Mother's ruin

I knew that posting my bets in advance had the potential to make me look like a blithering idiot (OK – more of a blithering idiot). And, for almost the first time during this project, my opinion was right.

Those of you could who could be bothered to check the results will have discovered that my predictions for only two of the six matches last weekend were correct. I can sit here and claim that a couple of the losers were very unlucky and that this was my worst performance of the season. The only upside is that if anyone had took my advice and backed the opposite of what I had, they would have made a few quid.

The following day, I entertained my parents for Mothering Sunday lunch. As I hadn’t been near Betfair all weekend, I was willing them to leave (I shouldn’t have cooked three courses), so that I could have a little dabble on the last few races of the day. Of course, my father fell asleep on the sofa (I knew it had been a mistake to ply him with so much booze).

By the time they were putting their coats on (with my eager help), I had logged on and laid a horse whose name I didn’t like. By the time I had locked my front door, the horse had won and I had lost £20. And that was before I had even switched the TV on.

I had no time to waste. And I wasted no time in throwing money down the train. I proceeded to lay the losers of the next three races for a total loss of £170. Although, I won on the final four races of the day, I had managed to blow £160 in an hour. Perhaps I should decide which horse that I want to lay – and then back it. It would certainly be a more profitable strategy. Mind you, so would asking my two-year-old nephew to stick a pin in the racing pages.

Not so good Friday

Not only do I talk rubbish. But now I'm writing it. In my Cheltenham overview, I boasted how I had made £163 in a few hours on the day after the festival, smugly intimating that this could be the way forward.

Well last night, when most single men were out doing the things that single men are supposed to do (and I can't even remember what they are), I rushed home to try to win a few quid on the racing from Dundalk and Wolverhampton. After making about £4 a race on the first six contests of the night, these were my results on the last four: lost £62; lost £45; lost £17; lost £51. My overall deficit on the night was £150.

I could try to blame it on the fact that I didn't got to bed till 04.30 the previous night. Or I could blame it on the fact that I know next to nothing about horse racing and have got to stop kidding myself that I am ever going to make it pay.

Head on the block time

My bad luck with my football bets is gathering pace. These are the results of the past four: five out of seven (six would have paid £400 and seven £1,500); five out of seven (£600 for six and £1,800 for seven); six out of seven (as the prices were shorter, I made £60 profit, but getting the final one correct would have paid £700); and four out of six (I needed one more goal in one game and for Aberdeen to have beaten a lower-division side in the cup for £430 profit).

It's hard to believe that I'm knocking on the door every week without ever winning, so this weekend, I am detailing my bets in advance. I would like to add the caveat that I am not at all confident this week (of course I'm going to say that). My selections are: Blackburn to beat West Ham (how loyal of me); Bradford to beat Port Vale; and the Spurs/Chelsea, Bristol Rovers/Peterborough, Crewe/Leeds and Swindon/Hereford matches all to have 'more than 2.5 goals'. I have combined them in fivefolds and an accumulator, which means that I will make a profit if any five are correct. If all six come up, I win about £800.

I advise anybody reading this before 15.00 on Saturday to rush down to Ladbrokes and bet on the complete opposite.

Wichita drubbed

I am not really a huge horseracing fan. I enjoy it more than 95% of people, but a ride by Tony McCoy at last week’s Cheltenham festival proved to me that, while I don’t hate it in the way that I do rugby, my interest in the sport is predominantly as a betting medium.

I had laid the favourite Wichita Lineman in the William Hill Trophy because I was convinced that its jumping would let the horse down. I was feeling pleased with myself when it made a terrible mistake at one of the early fences and almost fell. From then on, Wichita would clearly rather have been anywhere else than at Cheltenham racecourse, and McCoy was continually cajoling and whipping it to keep it within touching distance of the field. Despite its apparent reluctance, the horse jumped the last fence in third place. But it was 10 lengths down on the leaders and going the worst of the three. But thanks to an inspired ride by the champion jockey, who was straining every sinew to force everything he could from Wichita, the horse got its head in front in the final stride of the race.

For the next two hours, the presenters on the three racing channels battled to find superlatives to describe what an amazing performance McCoy had given his mount. I admired their professionalism, because they couldn’t all have backed Wichita. But all I could think about was the £50 McCoy had cost me. And I hated him.

