Talkbet

July 19th

Ok, as promised, here's a run down of my list of betting blogs, I'm moving the ones that haven't been updated, just to keep it fresh.

I have just coped and pasted the links, I dont have time to put all the nice names in!

http://bettrading100to100000.blogspot.com/
In February this year Richard, the blog owner was diagnosed with Lymphona, a form of cancer. He has started another blog over at http://mrbaldylymphoma.blogspot.com/ giving updates on his treatment. We wish Richard all the best in his recovery and beating the disease, his betting blog shall remain in my top betting blogs as I'm sure he will return to it at some stage in the future.

http://www.bertsblog.co.uk/
One of the best out there, Bert Black, one of the guys that started Betfair keeps tabs on the ludicrous amount of money he has now made as well as the horses he owns and races.

http://betangel-betfair-trader.blogspot.com/
A guy trying to go from 1k to 100k and half way there already! Well written blog but probably like others will struggle to think of what to write as the weeks go by....

http://blogofatwentysomething.blogspot.com/
One of my favourite blogs. Only small amounts of betting related stuff but an excellent read none the less, constantly updated.

http://clickingthewrongbuttons.blogspot.com/
Not a lot in this one, very little content, just screenshots.

http://www.flutterfly.co.uk/
How blogs should be done, a lesson to us all. Stacks of content and advice.

http://footygeek.blogspot.com/
Another of my favourites. As like me though, footygeek seems to be on a semi sabbatical from betting until the new season kicks in.

http://www.gamblog.co.uk/
Just seems to be full of latest football news, not really much betting content in there.

http://green-all-over.blogspot.com/
Well written and nicely presented site.

http://spenner68.blogspot.com/
Very interesting blog. The guy uses decent sized stakes and follows various tipping lines for horse racing punts, going through a lean spell at the amount, to say the least...

http://betstobefair.co.uk/
Used to be one of the best blogs out there. Now its just dead, anyone know what happened to Brian, did he reach the gambling nirvana he craved?

http://markiverson-professionalsportstrader.blogspot.com/
Another of the top betting blogs. Well written, updated regularly. Although the bloke makes to much money and far to easily for my liking ;o)

http://www.punt.com/
One of the daddies of the betting blog world. Not updated often but when it is some of the posts can be priceless, well almost. Stacks of useful info if you delve through the history.

http://smalltimesportstrading.blogspot.com/
Another dead blog I think.

http://thebetfairloser.blogspot.com/
Great name for a blog. Plays with the sort of stakes a lot of us do, makes good regular profits but boy can he blow it when it goes wrong ;o) Well written and updated regularly.

http://theexperiment-self-indulgentbullshit.blogspot.com/
Good fresh blog that I've been following for a while. Knows about horse racing intimately and puts that to good use getting free bets on etc.

http://john2e.typepad.com/
Complete pile of cr*p. Written by some moaning old guy, always p*ssed and ranting about something. Only joking, another daddy of betting blogs, always updated and a pleasure to read. John had a few big hits earlier this year but is looking to get back into the swing of it in October, wish him all the best.

http://www.tradeonsports.blogspot.com/
Good previews and write ups (especially cricket, although this is penned by someone else...), some of the stuff you need to pay for though if you're really that desperate.

This afternoon I shall be putting my horse racing trading app into practice, it will be interesting to say the least. Playing with £2 stakes is one thing, watching a £50 trade go the wrong way is another!

Plenty of the usual meaningless football around, will see whats on Betfair video (I think Liverpool are on Channel 5 later though?) and see if I can watch some of it.

Galway cost me a tidy sum yesterday scoring in the 90th min for a 1-0 win at Bray, I was not best impressed. Ended up with £9 profit on the in play app in the end yesterday when it should of been closer to £80.

 

18th July

2nd Test today between England and South Africa. I'm trying a new strategy for this, it probably won't come to anything but we'll see..!

Apart from that there is nothing around to inspire me, roll on the football season, only another couple of weeks and its The Charity Shield!

A quiet weekend planned, although might actually go out tomorrow evening and make a night of it, therefore Sunday will be spent with a major headache.

The gui horse racing trading app made a promising debut the other day, I traded a few races and got on a couple of nice drifts that the app predicted. I used to try and nick 1 tick scalps using stupid amounts of money but realised I either didnt have the patience for it or that I just wasn't very good at it! Smaller stakes and larger price movements are the way forward.

The in play football app has been up and down really, it made a £30 loss yesterday but then made a £33 profit overnight, presumably in a couple of South American games. I'm just ensuring its in peak fitness ready for the new season :o)

Been a long tiring week, crashed out for the whole journey this morning on the train, looking forward to a lie in tomorrow although I'll probably still end up getting up at 7!

July 16th

All pretty quiet on the betting front, apart from the Tour De France and the Open there isn't a lot going on sporting wise for me at the moment. The in play football app has been losing a little each day on various totally obscure games although I've reeled the stakes right back for it, there is just something about this time of year that it doesn't like.

