Q dos

I first looked at internet bookmakers due to an interest in tennis, and a belief that I could pick winners. It didn’t take long to work out that solely picking winners has little to do with making profit. Since those early days, I’ve been rather wary of tipsters. I generally prefer to have all information available to me, whether it be courtside temperature ( particularly relevant at the moment ), team selections or paddock news. Therefore, it seems like working blindfold to determine selections well in advance of an off-time, and I place most of my bets close to the event start. I appreciate that there are deadlines for publishing information, and pro tipsters have to email out their info in time to allow subscribers time to put a wager on. But those selections are being made without the full picture being available. I’m happy to take on board any tips as part of a build-up of knowledge leading to a final selection, but following tipsters is not for me.

So, obviously, I’d now like to big-up a tipster! A free one at that.

Amongst the morass of rubbish on Betfair forums are a few names that are respected and followed closely. When the thoughts posted on the forum back up a regular column on an established national industry website, we have a poster worthy of note. And when that information not only picks winners regularly but also details how an event may unfold and how most of its participants may fare, I’m sold.

The forum poster is Mr Q, also known as Manchester-based US horse racing pundit Paul Quigley, who writes a column for the At The Races website two or three times each week and often appears on the Betfair US racing forum with some interesting insights. He describes himself on his twitter header ( @paultheq ) as a full-time gambler on US racing, specialising on the tracks at Presque Isle, Sunland and Zia Park, and a writer on the subject. Certainly, his regular Tuesday column generally revolving around the above noted tracks is consistently successful, and last night’s performance ( starting with three winners and missing the four-timer by a short head ) brought me to my virtual paper and pen.

Worth a look.

Canary Wharf

Those people who have read my earlier post will, I'm sure, have noted the following phrase - 'I seem to be able to make a consistent profit....'.

Plenty of readers of blogs on the subject of betting and trading are searching for help in doing just the same. So it only seems fair that I offer up some of the strategies behind my success.

Let us turn to today's 4.55 at Wolverhampton. Generally my advice for this course would be to avoid - full of horses that really should be being used for pony practise for teenage girls. But today a selection hit me immediately - Canary Wharf. One of my favourite places on earth! Yep, today's biggest win came courtesy of a tenner on a horse with a nice name.

Glad to be of help.

Staying Awake

You know you’re getting old when……..

I understand the Football League Show will not be re-commissioned by the BBC after this season. It is deemed too expensive to make, in comparison to its viewing figures. I would like to give a solid
opinion on the worth of the show to the grass roots football follower, but I have to admit that after ‘watching’ for the last couple of years, I’ve never seen one whole episode!

My late Saturday evenings tend to consist of Match of the Day, followed by the F.L.S. My problems start when both Mrs B and I use the two sofas as mattresses rather than sitting upright. The routine then tends to go as follows:

Watch MOTD, watch start of FLS, drift off during the ‘main match’ in the championship section, wake during Yeovil versus Tranmere ( having always missed the Leeds highlights ), occasionally nod in agreement at some of Steve Claridge’s no-nonsense assessments, stay in a semi-conscious state through Sheffield United versus Wycombe, which then somehow morphs into Barnet against Aldershot, bypassing a dozen games. Then, finally, awake shivering to a BBC News 24 discussion on the state of Palestine at around 1.45am.

Welcome to life in your forties!


As a long-term blog reader with a huge google reader list (ooh, err missus), I have come to appreciate those who manage to write on a regular basis over a long period. Many blogs ( my own included ) falter through the writers’ inability to find new topics of interest. My own blog slowed as I struggled to find anything to say on the ‘defined’ topic, and find time for writing.

I’m hoping that my current situation ( both physical and mental ) will give me space to write. One of the reasons for the move to London was to make more of life outside of work. I could probably earn more, but I seem to have found a level of workload that means I have enough energy left on
weekends and evenings to have a social life ( at least until 11.00pm ish! ), and enough money to pay the bills. During the winter months, I’m happy to use time on Betfair as part of my income portfolio. I seem to be able to make a consistent profit when I treat a laptop session as ‘work’, even to the extent of leaving the flat and working from an office base or coffee shop for a defined length of time. When I play around at home, I tend to make bugger all.

