Tut Tut Tut

Two lessons came out of last nights session!

1) Be happy with the early profit when the target is hit
2) Keep the focus to turn things around

On the race of it my figures from the latest session are decent enough but the overall profit hides the story of a potential nightmare.

I think in the past when these sorts of things happened I was totally honest with myself and therefore never learnt from my mistakes, so nows the time for honesty cos if I learn I WILL make it work long term!

OK so what went wrong?

Well as stated yesterday I was planning to do the US racing last night as my wife was working. I 'squeezed' in a quick session around midday and made £85.51 in no time! So I was going into the evening session with a nice profit already for the day. I had a great start with a winner in the first for just over £50 then over the next couple with saver bets landed got that up to £60. Now I know that where I should have stopped, should have been happy with the profit and meeting my target and enjoyed my evening doing something else.

Anyway a the evening progressed it proved to be very difficult and I was up and down like a yo yo. I had a bad run and was almost £500 but clawed it back steadily to about £50. I was really pleased with myelf because of the focus I used to do it. Then the was a very short priced I fancied so I backed it. It drifted to a bigger priced so I backed it some more. Basically I was being greedy as it would have given me a nice profit for the session and I would have stopped.

It lost and I started to lose a bit of focus. The chase began and wasn't going well so I ended up lumping over a Grandon short price fav that when I really thought about it I would have had a small lay on normally at the price. It lost finishing unplaced and things were looking dreadful. I was 'about' £2.8k down and it was late. I say 'about' cos I wasn't sure, all focus had gone and i was tired cos by now it was very late. I'd been at it since 6 and it was now 11.30.

I decided one last bet then bed. I bet a fancy in the next race for £500 and got matched at an avg 5.3 or thereabouts. It won in a photo fortunately for me, it was the best horse anyway and looked the winner on the turn for home anyway! So I was staring at £3.5 ish loss in the face potentially ended up £770.99 down instead. Hard to go to bed on a loss but after what at happened it felt like a profit.

Anyway I was up early this morning to continue the claw back and manged it on ozzie dogs and trots ! Ended up turning the £770.99 deficit into a profit. Had one big bet of £400 on a evens fav dog that won by half the track and the rest on smaller bets.

So in summary

over the 2 sessions on aussie racing yesterday, the US last night and the aussie session this morning my total profit ended up being £330.66.

A good profit but slightly irrelevant if I don't learn my lesson.

Moving Along

early days but a decent second day. Again I wasn't sure when I'd get a session in but woke up early. Suprising how bright you are in the morning when you've had a decent day the day before. So I decided to have an early morning session on the Aussie racing. It's just about late afternoon there so the horses are coming to an end but the trotting / greyhounds go on until just after midday our time. My take on aussie racing is a follows:-

Horses - very similar to UK racing both from the form and market perspective although the markets are nowhere near as strong. I personnally don't have a great deal of experience of reading the form so I stick mainly to the place market (backing and laying). The a forumite on Betfair called Da Judge is the one to follow so I tend to use his advice on the rare occassions that I do play.

Trots - I used to hate trotting races but have learnt a lot from the posters on the forum. Most of the lot of races have one horse at the head of the market between 1.5 and 3.0. I just take a view of whether it i a value back or lay in the win market. Betfair market tends to be a very good guide as to the horses chance so I watch that carefully whilst always keeping an eye on the tote.

Dogs - I have virtually given up with the UK dogs. There is no value in laying them and when backing you can have such a bad run. I just haven't found a system that works, which in a way is frustrating because there is UK greyhound racing for 11 hours everyday (11am - 10pm). Aussie greyhounds is a different ball game, up to 8 dogs in a race and very often a clear fav trading around 1.5 - 2.5 on Betfair. So I treat these races the same as trotters. Although the greyhounds is very much how the race is going to be run. So many races can be read by a quickstarting 1 or 8 box dog pinging the lids and gettting a clear run and winning by 8 lengths or so. Market liquidity can be poor but this can be played to your advantage as most of the money comes in the 30 secs before the off so a dog that should be 2.2 can trade at between 1.9 and 3 in a matter of seconds as the big players try to get their bets matched.

