Loss of Direction

To be frank I'm suffering from a big sense of loss of direction at present. My sports betting/trading is quite clearly not working and I get the sad, sinking feeling of me going around in circles only to come back to the same result of me slowly losing money through my pursuits. The fact that I'm currently unemployed and stuck around the house a lot does not help the matter any.

Starting to think my plans have all been one big delusional thought. It's true that they say you should never really give up on your ambitions and your dreams, but that doesn't apply when they have proven to be largely unrealistic does it?

Do I still enjoy sports betting and trading? There's still a part of me that does, but then there's an other part of me that 's saying think of all the hours you've spent pursing this only to end up losing a decent amount of money. Sometimes difficult when you've got your heart set on something to let it go and move on. It seems I'm very close to coming to that conclusion, but there's still a little bit of drive and passion to continue. If I did however decide to pack it in, I think it would have to be completely. Don't see myself carrying on as a casual punter, be a bit like seeing your ex-girlfriend you still love on the train every day or something and always wondering what could have been or what still happen.

I'm about as close to my gambling goals as Charlie Adam's penalty was to the goal in the Carling Cup final, and I end up feeling a lot like the guy at the end of the clip.

Mistakes, Mistakes and More Mistakes

The more you think about the more you realise that gambling and trading is predominately about mistakes. The more mistakes you make the more likely you are to lose money, whether that be backing or laying something at unfavourable or your more classic mistake in placing a bet you didn't intend to. The saying goes Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Although in betting and trading you can afford to make hundreds and thousands of mistakes, basically as many mistakes as your bankroll will allow you. Sure all people make mistakes, it is often said the most successful people in the world have made big mistakes in the early career but have overcome them. But that fails to notice all the people who make big mistakes who didn't overcome and become routed down by a mistake they've made.

I know that last passage was somewhat vague but my point is that different people react differently to mistakes. The way you react to mistakes and losses in gambling/trading is one of the most important things. It fails under the all important D word again, but is deserving of a category of it's own in my view. I know from experience when I make mistakes I don't like it, it annoys me, it frustrates me, it angers me. I'm the guy banging my head on the wall after my horse is beaten by a nose. I do my best to try not get frustrated in this way, but it's almost inherent human nature that we don't like it when we are wrong, we don't like knowing that we aren't as clever as we think we are. I know I'm some steps ahead of the regular punter who simply thinks he can predict with certainty what's going to happen in a given sporting event. I know what value is. I may or may not have edge when it comes to betting and trading these days. But I know for certain that somewhat primal instinct part of my brain gets frustrated and angry far to easy. I have taken up poker recently but even in that I drifted into the same mode, I was playing my usually game and got a couple of bad beats I proceeded to go "on tilt" and play hands I would never even usually look at playing which of course resulted in further losses. Decided to take the rest of the week off after a very poor week upto Wednesday.

What I'm saying after all this time is that I realise I don't have the mindset for betting or trading. After reading up about trading in particular, it seems there is the possibility that you can train your own mind to get out of this problem. Although old habits die hard as the saying goes.

This week was another loss of £161.95 of which $11.85 (roughly £8) can be attributed to poker, the rest was simply me being a lemon trying to trade, hence the mistakes, mistakes rant. I'm not saying I'm giving up on this pursuit of mine. But I do admit to losing a bit of interest in betting and trading recently. Twinned with the realisation that my mindset is still all over the place, I've decided to take this week off largely to try and think things over and do a little more reading on trading psychology. Reading and applying are two completely different matters though, although despite all this I'm determined to remain positive.

End of January Update/ Week#5

Well I said I was due to end January in slight profit but I managed to mess that up with some ill-advised horse racing trading (I'm sure I said I should stop doing that before). This time I really do mean it thought. I've decided to split my betting upto into clear groups now. Football Trading, Football Betting, Other Sports Betting & Other Sports Trading. £100 each for the football groups and £50 for the other sports groups/ Keeping a detailed record of all bets and trades and it should show where my best areas are, although I'm pretty sure already that it will be the football.

Ended the month down £130.36 and the week down £184.83. Not much else to say other than I really need to stop with these silly blips in discipline, it's a difficult job trying to slowly make your way into decent profits. That is always the dangerous thing with discipline, you could have months of good discipline but it takes just one bad moment and you could quite literally lose at the profits and hard work in a moment of madness. Afterwards is a case of what the hell was I thinking there. Hopefully my new staking plan in place with the different groups should help me in the regard.

