mathare's Gamblog

[mathare]

Let's see if we can't fire up a bit of poker chatter again...

Today I decided to start playing NLHE cash games. I've dabbled in this area before but not at all seriously. Most of my play to date has been limit cash or no-limit SnGs so this is a bit of a step into the unknown for me. And for that reason I am keeping the stakes low while I learn a new game dynamic.

I had around $100 in my Ladbrokes poker account and for some reason I seem to like playing on there, maybe because it meshes nicely with Poker Office. So I figured I may as well play NLHE on Ladbrokes.

I have read in several places about the 10% rule, i.e take no more than 10% of your bankroll to the table. And indeed Annie Duke reckons it should be 5-8%. But anyway, I figured that was a bit strict for my tiddly playing bankroll so I was happy to start at the $0.10-$0.20 tables with a $20 maximum buy-in. I know this is 20% of my bankroll but so what? It's not as though the $100 I have in my account is all the poker cash I have, it's just all I had in there at the time. Plus, as always, I like to make the mistakes I am going to make as cheaply as possible so why not put in the hours at tables such as $0.10-$0.20 and build up from there?

I've only played a couple of sessions and I am pleased to say it's going well. I feel good playing too, which is always a bonus. And it's reflected in my play. I have got my steals working at a good frequency and playing tight aggressive poker.

I have also decided that as this is the start of a new poker journey for me I should take it seriously and do what I know I should do and always struggle to - concentrate on the game and take notes on my opponents. That means not reading the forum between hands (too often - and I must confess I am in the middle of a poker session as I write this so it's not all going fully to plan just yet) and not writing VBA or playing with my betting spreadsheets. Watch the action and try and build up a picture of how each player is playing.

I'll hopefully update this thread every now and then with progress to date and maybe a few stats along the way.

PS I just took a guy of 80% of his stack with AQo while writing those last few lines :D

[mathare]

Lost a big portion of my stack to KdKc when holding AdAh.

I raised, a guy re-raised and I re-raised once more. He calls and we see a ragged flop (2h 6h 7c). I bet $5 into a pot of around $6.50 and he goes into the tank, invoking his time bank. Then comes the all-in. I'll have some of that I think and call quickly.

Now this is the annoying bit. The Laddies software doesn't flip your cards when there can be no more betting so someone can go all in and muck on you if they lose. I hate that. Anyway...

River came Kh and the river dropped 9s and he swept in the pot before I'd even seen the river. My hand was auto-mucked so he never saw it.

He asked if I had AA, I told him I had AK but I reckon he can check the hand history and see what I had. I think. And if he did put me on AA he must have known he was a 4/1 underdog in the hand but I guess he just couldn't lay 'em down. Unfortunately for me :(

I've stolen a few pots since that to get my stack back to about 75% of my starting stack

[mathare]

Fought back close to level before the table started to break up. I could have finished a few dollars but instead finished just over $1 down after trying to force the game and trying to run over a couple of players that wouldn't have it after we went short-handed. I didn't adapt to the reduced number of players and that cost me a bit. Like I said earlier though, make the mistakes cheaply...

[mathare]

I keep thinking back to that AA v KK hand and whether I could have played it differently.

I raised a pretty standard amount from early position, around 3-4xBB I think (I don't have the hand history available at present to confirm that). I got re-raised from the other side of the table. It wasn't a big re-raise, I know that much. I re-raised more than the minimum to bring it up to $3 and he called.

Here's my first concern - was my re-raise enough?

Looking back on it I am quite happy with it. I have AA and have shown strength. When I have shown down cards they have been good cards and I have been playing tight. Sure, I've made a few late position steals but this is early position. I think I look strong here. I get raised, and now I know what he had I think this is a decent enough move although I may have raised more had I been him. But he 'only' has KK so what would he do if an A hits the flop. His raise is probably OK. But my re-raise - what of that? I have AA what have I got to fear? I don't want to play a small pot. I have isolated myself against one opponent who is raising into my aces. I want him calling the bet so I am happy with the re-raise to $3.

The flop comes 5-4-7 so it's as ragged as I could have hoped for. Is he playing 86 or 63? I really quite seriously doubt it as he re-raised me and called my subsequent re-raise. Is he playing A or K with an kicker that puts him on a straight draw? Again I doubt it because of the pre-flop action. So I bet out $5 into a pot that was around $6.50.

Was this a sensible bet?

I'm not going to check here am I? I've already decided he isn't playing cards that could connect with that flop enough to put him ahead of me. He wasn't afraid to raise pre-flop so I can assume he won't just fold here, and if he does I'll get the pot. So I bet out with a decent continuation bet. It's about the right size for that sort of bet and I figure on him calling, if not raising. I'm good so far.

He goes into the tank and invokes his time bank. That bet has put him to the test. He raises me going all-in for another $15 or so. I know he's not ahead of me in this hand so I have to call and the betting action is over.

Regardless of how the hand turned out did I play it right?

I think I did. I wanted to win his stack off him and by raising me pre-flop I figured I had a good chance to do so if I got a friendly flop. I got what I wanted in that respect and got all the chips in the middle. OK, so the turn screwed me a bit but I still had outs - the two other Aces and any of the remaining hearts. I make that 11 outs on the river. I was just unlucky and that happens. Luck is still part of the game after all.

That hand bothered me a bit last night but I think I played it OK even though I lost a load of chips with it. On another day the King won't come or I'll hit an out on the river and the situation will be reversed but I did what I had planned to do and put myself in a position to take this guy off his entire stack.

[mathare]

I know I'm just talking to myself here buy hey-ho. It helps me and boosts my post count :)

One buy-in burned through inside half an hour this evening. I just ran into a player who was trickier than I thought and hit the cards he needed really. I lost a chunk of chips early on when I played AQ stronger than I should have. I fired a bet in on an average flo and got a call. So I fired again on the turn and he had me beat in the end. He had chips and wasn't afraid to use them. I then suffered a few smaller knocks and finally got whacked holding JJ when this guy's 22 from the BB hit trips on the flop and then turned into a full house on the turn and river.

I reloaded instinctively and then thought: why am I still here? This table is not a simply beatable table and this guy has annoyed me. Not enough to put me off my game really but probably enough to bring my play down a notch from where it was. So I upped and switched tables. Let's see what the new table brings.

On anther note I don't feel as focused as yesterday so maybe that was an omen that I shouldn't be playing...

[vegyjones]

I know I'm just talking to myself here buy hey-ho. It helps me and boosts my post count :)

What a good idea :D

[mathare]

Not my night tonight :(

Three-quarters of my stack gone. AK getting me into a spot of bother from the big blind.

Three callers from a variety of positions and the SB raises to 6xBB. I call with AKo as does one other player from early position. The flop comes 5-A-9 suited. I'm top pair/top kicker with the nut flush draw. SB bets, quite small at around 1/4-1/3 of the pot. I call, the other fella goes all in for just over $6. The SB min raises to around $10 and I am put to a decision as that represents just over half my stack. I think fast and the odds say call. I am on top/top with the nut flush draw and while not getting great odds to call the money can't go much deeper as SB only has around $5 left.

The 7s comes down and the rest of the chips go in the middle, obviously. Then comes Ks and I have made two pair, losing to the SB's flopped trips as he held 9h9c.

I hate AK at times. I know I didn't play it well but that's another one of those hands where either of the remaining aces or one of my flush cards would have seen me right but they just didn't come. For the second day in a row.

I'm less convinced about my play in this hang than in yesterday's AA v KK though. Was I blinded by top/top with the nut flush draw? Were the outs enough? Should I have seen him for a hand and conceded on the flop?

One to think about later I reckon.

[mathare]

According to the hand history for that one the other fella held Ac8s. I was never in particularly good shape there according to the odds calculator on the Cardplayer site. Ah well! :(

[mathare]

Absolute rubbish this evening ;fire

Bought in for $20 twice and cashed out with not a lot of it left ($8.88).

I didn't play great all night, I'm not too big to admit that. I didn't feel on my game but I wanted to play because I am in the house by myself and it was a choice between poker, blackjack towards a Paddy Power bonus and working on my betting spreadsheet. I'd had a good session on the Paddy Power blackjack earlier and didn't fancy spreadsheetery this evening so poker got the nod. Plus I was keen to put in the hours at the table, build up my stats more at this level and learn more about NLHE cash games.

Instead I learned how to blow a big chunk of my chip stack - twice.

Looking back at the history for that first session it was downhill all the way. I got bet off AQo when I was playing that too strongly and that was only 7 hands in. Four hands later came a smaller loss when I played a small pocket pair (33) from the button. I thought I had the odds to draw to the full house when two 8s hit the flop but looking back I'm not so sure. I got off that hand anyway without too much of a loss really. AK two hands later gave me a slight boost but 7 hands later it was all over as the remaining half of my starting stack went on those Jacks to the full house. 20 hands, $20. Not an ideal start.

The other session wasn't quite as exciting. I had 4 small-ish wins, two small losses and one killer with AK as I mentioned earlier. I doubled up next hand to bring me back to around half my starting stack for this table but after that it was nearly 50 hands of absolute nothingness.

I'm not at all happy about those sessions this evening. I am sure there were at least a couple of hands in the 50 nothing hands that I could have tried to squeeze a bit back and perhaps I should have played some of the hands I did play differently. But what's done is done.

What I need to do know is mentally file those sessions and move on. I don't want to forget them as that defeats the point. I need to learn from them and then move on. I know I have a tendency to give up on a game after a night like tonight but I can't do that here. The game is not better than me. I just had a bad night at the tables and I can recover. Confidence. Belief.

And playing cards for money, even small stakes like I am now, when I am not on my game is a BIG no-no.

[mathare]

Bit of a change of plan on this already.

My Bet365 account was empty so I have loaded that with £50 and that's my new NLHE bankroll. So it's basically the same as I was trying with Ladbrokes but on a different site, one who use a slightly different version of the Microgaming software and one I prefer actually.

So it's a fresh start and although this won't be a long session tonight (2 hours at the absolute max) I am in a good mood and feeling confident and on top of my game so let's see how it goes. I am taking my time to breathe in the game as John Vorhaus calls it. I've passed up a few steal opportunities already while I learn what will get the table to fold. Meanwhile I am building a tight image hand by hand, something I can exploit later on in the session.

Let's play...

[mathare]

Why do I bother? :headbange

Another day, another lousy session at the tables.

Let's first look at the story of the session and then we'll step back and look at the bigger picture shall we?

I was card dead for a lot of this session. 105 hands and I saw only 14.29% of flops. That's tight and then some. I won more than my fair share of hands apparently (12.38%) but most of that was blind stealing from the button or the cut-off, just for fun and because I could really.

There are only three green hands in tonight's Poker Office profit graph:
1) Rivered a jammy straight and won a small pot
2) Flopped top/top and bet it to win a small pot
3) Called with 55 from the SB and bet into 4TT on the flop to win a tiny pot.
My steals don't even register as green on the graph so we can forget them.

And the red, losing hands - 7 of them :(
1) Q8s getting me into trouble when my flopped set runs into a rivered full house - not a big pot that one though
2) A slight loss with 88 when the flop came J high. The hand was played out passively so I lost minimal chips but it's still red on the graph
3) JJ causing my trouble again when the flop contains AKx and I can't seriously call any bet on that flop
4) The biggest loss of the night when I overplayed AQ on a KK575 board and my opponent showed me a King in the showdown
5) A steal attempt with T9 went wrong and cost me a bit
6) Second to last hand and another steal attempt goes wrong. Folder round to SB who raises my BB. I raise back trying to exploit the tight image and get significantly re-raised. A6s is not going to be good enough here so I cut my losses and fold. SB shows me K8o. This was a signal that the table think I can be pushed around and maybe they're right. If I am to stay I need to hand I can play back with to get my confidence back up a bit
7) Last hand, 98s rivers a straight but the river card puts 4 to a flush on the board and of course it's not my suit so I fold to the river bet.

I cashed out with $7.55 from the $20 buy-in. I'm not too chuffed with tonight's performance. Being card dead for too long left me stranded. And so often when I folded junk I find it would have hit the flop, and quite often hit it hard. I hate it when that happens.

So, on reflection, am I making a mistake even playing the game? Is it the right game? Is it the right site? Am I playing the right stakes? Am I playing the right table?

Game - I can play tourney NLHE and have done alright in the SnGs recently. But perhaps the cash game isn't for me. I don't know how to tell really, short of playing a hell of a lot more until it makes or breaks me.
Site - I know not all sites are equally good but no site is going to be full of tables so soft and squishy that I can stomp all over them are they?
Stakes - Am I playing high enough? A strange question to ask when you're losing but am I trying to make moves against players no sophisticated enough to spot them? Am I not trying hard enough because there's not enough at stake? No, and no, I think. I'm not trying to get too tricky on anyone, just tricky enough to avoid being predictable. And I have said all along I want the mistakes to be as cheap as possible so I have no plans to jump the stakes.
Tables - much of the poker literature bangs on about table selection but online the table can go loose to tight in the space of a few hands as the players change. So you can watch a table for half an hour and see it play one way only to sit down and have the table total change on you so I don't really give table selection much credit.

Am I just running bad and everything will come good again in time?

In the last two days I have played exactly 200 hands and seen only 39 flops. I've had 10 showdowns and won only 3 of them. That's not right. I've lost $43.57 in that time too.

Statistical blip or is this game just not for me? One to sleep on I think but instinct tells me I need to keep playing. If I lose my Bet365 bankroll then so be it. £50 ain't that much to learn whether or not I can play NLHE and if it is heading that way I reckon on bailing out before the full bankroll is gone. Maybe I need to go back to limit cash games - I was at least winning there even if it was below the expected rate for a decent player (expected rates run about 1xBB/hour, I was on 0.81xBB/100 hands so around 0.65xBB/hour). We'll see as time goes on I guess.

[mathare]

I have a plan - sort of.

Get at least 1000 hands of NLHE cash game poker under my belt and then see where I stand.

I'll look back at the cards I have had and see whether I have been running hot, cold or about average so I have a context to put my results in. If I am running hot and losing badly then the game really isn't for me. If I have been card dead for too long and am losing badly then it's not a definite no-no. Similarly a good set of results from bad cards is a good sign and good results from good cards is fairly inconclusive.

At the end of the day I can always go back to multi-tabling limit hold'em.

[mathare]

Get at least 1000 hands of NLHE cash game poker under my belt and then see where I stand.New plan - play 491 hands of NLHE in cash games and then give up because it's not for you. Let's have a quick check of the Poker Office database and would you believe it, 491 NLHE hands played at $0.10-$0.20 so it's time to give up.

And do you know what - this plan feels 100% right.

I'm not going to dissect tonight's session in detail - I lost again and that's all that really matters at the end of the day. And I got the cards this evening too so I can't blame that. But one hand made me see the light:

I had AA cracked by KQ that hit two pair on the flop, filled up on the river and cost me around half my original buy-in. That's when I realised that I can't get good enough reads on my opponent and that's what I need in NLHE cash games. I suspected a K or a Q, or maybe drawing to a straight. But the mistake in calling a decent all-in raise cost me a lot of chips. And that's when I thought - why are you playing no limit when you know deep down you're a limit player for cash games? And that's exactly how it is. That hand would have cost me one or two big bets in limit, not half my stack.

With SnGs it's different as the rising blinds mean it becomes about the right move at the right time more than the right move against the right opponent. I can play NLHE SnGs it seems but I can't convert that success to cash games so I shouldn't even try any more.

Making the decision to ditch NHLE and go back to limit hold'em was so easy to make and felt so right. It was a proper moment of clarity and I know it is the right move. I tried NLHE cash games - they're not for me so move on. I guess I had to try it, and in some respects limit hold'em is seen as the wimp's version of the game. Men play NLHE and you're not a proper poker player unless you make a profit at NLHE. Is that the case? Then I'll stick with limit hold'em because I know I can beat that.

So it's back to multi-tabling $0.50-$1 tables for me, which means a change of site again as the action on those tables on Bet365 and Ladbrokes is almost non-existant. So it'll be Victor Chandler or Party/Empire Poker for me for a while now. I'll use B365 and Laddies for NLHE SnGs still but not cash games, not any more.

Which gives me a bit of a problem? I have found this talking to myself business a real help in getting my head straight during/after poker sessions and I would like to continue with it. But it is supposed to be about NLHE cash games, as the title suggests. So a new thread or change the title? My preferred option is to expand the scope of the thread and use it to straighten my thoughts on other forms of gambling as well as poker, such as my casino bonus hustling. I have also been doing some work to resurrect my diary that I used to run so I could include that sort of thing in here as well. So I reckon in due course I will move this thread to a different area of the forum and rename it. It can be my gambling blog henceforth known as my gamblog. :D

Yeah! That all feels so right.

[mathare]

So I had my first session of limit hold'em under the new plan this evening.

I started by opening a load of tables on Party and Victor Chandler and letting Poker Office run the rule over those while I had my tea. The plan was to come back and sit at a semi-loose/loose table and play tight, solid poker and make a profit that way. Except I realised I wasn't getting the table stats properly from Party so after my tea I scrapped all those and switched focus to the VC tables. Then I cocked up and closed Poker Office and lost the table stats :splapme so in the end I just put my name on the waiting list for all 10 seater $0.50-$1 tables. I was only going to play one table at once tonight as I wanted to write some VBA at the same time. Anyway, I got myself seated and off we went...

Not much exciting happened for the first hour or so really. I played a few hands, lost a few chips, won a few chips back and that was it really. Limit poker is just about the grind rather than the big swings and great bluffs and laydowns. Poker Office was giving me the pot odds etc at all times so I knew where I was all the time and just played it straight and by the book. Looking at the session details I seem to have got myself into a bit of trouble with TT but nothing else seems to have gone too wrong. And by the end of the first hour I was about back where I started after winning 4 hands on the trot with AKo, T6s (blind steal), J7s (a blind steal that flopped trips) and QTo (a deliberately loose play that won the small pot on the flop).

I then accidentally closed Poker Office again when trying to get rid of some of the extra tables I had open so the rest of the evening is in a new session but that's no bad thing as it coincides with a bit of a change in thinking. Twice.

At the start of the second session this evening I lost focus and started to play strangely. My focus was elsewhere I think otherwise I cannot see why I played some of the starting hands I did. Anyway my stack went up and down and at once stage was down around $15 from the starting point of $50 this evening.

