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......