The Midas Touch.

There is a song that goes " I've got the midas touch everything I touch turns to gold" another classic probably from the eighties, well unfortunately for me that's not what's happened over the past two days.

If I sit back, look, and put it in perspective I'm still above my target for the month, but really I have performed very badly these past two days putting in some bad trades and then chasing them a bit, all to try to get to my best month this year. I also overstaked sometimes and this made me bite the bullet a bit sooner than I should have done. I shall go through my spread sheets and I wouldnt be surprised that If I actually put in half the stakes I am using now I would actually have made more money if that can make sense.


Well you live and learn and I cant even blame it on the gamblers most common foe "bad luck."
I have lost £ 685 on Betfair and another £100 from my own horse bets , but after the run I had been on with them a correction is sorely overdue!



Not even gonna mention "that" fixed tennis match yesterday a bit more annoyed with the tennis in Doha where the first two matches were a joke. Ok they have earned their right to get there but Jankovic and Dementieva were poor beyond belief. Both players were clearly injured, sick or both but getting a $100,000 just for turning up means they were gonna get on that court and the punters were never gonna get a fair crack of the whip. Both had their arses kicked in double quick time, I wouldnt be surprised if they quit and Na Li and Peer came in to take the spaces.

Anyway lets hope tomorrow is better.

A New Sport ?

I didnt get where I am today without my power naps, maybe next year I can enter.

From the BBC website:

A jobless security worker has won a competition billed as Spain's inaugural siesta championship, napping for 17 minutes in a busy shopping centre.

Ecuadorean Pedro Soria Lopez took first place and 1,000 euros (£890) for his efforts - or lack of them.

Judges praised the 62-year-old not only for the duration of his 40 winks, but also for his volume, notching up snores of 70 decibels - around talking level.

The contest was run by Spain's National Association of Friends of the Siesta.

It was part of a campaign to revive the Spanish power-napping tradition, which is seen as threatened by the fast pace of modern life.

Over the course of nine days, 360 competitors were challenged to sleep for as much of a 20-minute period allotted to them as possible.

Participants stretched out on sofas in the Madrid shopping centre while their pulses were monitored to check they were asleep.

Judges awarded points for the speed with which participants fell asleep, the volume of their snoring, the most original sleeping position and the best-dressed sleeper.

Well a productive weekend which pushes October up to the second best month in the last year. If I can keep it up for another week I could have my best ever month but you never know in this game. Must of had a record on Saturday with the football as every bet/trade placed came off. The only loss was £3 which was me doing a late hedge in case Chelsea let in a goal as I backed them to win to nil.


My system lay of Swindon came off as they drew 2-2. I was too busy to get involved with Ian Erskines stuff and the SBP but I think that they both did the business this weekend and if any of you were involved you would have made a profit. All FTS games were good and the system three picks both won keeping the record to 100% for the season. The SBP bet in the NFL was Cleveland +13.5 which also came up trumps. Shame with these two as I missed profit making opportunities.

I took some pain on the horses on Saturday as a couple of hefty lays won their races but today I managed to get a lot of that back so showing a small but positive increase in my account for the weekend. The other positive came from my own bets. I had three on Saturday with two being placed at 20/1 and 12/1 and a winner at 14/1.


Today I had three again with two unplaced and one second at 25/1. The placed horse today Dear Sam got backed in from that price right down to 10/1 at the off.

The Wedge.

Dark day for football today as the thin and the thick edge of the wedge met. A mega bucks player and a mega poor club. Just imagine if some of these very rich players from some of these big clubs just all chipped in a weeks wages to help Pompey, they wouldnt be in trouble thats for sure.

As a football lover it does make me wonder what has happened to the game I grew up to love. Just like many of you football fans I was taken to see my club when I was nine years old and I remember being in the chicken run at West Ham to see Bryan "Pop" Robson score the winning goal in an FA Cup 3rd round match against Watford. We had players like my hero Billy Bonds who played 500 times for the club along with Phil Parkes, Frank Lampard Senior and Sir Trevor Brooking. When we were relegated Sir Trev stayed with us down in the Second Division to help get us back to the top division. In those days players stayed and fought for what they cared about and maybe its all bullshit but to me it was more because they were part of a community.