Just when the weather is snowy and cold it is the exact time you realise why working from home would be such a good thing. No need to go out and freeze waiting for trains or sorting out your frozen up car.

For me though the focus well and truly slipped last week and for that I'm embarrassed. One bright note once again though is my poker, profit of $11.49 for the week. Wish I could play more poker, I am upto multi-tabling three tables at a time and do try and play for a few hours each day. Although at micro-stakes I'm never going to turn over massive amounts. A couple more weeks of decent profit in my SNGs and I think the time may have come to move upto the next stake level.

Another Nearly Week

Seem to have plenty of these so called nearly weeks where it could have been a fantastic one but ends up turning into a minimal profit or loss, this week I ended down £20.92 for week and I'm more or less break even for the year so far.

My horse racing system still seem to be going a slow rate, I did however enjoy some decent profit from the Snooker Shootout, by betting pre-match. It is a simple one frame knockout competition but with certain time limits on shots and the frame as a whole which means generally the players have to play quicker than in a normal match of snooker. Clearly evident from what I've seen it is a little like a lottery, because one small mistake could cost a player and the majority of the players in the competition are capable of getting a 40+ break, which is usually enough to win a frame. It was fun to watch, not quite the World Championships but an interesting concept I think.

Meanwhile on the cricket I traded both Australia v India and the Pakistan v England test matches. Which wasn't really good for sleeping patters, I never stayed up all night and watched both tests. Just usually tried to catch the sessions that I deemed important. I was with Australia from early on against India and my position never really changed. The Pakistan/England game was a bit different, started off by being against the draw and then backed England when they went out to around 2.50. Ended up leaving my book with massive red on the draw, medium red on Pakistan and Big green on England. Funny thing was if England had around 200 or more to chase in the final innings I'd have almost definitely traded out. But as it was I let it run and well the rest was history really. I actually couldn't get onto the computer at the time England had collapsed to around 30-4, I really wanted and should have laid my bet off there. Apparently I found out after England where 1.50 something at the point, which surely was a big lay given how the top order fared. Then again I really should have laid at the start of the innings with England @ 1.20, I was actually considering that and would have overlaid to ensure bigger profits on Pkaistan had I choosen to do that. Which makes the fact I didn't lay off at all sound even more stupid. Overall was down £30 on the week, but a wise decision or a non-England collapse world could have seen that be a comfortable £160+ profit

Didn't trade any on tennis this match, But I imagine trading was fruitful if you know what your doing. If the final was anything to go by, simply laying who you think was going to win at given point in time would seemingly have been the best strategy. So many swings in that game made for great entertainment. Wanted Rafa to win slightly more, but fair play to Novak two gruelling matches in the space of a couple of days. Think he probably earnt the title and a little rest maybe.

My poker challenge is still on going (think I'll stick something in the side bar about my running totals). This week I netted a profit of $8.08, which is decent considering I never played that many games with me being busy with the cricket and all. Much more time to play this week so hopefully I'll yield a greater profit.

You cannot lose if you don't play

Anybody recently taking up watching The Wire will recognise this quote from the second episode of season one. I think it can be a perfectly applied to the world of gambling, but is one sometimes I don't adhere to. By sticking to betting or trading purely on sports you know about you give yourself a better chance at success. But I'm guessing there's plenty of people out there who have bet on sporting events they know little about, a class 6 seller at Wolverhampton? A Belarusian football match? A volleyball match (because there was some hot females playing)? A match where you see no value but bet anyway because it happens to be on TV?

Easy traps to fall into at times but one that needs to be avoided at all costs. By simply keeping a track of your record in each individual sport you should see which are profitable and which are not. One would think the sports you know most about should see you perform better, might not always be the case because sometimes it's easier to find an edge in a obscure sports markets rather than more popular ones where the bots and professional traders lurk. I know for certain that my football betting and trading has been profitable, it's my horse racing trading and other sports trading that has let me down time and time again. Therefore I'm putting an end to trying horse racing trading from now on. Seems so tempting to trade the horses purely because it takes place a time when nothing else is going on, but I've shown I'm useless at and should really just give up. Other sports I haven't really had a large enough simple to judge whether I'm good or bad but I didn't really feel that comfortable trying to trade the tennis this week. Snooker I found a little better, but I was mainly just outright betting rather than trading. My cricket betting/trading went a little balls up this week with the Pakistan/England test, got into a good situation by laying the draw quite early on but managed to get myself into a mess by backing Pakistan at low odds but then switching to lay them as England came to bat second time round. Should really have got out after first couple of wickets tumbled, but didn't and suffered a double loss as I'd backed England to get 250+ runs as well.

