From time to time someone asks me if I'm willing to share which presets I'm using, which I am. I have gone through them on previous episodes of TradingEurope and I do make some smaller changes every now and then. So I figured I'd just write a post where I go through my presets and explain more about them.

General Strategy

I mainly trade during the weekends and view this as a good way to generate a secondary income. I never risk more than I'm comfortable with losing both in terms of overall bankroll and as my maximum stake size. In the days of Edgebet I tried the high volume all leagues approach and within my 1100 trades found myself limited on 5 of the highest volume bookies. When Trademate was launched it included better filtering options so I decided to change my strategy and rather focus on quality over quantity and take a long-term perspective. Don't get me wrong just as anyone I want to maximise my profits, but since the soft books limit winning players I believe that the best way for me to maximise my lifetime value is to be more selective of which edges I get in on. Therefore 95% of my trades will be on recommended leagues. The exceptions being when I try to clear a bonus. This approach is not for everyone and we have customers who have been getting higher profits than me in a shorter time period, by following more of a high volume all leagues approach. However, I believe that my lifetime earnings from the softs will be higher and only time will tell whether that will actually be the case. So my way is not the only way. I would say that it is best for people to use their own judgment and find a balance between risk and reward that they are comfortable with.

Presets

This is my main preset. Here I include all of the bookies that I’m using and all sports besides tennis.

Sports

The main reason that I stay away from Tennis is that sometimes players retire after a few sets in a tennis game if they have a more important game a few days later. This makes it unpredictable. That being said I have made a couple of trades on big name players in the major tourney’s previously.

Odds Range

I stick to odds from 1-4. There are two main reasons for why I do this. First, the variance is higher the higher you go in odds range. Second, Trademate is currently slightly overvaluing edges in the higher odds ranges, so I want to have higher edges and a margin of safety of a couple of percentage points to move in on trades here. Which is why I set up a second preset for this purpose.

Edge

I have set my minimum edge at 2%, because more marginal edges than that are not going to be worth my time. At times I have used 1% here, but these days when I do the majority of my trading on the weekends and there are plenty of edges to choose from I want to focus on getting in on the better edges.

Hours before kick-off.

I take edges as early as 7 hours before kick-off on the softs. The timing is an aspect that is much more important on the sharps, than on the softs, so I’m comfortable with going early here. Also, not doing so would make me to miss out on a lot of good edges. As long as one is beating the closing odds, taking early edges is fine.

Recommended Leagues

I use recommended leagues only here. From my experience my accounts last longer before I get limited when I stick to recommended leagues, as it is a lot less suspicious for me as a Norwegian to play on e.g. the English Championship than Chinese Basketball.

After Trade Placed

I stick to one trade per game. By having more trades on one game one can increase turnover, but it comes at the cost of a large increase in variance, which is not worth it in my opinion. The one exception I do make is if there is let’s say an over/under edge on Bookie A and a 1x2 edge on Norsk Tipping the Norwegian government bookie. Then I’ll place both trades at times.

High Odds High Edge

This is a preset I created as I at least want to know about very large edges that occur in higher odds ranges. Then I can make a decision on a case by case basis as to whether or not I’m going to place a trade on it. I have still capped my odds at 6 though so I’m not going all in on very large underdogs. I have set my min edge at 4% to give myself a margin of safety. I also want to know of edges that occur within 10 hours of kick-off. This is also for rec leagues only.

All Leagues

On some of the bookies I don’t get in as much turnover relative to the highest ones, therefore I have only included those bookies here. Again I at least want to know if there are some very good edges that occur in the smaller leagues. I have narrowed in my odds range to 3 and want a min edge of 3%. This is so that I get more premium edges, with less variance due to the lower max odds. I have limited myself to 2 hours before kick-off. Since the leagues are smaller, they have less liquidity. Thus it takes less money to move the odds so in order to reduce the likelihood that it will end up as a negative closing edge I place these trades closer to kick-off.

All Leagues High Value

This is an even narrower version of the All leagues filter above to identify even better edges.

Norsk Tipping

Finally for Norwegian citizens. On Norsk Tipping I take everything that is a positive edge and a single. If it is not a single I will combine it with another edge or look for an event with 1,00 in odds (these have been rarer lately). Sometimes I’ll also use an odds comparison site to check up on a very low odds game, e.g. Rafal Nadal winning in Tennis. But here the odds is very important, because if it is too low. It could cancel out the edge you get on the first trade. This weekend for example there was a 10% edge on Feyenoord with a -1 European handicap. If I can get Nadal at a -7% edge I’ll take it. But if it is a trade with a -11% edge on Nadal I’ll end up with a net edge of -1%. Then it is better to avoid the trade and wait and see if better edges show up that you can combine it with.