I expect workload to naturally increase in the summer, and my time on the exchange to reduce accordingly, so the blog subject matter may drift from sport towards random matters. I’m certainly feeling optimistic coming into 2012, so here’s hoping that the reality matches my expectations.

Conspiracy Theories

If you don't follow sports news, this picture will mean little to you. I do, and it struck a chord.

The title of this post reminded me of another Yorkshireman seen around SE20 in recent years, Mr Neil Warnock.

As I noted here, I'm not a fan.

Once again, my emotion towards his recent dismissal at QPR should be sympathetic - it's tough when you take a team beyond it's natural position and then struggle against wealthier and more established clubs. He did a decent job and is probably unlucky that the change in club ownership means that the proprietor has no loyalty towards the existing management.

Yet, I am left with a final image of him having a ridiculous rant at the FA over Joey Barton's latest misdemeanour. Warnock described the FA's decision to throw out Rangers' appeal against the Barton red card as 'disgusting'. He then laid into Norwich's Bradley Johnson for conning referees. The basis of this argument presumably being that Joey's attempted headbutt missed Johnson's nose by at least 2 millimetres.

I'll say it again - Warnock's a tool. I'd be happy to see him go back to to his original trade (dentistry) rather than put up with any of more of his paranoia-filled rubbish. Bye, bye Neil.

Yawn

Aaagghhhh…

Where did that 10 months go??

Well, sole remaining reader, welcome to the rejuvenated 2012 version of the blog – new title, new template, new location, new random thoughts!

It’s been a busy time, and thankfully we’ve (Mrs B and I) managed to achieve most of what we wanted to from 2011. Lichfield is a distant memory, the city crashpad is presumably re-let to someone younger and trendier than I, and the locals now follow The Eagles rather than The Brewers.

So here’s my new South London-based blog. As noted previously, I started the blog at a time when my main income was (hopefully) being generated via the betting exchanges after what is remembered as the 'credit cruch' decimated the housebuilding industry. The blog has changed along the way in line with my life. I expressed my thoughts on blogging in one of my latter posts -

Obviously, the blog seems to have taken a back seat. I started writing at a time when Betfair dominated my days, betting full-time. Whilst I returned to work a month or so afterwards, I've generally had something to write about on a regular basis. With sport ( and Betfair ) taking up less of my thoughts, the blog has suffered. I'm finding that I still have plenty of ideas to write about, but most are off the subject area. Regular readers will have noticed my tendency to wander from the 'designated' subject, and it's been noticeable that I get little feedback when I do stray. This suggests that the 'betting blog' community is really only interested in reading about sport and gambling. So what should I do? :-

i. Carry on the blog and say 'sod it', I'll write about whatever I want.
ii. Keep the blog for occasional posts when I do find something worth saying in the betting/sports field.
iii. Start a new blog, hoping to find a new audience for a more random 'popular culture' themed blog.
iv. Go back to Lichfield and get that Betfair screen working for me.

I'll have a think about it in the next few days. ( I'm not seriously considering iv. )

Well, the blog returns, and option 1 it is. I may be leading myself into writing for no-one, but I enjoyed blogging, yet simply don’t have enough worthwhile points to make on one subject. With my life hopefully now settled, it feels like a good time to resume writing. So I’ll be led by whatever interests me, and hope the results are enthralling enough to gain a readership.

I’ve regularly noted my enthusiasm for rock music, particularly new music and artists. So let’s begin with, er, a song from 25 years ago!

Suspended!

Rather than just let it disappear off people’s listings, I thought it better to let readers know that I’ll be suspending my blog for a while.