The last time we went down in May 2003 our team consisted of players like Jermaine Defoe, Joe Cole, David James, Glenn Johnson and Freddie Kanoute. All of who went on to bigger and better things not giving a toss about the state of the club they left. In fact as many West Ham fans know we didnt want to sell Defoe but just like Rooney he had player power and we didnt have a choice. He managed to get himself sent off three times in the first two months of life in the Championship. He probably hasnt been sent off since then.

I hope Pompey survive and I hope that these mega stars put something back into the game, but most off them will just go back to their home countries and live like Kings. Its good that people like Ian Holloway can try to make the FA/ FIFA see the error of their ways, the unfortunate thing is he is manager of Blackpool not Chelsea.

So to today which was positive and puts my Betfair account on a new high for the year.

My first football lay went down with Ausberg winning 2-1 with a goal in the final minute of the match. As you can see from the above screen shot I came out of the match after 85 minutes so didnt make a loss, but for my actual system it is a loss so the next game in German Div 2 will be lay No 2. Tomorrow has another lay, No 1 in England Div 1 which is Swindon Town at 2.02.


Today I backed three horse who all ran poorly and finished unplaced so £150 gone there. Bet Catalyst had a bet which I am doing to half stakes which was called Macs Power. As its name implies it powered home and won comfortably at 12/1 . I won £ 150 from this.

So a busy weekend ahead and I shall post again Monday. Have a good one!

Moscow Mule.

Well certainly a lot of disdain and disgust at yesterdays tennis match between Janko (The Fixer) Tipsarevic and Horacio ( Argy Bargy) Zeballos. Trawling the internet for anything on this game brought me up empty handed ,except for a quote from Neil Harman a writer for the Times who remarked what an honest tweet Janko made after he admitted that he choked. Choked wasnt the word I would use but hey it doesnt get reported it gets swept under the carpet. Just thank our lucky stars Neil Harman isnt a detective.

I was lucky enough to lay Janko the night before on Betfair at 1.23. ( That sounds wrong doesnt it.) I would like to say I had inside info but I get enough of that from all my spam mail. What i would recommend is if its not right jump in and try to make a few quid or ignore it altogether like the ATP do.


As you can see Janko had a relaxing smoke later in the evening in his crib,while listening to Cypress Hill, you go man !


Had a solid couple of days . Tennis is going well, I 've had a few profitable lays with my max liabilty always being £15 and have managed to make a dent in my £100 a day target. Yesterday I only had three horse bets as I couldnt see any value and today I didnt have any. There seems to be a lot of very trappy and low quality races about. Out of yesterdays bets I had a place at 14/1. The other two are probably just finishing now.


Tomorrow I will start my football five step lay system. I will only obviously be doing small stakes just in case it goes tits up early on, but each divsion will have five lays. If all lose then its back to the drawing board. The first lay for its division is Augsburg in German Div 2 at 1.74.
Lets see if I can get off to a flyer !

A Piece Of Luck.

Well the hot streak continued on the horses. I had just the four today and even though three were unplaced I did manage to get a nice 10/1 winner which made me a profit of £150 on the day. As you can see below this is another new Stan James account I managed to get opened up. Still not got Victor Chandler though and my Bet 365 account is in danger I think.


One of the unplaced horses I picked was called Rougham in the 3.10. It was running against four other nags in a beginners chase. Paul Nicholls had put in Celestial Halo for his chase debut and it went off at 1.29 on Betfair. Coming to four out it fell when battling for the lead with my pick. Unfortunately my horse fell as well and at first I was fuming because I thought the favourite had brought mine down but after watching the replays I could see that Rougham had fallen on its own accord. Amazingly the three horses that were well behind were suddenly in a race for the line and the 50/1 shot got beat by a head. The good news for me was I had layed the fav at 1.10 as with still four fences to go it was trading to low. This bought me in nearly £ 500 quid.


