Japanese Jellyfish

A bit of a kerfuffle as I've not had a proper phone before, but I've now rooted and rom'd my Orange San Fransisco (ZTE Blade) . I decided on Android 2.2 Japanese Jellyfish RLS9

I even used Clockwork to remove Orange



It's actually quite easy, so if I need to do it again it will only take about 15 mins (now that I've deciphered the various instructions/guides and worked out what you actually need to do...)

The phone works properly now all the Orange crap is gone. It is a really good value entry level android phone once you've cleaned it up.

Trading was a bit lean yesterday, mainly because I was trying to sort my phone out between races, I had an amazing amount of winners from my back to lay selections yesterday and if I'd simply backed them all I would have made a nice profit of about 400%, but it's not always like that and needless to say I scratched most of them just before they made their move for the front... still green but not green enough...

Today I can focus on the races without distractions, so hoping for a better profit.

Anyone got any suggestions for good SatNav app (with the maps on the SD card so they don't need to download on the move) to install on my phone?

Ideally I'd like to be able to plan routes sometimes rather than just put in the destination and let it take me where it wants to.

[Update]

Not a bad afternoon, I traded 18 races and had a nice trickle of greens, only annoying race was quite early on when I stuck a lay bet in by mistake as my finger twitched and so my original back bet just cancelled that out and as the horse went on to win I made p's instead of £'s, but apart from that it was very uneventful and boring steady afternoon.
£25 profit from £5/£6 stakes. IR bank now up to £120 (from £20 starting bank last week)

2:30

Not much trading today as I had to go to the dentist, but made it back in time for the 16:30 and made a few quid from just 5 races.

Would have been more races if they were all on time instead of running over the next race.

Car is in for MOT tomorrow, so I'm hoping that is cheaper than the dentist!



[Update]

Car was a lot cheaper than the dentist...

Stakes

Having thunked a bit about how to increase my profits I've decided to introduce a more aggressive staking plan.

I'm going to stake 5% of my bank and ratchet up at £10 intervals.
Minimum stake £5 and maximum £30.

bank £100 -> £ 5.00 stake
bank £110 -> £ 5.50 stake
bank £120 -> £ 6.00 stake
.
.
.
bank £600 -> £30.00 stake

There will be no reduction in stakes for losses unless the bank falls below £110, and if it does that the stakes will reset to £5.

Once the bank reaches £600 I'll withdraw each day as I don't see much to be gained from staking higher than £30 (but that might change).

I might even have a virtual bank, as there is not really any need to keep more than £100 in the bank even with £30 stakes.

Bank is currently at about £80.

I've also decided to not get involved in the market before the off as this sometimes works, but other times doesn't and is more of a distraction than a help.

50K

Not £50K unfortunately, but 50,000 page views...

I'm guessing that at least half of them were not me...

Should be a close call which comes first... 1 million blog hits or PC3*... Both will take well over 20 years...

I can't even imagine living that long. The blog will be gone long before then.

* I'm really not sure if it's PC2 or PC3 as I've seen it referred to as both... it's the one where you make £250k and then they screw you for 60%

Targets

Today I had no losses and I traded better than last Monday... I was also using double the stakes of last week...

But I made less profit per market.

So how do targets fit into trading horse races...?



If I had a target to make double my profit from last week, would I have made mistakes trying to get more out of the markets? Or would I have been more focused and able to get more out of the markets?

There needs to be some balance. I like to have goals, and setting targets can be a good way of motivating and monitoring. But at the same time it is difficult to set profit targets on markets that I have no control over, and I don't want to be trying to hard to take more than the market is offering me by taking unnecessary risks with my bank.

At the moment my targets are more about reading the markets, reading the races, how I feel, and trading well. They are more about not making losses than about how much to make.

Take what I am given, nothing more nothing less.

At some point (soon) I need to start pushing the stakes and profits a bit harder... What sort of targets will help me do that?

£10 a day is ok for beer money, but it won't pay the rent.

I'll have a think about how best to approach this and set some targets this week. It will probably involve ramping up the stakes faster.

San Fransisco

Finally decided to get a new phone...



The Orange San Fransisco PAYG Android phone for £100

The main reason I decided to change was I need a new Sat Nav and it makes sense to buy a phone with Sat Nav when it only costs the same for the phone and GPS software as I'd spend on just a sat nav...

With £10 credit, 6 screen protectors, a leather case, a car charger and windscreen sucker mount thing it still came to only £120 total.

