Top Man

I’ve never really taken to Jonathan Trott.

When Kevin Pieterson qualified as an English player, there was a sense of anticipation – a star to add to the Test lineup – as there had been a decade or so earlier with Graham Hick. But Trott, Cape Town born, slid into the Test side off the back of some decent county performances without creating a dent in public awareness. He’s subsequently become an effective part of the England line-up – stubborn, level-headed and tidy with an ability to compile big scores. Not too exciting then. Off the field, we’ve never really had much opportunity to find out if he had a personality.

But Mr Trott has risen hugely in my estimation. I know exactly how I’d have felt yesterday morning if I was an England player. And I’m sure it would have involved a wish to throttle someone from the Pakistan set-up. So top marks to Trott for having a whack at Wahab Riaz, and for showing an element of passion and aggression that we’ll need in spades this winter in Australia. Whilst I’m not condoning ‘Joey Barton’ style fisticuffs in most sporting situations, in this case I’m with Trott.

Missing in Action

Best laid plans........

So August was excellent, as my P&L headed upward and a calm (and profitable) betting routine took hold. The onset of the footy season could only improve matters. Well, theoretically.

The day after posting my last blog, I came across a couple of decent work opportunities. One of these involves Saturday work, but at an income level I can't afford to refuse. The major negative is that Mrs B, whilst happy to see additional income into her purse, is less than chuffed to see me then spend Sunday in front of the Betfair screen. So after last weekend's 'false start' on the footy betting, this weekend saw not one bet placed. I have no problem with limiting my trades to weekday evenings with a little weekend top-up, but I'm irritated that after months of struggling, the rhythm and routine I found last month has ground to a halt.

Whilst I dislike target setting, to see your P&L increase at a fairly steady rate on a daily basis is comforting. With my available hours limited, I think my preferred mindset moving forward should be to protect my bank balance, and let the P&L look after itself, for the moment.

An interesting post from Stephen Maher regarding whether successful Betfair trading is a good career choice. Most full-time traders have dropped out of their previous career, generally because they were unhappy in their role, and I'm sure appreciate the flexibility of their lifestyle, and not having to answer to anyone but themselves. I find self-employment has similar benefits. Stephen's issue is that he's never had a career. Personally, I would go back to college, finish my course and find work if at all possible. Even if that job isn't the 'big money, stress' type. In life, I think you need as many 'strings to your bow' as possible. Unforseen things happen, and a decent back-up plan is worth having. Five years ago, if I'd have been asked how I saw my coming years, I'd have been miles off in my prediction. Stephen has learnt the skills to be profitable on the exchanges and at the bookies. That's a useful tool to have. But I'd rather have it as one of a portfolio of skills in my pocket.

Poor Start

Having built up Saturday in my head as the notional start of a season of profitable footy, I was quickly brought down to earth with a bump. I suppose I should be grateful that I wasn’t involved in the games at Everton, Burnley or Barcelona, but I still managed to pick out a batch of games which didn’t go to plan. My major difficulty was that my strategies tend to involve scratching out early if things start to go against me, particularly on a Saturday when there is so much happening. And time after time, the first goal went the wrong way. Man City, Newcastle, Copenhagen, Moenchengladbach. All offset. The killer was my error of the day being punished – I left a position on the Newcastle / Blackpool game where I had a £50 risk if Blackpool scored a second goal, and I could have easily covered this for little outlay with five minutes to go. I didn’t, they scored.

The remainder of Saturday didn’t improve. I’d expect to have a few results go my way to counteract the losses, but nothing. I should have been profitable on the Fulham/Wolves game, having tipped up Wolves in my last post, but I didn’t back my judgement with cash. They scored first of course! As the evening wore on I realised I’d forgotten how difficult I’ve found Saturdays in recent seasons. The accumulation of negative moments leaves me open to chasing, particularly in the evening. Fortunately, a spell of decent results over the last few weeks has helped my attitude, so the laptop was turned off at the point where I felt vulnerable to the chase ( and left off on Sunday ). I will take forward the need to be a little more selective on Saturdays, and hope it was just one of those days.