But then poker sense kicked in and I glanced at the table stats and compared them to my stats. I was playing too passively after the flop but nice tight-aggressive poker beforehand. But the rest of the table were playing tight too and the percentage of people seeing the flop had dipped to around 20% while my own percentage of flops seen was around 22%. I was going with the flow rather than against it so I loosened up and started to raise several hands in a row with any suited paint and almost any cards in position when I was first into an unraised pot. I stole a few blinds before a few people cottoned on and I got callers. The thing is I also had cards then and won a few good hands, only folding the really poor hands. Loosening up had turned the session around and done me the world of good. It was the change of gear I needed and it surprised the rest of the table who were playing like proper rocks.

The end result - I finished up $4.20, which is hardly a sum worth writing home about and won't exactly pay the bills but it's a start and that's all I was after. Softly, softly, catchee mon(k)ey after all. One big bet an hour is an average win rate for limit hold'em supposedly. I was running at nearly double that tonight so I can't complain.

My starting requirements were all over the place at times though. Calling in early position with KQo :errrm Raise or fold 'em, son. I need to adapt back to limit hold'em still but I'll get there and soon I will be ready to start multi-tabling again. All the action you crave just over several tables so you're still playing tight-aggressive poker. And Poker Office tells you all you need to know superimposed on the table such as your pot odds, how loose your opponent is, how often he raises pre-flop and how often he sees the turn having seen the flop. And also how he's running this session. I made moves against some (relatively) big losers this evening I wouldn't have made againsr players who were winning and vice versa also. If a guy has lost $15 of his $20 buy-in he's going to lose the other $5 too so you're less likely to bet him off a hand if he has any part of it. May as well go for $20 as for $15. But if he's $15 up then he wants to keep those chips he's won. He earned those and doesn't want to end the session with no profit to show for it so he can be pushed around, as much as you can push people around in limit hold'em.

I feel good after that session. The poker took a back seat for much of the evening, as one table of limit hold'em at that level can and still produce a win. But I'm back in the game!

[mathare]

After some pestering by Betfair I have relented and given their poker client another go. I used to play here on and off when I was first starting out in online poker two or three years back. I looked in every now and again to see what they were up to, especially when they would e-mail to say they had changed something. And now I am playing in one of their daily WSOPE freerolls and I have to say the poker client is rubbish!

It looks tacky and the lobby can't even get the correct information displayed at all times. I am displaying the lobby for this tourney and it says:

Prize Pool $0 - it's $100 plus 9 seats to a WSOPE final qualifier tourney
10 seats in the WSOPE $250k giveaway up for grabs for players who generated 100 BFP - no, it's a freeroll with 9 seats up for grabs and no conditions on entry
Blinds would go up every 15 minutes - they go up every 5 minutes
Add to that the fact that it looks tacky, isn't compatible with Poker Office and just smacks of a DIY effort rather than going with one of the big networks/providers. I'm not impressed and won't be playing here for money

[mathare]

Well that's that pointless waste of time over and done with. I lasted 25 minutes, got dealt 22 hands and played 3 of them. I got one freebie out the BB, I made up the blinds from the SB in an unraised pot because the pot odds were good and shoved UTG with AQo with only around 5xBB left and the blinds set to increase again. The flop wasn't kind, the turn and river were no help either and I exited in 748th out of 1635 players.

And the Betfair software still gets on me nerves. It really is quite amazingly rubbish and amateur-looking.

I'll play some cash games on a proper site after my tea.

[mathare]

On the off chance that anyone is reading this I'd really appreciate some tips on loosening up, bearing in mind I'm playing limit hold'em much of the time now.

I'm a tight player by nature and I reckon on seeing maybe 20-21% of flops but the thing I am encountering on Party Poker a lot these days is similarly tight players. So if the table is tight I want to play a bit looser and swim against the tide as it were. But how do I loosen my play up properly?

I don't want to be in there with T3o and trash like that but what do I want to be in a pot with to play looser? Is any suited Ace now playable? What about the so-called 20s (A9, KJ, QT etc., any hand with a blackjack value of 20), are they good to add to my starting hands?

I already play suited connectors in position and strong hands. I try to play pocket pairs in almost any position but I won't generally play small pairs (66 and lower) into a raised pot from early/mid position.

As I naturally tight player in a game where you generally can't steal a pot with a late raise (he says as he raises with 83s on the button and steals the blinds) I look at most hands and immediately think fold. But what hands do you loose players look at and think "yeah, I could play that"?

[presto]

i play 44% of flops :)

so if you want to loosen up:

play all pairs - only cheap if they are low, (a low set is very profitable).
all suited Aces, (chasing the nut flush is cheaper in limit - if implied odd's are ok)
play all suited connectors, any position. - i don't play limit but would have thaught your going to get more chances to catch cards without being priced out (unlike no limit).
i usually play 20's.

throw in random crap like 5-7 (cheap) - if you hit the flop nobody can put you on a hand and you can take a big pot, always bluff it - if you win show your bluff to loosen up your image.
(that may just be a sharkfish tactic though :D )

[mathare]

Cheers Presto. That's the sort of thing I wanted.

Although after last night I was wondering if poker was the game for me. I've been having some dodgy sessions recently and I am a bit down on the game. I can't decide whether I am just not giving the game enough care and attention and just playing for the hell of it, playing badly or being unlucky.

I need to sit down and go back over my Poker Office stats and see a more accurate picture of things. But at the minute I have thrown my toys out of the pram and gone off poker. I don't see the point of playing and losing.

[mathare]

Bit better this evening :thumbs

I started with one $0.50-$1 limit table kinda in the background while I was working on something else. When that was done about 45 minutes later I fired up a second table at the same limits to keep my brain engaged better.

Did that work?

It did, mostly, yes. I was on Party which lets you easily tile multiple tables so the two tables I was sat at occupied the top half of my screen with either my browser or a spreadsheet behind them showing in the bottom half of the screen. This mostly kept my focus on poker and not on surfing the web or playing with my spreadsheets so I was quite pleased with that. I think I could easily handle one more table though and perhaps two in time. I'll stick to two tables for now until I get back into the limit swing of things and then bump it up to three and see how that goes.

I'll be the first to admit I got lucky on a couple of key hands this evening. Well, I say lucky, people weren't playing the hands I thought they would be so is that luck or skill? Four-straights and four-flushes were hitting the board and no-one was connecting with them and top two pair or a set would often win the hand. Fortunately I hit enough hands like that to show a good profit in one session and only a slight loss in the shorter session.

I saw about 25% of flops in both sessions and I didn't feel too loose so that's good. Whether this is about the figure to aim for I don't know. I thought about Party tables more last night and this morning and wondered whether I just need to play my normal tight game rather than force myself into an unfamiliar loose style. Maybe I was trying to play a loose game that I don't know too well and can't play too well so rather than playing tight and well I was playing semi-loose and poorly. That's certainly possible based on last night's play. Tonight was much more me and my normal style, as it needs to be if I am multi-tabling and that was part of the reason for multi-tabling tonight - to force me into my usual style of limit poker. And it's an experiment I will continue with.

I have a new plan - the umpteenth for this thread already :laugh. The new plan is to get to either $100 profit from the tables I am playing now or 5000 hands. Maybe both - the plan is still quite flexible. I'm on 3100 hands and $23.08 profit at this level. When I reach one of those milestones depending on how I am standing at the time and how it feels I may mix a $1-$2 in as one of the tables when I play two at once. So one $0.50-$1 and one $1-$2 table. The plan hasn't extended as far as whether to stick with Party or not. At the minute I just need to build up some loyalty points to unlock a bonus they gave me. I'm over halfway there I reckon. After that, who knows? I'd like to go where the tables are loose so my tight play is more likely to profit. That said I hate people connecting with nothing flops and making a hand to beat my big pocket pairs and confidence seems to be a big part of my game at the minute. When I feel good and feel confident I play better.

No doubt I'll be back with a new plan soon :laugh

That may be it on the poker front for a few days. I have a home game tourney at a mate's over in Kent on Saturday, followed by a cash game but that's just a bit of fun really. Not sure I will get chance to play again before then but a good boost this evening going into that live game.

[Profit Seeker]

Cash games scare the hell out of me. I've very rarely had a mess about on lowest possible limit stuff and apart from getting bored out my pants I always found that being a newcomer I got all the cards, made an easy pofit then ran off an hour later, but I know it wouldn't stay like that at all, hence running away and not coming back for a long time. I'm quite happy being a seemingly natural genius at tournament play, it's easy enough winning with the cards in my favour but feels great pulling a cheeky move with nothing, my timing is usually impeccable and it all comes through instinct and chi being focused on one table at a time, forget all this way over the top analysing and software trialling, just use your instincts.

[mathare]

There we go - this is now officially a gamblog :)

And to celebrate I'll start with some non-poker news. There is good and bad news today so let's begin on a cheery note.

Coral are one of several casinos that offer a monthly loyalty bonus and I realised the other day that I hadn't claimed this month's and £25 for nowt is not to be sniffed it if you ask me. OK, so the EV is only around £22 but let's not split hairs on this one. Anyway, I played my usual blackjack game for a couple of hours this evening and after staking £626 the bonus was mine. I even staked a quid more than I needed to to get the bonus - who said I'm a casino bonus abuser? :D And even better than the fact that I got £25 free was the fact that I won a little bit too so the bonus was actually worth £30 if you want to think of it in those terms. And a whole new month starts tomorrow so I could do it all again then if I wanted.

And now the bad news - the horses. I got properly ::hump today by the damn donkeys. Or at least that is how it felt. I lost around £150 all told and bearing in mind I have been winning £100+ for the past few days and £200+ the other day I can't bitch about it too much. Gambling is about taking the rough with the smooth and building banks steadily. This month some of mine have rocketed so I should be really happy. And overall I am as this month has been my best by a long way. Maybe it's just the stage I am at in my gambling career with bigger banks and what have you but this month's bottom line is around double my previous best month.

To give you an idea where I am with my staking and banks I would still class myself as a small-time gambler. My banks are building though and I reckon on each day netting me around £100 or costing me about £100 depending on how the results go for me. Yeah, I'd say around £100 a day is my average profit/loss at the minute. That's a nice figure for me to have in mind certainly. I don't get excited about profits less than £100 and similarly don't worry about daily losses less than that.

I'm hoping in the next few days to start putting more meaningful figures in this gamblog. I am still working on the code behind my spreadsheet to get it to produce the figures I'd like to publish, things like daily SR, overall SR, profit/loss expressed as a number of base bets for both each day and overall, margins over SP, that sort of thing. Once I have knocked the code up and got it producing some decent HTML I will start putting the figures in here for all my major banks, which just happen to be the W2W systems. Hopefully having the figures staring back at me from this gamblog as well as my spreadsheet will help focus me as well as give you lot an idea of how the systems are running for me. My main concern at the minute is that each such entry in this gamblog will be rather large so I need to sit down and work out exactly what figures I do want to show for each system. Maybe the total number of bets to date, strike rate, profit/loss in BB and overlay/overbet is sufficient rather than giving daily or monthly figures also. I'll give it some thought anyway.

But tonight the coding continues...

[Merlin]

Nice Blog , Mat.....nice to read......

[mathare]

Nice Blog , Mat.....nice to read......Thanks Merl. It helps me a lot to write things down, not just with gambling but with everything really. It organises my thoughts so much better and makes things much clearer for me. I'm hoping this blog helps me keep my betting in focus and helps me spot my strengths and weaknesses better. And by mixing in the casino betting and poker I hope it makes it more of an all-round read than my previous diaries have been as they were basically just tables of numbers.

[Win2Win]

Due to the fact I hadn't played poker since night racing started, when I fired up BET365 & Partypoker, bith of them gave me free money to start playing again, so thanks for the $50....will be useful to build up my banks even more, completely forgot I had around £2000 in the accounts.

[Win2Win]

Nice Blog , Mat.....nice to read......

Better than that Merl's waffle eh? :thumbs

[mathare]

completely forgot I had around £2000 in the accounts.You need to update your spreadsheets/betting records to display your bookie/exchange balances like I do :wink

[Win2Win]

You need to update your spreadsheets/betting records to display your bookie/exchange balances like I do :wink

Easy to forget loose change though eh? :thumbs

[mathare]

Just played a bit of limit hold'em again. I have been continuing to work on the code that is producing the stats I want for this blog and while that is processing I wanted something to do so figured I may as well play a bit of poker.

A very mixed session really. I played my normal game of tight-aggressive poker but I am starting to get the feeling I am perhaps too passive post-flop. That's certainly what Poker Office seems to think anyway. Overall for $0.50-$1 limit it has be tagged as tight aggressive (pre-flop) - neutral (post-flop). But looking at the detailed stats I am upping my pre-flop aggression but I think my post-flop aggression is waning, especially on the river. Something to be aware of there for future sessions.

It was an 87 hand session today lasting an hour and a quarter so the hand rate was reasonable. I lost a few hands in the first third of the session and at my lowest point was $10 down. I then went on a bit of a run and brought myself back level before AJo got me into a bit of trouble. But I ran up my stack to be a tad under $10 up a few hands from the end before 55, 66 and KQ in four hands cost me a bit and put me back to where I started, more or less. It was then that I decided to uncheck the 'Auto post blinds' checkbox and see out the round. I got 55 under the gun on my last hand, a hand I would um and ahh over and sometimes play in that position and sometimes now. If I was going to play I'd be in for a raise and drop below my starting stack. Not that that should matter as it's really all one long session broken into stages isn't it? But I folded and the board came A8Q so I think I was well off out of it. So I could have been $10 down, I could have been $10 up but instead I finished $0.45 up after 87 hands and 77 minutes. But the money isn't important - getting back into the swing of limit poker is the important thing here. Remembering that pod odds are king and that unless you're sure you're beaten folding on the river is usually a bigger mistake than calling because of those pot odds.

It's an NLHE tourney for me tonight but it's a home game (albeit an away fixture for me as it's over in Crayford, Kent) so it's more about the beer than the cards a lot of the time. And the tourney will be followed by a few hours of dealer's choice cash games and I tend to do alright there, especially when wild cards are introduced for some reason.

[mathare]

I said the other day that a profit or loss under £100 doesn't matter to me and I only bother with results outside that range. Well I guess that means I need to celebrate Saturday's results as I made over £250 :REGamblMo

It was the flat combo bank that sparked the celebration as that bank went up over £300 yesterday. I had a slight loss on the other systems and lays overall but nothing worth writing home about. But 6 winners from 7 bets, two of them at double stakes and some at very nice odds makes for happy days :happyboun

Or does it? I have to admit that my flat combo bank has left me in a slightly uncomfortable position - the stakes are much higher than I am used to and as I sit here before the start of racing on Sunday I am a little nervous about the bets I have to place in the coming hours. One of the flat combo bets is a triple-staker so the best part of £70 is going on one horse. That's a lot of money and way larger than bets I usually place. One of the lay systems I do is at £4 fixed stake 11.0 cut-off so could cost me £40 but that doesn't happen very often so I am not used to seeing potentially big losses from one horse. My other backing stakes vary from around 40p on the System Banker to just over £11 on the Michael Stoute system. I have lays with max liabilities of £30 and £40 and dutching is £27 per race when I do it. So this flat combo bet today is a little scary.

Don't get me wrong, my staking is all under control and in line with the banks etc etc etc. I am not chasing losses and placing big bets because I need to try and claw some money back from the layers, not at all. The bank has soared recently and my stakes have gone up accordingly but I am not used to these sorts of stakes and I find it more than slightly unnerving. Of course this is something I will need to get used to as my banks grow but when you first start placing bets like this it can be a little scary. Obviously I hope that one day stakes like this will be on the small side of normal but that day is many years away yet.

Here's to a good Sunday, hopefully.

Oh yeah, the poker home game. There should have been 6 of us but only 5 made it, and one of those was quite late and was being blinded away. I played tight enough and smart enough when it got really short-handed to get heads-up and should have finished the eventual winner off on two occasions but the cards had other ideas. He went all in blind from the big blind when we were down to three and he was very short-stacked so I pushed all-in behind him when I saw my ATo to push out the small blind. That worked and the BB turned over 32o. Oh yeah! But he paired his 3 and doubled through. And then when we got heads-up I went all-in with KT and got called by his QT I think it was. He rivered the miracle card he needed and doubled up again and a few hands it was all over when his K8 stood up against my Q5. The buy-in was a tenner and I got £15 for second and then lost £10 playing some very poor cash game poker. So I made a slight loss on the night but it was good experience again and good to see everyone and finally get some live poker in for the first time in a long while.

[Merlin]

I need to celebrate Saturday's results




Easy Tiger...:yikes: :yikes: :yikes:

[mathare]

Here's to a good Sunday, hopefully.Or not :yikes:

Ah well. It's still been a pretty decent weekend despite hardly getting a winner this afternoon. It was tough to see the horses losing (except the lays, a few of them found the line well enough), especially those with the big stakes on. My flat combo bank is still well up for the weekend (up £175) and the way it works means I will get some more practice with the scarily big stakes tomorrow as today's losses won't affect the staking. But everything else has taken a bit of a hit. My NH combo bank is down more than it should be because an oversight yesterday meant I forgot to put any of those bets on :splapme. My A+ bank has had 5 losers in a row now and only 1 winner in the last 8 so that has suffered a bit. I just checked the profit/loss for the other systems this weekend and it was not as bad as I had feared with the LTO3 bank doing pretty nicely as it happens. It's the lays that have suffered most with a couple of winning Golden lays and the new Pro losers hitting a few winners at my biggest fixed stakes. So the Pros have hit a reduction trigger but are not far from coming back up to where they were so I'm not too worried.

At the end of the day I have suffered a loss of under a tenner for this weekend and I have the opportunity to get hardened to greater losses that come when you play to larger stakes so I can't be too disheartened with how it has all gone. I certainly don't feel down despite today being my heaviest daily loss (I think, pretty sure on that though) in cash terms as yesterday was probably my biggest win and the two have almost cancelled one another out.

One thing that has certainly lightened my mood is the fact that I was able to withdraw a couple of ton from Bet365. You see the way I like to handle my bookie accounts is to keep them all at a level that can handle a day's betting without the need to deposit more unless I can really avoid it. It's a rare day when all the bets I put on with a bookmaker use the same account, more likely some of the bets are with one and some with another. I probably bring 5 or 6 accounts into play on an average day. So I tend to keep somewhere between £100 and £200 in most of my accounts, with more than that in Betdaq obviously as I need to cover the lays too. But my Bet365 balance today came very close to £400 so I figured I may as well have a couple of hundred of it back as I may need to use that to bolster other accounts later in the week. Especially Stan James where I suffered the loss of the big stake I had on Magical Speedfit on the flat combo bank.

