update more regularly over the next few weeks. Much of what I thought I was posting on the Betfair cricket forum anyway in the daily match threads. (My forum username on there is bftrader if you want to say hi)

So how did I make the profit? Well one way I sometimes look at a test match is to go by the rough and ready generalisation that the team that wins the most sessions wins the match. It's not always true but on this occasion is quite a useful way of looking at what I did. On the whole I won money session to session and day on day but did have a couple of shockers.

I didn't get involved in the match market at all before the 1st morning. And then I just went through one of those purple patches where everything I touched seemed to go right. I recently had a similar experience where everything I touched went wrong so it's nice to see Lady Luck balancing things out. Basically the start of the match was delayed. There was no real rain. In fact the sun was shining for the most part. The problem was a waterlogged outfield. So I was trading the weather which included a very small shower. To cut a long story short the market was yoyoing quite heavily and with the information I had I just kept catching it right. The result was that by the start of play I was £1.3k green any result. As well as somewhat stunned!

By the end of day 1 it was £1.6k green any result, £2.1k by the end of day 2, and £2.3k by the end of day 3 - though by then I was small green England and larger on India and the draw. Basically I took the view that England were too short after a poor start in the earlier stages of the match and layed accordingly as I mentioned on the Betfair forum. Couple that with some pretty short term positions on the draw and India and that's how the profit built.

Day 4 was a real up and down affair. Patience is always a big part of trading. Choosing the moments to get involved is key. Not doing anything for the sake of doing something. Well, in test matches you need a lot of patience! For the first three days I'd traded patiently and relatively well. I continued that into Day 4, getting to about £2.45k any result when I decided to weight my book pretty heavily towards India. Yes, they won, but I went too early. Ended up wiping the best part of £1k from each result when I hit a trade stop. Which was gutting as very shortly after the England wickets I'd hoped for arrived like proverbial buses. Don't like to dwell on what ifs but when I opened that India position I knew I needed wickets or it would cost me. The wickets came but started too late for my book. Unfortunately jumping the gun on India cost me a far larger win. But equally if I hadn't had got out at the stop and the wickets continued to remain in tact I would quickly have been looking at zero profit. So I have no real issue of getting out at the stop.

It's not as if I can be too hard on myself anyway given the final result. Well pleased with it. Anyway, as the wickets fell I obviously got back on India and by the end of Day 4 I was over £3k green on them with large liabilities on the draw and England. The price was 1.01-1.02 so I left a lay in at 1.01 to cover my liabilities and it got matched over night. Throwing money away maybe but for reasons I again explained on Betfair this morning.

So, that was that. A great test match to both watch and trade. I know I don't normally put screenshots up but as this has been my biggest win since I started the blog I thought I'd pop one up for posterity. Well, both that and I'm often asked to. (By the way, I'm sure it's a commission round up thing but notice that missing 2p from the screenshot to settlement?! Got me thinking about Richard Pryor in Superman 3!!)

Anyway, I've noticed in the past I'll often have a relatively big loss after a nice win so will be trying to avoid this next time I get involved. Will probably miss tomorrow's Pro40 game on Sky but am hoping to catch Thursday's before one of the highlights of the season - the Twenty20 finals day on Saturday. Proper cricket it might not be but it's bloody good fun to watch and trade. Not for the faint hearted but I'm hoping I can repeat last year's success!