End of July Update

Think it's safe to say that July wasn't a good month for me with a loss of £1,289.22 having occurred. Took a step back this week and placed only a few bets during the entire week, which felt very strange I must admit after doing something betting-related for at least some part of each day for the past three years or so.

Sometime to step back and reflect is always healthy I find. On reflection I've pretty much messed up big style and in hindsight I was incredibly naive in some of my staking plans and because of the systems not working out as planned a lost discipline in other areas. Now I find myself in a big hole and at rather big bet loss from betting adventures. It's easy to go back in hindsight and say this went wrong, that went wrong, ect. But the real thing I hopefully take out of this experience is that you do need a proper staking plan and you need to stick to it. Funnily enough I think I keep brilliant records, the majority of the bets I've ever placed are record on a excel sheet somewhere.

Yes my staking plans maybe where to aggressive but it also must be said my bets and systems have performed poorly in general this year. Regardless of staking plan if you don't have an edge you won't make a profit. So far this year I haven't had edge even if you remove all the silly mistakes I've made I still reckon I'd still have a big red figure for the year.

Sort of feels like going back to square one again, my stakes are really low and having played with higher ones during the course of this year. Funnily enough whatever gambling environment it might be I always feel more comfortable with smaller stakes I seem to trade better with smaller stakes and systems I start with small stakes tend to go well. Problem seems to come when a scale up. Don't know if it's a psychological thing or maybe just an unlucky coincidence.

I have considered just packing in my life as a gambler altogether and just admitting defeat. But I still think I have the potential to make this work long-term, it might be a naive belief going off my past record of ill discipline. But hopefully I've turned the corner or at least something as finally clicked. My betting bank is diminished now and I think this is my one last crack at glory if this betting bank I set aside two years back ends up empty I'll finally call it a day.

Oh yeah eventful stuff at the cricket today with the Ian Bell run out/ not run out debate. The Sky Sports crew turned into investigators for the day. Was also a great day's cricket in general a bit of controversy always adds a little entertainment though. Looking forward to the final two days.

It's not getting any better

Things seem to be going from bad to worse at the moment. My discipline has wavered probably as a result of the previous poor weeks and the knowledge that I'm so far behind this year. Got into some real bad situations this week where I was simply over-staking despite me knowing perfectly well what I'm doing is wrong. Sort of my mind telling me to do one thing but hand doing something completely different when it comes to placing bets.

Decided that this week I'm taking a break from it all. At the moment I'm not enjoying gambling at all, plus I need to seriously re-think some of my strategies. Hopefully a week away from it all may help me recover my love for gambling and hopefully means I come back afresh for the start of the new football season.

My next post will be the end of July one, which isn't going to be a pleasant one.

Time to do some soul searching as they say. Got a few thing lined up in terms of job applications to sort out this week also. I don't think that praying on my mind as helped my gambling too much. At the moment I'd love nothing better than to find a decent job on good pay and then gambling can go back to being my part-time hobby as oppose to my full-time worry at present.

A two week "bumper" update

Realise I didn't post my usual weekly update last week, truth be told not much as happened over the past two weeks in terms of my betting. Very slow going at present with me having dropped a lot of systems. Last week I recorded a loss of £251.69 whilst this week I recorded a profit of £42.17.

My cumulative P/L for the year is at just over the £2,700 mark and I'm roughly £300 down at the mid-point for July. It's true i'm finding my betting a little tiresome at present always makes it worse when your operating at a loss. Whilst once over I'd spend half a day betting or during something betting related, nowadays I spend about half an hour in the morning and that's it. Keep trying my hand at trading but I'm just not very good at it so I don't really do it that much either.

Weekly Summary #26 / Half-year report

Well the week just past was yet another losing one, a £578.60 losing one to be exact. This means my cumulative profit is now at a all-time high for the year at £2,501.36.

The end of this 26th week signals the mid-point through the year and a little time for me to reflect. Below is a graph showing both the weekly p/l figures (red bars) and the cumulative p/l (the blue line) also.

Whilst in someways it doesn't tell me anything I don't already know but it does act has a good visual representation of my performance and can be used to quickly identify trends in my performance. What really stands out on this graph is the two stinking weeks (week 6 & week 23). It also shows ever since week 6 I've found it hard to recover and haven't been in overall profit since the end of week 5. You can see signs of a comeback I commented on this blog, at the end of week 20 things where starting to look brighter but the massive loss in week 23 really set me back once again.

That just about sums up my half-year report, can't really add much more other than I hope to improve on this record for the remainder of the year. As I've mentioned before I've reduced my stakes quite a lot from the beginning of this month, there shouldn't be any big losses to come. Feels a bit like starting again from square one at the moment but I'm taking it little steps at a time for now and hoping to regain confidence in my betting.

End of June Update

This update is a bit like a massive pile of dirty plates in the sink, you know at some point your going to have to clean them up but it doesn't make the job anymore enjoyable. So here's me dishing the dirt. The full extent of the damage was a loss to the tune of £2,271.20 which is well rather painful to say the least. It even managed to beat my personnel worst of February this year, which was some achievement if I remember how badly February turned out.

To say I've become a bit disillusioned with betting at present may be going a bit far. But I appear to have lost that little bit of enthusiasm for the game at present. I've cut back on my systems and staking now, so it is nigh-on impossible for me to have such a big loss over the course of a month now. In contrast that means I'm not likely to be able to make any big monthly profit figures.

The also brings up the mid-point in the year, with six months down and only six remaining. At the conclusion of this week I shall draw up a graph plotting the 26 weekly P/L figures, should make an interesting visual but won't do anything to hide the fact that my betting adventures have took a serious setback this year. At the moment I've been spending a bit more time trading on Betfair, I'm still alive just from my initial £100 challenge, been down to as low as £5 and £10 on numerous occasions. Back to £5 again recently but I've managed to build it back up to £9 with numerous small trades over the past week or so. When I'm trading like that it's not so much the monetary gain but the fun and challenge of trading, using your skill (or lack of as it may be) to take on other exchange users across the world. There's something sort of magnificent and appealing in that I find. I might be only winning pennies at a time but the experience is the most important thing (or so I'm told). Of course experience alone won't win your anything in the long-term but it should certainly improve your chances of discovering a successful method of trading.