Norris McWhirter from the Guinness Book of Records
Betfair Trading,  In-Running

Record Breaker

My April Trading Update

The headline news is that April was a record-breaking trading month for me. Sounds great but I only won £94.98 so I’m not getting over excited.

*For the youngsters reading this who have no idea who the guy in the image above is I’ll tell you at the bottom of the post. (You’ll have to read it all now)

After 16 months of trading it’s only my 2nd ever green month so a win is a win as they say.

I switched to In-Running (IR) about a year ago on 26th April 2019. I’ve used trial and error and switched and tweaked strategies over the last year trying to get a trading plan of attack and the level of consistency that’s needed to be successful.

I know I’m not there yet but I certainly feel I’m well on the way. I joined with my new mentor on the 19th Feb 2020 and started to fully embrace his methods from 25th Feb. (Just over 2 months ago)

Safety, safety, safety he keeps saying to me over and over. I haven’t quite manged it 100% but I’ve traded the US races 24 days in April and had just 3 red days. My previous lowest red days in a month was 6 (last month).

My total trades were 128 markets with 6 red and 122 green. I would also point out that one of those was an accidental 16p pre-race loss when I tried to move the mouse on my desk and when it got stuck on a document I inadvertently clicked on something. They were just about to go off, so I had to take the 16p loss or risk it going in-play.

The way I trade now I often watch races but don’t trade them. If I don’t see a trade that fits my criteria I won’t enter the market. As that accidental click pre-race was one of those races I ended the race with the 16p loss.

It seems daft that an IR trader panicked about going in-play but choosing to Lay or Back a horse IR based on what I’m observing doesn’t frighten me in the slightest anymore but the thought of accidentally going in-play seemed very scary.

Overall, I’m pleased with the month but there are some negatives and I still need to work harder on discipline.

Betfair Trading Results

I made two really bad trades during the month where I should never have entered the market. On the day where I had my biggest daily loss (£142.50) I had a £90 red and should have instantly have turned off Bet Angel, but I carried on and had another big loss. (£65)

USA, USA!

At the start of the month I halved my stakes as I thought it would be best to take things easy on the US racing. After the full month of trading them I absolutely love the US races now. I’ve spoken to my mentor and a couple of other IR traders who also like them. If you didn’t see it, I did a post about trading Tampa here.

Not me currently, but I believe you could successfully trade the US races and make a full time living from them as the racing is very good for IR traders.

Trading 3 nights a week at one track and 3 at another you really get to know the tracks and how the pace holds up. (or doesn’t).

Though it remains to be seen what happens to liquidity when the UK & Ire start up again, its great to see people able to keep their eye in with the US races.

I had one feeble attempt at doing the Aussie races and gave up as I’m not a morning person, but some are winning Dingo Dollars every day. (While I’m asleep)

If in the future I’m ever trading UK stuff in the evening I would certainly have the US races loaded up as well.

I have written a summary and my trading plans for moving forward at the bottom of the article, and directly under this is the daily diary of my trading which I write after trading each day.

Daily Update

1st April

Halved my stakes as I don’t want to get in a hole with races I wouldn’t normally bother with. Traded 3 at Tampa and 1 at Will Rodgers Downs.

Number of Races 6

Traded 4, 0 losses, 4 wins. Biggest loss N/A, biggest win £2.55

Daily Total: Plus £3.96

2nd April

No trading. No meetings in the USA that were on Betfair.

3rd April

Tampa again today and still using half stakes.

Earlier in the day I saw there were some races from Singapore with BF video, when that’s what it said on Betfair. They made me put a £2 scratch trade through to get the pictures up and there were no pictures!

Anyway, traded Tampa for a bit and called it a day.

Number of Races 7

Traded 4, 0 losses, 4 wins. Biggest loss N/A, biggest win £2.49

Daily Total: Plus £6.51

Trading Tampa Bay

4th April

Traded Tampa which had a quite a bit of liquidity in the market. For me though I kept missing opportunities and had a couple of scratches.

Betfair Liquidity

Still using half stakes today so my biggest win was only £3.31 which isn’t too bad at all.

What made it sweeter was that the way I have the servants set up meant that I was in and out quickly without any risk. After I was out the horse came from way back up the inside rail to win a photo.

Tampa Bay Downs Horse Racing

Number of Races 7

Traded 5, 0 losses, 3 wins. Biggest loss N/A, biggest win £3.31

Daily Total: Plus £4.87

Trading Tampa

5th April

I was still on my PC gone midnight last night so watched a couple of races at Remington Park. Put a scratch trade through on both, no trades possible as the markets were super thin In-Running.

Tampa this evening was pretty good, and I would have stayed and done a few more but my daughter has cooked for me and that is a rare treat.

Still on half stakes so quite happy with how it went.

