Drawing a blank

In poker, they call it a ‘bad beat’. It’s a situation in which you should win, until some outrageously bad fortune scuppers your chances.

As regular readers (assuming there are any) will know, I have had some hard luck this season. In fact, it’s hard not to describe my life as one bad beat after another at the moment (check out Love Ain’t In The Air for further proof).

But even taking this into account, the events of Saturday evening were hard to stomach. I had placed a £20 accumulator on six teams to win and one match to have more than two goals. By 17.00, the first six of my predictions had come up.

My one remaining selection was Leicester City to beat Oldham. Leicester had won six of their previous seven games (including a 4-1 away victory four days previously) and were 10 points clear at the top of League One. Oldham were in sixth place, but had lost their last two away matches by an aggregate score of 0-7.

I’d had a profitable afternoon on the horses (I made £50 and it would have been my first thee-figure profit in an afternoon if Gold Cup winner Denman had not been beaten at odds of 8/11) and was feeling quite bolshy. If Leicester were to win, I’d have made almost £600 on the day. But instead of laying Leicester (taking bets on) for £100 at about 1.65, to ensure a decent profit whatever the result, I laid only £25. I also laid the 0-0 draw at 11.0 for £6.

Leicester dominated the first half, hitting the post and having a shot cleared off the line. But the half-time score was 0-0. I considered laying Oldham again, but was still reasonably confident, as Leicester had failed to score only twice since October.

Within five minutes of the second half kicking off, I was punching the air with delight. The Oldham goalkeeper was sent off for a foul on a Leicester striker and a penalty was awarded. Even better, Oldham didn’t have a substitute keeper on the bench. So overweight, 38-year-old forward Dean Windass, who wasn’t even an Oldham player (he was on loan from Hull) went in goal. Up stepped Matty Fryatt, the top goalscorer in the whole country with 25 goals (I’m not making this up) to take the kick. He could have placed it anywhere, as Windass wouldn’t have been able to dive. Instead, his shot went three yards wide.

Leicester piled forward for the next 40 minutes. But Oldham’s 10 men held firm. Windass even made a couple of decent saves. The match finished 0-0 and instead of winning £550, I had won £5 (the £25 I had laid on Leicester minus my original £20 bet). Then I remembered that I had laid the 0-0 draw. So I was £55 down on the day’s football betting. That penalty miss had cost me more than £600. I said earlier that Leicester had failed to win only one of their previous seven games (a 0-0 draw at home to Brighton). They cost me £200 that day as well.

The following day, I had plans. The only bet I placed was a £4 lay of the 0-0 draw in the Spurs v Arsenal match at 13.0. I lost another £48. There were five matches live on TV over the weekend. I laid two of them to be 0-0 draws. Only two of them finished 0-0. A pattern is starting to emerge here.