I'll Be Back.

Not a good weekend of punting for followers of my bets with every horse running complete nightmares. I am sure you have heard it all before but thats part of life in gambling. After making a superb +96 points in January ,this month now stands at a meagre +14 points. All that can be done after a shit weekend is to pick yourself back up and start again.

Still its a profit from the bookies and luckily for me my trading has been pretty good with the horses and football. Some of my own selections I have traded in running with my biggest win on Jump Jet that I put up as a selection on Friday i think. This hit about 1.4 in running before finishing third.

The horse lays are still in the middle of a cycle that I use so I havent posted any up on twitter yet, and to be honest I am having second thoughts about doing this as I dont need the grief if losing sequences occur. I think this very famous piece of work says it all:

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or, being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with triumph and disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with wornout tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on";

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings - nor lose the common touch;
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run -
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man my son!

Moving forward I like so many others have been poor keeping the blog going so I will take the decision that until I feel inspired to write more often and with a greater input I shall stop. I did this last year for about three months. I will obviously be on twitter posting my selections until everyone gets pissed off with them and just so you dont think I have done my bank here is my BF statement for last seven days.


Thanks for reading and for all the comments and as Arnie says " Ill Be Back". I wanted to put two of the best bits of comedy TV I have seen on the blog. One was on ATR a few weeks ago and one was sent to me by "The Professional Loafer"!! Please watch and laugh...



The second one I can not embed but heres the link:



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d3-E3mAQVyU&feature=channel

Update.

Well a great Superbowl final last night which I managed to pocket a few quid from. I felt that the Packers who were 18 points ahead at one stage and trading at 1.09 were really not in charge of their destiny. The Steelers seemed to me the better team and it was a case of whether they were going to win or shoot themselves in the foot. As it was they gave it away with three turnovers that the Packers scored three touchdowns from. Strange type of game as I felt the best team lost and the team with a 10-6 regular season record won the Superbowl. Two teams with 14-2 regular season records came nowhere. Congrats to all cheeseheads though.


Had an ok week the horses are a couple of points ahead and all football lays have lost their matches, so this is about 3 points ahead as well.

I have been asked about the horse laying system I use. This is a system that has taken a long time to put together. It has made about 160 points profit at level stakes, but I use a daily 1-4 staking plan so this recoups loses quicker and has boosted the profits to about 360 points. It is not for the faint hearted but if you lay at £25,£50,£75 and £100 as per the staking plan it can build a nice bank slowly but surely. I use the same type of staking for my football lays as well.

At the moment I am in a cycle on the lays but have decided to also post these up on twitter in the mornings with the relevant staking plan for anybody to follow. I have had to lock my account as I had a lot of spammers and idiots following me which is not what I want but if you would like to follow just send a request.

Lastly does anyone have any experience of 1st Class Lays I have been following for a while but I beleive the results arent what they seem. The website says they proof to "Laying The Odds" but there is no such site. I had contact with "Lay The Odds" who do not proof them and after sending numerous emails to them I have not had a reply with a link to the proofed results. All looks a bit fishy to me !

Thank You Mr Grace.

I bet the majority of you dont know what sentence comes before that heading..

So a great month for me with my own horse bets finishing +96, a really pleasing start which certainly amazed me as I usually average about 40 points per month. Yesterdays effort from Teenage Idol put the icing on the end of month cake as it got backed in from the 16/1 I got,to 7/1 at the off. It then pretty much bolted up winning by quite a few lengths. Unfortunately I had to split the stakes across three different bookies and two different accounts, but dont you just love that....

Sports wise a great weekend, I didnt bother watching much football as I was really engrossed in the Snooker Shoot Out. This turned out to be a great tournament which had more swings than a darts match, which I would say is the quickest sport to have a go at. Below is the blurb..

The birthchild of World Snooker Limited Director Barry Hearn, the event was designed to attract a younger generation and new sponsors to a sport with flagging attendances and recent corruption allegations. The format sees the world's top 64 players play one frame knockout matches lasting a maxmium of 10 minutes.

Other such rules include a 20 second shot clock for the first five minutes, a 15 second shot clock for the final five minutes and a free ball in hand for any foul. Players must also make a pot or ensure at least one ball hits a cushion, eliminating the common tactic of rolling up behind a colour to enforce a snooker.

After much trepidation beforehand about whether the idea would be a flop, fans and players alike embraced Hearn's new competition. Six time World Snooker champion Steve Davis said: "I was a bit sceptical about how stupid this tournament would look but he has the midas touch."

