Ouch

Battered!

I’m currently contemplating my worst day’s P&L since I withdrew my four figure bank in early March. I have an ability to look on the positive side of adversity, so here are the plus points I’ve managed to squeeze from a bad evening :

· I lost half of my bank in a day, without going on tilt. That takes discipline!
· I carry a small bank!
· I carry a small bank because I’ve been funnelling off my previous profits to top up my meagre (in comparison to what I’ve become used to) earnings. With hindsight, a good decision.

So, tonight’s events. After a decent weekend, with more Horse Racing success, at the start of my session this evening I decided to concentrate on the racing again rather than the day’s tennis. My first race lay came in the 5.30 from Ayr, and I immediately picked out a winner. Slightly deflated, I decided to lay the favourite in the next, riskier but my best chance to regain a loss without throwing money at the problem. The favourite won. Unfortunately, the following race involved a 1.3 odds-on favourite. I decided to lay, with the pained expression of a prisoner walking behind a hangman to the gallows. Diamond Laura, the horse in question, duly strolled home by 5 lengths, and in three steps a large chunk of last week’s profit was washed down the river.

I managed to maintain an even perspective, calmed by a check of my P&L which showed that my horse racing experiment remained profitable overall, and I managed to regain a little with modest wins on the following seven races. I then took a break for tea.

I came back and decided to have a look at the tennis from Indianapolis. Having read Scott Ferguson’s earlier blog post, I noticed Kevin Kim had taken the first set against Denis Istomin. My experiences tell me to avoid potentially dodgy matches, but swayed by my earlier calamities, I decided to throw £200 on Kim at 1.12. He broke Istomin twice to lead 3-0 second set, but the odds didn’t move to tempt a green up. Error number one was to not cancel out at that point – in a normal situation, two breaks of serve should cause the odds to collapse. That didn’t happen. I will admit to then compounding my error at this point by switching to read a report on the Test Match. I returned to my screens shortly afterwards, and Istomin was at 1.36! The odds never really recovered enough to make me red up, so I pressed my ‘hope’ button and just watched the match unfold. Whilst the forums were no doubt going crazy, I assumed Kim must have been injured early in the second set. If not, this was seriously dodgy. I watched with bemusement as nearly £1.5 million was matched, as conspiracy theorists and easy-money grabbers were sent into mass panic. It’s slightly bizarre to watch an odds screen and a scoreboard work completely out of step. The market knew Istomin was going to win, even when the scoreboard suggested otherwise. Istomin won. I lost.

I hope Istomin came in to the game with an injury doubt. I hope Kim was genuinely injured during the game. But there have been too many recent stirrings of this type. Maybe I’ll have to stick to the horses!