I've completed my horse trading gui app and will give that a try tonight. I've also noticed that Liverpool have a friendly tonight thats live on Channel 5 so i might even get to do some in play football trading while i'm watching!!

Can't wait for the return of the football season and the return of powerstats as well as a hopeful upturn in fortunes for the inplay app.

I plan to go through all the links on the right as well and sort out the dead wood, if i get the time I'd like to write a little review of them here as well.

Be lucky and todays tip is if you're a bloke, don't wear trainers with your suit, it just makes you look really stupid.

July 14th

Well I'm back! Been a very hectic last month though, I've moved out and now have the prospect of a divorce pending, mmmm can't wait!

So my betting has been pretty minimal really recently although yesterday I managed to get right back into it firing up my in play football app as well as some personal betting. I don't have the luxury of cable or sky now so won't be able to follow much sport in play, which means relying on either Betfair video, forum comments or some dodgy stream!

My personal betting went ok in the afternoon, basically just laying no Next Goal or Correct Score based upon the odds and the time gone. I was about £30 up and was happy enough with that but then took a bad hit in the Viking game which ended 0-0 (0-0 was available at 18's pre kick off!!). My attention then turned to Sao Paulo v Palmeiras and luckily 2 late goals for a 2-1 home win got me back on track although still down for the day. I left a bet up later in the Nautico game which didnt come in, so that meant a poor day overall. Note to self, only bet when you are confident on something and don't bet for the sake of it.... :o)

My in play app also didnt go that well, it lost £40 on the day even though it was +£30 at one point.

So anyway, I'll be taking things slowly and steady from now on, both personally and betting wise! I've given up on the horse stats as I paper traded them over the weekend and it came out poorly, back to the drawing board with them.
One thing I will be doing though is writing my horse trading app, this will be a gui front end that monitors horse prices and flags up potential impending rises or falls in odds. The logging of it via a text file looks promising.

I laid the draw in the cricket as well but for one reason or another which I won't go into on here couldn't get out to green up, it looks like I'll take a loss on that, albeit only small though.

Hope you're (both of you) all well and in profit !

June 12th

Sorry for lack of updates, betting is currently Suspended on this blog.

Got a few problems at the moment which I am just getting sorted, hopefully be back some time soon...

June 3rd

Shitov. How very apt that the name of the scorer in the Finland v Belarus game should have a name like that as that sums up how my in play app is doing at the moment, so nice of Shitov to score in the 89th minute for Belarus and kill any hope of profit from the game. The game actually finished 1-1, not that I care.
The other in play game yesterday the app got involved in was Bodo/Glimt v Lillestrom. Bodo/Glimt ?? What sort of a name for a team is that ? And yes, that cost me money as well.
Down £47 in total in those two totally insignificant games.

With regards to the Vantage Horse racing system. the good news is that the projected Betfair SP price I was using for backtesting seemed fairly accurate, I was worried that the prices were going to be overly generous (for backers) but on average they seemed about right.
It had a decent enough day, using SP figures from the Racing Post one system made 8 points profit, while the other system made about 4 points profit.
My server at home seems to of died so I cant get on to run any ratings for today. Mrs Talkbet is kindly stepping in as an IT engineer and rebooting it as I type this, hopefully I'll be able to then get on and run through the ratings.

Why is everyone in London so miserable ? You walk into a newsagent, say Good Morning and they just stare blankly at you as if you've dropped out of the sky.

I did some work on a trendspotting application that monitors horse prices before the off. It looks quite promising so I need to now transfer it to a gui based app. That way it can have pretty colours showing whether the price is expected to rise or fall accordingly. Something else to be getting on with!

 

June 2nd

Hope you all had a good weekend ? I managed to get an old PC/Server up and running after getting it a new PSU, it means I now have a couple of backup systems for my automated apps. It also means I can use Outlook Web client on it as it has MS Exchange installed, not that that probably means much to anyone!

Betting wise for me it was a quiet weekend although I did manage to make a fiver on Britains Got Talent after laying Escala, wonder what I'll spend it on ?
The automated in play football app had another couple of losing days. It lost about £20 on Saturday and another £20 yesterday. It looked like it might actually turn in a profit yesterday but the late England game meant all the heavy favourite odds on backers got their money back, they're only borrowing my money, I'll get it back soon enough ;o)
Good to see three Pompey players in the England starting line up, heady days indeed. Even more so with Defoe notching up a couple on the scoresheet.

I spent a fair bit of time backtesting my horse system, it turned into the code of nightmares with one part of it using 437 different IF statements as I ran it through every possible permutation of the ratings. I'm pleased I did it though as it really did need to be done, thanks to Algo for giving me a kick in the right direction.
I've now got a couple of systems that I'll paper trade today and then I might get back to using £2 bets. I need to monitor what sort of odds I can get on with as opposed to the predicted Betfair SP price I had to use for backtesting. Using real money makes this task slightly easier.

Train was busy this morning and the tube was heaving. You could tell the kids had finished half term, its amazing the time off that people obviously need to take. Which leads me on to my gripe today of people standing on the tube believing they still have the right to read their broadsheet papers at arms length while everyone else is packed in like sardines.....