As expected, some players struggled to adjust and cope with the rule changes more than others, rewarding those that can play and think quickly. Peter Edbon and Dave Harold, regarded as two of the slowest players on the circuit and with no experience of the Premier League shot clock, fell at the first hurdle.

The winner of the whole tournament Nigel Bond in his first match was down about 20 points and his opponent traded as low as 1.13 to win. As soon as a ball was missed the odds flew to over 2.0. There was also a game with Neil Robertson running round the table to beat the clock and potting a black in the very final second to win his match by one point. Again his opponent traded down at 1.04.If you like to lay low this was fantastic and gave me my third highest profit of the month after horse racing and darts.

I am sure that everybody has seen another service hit their emails this month. "Never had a losing month" screamed the headlines. This is http://portfoliopowerhouse.com , funny how going back five years of backs and lays not one losing month in that whole time. This is the first month of free trials and guess what, both backs and lays made losses in January to the tune of £1k (following advised stakes) this happens all the time with back fitted systems that just pull out certain courses, grounds and distances trying to make the past replicate the future. This rarely happens, if you go to Adrian Masseys site you can pick any number of variants to make your own system and spend literally years looking for that one winner. But in the majority of cases one good year for lays becomes a bad year the next.I wish the service well but dont get suckered in to much.

While on this subject I got my old laptop out and looked under the favourites heading. There were about ten websites that I followed for lays back then and also some football stuff and do you know not one of the websites is now trading , all have gone.

Back to the trading and the most disappointing again is football, my only losses this month were from this. I am in that rut when I have lost confidence in what I am doing and going into trades thinking that they will go against me. Speaking of this, all the lay the draw merchants must be having a hard time because I have noticed the draw odds drifting on so many games as I imagine people pile into them, also they tend to be holding up more in play. This month I shall be keeping the faith but using lower stakes, at least my own lay system games have been good and a profit has been made so this has helped.

Finally congrats to Crawley Town for being in the last 16 of the FA Cup. I went to school and grew up in the town until I left for pastures new at age 25. I used to go to the old ground "Town Mead" by Crawley Fire station and watch the team play with a few hundred others.

The last time they had a meaningful game in the FA Cup was the 3rd round in 1992 I travelled down to watch them play Brighton at the Goldstone Ground , and they got stuffed 5-0 ! One of my funnist memories at that game was the first Crawley foul drew a chorus of "You dirty Northern Bastards" 19,000 were there that day.

Anyway should be a great day out against Man Utd and I have already had lots of texts about going......

Lax.

Well very bad this month with the blogging as I have not been able to really find the time, or the inclination to put my thoughts down in writing. I am not the best with this twitter lark but as a newbie I have found it really helpful for posting up my bets and reading other peoples thoughts on this betting lark. I try to get my bets on line in plenty of time for anyone to follow if they so wish and make them clear and concise.

This month has been a great one with +76 points on the racing so far, today I had a 33/1 come 2nd and a 14/1 come second with one unplaced. It was a bumper Saturday for me with a 14/1 and 8/1 winner. The 8/1 went off at 7/2 and won on the line, which helped ease the pain of Somersby which just didnt get up to defeat Master Minded in the big race. If you follow you will see I only place value bets, which the bookies dont like which is why I keep my stakes to £25 each way. If I could get more off I would but its wise to not get to greedy.

A case in point was tonight where in the X Club one of the guys told me about a bet on Arsenal to score 4 goals against Ipswich. They were 5/2 (3.5) with Hills to get the 4 goals but any unquoted score on Betfair was 2.68 to lay so a fantastic opportunity to get a free bet ( as long as it wasnt Ipswich getting the 4 goals!) being greedy I tried to get £500 with Hills on this but got knocked back to just £200, and then a miserly £40 on another Hills account I have . Unfortunately they only got 3 but a fourth would have given me a nice profit of approx £190. So a nothing bet but I hope the knock back doesnt effect me in the future...

I am 3 and a 1/2 points down on the tennis so far but still have Woz who I backed at 9.8 before the start, she is now in the semi finals and I shall look to lay this off if she makes the Final. Mind you if it is against Zvonareva I might let it ride.

The football lays I have been posting up are in profit to the tune of 2 whole points! Again its better than nothing but I got myself out of the whole with the 4 point lay of Doncaster tonight.
Ten days ago on the Saturday I posted up an amazing free bet I found with Raith being 2.4 on Betfair to lay but backable at 2.75 with a couple of bookies, there was £3k sitting there early in the morning to lay.