The way I see gambling and banks is gambling can obviously provide a much better return on your money than a high street bank account can. But all the time you have money sat in a bookmakers account that you're not using you're losing interest on that money. Suppose you have £1000 in a Betfair account and your exposure at any one time is never more than £200. You've got £800 sat there doing nothing. Now I wouldn't pull the whole £800 out but I would most probably take £500 or £600 out and put it in the bank. Someone is earning of the money so it may as well be you rather than the bookies. I know some people prefer to see their betting banks all in one place and available for betting, ie in their bookies/exchange accounts but as I control all my betting banks through a spreadsheet I know where each one stands and am far more relaxed about having chunks of my betting banks sat in my current/savings account. I have no problems depositing and withdrawing funds from bookies and it is something I need to do reasonably often to keep my accounts balanced. After all, if I am searching for the best price on each and every bet I can't afford to have a £200 system betting bank sat with Ladbrokes (for example) when the best prices are often with Bet365 or Paddy Power. So a system's betting bank is more likely to be spread all over the place, across as many as a dozen accounts, which is why my spreadsheet is everything to me and I cannot be (or bet) without it.

EDIT: That'll teach me to write this before double-checking my figures. I am £30 better off today than I thought I was as my lay bets on Lord Ryeford weren't matched so I am actually just over £20 up for the weekend :)

[Mavrick]

That is interesting that you should mention what you did with your funds. Do you keep the entire balance of all your systems at arms reach. For example in an easy access saving account like what comes with all HSBC current accounts that only need a days notice to transfer the funds into your current account or do you think there is no point as it is highly unlikely that all systems will hit such a negetaive period where you will need to access them funds quickly.

[mathare]

That is interesting that you should mention what you did with your funds. Do you keep the entire balance of all your systems at arms reach. For example in an easy access saving account like what comes with all HSBS current accounts that only need a days notice to transfer the funds into your current account or do you think there is no point as it is highly unlikely that all systems will hit such a negetaive period where you will need to access them funds quickly.I don't think I have access to the entire balance of all my betting banks if I am honest. Hang on, let me just work it out....nope. My betting banks combined come to around £6000 and in my bookies accounts I have less than £3000 (of which less than £2500 is in sportsbook accounts) but I would happily start a new system tomorrow with a £200 bank without even thinking of depositing more funds. In fact I'd happily start 3-5 such systems and not think of further deposits to boost accounts yet.

I know I have a decent balance to my betting. A nice mix of backs, lays, dutching etc. and within that a blend of method and systems. The chance of them all going to pot at once is small, small enough for me to regard it as negligible so I don't need access to the full sum of my betting banks. Does that make any sense? As I am betting with several different firms and following a number of different systems which are not all likely to nosedive at once I am spreading my risk so an increase in my balance with one firm (as a result of wins acrosss several systems potentially) will usually more than offset losses at another firm so I withdraw from one to boost the funds at the other meaning I can still take advantage of the best prices with each firm equally.

This isn't answering your question at all is it? :laugh

I usually withdraw to my current account, an account I like to have a comfortable buffer of cash in at the end of the month but one I transfer funds out of regularly to my savings account. This is done via online transfer and is instant so in effect I can have instant access to my savings via my current account as long as I can get to a PC to initiate the transfer first. Recently I have been withdrawing more from the online bookies than I have been depositing so that money has more often than not passed straight though my current account and into my savings account. The spreadsheets record it as profit and show the system banks accordingly but it feels good to be withdrawing the cash and seeing it build up in my bank. Then my profits aren't just a number on a spreadsheet, they are an increase to my bank account and it gives me a great confidence boost.

Of course, as the stakes rise I will need to keep a larger 'float' in each of my bookies accounts so I will be withdrawing less leading up to that point so as to build up that float. But once the float is set I can continue to move money in and out to maintain that float in all my accounts and pull of the excess into my savings and earn interest on it while still having instant access to it.

Hopefully that gets somewhere closer to answering what you were asking :)

[Mavrick]

Thanks Mat, I think that just about answers it:)

[buddhabee]

Mat. Please assure us all that you back up your spreadsheet regularly.

[mathare]

Mat. Please assure us all that you back up your spreadsheet regularly.My home PC runs Second Copy regularly backing things up to my external HDD. I take a copy to work each morning on a USB memory stick and bring it home again each evening on the same, copying it to my laptop at work in between. And I often take copies of the main spreadsheet when I am playing about the code so I can play with the copy and not break the main spreadsheet. It's backed up well enough I think :)

[tophatter]

How many different banks you got on the go at the moment Mat?

[mathare]

How many different banks you got on the go at the moment Mat?How many systems am I following, in effect? 24 main banks but two of those are combo banks each including 5 systems. And that excludes any of my poker and what have you

[mathare]

I have just seen the list of flat combo qualifiers for today and all I can say is :yikes:. The list is huge so I am going to get a lot of practice with large stakes today. Wish me luck! :ooo

[MattR]

Is the combo bank you're referring to the Flat quickfire? Just wondering as I thought it was you that compiled it with auto sys :doh

[mathare]

Is the combo bank you're referring to the Flat quickfire? Just wondering as I thought it was you that compiled it with auto sys :dohNah. My flat combo bank is the four members flat systems plus Running for Profit all combined into one bank. It's a little complicated so I'll try and explain it later in this evening's update

[mathare]

A day of mistakes today, if I am honest. Missing bets or generally getting it a bit wrong has cost me around £115 this afternoon. Fortunately I know what the problem was and it's pretty easy to rectify.

In the past few weeks I have been using the System Banker software and Bet-IE, both of which involve bets that can't be put on in one go before the start of racing. So I have been switching between work and gambling on and off most afternoons. Today I did that more than I should and while I'm not at all bothered about not getting much work done I am bothered that I cocked up my betting a few times as I wasn't concentrating properly. From now on I need to go back to doing the bulk of my bets at lunchtime and the others as and when they need to be done.

Had I done that today, as I normally would but for some reason today didn't, I wouldn't have taken SP about Yorkshire Blue (11/8) when I could have got 2/1 early price with William Hill had I not forgotten to tick the 'take price' box. Greed got the better of me with Step This Way in the 4.30 and I asked for too big a price by a couple of ticks a few minutes before the off and forgot to go back and make sure I was matched. I remembered when I checked Bet-IE for that race and saw it win ;fire. I should have had around £9 on and would have got better than SP but the 9.2 I asked for was obviously a bit too much to ask. The other mistake was missing Hustle which was worth around £40 to me but I forgot to go back and check I was matched again. I only realised I had missed this one when I was checking my figures this evening.

So on the back of that today feels very much like a losing day even though it isn't. I survived the scary day on the flat combo and made just under £14 on that bank. It could have been more had the big stake on Altitude come to anything and should have been more had I not missed Hustle and taken the price on Yorkshire Blue. The lays went up nearly £24 on a clean sweep and the systems made a bit of a profit (£17) despite missing the decent winner on the Mark Johnston system. So it was a £50 day and should have been more like a £150 day.

I guess it goes to show that once complacency sets in mistakes are sure to follow. I have always said I wanted make my mistakes as cheaply as possible which I why I spent a few years on very low stakes (some of my stakes are still really low). But I will learn from today's errors and move on. It's most definitely not a case of forgetting today and getting on with tomorrow. It's a case of remembering what happened today and how much it cost me and making sure it doesn't happen again.

[mathare]

I said earlier I'd explain what this was all about so let's do that now shall we?

I have two combo banks - one for NH and one for flat. Each is made up of the four members systems for that racing code plus the "For Profit" eBook system for that code. It doesn't have to be set up this way, any number of systems can be used and codes don't have to be separated but this is the way I have chosen to implement the staking plan.

All systems use the same bank. That's the first thing I should point out as this is a big deviation from the norm. And I'm not talking here about the sam bookies account but separate banks in my spreadsheet or anything - all 5 systems in each combo bank use the same bank. This goes against everything we tell the beginners to do so maybe this is for experienced punters only but I'm going to make anyone take any sort of test before they can use this staking plan. You do so at your own risk and at the end of the day nobody made you do anything and you're big enough and ugly enough to look after yourself.

Right. So multiple systems from one bank. Each day I make a list of all the qualifiers. I do this as a table, just like it is on the members update page. So I have different races in each row and the individual systems in each column and then fill in the grid with a Y when a selection is in a system. So each selection is in between 1 and 5 of the systems making up the combo. What I then do I count up the number of systems each selection has been picked by and that's the number of points I put on the horse. It follows then that each horse has 1, 2, 3, 4 or 5 points on it. But what's a point?

I played around with the numbers when testing this idea (which I have to credit Vic for, it's not my work) at the end of 2006 and decided that the best way for me to use it was 1 point would be the LESSER of 2.5% of the current bank and 1.6% of the bank high. I started with a £250 combo bank so initially 1 point was £4 (2.5% of £250 = £6.25, 1.6% of £250 (bank high) = £4 and £4 is less than £6.25). As the winners hit and the bank rises so does the value of 1 point. And it doesn't drop again till 2.5% of the current bank is less than 1.5% of the bank's peak which happens when the current bank is less than 64% of the peak value.

This means that a 5-point winner can see the bank, and hence the stakes, increase rapidly, especially if it comes at a nice price. Stakes then stay high to give the bank a chance to go even higher but if the banks suffers a significant drop then the stakes drop too.

And that's about all there is too it. I said at the start of the year when I began to use these banks that I would do 3-month and 6-month staking reviews to compare them to normal staking of the individual systems. But I got lazy and didn't do that. I should do a retrospective review at some stage but I can't be bothered just yet.

I have to admit though that I didn't think that I could go from 1 point being £4 to 1 point being £23 in only 8 months but that has what has happened with my flat combo bank. It was slow to get started but in the last couple of months it has soared. My NH bank trebled but is now back below where it started. Not that I am worried about that in the slightest. It has been right down to around 20% of the starting bank already this year and recovered.

[MattR]

That's an interesting way of combining a few systems Mat, I like the sound of that. Off the top of my head without thinking it through I would assume that as long as 1 or 2 systems are on a good run the bank should keep climbing steadily. I've got a few 'background' systems where there are perhaps 2 or 3 qualifiers a week on each and they are around 20% SR ones but are generally higher priced as are the winners. Fairly often a horse will be in 2 or more systems so that sounds like it might be a good way of merging 4 or 5 into one bank.

[mathare]

I think it helps if the SRs of the systems are similar too Matt. I wouldn't combine a 20% SR with a 50%+ SR system, for example. The 5 I have combined all seem to run at about 30-40% I think.

[MattR]

Yeah, that makes sense. I like the idea of how you're working out what a point is worth too.

[Win2Win]

Mat, this is a blog......aka.....a way of 'hiding' keywords to get visitors off Google....so your posts should look more like;

I think it helps if the SRs of the systems are FREE BLOWJOBS similar too Matt. I wouldn't combine a 20% SR with a 50%+ SR system, for example LESBIAN VIDEO. The 5 I have combined all seem to run at about 30-40% I think.

:thumbs :D

[mathare]

I really do hate poker at times, tonight being one of them.

Looking at the graphs for tonight's sessions (2 $0.05-$1 limit tables on Party Poker) there is no doubt I played some hands poorly but was I really as poor as the figures seem to suggest? I bought in for $25 on each table and ran away screaming when they went short-handed less than an hour later and with less than $10 on each table. That's poor.

Yet when I look at my stats at this level in more detail on Poker Office it shows some good strengths:
When I see a flop when I am not in the blinds I win the hand 44.66% of the time and it has been a good earner for me. On these hands I am raising 79% of the time pre-flop so if I am in I am in for a raise. That's a strong play.
I am making money from the BB
When I raise first-in I win the hand nearly two-thirds of the time
I win over 60% of hands I raise pre-flop regardless of whether I am first raiser or re-raising. This has been an excellent earner for me
People aren't taking too much off me by trying to steal my blinds and my blind steal attempts are profitable
I am losing from the SB but not that badly, not as bad as I expected anyway
Pocket pairs are profitable for me
Playing suited hands is very profitable for me
Off-suited connectors (generally AK) are profitable for me
Suited connectors are even more profitable
So where am I losing money?

Let's look again at those starting hands, this time in more detail. Ahh. My biggest losing hands in terms of $/hand are QQ, TT, A8s, JJ, 65s, JTs, 55, 99, 44, A7s. Five pocket pairs in the top 10 losers is not good. In fact only 5 of the 13 pairs are profitable for me and with QQ, JJ, TT and 99 not among them I think I can see a flaw in my game. I need to look at how I play suited connectors too after see 65s and JTs in that list. Am I raising too much with them? Am I getting carried away with my aggression and raising where I should be calling? Have I read one too many "calling is for wimps" books or mis-applied the message?

It looks like I am playing QQ stronger than any other pocket pair so probably any other hand. Call a raise to two bets rather than raise to three then, that's an option for that one maybe.

I am pleased with my percentage of flops seen by position though. It's under 10% in early position rising as we go round through the middle seats to around 18, increasing again on the button.

Hang on! The big blind is costing me a bloody fortune by the look of it. How do I think I was making money from the BB earlier? It costs me $0.32 a hand. Is this the gaping hole in my game? Let's see what I am doing wrong here... When I voluntarily put money in the pot it costs me $0.60 per hand and only $0.26 per hand when I don't put money in the pot voluntarily. Now that's interesting. I'm calling too much in the BB. Raising from there is profitable on the few occasions I have done it but calling seems bad news. Checking from the BB pre-flop is profitable (just) and obviously folding isn't. Betting out on the flop from the BB has been OK. Raising on the flop is OK. Calling on the flop is a loser for me, and a big one at that. Betting the turn is OK but raising isn't. Although again it's calling that is costing me money. Out of 371 hands in the BB I have won money on 91 of them at $2.06 a hand and lost the other 280 at -$1.09 a hand. I need to tighten up from the BB pre-flop and be prepared to throw more hands away rather than chase. In comparison I lose money in the SB at the rate of $0.07 per hand, winning $2.45 a hand when win money (75/375) and losing -$0.70 per hand when I lose money on the hand.

I am loose agressive-aggressive from the BB and tight aggressive-passive from the SB making me loose aggressive-aggressive overall from the blinds. Take me out the blinds and I am tight aggressive-passive.

My pre-flop aggression factor is on the wane though and I need to do something about that but in a controlled manner. I need to rein in the aggression with QQ, JJ etc as they keep doing me over and not get over-confident with suited connectors but there is room for more raising I think. My aggression factors on the other streets are pretty settled now but there is room for improvement on the turn as that is my lowest of all so I need to up that a little.

In terms of playing on the flop betting out with one overcard, overpairs and low/medium pocket pairs seem to be my greatest weaknesses and biggest drains on my stack. Calling a bet with a low/medium pocket pair seems to be damaging to my chips too. By no means my only weaknesses but they are the majors. That and trying to bluff with nothing on the flop it seems. I know better than that don't I? Clearly not.

That's a fairly quick analysis of my game through Poker Office and maybe tomorrow (when the missus is out) I will go through and spend more time on it looking at more angles to see where I am winning and losing most.

In the meantime I am wondering if I need to get away from the tight tables of Party Poker and look for the loosey-gooseys that must be out there somewhere. I tracked a few tables at Poker Stars tonight so maybe I need to try there

[MattR]

Mat, just getting back to the combo bank a minute, I assume the 1.6% worked best in conjunction with a 2.5% stake. If you combined systems together where the % was higher or lower than that (all systems same % though) would you advise adjusting that 1.6% figure?

[Win2Win]

I only ever combine systems, when a variable such as 'F/c price' means that the same selection will never be selected more than once.

[mathare]

Mat, just getting back to the combo bank a minute, I assume the 1.6% worked best in conjunction with a 2.5% stake. If you combined systems together where the % was higher or lower than that (all systems same % though) would you advise adjusting that 1.6% figure?So normal staking for the separate systems would be 2% or 3% or whatever? If it were less than 2.5% I would scale that 1.6% downwards, yes. I think. I haven't really thought about it if I am honest. I think the key is to balance the percentages such that you're not overstaking your bank for too long. If you are risk-averse then set the percentages such that you're not risking your bank for so long. For example, with 2% staking using the lesser of that and 1.6% of the peak then stakes will drop when the current bank is 80% of the peak. If you reduce that 1.6% to say 1.2% then you'd reduce stakes when the bank reaches 60% of peak.

Only you can know what sort of protection you want built into this plan and when you'd want to reduce the stakes. Think about how far below the bank high you want to be before you reduce stakes. But at the end of the day as you're using the lesser of the two stakes you're never staking more than a given percentage of the current bank (2.5% in my case) so while it may feel that any drop in the bank should lead to a drop in stakes the 2.5% safety net is always in place.

The long and short of it is play around with the figures till you find something that feels right and if you can back-test it then do so to check how it works out and tweak as necessary.

[MattR]

Thanks Mat.

[mathare]

Just updated my spreadsheet with today's mixed bag of results. I had a few big bets turned over which resulted in a loss of about £30 on the day. I was up on the NH combo bank, up on the systems, a clean sheet on the lays but the only flat combo winner was a dead-heat which didn't help much. That bank is still well up though so I'm not at all worried about today's results. But had one of the bigger bets gone in today it would have been a very different story.

It was an odd day of racing today though, at least as far as I can tell from the reports and results - I didn't see any of the action. But three dead-heats is unusual for any day of racing. And I had a few nags beaten by a head or neck so it was obviously a day of tight finishes.

Not much else to say about the racing today. The lay systems are rocking along nicely and the Pros have recovered from their little setback the other day. The Lay'ems are coming along well too this year. Mark Johnston continues to make me money thanks to the system in the Flat Quickfire eBook. Life is pretty good on this front at the minute :)

[mathare]

Last night I started to analyse where my limit hold'em cash game was going wrong and identified a few areas for improvement. Tonight I want to look at those areas in more detail. But before I do that let's put things in context a little. I'm using Poker Office for my analysis and it's a tool I swear by. In my Poker Office database I have 3329 hands at the level I am currently playing ($0.50-$1) so that gives me plenty of data to work with so findings should be statistically significant. My headline figures are:
12.71% hands won
21.36% flops seen
-$11.85 won
-0.36 BB/100 hands
41.63% of hands won when saw flop
8.62% of hands went to showdown
46.34% of showdowns won
13.85% of hands I raised pre-flop
That tags me as tight aggressive-neutral.

