Getting Started

So here it is... finally! My first posting, which I am sure nobody will be reading anyway. But maybe over time, one or two folks will end up stumbling across this blog and maybe even reading back through the archives to these very words.

I've traded on Betfair on and off for a while including pre-race trading in the horseracing markets, though almost always to small stakes and never very seriously. I've had a longstanding interest in all things trading and have read many books on the subject. I think it would be fair to question how much benefit books can be when it actually comes down to living the reality of trading tick-by-tick, though I personally feel the benefit is immense. There is indeed a large gap between reading about a concept and actually being able to put it into practice, but I believe if you know what you should be doing, then it's possible to work towards actually doing it when the chips are down.

Unlike previous casual ventures into Betfair trading, this time it's serious. I am going to spend time preparing, and I'll be documenting my thoughts and actions here. In that regard I think this blog will start out a little differently from many others, and with luck I may even get some feedback from people already 'doing the do' on Betfair.

I've always been a believer that writing things down or talking about them can help greatly in paving the way to a more thorough understanding. Sounds way too obvious to even bother mentioning, but many people just do what they do and end it there. Part of my day job is software development, and there have been times when I just can't quite come up with a solution to a problem I feel is ideal or optimal. In such situations explaining the nature of the problem to someone else has often led to that eureka moment. The reason is that while I may have a mass of information relating to the problem in my head, explaining it to somebody else forces me to draw everything together in a more logical manner, and in doing so, something will often click or jump out that didn't before. To that end, I am hoping that drawing my thoughts together in the form of this blog will help me in similar ways, and hopefully be beneficial to others (if anyone actually reads it that is).

So that's it. I'm up and running, well, more like preparing to start crawling.