JS' Journal

The Phootie Brothers

2011-09-19T07:31:00.002+01:00

I am happy to report things have finally been falling into place the last couple of weeks. The long wait for the football season was followed by a few weeks of continuous testing and updating of triggers. Initially I wasn't happy with some of the actual functionality of my bots compared to how I wanted them to be performing, so I had to go back to the drawing board and rewrite all my triggers.

Phootie Alpha Live

2011-05-31T13:54:00.000+01:00

Thought I might as well post a little update. So my first football bot Phootie went live on the 7th May. After a few successful days testing on the 2.5 goals market, I added the 3.5 market to the equation, and after a few more days the 1.5 & match odds markets were also included. The bot itself is relatively simple and basically seeks out value and bets accordingly in-play. I actually felt a

Beware Bfexplorer

2011-05-09T04:31:00.016+01:00

As you can imagine I have contacted quite a few people over past few weeks in regards to getting a simple bot operational. The main purpose is to test the waters and hopefully build a positive relationship with a developer, which will eventually give me the ability to create and run more complex botting ideas. I did not feel the need to share all of my poor experiences, as I would expect to

Almost March already

2011-02-09T11:47:00.005Z

Wow how the time just flies by. I hope the start to 2011 has been good to you all. Not much to post about recently in regards to my bot progress, with me basically learning how to code some basic ideas. I've also been rather limited in time due to other commitments from late 2010 hanging over into this year. Some good news though, I will have some guaranteed reprieve from May onwards, from when I

Thank you

2010-11-24T21:33:00.001Z

Would like to say thank you for all the email / forum responses in regards to my last post. Although I may of come across as hopelessly stalemated, I have had some correspondence with a few really helpful guys. It's to be expected really, needing to sift through a number of time wasters before meeting someone useful. Do not think it's particularly appropriate to mention all names but you all know

Botting Help

2010-11-21T00:09:00.018Z

A quick post seeking some advice. As you may have picked up from previous posts I'm looking to get involved in the Betfair botting world. However regrettably out of the six potential programmers I have been in contact with, none have come through for me. It seems going quiet rather than replying and saying you can/can't do something is in fashion at the moment - and this is from email addresses I

First full(ish) day for a while

2010-11-18T20:15:00.002Z

Horse RacingUnit stake: £2Session P&L: £3.06Average market P&L: £0.18 It's hasn't taken long at all to get used to trading again. I'm feeling confident and motivated after today's result. Before today my cautious plan was to trade with min stakes for about 5 sessions or so (until I felt comfortable with the markets and software), but it seems that has happened already. My plan after reaching

The Geekstoy Children in Need Plugathon

2010-11-17T15:15:00.012Z

Well as some of you will know already, there are some great things going on at the Geek's Toy HQ. And believe it or not this isn't an appraisal of the software's performance, but a gesture from the Geek and others for the Children in Need cause. Having some sort of following here I thought I should at least contribute to this great cause in my own little way. If you have a blog or site you can

Good to be back

2010-11-11T20:27:00.001Z

Well it certainly has been a while, looking back the last full day of trading before this month was 16th February! As mentioned in my last post I have now resumed trading UK horse racing markets, and the past week or so I've gotten involved in quite a few markets, mainly getting back into the swing of things. I must say it hasn't taken too long to pick up where I left off, and it seems what I

Next chapter..

2010-07-22T05:25:00.000+01:00

Well the time for research is almost done. My house move is complete, and the Broadband & TV services are being installed within the next couple of days. With it all up and running I can finally set up shop for trading again. Have been fortunate enough to secure a late two week holiday starting next week. Great news as I really could do with a break, and it was looking less likely to happen

to bet or not to bet?

2010-06-14T02:19:00.002+01:00

Overall I'm happy to say that my betting exercise has gone relatively well, and it is much clearer which aspects will be repeated while others left out next season. With the MLB performing so poorly I have decided to withdraw placing wagers and paper trade the rest of the season. It really is like no other sport I've gotten involved in with the results almost being completely random, a

Week 11

2010-05-18T14:05:00.001+01:00

Spread Betting - NBA/MLB/Football Stakes & Banks NBA 1 or 2% * 171.63% Football 0.5 or 1% * 101.54% MLB 1% * 75.51% A bit of a sucker punch on Week 11. The main reason being the NBA had a terrible run of 6 consecutive losses, the worst run I've had all season, with the progressive staking system on these bets it made quite an impressive dent. Add to this the worst week I've had on the

Week 10

2010-05-18T10:13:00.003+01:00

Spread Betting - NBA/MLB/Football Stakes & Banks NBA 1 or 2% * 200.81% Football 0.5 or 1% * 94.96%MLB 1% * 87.12% Falling a bit behind with the updates. do not seem to be spending half the time I used to behind a PC, which is probably a good thing. Anyway here are the updates for the past couple of weeks. Week 10 brings another good result for the NBA breaking yet another milestone in