So more or less I did exactly what I said I shouldn't do last week and lost £535.15 this week. My Betfair P/L is very mis-leading because I was hedging a lot my bets with better bookmakers odds this week especially on the snooker, true figure was about £50 up over the week and not £350+


To conclude sometimes the best bets you can ever make are the ones you don't make. Same goes with poker, a pivotal moment in a poker tournament could be the fold of marginal hand pre-flop that could have got you in all sorts of bother had you played it. Didn't mention my poker this week, well that's because I've hardly played and was down a small amount. I will try to play more next wekk.

A New Beginning or Another False Dawn?

Believe it or not last week (week#2 of the year) I made a profit of £610.06 that's right, no typo involved that's six-hundred-and-ten-pounds-and-six-pence. The title of the blog just about sums up my feeling on this matter. Is this me finally turning a corner or merely a very lucky week. The large profits came largely from my horse racing and football trading. Things just seemed to go well and maybe I was experiencing the so-called unconscious trader's mind, where you don't really think about what you are doing it just comes naturally. My horse-racing trading and a few bets where largely in-play and on national hunt races. There is an obvious time delay between the horse racing pictures and people obviously betting in-play on course but I find that it doesn't matter too much when it comes to races over longer distances especially if you take a position early. My football trading was largely on the under/over 2.5 goals and match odds markets which I feel I've become adequate at trading. Although I've not kept a full record over the years I'm pretty sure my football trades in these areas would show good profit. I've sensibly now decided to track every single trade I make on Betfair. (the same Betfair which went down yet again Tuesday I think it was last week).


I'm also looking at trying my hand in other sports trading this week with the tennis and snooker featuring heavily. Only going to play with small amounts to test my skills in this area. Overall it's surprising what a good week's performance can do for your confidence. Although it's also important to stay true to yourself and not carried away by one week's results. I know I have made mistakes this week and possibly over-staked on occasions and it's important to recognise this and correct it, because in the long-term it doesn't pay. Meanwhile my poker career took another small step forward as I played a lot more SNGs this week, overall I was $16.99 up for this week playing around 30 $1+$0.20 SNG. Which is a decent return no doubt. I'm looking for five weeks of constant profit at a given buy-in level before deciding on moving up to the next level.

All things considered this has to go down as a superb week of course, but very important to not get carried away and I'll do my best to remain grounded and calm. A nice solid week this week would be ideal to follow on from this "monster" week.

Week#1 update

Well the first week of 2012 has been and gone. I actually managed to forget to note down my profit/loss for the week, I worked it out and I vaguely recall it coming to a small loss of about £30 for the week but I've made change to the amounts in my accounts since then and updated my spreadsheet according, so I'll just have to leave the week as a loss of £30, not accurate I know but any error will be correct when I record the second week's P/L figure.

It was my two remaining horse racing systems that performed so badly at the start of the year which was the main cause behind the loss. My main success of the week had to come in my FA Cup bets, I really liked the look of Ladbrokes' offer of betting on a lower league team and having your bet count for the replay should it go to one. I ended up picking out the four mostly likely "upsets" in my opinion and ended up with three wins and one going to a replay (with my bet being carried over).

FA Cup bets

I did however manage to get my poker P/L for the week. I have myself a target to play a certain nuber of SnGs and cash games each week, I fell short of that target this week but managed to net myself a profit of just over $8 (that's about £5 I think). Not huge but a decent start, poker is very time-consuming but I can confirm there's surely money to be made given the nature of some of the players I've come up against so far.

Bit of a heart-warming moment last night in the FA Cup, I'm not even an Arsenal fan but I found myself happy at the return goal from Thierry Henry. One of the greatest ever Premier League players without doubt and it's good to see him make a return to English football.