Obviously I won't be using the Orange sim once I've used up the £10 credit, as it's quite easy to unlock.

Betfair had a few issues today and I had a hard time with the in running this afternoon. Ended up slightly in profit overall but the IR horses made a £10 loss.

Funniest bit was when I missed the jump in the 20:50 at Wolves and decided to trade without video anyway, I was on Resplendent Ace at 30.0 and I held on till quite late in the race and eventually scratched for a 10p loss... the price then nose dived to 1.01 and it won the race... lol

Still 2 more races, and I've only had 6 beers so I might as well give them ago... :)

More Betterer

Mostly had a good day of racing today (threw away £6 in one race by getting too confident and losing full stake on 2 horses by not paying attention but the rest of the day was ok).

Have upped my IR stakes to £3!!!

May not seem a lot, but it made a tad under £39 profit and I'm getting a lot better at reading the races, even with the video feed delay.



All my trades are on horses that are pre selected, but I still need to read the race to know when to scratch and when to let it run a bit longer.

Apparently it's the end of the world as we know it... REM have split up, which explains why I was treated to 2 hours of non stop REM on the radio the other night whilst driving through France

Then if that wasn't enough, there was a program on the Stranglers next...

The speakers were on full volume with the pedal to the metal and speed cameras flashing for 3 whole hours.

IR Video

I made a video of In Running trading yesterday.

I should have stopped at about 4:30, but I carried on to complete most of the races apart from the last few jumps races at Ballinrobe.

Is using minimum stakes and a small bank, the selections were all picked in advance as candidates to shorten in running.



There are two versions, the first is normal speed edited down to 40 mins and the second is speeded up to double speed (and yes you guessed it... 20 mins).

The shorter version can be found here

I haven't done any IR for a month or so, so am a bit rusty.

The first half was better than the second half which was pretty poor, but stayed green. I made a nice green upto about 4:30 but then I was getting bored and scratching too early towards the end and cutting my profits (on the plus side I was cutting losses as well).

TT can get very laggy when running Camtasia, so sometimes when I'm clicking like a muppet it's not because I'm a muppet it's because clicks aren't registering... :D

Was using £2 stakes and a small bank (started at £23 and took it up to almost £40) just to get back into IR with not much risk for the first week or so.

Should be back to £20 stakes before too long and then I'll make another video.

Purple Haze

Had a good day on the Purple Place earlier this week and my bank is now into triple figures and I've doubled my stakes to £1



Will be starting up the In Running trading again soon, just putting the finishing touches to my race cards and selection system and it'll be ready to go, hopefully before the end of racing this afternoon.

The In Running will need to stay on BF at the moment, but I might put some straight bets in over the road as well, as a horse with a good chance of shortening in price should (in theory) also have a chance of winning, or why would it's odds shorten...

Code

Have had a few weeks off chilling out and drinking beer and doing marathons (watching obviously, I wouldn't be silly enough to try and run one...) and I am now back in Basel (for a whole two weeks) so have started work on my coding again.

The horse race database is up to date and the next step is to do some testing with my new in running selection scoring system.

I've had my bots running on a VPS for the last month and it's a lot better than having to keep a PC or laptop turned on 24/7 at home. Should have set that up ages ago, but I was waiting for my bank to grow a bit bigger and the first half of this year was a bit lean.

I can recommend the Tagadab VPS500 if you are thinking about a VPS for a bot, was quick and easy to set up, even on a Sunday afternoon, and has a weeks trial for about £2.

http://www.tagadab.com/uk/virtual-private-servers/VPS_500

I'm running the windows 2008 64 bit server and my bots are mostly written in C# 2010 and an older one is VB 2008.

The Betfair bots are currently still pulling in a few quid a day from the UK server and I've also started trading more of the Australian Server markets. These are harder as I can't find much data on the Australian horses and dogs to help determine what the prices should be but I'm not losing anything which is a good... The new Betdaq bot has made about £15 so far... but it's a start...

I've pretty much given up looking for a job in Basel at the moment. Apart from my lack of German, and I haven't had a job as an employee for 5 years... I've already got a ski job fixed up starting December for 4-5 months in France, so only have 2 months before that starts, so not really worth it.

As well as lots of skiing time it will also give me time to trade (or code) during the week as the job is 30 hours but all at the weekend.

Once I get back in April I'll do an intensive German course for a few months and then maybe think about looking for work again... Or I might just do some more cycling...

It's a tough life...