Minor Celeb Spot ( Midlands Area )

Guess who I came across in Birmingham earlier today? Yep, you cracked it – only the previously mentioned Central TV weathergirl Emma Jesson!

I nearly commented upon how I felt she and Ken Barlow made a lovely couple. But didn’t.

Little new to say on the Betfair front. On the basis that New Year’s Eve involves a trip down the M6 and M1, followed by a couple of hours stood in the cold in the hope of seeing the Thames-side fire works, then my current P&L will become December’s final figure. I can’t be bothered to count the total number of transactions, but the final profit comes in at £476.99. I’ll put together a post summarising ‘where I’m at’ betting-wise after the holiday, but the overall feeling is positive.

May I wish a happy new year to all, and good luck in 2011.

Quiz Answers

Current king of the sports betting blogs, Cassini, is also smart enough to land the spoils from my quiz.

Q1. The Brown’s superb response was as follows :






















Q2. Bored of those multiple choice questions where one of the possible answers offered is patently rubbish? Well, this is the opposite. Yes, the answer is Ken Barlow. Or, more accurately, 78 year old actor William Roache. To paraphrase someone wittier than I – what attracts Emma to the millionaire Mr Roache?

Q3. The club founded in a district within the Isle of Dogs, East London, that subsequently moved south of the Thames to Bermondsey, was Millwall F.C.

Bored?

For those struggling to fill their ‘twixtmas’ days whilst wading through a sea of turkey and chocolates, I offer you my ‘Nameless Bank Holiday’ 3 part quiz. Answers in my next post.

1. The following letter of complaint was sent to American Football giants the Cleveland Browns back in simpler times in 1974. Just guess how the Browns responded. ( Thanks to the Frank Turner twitter feed for spotting this ).























2. Here’s Central TV weathergirl Emma Jesson. I’ve been following her progress closely for ten years or so. Which of the following is she currently dating ?






























Jonathan Trott?











Marcus Bent?











Ken Barlow?


3. There is a metal plaque embedded in the pavement outside my new apartment block denoting the place where a football league club was founded in 1885 by workers from J.T. Morton, a food processing plant and cannery. They moved to their more famous (infamous?) home in 1910, and on to their current stadium in 1993. To get from their place of origin to the current home requires a trip one station along a tube line, and a short walk, or a slightly longer walk and a precarious swim for the more adventurous. Name the club.

Good Luck.

Bye Bye Hotel Room

The Basildon Travelodge is history, and I now have what is known as a ‘London crashpad’. Whilst it would be nice to see myself as being the occupier of both a ‘London home’ and a ‘Country home’, finances ensure that I am much more aware of being the owner of two whacking financial commitments each month. Whilst the income from my current contract covers my costs, the next stage will hopefully be to sell up in Lichfield and make a permanent move to the South-East. I’ve no guarantee of ongoing work, but my feeling is that there are more long-term opportunities in the South than the Midlands. My big pain at the moment is that I’m committed to some Saturday work in the Midlands for the next few months, so I’m trecking up and down the motorway on Friday and Sunday evenings. Mrs B has coined a nice positive phrase for it – ‘investing in the future’ – better than my idea – ‘flogging my nuts off'.

The flat has been an internet-free zone so far, and as I’m only looking to stay in this particular location for a 6 month period, I’m not looking to have a fixed phone line. So I’ve obtained a Mobile Broadband dongle, with low expectations based on various web reviews. If it turns out to be hopeless, weekday internet use may be limited to the free WiFi at McDonalds and Café Brera.

In turn, my Betfair usage is at it’s lowest level since I opened an account. My actual December stats to date are as follows :

Markets entered : 52
P&L : +£202.56

Anyone reading the blog regularly will have worked out that this has therefore been a fairly decent spell, taking into account my relative inactivity. Certainly, I have been pretty relaxed and patient during my limited time in front of the Betfair screen, and that does seem to be my recipe for profit. None of my sessions have been particularly long, and history suggests that over a longer day I become frustrated and my judgement wains. So maybe this lack of Betfair time may have it’s benefits in terms of profitability.

One side effect of London living is the tendency to come across minor celebrities ( this NEVER happens in my home village near Lichfield ). December’s roll-call to date – James May, Rav Wilding and Big Brother’s Chantelle Houghton and Victor.

I’ll hopefully be back soon with more minor celeb spots and minor exchange winnings.

Like Buses

Yep, three weeks without a post and then two come along at once.

Having spent three and a half hours in the car due to the snow today, and achieved little work wise, I now have a long evening on my hands, back in the Basildon Travelodge, so a good opportunity to get in a November review. I’ll try to remember to put anything I achieve ( or, er, cock-up ) tonight into December’s sum up.

