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.