I had taken two weeks off around Cheltenham. In light of my huge loss on Stoke, the aim was to win £1,000. At only £70 a day, I didn’t think this was particularly ambitious. Things certainly started well, as I made £150 on the first afternoon and £60 in half an hour the following day, after missing most of the afternoon’s racing, just by laying horses.

But winning small amounts (about £4 a race) by taking bets at long odds on horses to lose hardly sets the pulse racing. And it is extremely risky. Consequently, I got caught up in the excitement of Cheltenham. I bought the Racing Post every day, read all the tipsters’ theories and started backing horses to win. And with only a couple of short-priced winners all week, combined with at least one heavy loss each day after laying a winner for big money, I made a small loss every day of the festival.

The day after Cheltenham finished, I decided to revert to a boring strategy. I didn’t back a single horse to win all afternoon, and whenever a horse that I had laid started advancing through the field, I backed it, so as to reduce any potential losses. The result was 21 winning races and three losers – the biggest of which was only £2.20. My profit of £163 was my best-ever afternoon’s work. Not bad for three hours’ sat in front of my computer – and all tax free.

Horses for (the wrong) courses

Sometimes I feel as if I'm making these hard-luck stories up, just to entertain you (or maybe not). But they are all genuinely true.

My luck reached a nadir on Friday. I had a day off work (OK - I've taken two weeks off work to watch Cheltenham, but that's not the point). During a steeplechase, there was a horse running very poorly in the heavy ground. So I offered an £8 bet at 7/1, which somebody snapped up. The horse was soon tailed off and finished about 300m behind the winner. I had pocketed a very easy £8 and moved on to the next race.
About an hour later, the racing channel I was watching announced some 'incredible news' - that following a stewards' enquiry, the first four horses home in the aforementioned race had been disqualified and that the horse that I had laid had been awarded the race. They then showed a re-run of the race that showed the guilty horses going the wrong side of a temporary marker bollard. Such a manoeuvre would have saved them perhaps 0.25 seconds each, but because they hadn't completed the correct course, they had to be disqualified. So rather than winning £8, I had lost £56.

The following day, I had my usual football bet. You've heard this one many times before, so I'll be brief. I backed seven matches to have 'more than 2.5 goals' each, combing them in fivefolds, sixfolds and an accumulator. True to form, I got five out of seven right, while the other two finished 1-1 (ie one goal short). I won my stake money back, but another goal in the final 50 minutes of either game (they were both 1-1 before half-time) would have netted me £450 profit, while one in each game would have scooped me £1,700. Needless to say, there were numerous chances in each game (three of the four sides hit the woodwork). Why are there only last-minute goals when I don't want one?

After last week's debacle, such a win would have been a much-needed tonic.

Wheel of misfortune

With the Stoke cloud hanging over my head, I received an email from Betfair offering me a free £10 bet on their roulette table. I had vowed a couple of years ago never to play online casinos again, after not going to bed for two nights while chasing losses.

But Betfair must have known I was desperate and, showing pathetic weakness of character, I logged on. I decided to split the stake and have two £5 bets on red. Both spins were, of course, unsuccessful. But rather than log off, I decided that I would continue backing red, increasing my stakes each time, until I had made a profit. And that's what I did, starting with £5 of my own money. On the next 11 spins of the wheel, black came up 10 times and zero once. On the 14th spin of the wheel, I place £90 on red. Winning wouldn't have covered all my losses, but it was all I had left in my account. I won - but only because the table was worried that I would walk away because my account was empty. The result of my 15-minute foray into online roulette had cost me £100.