In the main, I’m not spending enough time on Betfair and, probably more importantly, not spending enough time thinking about sport and betting to come up with much interesting to say at the moment. Like a few bloggers recently, I’m finding interesting things to write about difficult, but it’s mainly the case that my daily routine is very different from when my blog was at it’s ‘peak’.

It was reading back my own blog that brought me to this decision – I was surprised how good it used to be! Recent posts have tended to be just occasional updates, with not too much variety or insight. They’ve been written whenever I get a chance to write, just for the sake of updating everyone. When my routine was different, I often had ‘future posts’ sitting around in my head waiting to be written. Recently, life and work have taken over that spare brain space. Most of my better posts were written around midnight after a day’s Betfair session was finished – I’m usually tucked away in bed at that time nowadays.

I’m still badgering away on the exchange when I get time, looking to maintain that elusive £1k bank where I feel I can play comfortably ( my bank currently sits at £886.43 ), and trying to stick mainly to football. My life hasn’t stayed constant for very long over recent years, so it may well be that things change again. The blog is therefore suspended, not closed.

Until the next time, good luck to everyone.

Overdue Post

Ahh, my blog finally springs into 2011 action. Well, ‘action’ is probably not the most appropriate word - stuttered into 2011 fits the analysis better.

My major issue has continued to be lack of internet access. I’m struggling to justify paying for a phone line for the limited time I spend at the London flat, and the internet dongle was, as expected, rubbish. So I’ve had limited access to Betfair, but enough to give me a nasty loss in January - within fifty quid, a complete wipe-out of December’s profit. How? – being ‘unlucky’.

I’ve mentioned ‘unlucky’ before. This is an alternative word for ‘inconsistent’ or ‘reckless’. January was an unlucky month in that a few lays at large odds went down, and a couple of footy games went unexpectedly, leading to all-red trade-outs. But the decision to place the lays was in most cases ill thought through, and often was just a lazy push for quick profit. On a couple of weekends, an element of panic seemed to set in. I’m playing with a fairly small bank and the results will have no material effect on my life. Yet instead of leisurely nudging my P&L forwards, I felt the need to use every rare minute of internet access to make hefty profit, often well beyond a natural level for the bank size. I’ve proved to myself so many times that, with a little time spent on research, the bets will come to me. But often my impatience leads me to search for ways to gamble. I also tended to stray into laying at higher odds, which is dangerous on two counts, firstly the damage each failure does to your bank balance, but also the psychological damage of having hours of small wins evaporate in seconds.

One bonus from January – a profit from tennis. The last twelve months left me disillusioned with the sport as a betting medium, hit hard by my poor trading skills and an evolved market that made my profitable years seem long ago. But I had a near 100% record picking winners pre-match. My only loss came from a rare in-play trade when, as so often happens to me, I chose to go all-red when things swung against me. I seem to have little trouble holding my nerve during football trades, but the speed of turnaround in tennis continues to fray my nerves.

A note of caution for bloggers not aware of Google Reader. A successful blogger of recent times, John O’Dwyer, has hit one of those inevitable bad spells. Presumably in a fit of despair, he posted an ill-advised blog a couple of days ago, and then promptly deleted it, along with it’s predecessor. However, the post still shows up on Reader, so many of his followers can see the deleted posts. Best to post only after a moment for reflection!

The photo? I was around the Wembley area yesterday afternoon, and as my own team are unlikely to be participating in a cup final any time soon, I thought I’d have a walk up Wembley Way. It’s a pity the legendary Twin Towers have gone, and the arch isn’t as impressive in daylight as under floodlighting, but worth the ten minute detour. I’ve never had much inclination to attend an England game, but I may have to look for an opportunity to see some sporting event at the stadium.

And finally, minor celeb spotting update. Er, celebrities don’t come out in January – it’s cold. So just the one name for my roll-call – Spurs slightly iffy left full-back, Benoit Assou-Ekotto. Hopefully, the remainder of February may be stronger, celeb- and profit-wise.