I’ve done a review, including some videos, of what it’s like to trade the US horse races via Betfair now that the UK & Irish meetings are all off.
Under normal circumstances there is very low liquidity on most of the international races but since the UK and Irish racing totally stopped, it has really picked up.
When I first looked at the US racing it wasn’t even getting £100,000 matched but the figures are building and building all the time.
Tonight one of the four races I traded had £327,000 matched which is remarkable.
Anyway to save me doing a lot of writing I’ve done three videos for you to watch. They are entitled Yankee Doodle Dandy (Parts 1, 2 and 3)
Yankee Doodle Dandy Pt 1
The sound is not great on the 2nd and third videos as I had a few sound issues but hopefully you will find them OK.
Yankee Doodle Dandy Pt 2
Part 2 Notes
In Part 2, I mention that only one horse has gotten loose and bolted off while I’ve been watching. From memory I think that happened down at the start when it was no longer alongside the “Pony” horse.
So the way they use the “Pony’s” to calm the horses on the way to the starting gate works very well.
Also you hear me get a bit excited that the horse I traded won which might seem strange. I do “Lay to Back” trades (L2B) so generally it’s better if I never lay the winner.
However my new mentor gave me a lot of help, not long ago, setting up my “servants” on my Bet Angel software.
So now I have them working in such a way that it means that although it’s one click to place my “Lay” bet the software splits the lay into multiple equal parts.
Then when any of them gets taken the servants auto place the back bets in. (Offset with Greening)*
The back bets get spread at various predetermined ticks on the ladder, this means that some gets taken earlier than others as the price drifts.
I’m not too greedy so I can, as happened here, lay something where the price drifts and I’m in an out of the market quickly. From then on it doesn’t matter to me if the horse storms back to win.
If you watch Pt 2 carefully from about 9 mins in you’ll see that I’m already out of the trade and have re-started the video and they’ve only just gone past the half mile pole.
The reason I like the automation I use now is because the way I used to trade In-Running I did it all manually.
Trading manually has a couple of disadvantages. Firstly entering the market is harder as if you don’t spot the signals early and the price starts to drift you are then trying to chase the price up the ladder and its easy to miss it totally.
The “once click” software lets you set the lay price to be X number of ticks above the current price so as it rises you still catch it. The way Betfair works though you will get the best possible price so if the price hasn’t drifted you’ll always get the lowest price available anyway.
Secondly when you manually trade out you can occasionally get it wrong. There is nothing worse than turning a nice green situation into a huge red.
Yes I could win more a lot of the time but you only need one “winner” to destroy a weeks work.
Yankee Doodle Dandy Pt 3
My trading results for the day
Pretty pleased with today, as I’m only using half my normal “liability” settings to win £16 from just four races is pretty good for me.
Tampa Bay Downs
Sadly Tampa’s schedule is slowing down a bit at this time of year. I don’t think it has anything to do with Coronavirus.
However with this and a bit of Will Rodgers Downs and Remington Park I should be OK till the UK starts up again.
I’ve taken this snapshot of the schedule from their website which you can visit here. You can watch race replays and stuff on their site if you wish.
TampaBayDowns
According to this there are 9 more meetings to trade in April and just 3 in May before the end of their season. Fingers crossed we will be close to a resumption in the UK by then.
*If you’ve never traded then the term “Offset with Greening” will sound like double dutch but this article is aimed at people who are already trading on Betfair.
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