However, if I focus on just my play over the last month things are a little different. I am still winning the same number of hands, seeing the same number of flops, raising as much and winning as many showdowns (give or take a small amount) but I am losing 4.55 BB/100 hands. I am only winning 35.54% of hands I see the flop for too. Over the last month I am tight aggressive-passive so it seems the root of my problems is recent play.

Bad habits picked up from no-limit games? Complacency? My choice of poker room? Let's try and work it out...

I want to start with my play in the big blind (BB) as I highlighted that as a big weakness last night. I've played 371 hands in the BB, seen 54.45% of flops and won 24.53% of the hands. I am raising less than normal (5.12%) and getting to a showdown twice as often (17.25%). I'm also losing 31.67 BB/100 hands. On 106 of the hands I was able to check out of the BB and did so. I don't quite understand how my biggest losing hands in this situation are hands like K2s (OK, the flop came K high but I had no kicker), A9 (I was gutshotting on the flop and turned top pair but lost to a flopped straight plus Q5, Q8, K7, K6, K5 etc. I haven't had these hands enough to be drawing many conclusions about them but high card, no kicker from the BB looks to be a leak. How am I playing these hands (apart from badly)? It seems I am betting some and calling with others. I can't be bothered to check whether I had pot odds on any of those calls but that's my first leak.

Leak 1: Overplaying high card with poor kicker from the BB. Hit the flop or drop the hand. Better to lose a small pot than a big one.

Things are pretty similar when I call a raise before the flop. Of the 79 hands that fall into this category I went to a showdown in 31.65% of cases but only won 36.0% of those showdowns. I am taking too weak a hand to the end, as reflected by the loss of 76.2 BB/100 hands. But what am I calling with? Only 9 of the hands have been pairs and only 55 has really got me into trouble. 21 hands were suited and if you take out QJs where I flopped two pair to be beaten by a straight and the figures aren't too bad. Not great, but not too bad. It's off suited hands that are costing me and it appears to be high card-weak kicker again that is doing the damage. I am overplaying these hands, perhaps thinking I can bluff with them but it's just not working. That leak needs plugging.

My pre-flop raising from the BB seems OK. QQ has cost me money but we'll get to that hand later. I also lost with J8 (don't ask, I don't know) but my other raises have been with big hands such as pocket pairs, AQs etc. I know big hands pretty much play themselves but it is nice to see something going right for me in the BB.

Let's have a quick look at playing out of the small blind (SB) too. 375 hands to look at here with a loss of 7.27 BB/100 hands. I'm semi-loose aggressive-aggressive here and I think I quite like that. The only thing that strikes me right off the bat is the semi-loose bit. I am in a bad position in all betting rounds after the first so I need to be careful. So seeing J8s as my biggest loser in this position is a little surprising. AQ, AK, KQs are fair enough. 66 is pushing it a bit and then we have hands like K4s, A5, J4s. Oh dear.

Hands where I called from the SB seem profitable so am I playing tight enough after all? My biggest losers are JT and once more high card-weak kicker hands. I am raising profitably from the SB too. OK, I am overplaying small pairs such as 55 and 66 and guess what, yep, court cards with weak kickers too. Let's just go back to those hands I call pre-flop from the SB and see how I do on the flop itself. I lost a bit with top pair, top kicker when I held AQ but there is still a sign of me overplaying hands with weak kickers. But at least that is only one leak so far and a pretty easy one to fix I reckon.

That's the blinds dealt with so let's quickly dart off and look at what I am showing down generally. Rather unsurprisingly there are a few big card with a poor kicker hands in the top losers in this category. Goodness only knows why I am taking some of these hands to a showdown.

Under the gun (UTG) I am making a slight profit from the 357 hands I have seen and that probably comes from the tight play, seeing only 9.52% of flops. I am overplaying poor suited aces (A6s, A2s etc) as some of the pocket pairs too perhaps as 77-JJ all feature in my list of biggest losers UTG, along with KQs. So I'm tight but is it tight enough? I called with 14 hands (but when you think that I only played 47 from this position that is quite cally) including low and medium pairs and poor suited aces. I need to tighten up further I think.

UTG+1 is a puzzler though. It's a pretty big losing position for me at -6.96 BB/100 hands over 358 hands. I am only seeing 8.94% of flops and as I don't have to put into the pot here folding is free so I can only assume as this stage that the hands I am playing are either not the right hands, or I'm not playing 'em right or I've been damn unlucky. TT (played very badly), AJ (played badly once, unlucky once), 44 (played badly twice and very unlucky once after flopping a full house!), 87s (played badly and no idea why it was played at all from this position) and so on. I am getting hands that look good but maybe aren't great early position hands. I have called with AQ, AJ, AT, KQ, QT and TT (plus a couple I'd rather forget about). Should I have been in for a raise with these? I seem to have done better when raising with other big hands. I'm not classing this as a leak just yet though as I think the evidence I have is pretty inconclusive due to the number of hands in the samples. Something to bear in mind though.

One seat further round and I make a profit once more. I have overplayed hands like JTs, the smaller pairs, weak suited aces and hands like KQ, KJ. I am still in early position here and need to be careful about this. I am still only seeing 10.08% of flops and winning 63.16% of showdowns so generally speaking my play in this seat only needs a bit of polish and it'll be fine.

I'm a small loser as I shift into seat 6, again overplaying marginal holdings such as small pairs and weak suited aces and kings. Hope on one to seat 7 and I start to make a really nice profit at nearly 16 BB/100 hands after seeing 15.34% of flops. Some weak suited aces still creeping in to the play and eating up the chips but never mind. Seat 8, the last of the middle seats, sees me win only 1 in 3 showdowns so it doesn't look like I am taking strong enough cards to the river. The biggest losers here seem to be the medium-big pairs so 77-JJ again. Calling and raising seems OK pre-flop so my problems here must be post-flop. Calling with some good, but not great, hands has cost me, especially as I have usually missed the flop. I have lost with AJ, JJ, KK and 77 after raising on the flop and in all cases bar AJ the raise was a mistake. With AJ I needed to shut down on the turn but didn't.

Bar the odd steal attempt gone wrong my play from the cut-off seems nice and profitable and doesn't seem worthy of much further comment. And pre-flop I am doing alright from the button too, raising it up 25.46% of the time, mostly as a steal. Indeed in 15% of hands I am in there first with a raise and it has proved profitable.

But enough of position - let's have a look now at how I am playing pocket pairs as I have spotted a few instances of hands like TT and JJ costing me a few chips. Only AA, KK, 88, 77 and 22 are profitable for me. I think I have spotted something looking at my play of hands like 44, 55 and other low-medium pairs. I am betting out with them when all I have is an pocket pair, not even an overpair. Yes, the flop is more likely to miss people than hit but someone will have caught something on a 4s8dKd flop so why I played 5c5s into it I don't know. I think the usual bit of advice here would be no set, no bet. I should pay attention.

Leak 2: Assuming that a small-medium pocket pair is still likely to be the best hand when overcards hit the flop. With anything but big pocket pairs employ a no set, no bet policy.

I wanted to see if my spell playing NLHE cash games had adversely affected my limit game but there is no easy way to tell. I am stealing more, or at least stealing more successfully anyway. But I'm not doing so well with suited connectors, hands that I know are great to play in NLHE in the right circumstances. I am wondering if some of that is creeping into my limit game and I am trying to play 76s in late position without decent pot odds or for a raise. My play of suited hands has got worse too. I wonder if that is due to my spell in NLHE and I am now forgetting about proper pot odds pre-flop. It's hard to tell but I'm going to classify this as a leak I think.

Leak 3: Forgetting the game is LIMIT hold'em so not playing the right starting hands from the right positions in the right ways. Forget suited connectors under 87s and watch those weak suited aces and kings.

And that reminds me of something else I am doing - ignoring the Poker Office HUD. Pot odds are displayed at all times so use them, don't ignore them. Yes, your pair on the flop may be the best hand but you need great odds to chase an improvement to trips. I think I am getting complacent/bored here and just wanting to play some hands even when I know I don't have the odds. And as it is limit I am not going to take a guy off his stack if I make my hand so I can forget about implied odds too. Pot odds are what it is all about. Yes, I am going to end up throwing away a lot of hands on the flop when the pot is still small but better that that losing a medium-sized pot later on.

Leak 4: Ignoring the pot odds and help Poker Office is giving me on the HUD. Use it, that's what it is there for. Throw away your hand on the flop while the pot is small rather than making it bigger and losing it anyway.

The final thing I wanted to look at was whether my play on Party was better or worse than elsewhere but that's not easy to do. Poker Office doesn't allow you to filter on network/site unfortunately. I started off playing on Empire Poker which is just a Party skin and threw in a few Prima (Ladbrokes) sessions now and then and now I am back on Party. I can't believe that the site has changed that much so I was on Empire. Indeed, looking back at my Empire sessions I was seeing a number of tables with <25% of players to the flop so the games were tight back then too.

I need to go back over some of my limit poker books and re-read them. I read something in a magazine recently that said to beat low stakes limit poker the best thing you could do was get a copy of Small Stakes Hold'em by Miller, Sklansky and Malmuth, read it and learn it. I have a copy and have had it for a couple of years. I have read it at least once, probably twice. But I haven't learned it. Maybe it's time to live by the book and really concentrate on putting their advice into action. I have always thought of myself as a limit cash game player primarily but my bottom line isn't reflecting that thought at the minute and I want to address that.

[mathare]

A shorter, more focused entry for me today as it's nearly bedtime so I don't have long to write much. And I haven't been anywhere near Poker Office this evening :laugh

A great day on the horses today. Some nice winners on the flat combo saw that bank reach a new high. I got some good prices too so I am really chuffed, especially when the big bet on Echo Of Light went in and I got a decent price on that one too. I was very pleased with that one, and Meeriss whom I had taken 7/1 about. The NH combo bet won and the systems did OK too today. In fact the System Banker is going great guns for me and I am up around £30 from a £200 starting bank in around 1 month. The P/L graph for that shows a brilliant steady climb, just what I was after. The lays suffered a bit of a loss today with Shaded Edge winning after appearing in 3 lay systems. Overall the lays loss was very manageable though and there were no further winners. I had a couple of winning dutches too. Just a shame the A+ bets let the side down a little but you can't have everything going your way at once which is why I maintain a diverse balance of systems. Up around £270 for the day though so I can go to sleep a happy chappy.

I made significant strides forward with my spreadsheet tonight too. I know have nearly all the figures up to date and by the weekend I should be able to produce HTML tables summarising any given systems on any given date. My plan is to not overcrowd this blog with tables of figures so probably once a week I'll produce tables summarising my main systems showing total number of bets, winners, SR, profit/loss in BB and overlay where appropriate. I am going to call it overlay throughout even though in the case of backing systems it is perhaps better called overbet. It's simply the margin above SP my bets were placed at and as I originally started to calculate it for lays way back when I have been calling it overlay ever since. Overbet just doesn't sound right. I reckon having these tables every week or so will strike the right balance between words and tables of figures but I am developing the spreadsheet to be flexible enough to change how and when I produce these tables as necessary.

And on top of all of this I even managed to spend some time watching TV with the missus. :thumbs

[mathare]

Merlin's recent blog entries about his father-in-law and the guy's love of money got me thinking about myself and wondering if I was anything like that. I have noticed that recently I have found myself quoting more profit/loss figures and wondered if I was getting an unhealthy obsession with money. It's a fact of life in the western capitalist world that you need money to get by and as gamblers surely we are all in pursuit of a few quid else we wouldn't be taking our chances would we? We're all trying to win more money. And things are going very well for me recently and I am surprised by how much money I am winning this past month or so compared to what I am used to winning. Obviously my turnover is much higher at the minute too, I'm not just landing longshot after longshot, but even six weeks ago I wouldn't have envisaged days like I have had recently.

My flat combo bank soared like an eagle again today. I had to raise a wry smile when I saw the number of qualifiers for this bank when I pulled the members' page up at lunchtime. Warwick being abandonded reduced that be a few though but it would still be another opportunity to put what I regard as some serious sums of cash into action. There were 9 selections in all with 5 winners and 4 losers. The losers cost me 5xBB as one was double-staked and the winners included shorties such as Ramona Chase but a nice triple-stake on Our Acquaintance combined with a nice price (9/4 early, 13/8 SP) meant I finished up nearly 13xBB for the day. All told I am roughly 30xBB up on this bank for September and it has more than doubled in the past month :yikes: Oh, I know things can fall as quickly as they can rise and I am prepared for that but I am also making hay while the sun shines. :happyboun

My other bets today say the systems lose a bit but that was balanced out by all the lays losing. I missed a few system bets in the latter part of the afternoon as a meeting overran (because we ended up building an Ikea table) and I didn't check whether I would have been up or down had I placed those bets.

In other news, my favourite Irish bookie came through for me today. Paddy Power sent me what I think is my 25th casino bonus this year, and that's not including the ones I haven't taken. It's an opportunity to try and hoover up another £75 free from the genial Irish folk. According to my spreadsheet Paddy Power are the bookies I have taken most cash off, so for them to keep offering me more is bloody generous of them.

And if I can balance a few numbers in my spreadsheet I'll start attacking the wagering requirement for this latest bonus...

[vegyjones]

Nice one Mat! Must have enough now to put a substantial EW bet on Grimsby to win the league :D

[mathare]

Nice one Mat! Must have enough now to put a substantial EW bet on Grimsby to win the league :DWhy waste money on that though? Play-offs are our best hope I'd say. But if we can keep this team together for next season we have a real chance under Buckley. I'd like to see us up there this year in amongst the contenders but I don't think we'll go up, in all honestly.

[mathare]

I think I have finally worked out why I wondered yesterday (and before then if I am honest) whether I was starting to become obsessed with money...

Money comes with success in this game, or perhaps it's more success that comes with money. As a winning gambler you are successful by definition. For years it was more about being right than being rich with me. I would gamble for pennies wanting to hit a winner, not trying to make anything other than a small profit because of the stakes I was using. It was about a cheap education in the gambling game, getting the mistakes out the way for as little cost as possible and for building up confidence in the methods/systems I was using as well as building up confidence in myself and that I could survive as a gambler, even a recreational one.

None us know in advance of a day's gambling what sort of day we will have. We may have a really good day, a really bad day or somewhere in between. But overall if you're a winning gambler then effectively each day is profitable when averaged out. So what do you do when it comes to missing a day? This is the 'problem' I am having now.

I have semi-regular poker games right over the other side of town that mean I need to stay over and it takes me a couple of hours to get home. So the next day I need to be up and out at a reasonable time in the morning to get back for the start of racing. The missus sometimes talks about us going away for the weekend and things like that. And the thought that rages through my head every time is that I will be giving up a potentially great day on the horses.

I wouldn't say I am struggling to balance my home/social life and my gambling career, that's not true. But as a profitable gambler I have a positive expectation and want to put in as much time as I can punting to try and maximise my returns. Gambling addiction has such a stigma attached to it but I would say I am addicted to gambling in as much as it has become a way of life for me. It's not good to admit to being addicted to gambling but it's a legal high and I'm not committing any of the sins associated with problem gambling such as theft, dishonesty to loved ones etc. I'm not a problem gambler but I am becoming addicted to the success and the great feelings that come from winning. Losing doesn't bother me so much, I can handle that as I know and accept fully that it is part of the game.

I think that's what it is more than an obsession with money itself.

[mathare]

Aplogies to those who thought I'd put up a really dull post with one line in. And further apologies to anyone who saw the work in progress that I put up earlier. That was my stats up until yesterday, only it contained mistakes in the HTML and I thought for a minute I had broken the forum. I'm still not convinced it's looking right anymore, not in this thread at least :peeky. That's why the tables that were here a short while back were quickly deleted. I only put them up to check they displayed OK on the forum after checking them as HTML in a browser. Then I needed to rewrite a section of the code to make it date dependent rather than just using the latest stats all the time. I think I have cracked it now and should be able to produce summary stats for any systems on any given date as a series of pretty HTML tables.

It seems vaguely sensible to give my stats up until the end of August at this point. Then if I do weekly stats as I said I probably would I can do another one for the bets up until the end of today. Let's try that and hope I don't break the forum with some dodgy code...

