Nothing day

Quite literally a nothing sort of day, with everything I made

being robbed back off me again tomorrow

Before I started this afternoon's session, I checked to see what my PC would be this week. Now is today's profit a coincidence, or did something happen on a subconscious level? Perhaps I've been watching too much Dynamo!

Botting

The botting venture continues to flounder. Conscious that I've only got 3 months left of my subscription, I've been furiously writing and re-writing my triggers in between races and testing them out in-play. I've lost count of the times I've started from scratch, building them from the ground up.

My ultimate goal is to take some of the in-running strategies I use every day and approximate those in trigger-form. The thing is, in-play trading has become a very intuitive thing after months of doing it, and programming intuition obviously takes more than a few routines slung together! Therefore, I'm trying to keep the strategies functional enough to make me some money, but also simple enough to ensure the logic remains straightforward and bug-free.

Starting with a £100 in test mode, I was upto £146 at one point in the afternoon and was already planning my retirement. But a few automated trades later and my virtual profit quickly evaporated, leaving a massive £4.66 profit for the day. Breaking even for the day is good progress though, as I've lost many starting banks in the past trying out different things; thankfully it's not been my own dosh on the line so far!

Once I get the first bot in place and earning, I will then introduce some variants to execute alongside it, to cover different scenarios...

Not that sort of Variant!

Stra-bonus

A bit of a strange one in the 14:50 at Warwick today, when Rios Girl traded at 1.01 for 17k and finished 10th. Looks like there was a mix up during the photo due to the similarity in colours of Rios Girl and the eventual winner, Straboe. The Rio price pinged all over the place so I whacked a few speculative bets on at big prices, which were quickly taken, and managed to green up for a tidy amount before the market suspended again

If only it were always this easy!


I had a comment on my last post, where I was predicting the imminent demise of everyone's favourite betting exchange

Betfair's not going to dissappear overnight despite all the current bad press, mets. Even when it does eventually collapse that'll be due to something else there to replace it so don't think you need to worry.

Yes, I know (hope!) you're right, and I'll try and be less of a doomsayer from now on! ;)

Autumn shakeup

The second half of September was a tough one for me. The returns from the pre-race trading have been getting thinner and attempts to make up for it in the in-running markets have been less-than-successful.

I was intent on winding down for the Autumn and Winter and perhaps only trading 3-4 days a week, but it hasn't happened. It's always in the back of my mind that the "writing may be on the wall" for Betfair amidst the current hoo-ha...

• falling share price
• serious data breach
• Tote foul-up
• increased downtime
• harsher Premium Charges
• top execs leaving

...and could spell the beginning of the end for us Betfair journeyfolk. That list is just too much bad stuff over a very small timeframe. So I'm just "knuckling down", trading any day I can and "grinding out a day's pay" *.

* that takes all the romance out of it, doesn't it?! ;)

The way I see it, if my Premium Charge rate is going to be hiked after £250k, then there's no harm in getting there as fast as I can while it's still a 250k threshold and not less. It's a good incentive to get the mortgage paid off sooner!

Having said that, I need to curb my losses as I'm still giving away loads more money than I should; I haven't updated the Betfair lifetime results spreadsheet for a few weeks but I just know it's loads. Today, I got upto 90 quid twice before being bashed back down again

losses easily amounted to £150+

£150 for a Saturday is pretty disappointing to me these days (but then I am quite hard on myself!). The funny thing is, I managed £150 last Saturday and Betfair was down for half of the afternoon lol !


Just going back to the data breach (that I only just found about out via Scott Ferguson's excellent blog), it's prompted me to change my Betfair password immediately in case someone logs in and tries to blow my wedge in a single go!

At the end of the day though, even though Betfair are taking a hammering in the press and on various blogs and forums, it's still the best thing around and when it works, it works brilliantly. I haven't fallen out of love with them yet, but I think that's only because I haven't been screwed over in a big way....yet!