How to become a professional trader

“The article below is written based on personal experience and it should be taken as a guide only
and used at your own risk”

Introduction
My name is Ilias aka UKTrader and I have been in the betting industry for the past 12 years. I am
writing this article as guidance in order to assist individuals reduce the amount of betting mistakes
and learn how to stand a good chance of becoming a professional football trader.
I’ve been involved in many aspects of bankroll builders to help be have a risk free capital:

• Matched Betting
• Arbitrage Betting
• CC Stoozing
• SB (Sharbing)

Using the above I was able to build up a capital of over £10,000 which I decided to invest toward my
passion, betting on football. It has been a long journey and I’ve put many long hours and hard work
in my betting career. During this journey I’ve made thousands of mistakes, lost my bankroll few
times but I was fully committed and persistent, trying to improve step by step. It is not easy that’s
for sure however, if you are determine and willing to achieve something, you can do it!

During my career I did a lot of external research beyond the world of betting. I’ve attended over 100
seminars ran by some of the most influential people in the world regarding the aspects of discipline,
self-control, elimination of negative emotions and many more. These have helped me have a clear
mind in making better betting decisions and stand a better chance than most of the punters when it
comes to long term investment return. I am a full time trader using basic tools which we will talk
later on and Betfair’s exchange platform.

Common Questions
Many punters, experienced traders and even professional bettors struggle to make consistent profits
and they always question themselves why?

"I am a good bettor but yet again I seem to keep depositing into my Betfair/Bookmaker's account
week after week. How can I stop this?"

"I struggle when I have a bad run. My profits are gone and then I lose control. I increase my stakes
but lose again."

"I want to be a professional trader & make money from betting. Is it possible?"

The simple and short answer to the above is yes but you will have to put a lot of effort and hard
work to be able to achieve your goals. There are some important factors which you will need to be
master before you can even start your career and these are discuss in the next page.
PREPARATION

A) Eliminate negative emotions

B) Investment/s Allocation

C) Staking Plan - Discipline

D) Betting Tools

E) Betting in action

F) Performance Analysis

G) Decision Making

Eliminate Negative emotions

NOW
You're probably familiar with the Power of Now, by Eckhart Tolle (the most spiritually influential
person in the world)

In the book the author puts forth a simple proposition, stay in the now and you will feel peace.

Most people don't get it immediately, but when they do, their life changes dramatically, because
when you're in the now, you are present with everything around you.

Think of a time when you were anxious or afraid of a future event (e.g hoping for another goal being
scored) and notice what happened when they event happened and you experienced it.

That wasn't as bad as you thought was it?

That's because you experience it , you were in the now and when that occurs the unknown became
known.

ACCEPTANCE
This is another part of being in the now. Many people run away from their negative emotions. They
eat, watch TV, have sex, walk, read or hang online.

When you get curious about the feeling and accept it as a part of you, it tends to go away. But how
can you accept it when it's so painful?

That w the first hurdle you have to overcome and when you do you will realise that the pain was
only half an inch thick.
You can either learn to let go your negative emotions or you can keep doing what you have been
doing up until this point.

EFT
EFT is weird, but it works! Nowadays a more effective and efficient alternative is FasterEFT and uses
few tricks from NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming)

It's faster and it works better that the tradition EFT but that can vary from person to person. A
common mistake by most people is the dismissal of EFT because of how it looks.

Another mistake is that people use it a few days and give up. Changing how you feel means going in
and cleaning stuff and most of us got a lot of crap stored in our brain so it will take some time (took
me 3 weeks)

After a while, you will start feeling reborn, peaceful and full of joy. At that point you know that it was
all worth it.

Once the above have been accomplished you will be in an advantageous position towards you
betting career.

INVESTMENT/S ALLOCATION
This is your starting point of your betting. You need to decide how much money you are willing to
invest toward you betting career. There isn't an exact figure of what is recommended as a starting
capital; each individual has different financial capacities; however it is very simple to decide what
your starting investment should be.

All you have to do is ask yourself:

How much can I afford to lose without affecting the people that I care about?

Now you have you starting capital.

For example purposes let's say that you deemed that £2,000 was the amount you could afford to
lose. Here you have an option to split the bankroll as follow:

Bankroll 1 £500: Testing Trades, Strategies, Identifying your betting type, learning curves etc.

Bankroll 2 £1,500: Your main investment dedicated only for trades that are part of you betting
career path and will indicate how good you are.

STAKING PLAN
Here you need to decide a staking plan for your investment. There are different marginal
recommendations that could be used; I tend to follow Forex best practice staking plan of 1% flat rate
per unit of your bankroll and the max possible stake 5%. I would advise for bettors that do not have
previous track records to stick to just 1% flat rate until they have a minimum of 500 trades that they
can analyse before re-evaluating & then introduce the 1%-5% staking plan.

With each type of trades and bets bad runs are expected so we have to plan ahead for this
occurrence. During my betting career I've had a bad run of 20 consecutive losing trades!
This is not new, and many of you might hit a similar bad run which could potentially drain out your
bank.

Following the 1% risk and 2% risk for the same football market this could take you down to 40% of
your bankroll after 20 consecutive losing bets. You will still have 60% left to carry on. If you were to
use a higher %, you could be out of the game before you even realised it and your betting career
path would be over.

On the testing bankroll I go for 0.5% FLAT Stakes on every single bet and sticking to no more that 1-
2% per football game. Here we keep practicing and ensuring that we can perform well even on a
non-televised football game just by analysing the statistics.

