Cheltenham 2012: Day 4

Bit better today but not the week I'd hoped for

I managed just over a ton in the main race which was on a par with last year's performance. With Kauto pulling up early on in the race, it really shook up the in-running market as these things usually do; I suppose the writing was on the wall for Kauto ever since his fall in training the other week. I wonder how many insiders laid him for all they were worth?! Nice to see McCoy getting the winner after a baron first three days - what an incredible sportsman!

I think I might double my bank for next year, which will be 8k, as my 4k bank didn't enable me to be as active as I wanted to be. So in the end, I managed about £450 over the 4 days :-(

I'm glad this year's festival is over as I put a lot of pressure on myself in the last few days. Still, it gives me something to look back on next year!

Cheltenham 2012: Day 3

My spirit took a beating today...

I got off to a great start in the first at Cheltenham and was £50+ up but a last minute trade saw me scrambling to red out in-running. That didn't set me up with the momentum I needed to go on and have a good day, and a few other setbacks made sure I wasn't going home with much.

But my silliest blunder was to assume that Cheltenham's 17:15 charity race was ever going to go in-running. Another last minute trade saw my £150 stake get matched just before the market suspended and all I could do was hope that the selection would come good in the race. It didn't. Another lesson learned (I hope!)

To say I'm a bit pissed off at the moment would be an understatement. I had a really tough Feb and profits were down on last year, and this month is looking a bit ropey too. Don't get me wrong, it's not so bad that I would ever need to contemplate getting a proper job, but I'm considering going back to basics.

This means keeping a record of each day - as I did in the beginning - noting the profit made, the rolling profit for the month and a short summation of my behaviour that day. This really helped me back in the day and is probably just what I need to steady the ship once again. I suppose that, in my efforts to push for greater gains, I'm actually hampering my own performance by heaping lots of pressure on myself. I don't need a fortune to live off, and yet I'm trying to play with the "big boys" and getting pummelled as a result.


Pure greed scuppered me in the first race: once upon a time, I'd have been pleased with earning £50 from a race but now I'm not satisfied until that £50 becomes £60 or £70. For the sake of my blood pressure, I really need to get back to that situation where I'm just being happy with whatever profit comes my way.

A year ago, I never thought I'd be writing a post like this but it just shows that, once complacency creeps in, things can quickly unravel.

I'm putting my video production on hold at the moment until I can be sure that what I'm demonstrating can still yield a profit on the right day. I've got 5 videos in the can as it stands, but since I filmed them in late Jan/early Feb, it appears to me that the pre-race markets are too volatile for me to even get involved with any confidence; I don't remember them being this bad last year??

Cheltenham 2012: Day 2

Nothing special about today's performance in the grand scheme of things...

I've been using a £4k bank this time round but could do with £8k really to play at the higher prices. Not sure I'll be last year's total at this rate, and that £500 day is still eluding me, but we'll see what the next couple of days brings.


Even though I'm doing well, I know I've still got lots of improvements to make before I ever had the nerve to make trades like this guy!



A quick sniff around YouTube and I found this



I like how this guy uses custom columns in Gruss to do his in-running trading. It's good to get a different perspective on things sometimes.

Lost a fair bit backing in-running just before the horses took a dive. I often find myself wondering who these people are that hoover up the all back bets when horses fall. I assume it's a couple of people in partnership - one being the "spotter" and the other one the "hooverer"! If obviously requires some deft race reading skills.

That's the other thing that amazes me is how these commentators call a race so quickly and accurately - are you saying to me that they remember the silks of every runner to enable them to call the race with this amazing stream of consciousness? With the US racing on ATR, they show a position indicator at the bottom of the screen, and me and a mate were discussing whether each horse's saddle is chipped so that their coordinates can be tracked automatically; if this technology was linked to some trading software you'd have a pretty powerful bot right there!

Cheltenham 2012: Day 1

Well, a right crappy old day for me as far as making my millions at Cheltenham goes...

I put a lot of pressure on myself to get a decent sum and it contributed to some silly errors, like trading upto £50 in one Cheltenham race only to blow £70 in-running :-(

Also, I'm finding it hard to deal with the pre-race markets at the moment - they seem to be all over the bloody place and I'm wondering if there has been some monumental shift in the way they behave? The word on the street is that I'm not the only one that has noticed a change. Be interesting to see what happens during the flat season.

If things don't improve with my pre-race game, I may very well be shifting over to Betdaq for a while to take my chances there. The Toy works really well on that platform and everything looks the same, which is nice. I'll have to stick with Betfair for the in-running stuff though as the liquidity on the 'daq was terrible the last time I looked.

Hope you're all suffering as badly as me having a great week ;-)