Firstly, the sanitised version, in the style of Robert Maxwell.

A final P&L of +£490.71. I had wagers on four sports, and all were profitable. Tennis was straightforward – one bet, +£2.21! Football finished at +£301.89, Greyhounds at +£154.05 and Horse Racing at £32.56. With considerably less time spent in front of the laptop, a good month. My profit per hour rate was certainly as good as any month this year.

Er, now the slightly amended and ‘audited’ version.

Well, same as above except that on one weekday mid-month I happened to be sat in my car awaiting a delivery. Slightly bored, I opened iBetmate on my iPhone. Checking my bank balance, in a moment of brain fade I decided that it would be nice to get a nice rounded up bank balance by making a quick £23. Having spent the last couple of months nudging away at £4 and £5 wins, then with hindsight ( both immediate and long term ) it seems pretty stupid to go for £23 in one go on a horse lay. It doesn’t seem any cleverer to stick this liability on an outsider in a handicap. But, hey, I’d be damn unlucky to hit a 21/1 shot, particularly one with shocking form……

You guessed the rest? So amend two figures above. Horse Racing came in at (£431.44), and total P&L at a small but worthy +£26.71.

It’s hard to understand how the thought process can be so inconsistent. I generally only use the iPhone to monitor bets I’ve put in place with the aid of a multi page laptop screen. But, hey ho, I’m not the greatest learner in the world ( ask my teachers at Royds School, Leeds ’77 – ’82 ), and I do seem to be prone to these occasional meltdowns.

Sadly, I’m not the only one. Crotig has been battling away for a couple of years with small stakes, struggling with discipline. But his blog has shown a definite improvement of the last few months, to the extent that he had built up a £1k bank. However, his most recent post reports a major blow-up. My advice would be to review his recent P&L’s. There’s enough green there to show that he can be profitable. Just avoid the brain-fade. Easy, really. Umm.

Pondering

A record three and a half weeks since my last blogging effort, consistent with what I suggested in the final paragraph of my previous post - work taking over potential Betfair time.

I'm currently sat in a McDonald's in Basildon, Essex. If things go to plan, then East London and Essex may be my new place of work ( and home ) in the long term. For the moment, home is a Travelodge, but I'm hoping to find a rental pad shortly. Logically, with potentially lucrative income available ( albeit with longish hours ), then any Betfair time I have should be used as a relaxing hobby rather than income generator. I would, however, note that my most profitable punting spells in the past were made at a time when I had a good income - the combination of no pressure to win and a healthy sized bank worked well for me at that time.

I'll do a November review shortly, but I have a small green at the moment after a limited month, and would have had a decent month but for one brain-fade.

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. )

October - Cut And Paste

You don’t have to go too far back through this blog to find a month with a profile approximating to the following :

Start badly
Become frustrated
Chase
Lose focus
Lose money
Reset head mid-month
Recover steadily
End up close to where I started.

A regularly occurring theme, and October was no different, albeit that I remained £150 or so in the red come Halloween. The month’s main frustration was that I allowed a couple of chases to wreck the P&L of a potentially profitable system, and in the process made Greyhound Racing this month’s big loser ( see September ! ). The horse racing bets have been moderately successful, whilst analysis of my football bets in the month shows that I would have been considerably better off if I had placed my original selections and let them ride, rather than trade during play. The word ‘tentative’ has been regularly used in this blog, and years of football betting have knocked a little bravery out of my mindset.

I’m glad I’m not reliant on football betting for my income. It seems a tough sport to prevail in, with pretty efficient markets. The guys at Trading Football Markets seem to have it sorted, but their type of trading looks like extremely hard work to me, and not how I wish to spend my evenings after a day at work – too much concentration required. Maybe that’s the point – as a recreational trader I firstly want to enjoy my pastime, and if a profit arrives, great. As a full time career, the effort and concentration just have to be put in, and if that means time-consuming multiple trades and constant monitoring, so be it.

Any impulse I may have had to get back into tennis trading has been put aside by the recent dodgy betting patterns in the East European tournaments. As numerous blogs have pointed out, if the ATP remain as toothless as it currently seems to be in situations where warnings have been received in advance, there is little incentive for anyone to bet outside of the grand slams and ATP1000 tournaments. Maybe some guys will see it as an opportunity, but I still have the bruises from last year’s Kim/Istomin game. More importantly, the sport’s reputation will go the way of cycling and track & field unless something is done quickly.

Things are looking interesting on the work front, so Betfair action is likely to be low key in the coming month. I’m currently sitting at (£7.57) for November, so that’s my first target!