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Transcript of Fsb Guide
Finding your own style on Betfair
zergtrader
©2012 zergtrader
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior permission in writing of zergtrader. You may not transmit it or store it in any other website. All information in this publication is provided for educational purposes only. No responsibility can be accepted by the author as to the effectiveness of this information. All forms of betting carry some risk, it is up to the individual to make informed decisions.
Table of Contents:
Introduction
How to start
What to expect
Your al l ies
Be select ive
Psychology
Discipl ine
Money management
Taking Notes
Software
Your enemies
Chasing Losses
Distract ions
Boredom
Overconfidence
Methods
Arbing, Spoofing
Characterist ics of a good trader
My systems for Horseracing
System 1: Trading Steamers with Best Odds Guaranteed
System 2: Swing trading: two trends
System 3: Scalping Pre‐Race
Conclusion
Introduction
Let me tell you what this book will do for you. Firstly, I will explain my trading systems and I will
tell you everything I have learned in almost 2 years of full time trading because I don’t want you
to make the same mistakes. Exactly what I think that would have been of great help in my
learning process. Secondly, it will show you how to find a strategy that works for you. This is not
difficult and should take you 2‐3 weeks. After that time you must continue using it, make
adjustments and be disciplined, which is the difficult part. The advantage of this method is that
there are bigger chances to follow it, if you created the method. You can also use my methods.
If your trading/betting is based only on your hopes you just can’t win. You must change that
now, gain a lot of experience in a specific sport/ market to constantly win. The commission and
currency rates are already a big disadvantage and a good method is demanded. If you are
making the same mistakes you can’t expect a different result. This is one of my conclusions
after 8 hours of trading every day, sometimes much more for almost 2 years. Over 90 % clients
of Betfair lose money and this has nothing to do with someone’s intellect. When it comes to
human psychology and that is what trading really is, people are the same, make the same
mistakes and will have the same results. If you consider that you are different, you might be but
with this statistic you should have some serious thoughts. Would you lay at 1.11 decimal odds
your chances to lose? That’s why you must be confident in you method and always follow it.
I have found some great methods to trade consistently with a profit and I will explain them in
this book, also you will find my opinions on some systems that I bought and how I think you can
be one of the lucky 10 % that win on Betfair. I have made profit sometimes for weeks and then
I let my guard down and lose last week’s profit in a moment of indiscipline. I can assure you
that after reading this book your chances of success will be much higher. If you don’t act now
and adjust your trading you will continue to lose money and eventually give up. This book will
help you and I wish you every success.
How to start
To start winning you must forget about past results because they can influence your behavior
and take some unnecessary risks. Also fear is a big enemy and must be controlled. Your focus
should be to trade right, not to make money. They will come eventually and you must be
prepared to take them for a long period of time. What worked for me was to find a strategy
that suited me and I believe that was the only reason that made me able to win consistently.
After a time I started to be bored of my method, searched other markets and changed my
strategy and then I lost. That’s why I say that only a few people can make a living from trading.
You must find your style and stick to it for months and every time you must have the same
mindset to avoid mistakes. If you have some experience you know what I mean.
What to expect
For example at horseracing, my scalping strategy uses a 500 € bank to make 30 € on average in
10‐15 races, could be used in all races but I lose my concentration after 2 hours. The stakes
could be much higher; it depends on the stakes that you’re comfortable with. I have set‐up the
ladder for 1 € profit for every tick and a stop loss of 3 ticks. The maximum exposure is about
200 € but I always close trades before the start of the race or when I get a 5 € loss in one race
so the risk is controlled. I don’t say that there are not losing days because there are a few, but
after a week or month I have a nice profit. I will explain entry/exit point later but trust me that
your plan must have strict rules that are easy to follow, because it’s very easy to make a
mistake. After reading this book you will have a similar strategy with stop loss, suitable races,
stakes, all must be established before trading otherwise your mind can be very selective.
