This is the 4th interview in our series of interviews with Trademate customers. Big thanks to Matias for sharing his answers!

WHAT IS YOUR EXPERIENCE IN SPORTS TRADING?

Before signing up for Trademate Sports 13 months ago, I had literally no experience what so ever with sports trading. Up until October 2016, when the sharps were added, I had grown my initial $5000 to around $9000, even though having a really bad run the last 1000 trades.

Meanwhile, I also experienced a bad run in poker, and ultimately decided to only focus on trading, so I added more funds to my overall trading account and was ready to take on the sharps. The first three months I ran terribly on the sharps, basically having an almost 45-degree downward graph. Luckily the softs treated me a whole lot better, so overall I broke about even.

What I think is important to mention is that I knew little to nothing about trading the sharps, so I hadn’t developed any strategy or anything. I just took almost every trade that popped up. Although having a positive overall closing edge, it was not worth my time squeezing out ~1% without having a huge bankroll.

During January I had almost emptied my Sportmarket account and was considering only trading softs for a while. Luckily I took some time trying to actually learn from my previous trades, and improve my ratio of +ev and –ev trades.

Also, I began taking a lot of own trades where I used my experience gained over the past months and found a way to beat the closing line by a lot more than most of the trades I got by using Trademate Sports. This led to way more trades and thereby a lot more turnover and I took my Sportmarket account from ~$2,000 in mid-January to ~$20,000 over ~5,000 trades. Unfortunately, the past few weeks been absolutely horrible and the combination of not trading very well, bad position sizing and running bad has shrunk the account by quite a bit.

DO YOU HAVE ANY TIPS FOR NEWBIES IN SPORTS TRADING?

That depends a lot on what your goals are. If you just want to have some extra money besides your job or something, the articles and videos on Trademate Sports is a good start. If sports trading is something you really are willing to spend some time on and potentially do for a living, I would try to get a broad understanding of trading and how the market works in general.

This article, for instance, gave me some insight on how those who model sports are thinking and how the odds are created. While only trading on the softs in the beginning, I would open a Sportmarket account (or any similar service), just to observe and explore how the market actually looks like and works.

The long-term goal should be to create your own strategy to beat the sharps by yourself, whether it’s by utilising information from Trademate Sports and deploying your strategy, or create your own models so you don’t even need Trademate Sports.

This probably means you should specialise on one sport, or maybe just one specific market in a sport. I wish I didn’t spend time trading basketball on sharps when I didn’t have a clue (stupid Chinese basketball).

Maybe it’s obvious to many, but still: there are bots that will take any combination of bets that will result in a surebet (>100% payout), so you will never be able to a get a “straight up” edge that is big with the sharps. To have a, lets say, > 5% edge the odds would have to move, that’s why I would recommend trying to find your own strategies if you really are looking for the big money.

ARE YOU BETTING THE SOFT OR THE SHARP BOOKS?

Both, but I’ve had my main focus on the sharps. Usually, I have 1-3 softs, in addition to the “semi-soft ” sites, Betcris and 188/Roadbet. Still, I have quite a few softs left, but probably will wait until most of the recommended football leagues restart before signing up for any new.

WHAT’S YOUR BANKROLL?

Enough to turn over an amount that potentially can make me some good money, yet not as big as I’d like.

HOW MANY TRADES DO YOU REGISTER ON AVERAGE IN A WEEK?

So far this year it’s somewhere between 250-300.

WHAT’S YOUR AVERAGE TURNOVER IN ONE WEEK, A MONTH?

Depends how many games there are and the size of the bankroll. The first four months of the year it was $420,000 with sharps, with $180,000 of it being in April only.

HOW MANY HOURS ARE YOU SPENDING ON SPORTS TRADING IN ONE WEEK?

Hard to tell, I spend a lot of time on the computer so I just have Trademate Sports in the background all the time. I do however spend maybe an hour or so a day just looking for certain things on Sportmarket.

WHAT’S YOUR FUND GROWTH PERCENTAGE?

I can’t tell for sure anymore, because I “cleaned up” my bookmakers by removing the accounts I’d been limited on and added a bookmaker as a “bank” to not lower the balance. Of course the “active” function, which would have dealt with the issues, was added just a week or so after I did that (hehe). The growth percentage was over 100% when I removed them.

DID YOU HAVE BAD RUNS? (WHAT HAS BEEN YOUR BIGGEST LOSS?)

I touched upon some early bad runs earlier, which were some of the longest bad runs I’ve had. As we speak I’m on probably the worst run in terms of $ because my sizing has been bigger than ever and the bigger bets have not gone in my favour. The last 500 bets or so I’m stuck almost $10,000, which is frustrating, but I believe I can handle the swings pretty well.

WHY ARE YOU USING TRADEMATE SPORTS?

Heard of it through Liqqa (Jonas Gjelstad's poker name) on a poker podcast, really liked it, and haven’t seen any reason to stop using it.

WHAT DO YOU LIKE MOST ABOUT USING TRADEMATE SPORTS?

It’s easy to use, has most of the features I need (closing lines etc.), and there’s a good community if I need help or opinions.

If you would like to share your experiences with using Trademate, let us know via the chat :) It is possible to share your experiences anonymously as well.