That was the highlight of the day for me and kept me in profit as my other lays went a drift and the tennis and football let me down.

Today the FTS system had two picks which were Arsenal and Burnley. Both teams won fairly easily so all the blame for the football losses go down to me as some games I thought would go one way obviously went the other. My hall of shame was backing Leeds who lost, laying Forest who won, and laying Sheff Utd who also won. So a full house there just a shame its not poker.

On The Right Track.

Its been a cracking few days for me since my last post with some lovely winners from only a few bets. I must have trod in something thats for sure. Starting with today I had just four bets with two unplaced , one placed at 14/1 and a 20/1 winner. The horse in question I backed in the morning but it returned at the same price which surprised me. It actually drifted on Betfair and went off at about 35/1 so a great touch.


Add to that the placed horse and today was a good one. On Sunday I only had three bets but again managed to find a nice priced winner in Ireland at 14/1.

And another place this time at 25/1. Again i took this at 20/1 and it drfited and went off at the bigger price which was nice.



Add to that I only had two NFL bets this weekend and both came through though one went to overtime. Thank you Mr X.


Saturday started my run off as I had another couple of winners out of six bets both at Cheltenham.

I didnt get time to put any SBP bets on over the weekend and I am not entirely sure of the results. In the college football he had an A B and C bet go down during the week but over the weekend the bets would have been profitable . In the NFL both bets won.

The FTS system is something I am having trouble with as every game chosen seems to go wrong and because Ian never shows screen shots or trades in running you are never going to know if he truly makes money at this or not. Reading his blurb and saying he makes £100k from this is pretty unbelievable to me. His system three selections are running at 100% so far this season but you are laying at odds of about 7/1 and there have only been about 9 selections so far.

I started my own football system this last weekend. The international break was good news for me as it gave me plenty of time to run through the results from 16 European leagues which was earthshatteringly boring and tedious but I have complied them all onto spread sheets. To give an idea of my strategy I have a five step betting strategy laying certain teams that are odds on. Some people will say its a martingale system but I do stop at five lays and come the end of the season we will find out. The only thing I can say is over the 16 leagues , going back to 2002 it never got beyond the fifth stage of the process.




The tennis has been going well over the last week so lets hope this continues with the Kremlin and Stockholm tournaments that have just started.

On Target...Just.

Well exactly half way through the month and my spreadsheet says I am exactly half way towards my monthly target. I am never gonna be rich but I am doing something I enjoy and that is the best thing in the world.

The last couple of days have been ok. I didnt make a bean yesterday but today would have been a cracker if not for some really poor decisions made by your's truly. Pressure makes you do rash things and today I buckled a bit. Its a bit like giving up something and then lapsing back into it and wondering where it all came from and trying to retrace what went wrong.

I chucked about £ 300 away on one particular race and the only good thing to say is that its the first time in twelve months that I have done something so silly. When I started on Betfair about five years ago it was a regular occurence but back then I had a full time job.

Below as you can see are the last couple of days figures :



The good news is the losses were well covered by my own tipping. I had five horses today and after having a lot of placed efforts recently I managed to get two winners, two placed and one out of the frame. I got on Frankie after he won the first at Newmarket and had a 9/1 winner.

He went on to ride three more winners on the day and I imagine there will be some money being lumped on him tomorrow.

In the 3.45 I wanted to get £ 25 e/w on Inca Chief but only Bet 365 had 66/1 and they wouldnt accommodate so I had to settle for £ 12.50 e/w. It actually got up in the last furlong to make a challenge before fading very quickly but just made the line in third place as the other nags swamped him.In the 4.20 handicap I had two horses Catergorical at 22/1 and Bollin Greta at 12/1. The latter won which made for a great punting day.
Bet Catalyst also had Hubris in the big race at Cheltenham and this got placed at 33/1 so well done Richard.This bought me in another £ 73.

The jumps is my favourite time for backing the horses and it was great to have Cheltenham back on TV today. There are some great cards tomorrow with Newmarket as well, where if Frankel gets any shorter in the market I will be laying it.