The good news is that the betting investment balance is still over £300, the bad news is it should now be over £400 and in decent profit and for the fact it isn’t, I only have myself to blame.
I have mentioned that I started doing more trading again, well last night I decided it was a good idea to trade some WTA tennis without any live video. Not always a bad idea but stakes should always be low when you can’t see what’s going on and they should never be the % of the bank that I was using. This was my first mistake.
I was trading 3 matches that on paper looked like very close matches but it turns out they were all pretty comfortable straight sets wins, trains as we call them in the trade. These matches never make good trading fodder and although losses were pretty much guaranteed they ended up bigger than they should be because I demonstrated at least 2 or 3 more classic newbie style errors.
First of all I was too eager to get involved. I never like laying less than 1.3 but convinced my opening trade to be in the 1.5x mark and when the market went against me I went in again and again. This was the first match Kerber v Muguruza and although Muguruza is a player on the up and capable of giving Kerber a good match it wasn’t to be yesterday.
The loss on this match was £30 and it kind of woke me up a little bit and I traded the second match better but from the point I got it was another train and a straights sets win. The losses on those two were about £45 so pretty bad but not disastrous. I make my trades with more liability than the bets because of the time cost involved but I had still over staked a little here.
By the time the third match had started, Vickery v Lepchenko , I’d decided that there was no way this one wouldn’t be competitive. I’d received a tip on the underdog already and when the favourite got off to a good start I layed big and as she continued to lead, layed big again, I was on full tilt now. Lepchenko won 6-1 6-0!! In total I lost over £50 on this match and it took my losses for the night over £100. A complete disaster and I thought about quitting the challenge with only £29 left in my betfair account (still nearly £200 in Pinnacle).
Well this morning, I’ve woken up to wins of almost £100 in Pinnacle! BettingResource have hit an inevitable return to form with 3 wins around even money and a parlay at about 6-1 of those 3 coming in too. So I’m back where I was before the disaster. I know I should be pleased but I feel frustrated that I should now have over £400 in the kitty and be easily on course for the average target of 2% gains per week.
I am of course grateful that I’m still well in the game and moving the bet365 funds that were placed into Pinnacle (£114) to Betfair is the only real inconvenience.
I have to make sure this doesn’t happen again but why did it happen? Am I rusty with the trading, was I never that great a trader or maybe the challenge has made me too keen to get involved. I stopped trading because I was running out of patience and the free time to do it and perhaps I can’t cope with losing when I’m investing large amounts of my time anymore.
I’m not going to rule out trading completely for the challenge just yet but I’m certainly not going to trade without pictures again or make trades above 1.3. I also need to make my staking plan as organised as my fixed betting one. I was making it up as I went along last night and fell into the trap of making rash decisions which inplay betting often entices.
It’s a tad embarrassing for an experienced bettor/trader to have to write about such amateur antics but I want this to be a reminder to myself and a lesson to others to be careful with inplay trading, to have a plan and to refrain from rash decision-making.
Thank god for good quality tipsters for saving my bacon… the challenge continues…