Number of Races 5

Traded 3, 0 losses, 3 wins. Biggest loss N/A, biggest win £2.73

Daily Total: Plus £5.23

5th April Trading

6th April

Damn, I did it again. Layed a winner. At least I had the good sense to immediately stop trading for the day.

Number of Races 3

Traded 3, 1 loss, 1 win. Biggest loss £42.11, biggest win £2.67

Daily Total: Minus – £39.44

Losing days trading

7th April

Much better day today. I missed the earlier races but was able to get a few bets matched on some of the later ones.

Number of Races 5

Traded 5, 0 losses, 5 wins. Biggest loss N/A, biggest win £6.03

Daily Total: Plus £11.12

8th April

I’m not being so rigid with my “4 Max” trades a day rule currently. Mainly because I don’t have to concentrate so hard in such an intense fashion when the races are 30 mins apart. That’s because there is normally only one tradeable US racetrack meeting each day.

Also, as I’m staking less, I want to try and eek out a few extra pennies if possible.

Only small greens today but they add up. Climbed out of the red for the month after my disaster a couple of days ago. Will be trying extra hard to stay there.

Number of Races 7

Traded 7, 0 losses, 7 wins. Biggest loss N/A, biggest win £2.82

Daily Total: Plus £10.04

9th April

No USA races today.

10th April

Tampa back on again today. I only watched a few races and all of them got over £200k matched, so it seems more and more people are starting to trade them now. They were getting about £100k when I first started trading Tampa.

Number of Races 5

Traded 3, 0 losses, 3 wins. Biggest loss N/A, biggest win £2.23

Daily Total: Plus £5.54

11th April

My best day of the month so far. I picked a great day to do a blog post about what it’s like to trade some of the races in the USA now the UK & Irish racing has stopped.

To read the blog post and watch the videos I did for it click here. Tampa Bay Downs Betfair Trading

Number of Races 4

Traded 4, 0 losses, 4 wins. Biggest loss N/A, biggest win £7.94

Daily Total: Plus £16.03

12th April

Didn’t trade today. Nothing on at the tracks I can trade.

13th April

No Tampa today (my fav US track) but a decent looking card at Will Rodgers Downs. (WRD)

WRD is part of a big Cherokee gaming facility which includes a casino as well as the horse racing track.  It’s located in Rogers County, near Tulsa, Oklahoma.

I had a few good ones today and the fact I’m using half stakes doesn’t make much difference when I’m really confident in a trade as I just click it twice!

Number of Races 5

Traded 4, 0 losses, 3 wins. Biggest loss N/A, biggest win £19.44

Daily Total: Plus £27.68

14th April

Another OK day at Will Rodgers Downs. Had 5 normal sized wins after getting bigger than average ones yesterday, so it didn’t feel like a great day. On reflection now though I’d take this before the first race.

I had one tiny loss which wasn’t really a trading loss, as I tried to move my mouse on the desk it got caught on some papers and I ended up placing a pre-race bet. Traded out straight away for a 16p loss. So not an In-Running loss but a loss, nevertheless.

I took a screen shot to show it was pre-race. (My mentor gets on my back when I have a red so I need proof!)

Pre-Race Trading Loss

Number of Races 8

Traded 6, 1 loss, 5 wins. Biggest loss 0.16p, biggest win £2.53

Daily Total: Plus £9.66

14th April Trades

15th April

Busy day for US racing with Tampa, Will Rodgers and another one I’ve never seen before Fonner Park which is in Grand Island, Nebraska.

There won’t be any races tomorrow (if you don’t count the ones from Fonner which start after midnight)

For a couple of reasons, I did far more races than I normally would. I traded six then stopped but I came back upstairs as I had work to do at about 10.00 pm when Fonner Park was just starting, and I wanted to see what it was like.

As it happened, I liked it. Not much liquidity but there was no Betfair Video available** which didn’t help. I watched it via Fonner Parks own website.
They provide an excellent live feed with nice sharp pictures.

Number of Races 14

Traded 11, 0 losses, 11 wins. Biggest loss N/A, biggest win £4.84

Daily Total: Plus £16.58

16th April

No US races for me to trade today. Nice day off but Tampa to look forward to for Fri, Sat & Sunday.

17th April

Back to Tampa again today. Nice steady stuff no drama watched a few I didn’t trade, as too close to call, but got a couple of safe trades in.

Number of Races 7

Traded 4, 0 losses, 4 wins. Biggest loss N/A, biggest win £2.86

Daily Total: Plus £9.14

USA Horse racing

18th April

I have been trying my new method of In-Running trading for almost 2 months now. My mentor uses two basic strategies L2B and B2L. Based on my previous trading experience prior to joining him l feel most comfortable with L2B. So much so that today was the first time I had ever been brave enough

to try a B2L bet. In the past I’d spotted a few opportunities but wasn’t brave enough to fire the bullet.

