Lay to waste

Thought it was about time I provided a brief synopsis of the highs and lows of the past 10 days. But, as always, it has been a case of lows and lowers.

After losing every night last week (and more than £100 on two occasions), I had a day off on Friday. I was confident that now I was beginning to get to grips with Bet Angel, I would turn a profit. But I made the usual big mistake and lost £150 on the day. I laid Comeonthehammers to lose £110, which was running so poorly that it drifted to 150 in running. Unlike the football team after which it is named, though, it came good in the end. As a West Ham season ticket holder for more than 20 years, it was particularly galling.

After a busy weekend away from my laptop (although I did manage to lose another £30 on Ronnie O'Sullivan wining the snooker world championship), I decided that Tuesday would be 'make or break day'. I'm more than £2,000 down in the past four weeks, and as work has dried up, I can't sustain such losses much longer. If I couldn't make money that afternoon, I would have to admit defeat. My tactic was to trade, with the occasional small lay in-running. My trading was largely successful, although using an average stake of only £12, I was making only an average of £2 a race. But that is a profit of £2, whichever horse wins a race. I lost a couple of times when laying, but nothing more than £25. The cautious approach paid off, and I made £55 on the day.

Buoyed by the previous day's success, yesterday I told a friend that I was confident of making a real go of trading. I even raised my stake to £20 on Wednesday afternoon. But I made so many poor decisions. Most of my unmatched trades were matched in running, which is more luck than judgement (For example, I might back a horse at 5 with the intention of laying it before the race at 4.8. But I read the market wrongly and the price drifts to 6. I can lay it at 6 and accept a loss or leave it to go in-running. If the horse is up with the pace, its lay price might drop to 4.8 and my bet is matched. But if it is struggling, the lay bet may never be matched and I lose my entire back stake of £20). But I was still £50 down going into the final two races of the day.

On the penultimate race, I laid a horse at 5 for £25. But its price dropped and my back bet of 5.2 was never met. I took a risk and let the bet go in-play. Naturally, it went straight into the lead and the price plummeted. The horse was the easiest winner of the day - and I had lost £100. On the final race, the opposite happened. I backed the favourite for £60 just before the price drifted alarmingly. In-play, it was always at the back of the field. I laid £20 off at a far bigger price than which I had backed it, but the price was soon so high that I couldn't risk another bet. It came almost last and I was another £40 down.

It's incredible how often the opposite to what I need to happen does. When I lay a horse and want the price to drift in running, it leads the whole way. When I've backed a horse and need a bold showing to force the price down so that my lay bet gets matched, it runs as if it's got three legs.

With two losing bets on the Champions League semi-final (can you believe that Arsenal, with all their attacking flair, didn't win a single corner?), I was £210 on the day.

I am well aware that I should be accepting small losses when the market goes against me. It's just that the market goes against me regularly, before often swinging back in my favour. I am not making enough when I win to cover regular small losses, so I let them run. Usually it's a risk worth taking. But when it doesn't pay off, the downside is huge.

Angel fools

On Sunday, I had my worst-ever day gambling on the horses. I should have known as early as the first race, as the short-priced favourite I had backed fell at the final fence when a long way ahead of its rivals, leaving the race to a horse that I had laid.

I’ve been trialling some new software, Bet Angel, which is a complex ‘betting bot’ that should make it easier to make a profit from my betting. But it has so many features, that it is easy to forget to cancel a bet or press the wrong button. This is exactly what happened to me on the second race of the day – and my fast-diminishing funds took another hit.

I was only 10 minutes into the afternoon’s racing and I was already £60. In an attempt to claw back some money, I started blindly backing favourites. It was soon clear that it was going to be a day which would be dominated by outsiders (to put things into perspective, Templegate, The Sun’s acclaimed tipster, had only one winner from 19 selections).

I was more than £100 down when I made my customary shocking decision. I laid a horse, which was running poorly, at 30.0 to lose £240. Within a minute, it looked as fresh as the proverbial daisy and was in third place, and going better than any of its rivals, with thee fences left to jump. I couldn’t risk losing £240, so quickly had £85 on it at 3.0. Of course, only seconds later it was struggling again, and finished third. If I’d had done nothing, I would have made £8 on the race. Instead, I had lost £85.

Now facing a deficit of almost £200, I started increasing my stakes on the favourites. But I just couldn’t back a winner – my run of luck was incredible. This was the fate of the horses that started at 5/2 or shorter during the course of the afternoon: 1/3 first, 4/9 unplaced, 4/6 second, 4/5 first, 5/6 unplaced, 5/6 second, 9/10 unplaced, 10/11 first, Evens unplaced, 11/10 third, 5/4 third, 6/4 second, 6/4 third, 6/4 unplaced, 13/8 first, 13/8 first, 15/8 dead-heat first, 2/1 first, 2/1 second, 5/2 third, 5/2 unplaced and 5/2 unplaced. If you had placed a £20 bet on each of these (and I did on all the losers – of course, overlooking a couple of the winners), you would have lost £135.

