What A Plonker

Apologies for not updating my blog for a while I have been busy with university work and there was a major blip in betting quest earlier this week which caused me to have a little time off. Stupidly in hindsight I got involved in an Argentina Premier Division football match whilst watching it on Betfair Video. It was one of the most craziest, open games I have ever seen. There was literally about thirty or so brilliant goal-scoring chances in the game. Needless to say I had backed over 2.5 goals with the score at 1-1 at half time, somehow it stayed this score with some unbelievable misses, post-hitting and world-class saves thrown in there somewhere. However I made the mistake of backing too large a portion of my Betfair balance on it, I lost around 40% of my Betfair balance which was pretty big since I hadn't withdrawn any of my winnings for a while. The few days that followed I noticed I continued to lose bets and put in really poor trades. In danger of losing more of my November profits I decided to take time away from Betfair until my return today. I also installed a neat free software trading tool called The Geeks Toy with use with Betfair. It enables much quicker trades and lets you green up equally on all outcomes with one click, really useful in my opinion and also comes with the ladder layout which I've heard is the preferred layout for the "proper traders".

It's difficult to determine what I am at the minute, an outright gambler or a trader? there's obviously an overlap in these terms because a trader is a gambler of sorts it's just that a trader gambles more on price movements than actual outcomes. The two can also be combined, for example what might have originally started out as a bet can turn into a trade and vice versa. I do find trading difficult I admit but I've been reading a few e-books and websites with good information, they are obviously not going to tell you how to make money trading but they'll for sure point you in the right direction. The danger occurs when one things he's trading when he's actually outright gambling, this has been part of my down fall in the past.

I suffered a £1.5k loss as a result of my madness in the aforementioned days above. I've now purposely withdrawn from my Betfair account and left myself just £100, I think sometimes the amount shown on your balance can effect your thinking (psychology I believe they call it). I had over £3,000 in my Betfair account at the time and I was on a really good run, maybe I was just to confident in my judgement and got carried away and totally disregarded sensible staking rules. It was almost like it was a lucid dream but one which I wasn't able to take control of. I probably sound a right loony here. But anyway yes just the £100 left in my Betfair account going to treat it like it's my last £100 in the entire world. I vaguely remember reading in one of George Soros books that he used to treat his hedge funds like they where his children, in the danger of sounding crazy again I think a similar thing needs to be done here with me. The attitude of risking money because it's money that I've won anyway is the wrong attitude to have I say, you should treat every pound to every pence in the same way. This gambling malarkey is hard enough without chucking money away with inappropriate staking. That's just about rant over, but to end on a brighter note some of my non-Betfair football & horse-racing bets have given me some really nice winners. This somewhat softens the blow of my little Betfair adventure but I'll do well to turn Decemeber into a profitable month of the back of that £1.5k loss in the space of a couple of days. The term like a roller coaster is rather cliched but I feel it's somewhat appropriate to my betting adventures this year.