Wednesday, June 7, 2006

Well tonight’s the night I’m going to stay up past midnight for the training. The notification bell has been ringing almost all day today. Unfortunately, I have not had the real time to put into it today because of the stay at home dad thing (not that I mind spending the day with my son). This week we’re doing swimming lessons so my schedule is a little out of whack. Lots of arbs today at 98% and lower, but I have not either had the chance to place the trades or I have not had the funds in the right sports book. If there is anything that is frustrating right now, it’s the fact that I do not have the ability to fund the accounts I want to in the right amounts. Another couple of weeks and maybe it will be better. I am working my way to getting $10,000 to work with.

I’ve been able to place one trade today for $200.00. It’ll probably net me a whopping .60 but I still wanted to do it to keep in practice. The baseball game does not start until 9:05 our time so it will be a late one. I like to pay attention to the games even though it does not matter who wins. I also had my first experience where the betting lines changed while making the wager which meant that I did have the potential to lose $7.00. So far it's looking like I'm going to get lucky however. I still need to get in the habit of making the trade with the greater odds first as that's the line that's most likely to change.

I am also discovering that the best time to watch things is currently the worst time for me. Usually mid morning is when I hear the bell ringing the most letting me know there are arbs available. I am looking forward to the time when there are funds available AND my wife's schedule slows down a bit.

It's 11:05 and I am ready for bed. This training better be good!

Tuesday, June 6, 2006

Was able to place an “over/under” bet. First time I did it and was not sure I did it right. Once the wagers were placed, I figured I must have done it correctly. Only had a total of $98.00 to bet.

Trade 1:
Baseball
Bookmaker A: $45.00
Bookmaker B: $53.00
Profit: $1.00

Balanced my accounts and went to bed.

Total profit June 6, 2006 on $98.00: $1.00
Percentage of profit: 1%
Average so far on placed trades: 1.5%

Monday, June 5, 2006

Frustration is starting to set in. Only have .60 in one of my favorite bookmakers and no way to fund it with more. On the other hand, another one of my favorite bookmakers has a ton in it due to the fact that my trades always seem to favor this one. Therefore, no trades were placed today, although I did see a lot of potential action.

Sunday, June 4, 2006

Everything is maxed out. Have not lost a cent but everything is maxed. Now I have to wait for the arbs that look good and happen to fall within the confines of the bookmakers with whom I have money. Let’s hope I get lucky.

I am feeling more comfortable with the trading process and have decided that I may try using a bit more if I can.

I was lucky enough to make 3 trades on Sunday. One for $100.00, One for $172 (that was all I had with that bookmaker), one for $200.00.

Trade 1:
Baseball
Bookmaker A: $48.00
Bookmaker B: $52.00
Profit: $2.24

Trade 2:
Tennis
Bookmaker A: $70.00
Bookmaker B: $102.00
Profit: $2.85

Trade 3:
Bookmaker A: $82.00
Bookmaker B: $118.00
Profit: $2.28

I also spent a good amount of time on the bookmaker sites with whom I had money and made sure I got my bonus cash for initial deposits. This is FREE money – all you have to do is be sure that you bet it. Since I plan to leave my cash in with these bookmakers for a while, I do not feel their terms were unreasonable and do not mind the roughly $200 extra in betting cash I have gotten so far on about $1,400 in deposits.

Balanced my accounts and called it a night.

Total profit June 4, 2006 on $472: $7.37
Percentage of profit: 1.6%
Average so far on placed trades: 1.65%

Saturday, June 3, 2006

Am discovering that no matter how much money you have to begin with, it is tough to get started in this business. I have opened accounts with several funding companies as well as used instant check options. However, on all new accounts, there are limits imposed as to how much you can deposit per week. I can easily see that if certain games don’t go certain ways, I will have to wait until next week before I can fund a couple of my favorite bookmakers as I will be exhausting all possible measures. I have mixed feelings about this, of course. On one hand, I am happy that security is so high but on the other hand, it’s really darn inconvenient for those of us that are anxious to get rolling.

I also have determined that the only time I can attend the “live” training is Wednesday, June 7 at Midnight (That’s Thursday, June 8 to those that like to be technical). Determined to learn all the tricks, I have decided to stick it out. We’ll see how it goes Wednesday.

