Tuesday 26th December 2006

With two days off from sports trading I was a little trigger happy today. These days with so many races are not normally very good to me as there is no time to learn the jockey colours between races. Liquidity also suffers as a lot of people will decided to trade just certain meetings and leave the others out for the day. I was just too keen to get a score on the board and tended to start trading too early in the races.

In the 12:00 at Market Rasen.I laid Seafire Lad for £36 @ 2.55 at about half distance and was just too slow to back him to recover my stake, I therefore started with a loss of £36. Next was the 12:15 at Huntingdon. I had ten trades in this race and all on the favourite, Christdalo, with my opening trades a lay for £100 @ 2.10 and a back for £100 @ 2.20. I continued like this until the last two furlongs where I managed to back him for another £114 @ 1.88 when I meant to lay and that was that another loss of £85.

I then had two very small profitable trades before the 12:35 at Kempton where I laid Kicks For Free for£28 @ 1.74 quite early in the race for my first decent profit of £28 for the day. Next was the 12:40 at Towcester, and here I laid Ask The Umpire for £14 @ 4.50 in the first half mile when he was not travelling well, for a profit of £14.

I then had another two very small profitable trades before a run of losing races for me. The first was the 13:10 at Kempton where I backed Yes Sir for £54 @ 2.81 and again for £25 @ 3.00 whilst thinking that A P McCoy was just holding him up and come with one of his great finishes, but how wrong could I be so I was down another £79. In the 13:15 at Towcester I backed Oscar Jack for £94 @ 2.25 whilst in the lead and approaching the third last hurdle only to see him over taken soon after wards with no chance to trade out to give me a £94 loss.

Then in the 13:40 at Market Rasen I backed Mr Woodentop for £81 @ 3.00 again when in the lead and with the same result as he was soon passed and lost me another £81. In the 13:50 at Huntingdon I laid Ma Furie for £100 @ 4.30 and backed her for £55@ 4.70 to give me a much needed profit of £45. In the 13:55 at Wetherby I laid Aston Lad for £25@ 7.50 and backed him for £15 @ 10.00 to net me a further £10. Next was the 14:00 at Leopardstown where I laid Savitha for £33 @ 11.00 when well beaten about two hurdles from the finish to give a profit of £33.

Then came the big race of the day The King George V1 Chase at Kempton. I have always liked Kauto Star but he does have a problem with his jumping so I was just watching and set up a lay on him for £510 @ 2.00 just in case he hit a fence hard. As I had thought he did hit a couple quite hard and eventually went straight through the final fence but his balance was brilliant and he kept on his feet to win. It was the third fence from home that he hit quite hard and stumbled, and at this point I hit my submit button. When I realised he was going to survive I tried to cancel but to no avail my £510 was gone for my biggest loss on the day. Funnily enough I was not too upset with this loss because, 9 times out of 10, I will win this type of trade.

In the 14:25 at Towcester I backed Blaze Ahead for £80 @ 3.50 at around 3 furlongs out and laid back £80 @ 1.60 very shortly afterwards to net me £152 on the race. Next for me was the 14:30 at Wetherby where I backed Bestofthebrownies for £55 @ 2.80 about 4 fences out when in the lead, only to see him blunder at the next and cost me a £55 loss. My next race was the 15:00 at Kempton and here I laid Craven for £25 @ 10.00 and Gentleman Jim for £19 @ 15.72 to give me a profit of £45. In the 15:05 at Wetherby I backed Jimmy Bond for £88 @ 2.03 to give me a profit of £91.

Next was the 15:10 at Leopardstown where quite early on I laid Mansony for £5 @ 4.00 but managed to back him for £326 @ 1.20 on the run in to net another £50 profit. Then came the 15:15 at Wincanton where I laid He’s The Gaffer for £66 @ 10.00 at about half distance to give me another profit of £66. I had three more small and profitable trades before the end of my racing day. I finished with a total loss of £472, not a great start to trading after the festivities.

Tonight's football match was the Premiership clash between Watford and Arsenal. I was quite busy with cooking the evening meal before the start but saw the odds for under 2.5 goals at around 1.95 so I put up a back for £500 at 1.95 about 30 minutes before kick off and went away to prepare the meal . I kept coming back into my office to see if I had been matched. The odds were continuing to drop but I decided not to move my odds down. By kick off the odds were down around 1.85. I watched the start of the game for a few minutes and then served the meal for my kids and I . When we had finished and I had done the washing up I went back to my office to see that now the score was 1 -1 and the odd for under 2.5 goals was 7.00 and I thought I would have a little play on the market by backing the unders for £9 @ 7.00 and a further £8 @ 5.00 a little later. I laid back this liability @ 1.85 to leave me with a good result if no more goals were scored. Then with 10 minutes left I backed the unders again for £67 @ an average of 1.80. I had put lays up to get out of this position just before the third goal was scored and was not matched therefore I was left with a loss of £67.

I turned my attention to the under 3.5 goal market and with just 4 minutes left on the clock I backed under 3.5 goals for £1000 @ 1.38, which I considered to be very generous odds. I laid back £223 @ 1.01 in the second minute of injury time. The final whistle went and I managed a profit of £382 in this market and a total for the match of £315.

Next I turned my attention to the PDC World Darts Championship. I just caught the end of the Ovens V Tabern match and managed to back Tabern for £27 @ 1.30 just as he threw for the match to net me a very quick £8 profit. So I have finished my day with a loss of £89, which considering the start I had is not too bad.

Comments

[A.S.A]

Hi mate.I've been reading your nice blog for a while and I have to say that I really enjoy your writtings.I wish health for you and all of your 6 children and a very good year.

I've a question mate: How can you get informed that which matches will be offered for in-running markets? Would you explain?

Thanks in advance

[Ray]

Hi A.S.A.
Thanks for your comments. The only way that I learn which matches are to be in play is to go to the Betdaq main page and see the mathces listed. If they have a TV channel on the header for the game they will almost always be in play, but if you click onto a match then go into the Info page here you will see if the game is going to be in play and if it will be actively managed or not.I hopw this helps. Good Luck.
Ray

[humble]

A great recovery on the footie ray to only finish that much down on the day. i tell you what i bet a lot of people had their hearts in their mouths with kauto star he is a class horse but a few scary moments if you back him lol.great post once again and full of good info we novices can pick through an learn from thanks

[Ray]

Hi Humble,
Thanks as ever for your comments. Yes Kauto Star is a brilliantly flawed horse. I finished yesterday in profit to the tune of about £90 as I traded the last darts match of the night, but as the match finished after 12:00 midnight the result goes into today.
Ray