"10-in-a-row" spread betting competition

One of the spreadbetting companies is seeking to attract new business by offering a £100,000 prize to those people who can get 10 winning bets in a row during the period ending December 10th. It has taken me a week or so to actually focus on this, but it now seems to me that this is worth pursuing. As an existing customer, I can also enter.

The main issue is that although getting 10 wins in a row is very low probability on a random basis, I am certainly aware of plenty of trading systems where the chances of at least a small "Favourable Excursion" are very good

The detailed rules disclose plenty of small print. A winning bet only counts if it is more than 5 pts for instance (and that is post spread). So on a random basis, I think the chances of any given sequence of 10 random trades being "winners" as defined is something like 10,000 to 1 against. Another clever rule is that trades must be consecutive i.e. bet two starts after bet 1 finishes. This stops you placing multiple bets in the same market and then waiting for one move in your favour before cashing them all out.

The overall prize of £100,000 is split if there is more than one winner. But there is also a rule for the case where no one gets 10 - it is shared between those who get 9, then 8. So maybe they don't think many people will get 10. One other rule is giving me pause for thought. This says that the company may void any application where it feels that bets have been made in "bad faith" or outside the spirit of the game - whatever that means. One strategy I had looked at was placing a sequence of stop and limit orders in one direction and then hoping for a big move. That might be caught by such a rule.

So I am now set up with a number of markets and a number of systems, so that my 10, if I can make it, will be in a variety of markets and at different times and some long, some short. Such a pattern would presumably not fall fowl of this other rule.

One other consequence of this competition is that a whole family of trading strategies that I used ot use years ago have come back into my thinking. I am pondering on whether I could trade these with one spreadbetting company, while Jerome trades our other stuff with the other. That could be another interesting area to add on to what we are doing currently