The Second Coming

At an appropriate time of year for resurrections, the long dormant Full Time Betting Blog is back after a six month hiatus, although as previously noted, the hit count has continued at a steady 1,500 a day despite a lack of new content. 

Yours truly gets a mention, and Geoff has some first hand knowledge of some of the topics recently being discussed here. 

In the blogging world Cassini appears to be having some fun at various “vendors” expense. I’ve actually had first hand experiance of all of those mentioned.

I went on the BetAngel course years ago and to be honest I can't remember too much about it but that probably tells you all you need to know. I can't recall ever using any of the information from the course and I certainly wouldn’t be paying £400 for it although I don’t think I paid anything near that.

I wouldn't say that raising awareness is "fun", but it should be pointed out that by all accounts, any benefit you might get from courses or videos is far more likely to be outweighed by the cost. 

That assessment seems to be the general opinion from the few attendees willing to speak about their experiances on PeeWee's courses. 

The badger (aka Tony Hargreaves) I met at a trading event Betfair were running (Centaur were also involved) and again it was a bit of a let down. It was a free invite so can’t complain too much but I do recall being underwhelmed with the trading advice on the particular game that was on. Again if I remember correctly it was an overs bet on football and an early goal was scored but the advice was something along the lines of ” great start – lets hang in there, there are bound to be other goals”. It finished 1-0.

I'm not sure I'd put too much stock into the failure of one trade since it's the process that's important rather than a single result. We've all found games where the value looks to be on the Unders and it ends 5:5 or vice versa the Overs is huge value, and the game ends 0:0. These things happen, but to the great surprise of no one, it doesn't sound like any golden nuggets of trading wisdom were shared. 

Even the great PeeWee has had this misfortune, as Oldboy related:

We were then told that it was harder to lose money on Betfair than it was to win it before Peter used one of his strategies to trade a race. (note: Peter must have been trying exceptionally hard that day as he proceeded to lose money on the race)

Geoff continued with an unexpectedly positive review of Cann Berry's offerings:

I've bought videos from Caan Berry in the last year or so and have found them to be very informative and more importantly when I’ve asked for specific advice its been forthcoming. That's not to say I’ve cracked horse racing trading as its farcically hard and frustrating but that is probably more to do with my inability/lack of discipline /lack of time as anything else.

I'd suggest that horse race trading for an outsider to the sport must be one of the hardest markets to crack. There's a lot of experienced competition out there. 

Geoff then picked up on this quote:

Courses by Pee Wee, the squadie and The Bodger are all given by poorly educated and unqualified people. You get what you pay for.

And commented that:

I personally think this is unfair as it insinuates that only courses given by well educated ( in terms of academic qualifications ) can be of any use. Some people are not / have not been fortunate enough to have the support network in place to be able to go to university and instead have had to make their own way in life and self educate themselves. To then insinuate that anything they do isn’t of any worth seems very unfair and to be honest sits every uncomfortably with me.

How does the author of that comment know those people are poorly educated? And define “poorly educated” anyway. 

I'm not the author of the quote, but my take on it would not necessarily be concerned with academic qualifications, but more about intelligence. If you're intelligent, lack of a good education won't be a problem in life; similarly a dunce won't become intelligent simply because his family have the resources to pay for a good education. 

I've met plenty of intelligent people who haven't had the benefit of a traditionally 'good' education, and this hasn't held them back in life.

The problem is that if someone can't spell common words correctly, can't use punctuation, has poor grammar skills, doesn't have a basic understanding of mathematics and has trouble with simple logic, then they're probably not intelligent, so why should they be trusted as fonts of trading knowledge simply because they have experience in Sales? Note that poor spelling alone doesn't necessarily mean low intelligence, for example those with dyslexia, but when logic and mathematics are similarly poor, low intelligence is looking probable!  

Such poor basic core skills don't give any thinking person confidence that the salesman in question is qualified in any way to sell them a product or service.  
I recently went to see a Financial Advisor, and the person I chose had a background in Financial Planning with his qualifications nicely framed on his office wall. 

Had I walked in there and seen a framed "Oakwood Energy Solar Panels Salesman of the Month February 2016" certificate on the wall, I would have turned around and walked out. Quickly. 

Before investing any money or time into someone's expertise, it behoves one to exercise common sense, and do some basic research rather than take what the salesman is saying as gospel. 

Were I thinking of attending a trading course, I'd want to see testimonials saying what great value the course was, and how much they had learned from it, and more importantly, how successful they had been post-course. Were these to be found, I could overlook the signs of a poor education, but in the absence of any positive feedback, all you have to go on is the salesman's word, and the evidence in front of you. As I wrote yesterday:

“People who cannot distinguish between good and bad language, or who regard the distinction as unimportant, are unlikely to think carefully about anything else.”

To the critical thinking, another red flag would be if the salesman makes unfounded claims, e.g. of being a full-time trader, when in fact they are nothing of the sort, or if they come up with claimed ways of avoiding the Premium Charge which don't stand up to simple logic.

One challenge with the betting industry is that there is no barrier to entry, thus literally anyone can open a Twitter account and start selling tips, often accompanied by impressive looking, but faked, results. 

It's the less intelligent who will fall for this type of a scam, and typically the perpetrators are similarly the less intelligent, looking for an easy way to make money. 

The more intelligent are using their skills elsewhere and getting paid to do so. 

If you have the skills to make money from trading, those same skills will earn you far more in a career.