Flogging a dead horse

I’m going away to Cornwall for a few days tomorrow, which is probably a good thing for my sanity and my finances. I’ll have a small accumulator on the weekend’s football matches, but will not be able to spend hours logged on to Betfair.

This is just as well, as not only am I getting carried away – but my luck is incredible. Yesterday afternoon at work, things were a little quiet. So I logged on to Betfair and laid a horse to lose. It was about the fifth favourite of the 10 runners. But it won – and I was £34 down. So I started to chase my losses. During the course of the afternoon, I backed six favourites to win – four finished second, one third and one fourth. I was £80 down. Quite unbelievably, I did exactly the same thing this afternoon, and although I backed one short-priced winner, I laid two others to the tune of £70. Another day, another £50 loss.

I’m afraid that this project has started to take over my life. Not the dream of turning £1,000 into £10,000 because my stake money has long gone. But making sitting in front of At The Races on my laptop the focus of my weekend – particularly when it’s costing me money. My Betfair account is now empty and I’ve got a tax bill due next week that I can’t pay.

I genuinely believe that I can make a profit on any horse race that I watch. Although this is clearly a misapprehension, I am less than £100 down on my betting on the racing over the past 10 weeks (it’s my football betting that is putting me in danger of going skint). So I have been arranging my life around getting back to my computer before the first race of the day. No time to go to the gym today. Can’t stay for lunch, mum, I’ve got things to do.

And in the week, although I am not turning down nights out, I am not arranging anything if there is an evening meeting on – and there is every Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday. Leave work, rush home and on with the laptop.

If I was making money, it might be a sacrifice worth making. But as I’m not, it isn’t. So when I get back from Cornwall on Sunday, I will be knocking the trading on the head, topping up my accounts and focusing on my football betting. Watch this space

Happy new year – for some

I have been doing well on my racing trading, regularly making £60 in an afternoon. In fact, I was £300 up on my betting on the horses in the last three months of the year. Whether it was the effects of going to bed at 04.30 I don’t know, but all my good work was wiped out in the space of two disastrous hours on the afternoon of New Year’s Day. A horse with no previous form sprouted wings in the final furlong of an all-weather race to catch the leader on the line. As the commentator said: “There was no way you could have predicted that.” It was little comfort to me, as I had lost £150 in 90 seconds.

Then I started chasing losses – and managed to back five consecutive losing favourites. The horse that was generally regarded as the “bet of the day” fell, while another was overhauled in the last 100 years of its race. In desperation, I decided to lay the next favourite. It won, of course. I was lost for words. And my bank balance was £250 lighter.

One of my friends has started asking me to tell her what I am going to back, so that she can do the opposite. It’s hard to argue with such logic, at the moment.

Hell-Bent on going skint

Since Black Sunday, things have got little better. As I can’t afford to continue my strategy with goals and corners, I am selectively backing matches that I fancy. But I am still getting far more wrong than right.

There were three live matches on last Sunday (Hibernian v Hearts, Wigan v Spurs and Man Utd v Chelsea), providing me with six opportunities to follow my strategy (total goals and total corners). I made five of the six bets – they all lost. The only one I didn’t do (“more than two goals” in the Man Utd v Chelsea game) was the only winner. Another £100 down the drain. Someone up there doesn’t like me.

Yesterday, there were four matches being played. As I was going to West Ham v Fulham, and had lost £200 on the previous afternoon, I decided not to have a bet. When I returned after West Ham’s facile victory, I discovered that the first three games of the day had all featured “more than two goals”, meaning that I would have been quids in had I followed my usual strategy. So I had a large bet on “more than two goals” in the Tottenham v Portsmouth match. It finished 1-1, with David James making several outstanding saves and Darren Bent missing an open goal from two yards.

I also had £12 on a horse in the last race of the day, with the intention of laying it off in running for a profit of a couple of quid. But I became engrossed in the football, and by the time I had remembered about the race, my horse had finished second last and I had recorded yet another losing bet. My luck has to change soon.

A kick in the teeth

You’ll have to excuse my lack of communication. It’s not that I’ve stopped gambling. Far from it. It’s just that I had a couple of terrible days that made me question whether I should be losing so much money (and then bringing it back to mind by writing on it).

The date was Sunday November 23. As you may remember, I was about £300 down on total goals betting and £150 down on total corners on live football matches. The strategy was to back more “than two goals” in every live match, increasing my stake each time that I had a losing bet to cover my previous losses and turn a small profit. It was the same deal with “more than 12 corners”.

The first game of the day was Spurs v Blackburn. I fancied an attacking game with plenty of goals and corners, so I had £60 on each outcome. Despite Spurs taking an early lead, the game finished 1-0. There were 12 corners – one shy of the number I needed.

At the same time, I was trading on the afternoon’s racing. It was soon the usual story. After several small wins, I laid (took a bet on) a horse to win at a long price, as it looked as if it would struggle to get round the course, let alone come home in front. But somehow it did – and I had lost £120. Rather than slowly recouping my losses, I started backing favourites to win. I had soon lost another £100.

The second live match of the afternoon was Sunderland v West Ham. Now I have had a season ticket at West Ham for 20 years and have been to hundreds of matches. So I feel that I am well positioned to predict their results. And I fancied Sunderland to win a drab match. But because of the strategy I was following, I felt that I had to have heavy bets on lots of goals and corners – even though I didn't fancy it. So I had £85 each on “more than 12 corners” and “more than two goals”, as well as £40 on Sunderland to win. West Ham’s 1-0 victory, with only seven corners, cost me another £210. Yes, Sunderland were unlucky (they should have had a penalty and had enough chances to have made two of my bets winners), but being “unlucky” was becoming too familiar a story. In exasperation, I had £50 on Barcelona to win that evening at 1.25. They drew (it was the first time they had failed to win at home all season) – and I had lost £560 on the day.

The most ridiculous aspect of the situation is that even if my two larger bets on the Sunderland match had come up trumps, I would have recouped very little of my losses (I would still have been £260 on my total goals betting and £80 down on corners). Instead, I was £445 and £295 down respectively.

My losses were almost rendered insignificant only three days later. After a lengthy study of the midweek fixtures, I fancied four teams to win and five matches to have “more than two goals.” I combined them in sixfolds (for 25p), sevenfolds (60p), eightfolds (£1.10) and an accumulator (£12.50). My outlay of £63.80 was almost twice as much as I had ever placed on such a bet before. But I was unusually confident.

And my confidence was soon looking justified. From the very first minute, goals started hitting the net in all of my games. I was watching the scores on Sky Sports and was getting more excited as the minutes ticked by. With a few minutes to go, all four of the teams I had backed were winning, and at least three goals had been scored in four of my five games. If either side scored again in the Hartlepool v Brighton match, I would have a full house. I logged on to the BBC website and started watching the live text feed. The score was 1-1 (as it had been since the 25th minute) and Hartlepool were piling on the pressure. But the game ended without further score.

Hartlepool’s previous 11 home games had averaged more than four goals each. The BBC report the next day started: “Hartlepool were made to pay for their wastefulness in front of goal…” I won £244. But one more goal from either side and it would have been more than £3,200. One of these days…