Be selective
Currently I use a strategy for scalping and one for swing trading. These are executed in the last
10 minutes before the off. Doing them every day I found out that I have better results than
using more methods. Scalping 2 hours daily and some good swings are giving me enough profit
to reach my daily target. I look in the morning for some swing trading opportunities and I
usually find about 5 races. This way I am in control of my system and I can reevaluate it more
often. I always spend another half an hour to take some notes and make some adjustments. For
several months I searched arbing opportunities in the morning, trading some tennis at noon,
then some pre‐race on horse racing and in the evening I was trading correct score markets in
football. When I look back I realize that I was almost addicted and I had a very lonely life. So I
decided to reduce the time devoted to trading, also because I developed my style and I can
enter in the required state of mind easily. I found some visualization exercises and relaxation
techniques used in Qigong which I practiced several years ago. Some exercises can be found in
“Trading to win” by Ari Kiev, I downloaded it for free after a quick search in Google. Now I
began to go to work again mostly to socialize with my colleagues and I can say that I live now a
balanced life and I’m much happier.
Before being successful I had to discover why I want to trade, how much I want to win and to
be comfortable with it.
I always try to identify the best trades and concentrate only on the races with the best results.
In my swing‐trading strategy I search 5 good races daily and I try to maximize the profit.
Psychology
I already said that you must always trade following a system. If you’re not then you will spend
most of your time finding a good trade. Then your expectations will be positive because you
have spent your time finding it. But the market doesn’t care how much time you have searched
for it, the price can go either way. I assume that is a good trade and there are 70% chances to
go your way so you have confidence, but if it goes wrong you will blame yourself, you will wait
the price to come back, after all it was a good trade. Sometimes it will, but after 100 such
trades the losses will be much higher and you will begin to lose confidence in your method even
if it was a good one. Not using a complete system with entry/exit points, stakes, bank,
maximum exposure, will ultimately make you blame yourself for every defeat and the
frustration will add up. With a system you will know that it has some losing trades so you won’t
be affected emotionally and you already know that the probabilities are in your favor. The key
is to have realistic expectations and know the system limitations. Every time, you must find real
trends and be objective. All winning traders know the importance of emotion control, and all
the others simply ignore it.
Another important point in the psychology of trading is that losing trades must be scratched
very quickly. When scalping 40 % of my trades are scratched, 20 % losses and 40 % are winners.
Having this wide margin, I don’t think much about it when I lose; I’m not interested about
individual trades as long as I followed the plan. Only after 100 trades my results can be
analyzed. Losing traders spend too much energy finding a good trade, but a moderate trade
with a good exit strategy will have better results.
Never react to market changes based on your emotions because you can’t be objective. The
only moment when you enter/exit a trade is when your system indicates it. The responsibility is
all yours and if things get wrong at least you can be proud that you had followed the plan.
Discipline
When you open a trade you must have in mind a scenario if it goes wrong. To win long term you
must accept to take a loss. If not, the loss can only get bigger. All the winning traders cut their
losses quick and learn how to let the profits run. This first step of taking losses immediately is
unavoidable; it’s the only way to start winning. There’s no point to move the stop loss or
dreaming that the trend will change. A fast decision must be made and the best one when the
price gets to the stop loss is to close the trade with a small loss. If not the loss can get bigger
and will result in bad trading decisions; you will lose confidence and you will enter trades with a
fear avoid losing again. The unwanted result will be that you losses will be bigger than your
wins. The feeling I have when I exit from bad trades is that I am proud that I could follow my
plan even in a tensed situation. With practice this will happen instinctively. Maintaining
discipline is essential for success and must be practiced every day.
If you ever feel that you are trading too much and the results are bad you must immediately do
something else. Take the day off and then reevaluate what’s wrong. Unfortunately this job is a
solitary one and has no external ways of control so you must impose yourself some strictly rules
to follow. The goal must be to make the best trades, not only to make money. With a good
system if you execute the trades with discipline, you will win in the long run.
Money management
There are several rules that I apply to staking and money management. They ensure that my
bank is safe all the time. My first rule is to risk only a small part of my bank. I limit losses to 5 %
of my bank. When that occurs I stop for that day. I never increase the stake after a loss. That is
a common habit and will cause much frustration. I use the 1 € for every tick staking tool to
control the losses and I’m more relaxed this way. My final goal is to win a steady profit and I
have realistic expectations.
Taking notes
I tried many things to discipline myself and taking notes was probably the best one. Now I only
write when I get an unexpected situation or I have something to learn from it, but I have 3
notebooks full of notes; also many screen recordings taken with Camtasia Studio.