BETTING TOOLS
There are hundreds of betting tools out there that can help or hinder your betting skills so be careful
what tools you use. I have tried over 1,000 different betting & trading software and to save you time
and money here are few that I and my traders used on a daily basis:

Statistical & Inplay

OPTA STATS
www.optasports.com The most reliable and invaluable data statics that money can buy. Opta has
the most accurate statistics for pre-match and in play football games that you could find anywhere
else. Unfortunately it is a very expensive data to buy and unless you are a professional and
experienced trader it is a tool might have to wait for a while. Rating: 9/10

WHO SCORED
https://www.whoscored.com/ WHO scored is by far one of the best free statistical websites that go
in depth of analysing players rating, performance, statistics and much more. For the 5 TOP European
Leagues and few others the use data from OPTA. The website is a great starting point to compile
your analysis once the team line ups have been announced. Rating: 10/10

IPT SCANNER
www.inplaytrading.com The new generation in play statistical platform is one that I rate very high.
Within One Page you can see and filter on the games that are in play and the statistics update
virtually in real time. The IPT Scanner has more stats than anyone else we know and it comes with
videos and a strategies section. The work that the guys are putting in the scanner is exceptional. The
data feed is coming from a 3rd party so the accuracy of the data on lower league games should be
taken with precaution. Another outstanding feature that the scanner has is a live Chatroom where
many professional traders, including myself, stop by and share our trades. This is a must tool to have
for betting inplay. Rating: 9/10

FLASHSCORES
www.flashscores.com Flashscores is my favourite mobile. The website is free to use and covers pre-
match and in play football and other sports statistics. Data accuracy is above average therefore it is a
good tool to have in your betting portfolio. Rating 7/10
STRATAGEM
http://www.stratabet.com This is a high end statistical company that uses video analysis to create
data modelling into predicting an outcome. It provides the highest niche type of statistics and it is a
platform that a professional trader could utilise. It is another expensive tool and unless you are
making a living from betting It is not worth buying. Rating: 7/10

FOOTBALL DATA UK
http://www.football-data.co.uk Football Data UK is one of my favourite free website that delivers
the statistics in excel spreadsheets. The guys are doing an amazing job into delivering invaluable
information. You can analyse everything from Shots on Target, Of Target, Cards etc. and you can
combine it with own formulation to generate conversation rate. They also have a template where it
can do many calculations including standard conversion rate. Rating: 8/10

PREMIER INJURIES
http://www.premierinjuries.com Premier Injuries is run by the freelance injury data analyst, Ben
Dinnery. It is the best place where you can find information regarding suspensions and players’
injuries in the English Premier League. Invaluable site to use and it is completely free; unfortunately,
it only covers EPL. Rating: 9/10

BETTING TYPES
There are many different types of betting types such as, pre-match trading, direct betting, in play
betting or trading etc. This are betting styles that you might want to learn using your testing
bankroll.

My trading style belongs to direct betting and Inplay betting predominantly concentrating on the
goal line markets. Place a bet and let it run. Sometimes in-play greening is involved.

For my testing bankroll another type of bet that I use is correct score dutch where I picked 4-5
correct scores and usually let it run till FT. If one of them scores is picked a 220% profit margin is
achieved.

Each individual trader can be good at one or many betting styles. That is for you to find out during
your testing trades. Once you have figured out your type, you can move to your main bankroll and
trade accordingly.

Whether you are direct bettor like myself or any other type of bettor, analysis before the game is
very important. That will help you identify value and give you an indication to how a game might pan
out. This will help you decide if a market is worth getting involved or not.

I have created a spreadsheet from scratch which calculates the true value of the odds against the
bookmakers. It is something that anyone can do as long as you have some good understanding of
maths and probability.
An example is shown below.

Game: Man Utd v Man City

Man U Over 2.5 : 60%

The weight on Home/Away/H2H is based on preference. I give more value on the recent 10 games
rather than on H2H. There is no right or wrong it's whatever you thing count more for your betting
value.

On the example above a true chance of Over 2.5 goals is 60%.

I check the odds at the exchange and they are at 1.70. This equates to 58.8% chance. So my
calculation to find value will be:

60% (True Chance) - 58.8% (Odds Chance) = +1.2%

Anything above 3% usually it's a value that I get involved. This doesn't mean that a bet will win!!
However, based on long term investment if I was to back the same outcome throughout the season
it will return to me approximately 3% profit. Other important factors should be taken into
consideration, things such as team motivation, key players injuries, starting XI, pitch and weather
conditions play a key importance in the analysis therefore you cannot rely purely on stats!!!

In play market is slightly different! We have find value on Over 2.5 but we decided to wait and see
how the game turns in play. 15 minutes gone and not a lot of action. Odds on Over 2.5 have drifted
to 1.9. Surely that's a value!!!

In theory yes it is, odds of 1.9 have a 52.6% probability and our true chance stands at 60% so we
have 7.4% value.

Unfortunately it doesn't work like that. The reason is because the pre-game analysis calculates every
minute played. So on some of the games goal before the 15 minute was scored while here we are at
0-0 so it's s completely different analysis.

Many would argue that if you were prepared to invest backing the Over 2.5 @ 1.7 you should
definitely back it @ 1.9. This is a very undefined argument and it is nearly impossible to say what's
right or wrong.
Betting in play for me it is the most profitable style;

It is not something that you cannot teach but it is something that you can learn & become self-
taught. 70% of becoming a profitable bettor is by mastering the ABC

A. Eliminate negative emotions

The remaining 30% belongs to your betting skills and tools that are used.

In my personal opinion, for the inplay betting all you need is an inplay software such as IPT scanner
and the pre-match analysis using a combination of the free website mentioned above.

PERFOMANCE ANALYSIS
DECISION MAKING (To be continued...)

This is my first draft and when I get some time I will update and improve this article. Until then feel
free to get in touch with me either in the IPT chatroom or on my contact details below.

Happy trading and stay green!

Author: Ilias M
Email: uktraders.com@gmail.com
Twitter: @TGT_Tips