End of 2011 Update - Part 1

Well hello there. It has been a long time since I last updated my blog but it was after all fully intended. December is always a busy month and 2011's was no different. This is the first of a two part special (makes it sound special doesn't it) as I firstly look back at my December performance and my overall yearly performance and the second part will focus on 2012 and my aims for this year.

So December, the beginning of December brought about the news that the great Denman would be retired. Very sad news for me, Denman was the main reason I became so interested in horse racing and it's sad no one will every get to see him race again. But his legacy and memories will remain with many people for a long time, I was going to rename my blog in his honour but I've kind of already got the base covered. Mid-December that proceeded to drag on and on in the build up to the birthday of christ. The day it self seemingly goes down in a very similar way each year and if not for the effects of aging I'd find it very difficult to separate one year's Christmas photos from the next. I do like eating and drinking a lot, it is one of few times in the year where it's basically okay to be a fat slob and drink and eat as much as you like. I'm not a big drinker anyway and I don't like to over do thing as Boxing Day is a very big for sports fans and gamblers alike. Enough top-class horse-racing and football to meet the everyone's demand. So between Boxing Day and New Year it was basically a case of watching all this wonderful sports and trying to make some money in the meantime.

Unless your happen to be a gambler that lives under a rock (some perhaps do) you will I'm sure have heard about the Voler La Vedette fiasco on Betfair.

"Too good to be true"

Maybe some people thought Christmas had come a little late this year and that one person's major mistake could earn them a big payout. But the sheer size of the lay almost immediately renders it some sort of Betfair malfunction unless Bill Gates has suddenly decided to take up horse racing trading. I was actually casually watching the actual race as well as the darts at the time but didn't actually have the race market open it wasn't therefore until afterwards I heard what happened. Was a void market in the end unsurprisingly so I never missed out thankfully.

To round off the year and December I finished with a profit of £112.78 for the month which brought the cumulative loss for the year to -£3,903.45.

The monthly breakdown where as follows:
January: +£1,232.87
February: -£2,220.18
March: -£12.80
April: -£294.23
May: +£1,145.58
June: -£2,271.20
July: -£1,289.22
August: +£376.51
September: -£781.24
October: +£233.82
November: -£136.34
December: +£112.78

I've also put my weekly figures into a graph, the bars represent the weekly P/L and the line is cumulative P/L.


Whether it's in figures or on charts there's no hiding away from the fact my year has been very bad, losing just short of £4,000 in one year is never ideal but especially so when I had such high plans for the year ahead (my look forward to 2011 looks a bit deluded on reflection).

One more graph to show the damage can't do any harm can it. Well here's my P/L for the year with each separate bookmaker account. Thanks to the fine folks at Boylesports who I profited around the £2,300 mark, meanwhile all my other accounts where either a very small profit or ranging losses from medium-sized to rather big.

My Different Accounts P/L 2011

One bright note I suppose is that my accounts are unlikely to be limited, A few of my accounts already are to a degree but on the whole I'm not too bad on that front. But then they are always happy to take your bets if your a loser I suppose, it's when you start winning the problems occur.

Well that just about sums up 2011, pretty bad year I guess. The loss of Adrian Massey's ratings was a big blow as my betting year was largely focused around those very ratings. I'd like to think I've evolved into a better gambler with me having to change my approach and try and find new ways of betting. Not going to really talk about my plans for 2012 in this part (that's for part 2). After I did so well in 2010 to turn a profit it is obviously highly disappointing to give all that back plus more, but hopefully I'm now older, wiser and better placed than I was at the beginning of last year to go into the new one with better plans and attitude to make 2012 a success. Please do tune in for part 2, which I hope to post up tommorrow or sometime later this week.