Trading football wise I havent done many games at all apart from the Asian Cup games in the afternoon which have been ripe for the goal markets especially again today with both Japan/Korea and Aus/Uzbek games being very profitable. The odds gave a good amount of time to be in the markets waiting for goals to come and neither disappointed.

The horse lays are also up about 15 points this month bringing the total to over 350 points in the past 18 months. So all is good for the time being at least!

Back To The Future.

I remember somebody saying to me that after visiting New Zealand it reminded them off England thirty years ago. I had an idea of what they meant but having never crossed so many time zones in my life it has always been one of life's great mysteries for me.
I know from looking back at my blog and obviously from my memory that one year ago I was sitting here watching the tennis from Auckland just as I am now, when suddenly it hit me what they meant.

In between games the music comes on, and while the watchers sit under the green parasols at the side of the court drinking pimms in the midday sun, the sounds being piped over the speakers are the sounds of thirty years ago.

Its like Dazzling Darrens disco as "Walking On The Moon" by The Police, then "Redemption Song" by Bob Marley, "Easy" by Lionel Ritchie , and then rounded off with a bit of Hall and Oates come drifting in the air reminding me of my youth. The more amazing thing for me is that they played exactly the same songs during the breaks this time last year. Groundhog day New Zealand style, so if you get the chance to watch on Betfair video, sit back, relax, enjoy and dont forget your pimms! Magic FMs got nothing on this tournament.

It made me think of when I go to the gym, I used to take an Ipod but its a pain having the lead dangling around you while trying to exercise so now I go and have to hear the same old stuff there too. Sometimes I think I'm in "One Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest" and I am waiting for the loudspeaker to call out " medication time, medication time."

So a nice 12/1 winner with Dandy Boy winning in Meydan today wiping out the small losses from the last three days and putting me up 48 points for the month. Traded some tennis last few days and added 2% to my bank and some Asian Cup football but broke even there. The markets apart from the Australia game were saying no goals but I am hoping that a few more will be forthcoming especially in the knock out stages.

I had a winning lay with Ath Madrid and then a disaster with Southampton but that League will move on to lay no 2 this weekend which at the moment is looking like Brighton but I will know for sure tomorrow.

As I am not pasting anymore, so for decorative purposes, and for all you tennis fans here is Ms Sharapovas new Nike outfit for the Australian Open. Once the draw is made for this tournament I am going to put up a couple of backs to lay.

Round Up.

So three bets Sunday with two places and a big 33/1 winner. Across The Bay ran a lovely race always near the head of the field and never looking in trouble.



This made up for a unlucky Saturday as 12/1 shot Giles Cross traded down at 1.40 in running before running out of the steam in the Welsh Grand National and coming second to APs mount. Good old good AP now has the Grand Slam of Nationals in his pocket. In the race before Professor Emery also traded at 1.5 with a couple of fences left before completely fading away in the heavy ground to finish third.

This gives a profit of 42 points for the week so if you are following on twitter I hope you had a few quid on as well.

The past week on Betfair has been its normal up and down, winning on Racing and Darts but losing on Tennis and Football, but last weeks profit has put my account at a new high!!

The Tennis has been my fault with some poorly executed decisions and one game where I thought a turn around was forthcoming which wasnt! The Football hasnt actually been that bad just had a down turn with following Pete Norsteds draw master which unfortunately is going through a rough spell but that is only to be expected with an ROI of around 50% which couldnt be sustained. I also signed upto his newsletter that has an Italian Strategy which has had four losers in a row. So hopefully better times around the corner with that.


I have mentioned before about going through spreadsheets of football data to try to get myself a system or basis of that to help with my trading. I had completed it last month but really didnt know how to harness the information to make it viable or profitable for that matter. To this end I have come up with two ideas both with staking plans based on fibonacci.I dont have fancy names so System 1 will be laying odds on teams in certain European leagues. The leagues will not be mixed into together but seperated so each one will have its own staking ladder. The plan will be 1/2/3/5/8/13, so basically if I call five losers in a row in a particular league then the sixth and final bet will be 13 times your original stake. If that loses then its back to the beginning.

