A disappointing evening

It always seems that whenever I am most bullish about a weekend’s schedule the more I seem likely to be proved incorrect and it is fair to say that this weekend did not get off to the best start possible with Leeds thrashing Castleford 76 – 12. I did speculate that Leeds had the ability to annihilate a side before the end of the season and they did so in spectacular fashion with winger Ryan Hall scoring five tries alone. I don’t think the end result makes my initial position any worse however. It seems like Leeds were at the top of their game and Castleford the bottom. Replay the game 100 times and this might happen 2 or 3, but I equally think that Castleford would win and contest more than their starting price suggested.

The SKY game was a damp squib from 30 minutes onwards as Wigan raced to 1.01. It had to happen sooner rather than later I suppose and I can only say that I traded the game terribly. I have a difficulty in backing underdogs on SKY because, if the score goes against you, there is very little in the way of recovery whereas the longer a game is close, the more I know I can trade the market to build green on the value selection. Such a thought means that I dip in and out of the underdog and that was evidenced in so far as I largely missed Warrington’s score early on which sent Wigan out to the 1.4s. I had managed to build around £50 green on Warrington and around £750 on the draw but that would all come to nothing as Wigan raced back as Warrington tired and saw the influential Lee Briers leave the field. I ended up losing £10 on the main match market.

I had also traded abysmally as I got too caught up in reacting to the events in the first half, overstating the value of changes of possessions, penalties, knock ons etc. However, I won’t dwell on those too much because I probably only have around 20 games left to trade this season and I should focus on what I do right to make the largest profit I can. I do feel however that my confidence in predicting has taken an irrational hit tonight; I know my strategy is capable of extended losing runs, and getting just 2 wrong is hardly the end of the world, but it just reflects my loss avoidance mentality when really a profit and gain mentality is more appropriate for my strategy.

A quick note on the football as the Premier League starts tomorrow. I have looked to trade 4 games so far to warm me back into the swing of things and I must say that on the whole they went okay if not brilliantly.

To recap, my current strategy is to scalp 0 – 0 down to 6, back 2-1 and 1-2, cover the higher scores and back unquoted. I have yet to decide on liability size for the upcoming season. I clearly have more money to play with, but clearly need to learn more about the markets.

In fact, I almost wonder if just scalping 0 – 0 and leaving it at that would be best given this week’s performances – the fact is that I have struggled in trading sensibly after the first goal goes in. For instance, a goal to the favourite sees my 2-1 and 1-2 backs almost entirely reliant on an underdog goal next and although unquoted can cover this, maybe I need to consider 3-0 although the relative size of this would mean that I could not cover unquoted and a couple of quick goals would leave that very precarious.

However, it’s all food for thought at the moment. I need to develop further in this market and whilst it will never be as profitable as RL is, I’m hopeful of getting to know the market well enough to be able to make a good profit, as I felt confident of doing towards the end of last season. I am out tomorrow but will look to trial the system on Sunday, although I must say that neither game looks a good fit for my strategy, but I don’t really know enough about football to be confident in that!