Not so long ago I dropped my stakes for B2L to 25% of what they are for L2B. This finally gave me the confidence to pull the trigger. It worked well as it was my biggest win of the day.

Number of Races 5

Traded 4, 0 losses, 4 wins. Biggest loss N/A, biggest win £7.96

Daily Total: Plus £15.05

£15.45 profit

19th April

Arggghhh!

Again, I manage to wipe out a month in a day. I thought those days were over and it wouldn’t have been so bad if I’d just switched straight off after the first big loss.

What made matters worse was I’d put my liability amount back up again after going so well for the last 10 days or so.

Number of Races 6

Traded 6, 2 losses, 4 wins. Biggest loss £90.03, biggest win £4.83

Daily Total: Minus – £142.50

Disaster trading

20th April

Back to something like a normal day trading the US races.

Number of Races 12

Traded 7, 0 losses, 7 wins. Biggest loss N/A, biggest win £3.96

Daily Total: Plus £16.84

21st April

Will Rodgers Downs this evening I’m starting to like it more. Also did a small trade in the first race at Fonner Park before switching off for the evening.

Number of Races 7

Traded 4, 0 losses, 4 wins. Biggest loss N/A, biggest win £4.89

Daily Total: Plus £12.59

D12 goes here.

22nd April

My best day so far with the US racing. I normally would have stopped after the first 4 but my daughter had banned me from the living room, so I stayed and watched a couple more races.

I wasted my time trying to get up a bit earlier than usual to have a look at the Aussie races. I won’t make that mistake again while there is still USA races to trade.

Number of Races 10

Traded 7, 0 losses, 7 wins. Biggest loss N/A, biggest win £13.20

Daily Total: Plus £29.57

Betfair Baby

April 23rd

No US racing today.

April 24th

Tampa on again today and some good news from the Tampa track as they announced they are extending the season which was due to end shortly. There is now a very good chance that Tampa can give me an option to keep trading the US races right the way through until the UK and Irish races start again.

I had a good day today, except one trade which I felt afterwards I shouldn’t have entered. The horse finished a close second, so I got away with it. It did give me a scare though and when I watched the replay, I knew it wasn’t a totally safe trade.

Number of Races 8

Traded 6, 0 losses, 6 wins. Biggest loss N/A, biggest win £9.21

Daily Total: Plus £29.46

April 25th

I switched to In-Running trading from pre-race on the 26th April 2019 and as it’s a leap year I guess that means I’ve been doing it a year now!

You can read a short blog post about that milestone here.

Another decent day at Tampa.

Number of Races 8

Traded 5, 0 losses, 5 wins. Biggest loss N/A, biggest win £3.78

Daily Total: Plus £13.46

April 26th

My best day so far on the US racing. Really pleased with this. The last race I traded was such a safe trade laying an odds-on fav that ran like a drain.

Number of Races 6

Traded 5, 0 losses, 5 wins. Biggest loss N/A, biggest win £25.89

Daily Total: Plus £44.17

Best day so far

27th April

So after a USA record-breaking day yesterday it was pretty poor this evening. No Tampa but Will Rodgers which is normally good, but Fonner was on this evening as well and that lowered the liquidity a bit on WR.

Tampa gets over £200k per race and some get over £300k but as you can see the later races this evening were poor. (image taken just after 22.45 had started)

Bet Angel Guardian

What was worse was that most races were competitive so there were no easy trades.

Number of Races 12

Traded 3, 0 losses, 3 wins. Biggest loss N/A, biggest win £2.79

Daily Total: Plus £6.57

28th April

My first ever losing B2L bet this evening. After being almost exclusively a L2B trader I had recently started doing the occasional B2L. Even though I’m very new to that method of trading In-Running, I already like B2L a lot and being over keen to do one was possibly responsible for me entering a trade that I really shouldn’t have done. Having watched the replay, I realise there was no trade there, so hopefully lesson learnt.

All my trades were at WillRD this evening, even though I watched a few of the races at Fonner Park I didn’t trade any of them.

Number of Races 10

Traded 5, 1 loss, 4 wins. Biggest loss £25.75, biggest win £3.00

Daily Total: Minus – £20.60

29th April

Last day of the month (there is no US racing tomorrow 30th) and after the loss yesterday having a losing day today would have been a disaster.

I made things difficult for myself by making a stupid mistake and losing £29.04 on the 2nd race. There were unusually 3 meetings this evening, so knowing there were lots of races, meant I had plenty of opportunity to make amends.

Chasing losses is just the worst thing to do when punting and it’s pretty much the same when trading if you aren’t thinking straight. However, I was calm and just settled down utterly determined to grind it out.

