Interview-Sports Trader Ricardo Santos, from Full Trader
Apuesta Legal exclusively interviewed New Zealand trader Ricardo Santos. Today he is one of the main sports traders New Zealand .
In our conversation we talked about how Ricardo understands Sports Betting and how his online work got started.
In the end, we had an important position from the trader on how he sees the future of the New Zealand betting market with regulation! Check out this chat below!
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1. Ricardo, how was your entry into the world of sports betting? Tell us a little about the beginning of your career and your connection with sports!
"I played Poker, I'm not going to say that professionally, but I played and I won a lot of money. I love Poker, even today! And some friends who played Poker talked about sports betting. I already knew they existed, until someone said a little word to me: that in sports betting the variance was lower than in Poker, and variance is very important to us in Poker.”
Ricardo states that he wondered how the variance could be lower in sports betting, since, according to him, You have to play thousands of hands in Poker to be profitable.
“ Sometimes it takes 3 months running a lot of tables [to make a profit] “
It was from this discovery that Ricardo Santos went after more information about the Sports Trading .
“At first I didn't have much material. There was a Portuguese forum that I followed, and I think that was the only thing I had at the time. And I was learning by myself. I lost a lot of money at the beginning, and this is already more than 10 years old. I don't know for sure exactly, but quietly more than $100k . It was a lot of not knowing what to do. But it was so, in search of a variable income and by Poker friends that I got to know sports betting. And I never stopped!”
2. What motivates your work as a digital sports betting influencer? How do you think you can help new bettors succeed in this complex market?
“What made me produce content, being an influencer in the area of sports betting was something that I did and that I saw that no one did. On the contrary, people said that this did not exist, that it was working with data in sports betting.”
According to Ricardo, he already worked with data in the city of Guarulhos, where he was a civil servant. In this case, it was data focused on the health area. It complements:
“ I started applying that in football. I started working with a database. The first [bases] I created myself, with my own bases, writing on the nail, on the hand, line by line. I have more than 20 thousand rows in Excel, which I did at that time, on hand, alone, to find patterns in football. “
Ricardo adds that at the time what was said about sports betting in terms of strategy was very subjective and there was no talk of standards. The trader reveals that the secret was start using math .
“And as a professional who already worked with it, I began to get along very well in my betting operations. And I started talking about it, I started a YouTube channel to talk about it, to spread to people that everything is mathematical. That's what I believe, that's what I see: everything is mathematics in betting, everything is probability.”
“ Even at the beginning I took a lot of hits, a lot of hits, from people saying that this was nonsense, that football is a completely random sport, that there is no standard in football. [I received] a lot, a lot of heavy criticism even at the beginning. “
"People wanted access to what I had access to, so we created a company, which is Full Trader, which today is perhaps the largest producer of data, of tools for bettors.
We have become perhaps one of the greatest references in the world regarding data analysis, applied data science in sports betting.”
Ricardo ends:
"It was mathematics that made me want to start producing differentiated content because I saw that no one talked about it and that generated a lot of results for me.”
See below a video of Ricardo explaining a method of banking management :
3. Every bettor who follows your work and observes your success at some point thinks that he would like to live on sports betting. What would you say to these gamblers and new traders who are just starting out in this universe?
“I always say this and very clearly: I don't think it's a smart option, financially, to live solely from sports betting.
And it's not that you can't generate income from it. Today I generate a very large income, more than doctors. My income, I can say here, that monthly, with the stakes, is much higher than that of 2, 3 doctors combined. But it's a variable income, and we depend on a few things.”
"In the pandemic, for example: with few games, if you only trade for a living, you wouldn't be able to trade much, because you don't have many games. So, how does it look? So I do not advise to live only from sports betting as an operator.”
For Richard, we have here the aggravating psychological pressure in having to make results in the month to pay the bills for the month.
"I advise the following: that have multiple sources of income sports betting is just one of them. Generate income in other markets, in other places, and take that money or a part of it and put it in sports betting so that you can multiply that money.”
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4. What is your profile as a bettor? Do you tend to take more risks or do you take a more conservative approach?
"As far as being more conservative or taking more risks, I think it's a problem that we think about each bettor having a profile. The risk, in fact, is in the math of the process, it's in the method, and it shouldn't be in the profile.
I have a method for example where I use 10% as stake . And there are other methods where we should all be conservative because the variance is greater. So the idea of being conservative or aggressive shouldn't be a psychological profile. It should be analyzed according to the variance of the methodology.”