I found a free spreadsheet that automatically updates with daily races. It saves me a lot of time
and I also make some notes on races in the excel file. I save it every day with the date to keep
my notes. Search for “Excel Trading Analysis Bet Angel” and you should be able to get it.
Another one that I use is from http://betfairtradingmindgames.blogspot.ro and you can
download an excel file from Betfair with profit/loss and see your progress on different sports.
Taking notes makes me patient when trading and see where I make mistakes or when the
results are better over time.
Software
I currently use AGT Pro (priced 20 GBP for 3 months subscription). This is perfect for my horse‐
racing trading methods, I can have a four ladder display with all the tools that I need.
The most important feature that I use is the “Book Profit” staking tool. It eases trading a lot and
it calculates what size the bet should be to win a predefined amount of money for every tick. I
have set up for 1 euro profit for every tick no matter if I trade a 1.5 price or a 6.0 price so I can
concentrate on selecting the horse and not on the stake. A small change but it improved my
results.
Bettrader Evolution (priced 39. 9 GBP for 3 months subscription) is my second choice for
trading horse‐racing. It was the first software designed especially for those markets and has all
the features needed.
Betangel has more features and I believe it’s the most advanced software (priced 59. 9 GBP for
3 months subscription). If you want to integrate excel spreadsheets or to use its Tennis Trader
tool it’s really great. I’ve created a scalping bot with Betangel Guardian and it’s easy to use.
I must say that I like Fairbot, Gruss Betting Assistant and Bfexplorer but they don’t have
everything I need for my strategies. Others could prefer them. After all they are only tools so
they all have advantages and it’s just a matter of personal choice and compatibility with your
strategies.
The reason I use AGT is because the interface is easier to customize and of course the price is
lower. I don’t want to pay for something that I don’t use and AGT offers everything I need at
great speed. My intention is to keep the expenses as low as possible. Maybe it’s not that much
but having many expenses that offers no value for your strategy is not a good idea.
Chasing Losses
This is the most important chapter. Chasing losses prevented me to win for several months.
Only after I had interrupted the pattern of making the same mistakes I was able to concentrate
on the long term result. I was aware of my problem but that wasn’t enough to avoid it.
My method of losing was to choose a lay of 5.0‐15.0 lay to gain back small loss from a bad
trade. I knew that it was impossible to win in every race, but I wasn’t capable to accept that.
When it went wrong I continued to lay with bigger stakes and soon I had several banks
depleted.
What I finally understood after several weeks, from this huge mistake was that that there are
no bad trades if you keep following your plan. It was only the fear of losing that made me
repeating the losing pattern. Sometimes I stopped trading for several days, only to make the
same mistake with the first trade after the pause, so maybe I was afraid of winning too much
and losing had a more intense impact on my emotions. Now I think about losses as expenses to
continue doing business.
Changing the destructive behavior
It was very helpful to discover that although I tried to avoid losing and to get bored, the reality
was that I could see that I repeated the same mistake again, and again. Then I studied what
made me react in such a destructive way; usually a small loss. This analysis showed me that
after a loss I had a desire to take back the money that I lost as soon as possible. When the loss
got bigger I was frustrated and I started to have a destructive behavior, verbally and physically.
Those feelings were signs that I was on autopilot with my losing run and taking notes was really
helpful on this stage.
It’s difficult to change such a powerful habit but it can be done. After this process I had to
correct the destructive behavior, just being aware of it wasn’t enough. A long process of
changing my reaction to stress and losses begun; the method I used was a visualization
technique. Before trading I visualized a tensed moment when I was losing and doing that many
times it became less threatening. I convinced myself that is all right to lose some and that
avoiding this fact is dangerous and can be very costly. I combined this method with an
automated scalping technique made in Betangel Guardian and when I turned on the bot I didn’t
touch the computer until it finished. No matter if it made a profit or a loss. You can do this in
Practice Mode or with small stakes. Doing this many times eventually changed my reactions and
then trading became easier.
Overconfidence
A big danger after finding a winning system is that you are sure that you have an advantage.
Knowing it make you think that you can beat the market every time. You forget to respect it
and begin to overtrade. At that moment you feel that you are losing money when you are not in
the market and see imaginary trends. The opposite situation is when you had many losing days
and you lost the confidence in your ability to trade successfully but I talked about it in the
“Chasing Losses” chapter.