Week 9

2010-04-28T19:33:00.001+01:00

Spread Betting - NBA/MLB/Football Stakes & BanksNBA 1 or 2% * 190.20%Football 0.5 or 1% * 95.39%MLB 1% * 82.58% Better week but still relatively poor. The main culprit continues to be the MLB with the bank dropping further to 82.58%. With a 1% profit target per bet you can see just how poor a start to the season it has been for the MLB. The football has almost redeemed itself having a much

Week 8

2010-04-20T00:32:00.002+01:00

Spread Betting - NBA/MLB/Football Stakes & BanksNBA 1 or 2% * 180.02%Football 0.5 or 1% * 87.49%MLB 0.5 or 1% * 88.79% Regrettalbly week 8 did not make a great impression although I am happy to have moved back into profitable territory, albeit a very small one. As soon as the playoffs started I was ready and the NBA has picked up where it left off, bank now sitting at 180.02%. More last minute

Weak Number Sleven

2010-04-20T00:28:00.003+01:00

Spread Betting - NBA/NCAA/MLB/Football Stakes & BanksNBA 1 or 2% * 173.32%NCAA BB 0.5 or 1% * 94.40%Football 0.5 or 1% * 91.33%MLB 0.5 or 1% * 93.99% First off apologies for the lack of regular updates recently, I was halfway through week 8 before I found time to update the blog so I thought I'd wait a few more days and do weeks 7 and 8 together. Onto week 7 and I must admit it's a week I'd

Week 6

2010-04-05T05:34:00.005+01:00

Spread Betting - NBA/NCAA/Football Stakes & BanksNBA 1 or 2% * 167.04%NCAA BB 0.5 or 1% * 95.66%Football 0.5 or 1% * 102.25% Another decent week comes to an end, must admit I did fall prey of bigger picture blidness for a few moments when my last couple of NBA bets lost. If they had also come in I would of been looking at my best week since starting. After I had reminded myself how silly my

Marchish Review

2010-04-01T13:43:00.000+01:00

Ok so the first full month of this spread betting exercise has now ended, with just over 5 weeks to review as I will also include the last week of February. Looking over the results I also managed to mix up some of the dates between week 4 & 5 due to the time differences in the US & UK, however all the totals match depending on how you add it up. I've changed my records to UK time only now to

Week 4

2010-03-25T16:46:00.031Z

Spread Betting - NBA/NCAA/Football Stakes profit target of bank:NBA 1 or 2%NCAA BB 0.5 or 1%Football 0.5 or 1% Since last update:NBA P&L: £23.48 * Current Bank: 153.25%NCAA BB P&L: -£29.48 * Current Bank: 91.66%Football P&L: £35.69 * Current Bank: 107.14% I have now added Football picks to my ever increasing repertoire. This is for the major European leagues where I have decent enough stats to

Manual Trading RIP

2010-03-24T14:38:00.004Z

Right so as you've probably figured out by now, my time to manually trade the horses and football is pretty much non-existent, and regrettably it looks like this will remain so for the foreseeable future. It is of course disappointing, particularly having made such good progress towards the end of last year. However priorities change and when I started this venture from a dead end job with plenty

Staking Systems & Week 3

2010-03-15T11:56:00.014Z

Spread Betting - NBA/NCAAStake: 1 or 2% of bankSession P&L: £12.30Current Bank %: 144.32% It has been a bit of an up and down week. I had my best ever sequence of results followed by my worst ever sequence, with the net result being a slight profit. And as you have probably noticed I have started to apply the same statistical approach to the NCAA basketball, with mixed results so far, 3 wins

NBA - Week 2

2010-03-08T16:44:00.005Z

Spread Betting - NBAStake: 1 or 2% profitSession P&L: £65.31Current Bank %: 141.25% My second week of the NBA spread betting exercise has gone well. A profit of £65.31 with my bank now standing at 141.25%. I've gotten much more comfortable with each bet as the winners have started rolling in knowing that each one is making it less and less likely for this to go tits up. The statistical analysis

Spead betting update

2010-03-01T20:33:00.008Z

Spread Betting - NBAStake: 1 or 2.5% profit of bank Session P&L: £49.73 Current Bank %: 124.92% No trading since my last post as I have been working this weekend. Good news is that my spread betting exercise is going well with another 5 winners out of 6 giving me a total profit of £99.66 in my first week. My stake has increased slightly as the bank has now grown 24.92% since starting which is

US Spreads

2010-02-25T12:25:00.019Z

Spread Betting - NBAStake: 1 or 2.5% profit of bank Session P&L: £49.93 Current Bank %: 112.48% As ever it's been a busy old week, have been working for six days on the trot and am enjoying a well earnt day off. Although due to work commitments I have had no time to trade the racing markets, I have been quite busy most evenings looking at many US markets and entertaining a statistical betting

A few more hours of 'fun'

