Recent Articles
Bet Angel user guide, upgraded!
As regular users will know Bet Angel has continued to grow year after year with new features continually being added, often at the request of our users. This has inevitably resulted in an ever-expanding and extensive online user guide.
Quick links
We have therefore noticed that sometimes finding the information you’re looking for may have become quite time-consuming. For this reason, we have added in a new tab ‘Quick Links’ which we hope will make the online user guide more …
Trading Tennis at the Australian Open
January is when the Tennis season starts up again and it’s a great time to get some Tennis trading experience under your belt. With weaker markets elsewhere, the Australian Open is a great time to get going on Tennis.
If you want a quick browse of previous advice dispensed on Tennis, click here to search the blog for Tennis articles. But also view the playlist on betangel.tv. The forum is full of chatter from previous tournaments that should help …
Trading Christmas racing markets
It’s almost time to relax, but typically this can start and end sooner than you expect on racing markets.
Pre-Christmas period
The markets in the run up to Christmas day can be a bit barren. Indeed, this year, they thin out completely. We have some low-quality fodder through the week, then one Irish evening card on the 23rd and, obviously, nothing on the 24th and 25th.
It actually works well this year, as it means you can most likely take …
Loss recovery systems
A very common question I’m asked on specific trading strategies is ‘what do I do’ about losses.
Puzzlement
At first, I was pretty puzzled by this question.
You expect losses, they are part of trading. Trading is all about getting a positive expectancy. If you trade at random you will end up with random results. Because the market is generally very efficient this means that, excluding costs and commission, you will end up neither winning nor losing a massive amount …
Starting out as a sports trader – Scaling up
I was back on my small account on Monday. I was recording a few videos at low stakes (I posted one last week) and also giving instruction to my daughter; she is progressing nicely.
I’m also teaching a new recruit to the team. It’s interesting to watch and learn from newbies and how they look at the market. I feel like It’s a microcosm of the entire market. I ‘feel’ this in the market every day, but experiencing first hand …
Starting out as a sports trader
I’m conscious that when I post bigger totals people wonder how they were created? The first thing to note is that the commonality with them is that they were all created with a lot of experience and hard work! There are no shortcuts when it comes to really good quality trading. Knowledge, experience, hard work, the rollercoaster that is trading, all count. It takes a lot of practice to trade with larger stakes confidently, but you can do it!
Bigger …
Bet Angel – Now ten times faster!
We are pleased to announce that a new version of Bet Angel is now available.
The upgrade is free for all trial and existing users. There is no need to re-register. To upgrade simply download the latest version, install and log in!
Download it from here: –
https://www.betangel.com/download/?product=BetAngelPro
Key new feature – Exchange price streaming
This version adds support for Betfair’s Exchange Streaming for prices and bet updates. The feature is switched off by default but is activated by ticking …
Be Prepared – Always Have a Back Up Plan
How many times have you had an open trade only for an unforeseen incident out of your control too suddenly occur resulting in you not being able to close your position and possibly leaving you staring at a hefty loss – especially if it’s an open lay position.
If this is something that your fortunate not to have experienced yet then it’s worth reading on if you want to keep it that way, for those unfortunate to have already been …
‘Gut feelings’ help make successful traders
While browsing various papers I recently came across an academic report publish in Nature, entitled the unfriendly – ‘Interoceptive Ability Predicts Survival on a London Trading Floor’.
Basically speaking, researchers show that ‘gut feeling’ does indeed contribute to successful trades. You can read the full report here: –
https://www.nature.com/articles/srep3298
If you don’t want to wade through this, here are the key elements: –
First off, Physiologists often use the term ‘gut feeling’ as a colloquial synonym for any interoceptive sensation …
Difficult to Trump that
Well that was interesting.
It was clear for some time that this was going to be a huge market. Interestingly enough, the same guy I know that foresaw the financial crisis, also saw this development. I’m now his devout follower forever and would jump off a bridge if he told me it was appropriate 🙂
Previous markets
I started looking at this particular market back in 2004. Clinton was a democratic nominee back then as well and I’ve revisited each …
Gone To The Dogs
So if this is your first years trading then the last few weeks may have been a bit of a shock for you following the hectic summer period.
You go from being spoilt for choice over which markets to trade just a few weeks ago, to suddenly having very few markets to look at. The ones which are available will have a very different feel to what you have become accustomed to – however this is perfectly normal for this …
Two books that will change the way you think
In my quest for unreachable perfection, I’ve spent a lot of time trying to understand how people think. There are several reasons for doing this.
The first is to make better decisions myself, sometimes people make decisions or say things that just don’t make any sense. You often also get stuck making a decision which you can’t seem to resolve.
Having thoroughly explored the markets, what to do, when and how (so far) in my career I’ve switched my main …
A fool and his money are soon parted….
‘A fool and his money’ It’s a classic phrase, but it always seems to ring endlessly true and never shall it be any different it seems!
I have written about this before and in particular about the now infamous Elliot Short: –
I wonder how many times I will hear about some gambling scam where people have lost enormous amounts of money? It seems that will always be the case.
It’s a real downer!
It’s a real downer to …
Derby Day!
Isn’t the Derby in June? Yes and no….
If you are in Australia, early tomorrow morning (UK Time) is Derby Day at Flemington in Victoria. This kicks off the Melbourne Cup carnival and a week of top class Australian action. On Tuesday we have the race that stops a nation, the Melbourne Cup then more top quality days on Thursday and the following Saturday. It’s a busy period full stop on the horse racing front, as we also have the …
Luck and Skill in sport
Sport is generally about two different players or team competing with each other. It’s unlikely they will be equally matched in every respect, though not impossible. But typically a differential exists between the two. However, luck can be a key component in a sport as well.