Defeating overconfidence can be done if the rules are applied on every trade. Take your time to
make notes, don’t think about how much money you can make. The only thoughts when you
trade must be to follow the system.
Methods:
Arbing, Spoofing
Arbing is a very easy to make a profit. However it requires a big bank, a lot of concentration to
avoid errors and enough time to learn it properly. You should expect to make a 10‐15 ROI
profit. The first step is to download Arbsurfer or any other arbing software and after you make
100 arbs with small stakes and without errors you are prepared to use bigger stakes. The only
problem is that the Bookmakers will restrict your account after several weeks if you’re not
careful. I won’t tell you more because there are many free tutorials and are easy to follow.
Spoofing is a very advanced technique and must be executed only after you understand really
well how the markets work. The basic idea is to clean all stop losses used by traders, usually 3
ticks higher or lower than the current price. You place a big stake to catch all the money until
the fourth position. Then all the stop losses will be triggered and you can hedge for a 10
percent profit. It sounds good but there are also taking a big risk and there are always traders
that wait for spoofers to make some easy money. Because you have taken this risk and they can
jump in front of your money. You cannot train for this method unless you take the risk.
Characteristics of a good trader
Has a goal to reach to keep him motivated
Constantly practices and improves his method
Keeps his emotions under control
Develops his mind‐set to constantly win
After he has found his style of trading he sticks to the plan
Analyzes his results
My systems:
Trading Steamers with Best Odds Guaranteed
With this method you will make a profit by having two advantages. The first is that you will
choose the horses which are likely to steam‐in and the second is more like a guarantee if they
drift you will benefit of the Best Odds Guaranteed. I have used this method for several months,
then I couldn’t choose the races in the morning due to my schedule but it still works. You must
use an excel file to write every selection. Here I used 15 € stakes.
The strategy:
1.You must open the bestbetting.com site in the horse racing section in the morning at 9‐10 am before the bookmaker odds are published. Is best to choose them as soon as they are available. 2.You open every race and choose the horses that are at the same price or higher at Betfair then the bookmakers. For example the second horse odds are 5.5 at Ladbrokes and 5 at Betfair. That means that the horse is steaming and the Bookmakers didn’t updated the prices yet. 3. When you find a horse you back it at the Bookmaker price with your stake. The prices can be checked two or three times. I navigate on every race for half an hour; when I find a selection I back it, write it in the excel file and search for another. 4. For every horse I check its price on the Betfair site 10 minutes before the start of the race and calculate the lay using arbcruncher.com back/lay calculator. If I have backed at 5.5 in the morning at the Bookmaker for 20 € and now the Betfair lay price is 4.0 the hedged profit is 6.45 € no matter the result. If it drifted to 7.0 the lay price I check the Bookmaker price because this is the price that I will calculate as the back odds in the arbcrunchers calculator. The BOG offer is a great one and it assures you that you will make a profit.
Always hedge the profit or loss. It’s the only way to make a profit long term. Test this method
for two weeks until you have understood it perfectly. Plenty of errors can be made in the
beginning so paper‐trade it first. My stakes are 20 €, at a point I used 70 € but the Bookmakers
will soon restrict your account if the stakes are too big. To use 20 € stake, your betting bank
must be at least 500 €. The recommended BOG Bookmakers for this strategy are: Bet365,
Betfred, BetVictor, Boylesports, Ladbrokes and William Hill. You can test for two weeks which
one has better odds and use only 3 of them. I used all the Bookmakers and some restricted my
account to very low stakes because I used bigger stakes and I made a lot of withdrawals. I
recommend making deposits and withdrawals using a Moneybookers account, it’s safer and
faster. You also collect points, after 6 months I received a pair of Ray‐Ban Aviator Glasses. This
strategy can work for an year or more of you keep your stakes small and bet on other sports.