Yesterday I watched the first episode of Alan Davies’ Teenage Revolution ( ‘taped’ from during the week ). I had read a review in the papers before watching the programme, and the reviewer thought the programme was boring – just Davies’ ramblings on his teenage years. However the reviewer was probably born sometime in the seventies. I was born on 2nd March 1966, Davies on 6th March 1966. So for me it was fascinating viewing. So many of his reminiscences matched my own memories. His first bedroom wall poster, as was mine, was Debbie Harry. Paul Weller was my idol, and his. Whilst there were plenty of differences ( his public school was hated, I quite enjoyed my comprehensive ), many of the experiences rang a bell. I particularly related to his description of the skill required to flick through albums in a record shop at high speed, and the fear of the skinhead gang from the rough side of town.

So that’s my Thursday evening viewing sorted for the next three weeks.

There’s a decent amount of European football on tonight, so I’ll hope to put my September P&L back onto an even keel.

Risky Business

A quiet start to September for my Betfair exploits, caused by a two day trip to London, followed by my final music festival of the year over the past weekend. At least UEFA had the grace to put the international games on Friday evening, which gave me a weekend free of I-phone checking . My P&L for the month is currently showing a small green, and tonight’s sparse football fixture list means it will stay that way until tomorrow evening at the earliest. My involvement in the US Open tennis hasn’t really taken off. I’ve no Sky Sports at the moment, and I haven’t had the enthusiasm to get involved.

So the festival summer is over. Boo, hiss. A summer that began with on the Isle of Wight in early June with a fair performance from Doves, and ended with an entertaining set from the Ukelele Orchestra of Great Britain on a chilly September evening in a park in Moseley, Birmingham. Glastonbury was the highlight ( helped by a magnificent five days of warm sunshine ), and no festival disappointed.

Think you like to take risks? Spare a thought for Leeds/Reading Festival organiser Melvyn Benn, who booked both Pete Doherty’s Libertines and Axl Rose’s Guns N’ Roses for his main stages. This seems a little like taking Ledley King and Jonathan Woodgate as your central defensive pairing to a World Cup final with no back-up. In the end, Doherty was a success, Rose a slightly embarrassing failure, and Benn a relieved man. I’ll soon be working out next year’s festival itinerary. Although Mrs B has given me a nudge to suggest that annual holidays do not have to consist of six weekends sat in a field eating takeaway food. Umm.

So I’ve no excuses now for not buckling down to the footy season ahead. I’m looking ahead to the coming weekend. As I noted previously, I expect the season to settle down now. So time to profit ( hopefully ). I like the look of Bolton and Wolves in the Premier League, and think there may be value in following them through the coming months. The remainder of my bets will rely heavily on Soccerway.

Sense Of Achievement

On the last day of July, I lost £168.29 on Betfair. It’s happened before, it will no doubt happen again ( although hopefully not as clumsily ). But, not for the first time, it put me in a position of holding a two figure Betfair bank. As documented previously, I chose to deposit £1,000 of my hard-earned income. As February was the last time I made a noteworthy profit, this may not have seemed my most sensible option. Particularly as my blog will testify to the frustrating time I have incurred over the intervening months.

Maybe it’s that period of failure that makes today feel better. Who gets the most satisfaction from a victory – Chelsea or Barnet? Following last night's Betfair session, I was able to withdraw £250. This follows a couple of previous withdrawals totalling £750. And I have a Betfair account balance of £1010.56. So all objectives achieved – fully refund my initial deposit, average over £50/day over the days I opened the Betfair screen, and create a decent bank balance to take forward. Tick.

The skill is of course to maintain this level, and not get frustrated when the inevitable losing run comes. But the confidence gained from a month of success, rather than a few days, reduces the likelihood of meltdown. It’s way too early to believe I’ve turned a corner, but hopefully I’ve stopped my slow slide down the hill. I’ve still been frustrated ( I think it’s an unavoidable side effect of gambling ), but my frustrations have been in not taking potential opportunities, rather than placing losing bets, and they are fairly easy to exorcise if you have a nice green P&L to check regularly.

I notice that John O’Dwyer has had a rare bad week on the exchange. I started following John’s blog at the start of the year, when his published P&Ls looked very similar to my own. The subsequent months have seen wildly different progress – John’s profit increasing exponentially as he has shown an ability to profit from a wide range of sports, whilst I’ve struggled to put profitable days together and have lost confidence in most of my previously successful strategies. I was struck by how his worst spell of the year has coincided with my best performance. At least he can console himself with a trip to the US Open. My September highlight will be a trip to the Moseley Folk Festival!