The second system is again laying certain teams in European Leagues with the following staking plan 1/2/4/8. Again these will be favourites in their matches but not odds on favourites so the plan is more aggressive to get back losses. Just like my horse bets I will be posting these on Twitter so if you want to follow for small stakes please do. I have checked previous years results in the leagues I have selected but obviously that doesnt mean the future will repeat the past !

The 1st selection for system 1 (which was tweeted) was lay Crotone in Serie B for a 1 point stake last Saturday. I managed to lay them at 1.80 though this was a loser as they won 2-0, so this league will go onto lay no 2 when I find a game that matches.

Finally I am not going to be cutting and pasting my Betfair and Racing results on here anymore.

This is more for personal and time reasons than anything else, but if you see my twitter posts you can get an idea for yourself how things are going.

R.I.P

Yes R.I.P Gary Mason who fought hard and fair, this obit from the guardian:

Gary Mason, who has died in a cycling accident at the age of 48, will be remembered principally for the only professional boxing match he ever lost – for the British heavyweight title against Lennox Lewis at the Wembley Arena in March 1991. The 28-year-old Mason was a 2-3 favourite, but had a problem that Lewis exploited mercilessly: a year earlier he had had surgery to repair a detached retina on his right eye.

Lewis had trained by placing tape just above the right eyes of his sparring partners. He closed Mason's eye, forcing a stoppage in the seventh round, but only after absorbing some heavy body blows. Several years later, he acknowledged to me: "You may be surprised, but of all my opponents, Mason hit the hardest."

Mason, the son of a Jamaican-born carpenter, grew up in Clapham, south London. By his late teens he had developed a powerful 6ft 1in physique, which he put to good use in the amateur boxing ring.

In 1984 he turned professional under the management of Mickey Duff, who developed his career carefully. By then Mason had grown to more than 17 stone, and was far too strong for his initial opponents. After a three-year apprenticeship, Duff arranged more challenging contests, and Mason proved that he was more than just a heavy-handed brawler. He had a tight defence, an accurate jab and – unlike Duff's premier breadwinner, Frank Bruno – one of the hardest chins in the business.

Mason beat Hughroy Currie in the Royal Albert Hall, London, to win the British title in January 1989, but by then his focus was on the world rankings. His biggest victory came later that year when he knocked out America's former Olympic super-heavyweight gold medallist, Tyrell Biggs, in seven rounds. This propelled Mason to fourth in the rankings of the World Boxing Council, but soon afterwards he suffered the detached retina and retired briefly.

Nine months on, following surgery, he returned to stop another American fringe contender, setting up the Lewis fight for a record British title purse of £276,000. Duff was delighted, accusing Lewis's management of "doing a Cecil B DeMille in reverse – taking a star and turning him into an unknown". Instead, the defeat, and the consequent loss of the British title, began a long downward spiral for Mason. "After losing to Lennox, I just didn't want to play any more," he told me. He changed his mind three years later, picking up a couple of wins in the US, but when he was refused a UK licence he retired for good at the age of 32 with a record of 37 wins, 34 of them knockouts, and one loss.

His party-loving lifestyle and doomed investments, including a jeweller's shop called Punch 'n Jewellery, had soaked up his savings, but he pressed on with fresh schemes. He made a pilot programme called Who's Gary Mason? and hawked it around the television studios, "but nobody seemed to want it". He signed for the London Crusaders rugby league side but gave up after three games. He invested in a clothing line called Punch and Style, "but that didn't work out either". He worked as a Sky Sports commentator, but inadvertent on-air swearing led to his being dropped.

Mason then headed for Tenerife, in the Canary Islands, where his activities included promoting arm-wrestling shows, "but no one would invest". He later set up stall as a boxing promoter, predicting: "In time I will be as devastating as a promoter as I was as a boxer." But again it flopped. Soon after his final tournament, his father died and his brief marriage collapsed. He took a job as a hospital security guard, but was fired for too much flirting with the female staff. One of his subsequent ventures was to front a charity called the Rhythmical Empowerment Group to "promote equality and diversity through music and rhythm".

Throughout all these setbacks, Mason came across as a bright, optimistic and avuncular man, always willing to help at charity events, full of ideas and schemes and always ready to break out into his deep "ho-ho-ho" laugh, invariably at his own expense.

Mason was riding his bicycle in Wallington, south London, when he was in a collision with a van, and was pronounced dead at the scene.

• Gary Mason, boxer, born 15 December 1962; died 6 January 2011

Cinzano Bianco

No gripes today as everything ended in positive territory. After yesterdays post my old boss would have been happy that all departments were green if only by small amounts !

