Well, having enjoyed Total Football Trading in the lovely Cypriot spring, I thought I’d pick it up again during the dismal English summer!
Big football tournaments have a habit of suddenly taking over your life, then disappearing again almost as quickly, leaving you to wonder what it was you used to do in the evenings before it all began. For Euro2012 is almost over already, with only six of the thirty-one games remaining (three quarter-finals, two semis, and of course the final itself). However, the good news is that they would all appear to be susceptible to a pre-match trading technique in TFT called the Paper Chaser Method.
If Paper Chaser isn’t appropriate, I will switch to one of the other methods, as I plan to trade all six games, and report the results here. However, I have taken a bit of a shine to pre-match football trading, as it really is so simple, and of course it can’t be spoiled by a sudden market suspension (which is a technical term we betting types use to mean “a goal”). :-)
I will work with stakes of £400, which may make you think I’m either crazy or rich, or indeed maybe both. However the latter is definitely not the case, and the former really only a matter of opinion that you will have to take up with my various ex-es.
In practice, I will employ stop losses to reduce my liability to far less than this figure. And I am sure there will be little need to worry as highly liquid pre-match markets, such as tonight’s Germany v Greece match, move at glacial speed.
Here’s hoping Total Football Trading can deliver some more winnings to keep my mind off the English rain.
Oh to be back in Cyprus! 
Lucy x
A satisfactory if somewhat uneventful start to my end-of-Euro2012 trading, as I made precisely £8 pre-match, and decided as a result not to green up, hoping instead for a German victory. This duly arrived thanks to a strong German performance.
It appears I closed my trade at precisely the right moment, as unexpected German team news – which appeared to involve changing their entire forward line! – did cause a slight wobble in the market. The TFT manual does warn about the potential effects of these announcements, and fortunately I followed its advice, and exited in good time for a small profit.
Lx
OK another £400 staked today, but this time with a lay bet on the Spain v France match. There is so much money on these Euro2012 games though that it all moves painfully slowly, so the potential cost of a lurch in the prices is likely to be very small. And so far it’s all gone very much to plan…
Lx
Another closed out trade, and another £12 (potential) profit with Paper Chaser!
I don’t want to say too much about the detail as it’s not fair on the system designers, but it does seem that massively liquid markets (such as Spain v France) are easier to trade, because you can watch things unfold in slow motion.
That said, I made a profit, then gave most of it back, then managed to retrieve the loss again – so it certainly wasn’t entirely straightforward. Sometimes it’s hard to know whether to stick or twist; but I am trying to “run my profits” as the old adage goes.
Anyway, all’s well that ends well. Though I have decided to avoid greening up when I’ve locked in profit on a favourite. So banking my £12 still depends on a Spanish victory.
Vamos España!
Lx
Well my refusal to green up on favourites has gone very nicely, with another £12 banked. That’s £20 in two pre-match trades…
That said, I didn’t bother trading the England game… It was never going to be fun, was it? And I hate trading when I’m not in the right mindset, so I settled for the Bet365 arb instead.
On a slightly unrelated subject, I do have a complex three-way arb on the Portugal v Spain match for you, based on an inverted middle. You can read all about inverted middles here but in essence they are a sort of concocted lay bet (which means you don’t need Betfair to do lays!). For the record, the inverted middle consists of bets 1 and 2 below, and the 3rd bet then closes the trade by backing the same outcome as we’ve laid.
I shared this trade with my Rollingstone triallists about six hours ago, so it can now go on “general release” before the odds change. However, do check the odds for all three bets haven’t changed from the prices below before putting any cash on the table.
The three bets are as follows:
1) Back £180 on Spain to win with an Asian Handicap of -0.75. Odds must be 2.35 @ SBOBET.
2) Back £200 on Portugal to win , with +1 European Handicap. Odds must be 2.05 at Stan James.
3) Back £30 on Spain to win by a 1 goal margin at Ladbrokes. Odds must be 3.75 at Ladbrokes.
If Spain win by more than one goal, this package of bets yields £13.
A single goal win for Spain and we win £4.
Any other result produces a neutral outcome.
Lx
ARB UPDATE – STAN JAMES HAVE LOWERED THEIR ODDS SIGNIFICANTLY SO THE ABOVE ARB IS NO LONGER AVAILABLE.
OK back to Total Football Trading’s Paper Chaser method – and tonight’s match between Spain and Portugal.
It’s SOOO very tempting to increase stakes rapidly when things are going well, but it is almost always a mistake. (In fact, my experience is that almost any emotional decision when betting seems to destined to be a mistake!). So, I have decided to stay with my original £400 trading amount, though I am allowing myself to add my £20 winnings above to it… Hence I’m now betting with £420.
The whole pretty little sum has been dumped into one of the major markets for tonight’s match as a lay bet… and I shall be hoping to trade out by about 6pm.
