BTC Academy Review

The BTC Academy is a collection of sports trading courses put together by the Betfair Trading Community team.

The courses cover four different sports, including football, tennis, horse racing and cricket. For complete beginners, there is also a "trading essentials" course that covers the foundation trading skills needed before progressing on to more advanced topics.

The lessons are all in the form of video tutorials and after you have finished each topic, they need to be marked complete before you move on to the next.

BTC Academy Courses

Trading Essentials

This course is important for anyone just starting out with trading on Betfair. It covers topics such as creating a trading plan, mentality, how to find an edge in any market and entry/exit points.

Think of it as the foundation level where you learn what to look out for in the markets and work on your mindset. Being able to stay calm when trading is one of the biggest battles, so this is a pivotal part of the process.

You will also learn how to manage your trading bank which is another fundamental part of trading that needs to be covered before you move on.

This course comes split into 6 modules and there are more than 50 lessons altogether:

- Basic Training
- Money Management
- Mentality
- Getting an Edge on the Market
- Finding Value in the Markets
- Execution

Once you have got to grips with the essentials, it is time to pick which sport you want to start trading. As a beginner, it's probably best to concentrate on one sport to start with.

Mastering Football Trading

The Betfair Trading Community's main focus is football trading, so as you'd imagine, this is the most in-depth course available at the BTC Academy.

It starts off with the basics of football trading with advice on trade research and some live analysis of football trades carried out by the team.

After that, it moves on to how to trade pre-match and in-play games, with an emphasis on how to pick which matches to trade based on stats. There are also some live examples of trades so you can see how the team handled various scenarios in reality.

The course is split into 5 modules and 38 lessons:

- Essentials
- Pre-Match Trading
- In-Play Trading
- Scalping
- Stats Software Tutorials

The BTC stats software is available as part of membership to the main Betfair Trading Community service. This course goes into more detail with video guides on how to use the software and how to get the most out of it.

Mastering Cricket Trading

This is a much shorter course compared to the football trading course but it contains an easy cricket trading strategy to get started with. 

There is also a guide to scalping cricket matches and how to trade IPL/T20 cricket.

The course is made up of 2 modules containing 6 lessons.

Mastering Tennis Trading

The tennis course is again quite a short course with just 2 modules and 5 lessons.

The main points that it covers are some entry and exit points and how to choose lower risk trades.

Mastering Horse Trading

The horse racing course contains 3 modules with 6 lessons and includes some basic information on pre-race trading and some live trading examples. 

- Essentials
- Pre-Race Trading
- Live Trading Examples

I personally found this course very sparce and it didn't really go into much detail on how to research races to trade. The first live example, which is a Back to Lay trade, mentions a part 2 to the video, but there is only 1 part shown, so you don't actually see the trade take place.

The 2nd example is a Lay to Back trade which shows a £100 lay stake on a horse at 13.5 which is £1,250 liability. It is backed in-play at 18.5 for an equal profit.

The trader gives some information on how to find horses to trade, but it is very basic and as a beginner it would be all too easy to follow this example and get into trouble quickly.


Summary


There's no doubt that as a beginner trader, you will find this course useful for some of the basic skills needed to get started.

You could probably find some of the information around on the internet for free, but the difference is, with access to the BTC Academy you also get on-going support from the team.

I do feel that the course would benefit from some more trading examples and some of the courses covering other sports could be expanded. Any updates to the course in the future come free of charge, so hopefully the team will look to do this at some point.

The BTC Academy has got the makings of being a great beginners trading course, but to me personally it feels like it has been rushed. This shows with the spelling mistakes on the sales page and some parts of the course content and also the sparsity of content in places.

I have given a neutral rating at this stage, but I am open to having another look if changes are made in the future.