Naughty - but nice

Friday night and Saturday were par for the course. Most of my trades were successful, but several losses wiped out all the profits and put me heavily into the red.

I can't be bothered to write - and I'm sure you can't be bothered to read - about the minutiae of my trades. It just seems that every time I lay a horse and it is involved in a photo finish, it wins. While every time a horse I have backed is in a photo, it loses.

Luckily, I won £72 backing a horse called St Trinians on Saturday evening. Otherwise, my losses would have been far greater than the £160 I suffered.

My financial health was not helped by Barcelona, who seem to delight in costing me money every weekend. I fancied 'more than two goals' in their match against Atletico Madrid. But I thought the price of 1.72 at kick-off was a little short. So I decided to have £30 on 'fewer than 2.5 goals' at 2.34 and then trade out (with the game goalless after about 10 minutes) for a guaranteed profit of about £4. Unfortunately, Barcelona scored three times in the first nine minutes. And that was that.

Running total: still waiting for that win