The only problem with playing the aussie stuff is you end up with two PnL's because of the way Betfair split your betting.

So yesterday I played the aussie racing in the morning for an hour and half and the result was

Greyhound Racing: GBP8.13 | Horse Racing: GBP122.31 Total P&L: GBP130.44

In the afternoon I played the UK horse racing and had a footie bet in the evening and made a nice profit too

Horse Racing: GBP88.45 | Soccer: -GBP20.00 Total P&L: GBP68.45

As you can see I have to obtain the PnL seperately.

I haven't posted my PNL as a jpeg today because it's just a bit of a ball ache to do and I'd have to do two. I'll probably just do that for weekly PnL

Anyway I made almost £200 in the two sessions which is a very pleasing result.

As we speak I have jut finished another early morning aussie session and made a steady profit

Greyhound Racing: GBP33.73 | Horse Racing: GBP62.73 Total P&L: GBP96.46

Will be definately doing a US racing session this evening as my wife is working.

Dream Start

Wasn't sure if I would get time for a session today but managed TWO ! a few selections on the UK racing and a couple of hours on the US racing.

Both using a slow and steady approach. on the UK is was always in front after winning on the first race. On the US lost of the first race and if I'm honest a bit more than I should have just less than £100 but held it together and made it back over the next few races and things went well and ended with over £200 profit on that session. In fact made over £200 on each one.

Very very happy with todays P & L

Last reckless day and the trial of slow and steady

The last Blog I did was started about 4 weeks after a new 'slow and steady' approach was working out. Prior to that I had took a month off after becoming disallusioned with betting.

This time I'm going to start posting my results as from tomorrow 25th August 2009. I've had reasonable couple of weeks but a shocking time before that. What convinced me was the past weekend. Saturday I was up and down all day but ended up making £1.5k or thereabouts. Sunday I lost £3k during the day but made back £1k in the evening. This morning I made £1k in the morning on the aussie greyhounds after being £1.5k down at one point. And this afternoon I made £500 so basically I've been all over the place. Saturday and Sunday all I did all day long was punt nothing else! And after nearly 3 days of solid punting I came out with about £1k but it could so easily have been £5k down! So tomorrow I will start the slow and steady approach again. In fact I started it this evening on the US racing which is my speciality and I'll explain about that in future posts to come. The reason why I'll start compiling by figures from tomorrow is I don't want them confused with the reckless stuff I've been doing!

This evenings 'trial' went well. I had two sessions. One early starting at about 6pm and lasted 45mins. I ended up £171 and the second one has just finished making £97.

I'm not sure if I'll get time for a session tomorrow because my wife isn't working but we'll see!

I'm Back!

My previous approach based on the following:-

• £5k bank
• Minimum three hours set aside for betting sessions (some days I would have 3 sessions and some sessions would only last 30mins)
• £50 target per session minimum.
• By hook or by crook I always made at least my daily target but often exceeded.
• 6 sessions a week = £300 per week but I often racked up plenty of short sessions and made higher than my target per session. I was averaging around the £1k per week.
• Most of my punting centred around horse racing and greyhound racing. A lot was involved laying short price selections at less than 4.0 on Betfair.

To be honest I was close to losing my £5k bank twice before it finally came crashing down. However, if I am also honest at times there wasn't a lot of thought put into my selections particularly while I was down. Anway I have really struggled with this chasing instinct, which is why I have recommenced blogging.

I want to be back posting the regular £100 - £200 profit per day and around the £1k mark per week like before. Instead of the £1k profit one day, £2k loss the next.

So what is difference this time?

Well, I'm not going to explain that here but I will discuss the differences I have introduced into my punting style in my blog posts as things progress. I thought I knew a lot when I was doing my previous blog but have learnt a lot more over recent months. I have also picked up a few more contacts and get some good information on UK horse racing.

This is my last go at this if it doesn't work out I'm giving up for good!