Ricardo's position is once again based on mathematics:
“ What's going to decide whether I'm going to be aggressive or conservative is the math and not my psychological profile. “
For Richard, what people should think is:
"Look, in this method here, by having a smaller variance, I'm going to be more aggressive. In that other method, because it has a greater variance, I'm going to be less aggressive, I'm going to be more conservative because the method requires it, not because my mental profile is more conservative or more aggressive.”
He acknowledges that this may be counterintuitive.
“I know most people don't think so, but I'm neither talkative nor aggressive: I like to operate the market according to variance . Low variance, I'm going aggressive for the market. Higher variance, I go conservative for the market.”
Check out a touch of Ricardo on variance in sports betting:
5. We know that you operate only on Betfair. What are the advantages, in your opinion, of trading and betting exchanges compared to traditional sportsbooks?
Betting exchanges – Exchanges
“I think you can extract value from any situation. First, a Betfair there is a question in the Exchange, which she will not limit earnings . The limitation that exists at Betfair is a limitation of liquidity, of how much liquidity I have to make my trades. A liquidity it's very high, so it's quiet.”
“ The main difference between a trader who operates on Betfair and a punter who will operate on a sportsbook is the way of doing the analysis and the choice of games to operate. “
"The trader does not select the games to work. The trader selects the moments within the games. It's different. A trader needs to learn how to choose within a game which is the best time for him to do the operation , as it has a lot of variation.
There are moments in the game that you can't do anything about. So the advantage that a trader has over a punter , for example, it is precisely to follow the game and operate at that specific moment. If the game changes, the trader leaves .”
But of course Ricardo recognizes disadvantages!
“But it also has disadvantages. Many people who are trading at Betfair, entering and exiting the game, may miss some opportunities to trade, by missing the timing of the entry.
The punter may have already positioned himself before the game began, in some handicap for example, or even in the end result market. And the trader will wait for favorable behavior. And in that of waiting for a favorable behavior, it may be that the goal comes out and the trader cannot catch it.”
Bookmakers-Sportsbook
"People who work as punters today seek to price the market, find where the odd it should be for that line. I wouldn't do that. Why? Because the market of bookmakers it already does that very well. The structure that houses have to determine the price of an event is very large, but very large indeed. Especially in the big leagues.
So I wouldn't argue with the house for price. As a punter, I would select games very well , according to the variance of the games. I would select games with odds between 1.8 and 2.20, more or less, but games where I have a lower variance, where I have a higher confidence index in these games in pre live.”
For Ricardo, competition in Trading is lower , which makes this practice more attractive!
“There are many more punters than traders in the world. Most people don't know how to trade live yet, so I think it's much easier to make money as a trader.”
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6. How is Ricardo Trader's routine? How many hours a day do you invest in studying, analyzing games and effectively betting?
"My routine is maybe a little different from other people. I am a passionate about study. I love studying. So the amount of time I spend studying sports betting it is quietly more than 4 hours a day without operating.”
“ And I love studying at night, so sometimes I stay studying until about 2, 3 o'clock in the morning. I keep studying, finding patterns in databases, creating methodologies, validating some theses.”
"Operating, I can say that I operate in the afternoons. I operate from 2, 3 in the afternoon and usually stay there until about 10 o'clock at night. So about 8 hours a day I spend operating.
And I operate from Sunday to Friday . I don't operate on Saturdays. I forget, I totally relax. Sunday is the day I work the most. I start in the morning and stay all day, from 8 in the morning until 10, 11 o'clock in the evening.”
In the video below, Ricardo addresses the fact that Trading is not for everyone:
7. Finally, a more legal question of order: How do you, as a trader, see the regulation of sports betting in New Zealand?
"The people who are taking care of the regulation in New Zealand they don't work with sports betting. They don't know. A public consultation has been opened in New Zealand for people to say what they think of the regulatory model . And we sent several letters, several templates. Only they just do not listen.”
Ricardo points out, as we have previously said in the Directions, that one of the biggest problems of the New Zealand model is the type of taxation.
"Virtually no professional gambler will be attracted to this type of business. And many either go to other countries or go continue in illegality . What the government doesn't want, because it wants, is revenue. And to raise money, you have to have money in the market.”
At the same time, Ricardo points out that the government can, yes, collect, if the focus is on amateur bettors.
"They [amateur punters] don't understand how sports betting works . They will treat betting as trial and error, as gambling and they will look at it the same way as the lottery.
Most do not understand about positive expected value , does not understand the odds and will simply bet. There are a lot of people who are going to do this, so the government will end up raising a lot of money. But for the professional I believe that it may be that the scenario is not the best.”
Want to know more about Ricardo's work? So check out where to find him:
- YouTube channel
- Site
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