The horse bets finished up by £280. I picked seven horses and to be fair they all ran terribly apart from one Bianco Fuji and luckily for me it came home a nice easy winner at 16/1. I did list it on my twitter page so I hope I wasnt alone in punting it.

Think they should have called it Cinzano Bianco though, brings back memories of Leonard Rossister and Joan Collins, but I digress...



The BDO World Darts has been running for a few days and even though I dont think the standard is as good as the PDC its better for trading as more doubles are missed which means lots more price swings. I remember last year a 1.01 getting turned over and today we had a 1.02 nearly get done followed next game by a 1.06 getting a resounding beating. Darts is full of peaks and troughs it just whether you are brave enough to jump in and hold on for the ride !

Myself I dont risk much I lay low so have a very limited downside and steer clear of either player around the evens mark.

Tennis is now in full swing on the other side of the world. Last year I stayed up through the night on many a freezing cold January night and felt like shit the next day, so this time I am going to give it a miss until the AO comes about. Lots of surprises in Brisbane though on Monday, one Czech lefty took out one of the top seeds, as Kvitova beat No.3 seed Petrova. That theme came up again on Tuesday as another Czech left-hander, Savarova upset the tournament's No.2 seed, Peer.

The two had played three times before on the WTA, with Peer leading the series, 2-1. After they split the first two sets it seemed Peer was on her way to another victory, building a 5-2 third set lead; she even held match point with Safarova serving at 5-4. But Safarova finished strong, winning 10 of the last 11 points to upset the No.13-ranked Israeli in two hours and 30 minutes.

"Shahar is a fighter and the match was very long. In the end, it could've gone either way," Safarova said afterwards. "I'm very happy to win this match. It's nice to perform so well right before the AO. I worked very hard in the off-season and I'm happy to play these kinds of matches right now."

Safarova has now won four of her last six matches against Top 15 players.

"I'm happy I'm playing this kind of tennis now," the 23-year-old added. "My goal this year is to be in the Top 20. I'm going to work hard to get there."

I think the Womens AO tournament will be far more an interesting with Serena missing, Kim will be favourite and rightly so but after last years first round exit I will be interested to see Sharapovas draw.


Only had the one football bet today from Premier Betting which was a winner. For the money I think this is a great site with ratings, injury news, analysis, and the odd winner !

New Year.

Belated Happy New Year to all readers of my blog. So after a busy Xmas, I settled back down to work on the January 1st. After the slowness of December the sporting feast has arrived in the New Year with a bang.

An absolute cracker of a World Darts Final with Adrian Lewis finally coming of age smashing records all over the place to overcome a gallant Gary Anderson. If you missed the amazing 9 darter at the beginning of the match have a look below.

As the German commentator says "Thats RocknRoll."




As mentioned before, this year I not following any horse tipsters just my own selections . I have added a twitter link on the right so if I do fancy anything it will get mentioned on there so if you are interested please follow, just dont blame me if they lose !

I had the typical moaning day on Saturday with a 11/1 shot that I backed getting over 11k matched at 1.01 but somehow losing. It was pretty strange as it had more to do with camera angles than anything because it obviously looked all over the winner but as the camera swung round it was actually behind.
It added to my frustration as I tried to get on Blazing Bailey at Cheltenham but couldnt get the 12/1 anywhere. I was being offered 10/1 by Stan James but believe it or not I didnt think it was good enough value at that price in such a large and competitive field. I then had to watch as it romped home. I then had another called "Junior" which I tweeted at 8/1 trade at 1.25 before coming second.

Just three bets on Sunday with one winning at 7/1 and one placed as well, and nothing today.

I imagine I will not have anywhere near the amount of bets I had last year but this will help free me up to follow some projects I want to and hopefully benefit my trading.


Talking of trading my 2011 P/L looks a bit messy. I find it a bit like my old job where I had four parts of a commission structure to complete to get paid well, I normally could get two or three but there was always something lagging behind dragging me down. Then when the boss wanted to see me that was what he concentrated on and not the positive.


So the balls up is with football. I did a few games over the weekend and things just didnt work out, goals came when I didnt want them to and goals didnt when I did. In three matches I had money next in the queue when goals were scored and once like tonight I had got my lay money matched and within seconds a goal was scored costing me £100. Poor choices, poor selections?
Time will tell.

The horses are going well so thats the positive and am looking forward to seeing some tennis again.