Swing trading
Trend one:
The suitable races can be chosen in the morning. You can find others if there are horses withdrawn
closer to the start. The condition is that the race to have 2 horses with 2.5‐3.5 odds. In this situation one
of the horses will usually drift and the other will become favorite. I wait for the trend to be visible on
one horse and I back or lay the other. Usually there is a delay before the other prices react to balance
the over round. Timing is crucial here. The first trend begins 10 minutes before the off time. I watch for
changes in the trend at 5 and 3 minutes, plus‐minus a few seconds. When I spot the opportunity I open
the trade and wait until there are signs of price reversal. The signs are: the unmatched money on the
next position reduces, the colors on the price button become yellow or change, the WOM percentage is
against the trend and I check the graphs. I look in the same time to the other horse for the same signals.
I usually trade out with a 6 tick profit. It doesn’t work every time, so you must develop an ability to know
when to enter/exit the market. If you combine all the trading signals this strategy will be profitable and
after 2 weeks of practice and taking notes you’ll be able to spot the opportunities.
Trend two:
When the favorite steamed in from 5 to less than 3 during the day it usually drifts a few ticks in the last 5 minutes. Most times I lay it 3 minutes before the start of the race and hedge with 5 tick profit or more, depending on the signals (the same as in strategy one). The second horse price must be higher than 5.0 in the beginning. When you enter the trade the price should be at the bottom of the trading range. Remember that we want to take several ticks profit and sometimes there are smaller swings caused by some big bets. My stop loss is 3 ticks lower than the smallest traded price and if the support is broken it can go much lower so taking a small loss or scratch the trade is important. The top and bottom of the range of traded prices is a good indicator that there will be a change. Prices don’t stay there too long. Usually they come back a few ticks but on some occasions they break the resistance and all the traders want to exit fast so the price moves more.
Scalping
Most traders begin with scalping in the pre‐race markets. That’s what I did and it was impossible to win at that time. I’ve seen some videos about winning 200 pounds in five minutes and I thought I was easy. But scalping is for experienced traders. A lot of experience with markets is required to make it profitable. At first your goal must be to break even and over time you’ll notice the best moments to enter the market. Scalping is about pattern recognition, great concentration and taking fast decisions. If you have the required qualities and time to learn scalping I think it’s the easiest way to make money trading. It doesn’t require any preparation before the races, you just open the market 10 minutes before the start of the race. But to get to
that point you must spend hundreds of hours watching graphs and ladders. I’ll try to explain to you what I look for to have an edge. I use the “Book profit” staking tool in AGT Pro that calculates the stake to win 1 € on every tick. Winning 5 ticks on average per race will make you a decent profit after 2‐3 hours of scalping. Begin with evening races, they are easier to scalp. The following things I have learned the hard way by watching the graphs, ladders and making notes. I hope they will help you.
1. The best markets for scalping are those without major swings in the graphs. 2. The favorite horse is more difficult to scalp for the beginners because the price move
faster. I recommend the second and third favorite. 3. Watch for the change of increments at 3.0, 6.0… because your exposure for every tick
doubles when it passes from 2.98 to 3.05. 4. The Weight of Money indicator is still very important. 5. The traded range column can make you avoid many mistakes. Avoid support and
resistance points to open trades, the middle of the range is best. 6. Try to be in front of the queue by entering a few seconds earlier in the market and wait
for the price to come to your position. When it’s one tick away open a counter‐trade and you’ll get matched with both positions.
7. The horse you trade should have little volatility visible in graphs and make sure there are no spoofers because they will trigger your stop loss.
8. Always be aware of timing. This is very important. In the last 10 minutes there are different behaviors of the market. I divide that time in 10 to 5 minutes, 5 to 3, 3 to 1 and in the last minute I have all my positions closed because the price moves too fast.
9. After you begin to see patterns and you make some profitable trades you must ensure that you minimize your risks. I usually close trades before they reach to 3 ticks loss.
I follow these rules all the time. If you integrate them in your scalping you will make a profit. After that, learning to reduce the risk is essential and when you master the exit points, only then it will be profitable in the long term.
Conclusion
By now you know that trading can be profitable. You will achieve your goal if you find your
system, start small, build up confidence and maintain discipline. Trying to double your bank in
one day is just gambling and that’s what we try to avoid. A trader’s progress with any strategy is
to test it, make adjustments and test it again for several weeks. If the results are as expected it
should discipline himself using small stakes until he had internalized all the rules and he follows
them instinctively. Only after a few months he can be sure of his long term success. This is the
only way that took me to the results that I wanted. I wish you every success!
Trade well