A good point to have a few day’s break from the Betfair screen. I’ll be back after the bank holiday.

End of the Phoney War.

This is my new donate button. If I maintain August’s success, I’ll soon be posting tips which people will be flocking to follow. This obviously requires a batch of new readers who are uninterested in reading my previous 213 posts of woe and indiscipline, but here’s hoping.

The turnaround is due in the main to the old ‘D’ word*, added to my favourite ‘C’ word*, but I’ll save the regular mental analysis for a month-end post. Having ‘abandoned’ horse racing in a previous post, I’m actually in profit on the month on racing – a lesson in taking on selective opportunities, rather than getting into a groove of daily laying sessions. My tennis betting remains limited, if mildly profitable, with the WTA almost abandoned – not deliberately, I’m just not seeing value opportunities pre-match, and my days of following the women’s game in-play are gone.

I’m following my view from previous years that August is a month for watching football rather than betting ( apart from the Scandinavian stuff ), and getting my fingers burnt with my largest bet of the season so far only confirmed my opinion - a lay of ‘Any Unquoted’ in the correct score market in the Newcastle / Villa game! I scratched at 2-0 and took a hefty all-red at 3-0. Bah. I can’t see there being three 6-0’s each week once we get into the season, although the early games have already thrown Wigan and West Ham to the bottom of the PL, and I fear they may remain there throughout the season.

I’m away this weekend at the Leeds Festival, so for me September will bring a start to taking football seriously. Another couple of batches of games in the remainder of August should hopefully help to ease out the early season anomalies, and there are already plenty of clues for the season ahead. With my mates ‘D’ and ‘C’ in tow, I’ll be joining plenty of others looking to find that illusive edge in the footy markets. Good look to all.

*Discipline, Concentration.

But Seriously.......

I came across a blog post from the unoriginally named but consistently successful Betfair Trader, from which I take this excerpt, which rings a few bells with me at the moment.

It's one thing winning but holding onto those profits to let them mount to a decent profit is another kettle of fish. I've seen plenty of part time traders’ blogs who have a much better strike and ROI than me but soon get bored at winning small amounts and either start taking unnecessary risks to up the win rate or just get bored because they really don't need the money with a full time job. You'll see a lot of full time gamblers/traders make it work simply because they have to either thru losing a job or wanting to get out of their crappy job it's that single mindedness that will get you a long way in this business.

Like most things in life if you want something badly enough you'll do your best to achieve it, that's not to say you won't be able to make a few quid trading a few hours here and there but it's a damn site harder when all it is to you is a hobby and becomes a very dull one if you manage to make any profit from it. For a lot of people the fun is in the chase and you may find that fun disappears once you get close to cracking it so you'll end up subconsciously sabotaging yourself to get that fun back into it.

I can particularly relate to the last sentence. Just check how many times the word ‘frustration’ appears in my blog over the last six months. Also consider how my profits have disappeared over the same period.

The main relevance to my own trading is that my ‘Festival Summer’ (Glastonbury, IOW etc ) has had the side effect of reducing my work income. Welcome to the world of self employment - don’t work, don’t get paid. So having taken a quick look at my actual and potential income for June/July/August, it struck me that Betfair trading profit was now, if not essential, certainly advantageous. So August started with a £1k deposit, earlier than I suggested here, and a determination to get back into the mindset I had during my ‘full-time’ stint in 2008/9. The last six months have shown me the implications of treating Betfair as a hobby to take lightly. The only way to make profits, however sizeable, is to follow the rules you set yourself consistently, regardless of the result of the previous trade or the previous day’s trades.

Things have gone well so far. I’ve only had one losing day ( of £10 ) in the month, and there has been a definite reduction in my sense of frustration and the related overstaked bets. I’m aiming at making around £50 a day, and I’m probably limiting my potential profits by doing so. But the current aim is steady income over a period of time, not maximising profit. If I can turn a twelve day spell of success into a sixty day spell, I can consider freeing up my staking. For the moment, simply having any spell of success will help my confidence after the roller coaster of frustration and piss-poor decision making that has been my 2010 on Betfair. And ‘single mindedness’ has a big part to play in my success or failure.