Life's a gamble

I've been gambling since I was 15. I used to pop into my local Coral and have a 50p accumulator on 15 football matches every Saturday afternoon. Of course, I never won.

I got a job in a betting shop when I was 18, and by the time I was 22, I was a relief manager for Ladbrokes, covering 35 in shops in north-east London, Essex and Hertfordshire, settling up to 700 bets a day.

Over the past 25 years, I have placed thousands of bets. Football is my main passion, but I used to be a regular at Walthamstow dog track (RIP), and have also gambled on everything from tennis to Big Brother.

From fixed-odds betting in the days when you had to make a minimum of five selections if you included a home win, and tax stood at 10%, I started dabbling in spread betting, till Ipswich's fifth place in 2001 cost me £1,500. I was a late starter on Betfair, but over the past 12 months, I have started trading, with a degree of success.

As the years have passed, I have spent an ever-increasing amount of time studying form, thanks (or perhaps not) to the information online.

But although last season was my most successful ever (including my first four-figure win), I still went into work several times a week and greeted my colleagues with 'I was unlucky yesterday...', after a last-minute penalty miss by some Division Two striker cost me several hundred pounds.

It is to save my friends and families from my continual moaning that I have set up this blog. All my hard-luck stories (and, hopefully, a few good-luck ones) in one place.

The aim is to turn £1,000 into £10,000 over the course of the 2008-2009 football season, via fixed-odds and spread betting, and trading on Betfair. I will not be detailing every bet, but will be discussing some of the more interesting ones. I will also provide a running total for anyone who can't be bothered to read my rantings.

With my track record, it is an exceptionally tall order. But as Del Boy likes to say: 'He who dares, wins.' Or goes skint.