Evening all

Evening all, I hope you have enjoyed the action from Cheltenham today. I tried to keep up with it throughout the day (in between lectures and seminars) and, although I'm not properly betting on the races, I will be looking to make a few quid over the course of the week. The big festival has meant that the bookies have gone free bet crazy, meaning our good friends at Bonus Bagging have been working hard to siphon out the best bets on offer. Luckily most of the bets are reloads, meaning they are for everyone, even those with an account already. Admittedly this does take out the fun of the festival slightly, but I am looking to make money really and I don't need to bet to enjoy the races. Saying this, I did allow myself to place my £5 free Ladbrokes bet on the 5.15 (it lost). Next month at Aintree is when I will be really throwing money away (because I will be there), so I can look forward to that.

Onto football matters then, and it has continued to be profitable and I am up around £15 since last time I posted. Not too big a profit this time, mainly because my trading has been patchy as I have had a lot of work on recently (which is now all completed). The CS dutching has been a bit scarce recently, due to lack of time and lack of games I really fancy. As I have said before I have found it difficult to pick out my games, mainly due to my cautious nature. The laying system also hasn't seen much action recently, but the games it has been used on have been a lot more promising, thanks to my more refined selection of games. Hopefully it will be a sign of things to come.

Those of you who have been pleading with me to forget laying the draw will probably be glad to hear that it has finally taken a turn for the worse, and has started to lose me money. Three fairly hefty losses in a row meant that the entirety of my profit was wiped out and I am now starting to see the pitfalls of the system. I haven't given up on it completely however, I am still monitoring it but only by paper trading it. It is extremely frustrating for me to admit that the system is not any good, particularly as there are so many games where you *just know* that it will not finish 0-0, yet if the goal comes too late then it is useless for the system. Apart from laying the 0-0 scoreline, which I wouldn't do due to the high prices, I cannot think of any real way to profit from games like this. I'm not really a fan of the overs markets, mainly because if there hasn't been two goals or one early goal by half time then you will find it hard to make a profit. One goal in the first half on the 30th minute is not really good enough, especially as the price rises dramatically up until then. Despite this however, I have decided to try playing the 2.5 market using £5.00 stakes and trading out for a profit/loss usually at half time. So far the results have been typically up and down, although the unders have been significantly more successful than the overs, be interesting to see if this continues.

The half time 0-0 lays have been up and down also, so not too much to tell there. They are straightforward bets so the stats speak for themselves. One thing I would like to add is that I feel my discipline has been improving immensely over the last few months, and I have particularly noticed it in the last two weeks. On a few occasions recently I have missed out on trades because I was waiting for specific odds, this happened twice actually in successive Arsenal games (AC and Newcastle). I was waiting to pile into the overs markets and refused to take the pitiful pre-match odds and duly paid for it, as both games saw early goals. I was fuming, and in another life I would have piled into the overs regardless, but I kept my cool and waited to see if any realistic trade opportunities came along. There is always tomorrow after all. 

Enjoy the Scouse derby tonight and the rest of the racing week. I hope it's a green one for you.

A Poor Blogger

My apologies for being absent over the last week or so. I have been rather busy with university work and have thus been unable to update as much as I would like to. I had intended to post about an hour or two ago, but I have been somewhat waylaid by the discovery of Betfair exchange games. If you aren't familiar with them, they are basically traditional games such as roulette, poker, blackjack etc. but in the style of their exchanges. Now, obviously I am not stupid enough to play around with these using my own money, but I was taken to the roulette table as they have a £5 risk free bet offer on at the moment. I won with my free bet and played around with my winnings (eventually losing it) but I was impressed at the innovative slant on the old-school casino games. Well worth a look if you haven't already, though I wouldn't go as far to say it is well worth a bet! Doesn't seem any more safe to me.

Onto real trading then, and I have been trading as much as I can over the last couple of weeks. It has been reasonably profitable, but areas have worked out better than others. The dutching has been very up and down and the wins aren't really building up too much, despite still being in profit. At the moment I am having trouble deciding upon a time to trade out, but that is something I will hopefully amend in the coming weeks. Since my last post I am +£2.29 after 8 trades, not too great but better than a kick in the teeth.

Over on the laying side of things, this has been far less productive and I have decided to change my approach slightly. There isn't really much else I can say at this point as I had realised this would happen after a short while, but I am hoping my improvements over the weekend will help to restore some profit. Since my last post I am -£19.60 after 14 trades.

Lastly, it has been very interesting to hear your opinions and votes on the subject of laying the draw, please continue to vote and contribute! The general consensus so far appears to be that, in the long run, laying the draw is not profitable. I know that there are people that make a lot of money from this system however, so shall continue to conduct the test of my own until I reach a definitive answer. At present, I have traded 11 games with the system with 9 wins and 2 losses, with an average loss of £5.99, and average win of £3.19. Obviously it would be ridiculous to make an informed decision after only 11 games, but if I can maintain these figures I would only need to win twice for every one loss in order to break even, something I feel is very achievable indeed. We shall see though.

The HT 0-0 laying has had a good week, with only one loss it is in profit of around £22 using £2.50 stakes. Though I must admit it is difficult having to check the website constantly right up until kick off to see if there are any bets for the day. I do follow him on Twitter but it is easy to miss if I don't check it regularly enough, and a couple of times I have come into the bet around the 20th minute (luckily there were no goals, and I actually got a lot better lay odds). I can't really complain though because this guy does an excellent job for free, so I will just have to try harder to check the website in time. In total for my 'other' section I am +£37.34 since my last update.

The weekend ahead looks good, with a large number of trading opportunities, particularly in the big games. If the matches between the 'big 5' (or 6 or 7 or whatever it is nowadays) continue in the same form, then we should be in for some firecrackers. Have a fantastic weekend people.