The Sports Trader: Friday 8th December 2006

I have had a traumatic experience today, that feeling that you get when you can not communicate with the world. No I hadn't lost my voice, hearing, eyesight or any other of my senses. It was my internet connection. I felt totally hopeless and suffered withdrawal symptoms. I switched on my computer, as normal, at around 7:45, went and got the children up and gave them their breakfast and then went back to the computer to have a look at my emails. Nothing was happening. I did all the checks to see if there was a problem at my end then decided to call Bulldog. Give them their due, they were courteous and soon discovered that my local exchange was down and dispatched engineers. I was even given a text message to confirm what I had already been told and with a number to call back for updates. After getting the children to school I tried my computer again - same result. I then rang the update line and was connected to a recorded message telling me their was a fault at my exchange and to find out more information please 'log on to Bulldog Broadband' How the F**K could I do that. That type of thing really gets to me. I had a lot to do and just could not get on, so I resorted to doing all the house work like us single parent family fathers have to do from time to time. Please don't any of you husbands out there be conned by your wife telling you that it is hard work, this house work lark, it's not. Anyway after trying to connect several more times and getting no answers form Bulldog I decided to track down my local exchange and speak to the engineers to see when I might expect to be reconnected. No engineers in sight, so I then started to think that perhaps they hadn't even been sent to repair the exchange. I went back home and guess what? I had a connection, so I fired everything up and just managed to see the last two furlongs of the 13:55 at Cheltenham and to compensate me for my bad day to date the gods were on my side as I backed Spot The Difference for £100 @ 3.75 just going over the final fence, so I started the day after missing the first 10 races with a profit of £275. The next race I traded was the 14:30 at Cheltenham where I backed Pilca for £776 @ 2.75 just after the second last fence and to me looking to clear away from the field. But then Border Castle came tanking along so I tried to lay my liability with Pilca still well in front @ 1.55. I only got £45 matched and then backed Border Castle for £200 @ 1.10 to leave me with a net loss of £710 - ouch! Next up was the 14:55 @ Southell and here I backed Sir Bathwick for £400 @ 1.46 in the final few yards as Burntoakboy was challenging but lucky my horse kept his nose in front to give me a £184 profit. The next race for me was the 15:05 at Cheltenham where there was a great deal of liquidity, indeed in a lot of the big races today Betdaq liquidity was very close to that on Betfair. I layed the favourite, Jockser, at about half distance for £500 @ 6.00. This was an unusually large lay for me but the horse just did not seem to travelling so I went with it. Shortly after I layed him I backed back partially @ 8.10 for £22, £3 @ 16's, £5 @ 25's and £20 @ 50's and finished up with a very nice £448 profit and all commission free. I had one other very small profitable trade in the 15:20 @ Wolverhampton and this left me with a profit of £196 on the day's racing after trading just 5 events.

I didn't think I would trade any of the football tonight as both games were being traded on the Betdaq unattended basis where there are no suspensions after goals, red cards or any other event that might take place. I had a quick look at the Bayer Leverkusen V Hertha Berlin and did have one very small trade to give me a £3 profit and then I switched channels to the England v Scotland U16 match. The match was in the 65th minute when I started to watch with the score at 2 -1 so my favoured market of under/over 2.5 goals was already finished. I then had a look at the match result market and in the 75th minute I backed England for £285 @ 1.20 which I thought were brilliant odds considering this is an Under 16 match that only lasts 80 minutes. England duly held on to their lead and I made another £57. So I have finished this shortened day with a profit of £256.

I would like to say that although I was not best pleased with Bulldog, (or Pipex as it is now), this morning, I have had a very good service from them for nearly two years and this was my first outage with them.

With Christmas just over two weeks away I thought I would put together a few links to sites that are offering some very good present ideas for us racing enthusiasts. I know my family never know what to buy me and I am sure many of you find the same so you end up with presents that you will never use. Just direct your loved ones to these links on the bottom left of my blog and I am sure you will find some very useful gifts. In particular no racing enthusiast should be without the Form Calendar at just £12 and which I have bought for myself already. In John Francombe's words it brings a mixture of glamour and fun to a sporting calendar that gives all the main racing dates and locations and also helps support The Countryside Alliance.