BB stats for 31/08/2007
<table><tr><td width="100"></td><td align=center width="100"><b>A+</b></td><td align=center width="100"><b>Flat Combo</b></td><td align=center width="100"><b>NH Combo</b></td><td align=center width="100"><b>Bet-IE</b></td></tr><tr><td><b>Bets</b></td><td align=center>573</td><td align=center>660</td><td align=center>930</td><td align=center>70</td></tr><tr><td><b>Winners</b></td><td align=center>218</td><td align=center>251</td><td align=center>321</td><td align=center>57</td></tr><tr><td><b>SR</b></td><td align=center>38.05&#37;</td><td align=center>38.03%</td><td align=center>34.52%</td><td align=center>81.43%</td></tr><tr><td><b>+/- BB</b></td><td align=center>0.93</td><td align=center>94.48</td><td align=center>45.95</td><td align=center>4.47</td></tr><tr><td><b>Overlay</b></td><td align=center>0.70%</td><td align=center>10.04%</td><td align=center>13.35%</td><td align=center>.</td></tr></table><table><tr><td width="100"></td><td align=center width="100"><b>TJ Murphy</b></td><td align=center width="100"><b>AP McCoy</b></td><td align=center width="100"><b>Claiming Jockey</b></td><td align=center width="100"><b>First Timer</b></td><td align=center width="100"><b>Nine Or Less</b></td><td align=center width="100"><b>Trainer 3</b></td><td align=center width="100"><b>Stoute 80</b></td></tr><tr><td><b>Bets</b></td><td align=center>32</td><td align=center>41</td><td align=center>34</td><td align=center>56</td><td align=center>47</td><td align=center>102</td><td align=center>29</td></tr><tr><td><b>Winners</b></td><td align=center>3</td><td align=center>11</td><td align=center>12</td><td align=center>18</td><td align=center>20</td><td align=center>38</td><td align=center>6</td></tr><tr><td><b>SR</b></td><td align=center>9.38%</td><td align=center>26.83%</td><td align=center>35.29%</td><td align=center>32.14%</td><td align=center>42.55%</td><td align=center>37.25%</td><td align=center>20.69%</td></tr><tr><td><b>+/- BB</b></td><td align=center><font color="FF0000">-5.25</font></td><td align=center>12.39</td><td align=center><font color="FF0000">-2.57</font></td><td align=center>1.65</td><td align=center><font color="FF0000">-4.08</font></td><td align=center><font color="FF0000">-4.77</font></td><td align=center><font color="FF0000">-14.04</font></td></tr><tr><td><b>Overlay</b></td><td align=center>70.24%</td><td align=center>20.98%</td><td align=center>-8.95%</td><td align=center>-4.36%</td><td align=center>9.67%</td><td align=center>0.50%</td><td align=center>8.36%</td></tr></table><table><tr><td width="100"></td><td align=center width="100"><b>Lambourn Yuck</b></td><td align=center width="100"><b>SixPlus Loser</b></td><td align=center width="100"><b>Johnston Tracks</b></td><td align=center width="100"><b>Michael Stoute</b></td><td align=center width="100"><b>LTO3</b></td><td align=center width="100"><b>System Banker</b></td></tr><tr><td><b>Bets</b></td><td align=center>198</td><td align=center>59</td><td align=center>101</td><td align=center>56</td><td align=center>57</td><td align=center>112</td></tr><tr><td><b>Winners</b></td><td align=center>69</td><td align=center>17</td><td align=center>17</td><td align=center>15</td><td align=center>17</td><td align=center>50</td></tr><tr><td><b>SR</b></td><td align=center>34.85%</td><td align=center>28.81%</td><td align=center>16.83%</td><td align=center>26.79%</td><td align=center>29.82%</td><td align=center>44.64%</td></tr><tr><td><b>+/- BB</b></td><td align=center>20.38</td><td align=center><font color="FF0000">-10.06</font></td><td align=center>36.58</td><td align=center>39.58</td><td align=center><font color="FF0000">-1.67</font></td><td align=center>36.77</td></tr><tr><td><b>Overlay</b></td><td align=center>11.04%</td><td align=center>4.62%</td><td align=center>25.27%</td><td align=center>26.37%</td><td align=center>6.22%</td><td align=center>8.15%</td></tr></table><table><tr><td width="100"></td><td align=center width="100"><b>Golden</b></td><td align=center width="100"><b>Max</b></td><td align=center width="100"><b>Pro2</b></td><td align=center width="100"><b>Lay'em</b></td><td align=center width="100"><b>NHPM</b></td><td align=center width="100"><b>Ladies</b></td><td align=center width="100"><b>CD</b></td></tr><tr><td><b>Bets</b></td><td align=center>679</td><td align=center>189</td><td align=center>305</td><td align=center>1036</td><td align=center>399</td><td align=center>34</td><td align=center>166</td></tr><tr><td><b>Winners</b></td><td align=center>553</td><td align=center>153</td><td align=center>274</td><td align=center>890</td><td align=center>341</td><td align=center>26</td><td align=center>140</td></tr><tr><td><b>SR</b></td><td align=center>81.44%</td><td align=center>80.95%</td><td align=center>89.84%</td><td align=center>85.91%</td><td align=center>85.46%</td><td align=center>76.47%</td><td align=center>84.34%</td></tr><tr><td><b>+/- BB</b></td><td align=center><font color="FF0000">-2.50</font></td><td align=center><font color="FF0000">-1.71</font></td><td align=center>9.34</td><td align=center>4.02</td><td align=center>5.61</td><td align=center><font color="FF0000">-1.28</font></td><td align=center>1.02</td></tr><tr><td><b>Overlay</b></td><td align=center>12.06%</td><td align=center>9.83%</td><td align=center>11.93%</td><td align=center>13.53%</td><td align=center>11.65%</td><td align=center>18.23%</td><td align=center>5.21%</td></tr></table>

How's that look...?

Seems OK to me. Of course I am only putting up my horse betting stats. I don't want to overcomplicate things with casino or poker stats in here as well. I could have them in a separate table but I just don't think it's worth it. People want to know how the W2W bets and things like bet-IE are performing so they can compare to their stats, they don't want to see my poker stats - do they?

I have to admit I am well pleased to have got this working :happyboun

[wb]

The missus sometimes talks about us going away for the weekend and things like that. And the thought that rages through my head every time is that I will be giving up a potentially great day on the horses.

I wouldn't say I am struggling to balance my home/social life and my gambling career, that's not true. But as a profitable gambler I have a positive expectation and want to put in as much time as I can punting to try and maximise my returns. Gambling addiction has such a stigma attached to it but I would say I am addicted to gambling in as much as it has become a way of life for me

Very interesting Mat, and I understand this completely. To give an example: A few weeks ago, I had a really bad week losing a lot of money. When Sunday came, I was in no mood to bet, and considered going out instead. My wife was bugging me to 'do something nice' . In the end, her mates came over and I was left to my own devices. I put my bets on, and hit a huge winner. Even though I had a poor week before this, and a poor one after, I was up overall. This is an example is the type of thing that bothers me about missing days. I worry about what I miss. Had I missed that Sunday, I would have recorded a dreadful two weeks. Instead, my records show a profitable time overall for the period.

The flip side of the coin is that it is a pain in the ass if you put your bets on and they lose. Today for example, I skipped my lunch to get my bets on, only to lose a couple of hundred quid. By the time I came home from work, I was hungry, disappointed and down money. It's probably different with poker, but routine has become everything to me now, and the wife has to accept me for that. I do my research, place my bets etc at a certain time every day. (I put up with her horrible smelly cigarettes after all, so the least she can do is put up with my racing).

[mathare]

It's probably different with poker, but routine has become everything to me now, and the wife has to accept me for that. I do my research, place my bets etc at a certain time every day.My missus has come to learn that I can't just drop things at a moment's notice and help her or go out. I need a few minutes notice so I can get the next race on or whatever. She regards spending time with me in the evenings as a bonus but she seems happy enough watching lousy television knowing I am just upstairs on my PC. Same at weekends, although I do try and spend Saturday evenings with her and some of Sunday. It's our routine. She knows what gambling means to me and knows I'm not exactly up to mischief. She'd be far more concerned if I was out on the beers several nights a week. What we have going on now just seems to work for both of us.

For me it's like a second job I do in the evenings and at weekends. I come home after spending all day at a PC to spend most of my free time sat at a PC. Some people really don't understand the attraction but once racing has finished I have spreadsheets to update and steadily improve, there's poker and blackjack to play and I am steadily developing odd bits of software such as Auto-Sys on the side. It keeps me happy and it keeps my brain active, unlike most of the TV these days.

[mathare]

Just a quick note on today's results. It felt like I had had a really bad day so I was quite surprised when I just did my stats. Don't get me wrong, it wasn't a good day but it wasn't as bad as I had feared. I had two triple-staked flat combo bets go down (Glorious Gift and Ceka Dancer) and for each I was praying for them to win at any price rather than lose. Just one of those going in would have turned today round and made it about breakeven at worst.

But I am still a healthy amount up this month and have withdrawn a chunk from Blue Square this evening after a decent winner there yesterday (Our Acquaintance) so in effect it feels like a winning day. Always nice to try and stay positive about gambling :)

[Mavrick]

It's great to see your diary up and running again.

A few of yours and wb comments about the missus ring true, but we could be up to far more no good like you say and it keeps the brain active and the discipline needed can be applied to all parts of life.

[mathare]

It's great to see your diary up and running again.
Cheers Mav. I've really missed it so I am also really chuffed to see it going again. I'm pleased that I've got an outlet too for my thoughts and feelings on how the gambling is going and what it is putting me through. My old diaries were too heavy on the numbers and too lazy. It was just cut and paste from a text file every day. By actually blogging it helps keep me focused on the job in hand and straightens my thoughts out of an evening which is better that my brain muddling through them just before I try and get to sleep which is what used to happen.

[alfazzr1100]

Mathare,

I enjoy reading this - but the poker stuff really loses me - I 'm still struggling with the racing. I can hear the groans as I write this but in the racing stats above, can anyone plesae enlighten me, what is the BB and overlay?

many thanks, for that and your other replies.

[mathare]

I enjoy reading this - but the poker stuff really loses me - I 'm still struggling with the racing. Maybe one day the poker stuff will make sense. Maybe it never will to anyone other than me but blogs are as much about getting one's thoughts down clearly as they are about communicating with others and entertaining them.


I can hear the groans as I write this but in the racing stats above, can anyone plesae enlighten me, what is the BB and overlay?Easy stuff this, and it will change the way you look at things, hopefully.

A BB is a base bet. Suppose two gamblers each won £200 on the horses on day - who has had the better day? You may be tempted to think they both had an equally good day as they both won £200. But you don't have all the facts you need to compare their results as you don't know how much each of them staked to win that £200. The first gambler had £20 on a 10/1 shot that came in and that was his only bet of the day. The second gambler was betting on horses at £50 a go and had several winners and several losers. Our first punter won 20 times his stake, our second gambler won only 4 times his stake. So the first guy has had a day that was 5 times as good as his rival's. We say gambler A won 20xBB and gambler B won 5xBB.

Now the maths there has been simplified as I said each guy was betting the same amount on each horse. Sometimes that's the case and sometimes it isn't. What I do then is average out my stakes to give me a BB for the day.

So basically speaking, for backs 1xBB is our stake. Call it 1 point if you like. Call it anything you want really. But it means you, I and anyone else can compare results meaningfully. I can say I was 10xBB up on a system, you may be 11xBB up and someone else 8xBB on the same system due to variations in price. But we are all talking in the same terms rather than in terms of pounds won or lost which will depend on how much we risked.

And it's this concept of how much we risked that sets the BB for the lays. There 1xBB is out liability at the cut-off - the most we could lose if a horse won at the biggest price we are prepared to offer backers. I cut-off at 11.0on most systems and tend to use fixed stakes so (ignoring commission) for each winning lay (losing horse) I win 0.1xBB.

That make any sense?

Now with laying, it's impossible to lay at SP because SP isn't settled till the race is off. You can back at SP with a bookies but the exchanges have no concept of SP. But the exchanges do advertise that they usually beat SP by a margin of 20% or so. That means backers do better on the exchanges than they do backing to SP with a bookmaker. But if backers do better that means layers must do worse. And indeed that is the case but it's a fact of the game and one we have to put up with. The amount over and above SP that we have to offer backers in order to get the bet matched is known as the overlay and is expressed as a percentage. Take my Golden lay figures of 12.06% overlay. That means I have had to offer an extra 12% on top of SP in order to get my bets matched on those selections.

With the backing bets I have used the same term simply because that is what I have always known it as and overbet sounds wrong to me. But it's simply the amount I have beaten SP by when placing the bets. The bets may have been on the exchanges (taking advantage of the inherent overlay layers face) or early prices with a bookmaker. But the percentage shown is how much better than SP I am doing. If it goes negative I would be better just taking SP rather than using early prices or the exchanges.

Hopefully that explains that for you :)

[tophatter]

Im enjoying reading all the blogs in this section, Mats, pezzas, vegy and Merl.

These diaries give a human element to the gamblers rather than just have people dismissed as gamblers as a group. Gambling most certainly need not be a terrible destructive addiction as is sometimes painted by people who do not understand why some people gamble. Some people may gamble for kicks, some because they enjoy the statistical challenge, some because they can make a living from gambling.

I put myself in the same catergory as Matt. People who dont understand what i am doing might well call me addicted to gambling as I gamble every day but im not addicted to gambling for the sake of it. I dont do the national lottery, i put no more than a fiver on the grand national and i dont enter raffles! Im addicted to trying to not be a gambler but an investor. I love the idea of winning at a game that people think I should lose at.

I have said it before and i will say it again. If I went back to the old days and become a habitual loser again I would have absolutley no hesitation in giving up gambling and never betting again. I aint interested in the odd big win anymore, thats not good enough. I would rather have a lot of little wins and the satisfaction of long term winning than the rush a big winner gives me.

I dont have a missus to think about either but I dont think it would effect me too much as I tend to put my bets on in one hit and then wait till the end of the day. The main problem would be I spend more time doing the plotting and planning and enjoying the aftermath of a days gambling than i actually spend placing the bets themselves. That to me proves im not a compulsive gambler but a calculating gambler.

[alfazzr1100]

Mathare, once again thanks for such a detailed response. I take my hat off to you - where do you find the time for all the gambling, bloggin and VBA ?

So, as I understand it those systems with a negative BB are losing overall since the start (Golden for example) and looking at the number of bets you have been running some longer than others. I recognise some of the names but are the other systems those on the members only section (Stoute 80 for example) ?

[alfazzr1100]

Another observation, on Lamborn Yuck (and accuse me of curve fitting if you like) but when I downloaded the results, without changing any of the settings the bank at the end of '06 was &#163;88,526. If I am right, if you exlcuded all the bets where you cant get odds of over 3, then the bank rises to &#163;157,896. What I was also looking for (and haven't found it yet) was a method using the past stats, to recognise if the system was on a losing run and withold bets until it picks up again (obviously paper trading through the gaps) thus avoiding the dips. When back testing systems like this, I don't think in real life I would have the confidence to keep using a system if it was down &#163;50k on previous highs. I know if you have taken out the original &#163;200 bank its all winnings but also it's opportunity cost (like, say, a Porsche Boxer).

Ho hum.

[Win2Win]

Since I launched it as a freebie Alfazzr100, if you had dropped all those over 3 it would be runnin at a decent loss instead of a profit. It is the bigger priced horses keeping it afloat this year during the random weaher we've had, with many short priced horses way below the average for winners.

[alfazzr1100]

Sorry, my wording was a bit confusing - that is what I meant; ignore the lower odds and only take those over 3.

[mathare]

Mathare, once again thanks for such a detailed response. I take my hat off to you - where do you find the time for all the gambling, bloggin and VBA ? I'll sleep when I'm dead :) (he says after sleeping for 10 hours, the longest he has slept for many a month :laugh) Seriously though, I just treat it as though I have two jobs - a 9 to 5 htat pays the bills and another that occupies my evenings and weekends. Neither me nor the missus have really been into pubbing and clubbing and what have you and most of our friends have settled down, more or less, so we are in far often than we're out giving me time to pursue my hobbies.


So, as I understand it those systems with a negative BB are losing overall since the start (Golden for example) and looking at the number of bets you have been running some longer than others.If there is a negative BB the system is losing, yes. But I can honestly say I am not at all concerned about any of the systems and those that are currently losing are mainly NH systems that I expect to turn round in the coming NH season. The Golden lays are a bit misleading as I bundled all Golden lays into that same pot, including a period of members only lays that had a bad run. Take that out and the Golden lays are doing very well.


I recognise some of the names but are the other systems those on the members only section (Stoute 80 for example) ?A few of the systems are available to members only, yes. Unless you take out any of the Auto-Sys subscriptions in which case you can have the quailifiers for them free :)

[mathare]

A word on my latest casino sessions before racing starts for the day. There are three ways of looking at what has happened in the last couple of days:
I have win £7.50
I have lost £92.50
I have lost £75.63
Weird isn't it that one is a small win and the others are not insignificant losses? It's all down to how you view casino bonuses. Let me explain...

Paddy Power e-mailed me a couple of days back offering me a 111% deposit match bonus up to a maximum of £75. I took that (even though it's not quite as good as bonuses I usually aim for due to the wagering requirements (WR)) and set about playing some heavy blackjack to get through the required WR. I ended up losing on the game, so much so that at one stage I needed to reload my account with a further transfer from my sportsbook account and in doing so I triggered the monthly deposit bonus of a further £25. I eventually got through the WR for the original bonus and continued to play in an attempt to get even again, as I was down overall even after claiming the bonus at this point. Well, it was partly to get even and partly for fun and entertainment. The long and short of it was I lost further and in claiming the bonus (and playing on) I was £55 worse off than I was before I started playing for the bonus cash.

The blackjack play after the bonus was released wasn't contributing to the monthly bonus WR so I switched to video poker for a while and lost another tenner. This was late last night so I went to bed. I got up this morning and continued the video poker assault unlocking the £25 monthly bonus along the way and playing on to make a small profit overall, £7.50 over the blackjack and video poker play from the past few days.

So at the end of it all I was up £7.50 despite the fact that I had claimed £100 in bonuses. So am I £7.50 up or £92.50 down? But of course the games have an inherent house edge so a £75 bonus isn't really worth £75. In this case, due to the house edge and the WR it was really worth around £61.88 and the £25 bonus was worth £21.25, or at least that is my expected value for each bonus so that's what I would expect to make from it on average. Add them together and you get £83.13 which is what I 'should' have made over the past couple of days, instead of the £7.50 I actually made. So am I £75.63 down?

While I use the expected value of the bonuses to decide whether or not they are worth going after and as my target I don't swear by it. In this case I consider myself £7.50 up. I now have £7.50 that I didn't have the other day and it has come from Paddy Power's casino bonuses. Maybe I played badly (I did make several mistakes - I know that much) and maybe luck was against me but the expected value is an average figure. Sometimes the bonus is worth a lot more to me than it 'should' be, other times it is worth a lot less and sometimes claiming the bonus costs me money (as claiming the £75 did earlier). But I know this free money is out there and I want it and my spreadsheets indicate that claiming it is very worthwhile.

Plus I know how much my confidence helps me with my gambling so if there is a positive angle I can take I will try and take it so let's say I am £7.50 up shall we? :) After all, these casino bonuses are basically invitations to try and win some money with the house edge in my favour (overall). The casino has an inherent house edge but doesn't win all the time so why should I expect to win every time I have an edge? As long as I am winning long term that is all that matters. And I'm definitely doing that.

Oh yeah, and Paddy Power have offered me another bonus tomorrow. It's only £25 again but the terms and conditions are decent so I'll have that :)

[Win2Win]

How to invoke the 'Kiss of Death':
Looks like a great betting day so far today.......

(Note that after this point everything loses :laugh)

[mathare]

Looks like a great betting day so far today.......Yep, been an excellent day so far :thumbs

[Mavrick]

Yep, been an excellent day so far :thumbs:splapme

Is it just my bets that all seem to be losing now?:D

[Win2Win]

Still going well......but....9 losing NH meetings out the last 10 now :ermmm Big losses....must have given back the big profits I made on the NH last summer :mad:

[mathare]

I'm annoyed with myself at the end of today's racing. I had missed a few bets throughout the day (mainly NH, fortunately) but due to one thing and another I missed the 9.20 by seconds costing me around &#163;75 in the end. I still had a good day on the horses, making a couple of hundred quid all told but it could have been more had I not missed that last race. Oh well, what's done is done and there is nothing that can change it now.