Luck in football
The number of goals in football is low, an average of 2.60 goals a game. Watch this video to learn more about that.Over the course
Over the course of a …
Luck and Skill in trading…
Luck or skill?
On Monday I hosted a learn to trade course with the intention of giving people a decent start in their sports trading journey.
Distractions
People are always keen to see you do something when you’re hosting a course. This particular course wasn’t set-up as a full-blooded trading session. But I was happy to oblige, as there is no better way of understanding the concept if you see it in action.
Of course, you can’t guarantee that you …
A classic psychological flaw
Here is something that will help you understand the way people act and what you can’t do about it! But how you can benefit from it.
I made a comment on Twitter a little while ago saying something along the lines of “if I ever think going to lose my edge all I need to do is look at social media and I know that’s not going to happen”
Entrenched views
What I was commenting on was the proliferation of …
Trading the Ryder Cup
Once every two years, the sporting world turns its attention to what is turning into a classic sporting Rivalry, the Ryder Cup.
Many years ago it didn’t have anything like the profile it does now. Post war it was a chance of US golfers to show how much better they were than UK players. Then the rules changed to make their opponents UK and Ireland, but that was still dominated by the US. Then in 1985 when it became the …
The greatest show on earth?
Tonight in the US we have the first presidential debate and what an interesting one it looks like it will be!
Take your side
In the red corner we have the eccentric, surely can’t be elected president, TV personality Donald Trump. And in the blue corner we have the political dynasty that are the Clintons.
Political markets rise in prominence
Political markets on Betfair are becoming very big business and this prominence within the marketplace reached a peak during the …
Manual or automated?
It was with interest this week that somebody pointed me to a blog post debating, or should I say justifying a stance on automated trading vs manual trading. Here is my angle on it: –
Financial markets
If you look to financial markets you have many aspects to it. High-frequency traders, slamming in positions in and out of the market to scrape a few cents per trade in as large a block as they can get through. A very specialist …
Quick Sand – Racing at Laytown
The races
Since 1868 Laytown has hosted the annual race meeting like no other. With no formal race course to host the equine competitors, these horses are raced on the beach. Laytown catches the attention of wide range of racing and non-racing goers each year.
Quite a few years ago I was captivated by the sight of horses running on the beach. It just seemed a bit different and interesting. So I set my sights on visiting this very unique …
Trading Betfair Tennis markets automatically
My (automated) Tennis trading journey
When I first looked to trade tennis with automation my initial mistake was trying to create a single automation file and apply it to all the day’s matches. I soon learned this was never going to work and instead started taking some time to use the wealth of stats and data available for tennis from a number of website’s and other sources to carefully select matches most suited to specific strategy/rule I was trying to …
US Open Tennis
How I learnt to trade Tennis
When I first started to trade Tennis, I needed a few things to be in place. One of those was an understanding of how odds move in Tennis match.
The reasoning was that if I knew that, I could pitch my opening and closing trades roughly where I wanted, where the market would move to. I could also start searching for ‘precursors’ to that key point in the match.
Also, with so many matches …
Manic Monday
It’s that day of the year that you either love or hate. The August bank holiday in the UK brings a whole bunch of racing, all on the same day. Then as we drift into the late afternoon, the US Open tennis gets underway. Not exactly a relaxing Bank Holiday!
Today there will be 483 runners over 51 races. This may seem like heaven for some, but it’s a nightmare for others. Quite a few races will attract little liquidity, …
Loadsamoney
I made a post on social media this week about an article that appeared in the Financial Times. I didn’t realise at the time of posting, that in the background there was a mention of a sizeable position then went through the market at Royal Ascot.
I only realised this, when people started questioning it shortly after the post. Asking how it was possible put £125k through a market?
Ordinary or extraordinary?
This wasn’t an ordinary market, though, this was …
Curtain comes Down on Rio 2016 Olympic Games
That’s it for another 4 years having been glued to my TV for last 16 days flicking from one sport to another next week I can begin to get back to some normality and trading – for the next few weeks at least!
As a big cycling fan it was great although no huge surprise to see the GB track cycling team perform so well at Rio 2016 and bring the largest haul of medals home – with the same …
Ebor or Ebore?
Summer racing isn’t over quite yet and today kicks of the Ebor meeting at York. I’ve traditionally done OK at this festival each year so I am looking for something above average this week.
The Ebor meeting can yield some good results, but nothing is ever guaranteed and this meeting can be a bit random at times so it’s probably not going to be all plain sailing. It should be better than what we have been seeing recently though.
Traditionally, …
Why Monday’s evenings are great markets
Something snatched my curiosity many years ago about trading the evening racing during the summer.
Anomaly
It always seemed pretty anomalous to me, but I would always feel that I would do well on a Monday evening, But Tuesdays would often be terrible. The rest of the week would vary depending upon the type of races and courses where the evening racing was being held.
Closer examination showed that Windsor was producing consistently above average results. So I came up …
Betfair Trading course – Learn to trade on Betfair
Check out the FREE Betfair trading course at the Online Academy: –
https://www.betangelacademy.com
Preamble
If you are looking at learning to trade, here is a way to get a really good start onto the first step of the trading ladder?
If you are coming from a gambling background, from matched betting or you are just intrigued by trading on sports. We can give you improved confidence in your initial trading journey by teaching you how to trade on Betfair. We’ve …
The footy season – My general approach
Now the football has started again, here is an insight into how I approach the whole season.
Off-season
During off season I am most active on research and new information for the next season. I gather a huge amount of data during the season and during the off-season I analyse it to take ideas forward to the next season. Same story this year.
I started analysing football matches in the 80’s, so I tend to focus on very specific problems …
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