Back to black

I had found out in the pub on Saturday evening (how did we live before iPhones?) that my first bet had won me £142.39. I also knew that the first two legs of my second wager had been successful.

By Sunday morning, Barcelona had won 6-0. So my fortunes rested on the fate of Chelsea, Genoa and Sevilla. I considered Chelsea a certainty against an injury-hit Blackburn, so settled down in front of the TV for an afternoon’s trading. I had planned to nip out early to buy the Racing Post, to see whether studying form could give me an edge. A late night and splitting headache ruined this plan, but I still spent a couple of hours on the paper’s website. I identified a couple of horses that I didn’t think could win in the heavy going and laid them. One was second favourite, but as I was trying to establish whether I could pick horses that couldn’t win, I laid it for £10 (twice my usual maximum).

The afternoon started as the previous day had finished. I made a profit on the first 14 races of the day, albeit it generally small ones (my losses have led to a more cautious approach). The two horses I had laid that morning were both well beaten. The second favourite I had laid at 4.7 drifted to 9.4 by the start of the race, and ran and jumped as if its legs were tied together. When Chelsea went into a 2-0 lead, I was feeling invincible.

Not invincible enough to let the Genoa leg of the bet run without laying it. I laid them for £20 at 1.4, but despite going in scoreless at the break, they beat 10-man Reggiana 3-0. So I had lost £8 – but my main bet was still running.

My luck on the horses dipped, but I still lost on only four races all afternoon – and the biggest of them was £15. I finished £70 up on the gee-gees.

The final leg of my football bet was Sevilla to beat Recreativo Huelva. Sevilla had won six of their seven home games, keeping five clean sheets, while Recreativo had scored only twice in their five away matches. On paper, it should have been a comfortable home win. But 20 years of the last leg of an accumulator letting me down – and always ‘comfortable home wins’ – had taught me to fear the worst. So I laid Sevilla at 1.39 for £25.

The match was scoreless at half time, but Sevilla eventually put one of their chances away. The scorer was Freddi Kanoute, who I used to watch in action at the Boleyn Ground. Although he missed a penalty a few minutes later, this was definitely a fonder memory than anything he ever produced in the claret and blue.

The game entered four minutes of injury time with the score still 1-0. By now, Sevilla were 1.1 to win. The sensible thing to do would have been to lay them for another £40 (losing £4 if they held on), but my mood had swung from pessimistic to bolshy, and I let the bet run its course. I was almost left to rue my cockiness, as Recreativo had three golden chances. But Sevilla hang on and I had pocketed £191.92. Incredibly, none of the seven teams I had fancied (Wolfsburg won 3-0) even conceded a goal.

I was happy – but not as happy as I should have been. I couldn’t help but think that I should have put Barcelona into my first bet, which would have won me another £30. And why did I leave out Liverpool to beat West Brom? And what if I had used my £53 stake as a straight accumulator on my eight successful predictions? That would have won me almost £2,500. And why do I win only when I am less ambitious, whereas all the wagers of the past few weeks that would have paid out four-figure sums are thwarted by the width of the crossbar.

But the bottom line is that I had made just under £400 on the weekend’s gambling. And if Leeds could have secured a deserved win on Friday night, it would have been nearly £500.

Running total: back in the black