The profits were spread nicely today with a big chunk coming from the flat combo bank, as you'd expect when those stakes significantly outweigh those of anything else, a nice little contribution from the systems such as LTO3, Michael Stoute and Lambourn Yuck, and the lays had a deceny day with just a winner in the 8.55 on the Lay'em system.

To get over the annoyance of missing that 9.20 I rearranged the furniture in the spare room, reorganised bits in the living room and dining room, shoved loads of crap up in the loft and tidied up after the missus, who has gone away for the weekend. I started doing this about 7ish and it's part of the reason I missed the 9.20 so after that I did it a more fevered manner, forgot all about cooking and eating my tea (I had no idea what to have and wasn;t that hungry anyway) and generally worked off the annoyance. I think I am over it now.

[mathare]

I wasn't really feeling up for it today. I felt somewhat tired and lethargic mainly due to not getting much sleep last night as next door were having a loud party till the early hours.

When I awoke I was determined to finish the job I had started yesterday - namely rearranging and tidying the house before the missus came home from her weekend away. So I did a bit on that, put the Auto-Sys qualifiers up and played a bit of poker before racing started. Not much, around an hour on two tables, one on Party and one on Victor Chandler. Bit of a mixed bag with the Party table being really tight and the VC table being a lot looser but still not loose. Maybe it was the way the cards fell, maybe it was the opponents I faced but I was doing a lot better on VC than Party throughout. I took a big hit on Party with KK losing to AA. Neither of us connected with the board at all and it was pretty ragged but I have seen people overplay all sorts of lousy pocket pairs (indeed someone did so later with pocket 4s) so I didn't put him on aces. After some the pre-flop betting was capped and the flop was raised we called the remaining streets down so in that respect I could have lost a lot more. But I finished the session a couple of bucks down on Party and around $11 up on VC so not bad for an hour's poker at this level.

I have read the first couple of chapters of Miller/Sklansky/Malmuth again and what they say makes sense. I just need to get further into it and remind myself how to play solid, tight-aggressive limit poker again. I may re-read the limit poker section of Super System 2 soon too. That book and it's predecessor are over-rated if you ask me as I think as brilliant as Doyle Brunson is at playing no-limit his writing skills leave a lot to be desired. But the limit hold'em section is written by Jennifer Harman and she's actually a decent author I reckon.

The horses produced a bit of a nothing day really. I wasn't up for it and put the bets on in bits here and there, watched some cricket (Hampshire v Gloucestershire I think) and continued with the housework. I made a mistake in staking one of the flat bets but it saved me a chunk as it lost and I understaked it. That pays back some of yesterday's error I guess. Anyway, I lost just over £50 today which is neither here nor there really.

And of course there was the bonus from Paddy Power again. £25 when I wager £700, which I can rattle off in just less than an hour most times, even betting as low as I do. The game is so quick and I play it on turbo anyway as I know it all inside out by now. And using my n+1 staking plan I soon rattle through the wagering requirement while playing enough hands to have a decent chance of ironing out a lot of the short-term fluctuations. With the terms and conditions on the bonus I could expect it to be worth £21.50 on average and although I played on for a few hands after the bonus was awarded (to finish the streak I was currently on) I finished ahead of the game with a profit of £34 including the bonus. So that balanced out a chunk of the horse losses and means I end the weekend on a nice high.

[Win2Win]

I wasn't really feeling up for it today. I felt somewhat tired and lethargic mainly due to not getting much sleep last night as next door were having a loud party till the early hours.

Translation: "I was completely ratted the night before & couldn't be :butthead: doing anything" :thumbs

[mathare]

Translation: "I was completely ratted the night before & couldn't be :butthead: doing anything" :thumbsHaven't touched a drop for ages actually. I don't drink round the house unless we have people round. It was just a bad night's sleep on Saturday

[mathare]

Another day where I didn't feel particularly enthused by it all so I just dumped all the bets on at lunchtime and left it, pretty much. However, a few of the racing results this afternoon got my enthusiasm levels up more than ever so slightly. It's great to see winners going in at 3/1, 4/1 and 6/1 knowing you had a decent wedge on each of them. It's that flat combo bank again folks...

Today my flat combo bank increasing by more than 150% of the starting bank. In January I started with a £250 bank and today, less than 9 months later that same bank stands at over £2100 :yikes: Billion Dollar Kid, Palm Court, Beechside, Thinking Positive and Tonnate all did the business and brought home the cash. Of the losers Blue Zenith (11/4) was beaten a short head, Young Bertie (5/1) by a neck, Star Strider (2/1) by 2l, Trees of Green (3/1) by 1l and Billy One Punch (6/4) by 1.5l. For the sake of a few feet it could have been so much better :laugh But today's profit is certainly not to be sniffed at, £380 on the day all told, helped in part by only getting £1 matched on Trees of Green. That and yesterday's errors have more or less made up for my cock-up on Saturday night. I'm not a big believer in karma but it is nice to see the luck even out in such a short space of time. Not sure I'd be saying that if Trees of Green had won though :laugh

I did make one mistake today though that did cost me money. I should have had a bet on Atabaas Pride with the System Banker software and I thought the bet was placed when I got an error on the Paddy Power website but it turns out it wasn't. That mistake cost me about 20p! I think I'll live with that one...

The other systems ran pretty poorly today but there were few qualifiers. The Lambourn Yuck had a winner, the 6+ Loser and Stoute systems had a loser each and I hit two losers on the System Banker. I also had one winning lay at quite high odds but broke even on the lays overall, at least within a few pence anyway.

Days like the past few days leave me with a very real and genuine concern - how much longer can I take cash off Bet365 before they shut me down or limit my bets? My spreadsheet shows I have taken them for over £1300 in all, and around £1000 of that has been in the past month or so. I have never even had a hint of a bookie limiting my bet so I don't know at what stage it starts to happen. Is winning £2000 enough for them to get worried or does it need to be £5000, £10000, £20000 - what? Bet365's best odds guaranteed offer has helped boost my profits significantly so I would hate to be limited there.

And a note of joy to end on - I am 95% confident that I can persuade my work to send me on a training course I want to go on in November. It's training for some software called Test Complete 5, an automated testing tool we're purchasing. This is great news because I haven't had any training in anything useful for a few years now (I've only been with this firm six months) and this place seem really keen on keeping the staff up to date with the skills they need to be happy and do their job properly, which is a big change from my last exploiter, I mean employer. So it looks like I could be getting my hands dirty with some VB coding for work too and that can only be good for my exploits outside of work. Hopefully they will see the benefits of sending me on the course, especially as it is only $800 for four days of training. We'll see though.

Oh, did I mention the course is at the Hard Rock Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada :D:happyboun

[Win2Win]

less than 9 months later that same bank stands at over £2100

....and it took us months to talk him out of doing 10p bets all the time :rolleyes:

[mathare]

....and it took us months to talk him out of doing 10p bets all the time :rolleyes::laugh This is true. But it took me a while to find my feet and to feel comfortable placing decent wagers. I'm a tight northerner and the prospect of losing money worried me. I needed to gain confidence that the bets were winners and also a bit of a shove along the way. I'm naturally risk averse which doesn't help.

[silax]

hi mat as for getting restricted by bookies it depends i got restricted by ladbrookes a few years ago and i hadn't made a lot about &#163;300 over about 2 months or so but i'd never shown a loss with them and my profits were very steady.
i think it proberbly depends how you bet and if patterns emerge

[mathare]

i think it proberbly depends how you bet and if patterns emergeIt's quite weird my betting to be honest. I use several bookies and the exchanges every day and most of my winners seem to come at certain bookies and not at others. I can hardly buy a winner with William Hill but Bet365 has always been alright for me. There can be nothing more to it than luck as I am always looking for the best price available for each selection so it is very much luck of the draw which ones are placed with each bookie.

[wb]

It's quite weird my betting to be honest. I use several bookies and the exchanges every day and most of my winners seem to come at certain bookies and not at others. I can hardly buy a winner with William Hill but Bet365 has always been alright for me. There can be nothing more to it than luck as I am always looking for the best price available for each selection so it is very much luck of the draw which ones are placed with each bookie.

It's probably a lesson to all of us to keep a few bookie accounts active. I must admit, I've become betfair institutionalised in a way. How time consuming is it proving to shop around for every single bet? Are you using oddschecker, or how do you do it?

[Mug OUFC]

Mate, I cant buy a win at bet365. Betfred and betfair are fine but as soon as i see the biggest price at bet365 i know its a losing bet.

[mathare]

How time consuming is it proving to shop around for every single bet? Are you using oddschecker, or how do you do it?It takes me seconds, really. Select the race on Betdaq and the race on Oddschecker. Look for the bold odds for the horse in question on Oddschecker (or the best available odds for the bookies I have accounts with anyway as I don't yet have accounts with them all) and compare to Betdaq, allowing for commission. It's the final little step of allowing for commission that may take a few seconds longer until you get used to it. My comm rate is 3.75% but I add on 4% for each unit of odds as it is much quicker to calculate. I also round up for further ease.

Suppose a horse is 7/4 best price with the bookies. I look on Betdaq and see I can get 2.83. Which is best? 7.4 = 2.75 but taking into account commission at 4% (0.04) I need to add on a further 0.07 to the Oddschecker price to get an equivalent to Betdaq. So 2.75 + 0.07 = 2.82 so I am better off using Betdaq.

When it is that close, the best price from the bookies is available at Bet365 and there is a chance the horse will drift I will usually use Bet365 as the loss of that 0.01 in odds is compensated for by the fact that I may actually get paid out at 15/8 or 2/1.

To compare any bookies price with the Betdaq price I use the equation:

([odds] / (1- [comm rate])) + 1

So, using the above example and my 3.75% (0.0375) commission rate:

((7/4) / (1 - 0.0375)) + 1 = 2.8182

Therefore, I need 2.82 or better on Betdaq to beat the bookies price. If you don't account for commission and treat 2.75 on Betdaq as equal to 7/4 with a bookie you will be losing out overall as while the prices are equivalent the commission rates are not so I manipulate the prices to equate the commission rates as well.

[scoobydoo]

Mat...what time would you do this...is it in your lunch break or in the morning? The reason I ask was yesterday put bets on Betfair early on and 75% drifted out although one of them I got a point clear of Sp and it won! Do just do it at a set time everyday?

[MattR]

I noticed that yesterday Scooby, virtually every winner I had drifted out from when I took the bet, but most days it's swings and roundabouts I find. Some get beaten, others come right in and I find I got a great price. I usually do most if not all of mine between 1-2pm except Saturdays if I'm off to football when I have to put them on earlier.

[mathare]

Mat...what time would you do this...is it in your lunch break or in the morning? The reason I ask was yesterday put bets on Betfair early on and 75% drifted out although one of them I got a point clear of Sp and it won! Do just do it at a set time everyday?I do it at lunchtime. All my bets (bar System Banker selections, obviously) on during my lunch break, which extends between 12pm and 2pm most days but I normally put the bets on around 1ish.

[scoobydoo]

I noticed that yesterday Scooby, virtually every winner I had drifted out from when I took the bet, but most days it's swings and roundabouts I find. Some get beaten, others come right in and I find I got a great price. I usually do most if not all of mine between 1-2pm except Saturdays if I'm off to football when I have to put them on earlier.

Just wondered if it was a one-off Matt...going to do it more often now as then I know they are on and I can get other stuff done.


I do it at lunchtime. All my bets (bar System Banker selections, obviously) on during my lunch break, which extends between 12pm and 2pm most days but I normally put the bets on around 1ish.

Thanks for that Mat.
Its funny....people in general dont always welcome me with open arms but bookmakers have loved me over the years....cant get enough of me! :ermmm Think I might try and find a bet with them that they'll never close down one of my accounts! :laugh

[MattR]

Just wondered if it was a one-off Matt...going to do it more often now as then I know they are on and I can get other stuff done.


Yeah that's mainly why I do it. I don't want something to crop up and then miss some bets, so I'd rather get them all in and done.

[alfazzr1100]

Mathare,

Why do you say "bar the Systen Banker" ? Is it because you only put one on following the previous, rather than all at once.

Ian

[mathare]

Why do you say "bar the Systen Banker" ? Is it because you only put one on following the previous, rather than all at once.
The System Banker software sets the stakes for each bet when the result of the previous bet is known which means I can't put several on at once. This has meant I have missed a few bets along the way but the way the software is designed to work and the performance I have seen from it so far mean I am not at all worried about missing a few along the way.

The reason I switched to putting all my bets on at lunchtime was because the job I was in at the time was getting in the way at inopportune moments such as just before a race was about to start and as I was trying to place my bets close to the off in an attempt to get prices that were more 'true' I would end up missing several bets. So at the start of this year I changed my approach to putting all the bets on at lunchtime and just accepting that some would drift and I would get worse than SP. I also changed my job in March so I could revert to putting the bets on near the off but I like the way I am doing it now and I am not suffering with the prices. Take my combo banks which each have 700+ bets recorded against them. I am beating SP by 10%+ on both of those so I am inclined to stay as I am. Plus it means I can focus better at work.

I do sometimes have a few puzzling moments in the late afternoons though when I check the results (as I do from time to time) and see a familiar name has won the race. The name rings a bell but why? Did I back it or lay it? :laugh

[mathare]

Bit of a nothing day today really.

The flat combo didn't continue it's soaring success but neither did it crash either. It dropped £50 in all thanks to another karma-balancing mistake where I was too greedy in my order for Gulf Coast and a two-pointer wasn't matched which saved me just shy of £70. The bank did go through yet another high though before it slipped down which means tomorrow's stakes are slightly higher than today's were. It's certainly an all-action bank this one :)

And after the past couple of weeks I think I can safely say my concerns about betting with higher stakes is easing. They are just numbers in spreadsheets and forms online after all. I think it being that distant and abstract helps a lot. Were I forking out the cash for each bet then I think I'd get more flustered by it all. Feeling the winnings in my hand would be weird too. I think I would have been tempted to take the money and run more than once.

The other systems and lays just about broke even. I think the systems made around £6 with a Mark Johnston selection coming home to wipe out the losses elsewhere. The System Banker weighed in with a small win too. The lays had two winners, well the same winner on both CD and Lay'ems anyway. But they were balanced out by other winners to leave me 86p down on the lays. I think we'll call that break even shall we? :laugh

The great bookie mis-match continued today as well. I can do no wrong at Bet365 it seems as I managed to win another £100 of them today to push my balance up into four figures. I need to take a big chunk of that out and spread some of it around to top other accounts that suffered a little today. None of my accounts are criminally low but some are under a ton now and with flat combo stakes up over £35 a point I may need to boost some of my balances a bit in order to take advantage of the best prices when I see them. But for now I think I'll take a wodge off Bet365 and leave it in my bank account and hope I don't need to top any of the accounts up for a while but if I do I can do so safe in the knowledge that it's pure profit that I am just spreading around as I had always planned to do.

[Win2Win]

And after the past couple of weeks I think I can safely say my concerns about betting with higher stakes is easing.

...and that is the point you usually get a hammering :yikes:

[mathare]

A very unusual day today with little variation in the results for each bank - pretty much everything won in that bank or they all lost.

I tend to group my bets my sheet in my betting records spreadsheet when talk about them. So I have Horses (A+ bets and any of my own tips, which are rare), Flat Combo, NH Combo (see above for combo bank details), Systems (all the eBook backing systems, Lambourn Yuck, System Banker and the free Auto-Sys qualifiers), Lays and Dutches (Bet-IE). So any time you see me talking about the lays breaking even or the systems making a nice sum, that's what I am talking about. I know "systems" is a very generic term but to me it means something very specific when discussing my betting records. Which is just what I am about to do now but I wanted this aside just to clarify a few things.

I thought I was in for a creaming today as loser after loser came on the flat combo, with by far my highest stakes of all backing bets. I have higher liability lays but only at my cut-off and I don't often have to bet at that. Five selections on the flat combo and the first four all lost. I then had a nervous moment when I checked my order for the 7.20 at very close to the off and realised I was too close to the off and the race was starting. I quickly grabbed what I could (2.75) and crossed my fingers. Thank goodness Logsdail won even if it did so at 2/1 and I had got a crap price.

Even with that winner I had had four losers putting me down over £80 on that bank. Surely I was on for a losing day. Both NH combo selections lost, admittedly at just under £4 each but it all adds to the bottom line. But in the end I almost break even really thanks to a clean sweep on the systems, which should have been a cleaner sweep had I not missed a System Banker selection due to a mix-up over the race time. But 4/4 there plus Winners on the Stoute 80+, Michael Stoute and LTO3 systems sees a nice profit of over £55 there. The lays made a fiver, despite a winner on the Lay'ems at 9.0 (7/1). Only £20 down now, and that's where I thought I was for the day until I realised I also dutched a couple of races this afternoon for profits of 44% and 26% with a BB of £27 per race so that's another £19 and I finished the day under £9 down. Bearing in mind I had four big bets go down and got a poor price on the only flat combo winner I am really pleased with the day's outcome.

Like I said at the start though - a day of extremes. All (both) dutches won. All the system bets won. All (both) the NH combo bets lost. Only one winner on the lays and only one winner on the flat combo to spoil the black/white situation.

[mathare]

Just remembered, I was going to do weekly summary stats wasn't I? :splapme Here are the stats for 7th September...