If I’d only got 2 or 3 races left, I may have been tempted to take chances but the knowledge that I had far more races than I needed meant I could just trade normally. The only thing I’d have to do is trade more races than I normally would.

I ended up trading 10 races which is double what I’d normally trade.

Number of Races 16

Traded 10, 1 loss, 9 wins. Biggest loss £29.04, biggest win £8.22

Daily Total: Plus £3.45

Got my losses back

30th April

Day off no USA racing today.

Monthly Total

Monthly Betfair Trading Report

Summary & Next Month’s Plan

OK so a few blips apart I should be fairly pleased with April and as with every month since I started trading I’m looking forward to the new month immensely.

My target for May is for an all green month in terms of green days. I know it’s possible if I can fully implement the strategies I’m currently trying to employ. There are a small number of us in the mentors Telegram group and although some are new to it like me the established members of the group are doing very well.

One guy has had 135 consecutive green days without a single red race which is just staggering.

The group is excellent, and the older members are very helpful, and the newer ones have the feeling that we are all in it together.

Trading can be quite lonely just sitting staring at your screen day in day out on your own, so I’ve enjoyed all the Telegram rooms I’ve ever been a member of. You do learn a lot from the others and when someone asks a Q there is always someone who can help.

Flip Flop Trading

Because I’ve tried pre-race then switched to IR using one method then had a short stint with another before reverting back, I didn’t even want to say I’d started a new method when I did in February. I thought I’d keep it quiet and see how it goes first.

It smacks of desperation and a reluctance to put in the hard work needed if you keep flitting from one method to another. When it comes to IR though I’ve done it now for a year in one form or another and all the methods I’ve tried have added to my education.

The techniques and race reading skills I’ve learnt are finally starting to bear fruit because I’m now using them in a more structured and methodical way.

I’ve been able to use all the knowledge I’ve acquired whilst trying to trade the way my mentor advocates.

For anyone interested to know more about how I’m trading now, I have written a full review of the trading method I’m using called Back for Profit.

May the Force be with you.

So here is to a green month in May. I’d like to see some UK and Irish racing back if possible but I’m in no rush as the US racing has been a real bonus.

After getting the hang of the jumps races over the winter months I was a bit worried about the UK flat season but as I’ve been trading all the US races on the flat, I’ve realised it shouldn’t be a problem.

Onward and upwards with B4P.

Mystery Man

*The guy in the photo at the top of the post is called Norris McWhirter who with his twin brother Ross started the Guinness Book of Records. (1955)

They both helped Roy Castle present the BBC programme “Record Breakers” which was on TV when I was a youngster!

Record Breakers

** Never one to miss a trick with the upsurge in liquidity for US racing generally, Betfair now provide the videos to Fonner Park so the liquidity is starting to rise there also. (Tampa gets over £300,000 in some races now)

14 Comments

  • Paul Brawn

    Really enjoying reading your blog and can feel your excitement building. I’ve only started in running on the US racing this month so all new and still flip flopping but you are inspiring me to keep the faith…thanks!

  • Lee

    Just came across your blog mate. Really enjoyed it👏 I’m looking to get back into trading myself. I left it alone for a while after taking a break but I’m using this lockdown to revisit my Caanberry’s & Peter Webb’s video courses. Keep up the good work and stay green.

  • runlikeadrain

    Lockdown has certainly given all of us extra time and no excuses not to spend more time trying to improve by studying a bit more. GL with it.

  • edward

    Well done glad to see you persevering. Did you give up the two methods you learnt before and start afresh with your mentor?

    • runlikeadrain

      Its best to embrace his methods totally and get out of old habits that caused costly mistakes. However the experience you have gained previously is still in your head and will always come in useful from time to time.

  • Johnney

    Cheers Dave, good to hear some honest trading reviews, I’m still relatively new and finding my feet but your posts are proving very useful!

  • Si

    Great read there with an absolute blast from the past lol. Got to get the record now of a green month. Stay safe, stay green 👍

    • runlikeadrain

      Thanks Si, made a few schoolboy errors and consequently I’ve reduced my stakes right down. By doing that I’ve almost certainly locked in a red month. But I think its better than carrying on as I was.

      Nearly back to UK & Ireland racing so time to stop messing around!

  • Wayne Simpson

    Hi
    Enjoyed your video but ive always found the american pictures miles behind the inplay markets so impossible to trade

    • runlikeadrain

      Thanks Wayne, glad you enjoyed the videos.

      Tampa, Will Rodgers Downs & Fonner park are all like trading UK races, so Betfair video is about 1.6 seconds behind live. (Which is about 6 seconds ahead of Sky Sports Racing)

      I can’t speak for all the tracks but those are the ones I’ve been trading.

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