The next evening, I received an email from Betfair saying that for being such a good customer, I had been allocated a free £20 bet. I backed black. It came up red. What a surprise. I was fuming and fired off the following email to Betfair: 'I would be interested to hear your comments with regard to the fairness of your roulette table. I signed up to your casino (tempted by a free bet) on the evening of 5 March. After some initial success, I backed red on virtually every spin of the wheel. In 19 consecutive games between 23.19 and 23.24 I lost 18 times. I know for a fact that I backed red for the last 13 spins in that sequence, increasing my stake each time (I kept a note). And black came up 12 times and zero once. The odds of this happening are more than 8,000/1. Would this same sequence have occurred if I had been backing black? Of course it wouldn't. If you reply, I know that you'll start talking about random number generators. But we both know that the sequences that occurred are not random (it took Derren Brown nine hours tossing a coin to get 10 consecutive heads - I got 12 reds and a zero in less than four minutes). I think it's short sighted to rig your games to such an extent. I could have been a good source of business for the Betfair casino, but in future I will play on websites that are less obviously fixed.'

Within 24 hours, I got the following reply: 'Every spin on casino is totally independent of any other. The chance of a odd/even or black/red is 50/50 every spin. Betfair casino's RNG (Random Number Generator) is a TRNG (True Random Number Generator). It uses a hardware device for getting random numbers. It does not use a software algorithm (PRNG). The hardware generator derives most of its entropy from shot noise. Hence its entropy source is almost entirely quantum and therefore extremely non-deterministic (ie completely true random). The output has been tested extensively by the most stringent tests available and it has not failed any test for randomness in tests utilizing up to 500 billion bits. The hardware unit has passed Dr. George Marsaglia's battery of "Die Hard" tests.'

What Bruce Willis has got to do with anything beats me, but I still think I've been ripped off.

Villains of the piece

This is the most difficult entry that I've had to write for this blog - and it's taken a week for me to be able to talk about it.

Despite all the near misses and stupid mistakes over the past few months that have drained my bank balance, I've had a 'certainty' up my sleeve which was going to help me redeem a fair proportion of my losses.

I was trawling Betfair's football markets in the autumn and found a market that pitted Aston Villa against Stoke and West Brom. It was an absolute no-brainer as to which of the three would finish highest in the Premier League, as reflected by the price of 1.14 for Villa to win. Still, with interest rates tumbling, there was nowhere else that you could get a 14% return on your money over eight months, so I had a couple of hundred pounds on Villa.

Thereafter, every couple of weeks, when I had a few quid to spare, rather than putting it into the building society, I backed Villa. As expected, West Brom and Stoke were soon fighting a relegation battle, while Villa were challenging for a Champions League place. Incredibly, the price went out to 1.5 at the start of the year, before settling at 1.28. As Villa pulled further clear, I kept plunging on them.

Last weekend Villa were playing Stoke at home. They were 25 points clear of Stoke (and 28 clear of West Brom) with only 12 games to play. A victory for Villa would have made it almost mathematically impossible for them to have been overtaken (in reality, it was pretty much already in the bag, as Stoke's away form read 'played 13, won 0, drawn three, lost 10, for eight, against 29'). So I had a final £300 on Villa, taking my total stake to £2,700.

Villa took a 2-0 lead in the match, but Stoke, who had scored only eight times in 1,356 minutes on the road, scored twice in the last four minutes to secure a draw. Not that I was too bothered because the bet was still as good as won (as it had been since day one). So I logged on to Betfair expecting to see Villa's price having dropped to 1.01. But to my amazement, Stoke were now favourites. A huge knot developed in my stomach as I realised that the market was not who would finish top in the division, but who would win the most points against the other two sides.

After a little research, I discovered that Villa had beaten West Brom twice, but lost at Stoke in September (to a last-minute goal). Stoke had beaten West Brom at home, but had still to play them away. So even though I had misunderstood the market, if Villa hadn't surrendered their 2-0 lead, I would still have won. Instead, two last-minute goals (in the matches at Stoke and at Villa) meant that I was staring the biggest loss of my life in the face. It's hard enough losing, but it's the nature of the defeats that gets me down. Not only were both matches decided by last-minute goals, on doing some research, I discovered that Aston Villa are the only side in the division that Stoke have secured four points against. So if they had been matched against any one of the other 18 sides, they would have lost.

Anyway, the upshot is that I can get out of the bet now and accept a loss of £1,250 whatever the outcome of the West Brom v Stoke match next month. Or I can be brave and hope that West Brom beat Stoke (and remember that Stoke haven't won an away game all season) and collect my £750 profit. But If Stoke get a draw or win, I lose £2,700. What a dilemma. Any advice?