2010-02-16T11:12:00.001Z

Horse RacingUnit stake: £5Session P&L: £24.59Average market P&L: £0.57 Just a quick update. Have basically picked up where I left off with QuantSports and traded for a few hours on Saturday and Monday - squeezing in 43 markets. I mainly used £5 stakes for both days as I'm still getting used to the new set up, and also I feel I needed the practice being less active in the markets recently. I'm

QuantSports

2010-02-11T01:24:00.061Z

Today I found myself in the fortunate position to test out the new QuantSports software with Betfair's horse racing markets thanks to Toby's kind offer. This is a bridge between Betfair and NinjaTrader allowing the user to custom create charts with as many preset or custom made indicators desired. With this tool I could fine tune the degree of technical analysis charting displayed in real time on

Branching out

2010-02-05T05:33:00.000Z

The little trading break I've had has got me thinking much about where I am headed. At the moment I have traded profitably on two sports, horse racing and football, both of which I was attracted to by the liquidity and opportunities to profit. More recently, particularly when the challenge to profit was not so apparent, I have become increasingly disinterested in trading horse racing. I'm not

February quite contrary

2010-02-03T18:16:00.004Z

Horse RacingUnit stake: £5-10Session P&L: £10.84Average market P&L: £0.84 Can finally put January behind me, it's been a frustrating month with such little opportunity, firstly by me needing to settle into a new job and simply not having the time to trade, followed by the effects of the extreme weather on the cards, and then finally the API failing on almost a daily basis. The latter point still

Musings

2010-01-28T11:37:00.005Z

It shouldn't, but it still amazes me how our brains distort information when put in certain circumstances. I had an opportunity to review my IR footage mentioned in my last post, and am almost gobsmacked when seeing the risks I was taking. At the time I was not fully aware and felt slightly uncomfortable but couldn't quite put my finger on why until seeing the footage later. I was quite fortunate

IR

2010-01-23T22:57:00.000Z

Horse Racing Unit stake: £50 Session P&L: £90.25 Average market P&L: £6.02 With the racing being on TV I decided to try some in-running tactics today, and for the races not on TV I used Timeform radio which if anything was bang on the terrestial TV pictures. I would describe today as low risk tactics, if there is such a thing in-running. It involved watchng and reading the race before making

Good to be back

2010-01-16T18:17:00.005Z

Horse Racing Unit stake: £2.00 Session P&L: £3.13 Average market P&L: £0.15 It's great to be back! As anticipated my new job has kept me very busy. First day off I have had in a while and fortunately the weather is looking to have finally returned to normal. I decided to use minimum stakes as it has been a month since I had last traded and I wasn't quite sure what to expect. Was quite

December Review

2010-01-04T12:36:00.001Z

Horse Racing On the whole I have been pleased with December. I did have a few relapse moments which in hindsight frustrated me more than I should of allowed. I do have much more confidence in my ability to profit now than before, despite not trading as much as I would of liked in the latter half of the month (mainly due to other commitments). I feel my attitude towards risk has changed and I

Happy Holidays

2009-12-30T12:28:00.001Z

Just a quick post to wish you all a happy last couple of days in 2009 and a joyous stumble into 2010. Have had a relaxing break from everything and will be back in the UK to resume things in a few days. It has been great having some time away from my desk to reflect on everythng and get a decent opportunity to refresh my batteries. Have a good one whatever you do, see you all in 2010.

Hybrid platform

2009-12-19T17:37:00.004Z

Horse Racing Unit stake: £8.44 Session P&L: £16.68 Average market P&L: £0.93 Racing Bank at end of session: £101.07 Unit stake for next session (10%): £10.11 What a difference proper focus and motivation can make. About this time yesterday I was posting about how dissapointed I was in regards to my performance. I would of been happy with just making back my loss but I almost doubled it

How to lose a tenner in the middle of the night

2009-12-18T15:32:00.002Z

Horse Racing Unit stake: £5/10 Session P&L: -£9.70 Average market P&L: -£0.46 Racing Bank at end of session: £84.39 Unit stake for next session (10%): £8.44 A mixture of insomnia and boredom led me to trade at 4am in the morning. In hindsight not the best of ideas, not necessarily because of the time, but more to do with my state of mind and approach. That is, I had no tact to my approach

A bit of midweek footy

2009-12-15T22:25:00.016Z

Football Unit stake: £10.27 Session P&L: £2.73 Average market P&L: £0.38 Football Bank at end of session: £54.10 Unit stake for next session (20%): £10.82 Had time to scalp a couple of matches after work just before KO. Not much done but still I guess it all adds up and gives me another slight increase in unit stake.

Messing around with The Toy

2009-12-15T00:16:00.008Z

Horse Racing Unit stake: £2/£8 Session P&L: £10.69 Average market P&L: £1.07 Racing Bank at end of session: £94.09 Unit stake for next session (10%): £9.41