Travelling the world watching the game you love and making a tidy living from it sounds like a dream job doesn't it? Avid cricket fan and prolific tweeter, 'Innocent Bystander' does just that. He told me about his career as a cricket trader.
I love my job: it's the best job in the world. I am travelling the world, watching cricket, combining the sport I love with things I'm good at. I've been doing it for four years. It's always been fun. I'm not good enough to play the game so this is an alternative isn't it?
The only downside is explaining to people what I do. I get some strange looks at times. The hard part was telling friends and family, but that's all done now. They know what I do and they know I make a living out of it. They are not too concerned.
What do I do if other people ask me what I do for a living? That really depends on my mood; sometimes I just say I'm a trader. If it's people I know, I just tell them straight out; I trade cricket matches like people would trade stocks and shares. I've got two math's degrees: it's not really something you spend all that time and education on to say you gamble for a living. But I don't see it as gambling, I see it as minimising risk and maximising return, and the figures back me up on that. I have managed to put a lot of money away and still have a very nice living.
I'd always done a little bit of gambling. More on spread betting than anything else; buying and selling, companies like Sporting Index. But then I heard about Betfair: they were a new type of betting. They allowed you to back a side to win, or lay them not to win. It fitted in with my mathematical mentality. I also use CricketBetLive.
I was earning more when I got home in an hour than I would earn at work all day. So I told my fiancée (now wife) I wanted to go full time. She asked if there was a risk, and when I said I don't think there is at all, she backed me up. It's proved to be the case, five years on it's all going grand.
I'm always working. My laptop is on from breakfast to when I go to bed. When I first went full time I said if I wanted to go out for an evening I wouldn't let trading get in the way. There's always mobile phones and access to information. So it's not as if I am ever away from what's happening in the world. I always feel I'm pretty much on top of what's happening.
If there was an England Test match I would probably avoid going on holiday, but that's more because I'm a fan than because I'm a trader. I went on my honeymoon during the Test match at the Rose Bowl against Sri Lanka last summer, but that's not a problem!
I find t20 the hardest to make money on, but there are numerous opportunities because it's such fast moving action: the markets actually reflect the game. You've got 120 balls in each innings, and each one can change the market significantly, whereas Test matches are a little bit more sedate. You've probably got less events happening in a Test match that will affect the market. You've got more time to think out your strategy, whereas with t20 you have to be sharp on your feet, moving quite rapidly with it. I find Test cricket the easiest to make money on, and I love test cricket.
I know about half a dozen/eight traders who I meet regularly at cricket matches and we share information. Everybody is looking for the opportunities, but I find cricket traders to be very friendly people. We help each other out; we stay at each other's houses. I've made good friends from it, and I am sure they are people who will be friends for quite a few years. People who travel the world watching cricket to trade you can probably count on the fingers of two hands.
It is almost impossible to say whose money it is that I win. Betfair is a worldwide trade, you get money from the streets of Mumbai, Lahore, Colombo: it all comes through the illegal sub-continental bookmakers markets. Some of it sticks there, some of it goes into more dodgy elements of gambling, some of it gets fed through Betfair and CricketBetLive. A bet that I have matched could have been placed anywhere in the world. It really is as open as that. It could be anyone with a small account to someone with a multi-million pound account.
I've had 5 figure losses, but my trading is always positive. I chart each day how much I win and lose. It is always an upward graph. You get peaks and troughs because what I do it is volatile: sometimes I am wrong. But I have far more winning months than losing months.
There is no set stake. It depends on how I see the market at the time, how much I want to expose myself on that day. As a ballpark figure I tend to get uncomfortable if I lose more than £5,000 in the market; I use that as my benchmark.
I don't get involved in the spot betting side of things. It's not a market that I consider worthwhile. I just work on the things I know, which is basically who will win the game. I don't go into a Test match saying England are going to win, and hold that position throughout the whole of the Test match. I can change my position every few minutes, but it's just about who's going to win.
It's definitely not as easy as people think. You need to know how markets react. Basically you need to have a rough idea about what is going to be the worst-case scenario: if the market goes against you how bad could it be, or if it goes in your favour, how good it could be for you. It's all about maximizing those goods, minimising the bads. Cricket knowledge is vital. It's knowing the market, knowing cricket. I tend to get involved if it gets a bit volatile, if it gets exciting, if things move quite sharpish in your favour.
If there is weather involved in a match I will normally make a lot of good money on it. The weather affects the market sometimes more than wickets. There are advantages to being at the game, you sometimes see the bad weather come in before the media. I remember a Test match against Sri Lanka in Galle. On the last afternoon England were five down trying to save the game. We were watching rain clouds coming in over the bay, but they were coming in behind the commentators box so they weren't mentioned in the UK. When Alistair Cook was out after quite a good knock the market started to panic, and the draw price went quite rapidly. When it rains in Sri Lanka, it rains. We knew it was only a couple of balls away, and as soon as money was coming into the market we were taking it out - backing the draw - and we made quite a bit on that. But that is an extreme case. A lot of it is about understanding how the weather is going to be presented to the public. I keep an eye on every weather forecast update. As the forecast changes I will make a move on markets off the back of information as I see it become more of an established trend.
I think cricket is pretty unique in terms of betting. A lot of it is dependent on weather conditions. In football, the game plays or doesn't play. There is not really anything in between. There are not a lot of other sports that are affected like cricket.
There is nothing illegal about what I do. Betfair is a ftse 250 company, what they do is perfectly legitimate. Betfair are just like William Hill or Ladbrokes, it's just a slightly different form of betting.
I haven't really thought about how long it will last. Cricket was invented as a game for gambling, it's not going to change over the next 'x' amount of years, so there will always be opportunities for me. How long I'll go for? I don't know. But why give up something you love? It's an ideal way of earning for me. I'm meeting people and just having a good time.
Read the wit and wisdom of innocent bystander on twitter @InnoBystander