I am still nervous about placing big trades and feel I should not do any until after the training. Patience is a virtue…

I did not place any trades today, although I watched throughout the day. I did not see anything different on Saturday that I saw during the week. I supposed that during baseball season and tennis season, days of the week don’t matter so much.

Total profit June 3, 2006 on 0: 0
Percentage of profit: 0

Friday, June 2, 2006

Funded my Neteller account with the max allowed of $750.00. After watching the past couple of days, I picked a few bookmakers with which to place my money.

Placed my first “real” trade in baseball, betting a total of $100.00. $44.00 went to Bookmaker A and $56.00 to Bookmaker B. For some reason I did not mark down the teams I bet on, but that’s not important anyway. At first I thought I screwed up since when I placed the bet for $44.00 it said “in order to win $57.00” (or something to that effect). I did not realize until a couple of days later that it was $57.00 on top of the $44.00 (not a TOTAL of $57.00). It did not matter anyway, as the bet for Bookmaker B is what won. Total winnings: .80

Placed my second trade in Tennis. Bookmaker A had $43.00 placed on Perry and Bookmaker B had $57.00 on Dulko. Total winnings: 2.60

At the end of the day, I go through each and every bookmaker account and check balances. I also do this throughout the day as matches end in order to get an idea of how quickly bookmakers fund. It appears that most of them settle within 10 minutes of a win. I'm thinking that if I work things right, I can do even better than planned if I can utilize my working capital (or a portion thereof) more than one time in a day.

Total profit June 2, 2006 on $200: $3.40
Percentage of profit: 1.7%

June 1, 2006

Started my first little bit of “paper” trading, just to see how it would do. Using the default bet amount of $500.00, I bet on two separate events. I would have done more, however, right now, my wife is working about 12 hour days and I have all the baby duty for at least another week or so til her schedule lightens up. Also, having never bet at all with a bookmaker, I am learning the system and being very cautious trying to gain all the nuances of each site. Both trades took me over 5 minutes each to place.

Created an Excel spreadsheet with all my login information for all my bookmaker sites. I have since discovered that having different passwords for each site can cause quite a delay, however, I have not yet decided to go and standardize them all. We’ll see how much patience I have for that.

Made a whopping $22.00 (on paper) on my two trades. Not a lot, but it was enough to show me how much money I’d need in order to “work the system” as well as how quickly the bookmakers pay out.

Created another spreadsheet to show what kind of money I would make in 12 months based on different starting investment amounts as well as compounded interest. Based on simple calculations, I have concluded that if I start with $5,000 compounding 1% per day, in 1 year I will have $187,000 +/- taking into consideration that I will not be trading every single day during that year. On 1.5% I can potentially end up with $1,125,000. Not a bad bit of cash for a couple hours of work per day.

I am beginning to really see the potential here. But like they say, potential just means you have not done anything yet.

After explaining the system to my wife, budget guru that she is, we are putting together about $10,000 to invest over the next couple of weeks in order to really get going.

May 31, 2006

Signed up for a Neteller account. Figured that it was going to take a bit of cash to really make money at this and started to realize a lot of the security measures put in place in order to make sure that people are not using other accounts fraudulently and also, to protect people from spending beyond their means.

I also discovered that there are several bookmakers that will not allow for people in the United States to utilize their services. I immediately put those companies on my "exclude" list within the software.

I validated my checking account with Neteller which involved a phone call and answering several security related questions. Once again, I am grateful for the measures but on the other hand feel sort of annoyed by it all.

May 30, 2006

Today I signed up with a company that makes software for arbitrage trading in order to start my “exciting” career as a sports arbitrage guru. After reading up on exactly what arbitrage is all about, I realized that there was a system out there whereby you could make money on sports (something I’ve always wanted to do) without much risk.

I spent a lot of time playing with the software, reading the manual on how to use it and signed up to a few bookmakers, just to see how the system ran.

The people who make these programs would like you to think that there is absolutely no risk involved whatsoever, but the reality is that there is a minimal amount of risk which I am sure will become apparent as I gain more experience.