Baby, CricketEdge and Premium Charge

I realise no posts since last June makes me a poor excuse for a blogger so apologies for that. I've explained why I've been away on the various forums when people ask but basically so much has been happening I just haven't had the time. Like I said - a poor excuse!

So what has been going on? Well first up the big news is we're having a baby! We're both chuffed to bits and looking forward to the big day sometime in late June / early July. All a bit overwhelming really and it means i've finally had to sort all the DIY around the house out. I can safely say I hope I never have to rip floorboards up again. Exciting times though and we're busy choosing all kinds of baby stuff and getting the nursery ready. Can't wait. :-)

What else? Well in my last blog entry I said I was going to write a whole load of cricket trading articles. I have. Though after I wrote that entry I was contacted by some other cricket traders and asked if I would consider joining them in setting up a new cricket news and betting website. I agreed. The site is called CricketEdge and it's recently gone live.

Helping out with that site has taken up quite a bit of time and effort. There's a fair amount of content on it now with a whole lot more waiting in the wings, including the series of trading articles I've written, so hopefully they'll be up soon. In the mean time there's some pretty useful, if basic, articles on cricket betting among loads of other stuff that you may find interesting.

The idea is to build a community of cricket fans and punters / traders and a forum will be added soon to enable the discussion. Involved as I am I'm biased I know but the guys behind it are a good laugh, know their cricket betting and I hope the site succeeds. Hell, we may even make some money out of it!

Talking of money that brings me to trading. Yes, I am still very involved in the cricket markets. More so than ever in fact. Of course, the big news since my last post has been the introduction of the Premium Charge over at Betfair. There, I managed to say it without swearing.

In that last post I mentioned I was moving much of my betting activity away from Betfair in as much as it enabled me to capitalise on the knowledge I built up on each match by using markets available at bookmakers as well as spread firms. Basically allowing me to maximise my profit from the knowledge and views I had on a game.

This has helped me offset the impact of the premium charge a little but I've still had to alter my approach pretty drastically to cut down on the amount of charge I'm paying. On the whole this has involved me racking up substantial losses on Betfair when needed while holding an opposite position elsewhere. Extra effort for me, a pain in the butt but also what Betfair wants as it means more money stays in the Betfair pool for longer.

I must admit it's a strange feeling to sometimes set out in a market to deliberatley lose money in it, or trade it as normal and then transfer the green elsewhere, but I suppose it's better than not being able to use the exchange at all. Still sucks though, as our American cousins might say.

So that's that. I'm still around, still trading and am looking forward to having a junior BFT to dote on soon.

I will be updating my blog every now and then going forward for anyone who is still remotely interested in my ramblings. I guess after such a miserable effort to do so after last time I won't say anything more than just as and when I have something interesting to say - and the time to say it in. In the meantime good luck with your betting! :-)