Q's from a reader

So I got some questions from Jonas from sweden... I used google translate to translate it for me due cause i find it most time effective. I'll copy the swedish version first then the translated part.

Hejsan!
Jonas heter jag och har hittat din blogg, intressant och bra.
Dessutom verkar du duktig på trading.
Har själv vidrört ämnet periodvis, med blandade resultat. Det som gick bäst förr var iaf live-tennis. Har precis investerat i en laptop och så sakteliga börjat igen.
Undrar lite ang din trading, inom tennis.
Tradar du direkt på betfairs hemsida el använder du någon mjukvara?
Körde med bettraders själv förut men "harvar" på hemsidan nu. Finns visst något på hemsidan som heter Betfair Rapid - någon erfarenhet utav den?
Vilka matnyttiga sidor använder du?
Kör du med scoreboard eller streamar du matcher?
Vore kul om du svarade, finns inte många att fråga sådana saker om
Mvh Jonas

---------------------------

Hello!
Jonas is my name and found your blog, interesting and good.
Furthermore, you seem good at trading.

Have yourself touched the topic periodically, with mixed results. It went better sooner was anyway live tennis. Having just invested in a laptop and slowly started again.

Wondering little about how you trade tennis.
Do you trade directly on Betfair website or do you use any software?
I used bettraders before but I use the website nowwadays. There is something on the website called Betfair Rapid - any experience out of it?

Which tennis webpages do you use?
Are you running the scoreboard or stream you matches?

Regards Jonas

-------------------------------------------------------------

Hello Jonas!

First of all thanks for the kind words.

What you use for hardware is probably very personal (eg. laptop, desktop computer). I find having alot of working space is nice. But when I started out I just had a one screen so I didn't have anything more than you. Now I have two different setups. One @ my girlfriends place with two 28" 2560*1400 screens and one @ my house which looks like this. ->

I have never used the website for trading basically. I do know alot of very succesful people do use the website only. This is from what I have read on various blogs etc. 

I use Geektoys and I find it good enough for me. I have tried Bet Angel aswell but being so used and comfortable with geektoys I have sticked to it. I find it quite cheap aswell. Bet Angel have a cool feature that you can connect the markets to excel and basically do anything excel can do handling data. As you might have guessed by now I have never tried Betfair Rapid. Never heard anything about it either, sorry.

Tennis infromaition websites I use is the ones I have linked on the right handside here on the blog.

For scoreboards and streams I only use bet365. 

Good luck with you trading Jonas!

/Sammy

Q: from a reader...

Got a question from Ste:

"Hi Sammy, I have been reading your blog on tennis trading. I am a student and have recently started to look towards trading, mainly horseracing as I have a greater knowledge about that. Yet I see more and more trading on tennis, would you be able to give me a few beginner pointers? If you can that would be great, if not then its not problem. Thanks!"

Hey Ste!

So this is a super broad question cause there is many aspects that you have to learn. But key in all sports trading is learning to read the markets.

You have to know from with in 1-2% margin where a odds will be if X or Y happens. If not its very hard to make any assumptions on what your liability or profit will be for the specific trade / strategy you are looking at.

How to do this is pretty straightforward. You just watch alot of matches and see how the market moves each ball / game / set. This might seem abit overwhelming at first cause odds seem to move a bit random. But eventually after alot of practice you can start to see patterns on what is normal and not and after that spot value (when market is out of line)

It took me about 3 months of pretty much watching every tennis match during that time in 2012. I dont know if that is fast or slow. You could probably learn it much quicker but. The first month I pretty much didnt trade i just focused on following the markets movement in relation to what happened in the match.

What else...

Bankroll management, there is loads of information out there on this topic. If you have a small bankroll that you can easily replace. Then you can risk a much higher proportion of your bankroll. If its something that you need to be able to work and make a living. Then you have to take really good care of it. Otherwise you wont make any more money if you blow it all. Its like being a carpenter and not taking care of your tools. You will be out of a job -> no food on the table.

Note worthy is, depending on your margins you have on each trade. If you have small margins = higher variance which then you should use a smaller porportion of your bankroll. The bigger the margin the bigger amount you can risk.

Ok thats all I had time for today. I hope you can take something with you from all of this anyways! I think learning how the markets behave for the different sports is for me the most important thing.

Stay Sharp!

/Sammy

Halfway thru Aussie Open

Yes we're almost a week into the first grand slam and I had a really good start to the week. But been struggling last couple of days to find any decent value. I'm really struggling with the high liqudity markets. Hard to get any really good value odds due to market maker having no spread at all basically and they pretty much always are infront of the queue with their speed (courtside info). Which is super annoying. Would be way more easy to make money if we where trading on the same terms. But it is what it is....

So I often "zoneout" in these circumstances. Which is not good obviously. But I'm working on it. I think basically I dont trust my strategies or theories in high liquid markets. Which makes me doubt myself alot and therefor not trade aswell.

The sultan @ centercourttrading have recommended a book "trading from your gut" which i picked up the other day. I must say it was a good read. And I think you can pickup alot from it. For you that have read it I find myself being a "left brain" person that are struggling with trusting my instincts and intuition. So I found it quite intresting really.


Much better start to this season. I remember being stuck about 2-3k at this point last season...