BB stats for 07/09/2007
<table><tr><td width="100"></td><td align=center width="100"><b>A+</b></td><td align=center width="100"><b>Flat Combo</b></td><td align=center width="100"><b>NH Combo</b></td><td align=center width="100"><b>Bet-IE</b></td></tr><tr><td><b>Bets</b></td><td align=center>579</td><td align=center>712</td><td align=center>938</td><td align=center>73</td></tr><tr><td><b>Winners</b></td><td align=center>218</td><td align=center>274</td><td align=center>324</td><td align=center>59</td></tr><tr><td><b>SR</b></td><td align=center>37.65&#37;</td><td align=center>38.48%</td><td align=center>34.54%</td><td align=center>80.82%</td></tr><tr><td><b>+/- BB</b></td><td align=center><font color="FF0000">-5.07</font></td><td align=center>118.40</td><td align=center>46.34</td><td align=center>3.91</td></tr><tr><td><b>Overlay</b></td><td align=center>0.60%</td><td align=center>10.40%</td><td align=center>13.48%</td><td align=center>.</td></tr></table><table><tr><td width="100"></td><td align=center width="100"><b>TJ Murphy</b></td><td align=center width="100"><b>AP McCoy</b></td><td align=center width="100"><b>Claiming Jockey</b></td><td align=center width="100"><b>First Timer</b></td><td align=center width="100"><b>Nine Or Less</b></td><td align=center width="100"><b>Trainer 3</b></td><td align=center width="100"><b>Stoute 80</b></td></tr><tr><td><b>Bets</b></td><td align=center>33</td><td align=center>41</td><td align=center>34</td><td align=center>59</td><td align=center>47</td><td align=center>102</td><td align=center>29</td></tr><tr><td><b>Winners</b></td><td align=center>3</td><td align=center>11</td><td align=center>12</td><td align=center>18</td><td align=center>20</td><td align=center>38</td><td align=center>6</td></tr><tr><td><b>SR</b></td><td align=center>9.09%</td><td align=center>26.83%</td><td align=center>35.29%</td><td align=center>30.51%</td><td align=center>42.55%</td><td align=center>37.25%</td><td align=center>20.69%</td></tr><tr><td><b>+/- BB</b></td><td align=center><font color="FF0000">-6.25</font></td><td align=center>12.39</td><td align=center><font color="FF0000">-2.57</font></td><td align=center><font color="FF0000">-1.35</font></td><td align=center><font color="FF0000">-4.08</font></td><td align=center><font color="FF0000">-4.77</font></td><td align=center><font color="FF0000">-14.04</font></td></tr><tr><td><b>Overlay</b></td><td align=center>69.01%</td><td align=center>20.98%</td><td align=center>-8.95%</td><td align=center>-4.73%</td><td align=center>9.67%</td><td align=center>0.50%</td><td align=center>8.36%</td></tr></table><table><tr><td width="100"></td><td align=center width="100"><b>Lambourn Yuck</b></td><td align=center width="100"><b>SixPlus Loser</b></td><td align=center width="100"><b>Johnston Tracks</b></td><td align=center width="100"><b>Michael Stoute</b></td><td align=center width="100"><b>LTO3</b></td><td align=center width="100"><b>System Banker</b></td></tr><tr><td><b>Bets</b></td><td align=center>209</td><td align=center>63</td><td align=center>112</td><td align=center>59</td><td align=center>62</td><td align=center>148</td></tr><tr><td><b>Winners</b></td><td align=center>71</td><td align=center>18</td><td align=center>19</td><td align=center>16</td><td align=center>21</td><td align=center>65</td></tr><tr><td><b>SR</b></td><td align=center>33.97%</td><td align=center>28.57%</td><td align=center>16.96%</td><td align=center>27.12%</td><td align=center>33.87%</td><td align=center>43.92%</td></tr><tr><td><b>+/- BB</b></td><td align=center>12.63</td><td align=center><font color="FF0000">-12.61</font></td><td align=center>33.97</td><td align=center>40.98</td><td align=center>9.50</td><td align=center>47.31</td></tr><tr><td><b>Overlay</b></td><td align=center>10.87%</td><td align=center>3.67%</td><td align=center>27.78%</td><td align=center>25.91%</td><td align=center>6.55%</td><td align=center>6.95%</td></tr></table><table><tr><td width="100"></td><td align=center width="100"><b>Golden</b></td><td align=center width="100"><b>Max</b></td><td align=center width="100"><b>Pro2</b></td><td align=center width="100"><b>Lay'em</b></td><td align=center width="100"><b>NHPM</b></td><td align=center width="100"><b>Ladies</b></td><td align=center width="100"><b>CD</b></td></tr><tr><td><b>Bets</b></td><td align=center>691</td><td align=center>192</td><td align=center>334</td><td align=center>1065</td><td align=center>405</td><td align=center>36</td><td align=center>177</td></tr><tr><td><b>Winners</b></td><td align=center>562</td><td align=center>155</td><td align=center>299</td><td align=center>915</td><td align=center>347</td><td align=center>28</td><td align=center>151</td></tr><tr><td><b>SR</b></td><td align=center>81.33%</td><td align=center>80.73%</td><td align=center>89.52%</td><td align=center>85.92%</td><td align=center>85.68%</td><td align=center>77.78%</td><td align=center>85.31%</td></tr><tr><td><b>+/- BB</b></td><td align=center><font color="FF0000">-3.56</font></td><td align=center><font color="FF0000">-2.32</font></td><td align=center>9.32</td><td align=center>3.97</td><td align=center>6.18</td><td align=center><font color="FF0000">-1.09</font></td><td align=center>2.08</td></tr><tr><td><b>Overlay</b></td><td align=center>12.17%</td><td align=center>10.28%</td><td align=center>12.45%</td><td align=center>13.46%</td><td align=center>11.73%</td><td align=center>18.29%</td><td align=center>5.10%</td></tr></table>

[mathare]

A loss of 6xBB on the A+ bets in the past week as we haven't had a winner on those. But up 24xBB on the flat combo bets and my overlay has increased slightly too. So not only am I getting winners I am getting winners at better prices. A small increase on the NH combo bank but really nothing to write home about. The Bet-IE dutching sees a small increase too, which is nice.

Timmy Murphy booted home another system loser and the First Timer system had a few more losers. Nothing else on the top set of systems though. The action came in the third table with a few more Lambourn Yuck losers, a couple of BB dropped on the SixPlus Loser eBook system, a slight loss from Mark Johnston and just inder 2xBB gain from Michael Stoute's system selections. LTO3 really turned round with more than a 10xBB swing and the System Banker put on another 11xBB as it goes from strength to strength.

Not a lot of movement in the lays. Some gained a little, some lost a little. Many of the overlays have crept up though and that is something I need to keep my eye. There's not always a lot I can do about it and 10&#37; is my target overlay but when putting my orders in at lunchtime I often have to settle for that price though the horses often shorten. I am trying to balance trimming my asking prices while still getting matched. This is a work in progress.

While the figures may not show it clearly this has been a very good week for me and resulted in nearly &#163;1000 profit. I'd settle for that every week :)

[mathare]

I thought today was the day when I had the hammering that Keith was on about. But Sion Hill came home by a neck in the very last race to turn things around. I :hearty Jamie Spencer :laugh

The statistical correction on the flat combo continued, and it was this that was taken the hammering in the early part of the day. Three one-point bets and three two-point bets went down with only Seabow and Sion Hill winning but I managed to drag my overlay up by 0.17% today so the loss of only two points on this bank is very welcome news as it looked like being a lot more.

The systems had a good day with a very nice Michael Stoute winner. This bank has really taken off and the bank is now in profit by more than 150% of the starting bank. The System Banker continues to do well too.

A small loss on the lays with the Golden lay losing, although I did get that one at SP, and Adage losing too but I beat SP on that one.

Overall, thanks to Jamie Spencer and Sion Hill I was only £4 down for the day. When Adage came home ahead of the flat combo selection I had backed heavily I really feared the worst for today so to come out break even is better than I could have dared hope for really.

A lucky escape perhaps...

[alfazzr1100]

Luck favours the brave, sometimes!

[alfazzr1100]

Looking at the figures though your summary is precise and overall it looks like up 24.03 BB. To make a £1000 in the week that means and average of £40 per bet - or have I misunderstood - again.

Ian

[mathare]

Looking at the figures though your summary is precise and overall it looks like up 24.03 BB. To make a £1000 in the week that means and average of £40 per bet - or have I misunderstood - again.That £1000 includes a few other bits like my casino betting and bonuses from that but yeah, around 24xBB sounds right for that week. My average bet is lower than £40 I can tell you that much. In fact for the systems quoted in these tables of figures my profit was only £450 for the week. So my average bet for these systems is somewhere around £20, which feels about right.

And looking at my figures again that £1000 I quoted includes a few days outside the first week in September so shouldn't have been included :splapme They are to be included in the next weekly update. Sorry for the confusion - that's what happens when I try and do these updates at the end of a long evening. :ermmm

[alfazzr1100]

No apology needed I, and I am sure many others, benefit from your analitical thoughts and figures.

[mathare]

A decent enough day with a profit of over £150 all told, thanks in no small part to the flat combo bank but as I keep saying this bank overshadows all others at the moment so I expect my daily profit/loss to largely be governed by the results from this bank. And so it was with all but about £30 coming from the flat combos. A clean sweep on the lays provided the rest of the profit and balanced out the small loss from the other systems.

But that isn't the main focus of today's blog entry, oh no. I want to talk about the poker I played instead. It was another home game in Crayford, only a couple of weeks since my last trip to that part of the world. I've been there many times as the guy running the games is an ex-housemate of mine but in all this time I have never been to the dog track there. I must put that right sometime. But anyway, on to the cards...

At the start of the week there were going to be 11 players but with one thing and another we were down to start with just 4 of us. And four became three as one of the players had forgotten anyway :splapme So we played a very short-handed hold'em tourney with 20 minute levels. And I started by playing perhaps the worst poker of my life. I was awful. Some good aggressive pre-flop play combined with some dreadful calls/bets post-flop and some cringeworthy passive play saw me run my starting stack of 1500 down to around 300. I lost a few hundred when my opponent rivered a flush and I had two pair (top and middle) and was just blind to the flush possibilities. I could try and blame the four colour cards (diamonds were blue and clubs green) but there is no point - I was just playing rubbish! Fortunately there were rebuys so the fact that I wasn't getting many hands (I must have seen 73 as my starting hand half a dozen times in the tournament) combined with the fact I was playing dreadfully was of no great concern. A few all-ins to steal the blinds saw me build my stack a little but doubling up twice in the space of a few hands really helped and then there was no stopping me. I hit a few flops and dragged in quite a few pots, playing my opponents and the cards really well. And five minutes into the 5th level it was all over when I pushed all-in having turned a flush and got an unexpected call. We'd only been heads up a few hands too. So that was that, winner takes all and the winner was me :D

But this was a poker night and I'd made my way over there to play cards for the night. The tourney started at 8.30 and was all over before 10pm! So I played the host heads-up in a cash game until another of his mates turned up for a couple of hours. And then the silly games came out and it all got a bit mental. Games played included: a Lord of the Rings variant on seven card stud (well, three variants really - one for each film: (i) red nines are wild, black nines are dead; (ii) high hand splits the pot with hand containing most black cards; (iii) kings dealt face-up are 'returned' and no replacement card is dealt), Chicago (seven card stud variant with highest spade in the hole taking half the pot) and Slaughterhouse Five (five cards per player and 5 cards to a hand in the middle, each player turns over a card and one of the middle 5 is turned over with all cards of that rank then declared dead and then a round of betting; repeat till all cards are face up) plus another seven card stud game whose name I forget but 2s, 4s and 10s were wild.

That continued till about half four in the morning and at the end of it I was a fiver down from my cash game buy-in. Hardly here or there really.

[mathare]

I didn't get back home from the poker till shortly after 1pm so it was a bit of a rush job to get all the day's bets into the spreadsheet before racing began, especially as I hadn't reminded Keith that I would be away that morning so wouldn't be able to do the Auto-Sys qualifiers so I quickly needed to rattle those out and put them live before I could sort my own stuff out really. That rush, plus being tired from the night before, meant I wasn't really in the mood to sit in front of my PC all afternoon as I would often do on a weekend. Instead the bets went on in batches and I sat in front of the TV with the missus for a while.

I did keep popping back up to update the spreadsheet with the results as they came in though and that gave me the impression I was in for another poor day with big bet after big bet being beaten and some of the lays winning. I didn't have too many systems bets but they weren't going too well either. Thankfully the flat combo bank hit a couple of winners late in the afternoon to put that into profit for the afternoon, albeit only by a point or so. But I had a losing dutch (the only one I put on as I didn't really have the patience to sit there monitoring the races for dutching possibilities) and made a mistake on a system bet while the missus was talking to me, taking it each-way rather than win only and as the horse was unplaced that became a pretty expensive mistake. But betting karma kicked in again and the majority of my lay on Desert Island Miss at 10.5 (8/1) went unmatched so my loss there was a lot less than it 'should' have been.

Overall I lost around £70 which is well within the bounds of a 'normal' day that doesn't deserve worrying about.

[mathare]

You're not getting an update for Sunday. OK, I put the bets on early then went out to a BBQ and got really drunk. It was an averagely poor day costing me about £60 on the bets. There, that was Sunday.

Monday was more than three times worse that that, and I'm not talking about how drunk I got. Over the past week or ten days one by one my bookie accounts have been getting depleted, which is no big deal when the best price is on offer at several of them so I just use one with sufficient cash in it still. But tomorrow I am going to have to reload one or two of them because today was pretty painful - down £200. I only had two winners on the flat combo, and one of those was at 1.11 so I lost over £100 there. I had a clean sweep of losers on the systems (I missed a couple of system banker selections in the middle) and hit a couple of winners on the lays.

But let's look on the bright side - even though I need to reload some of my bookie accounts it's really only money I withdrew a few days back and I have withdrawn another £250 from my Betdaq account to help offset the deposits too. And I am still over £800 up for the month, which is a great position to be in. And today I dropped down to 3.50% commission with Betdaq which I am really chuffed about.

[mathare]

Well that hammering Keith warned me about came and it came in style too. :cryer

After losing nearly £200 yesterday today's loss of over £350 was a real in the nuts. It may have been a statistical correction but it was a pretty expensive one. However, I need to maintain a positive outlook so I am trying to focus on the fact that I am still over £400 up for the month and not worrying about how much I have dropped the past couple of days.

After yesterday's clean sweep on the systems the flat combo must have been feeling left out and decided it wanted in on the action today, dropping 10pts. The systems produced one winner on the System Banker (I missed the other selection) and a golden lay won with all other lays losing. So the systems and lays together contributed very little to today's bottom line, which is a good thing I think.

In an attempt to take my mind of the donkeys I have been working off a couple of September's casino bonuses. I am around halfway through the Littlewoods bonus and currently up £15 there, excluding the bonus cash when that is released. And I'm working on a £10 Coral baccarat bonus with a 10xB WR, or rather I would be if their baccarat game didn't keep crashing :rolleyes: That's going well though and I think I am around £10 up so far with approximately half the WR remaining still.

[paul183195]

However, I need to maintain a positive outlook
totally agree on this statement mathare, even though i only papertrade at the moment it is important not to let losing runs/bad days affect you.some people might think papertrading is not any help but apart from trying out new ideas it also helps educate you in dealing with a poor run of results. stay positive :thumbs ( enjoying the blog bytheway )

[Win2Win]

It was the Monthly that took a hit, but then it's the Monthly that has banged in a lot of profit in the last few weeks.

Stats are telling me a good day today, or tomorrow......

[mathare]

totally agree on this statement mathare, even though i only papertrade at the moment it is important not to let losing runs/bad days affect you.some people might think papertrading is not any help but apart from trying out new ideas it also helps educate you in dealing with a poor run of results. stay positive :thumbs ( enjoying the blog bytheway )Thanks for the kind words Paul.

I think papertrading is a great idea and have always been a big fan of it. When I first started out with W2W I didn't have the patience to papertrade and didn't see the point so did the next best thing - bet with tiny stakes. That was enough to keep me interested and convince me things would work out before I increased my stakes.

I don't want to get to the stage where losing £550 in two days is nothing and I become complacent about it. It may not be overly significant in terms of some of my banks but in everyday life £550 can go quite a long way. But I do want to be positive about my gambling as that helps me enormously. And there's no getting away from the fact that my gambling this month is showing a profit despite heavy losses in the past few days so I must be doing something right and it's that I want to focus on.

[Win2Win]

Wait until you drop £20,000 in a day.......

[mathare]

Wait until you drop £20,000 in a day.......Much as I hope that never happens if it does happen then I know my banks will be in such a position that I can afford to be staking at a level that exposes me to that sort of risk.

[Win2Win]

Yeah....but when you go to bed you realise you've just lost a BMW :yikes:

[mathare]

Yeah....but when you go to bed you realise you've just lost a BMW :yikes:Have you checked down the back of the sofa? :doh

[mathare]

Hands up :Helooo, I don't really know how I did it today and I didn't really expect it from the day's results but I made a profit. Gambling can be like that sometimes.

The flat combo bank sucked again with 2 winners from 6, and neither of them at great prices and were only one pointers while the two pointers lost. So another £100 down there and the stakes are coming down slightly with the bank now at such a level that the 2.5% of current bank stake is kicking in rather than the 1.6% of bank high.

Three system banker losers (I missed a couple in the middle of the day I think), a loser on the LTO3, one on the Lambourn Yuck and one Mark Johnstone loser were more than offset by the winners at 19.50 and 13.00 on the Mark Johnston system. That and the Michael Stoute system are now significant winners for me. And the Johnston system should be a lesson to many of you/us - I was £85 down on the starting bank of £200 at one point and am now over £300 up on the same bank by doing nothing than letting the system sort itself out. Sometimes you just need to keep the faith.

The lays offered up a mixed bag with a Golden lay winning, the Lay'ems suffering a bit and a couple of fairly short-priced Pro winners too putting me nearly £50 down on them for the day.

But a profit of £68 on the day is very welcome and rather unexpected from the results. Good job the Mark Johnston system was there for me today really or the carnage of the last few days would have continued unabated.

[mathare]

Let's see if we can't fill in the gaps shall we.

Thursday saw another loss, £130 this time. And by now I was struggling to remain positive even though the bottom line for the month was still black to the tune of a few hundred. The flat combo opened with a 4-pointer which won at odds-on followed by seven losing 1-pointers and a losing 2-pointer to put me down £190. There weren't that many system bets but it was split 3 winners and 3 losers (1 was a dead-heat which I count as two separate bets, one winner and one loser, for ease of accurate settlement) and a very slight profit was made. The LTO3 system got a nice boost but the (relatively) high-stakes Stoute bet lost. The lays saw one winner in 26 bets and a profit of £55. Just a shame that the winner came on the Golden lays though as I have been struggling with them of late.

Thursday evening saw a mammoth drinking session with work followed by a few more beers at lunchtime on Friday so I gave the racing a skip. I was a bit demoralised by the recent losing days so I felt a day off would do me good, especially as I hate gambling after I have been drinking. I cleaned up the remaining WR on a couple of casino bonuses to give me a bit of a profit on the day and left it there.

With a big Saturday approaching I felt good again. I had had a profitable day and dodged a bad one on the donkeys again by the look of the results. I didn't bother working out what Friday would have made/cost me as I don't see the point. I missed the day so let's just pretend there were either no bets or no racing.

[Win2Win]

I missed the day so let's just pretend there were either no bets or no racing.

