It’s been a while! This year has felt like a long one. The season is almost over. Just the WTA Limoges Challenger to finish off this week. There are the Next Gen Finals that start on the 17th. The format changes for the Finals. They are the best of 5 sets and each set is the first to 4 games and sets are first to 4 games. Tie break to 7 points at 3-3.

The change of format can make them interesting to watch but I have never traded them as they also don’t have Advantage. From Deuce, the next point wins and the server gets to choose which service box to use. There are a lot of other “innovative” rule changes. A lot of pissing about like that makes me not want to trade them. Apart from anything else it just eats into Family Christmas time!

Trading this season has been pretty uneventful. Just how I like it! You don’t want too much drama when you’re trading for a living. I have made an effort to trade more ATP than I usually do. I still much prefer the WTA as it gives a lot more trading opportunities per match. I feel my predictions have been better in the last 2 or 3 years. That is partly due to the Tennis Profits site. Not only can I research a match quicker than I can on other sites but the available stats give a little more insight. Obviously, better predictions make the trades that bit easier.

I used ChtGPT to write some code to find a players results on a given surface in a given date range. It does this and outputs them in a format that I can just copy/paste into my daily Trading Tips email. It wasn’t as simple as I had expected. I thought that if I gave the exact same prompt, I would get exactly the same output. Wrong!

If the output was incorrect, I would ask why. When I was getting responses along the lines of, “You’re correct to query the results and I apologise. I had assumed that you would not want that result in the same format as before”, I realised that this was not acting like a computer that I could talk to. I think it will be a while before AI takes over the world.
That took a lot of time and patience but once I changed my misconceptions of how ChatGPT would behave, it developed into a very useful tool that saves me a significant amount of time.

I have just finished the last live stream of the year. I do weekly live streamed trading sessions for TradeShark and Tennis Profits members. Trading Tips subscribers also get access to them. I stopped doing the Chatroom trading sessions. There is just too much to concentrate without having to type out the instructions for what trade I intend to place, never mind all the insight that I try to pass on about why I am about to do something. I can share so much more information in a stream.

The dogs are still going strong. Well, strongish! They are doing ok for dogs that are almost 14 years old. We have a Collie cross, Charlie and a Trailhound, Molly. We thought we were losing Molly back in April. I had taken them out for an early walk and she was fine. By 3 pm, I went downstairs and she could barely stand. If she did stand, she would soon fall over. Her eyes and eyebrows were all over the place. I thought she had either had a blow to the head or she’d had a stroke.

As I drove her to the vets, I was preparing myself for her not coming home. The Vet said initially that it was an inner ear infection that was affecting her balance. When I queried why she was not giving Molly antibiotics for the infection, the Vet said, “Ah no, it’s not an infection. It’s a disease.” I can’t remember what she called the disease. She said they could never be sure what caused it but dogs usually recover to some degree. Apparently a lot of dogs don’t recover completely. After some 500 quid blood tests, I took her home. The test results were surprisingly good for a dog of her age
Long story, short, after 3 days, she had recovered around 80%. She could walk without falling over but was still holding her head at an angle. (A common symptom). Apparently, many dogs never recover more than that. Over the next few weeks she continued to improve. I’d say she is over it 95%.
I give both dogs off lead time whenever possible on walks. Both have excellent recall but the last time I let her off, she took off down the path. It was like the old days before her recall was good. You’re recommended not to allow Trailhounds off lead. They are trained to follow a scent trail cross country in organised races. I had to bellow at her before she stopped and reluctantly came back. I don’t know if the disease affected her hearing or if she was just playing me up. The little sod hasn’t been let off many times since.

If you’ve every tried Google Ads, I hope your experience was better than mine.

Obviously, a gambling related site can be tricky to advertise. I was constantly having ads blocked for an “online gambling violation”. Google staff don’t understand their own automated policy violations. Unfortunately, they won’t admit to not understanding it and just give you bullshit. I was also flagged for a policy violation for “UK Financial Service in the United Kingdom”. That policy is to do with credit cards and loans etc. Google’s staff, including a supervisor/manager told me that because my site mentions the words “money” and “trading”, it violates the Financial Service policy”.
I figured out myself how to remove the violation but it took months. Even then, a few weeks later the auto policy violation system would flag me for one or both policies.
If I was flagged for an online gambling violation, there would be a message to apply got a Google certificate to allow promoting online gambling sites. On their application form, there were just 2 options. Aggregator or Operator. neither of those apply to my site so I couldn’t apply. 12 months later, they changed the form to add a 3rd option of “Promoting online gambling”. So I applied.
My application was declined due to my site not having online gambling related content! Really?? So why have I spent the last 17 years trying to explain to people that sports trading is very different to sports betting?

After a LOT of emails to Google customer service, I found someone with a brain and it seems ok at the moment. I switched one of the campaigns off as it insisted on bidding over £5 per click for this niche topic. I’ll leave it there as I can feel myself getting wound up.

I intend to post diary posts more regularly. I’m sure I’ve said that before! Shorter posts are probably the way to go.

Have a great Christmas!

If you’re interested in finding out more about tennis trading, contact me.

Trading Course www.tradesharktennis.com
Learn how to trade tennis on Betfair

Tennis Profits www.tennisprofits.com
Tennis stats site. You won’t find a better stats site for traders. Includes in play tools to use during matches. FREE trial available.

Trading Tips email https://blog.tradesharktennis.com/tennis-trading-tips/
Daily Trading Tips for every main draw ATP and WTA match, 7 days a week. Several subscription options including non-recurring.

What’s the different between TradeShark and Tennis Profits? https://blog.tradesharktennis.com/whats-the-difference-between-tradeshark-and-tennis-profits/