If last week at Cheltenham epitomised having to dig in at times, the weekend went a long way to showing me what I often thought that people generally, and I mean no offence, are clueless of value and actually making money and just like winners. I believe firmly that method is almost irrelevant if you have no mindset to succeed at this game.
I accept fully that people bet for different reasons and people will have differing views to me on value, odds compiling, methods, long term etc etc. That is their right. At the end of the day I think too many people over analyse things and all I am interested in is profit and how much I make. I don’t worry too much about ROI or winners strike rate etc etc. We are all different and it would be mightily boring if we weren’t.
However that gets countered by emails that ask me how I win? How can they win? I have literally just had one sent to me 1 minute ago saying “I wish I was more consistent” from someone who I know could be. The thing that stops most people is mindset and approach.
I will give you an example.
I was contacted sometime ago by an FTS member (he has given me permission to post this) who wants to set up a trading platform and chat feature for trading football and on Saturday they had a beta day that he wanted me to observe and send him my comments. There were around 20 people in the room plus me anonymously and the FTS member who was the king pin. He had sent me the game they were trading and the full instructions of the trade so I knew what was going on.
Basically the trade like most as there are only certain things that win was based on entering the match at a certain time in certain conditions and trading out if goals were scored with different rules dependent on who scored and when. All simple stuff and rules were clear.
So in amongst my own stuff I had the pop up chat thingy open and the usual drivel was being talked in the chatroom, one subscriber compelled to turn it into futbol24 by typing every goal that went in anywhere which was just plain annoying.
It then came to trading time and the conditions were right and there was a frenzy as the 20 something people entered the trade and all typed in that they had done so. Now if nothing happened from this point the trade lost and that was that there was no stop loss but there were strict rules for events such as goals, red cards etc.
One of those events happened about 10 minutes later and there was great excitement in the chat room as this goal put the trade in a profitable position BUT in this particular event you were required to wait longer to get maximum profit.
It was an unbelievable scene as people argued and talked themselves in and out of the Betfair “cash out mindset” (which represents terrible value by the way) in the chatroom. The rules were clear yet here people just wanted a winner.
Now I have no idea if this method makes money long term, but I imagine being an FTS pupil behind it that the numbers and timings were based on maximising winning trades and absorbing losers. Therefore taking profit early could not possibly win in the long run.
Several got out practically straight away, others were steadfast and were doing the method as is and others were fighting themselves continually, one guy talked himself in and out of exiting the trade at least 4 times in 60 seconds before announcing a’la Duncan Bannantyne “I’m out”. I was just astonished and had my head in hands!
But then the best bit happened – The guy behind the system, the guy behind the rules, the guy who determined the timings, the guy who went to to trouble to set all this up he himself typed he was profiting. I was apoplectic. I nearly punched poor old Jeff Stellling in the face through my TV screen.
I calculated his exit would have made 50% roughly and had he stuck to the rules would have made about 88%. A 38% difference but the risk of losing remained until the 88% point was hit. The trade would of actually been a winner but if people and in this case once he posted it was everyone bar one are taking 50% profit instead of 88% profit on a winning trade if that is the rules then they cannot possibly absorb the losers.
He genuinely could see nothing wrong with it and stated better to have winners, good karma etc etc.
I actually am lost for words from this point. Gambling is gambling, trading is trading, betting is betting. Most who do any are clueless and this just proved the point. It was all about the one trade and no thought to “if I keep doing the same thing what would happen”. It reminded me of my old friend Ron who I posted about sometime ago who told me he trades out of his fixed odds bets although he has proved it costs him money over time.
The fact is this game is painful, my own fixed odds bets this year have been painful (more on that in another post) but that is the game, you bet the value and get through it or you punt for fun, don’t set yourself up as an authority then do something else just to look good to a chat room and say you had a winner. If you genuinely believe you have value long term you keep going, bad runs come and go but your prices mean you survive and profit.
That brings me to chat rooms, I know many sites now have them and we are looking at the features on FTS but it just shows get a lot of people in one place and they all follow like sheep right or wrong so they are not all great and in the above instance I could only see the negatives. I knew none of the people in there so if one happens to read this, I make no apologies, perhaps trading is not for you and stick to bets that you can place and leave.
People genuinely don’t want to win, but everyone loves a winner!
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One Response
I am coming back to my tennis trading. There’s a service I bought (it is a one off fee) several years back, and I keep using it as they have a blog, and I can use the matches discussed to limit the number of games I look at. Lazy I know but still.
Bear with me there is a point coming!
So, having got a list of hopefully tradeable matches, I don’t read their analysis, I do my own, make my own opinions, device my trading strategy.
I then go to this site’s chat room.
In the early days i used to get swayed by the chat in there, following the herd often against my own analysis, to my detriment. Or i’d would say I making this trade only to be scoffed out; no apologies when I was proved correct! I have learned to use the room selectively as often matches are discussed on there that are not on the blog. This of course triggers my own analysis. It has taken a lot of time and discipline to do this independently.
At the end of the day, only you are responsible for your actions. You have no idea how good a trader some anonymous bod in a chat room is, and your opinion is just as valid as anyone else’s if you have done your homework. Finally, you must always trade your plan, with constant tweaking of the plan where appropriate AFTER trading has been completed NEVER DURING.