Wednesday 28 January 2009

You have to laugh

Sometimes, you just have bad luck. Other times, you add bad decisions to bad luck and sometimes you fluke out.

The past few days, I definitely fall into the second category.

Last weekend, I decided I would trade three football matches. At complete random, I opted to trade West Ham v Hartlepool, Man Utd v Tottenham and Liverpool v Everton. The three matches I opted not to trade were Aberdeen v Rangers, the Barcelona game on SKY Sports on Saturday night and Cardiff v Arsenal.

This decision was completely random, but resulted in me missing out on two 0 - 0s and one which plunged from over 30 to under 15 at least, whilst I traded three games which had first half goals.

The crazy thing is, I have done this all month! The matches I have traded were not 0 - 0. The matches I have not were 0 - 0. The decisions were not made expecting any game to be 0 - 0 or not to be 0 - 0.

I then briefly traded the Dancing On Ice elimination market on Sunday, watching former Saints coach Ellery Hanley in a sequin definitely makes you look twice! Whilst I had not watched Dancing On Ice before this season, his ridiculous dancing made me look twice again when I saw he could still be backed at 13 and I managed to get £7 matched. It soon became apparent that Hanley, in my mind, was at worst a 5 to 1 shot.

What did I do? I traded out before 11, slightly concerned with liquidity. However, for £7 I took a ridiculous price, and this is something I do way too often. Of course, within 30 minutes he was trading below 5, and a potential very large profit had been turned into a small profit, although one that nearly took me back to my balance at the start of the month.

Now, I had thought that in 2009, I would be able to "flick a switch" and start believing in my trades more and being more aggressive. However, I am finding myself doing the complete opposite.

Therefore, I set myself an exercise. Place minimum stake bets on 0 - 0s on football matches where the starting odds were around 10. Now, my thinking was that as I trade out too early too often, it would be a good lesson if I did not trade out on events which would see price drops. I was amazed at how much I wanted to trade out. The price would drop by two or three ticks and I would literally have to stop myself from laying off. I did manage to do so in the end, but thought that I still needed to work in this area and therefore decided to back 0 - 0 on all 10 Premiership Games on Tuesday and Wednesday. I do not need to tell you what subsequently happened!!! Making matters funnier, I had been reading about late goals, and did consider laying all current scores with around 10 - 15 minutes to go but opted against it. Of course, 5 of tonight's 6 games, did experience score changes in this period, and now I notice that Celtic v Dundee has finished 0 -0, another game that I did briefly consider trading but then opted to trade only Premiership games!!!

So now I find myself down £35 for the month, and totally bereft of confidence. It feels like I have the ability to make a game 0 -0!

I am honestly not too sure of the next move to make. Things seem to have gone downhill, ironically, since I let my heart rule my head in the NFC Conference Championship Game. It sure feels that the next match I decide not to back will be 0 -0!

On an unrelated note, I have only just realised how difficult it has been to keep the blog regularly updated, I guess when I started it I forgot how tired I usually feel after work, although I do seem to waste a hell of a lot of time in general just by not prioritising. I hope to review most of my trades over the next couple of days, although this itself won't be easy as my usual way of charting price data on events I trade on, lite Betfair, is still down! and don't know what I will do with regard to trading this weekend. Although I still have close to four figures in my account, I feel like I am in a negative position, on account of this month, and hate to trade from a losing position, as it feels like I will only lose more money.

As always, I would be extremely grateful for any comments (Probably telling me how much of an idiot I am!) and advice on what to do next!

The switch certainly hasn't been flicked yet.

1 comment:

  1. Hi Craig,

    I know the feeling well....no matter what you try and do, nothing seems to come off!!!
    Happens to us all at times,

    I'm sure it will pass soon.

    Best of Luck!!

    ReplyDelete