Can my nice little run continue???
Lx
Well the answer to the above was – yes and no.
I traded myself into a £4.20 profit on a Spain win… and then of course we had a 0-0 draw, so I ended up with nothing.
It’s that old debate – to green up or not green up…. I hate doing so on favourites, but I hate favourites who let you down even more!
Another curious feature of these giant markets is how painfully slow they become… the Germany v Italy game was even worse!!
Now I can be a teensy bit geekish about sports markets (well, there’s no “ish” about it!) – see here for my thoughts on the psychology behind the way people bet on huge favourites like Germany (and how we should respond as traders).
Finally – I’ve got a nice inverted middle lined up for you for the final, with a tenner coming back on the draw (hopefully) after 90 minutes.
And no, I’m not greening up on that either!
Lx
I’d be interested in views on this set of systems. I bought them the other day and have been trading a few so I don’t have a really significant amount of data to go by. I’ve largely been concentrating on In and Out, as that seems, on paper, to fit me best. At the moment after 30 games, the strike rate of failed early trades is 20% for me against the given 13% so I’m currently down by a few pounds. Has anybody got a more significant amount of results to tell whether this is a workable strategy?
Dave
I achieved a lot better results than that – around 9% failure rate – but I was left wondering the opposite… i.e. was I just lucky? I did a shade over 50 In and Out trades in the end, which I was happy with considering how many other strategies I had to test.
The interesting part would be to find out what percentage point delivers break-even.
Ultimately, since I’ve finished the trial, the methods I’ve used most have been the pre-match ones. They are just so much safer.
Lx
I’ve now done 31 trades, both today’s were losers, with a strike rate of just 75%. I’ll carry on till I have more results, but it’s not looking good. What would you say are the best strategies to use, Power Hour?
Dave
Personally I have pretty much settled on the pre-match methods. They’re not just the most effective, they’re the most predictable. And as regular readers will know, I’m a huge fan of “dull, regular profits”.
As soon as you introduce the possibility of market suspensions, there is the element of surprise, which it sounds like you’re struggling with….
Lx
I’m not struggling with market suspensions as much as the games having too many early goals! I’ve had more success with tennis in-play trading than football so far.
OK, I’ve done some more research and the claim for the In and Out method that only 13% of games have a goal within 15 mins is wrong. For the last five seasons, the Premiership has seen 30% of games have early goals and Italy has about 25% of games. Given this and my own early experience, I’m inclined not to believe any of their claims unless someone can verify them.
Interesting. I have directed your comment at the TFT help desk and will report their response.
Lx
Dave
I have received a response from TFT as follows.
“I had a look at the method again and I believe it was worded slightly wrong. 0-15 minutes is statistically the time of the match which is least likely to have goals with less then 13% of ALL goals coming in that period which is what makes the early part the best part of the match to use this method on”.
Thus we appear to be talking about 13% of all goals not all games….
Mark @ TFT continues -
“This method is based on the fact that the markets can move really quickly in your favour in these opening stages and in most cases you do not even need to be in the market longer then 10 minutes, let alone 15 minutes”.
“I do urge people that use this method not to do it blindly. Only use it on matches you can actually watch so you can see how threatening the teams are looking and this will help you to avoid the early goals that can arrive. As mentioned in the tips section, get out of the market when corner kicks arrive or just leave the trade if the tempo is high. Doing it like this you will pick up more then enough winners to make a long term profit, but just using the method on any and every match that goes in-play will be very dangerous. To sum it up, being selective is the key”.
Mark can be contacted at info@totalfootballtrading.com if you wish to discuss further.
Lx
On the other hand, I’ve had some significant success with LTD Reloaded today and that seems to have some decent stats to back it up. I need to fine tune my exit strategy for that in case it doesn’t go to plan.
Back again, Lucy! I’ve been concentrating my efforts on a tweaked version of LTD Reloaded with a decent degree of success (and profit!) so far, but I have a general question not so much on the system, but the staking. My bets currently are relatively small, but if the success rate remains as it is (currently 80%+), I plan to increase the stake to a more meaningful level. The point I’m wondering is, regardless of stake size, do I continue with the number of bets per day e.g. I had 11 bets on the Friday internationals or do I target a set point per day i.e 1 or 2 points? Any thoughts would be welcome.
Dave
I’m glad to hear you’re making progress and would be interested to hear more about your new rules. You can email me at lucylastik@laybackandgetrich.com if you prefer.
My definite view on your question is to bet on any and all matches that fit your selection criteria. If you have an edge, it would appear to make sense to push as far and as hard as you can.
Lx
hi dave
what is your interesting “tweak” ?
with kindly regards
It’s largely the scores that I actually look for, so I only look at 0-0 and 1-1 at half time, plus things like money traded.
thx