Stephane Robert the french lucky looser have made it to the 4th round and you can read a pretty amusing interview here. http://www.ausopen.com/en_AU/news/interviews/2014-01-18/201401181390025203272.html

Now its time to get back to the markets. The last matches for the day starts in a few mintues.

Stay Sharp!

/Sammy

Week 24 - Grass season

I had some days off and went to Germany for a little trip with my girlfriend. We ended up in Berlin & Lübeck.We had great weather and a really good time. There is so much to see in Berlin its really hard to find time to do it all. Was surprised about Lübeck it was really nice, but 1 day is enough. We where abit in luck cause there was this wine festival going on i Lübeck. I was drinking sekt (german champange) all night from south german wine producers for basically nothing.

Gerry Webber Open - Halle

Aegon Classic/Championship - Birmingham

Clay season is basically over. There is a number of tournement left but left but officially it's kind of over. As i came home pretty late yesterday. I went to bed earlier than normal. I haven't really checked the matches for today which is not great. But stats is really hard to find for grass. Some players haven't recorded a single match on grass. Which makes it hard for me and betting companys to come up with decent lines.

Average hold for both men and women on grass is significantlly higher than on other surfaces. So we can expect in generall less breaks.

Nurnberger WTA Int'

 There is a clay tournament this week in Nurnberger which is a new tournament. Hard to say how that clay play so we will see what info comes about and what numbers that turns up.

I'm getting ready myself for todays action and im not finished so I cant really get you any predictions for today. If I find anything intresting I will post it later. Im going write an article about hardware and software this week. I have alot on my plate though but hopefully I will have time to do it abit later.

GL @ the markets /Sammy

Everybody seems to love a P/L screenie...

May 2013

Day 10 Roland Garros

It's time for quarterfinals in Paris, France. Today we have 2 womens matches and 2 mens on the card. There is alot of doubles going on aswell but I have some stuff to do around the house so i dont think i will get involved in this. But lets go through the singles matches today....

Like most matches i find S.Williams being value at these crazy prices. But backing from start is not for me. I'm going to back S.Williams if she trades higher.

A.Radwanska against Errani could get alot more intresting. The 1.64 (61%) odds on Radwanska is fine. Predicted holds for this match is very low. And trading breaks will most likely be a generous offer. I'm hoping for a 3 setter with alot of drama in the mix.

T.Robredo

Robredo - Ferrer: Will the fairytale continue? I doubt it. Having 3 tough 5 setters in the legs and the emotional drain after the last one. Robredo cried of happiness after winning against almagro. It was almost like had won the whole tournament. I think it would take a lot to reboot emotionally and physically to beat an inform Ferrer over another 5 sets. 1.07 is very low though nothing i'm going to back.

The main attraction today is definately the clash between Tsonga vs Federer. Market has Federer at a healthy 1.60 which I find high. After Federers poor performance against Simon the other day and Tsonga looking really solid in his previous matches during RG. I think market has overreacted abit though. For me i'd say 1.33-1.40 would have been a much more solid odds on Federer. It's definately gonna be a intresting match to watch and hopefully trade. GL @ the markets. /Sammy

Federer & Tsonga

Monday:Rome

If i counted right we have 22 matches today. So it should be plenty of opportunities. Liquidity might be a problem in some matches. But its pretty easy to spot where it is and isn't. Just be a bit cautious, you might have to red @ wrong prices.

Im probably just gonna trade WTA matches, but it also depends where liquidity will be at. So there might be a couple of ATP in it today. We will have to see how the surface is playing out this week. The thin air and pretty fast clay in Madrid favored the very aggressive style of Raonic and Janowiz. I think Rome will play abit slower and they wont have that much advantage against the good grinding type of players. This is just a guess but we will have to see.

Mens:
Fognini - Seppi should be a very nice match to trade. I think market have the wrong favorite here but it really doesnt matter. You can probably go both ways here. Laying who ever has the lead.

Montanes - Klizan: Klizans odds here is to high. Im going to back him at some point in the match.

Giraldo - Janowicz: Wrong favorite. Im favoring Giraldo.

Kohl-Raonic: Raonic abit to high. I will lay. I really dont like trading big servers cause volatility and variance is extreme usually. But getting position on kohlschreibers serve and then moving some liaibility when he has held is good. So you can cover if he gets broken first.

I cant really understand that Malisse is so bad @ clay. His stats are like night and day clay vs hardcourt. I was abit surprised that market have taken note of this.

Stepanek - Starace: I dont know what to say, might be a very fun market. Computer says Stepanek to low. These 2 gentlemen is known as 2 match fixers. This is pretty much common knownledge and market will probably be abit crazy due to it when fear and greed kicks in.

Women:
 Cirstea - Morita: Last week they played and Morita had to retire after just 3 games. Dont know what that was about. Probably better to just leave it alone. Or back cirstea. Market will go crazy if there is a MTO.

Niculesu - Peng: High probability this will be a very nice match to trade. Odds are a little high on Niculescu.

Hsieh - Stosur: Lay Stosur

JJ - Pirnokova: Lay JJ

Makarova - Oudin: Lay Makarova


GL @ the markets

/Sammy

Edit: Forgot, Ramos to low aswell. Lay.