Nothing else to report, as you were...

May 30th

Morning all! Well the horse racing system bets have taken a bit of a pasting this week and I've had to rejig them (again) to try a new tack. I've gone back to paper trading them as £2 bets still add up if you aren't finding any winners.

I spent some time yesterday rewriting a new script that chomps the downloaded stats and comes up with potential winners, paper trading it over the last few days results seems to produce decent enough results but only time will tell.

My in play football app has taken a bit of a pounding this week and looks like ending May with a small loss. I left it running last summer and it faired quite badly, this year I've reeled the stakes back in though. It had a bad month in March and I'm prepared to allow it the odd bad month or two as long as it produces a profit over the longer term. Having said that, maybe betting on womens football and friendlies is not the best way forward!

As a matter of minor interest this morning on the tube I listened to Joy Division Love Will Tear Us Apart, New Order True Faith and Happy Mondays Hallelujah, seemed to kick start my day anyway :o)

My pet hate for today is men with pull along bags, what posesses them to pull a small bag the size of a matchbox along on wheels ? Have they no dignity ?

I'm reading a couple of books at the moment. Way Of the Turtle reveals for the first time, the reasons for the success of the secretive trading system used by the group known as the “Turtles.” Top-earning Turtle Curtis Faith lays bare the entire experiment, explaining how it was possible for Dennis and Eckhardt to recruit 23 ordinary people from all walks of life and train them to be extraordinary traders in just two weeks. I have an open mind as to whether the strategies in the book can be transferred over into trading odds in the betting world, I used to think they couldn't but the book has given me a few ideas and if I have time today I'm going to write an app to monitor the pre race horse racing odds and see if I can spot trends developing.
Fixed Odds Sport Betting is written by Joseph Buchdahl, the same guy that runs the excellent Football-Data website. I can only read it in short bursts as lot of it is hard going and Joseph clearly knows his stuff.

Well it's Friday and my bets are placed, let's hope today things get better. I'll be glad to see the end of May on the betting front, apart from a good couple of weeks trading the horse manually it's been a poor month for me.

Have a good weekend.

May 27th

About time I did an update, I'm sure my readers (both of them) are bursting with anticipation as to what I've been up to.

Betting wise, pretty quiet really. I'm doing a small number of system bets on the horses but to be honest they are not going to well. I download ratings from ukhorseracing and run an app I have coded on them, this comes up with a number of selections. I also 'cherrypick' horses using the ratings as well as using a system from the site itself, it needs a good few days to get things back on track though.

My in play football app has gone through a very lean spell, it's lost £140 over the last couple of days and has had 8 consecutive losing bets, which is very unusual. Anyone reading that and thinking of trying out the martingale system really needs to think again....

Watched a bit of footie over the weekend, congrats to Hull, can they manage to beat Derby's points tally from last season I wonder ? Commiserations to Leeds, a big club that should be doing much better.

And while we're at it, I'll add my vote to the growing support to end our participation in the Eurovision Song Contest, what a joke that has become, not that I watched it....

I lugged my laptop into work today, big mistake. It's a 17 incher (ooo errr) and too heavy to commute with. It's a pity as I have plenty of spare time on the train and could use the time well. Maybe when my financial position is a bit better I can look at getting a smaller laptop.

Not the most of enthralling entries I'm sure you'll agree but it's all pretty quiet at the moment.

Till next time....

May 22nd

Well I'm still here, just not much to say really! My new contract is going well although the travelling and getting up at 5.30 is proving tough!

Betting wise I've been very quiet this week. Not surprising really, other things have taken priority - like settling in at work. I've now had to ditch my Vantage System till I can find something a little more consistent, it made some great profits for a few days but there are to many long losing streaks and I've decided to quit while it's ahead. I still want to sit down and write some more code for it to try and enhance it more, I think it was coming up with too many selections for a day and I also need to look at the winning and losing bets to see if I can identify where it's doing well and not so well.

Ideally I'd like to do this on the train but I think my laptop is to big to use really, it's a 17 inch screen and eveyone else is using small notebooks. I think I'll have to try bringing it into work one day and see if it can be used easily on the train.

I have read a couple of books already though. I've just finished Tail End System , what an awful book (in my opinion!). The first 25% of it just repeats the same info about what race types and courses are best. Then there are TWO pages of guidance on horse form to show you which horses to choose. The remaining 75% of pages are simply photocopies of Racing Post race guides showing long priced horses that have won with a small explanation after each one about why it won. Anyone could write a book like this and then backfit comments and opinions once the results are known. My advice is not to buy it, I have a second hand copy if anyone wants it....!

What a fantastic Champions League Final that was last night, everyone predicted tight and cagey but I haven't enjoyed watching a game so much, from a neutrals point of view, for a long time. So not only will we be playing the League Champions in the Charity Shield in August, we'll also be playing the European Champions!

Right, must go - a bacon roll and a coffee has my name on it...........