Automated Tennis Trading

I like to update my blog more regular again. It helps me to analyze the trades I made and avoid mistakes in the future (if I made them). 

I still - like six years ago - trade with the help of fairbot. In my opinion it´s by far the best tool. It helps me a lot, especially in automated trading. Six years ago I traded mainly manual. It´s extremely time consuming and sometimes frustrating. You wait for hours for the right moment to open a trade. In the worst case the trade is not going in your direction and you become frustrated. This leads to impatience and the risk rises to make a costly mistake. Now it´s different. In the morning I select the matches I like to trade and fairbot is doing the rest for me. Beside it has the advantage that there is no risk of chasing or overtrade. I have clear rules what fairbot has to do under which circumstances. 

Yes, I have no live TV pictures to react. Sometimes is a disadvantage (especially when there is an injury), but in general I think is not necessary to watch the matches. The markets often overreact, because a player doesn´t play his best tennis. It can change immediately... I don´t think that TV coverage helps a lot. Probably is even the opposite, because the pictures lead you in the wrong direction.

How you  can see above I made yesterday a gross profit of three Euros. Well, it´s not much, but in comparison to the stakes I am happy about it. My stake per bet is just one Euro. How you can see the single losses are distinctly smaller than the profits. In comparison to earlier times I made significant changes in the risk-/reward-ratio. If I win a trade is often three times the stake I can lose. So the pressure for a high hitting rate is not that high. In this point the automated trading helps a lot. The greens are just growing and there is no nervous finger which likes to hedge the trade too early. There a predefined rules, which define what will happen under which scenario.

Of course there are some disadvantages with this trading approach too. Yesterday Ons Jabeur had to withdrawn, because of an injury. Like I mentioned, I don´t trade with (quick) TV pictures. So my position turned in a red one, when the market recognized that she has serious medical problems. 

It´s still a long way to go, but at the moment I feel quite comfortable with this trading strategy. It´s not time consuming and it´s free of emotions. Sure my predefined entry- and exit-points are not always perfect. Before the match starts I have to define the entry and exit-levels. So sometimes a break or a win of a set brings more ticks that I was asking for. It´s the price for not beeing the whole time in front of the computer. Trading can be very dull (even when you are successful), so I accept this disadvantage (also the one with the injuries). Instead of trading professional, where the pressure is immense, I prefer to trade for an additional income. 

My wife accepts this hobby (more or less... for her is just gambling :-)), but she doesn´t want that I deposit more money to b´Betfair. So I have to grow organic. Right now I have just 60 Euros+ on my account. Actually my 1 Euro flat stakes are quite high in comparison to my account balance. :-)  Perhaps I can convince her to deposit a bit of money if I can prove her that my system works. In exchange I can buy her a nice (Gucci) bag. ;-)  

Organic grow is healthy, but as well time consuming. You need months, when not years, to reach a five digits balance. My target is to trade with 100 times bigger stakes (100 Euros per trade instead of 1 Euro). So my balance has to be around 10´000 Euros. If I have to grow only organic it needs time, a lot of time, which I lose for making real money.

My first target is to reach 100 Euro. With this amount I have at least the balance I should have for 1 Euro flat stakes. In the last post I mentioned a negative progressive system, which should support the strategy. When I learned something in the past is the fact that the best (progressive) staking plan doesn´t help to to convert a losing strategy in a winning strategy. I am 100% sure that only a system that works with flat stakes can work with progressive stakes. Nevertheless I am convinced that a progressive staking plan can help for improving your betting results.

In the next post I will write more about my slightly progressive staking plan.