Colours blind

Last week was an average one. No decent wins, but no catastrophic losses either. Of course, I finished the week with less money than I started it. This wasn't helped by logging on to Betfair while at work and laying horses 'blind'. Basically, I picked out a horse in a race at about 20.0 (19/1) and took a bet of £2 or £3 on it, without having studied the form or being able to watch the race. It worked several times, but then one of the horses that I had laid won, costing me more than £40. Shrewd betting, eh?

On Saturday, I decided to have another serious dabble on Betfair. I plonked myself in front of the TV and decided to be a little more adventurous, in an effort to win more money per race. And it worked incredibly well. I was making between £2 and £15 per race. What's more, I was showing more caution, in that if a horse I had laid and had a significant liability on started to move through the field, I backed it at shorter odds (reducing my profit or giving me a slight loss), rather than crossing my fingers and hoping it got beaten.

I was more than £100 up when I made a crucial mistake. Two races were going off at the same time, so the TV screen was split in two, with commentary on one of them. As I felt infallible, I laid a horse in the race without commentary. The picture was too small to see how exactly how it was running. I may even have laid the wrong one, because it was hard to differentiate between the jockeys' colours. The upshot was that the horse in question ran on to win a close finish, costing me £70.

I still won £40 on the afternoon's racing (although my profits were wiped out by a £40 loss on England to beat the Stanford Superstars in the 20-20 cricket match) but to have so much hard work wiped out by a single mistake is galling.

Running total: just about in three figures