Prosperous times at the Betfair Trader towers

The Betfair Trader / Editor / 15 October 2007 / Leave a Comment

The Betfair Trader gets the final ODI between England and Sri Lanka right again. This is how he did it...

Patience pays off as Sri Lanka win

Daily Result: £1422

So the good run continues. Times are prosperous at BF Towers and with Lady Luck's blessing seemingly temporarily bestowed upon me there's even the temptation to buy a lottery ticket! No seriously today was another good profitable one. And more importantly I was especially pleased with my trading in the 5th ODI between Sri Lanka and England. This back to basics drive is paying dividends. It appears it was well worth taking the time to step back from everything, examine what I was doing and redouble my efforts to try and get everything right.

Of course I didn't get every trade correct today. In fact a few went against me. And I also lost on a cheeky lay of the completed match market in anticipation of rain that never turned up. But at the key points I did mostly get things right. Cut losses when appropriate. Let wins run. And, most importantly of all, just sat on my hands with an equal green book when appropriate. Patience played a big part in the size of my win today. And this is a topic I will be addressing in the next week or two. There's a few other subjects I've said I will cover, including the importance of cutting losses, and I will be doing blogs on these now the trading schedule is becoming less hectic. If I can work out how to do it I plan to dump them all in the same section so they're easy to find.

Today's early trading was all about opposing Sri Lanka. With Jayasuriya and Perera getting the Lankans off to a blistering start I ended up cutting for around a £100 all red book. But as the wickets started to fall the money kept coming for Sri Lanka in waves. I waited and assessed the situation. But even with Collingwood seemingly unable to bowl, a weaker English batting line up, the question of lights and the Lankans having the choice of 4 spinners I still could not justify the price. So I layed it. Opposed the market and went with my own intuition. As I discussed at the time Sri Lanka might well win but surely their price will blow in the mean time?

Well blow it did and by the time the Sri Lankans had posted their 211 England were 1.58. Interesting to note that because in the last ODI between the two sides, on the same pitch, Sri Lanka also scored 211. But at the change of innings they were in the 1.8x range. That's some difference!

Anyway, at the change of innings with a bit of tinkering I'd have been around £500 all green. I left it red Lanka and green England though until the resumption, reducing my red a little and then levelling out when Mustard was caught behind early. It then became a waiting game with me mostly sat on my hands. I was around £430 green the pair and not wanting to get involved as the match could go either way. The prices bobbled around in a range for a while and I just left them. No need to gamble. Much better to wait for the range to be broken, a likely winner to emerge and then get on for the ride. Really is no need to catch the whole movement. Get 80% of it and you'll do very well for yourself.

There were a few ups and downs in the market but eventually, as the wickets began to fall, it got to the stage where I couldn't easily see past a Lankan win and started to build a position on them. As more wickets fell I increased the position. Ultimately England scored a total of just 104 in reply handing Sri Lanka a crushing 107 victory. It could have been worse though. At one point I thought England were going to beat their own ODI low score record of 86, as well as the 88 which is their lowest ODI score in Sri Lanka. In the end the 102 stopped just saved them from their 6th ever sub 100 ODI score.

So another successful day on the trading front. Not sure if I'll do tomorrow's India v Australia game. Very early start for that one. Maybe see how I feel later though it's not likely to be good - heading out soon to the pub with friends to watch the France v England game. Looking forward to it! No bets for me but good luck if you get involved. :-)