January - Waste Of Time?

At the end of a month where many hours were spent in front of a laptop screen, I end with a P&L of +£79. I’d hate to work out my hourly rate, it’s probably not much over a quid per hour. But at least I’ll have learnt some worthwhile lessons? Er, no, not really.

My gains in the month generally came from my strengths – knowledge of sport, identification of value, research. My losses from my old shortcomings – inconsistent staking, chasing losses and lack of concentration. I’ll add a new shortcoming – lack of respect for my bank money. As a few bloggers have found, the problem with having a longish period without making progress is that it can lead to frustration – the ‘what’s the point?’ mentality – and when you’re controlling a bank only equal to a couple of day’s wages, it’s easy to just throw in a couple of bets using big chunks of that bank simply to relieve that frustration. Oh, and they often lose!

If I delve deeper, I can find a few positives to carry in to February. My losses were restricted to three short spells, and two of those were simply reckless. Whilst I will have to admit to chasing losses on both occasions, my mindset was less about loss recovery and, as I mentioned above, more of frustration at my carelessness. So most days of the month have been profitable and I have generally kept my concentration levels up. The obvious learning outcome – a long period of consistency can quickly be undone by a short period of brain-fade.

I was profitable with all sports except racing and snooker. I was particularly pleased with my tennis results, having deliberately avoided the overnight matches which made up the bulk of the month’s opportunities. I ended last season with a pretty negative attitude towards tennis betting, so I’m pleased with my start to the new year. My most profitable sport was football, a decent turnaround as I was in the red as at the 11th of the month. And snooker is definitely blacklisted – four bets, three losses.

The big hole in my P&L was horse racing. My initial impression was that racing was simply the sport that happened to be available for me to take my frustrations out upon. It was certainly where I targeted my loss-chasing and inconsistent staking. But having done a little analysis, I find that if I had laid to a fixed stake, I would still be in the red. Only by about half of my actual loss, but still a noteworthy sum. In addition to the inconsistent staking, it is likely that I am simply having too many bets. Many bloggers with considerably more expertise in the horse racing sphere than I seem to limit their trades to where they feel fully confident in the selection. I will look to reduce my quantity of bets, and hopefully I may see an improvement in hit rate.

There’s no doubt that much of what I’ve said in previous month-end posts still applies. I continue to be inconsistent, and I continue to perform at my best only when recovering from losing P&L positions. I know that future profits are simply reliant on consistency and concentration. Doesn’t sound that difficult, does it? Maybe I’m just a slow learner!