Struggled to find any relevant witty (or at least I think they are!) picture to go with the above  title as don’t want this post to seem like one long advert (edit- after re reading this  post it does look like an advert!!).

After sorting out my various different spreadsheets and elements of record keeping that I mentioned in my last post I settled in yesterday for some football trading with low stakes to get my head around some ideas and test some strategies out. International fixtures sometimes have a reputation for being a bit tricky but the good thing about yesterdays games were that there was lots of liquidity on Betfair and also with the qualification process for EURO 2012 nearing the end there were also  some “must win” games that gave these  games the “edge” sometime lacking in friendlies.

Earlier in the week I had invested £60 in a set of trading manuals released by Ben over at Sports Trading life- to be honest I  had thought about the purchase  for a few weeks now as I wasn’t entirely sure that it was worth the money given the fact that I have a few manuals already and I’m a member of a football trading service. Another really off putting aspect was the highly corny sales page which looks like so many others- not necessary and it really didn’t impress as just looked like every other bullshit betting strategy! Despite all that I took the plunge and I’m pleased to say that I was pleasantly surprised. As well as some strategies that I’ve never heard off or seen before, there are a few  that are new ideas/twists on current popular themes. The manual was well set out and I  also  liked the fact there were screen shots of the trades showing you exactly what to do. More important was the really detailed advice on selection criteria and its something that I’m starting to take a lot more notice of.  My personal opinion is that its well worth the money although considering I paid for the book by  last nights trading you would expect me to say that! It comes with a money back guarantee and the detail can be found here although ignore the tacky sales pitch! Click Here

My first port of call yesterday afternoon was to use the excellent market matcher software on the Betting System notes software (banner above) to give me a list of available games to trade . This is a fantastic piece of kit that saves literally hours of  looking through Betfair coupons and I’m struggling to think what I would now do without it- its that good. When I look back now I realise that part of my failure previously has probably had a lot to do with game selection and by having to do it  manually I was probably far too casual and ended up applying strategies to games that were not suitable. Not anymore  as I  now have a a list of games in about 30 seconds.

Longer term readers of the blog will know that I’ve been a member of the trading football service for a good while now and I still cant  speak too highly of it . Probably the stand out thing about the service  is the cracking sense of community in the chat room , and I think this alone is worth the monthly fee of £25. Last night was  no exception to this rule and a packed trading room benefited from some good trades. I personally had decided to get involved in a couple of trades using the “Homer” strategy (copyright Handy Andy) and fair play to the guy he spent a couple of minutes  in chat with me explaining some moves as well as guiding approx 65 people through to some nice profit. Andy – you ought to get a donate button on your website mate as I’m sure a few people would willing donate a few quid to by you some “duff beer”..

So having done all the prep I sat down to action making sure that I was keeping a close eye on the relevant match stats. Again I’ve realised that this was another failing in my previous trading as I didn’t pay enough attention to what was actually happening in the game. A great example of this was last nights Romania France game that I previously may have laid the draw in the second half- on checking the stats I saw that there had only been 2 shots on target which hardly indicates a goal fest! A bullet dodged as it ended up in a bore draw . There are plenty of stats sites out there but personallyI would recommend www.flashscores.co.uk as the shots on target information  in particular is vital.

You will often see people talking about the importance of only trading games that you have a  live feed/tv coverage of  and this is especially true when you are scalping certain markets in play. There are lots of different ways of getting hold of these feeds and the one I use is livefootball.net £7.95 a year to watch 3pm premiership games? let me have a think about that for a nanosecond….

So hopefully above I’ve given you an overview of some of the tools that I am currently using, last night can hardly called beginners luck but I’ve certainly noticed that by being a bit more methodical its helped my trading and profits enormously. A nice profit of £112 was secured on the night which will have easily paid for all the above services.

Still on a football theme there is still time to enter the Last Man Standing competition with a £100 prize kindly donated by  Paddy Power. Its free to enter and all the details are here.

Hope you’ve found this blog post useful and apologies if it reads like an advert – I personally use all the services mentioned above and really do rate them.

 (although what do I know??)