Isn't it Ironic!

Daily Loss £286.69

Before I discuss tonight, I wanted to explain the title of the post. There are 5 reasons why tonight’s large loss is highly ironic:

1). It was Friday the 13th today. I’ve managed to experience my largest ever loss in a race on Betfair and my largest ever loss in a day on Betfair. I’m probably the least superstitious person in the world but it makes me chuckle!
2). Last night was probably my best feeling I experienced on Betfair. With a trading bank of £50 and by trading 7 races, I won £87. Tonight, was probably the worst I’d felt on Betfair. Life is full of highs and lows!
3). I wrote a comment on another blog this morning about the fact I keep detailed records of how I do on Betfair and about how I have been beating my personal records quite consistently on Betfair. Tonight, I set a new record for my largest loss!
4). I added a few more links to my blog today to other blogs. One blog (Betfair Rookie) shows a guy lost £3k in his first week of trading. Even though it appears highly unlucky, I chuckled a little as I would have done the same a few months ago when I started out if I had started with the size of stakes that he is obviously using. I was going to comment that he should look to reduce his stakes for the time being until he gets more experienced. Maybe I should have taken some of my own advice!
5). This is probably the most ironic thing about this loss. I read a really good blog post this morning from Matt at Punt.com about how people value money on Betfair. I now have £2k in my Betfair account which is pure profit from my 3 months of trading but I wondered how I would feel if I lost a large chunk of this. I didn’t have to wait long to find out!

So how do I feel? A bit sickened to be honest as I’ve worked really hard to build my profit up and I managed to lose 10% of it on a race tonight. Obviously, I need to put this loss in perspective and it’s only my last week’s profit but it still hurts like mad. Hence, I know I don’t have an issue with Betfair money just being numbers as I wouldn’t feel so bad if I didn’t care about the money. I care alright!

OK, I don’t want to play the hard luck card too much here but it’s difficult to not feel like I was very, very unlucky tonight.

I looked in depth at the 7.25 at Goodwood today and figured that Tony James and Fleuret would both run well and would be overpriced on Betfair. I favoured Tony James though, but I would try to get riskfree bets on both of them if possible.

I backed Fleuret at 29 for £50, laid off at 23 for £50 and had £300 riskfree on it with about 15 minutes to the race. Piece of cake really as 29 was way too high a price. It started at the race at 14 on Betfair and traded below 3 in running.

Not sure if anyone traded this race or saw the race on TV but it turned into a bit of a nightmare for me trading Tony James. I was snapping up everything from 19 above from about 30 minutes to the race. It was a certainty to go off at 16-18 on Betfair and it would have been easy to get riskfree on it.

I had £120 on it at 19.5 on average and I had £300 queued at 20-22 on it. Everything was looking rosy and going to plan. Disaster then struck!

Someone matched everything from 20-25 on it and it was trading at 28. This all happened in 5 seconds and I knew something wasn’t right. I then quickly put the sound up on ATR and I saw Tony James trotting to the start. It then did the splits and nearly fell over. It looked quite nasty to be honest and my first reaction was to try to exit the bet. Unfortunately, everyone had the same idea and all it caused was a massive drift. The horse was now trading at 40 and I had £420 win at 21 or so.

I knew I was in trouble at this point in time. There was very little money to lay and no one wanted to back it. I then decided to put £100 on it at about 36 to push up my average odds a little and to hopefully help it shorten in price so I can exit for a loss.

It was slowly coming down in price and had reached about 28 when all of a sudden someone laid everything from 28 to 40 again. Shit!!!!!

I then heard on ATR that it had kicked another horse at the start and was looking very agitated. I now had £520 win on a horse who is trading at 40 and I’ve backed at average odds of 23 or so.

I heard on ATR that a horse had been withdrawn and I was praying it would be Tony James and I would have had a great escape……

No such luck. The horse withdrawn was the horse that Tony James had kicked and the Betfair market then got suspended. When it reopened, I quickly tried to lay and got about £100 laid at 25 but I then noticed my average odds backed at had dropped to 18 due to the Rule 4! Fucking great I thought……

Tony then went on a massive drift again as it wouldn’t go in the stalls and I had no way of exiting the bet. Everytime I tried to lay off £50, it caused a drift and I couldn’t get anything laid off. I could have redded up for about a £170 loss on the field (due to people asking for large odds and poor liquidity on the horse) but I decided against it. I don’t regret this decision as if Tony James had run well, I would have regretted the decision big time.

In running, I managed to lay off a little more at 25 and being honest, I was again slightly unlucky as it travelled well to a point but it seems that everyone was laying off in running and huge queues were everywhere. I then left my £280 lay at 4.8 to give me about £5k riskfree if it got matched as the only way I was getting out of this bet was if the horse won!

The horse had no luck in running and faded badly at the end of the race. Not surprising given the run up to the race!

Overall, a £280 loss on the race and a bit of a disaster for me. My confidence has taken a bit of a knock and I’m going to be having a few days away from Betfair now as I don’t want to trade on the back of a large loss as it may affect my future decisions too much. To trade using my strategy, you need “balls of steel” as Andrew keeps reminding me and at the moment, I don’t really feel up for it.

Good luck with your trading for the next few days!