The afternoon reached a nadir with the 4.55 at Leopardstown. I had read in the morning that a horse called Indian Ridge was being heavily backed. As this is usually a good sign, I had £20 on it. By the time the race had started, it was favourite. But the jockey settled the horse near the back of the field, and as the leaders rounded the home turn, Indian Ridge was about 30 lengths off the pace. In desperation to recoup a few quid, I identified a horse near the back of the field with less chance of winning than my selection. So I laid it for £3 at 26.0. A combination of my hastiness and the poor camera angle, however, meant that instead of taking a bet on a horse whose jockey was wearing yellow-and-blue silks and a stripy hat, I had taken a bet on a horse whose jockey was wearing yellow-and-blue silks and a spotted cap. Of course, the horse I had laid, Majestic, was in second place and within a couple of seconds had raced into an unassailable. Suddenly, Indian Ridge appeared on the scene and chased Majestic all the way to the line. It got within half a length and would have won if the race had been 50 yards longer – or the incompetent jockey had started his run a split-second earlier. If Indian Ridge had won, I would have made £80 on the race. But as Majestic held on, I had lost £85. Quite a difference.

I should have clawed a significant amount back on the final race of the day. But, as usual, I made the wrong decision. I was felling somewhat reckless and decided to back the three shortest-priced horses in the race for a total of £60. Halfway through the race, all three were running fine. Then one of my horses fell, bringing down another. So I had one chance left – and if that didn’t win, I would lose another £60.

Now when I have laid a horse and it moves into the lead, I rarely back at the vastly reduced odds on offer. I just cross my fingers that something will beat it because if I do back it and it fails to win, I have still lost a lot of money. Whereas if it fails to win, as I originally anticipated, I make a profit. But with the boot on the other foot, and my one remaining runner contesting the lead, I decided to lay it for £60. Within a second of me placing the bet, it had pulled clear of the field, and was never in danger of not running. My decision meant that rather than winning £110, I won only £40. Of course, if it had been beaten, rather than losing £60, I would have won £5.

Why is that I always take out insurance on a selection when I needn’t have, and do nothing, when I should be doing something? Another hideous afternoon – and a loss of £280. When is this run of luck going to change?

Read it and weep

I've just suffered my worst weekend, in gambling terms, of my life. I woke up on Monday morning almost £1,700 worse off than when I went to bed on Friday night.
In all honesty, the bulk of that loss was accounted for by a bet that has been running since August (see Villains of the Piece, 8/3/09).

Just to recap, I laid out £2,700 on a bet which I thought was pitting Aston Villa against Stoke and West Brom as to which team would finish higher in the Premier League. In fact, it was which side would gain the most points in matches involving only these three teams. I backed Villa, but if Stoke could avoid defeat against WBA on Saturday, they would finish top. If Stoke lost, I would make £700 profit. But if they drew or won, I would lose £2,700. My dilemma was that I could get out of the bet now, taking a guaranteed loss of £1,300. Although still the biggest loss of my life, it was significantly preferable to losing £2,700. But what if I accepted the £1,300 loss and then WBA won? I would be gutted.

So I spent seven hours on Friday night/Saturday morning looking at my options. Stoke had not won an away game in the top division for 25 years (admittedly, they had been in the lower divisions since 1985, but they had still lost 11 and drawn four of their 15 away games this season), but the way my luck has been, and the fact that WBA were bottom of the league, meant that I could not risk letting the bet run its course. Eventually, I thought I had reduced my guaranteed loss to only (!!) £1,000 by backing the draw and Stoke to carefully calculated stakes. Then I realised that if WBA won by a single goal, Stoke and Aston Villa would dead-heat for first place in the mini-league, which would result in me losing £1,850, rather than £1,000.

At 04.30 on Saturday morning, I decided that the best course of action was to back Stoke in the mini-league and to lay West Brom to win the match. The financial implications would be a £1,320 loss if Stoke won, the match was a draw or WBA won by a single goal, and a loss of £760 if West Brom won by more than one goal.

For the first time in 20 years, I sacrificed going to a West Ham game on Saturday afternoon, so that I could keep an eye on what was going on at the Hawthorns. It was also Grand National day, which is my favourite sporting event of the year. In the end, Stoke scored in the second minute of the match and got a second a couple of minutes into the second half. Although, I was gutted to have lost £1,320, I was glad that I had not let the bet run without hedging (as I had been advised), as losing £2,700 would have sent me over the edge.

I don't whether it was tiredness or the fact that I had one eye on the football, but I made lost of mistakes on the afternoon's racing, laying several favourites and adding another £150 to my losses. And I didn't even have time to study the form so that I could have a bet on the National. All in all, a poor day.

There was plenty of racing on Sunday afternoon, and I was confident that without any distractions, I could make some decent money (with the exception of the previous day, I have made a profit on the last afternoons I have spent trading on the racing). I started well and was well in profit when a 2m 5f hurdles race at Southwell took place. I had a quick look at the form and identified a horse called Nabouko with very poor form. Not only had it not run for 373 days (meaning that it was probably not race fit), but on its four previous career runs, it had been beaten 63 lengths, 29 lengths, 36 lengths and 15 lengths. So I laid it at 26 (25/1) for £2. My hunch was soon proved right, as Nabouko was soon toiling at the rear of the field. I sensed more easy money to be made, so laid it at 70 (69/1) for another £2, before nipping to the toilet.

A couple of minutes later, I returned to my armchair, to be met by the jaw-dropping sight of Nabouko galloping past the leader and crossing the winning line in first place. I almost burst into tears as I realised that I just lost £188 - my biggest-ever on horse race.

Despite the fact that I was £100 ahead before the race, I lost all control and started making bad decisions. Over the next 90 minutes, I laid another five winners for payouts of more than £50 each. As usual, by the end of the afternoon, I had won on far more races than I had lost on (23 compared with six). And although there are certainly positives to be taken (when I win, my average per race is up from about £3 to £10, and I would have made a profit on the afternoon but for Nabouko), I lost another £150 on the afternoon.