23rd February - Total Profits £662

How exhilarating can this trading be?

Quiet day, a little tennis, couple of horse races and a tiny profit.

So where's the excitement?

Football of course - tonight's football is the kind of football I like and each match was different. So the story from tonight:

St Pauli v Kaiserslautern were playing at 7:15 - I only noticed the live stream when I looked at a regular link that had been down for a couple of weeks but was back up again. The other matches were Wycombe v Rotherham and Hull v Tottenham one starting at 7:45 and the other just after 8:00.

So I started trading on the St Pauli v Kaiserslautern match and had racked up £8 on the unders market. It was a live stream so I was grateful that the two football matches were starting so I could watch them on the tele. As it happened the Wycombe game started with a low starting point to the unders market and it didnt move very quickly - so I sopped with only doing two trades. The Hull match was different and the unders market started at 1.90, with large figures surrounding the back and the lay side and the fact that the two sides were being very careful not to lose this match made the trading tricky as what happened was the two sides were defending a lot and put the ball out for corners and throw ins but this led to set pieces and set pieces are dangerous for trading so perversely the fact the two sides were determined not to lose meant that both sides were more vulnerable than in a normal match due to the high number of set pieces - so I took a decision to not trade much on the unders market and return to the St Pauli v Kaiserslautern match.

St Pauli v Kaiserslautern - the crowd and the atmosphere that they created looked and sounded great. Neither side looked capable of scoring due to the over officious referee who was blowing up at every opportunity, glaring at players and booking them. He sent a player off and the trade on the back side of the draw market at 2.94 was in "suspended land" and the market opened at 3.10, with neither side looking capable of scoring I took on an extra £23 worth of liability as the odds screamed "too high". Fairly comfortable trading took place all the way down to the 2.20 mark where I had greened up for around £11. The referee took it into his hands to show how good he was and handed a penalty to St Pauli and my Back bet of £186 on the draw was again in "suspended land" - commentator said that it was never a penalty, the player's foot slipped - goodness knows what he was watching as it looked a stonewall penalty to me. So lets recap; about £10 up to now, a further £11 on this market and a back bet on the draw for £186 - traded out for a £96 loss. Not the best of nights trading but these things happen - would I have changed any of my actions - the answer is no so just need to keep my head, dont do anything silly and keep calm and focused. So I focused on the Wycombe v Rotherham match that at half time was 0-0.

Wycombe v Rotherham - 2nd half, there wasn't much trading going on, I presume everyone was trading the Hull match rather than look at this one and what transpires was a stretched ladder with approximately 10 to 15 clicks difference between the backers and the layers and the amount of money on the lay side was minimal - like £7 here, £12 there on the other hand the backer(s) had £200 but at odds that were only going to be matched if someone desperately wanted to get out of the trade - I have seen these markets before and fortunately I have seen these football matches before - on the football side neither side were dangerous - the match was in the 4th tier of English football and thus the quality of attacking isnt that great and the defending is adequate in terms of what they are facing.

So what I did here is get £186 worth of liability and just watch the match, if there is imminent danger then trade out at the high odds i.e. not get full value but still at least you have an option to trade out. The match was uneventful and I was mindful that I had just lost £96 and needed to get it back. So when the odds finally got down to a range that was of fair value and other traders started to get interested in the market, I traded out for £50 - very happy with this and with more traders and liquidity to the market I went on to make £67.76 from this market when I left - I left when the market reached 1.43. The reason I did so was to now concentrate on the Hull match which started 15 minutes later than the Wycombe match and thus had high draw odds as the score was 1-1 at half time.

Hull v Tottenham - there was a spell in the match where the odds on the draw were coming down rapidly and as it happened neither side scored - which is good for trading the draw. Now unlike the previous market this market had plenty of traders trading and so a different type of trading was employed - basically if there was money to back then I backed and then layed at 2 ticks lower which would take about 15 seconds to get filled. I traded down to 1.38 mark which coincided with 5 minutes left to play - the total number of selections on this market was 49 - so this was busy trading where the Wycombe match was patient trading. Anyway I made 37 quid so I ended up for the day.

When I finished trading, I had the excitement and exhilaration of the nights trading. I felt tired and reflected about the fact that the way in which I trade can be enjoyed, which I am not sure is the case with all trading.

Results:

£20.84 - 1.94%