Two more days of 'part-time' betting, and didn't quite get back to zero on the week, but have given myself a fighting chance for the weekend.I am coming round to the opinion that I, and an awful lot of supposed experts, really can't tip sports results. The nature of sport is that it is often unpredictable.
Throughout most of the last couple of years I have tended to combine some modest pre-match bets with placing larger amounts in-play. I often spend a considerable amount of time reviewing form and looking for expert opinion. But analysis of my recent results suggest I should abandon my pre-match attempts and just concentrate on making profit from my minute-by-minute judgement of what is happening on the screen in front of me.
When I had a 'proper job', I regularly used to pop in to Tamworth Services at lunchtime to grab a sandwich and have a quick free peek through the sports pages of the Racing Post in the newsagents. I would then have fun in the evening watching most of the expert tips crash and burn. The problem seems to be that tipsters are obsessed by value, and are drawn to contests where, frankly, anything could happen. Most of my recent pre-match successes have been on "the bleedin' obvious" - this week on Chelsea, Bordeaux, Rangers ( v Forfar ) etc. But as soon as I look for value........
And so on to Camille Pin, currently ranked 104 on the WTA Tour rankings and, according to French 'Hello' magazine, she also likes scuba diving. Umm.
Last summer, I had a nice day out at the DFS Classic WTA tournament at Edgbaston. They have a show court, plus four further grass courts placed alongside each other. You can find a nice spot to sit on the grass and watch a few games, just moving along a few yards every so often to check on an adjacent match. I watched our heroine, Miss Pin, play an awful game against Anastasia Rodionova where both players took it in turn to look like park players. Pin seemed to have a game reminiscent of the Evert, Goolagong days when ladies patted the ball to each other politely. Rodionova was simply rubbish. Pin won. I then watched a decent game between Marta Domachowska and Margit Ruutel, with the then 64th ranked Domachowska winning.
The next day I rubbed my hands on contemplating a Domachowska/Pin contest, with odds slightly favouring the Polish player. I had the ultimate advantage of a courtside form guide. I lumped on Domachowska. Pin won 6-4, 6-2.
I know nothing.
Pundits are dangerous - Venus Williams was playing Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova earlier this week and the commentators were raving about Anastasia, talking about her resilience, her hard hitting excellent serve etc... almost made me want to Lay V. Williams at the ridiculously low odds - result 6-0, 6-1. My mate does the horses and if the commentator mentions his horse he can be influenced - he has phoned me loads of times cursing the commentator putting him off his bet.
ReplyDeleteI have found a lot of the time people are in a privileged position not down to being good at their job or their experience but they were in the right place at the right time. Same with pundits too i reckon, take Ray Houghton - he talks a lot of shit when it comes to football, doesnt do his research and he no doubt gets his punditry positions due to who he is rather than what he knows.
But I find that if I think a match is going to go one way or the other then I have selective memory as to how good my predicting was or make excuses for why it went wrong but if I were actually going to record all my predictions pre-match I would be just as bad as the pundits - I rather watch a match or sports event for 5 minutes and then go from there and hedge out when proved right or go on tilt like I did yesterday...
Yeah, definitely the way to go. But it's just so tempting when you're checking the fixture list....
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