When I started to find out about Betfair trading a couple of years ago the amount of information that was freely available seemed quite limited. There were fewer forums. Fewer blogs. Those who obviously knew what they were talking about weren’t about to give away their “edge”.

Any information you could find had to be pieced together from various sources. That situation has definately changed. Now there are several forums, dozens and dozens of blogs and chatrooms where the new breed of “experts” reside to hand out their wisdom to the “newbies”. Does that make it easier for a new trader to find the information that they crave? As a new trader entering the trading community ( I use the word community in the same context as in Basra City is a community) they are keen to grasp the information that is given. The problem is that its an easy mistake to make to assume that the information is accurate and also given for the right reasons.

Until you know a little of the terminology and culture its virtually impossible to sort the crap from the quality. In a forum or chatroom a particular approach or suggestion can be dismissed by a seemingly experienced trader. But where can the pedigree of the trader be checked? Are they dismissing an idea because they have tried it over many months and found it to have little merit or are they simply dismissing it because they can’t make it work themselves? Did they join the forum 2 days ago or 2 years ago?

One particular example is based around the recent problems with the tennis scoreboards.  When I started to learn the tennis markets I didn’t have live pics. So I learned to read the market itself and to use a scoreboard to confirm that I had read it correctly. By looking at when the money comes in ( or leaves) the market, how much comes in etc you can pretty much read what’s happening. The scoreboard can be several seconds behind but that’s ok as we are using it as confirmation only. This only works when the match has a good amount matched and also has plenty of money entering the market inplay. there have been recent situations where there was a large amount of money matched on a game before it started but then relatively little money coming in during the game. You also need the scoreboard to be uniformly slow. If its always 7 seconds behind then thats not a problem. If one minute its 7 seconds behind and then 15 seconds behind its of little use.

During Skype sessions I have had participants who had Live Sky pics while I was trading purely from a scoreboard and comments were made about how accurately I was reading what was happening. For example a move in favour of the receiver but with lower bet amounts than you would expect to see for a point being won usually indicates that its second serve.

I have advised new traders to learn to read the market in this way but have had the technique dismissed as being impossible/unworkable for new traders.  To learn anything new you have to start somewhere and something like trading takes months and sometimes years to get to grips with.  The negative comments may disuade newer traders from attempting to learn something new.

As in every large group there are many negative attitudes among traders. There are also some very positive individuals but at first glance it can be difficult to differentiate between the two types.

There is a large amount of superb info for the new trader and also a hell of a lot of complete crap. There are ofcourse many guides, ebooks etc out there which claim to have the answers in a concise package. I can talk about this type of information from both sides. Both as a customer and as a vendor. I have bought the occasional ebook in the past. Most have been very poor and a couple have been little more than a rip off. Howver some have contained enough info to justify the price tag.

You need to do some research before buying anything like this. Don’t necessarily rely on the views of the people who simply shout the loudest. With my vendor’s hat on I can speak from experience that the vast majority of people who criticise my Tennis Guide have never read it! They see that I am selling information and therefore it MUST be a scam. These people have no credibility. If they read the Guide and THEN criticise it then thats fair enough. But from the new trader’s viewpoint who reviews the reviewers? 😉

So to any new traders who may be reading this you have access to a larger amount of information than was around a couple of years ago. So its easier to find but then you need to research the credibility of the information and those who are recommending or criticising it.

Does that means its easier to learn trading? I don’t think so.