Mauling by the Mancs

Amazing stuff from the Premier League this weekend with Man City smashing five at Tottenham and then Man United smashing eight past Arsenal (I'll resist any 8-2 jokes here). Do feel for Arsene Wenger though, done a brilliant job at Arsenal yet is always apparently under-fire. He had about a zillion players out but it was still no excuse for a simply shocking performance. For me it's a two team race for the title Chelsea have been far from convincing so far this season. I think the two Manchester sides look the strongest both in terms of first eleven and squad depth.

Back to the betting front and another successful week with me netting a £72.94 profit, came with a few hitches the week but managed to pull it around towards the end of the week to record my third back to back profit week (shock horror).

The end of August is nigh meaning my end of month update is on the horizon. Shall post a more detailed update of my events then.

Week #33

Glad to report another profitable week, this time a £211.78 one which is pleasing. Although not at all easy felt at times I was fighting the markets with some of my trades and if anything got a bit lucky to get out of certain situations as healthy as I did.

The good thing is that I did manage to come through it and record a profit though. Although I'm under no false pretenses and I know I made mistakes throughout the week and just hope I can learn from them. Part of the problem is that sometimes you can benefit from bad behavior whereas you may seem to have lost out when practicing some good trading behaviour.

It's quite an equal balance between my horse racing systems and my trading now which I'm finding quite good. Whilst I'm still an unemployed bum I get the chance to watch all the test match action. England have simply blown India away in this series, and managed to complete the 4-0 whitewash today. The sight on England cricketers celebrating is becoming a familiar scene nowadays. Well done to them.

Step In The Right Direction

Aware I'm a little late with this end of week update but glad to bring forth tales of good news. That's right this week I made a profit, not exactly crack open the champagne time but nonetheless a positive week with me heading in the right direction for a change. £29.92 in the right direction to be exact, not exactly mind-boggling I know but it's certainly an improvement on my recent performances. Which has seen me rack up 7 losing weeks out of the last 9 resulting in two big losing months of June & July.

Enjoyed watching the cricket and seeing England become the new number one, not a fan of backing the teams I support but you wouldn't have gone much wrong backing this England team over the past two years or so. They did me proud with my outright Ashes bet over the winter and I've backed them a few times against India in this series. I watched the market casually for this test match and it seemed strangely stuck around the 1.20 mark for a while, even with India needing to bat for two full days England where still available to back on the beginning of day four at 1.12, which was a stonking price in my opinion with India already 2 down and looking totally demoralized after England posted a mammoth score with Cook falling just short of a treble hundred (shame really).

Meanwhile the new Premier League season got underway and I largely took a backseat and just watched on with interest. I was however rather miffed that the Premier League Fantasy Football site, which I do take a bit too seriously, was down Friday afternoon and Saturday morning meaning I began the season without a team, meaning I'm playing catch up with everyone else in my league now. From the betting front I made a couple of good trades in my view laying both Chelsea & Man United at what looked skinny odds on Saturday night before laying both off for nice profit the Sunday morning. There was particularly a nice drift on Chelsea with them going from 1.75 all the way out to evens and beyond (although I traded out for a nice profit at 1.90).

I've also made a very good start to the new week, so all things going well I should have further good news to announce this week. Elsewhere I'm still jobless but at least my gambling seems to have taken a turn for the better.

Week #31

Feel a little more positive at the end of this week despite still ending the week at a loss. However the loss was only £15.46 for the week, which is a bit like noticing your half finished packet of softmints has been stolen along with your car, in the grand scheme of things it matters little.

My own trading and other betfair exploits where profitable it was my horse racing system that flopped once again. I'm now down to just two left remaining after dropping another after a horror week this week.

Feel my mindset has been a lot better this week. Only been playing with small amounts and now I know my gambling is a pure part-time hobby now. Been looking especially at pre-game football trading i.e. trying to lock in a profit on certain market before a ball is kicked. Did that with today's Community Shield match and hope to try and do it with the Premiership this season. Don't know whether I'll be doing normal bets this season, didn't go to well last season even if it wasn't that bad. Think I may stick to my pre-game trading method for the time being.

Well here's a rarity, a profitable week on Betfair

People may think I'm a bit crazy for continuing to blog despite the tough year I've had. I've often found bloggers and "tipsters" who start to see things turn bad and then seem to quite hastily stop posting altogether. For me the blog was always about keeping a journal of my betting activities and hopefully learning from my mistakes and perhaps one day looking back and reminiscing in my old ways.

Back to the real world, and I'm still unemployed at present but every new week offers new opportunities (as cheesy as it sound). I'm still hopeful I'll be able to find an ideal or close to ideal job for me. But as with everything in life it seemingly doesn't come easy. But I do feel in a weirdly positive mood for someone who isn't the sort of person to go around feeling happy.

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.