I wish I could :(

[mathare]

Bit better these last couple of days :)

Saturday saw a great day on the flat combo (up just over £200) with 6 winners and 8 losers and more importantly the three-pointer winning, which always helps even if it was at pretty short odds (2.43). OK, so this was largely offset by a bad day on the systems with the Stoute selection losing along with all 5 of the Mark Johnston selections, and those 6 horses were carrying my largest system stakes. The LTO3 which has enjoyed a good run of late also hit a couple of losers. The only winners were one on the System Banker (I bailed out shortly before 4pm to go watch Cage Rage at Wembley in case anyone points out any winners later in the day) and one on the Lambourn Yuck system. So that was £110 (or near enough, anyway) gone. And the lays struggled again with two Golden Lay winners, unfortunately plus one on the CD Lays and a Pro lay winning too. The lays cost me just under £35 in all to give a profit on the day of £90, including a bit of casino gaming and a bonus there.

Sunday was another of those days where I got busy with other things but this time I got all the bets on OK. The flat combo selection won at 3.5 (9/4) and thanks to yesterday's winners my stake was back up to the highest it has ever been so I guess I truly made the most of this one today. The NH combo had a winner too :yikes: Yep, a profit on the national hunt racing - not had that for a while. Two losers and a 4/1 doesn't make for a huge increase in the bank but it all helps. Mark Johnston weighed in with a short-priced winner as the only selection on his system today, which combined with a winner and two losers on the Trainer 3 system and 1 winner from 5 in the System Bankers meant a roughly breakeven day on the systems. A short priced winner in the 4.30 meant a loser for the NHPM lays but a profit overall on that system. The other lay winner today came right at the end and at a big price (Alpha Juliet at 9.7 [15/2]) and on my biggest bank (Pro Lays) so it cost me about as much as any of the bets today could have. I've had better ends to an afternoon of gambling but I still made back around a tenner of yesterday's losses on the lays. And that has taken the Pro Lays 65p below their reduction trigger so the stakes will be stepped back a notch tomorrow.

And finally today a brief word on the state of my banks. I said a while back that I could do no wrong with Bet365 and no right with William Hill. Well, it's changed slightly. Now it seems that most of the bets I place with the bookies are losers and the money is piling into to my Betdaq account instead. Of course, I am still trying to maintain a balance (in both senses) across all my accounts and because of that I keep withdrawing funds from Betdaq to spread round the bookies. It's weird because making deposits feels like a bad thing to do and withdrawing makes it seems like I am perhaps winning more than I actually am. It certainly feels odd to be depositing £100 with the same bookie a couple of times in a week or what have you and makes me feel a bit like a mug punter so I have to keep reminding myself that for every deposit I make here there is a balancing withdrawal elsewhere. Thank goodness for my spreadsheet which spells all this out for me in no uncertain terms. I can see at a glance that the deposits at Ladbrokes have been funded by the withdrawals from Betdaq and that there is still a little left over. That helps keep me positive too.

[mathare]

Only a few races into the day and I think it's going to be painful. I had a massive wedge on Dubai Samurai so I'm not happy to see that one go down. :mad:;fire

[Mavrick]

I got 3.2/1 on it so I knew it would go pear shaped;fire

[mathare]

I got 3.2/1 on it so I knew it would go pear shaped;fireI had a chunk of mine matched at 3.9 before it steamed and I got around 3.2 overall. Ah well. Onwards we trudge...

[Win2Win]

Break even after the 2.50 :)

[mathare]

Break even after the 2.50 :)Really? I'm a looong way from that point

[MattR]

Even further now :yikes: :headbange It's one of those days, you just know it don't you.

[Win2Win]

Well in profit now with Birkside & Elopement.

[MattR]

What is it with the odds on horses today! Do like it when they're beaten with a Johnston one though :D

[mathare]

What is it with the odds on horses today! Do like it when they're beaten with a Johnston one though :DI don't! I missed the :censored: race! That would have put me into profit for the day too :headbange

It just goes to show that there are always lessons to be learned in this game. I figured that as I had a pretty quiet afternoon coming up that I could do the racing in batches today and as such not have to top up more of my bookie accounts to a level that they could cover bets as necessary. By betting in batches I could make sure I used accounts that were sufficiently funded and fund only those that I would need for that batch. That would have worked perfectly had I not got caught up in various work tasks that took my mind of gambling and made me forget several batches of bets, including the one that included a 12/1 winner on one of my bigger banks so a result that really could have turned things round for me.

It was an expensive lesson to be learned but when I get home this evening and have a chance to concentrate properly on non-work matters I will top up each of my bookie accounts to a level that means they can all support a decent level of gambling over the coming days/weeks and then I won't have to use this batch gambling approach.

I have a day off from the punting tomorrow (and Auto-Sys so aim any complaints at Keith) as I am interviewing potential software testers from 9am till 5pm. I think I need that day off to reset my sense of perspective and to get over my mistakes of today. I'll update with figures later so I can see the impact of my mistakes and see how bad the day was. It feels terrible but perhaps it wasn't that bad...

[mathare]

Just checked my Betdaq P&L for the day - down £388! :yikes:

Maybe it was that bad then :(

[MattR]

I think it was always feels worse when there's a lot of odds on selections and a few lose as those that win don't bring much back. The Johnson winner sorted that out though. Sorry you missed it Mat, I remember a few months back missing one of Wayne's handicap ones at about 40 or something, I'd put the bet in a few ticks higher and then got involved with something else and never got back to check it had been taken, naturally it hadn't and it won :headbange Nothing like being hit in the pocket to make you more focused is there!

[Win2Win]

I ended the day £40 down :( :) :doh

[huckabuck]

i had two johnston winners,the 4.30 and the 5.00:doh what have i done wrong now:D

[hudsonmat]

i had two johnston winners,the 4.30 and the 5.00:doh what have i done wrong now:D

I must have made the same mistake:D

[mathare]

i had two johnston winners,the 4.30 and the 5.00:doh what have i done wrong now:DDunno, but the 5.00 wasn't a Johnston system selection so looks like you were lucky on that score

[mathare]

OK, it wasn't perhaps as bad as it could have been. I finished the day down around £260 which I admit isn't great but could have been worse by a distance. True, it could also have been better by a goodly margin too. I reckon missing that Johnston winner cost me somewhere in the region of £190. I would have had £13.03 on it and with a 12/1 SP and me getting around 20% overbet/overlay on those selections I reckon on missing out on a big wodge of cash.

I always said I wanted to make my mistakes cheaply but that one will focus the mind for sometime to come. :headbange

The flat combo bank had a couple of winners and I got 7/2 on a 9/4 winner there but the 5-pointer got turned over as I said earlier. That was by far my biggest stake on a horse so to see that one go down was a bit of a ball-aching start to the afternoon and it didn't get much better from there really. The stakes have dropped on that now though as the bank took a decent hit. The systems broke even, near enough (but could have been massively in profit of course :rolleyes:) and the lays cost me again. And wouldn't you just know that a Golden lay would win. My bank for those is very nearly gone - 1 more winner will finish it off. Not that I will admit defeat at this stage though - I have a plan.

I've had plans in the past. I started this year with a fantastic action plan and for months I saw it through and followed it religiously. But recently as the stakes have increased I haven't adhered to the plan as strictly. And when you don't stick to a plan there is no point having one really - other than to hit yourself round the head with when it goes wrong. And that's what I am doing now, pretty much.

I have reloaded all my bookies accounts. It felt like a major drain on my bank account but I have checked my figures and I have withdrawn £1700 this month and with tonight's deposits I have put back £1550 so that still looks OK to me. Now each of my usual bookie accounts has at least £150 in it so I am in a good position to get my betting back on track. Obviously there is significantly more than that in my Betdaq account to cover the lays too.

So now I can get back to putting all the afternoon's bets on in one go at lunchtime. Not put the first few on at lunchtime or think that because racing doesn't start till 2pm I should wait till nearer the start of that race and put the bets on. They all go on at lunchtime and I'm done with it. If I get the chance I should periodically check back on my Betdaq orders to make sure they are getting matched properly. And that's all there is to it. It's not rocket science so why I have been unable to stick to that recently is beyond me :ermmm

Part two of the plan involves a new piece of software and the Golden Lays. That bank is nearly gone and in part that may be because I am doing them to fixed liability and I should swap to fixed stake. I went to FL at the start of the year as my staking review figures showed FL to be more profitable. Now the plan is to buy The Staking Machine and run the bets through some professional software and check which staking plan I should be using. I am overdue a staking review on a few systems if truth be told so buying TSM really has to form part of the plan.

But that's something for another day - a day when I have more time to sort things out. I am really busy for the short-term future so it's going to be a case of getting back on with part one of the plan and bringing part two online at some later stage.

Tomorrow is an enforced day off and the way I am feeling at the minute that is no bad thing. That Mark Johnston bet has knocked sideways a bit and I need to take time out and get my head straight again. I also need to focus on regaining my positive outlook. I have profited over £300 so far this month yet it feels like I have been properly ::hump due to the fact that I was over a grand higher than that at points this month. But at least I had that profit to lose, eh?

[paul183195]

imagine if you was down on the month and then missed out on the johnston bet . that would of really knocked you for six.

[huckabuck]

mat, i have sent you a pm,still do not no what i have done wrong:helper
i have gone over the race a few times:ermmm

[scoobydoo]

mat, i have sent you a pm,still do not no what i have done wrong:helper
i have gone over the race a few times:ermmm


I must have made the same mistake:D

Look at rule number 5 for 5.00 Leicester yesterday...distance of the race.

[mathare]

mat, i have sent you a pm,still do not no what i have done wrong:helperYou've not subscribed to Auto-Sys :wink:D

[MattR]

You've not subscribed to Auto-Sys :wink:D


:laugh

[huckabuck]

thanks mat and scoobs,i have missed the race distance when i wrote the
systems in a book:splapme.i had a virus on my lap top and had to take it
to a pc shop to get it all cleaned out.im not to good with this pc stuff,saving
things and all that.if you could pm me the race distance please,i have been
backing to many:laugh
huck

[Win2Win]

If you register on aMember, and let me know your username you have access to the ebooks & results from the account. Plus Odds On Banker is now FREE.

[Mavrick]

Plus Odds On Banker is now FREE.

Is that profitable to level stakes?

[Win2Win]

Up till now, Yes :)

[huckabuck]

thanks keith

[Mavrick]

Up till now, Yes :)

I'm sure I can turn that around.

[marky72]

mathare when your auto-sys subscriptions is running out do you get an e-mail to remind you

[Win2Win]

You should do, about 3 days before.

[marky72]

i havnt mate and my subs finish today

[mathare]

mathare when your auto-sys subscriptions is running out do you get an e-mail to remind youI dunno, mine doesn't run out :doh

[Win2Win]

i havnt mate and my subs finish today

Maybe I haven't ticked the box :wink

[mathare]

Have you all finished having your chinwags in my thread? :wink :laugh

Anyway...

I owe someone a massive debt of thanks. I'm not going to name them because that's really not fair as the favour they did for me today was to not turn up for an interview we had arranged. I had interviews booked in for 9am, 11am, 1pm and 3pm today with each expected to last around an hour and a half so I would hardly have time to eat lunch let alone sort out Auto-Sys and put my own bets on. But I heard around 12pm that my 1pm wasn't going to turn up. No reason given by the recruitment agency. But the guy would be available again on Thursday. Thanks but I'm not sure I'm interested any more as I'm not planning to do any interviews on Thursday and his CV wasn't that hot on reflection.

So come lunchtime I am able to eat and free to gamble. But today was a scheduled day off for me so should I do it? I gave it a few moments' thought and decided that today was only supposed to be a day off as I wouldn't be free to put my bets on but as I was now free I should treat it as a regular day, and you know what - I am really glad I did :thumbs

The flat combo flew today, increasing by more than twice what I lost yesterday. I had two single-point losers and 5 winners today, including two two-pointers. Winners came at 2.60 (11/10), 7/2 (11/4), 3.65 (2/1), 4/1 (9/2) and 3.15 (15/8) so I got decent enough odds on them, and that was reflected I think in the profit of £456 on the day for this bank. I only had 3 bets on the systems (2 x LTO3 and 1 x 6+ Loser) and got two winners there to add another £20 to the bottom line. The lays netted £8 with one winner on two systems.

So overall today saw a profit of over £485 to see it become by second best ever day. But having said that it was really my best ever day as the one day I made a greater profit than this was very much a one-off when I was alerted to an unbelievable opening offer from Mansion by a forum member who shall remain nameless and that one bet alone netted me over £500. SO I class today as my best ever proper day. And to think I would have missed it had my 1pm interviewee not cancelled :laugh

[MattR]

I think you owe him a job :laugh

[cantonachris]

Hi Mat,

Congratulations on your most profitable day to date, lets hope there are many more like yesterday.

I wondered if you could clarify a point for me regarding your flat combo bank.

In an earlier post you said that your flat combo bank consisted of the 4 flat member systems and RFP.

Have you now included the flat monthly selections as well?

It's just that yesterday there were 2 double class, and I got 2 RFP selections, which were 4 different selections. Or am I missing something?

By the way, love the blog, its good to read the day to day trials and tribulations that go hand in hand with trying to make a profit at this game. Like yourself I was fed up a few days ago and euphoric yesterday all part and part of whats involved if anyone wants to gamble successfully.

[mathare]

In an earlier post you said that your flat combo bank consisted of the 4 flat member systems and RFP.

Have you now included the flat monthly selections as well?Did I? If I said 4 I meant 5, I just can't count :splapme :laugh

Each combo bank includes the relevant For Profit eBook and all the member systems for that code. If I have said otherwise at any stage I'm a bloody liar.

[cantonachris]

I have two combo banks - one for NH and one for flat. Each is made up of the four members systems for that racing code plus the "For Profit" eBook system for that code. It doesn't have to be set up this way, any number of systems can be used and codes don't have to be separated but this is the way I have chosen to implement the staking plan.

I wasn't making it up, honest, and thanks for your reply.

[mathare]

I wasn't making it up, honest, and thanks for your reply.I didn't think you were making it up at all. I made a deliberate mistake to see if you were paying attention :laugh

[mathare]

Hello, my name's Mat and I am on tilt :helper

Allow me to explain...

Tonight I promised to teach some of my missus' workmates to play poker. So ten of us sat round the table this evening, I dealt a few hands face up so they could get the dynamics of the game then a few face down so we could play 'properly'. We ate some pizza and reset the chip stacks for a £5 no-limit hold'em tourney with rebuys in the first hour. I set the structure as 3000 starting stacks with blinds at 25/50 doubling eveyr 15 minutes to get the whole thing played out in around 2 hours.

I'll cut to the chase now as you don't need to know how fantastically I played compared to the muppets I was up against. I was bloody good though. So good that with 36,000 chips in play (two rebuys) when it got to heads up my opponent had 3200 chips and I had the rest. I had him outchipped 10:1 and when the cards were dealt with us both all in I had him dominated. And lost. OK, I can handle that. Next hand I am all-in blind to try and finish this off as fast as possible. I have the best hand again but lose. OK, I can still do this, very much so in fact. Next hand and I am still going for the kill so we are all-in pre-flop for the third hand in a row. He doesn't have a big enough stack to worry me still so why not get them all in early and see if he folds. We flip our hole cards and guess who has the best hand - me! Guess who wins the hand - him! Fourth hand heads up and all the chips are in the middle pre-flop, of course. He shows me a better hand and actually has me dominated. Pah! What does that matter? It hasn't done me any good so far. Yeah, it holds up. Where have my chips gone? Fifth hand heads up and with all the chips in the middle I hold A6s to his 67o. I flop 345 to give him a straight but I have two of my suit. No fifth suited card comes and I have blown a 10:1 chip lead when I had the best hand 4 times out of 5. Can you :censored: believe it? It's just a good job this was a £5 tourney and nothing more. I won £20 at the end of it so made £15 so I shouldn't complain too much. I only lost a tenner after all.

Ah well, :dung The winner was a :censored: lucky bugger though :laugh

Anyway, on the more serious side of my gambling:
Flat combo :thumbs
NH combo :thumbs
Systems :thumbs
Lays :thumbs

Up over £150 today on the horses, thanks largely to a 12.00 Mark Johnston winner. That makes up a little for the one I missed the other day. :hearty

[mathare]

Not much to report today so I'll keep it short.

A game of two halves with a good afternoon before a poor evening meeting at Wolves. Of course, when you have a single bet much larger than anything else that day it will have a significant impact on the day's figures and that was the case with the flat combo 3-pointer that went down in the 7.30 at Wolves. I had 1 short winner and 3 losers on that system today to drop around £130. Thankfully the NH is back on form somewhat and that combo bank was able to chip in with around £40 back. The systems has a quiet day with a roughly 50/50 split on winners and losers netting me around a fiver. The lays broke even (my figures show they made me 11p across all lay systems) and I had a winning dutch, ironically in the 7.30, netting me approximately a tenner. So that, and a profit of around £12 on the A+ bet today (which I nearly forgot) leaves me just under £65 down on the day - well within the limits of a normal day that I barely give a second though to these days.

[Win2Win]

I'll keep it short.

That's what Vegy keeps telling his wife :)

[cantonachris]

I always pay attention to your posts Mat!

[Mavrick]

Are we going to get a full stats update today mat out of interest?

[mathare]

Are we going to get a full stats update today mat out of interest?I've been slack with them recently because I don't think they are too meaningful on a weekly basis, in hindsight. But as today is the end of the month I was going to do a full round up, yeah.

When racing is over I will gather up the stats, crunch the numbers and update here.

[Mavrick]

Good stuff.

[mathare]

Actually, you're more likely to get this review tomorrow as at present I feel bloody awful. I have picked up some cold/virus that has really knocked me for six so I'm not exactly in the mood for full analysis of a month's gambling data.

[Win2Win]

I get a flu jab on Tues.....so I'll feel like crap on Wednesday :doh

[mathare]

Still ill so the monthly review remains on hold. I am hoping to get it done tomorrow though.

For now though you just get:
Friday 28th September: :( (-£145.68)
Saturday 29th September: :( (-£37.31) but casino bonuses made up for it by a long way
Sunday 30th September: :mover (-£7.67)
Monday 1st October: :) (+£72.36)

If I get chance tomorrow I'll tell you all about my 'issues' with Coral's casino ;fire:headbange:helper:ermmm

[mathare]

Today's excuse/reason for not having done the promised monthly update is much better than yesterday's. Yesterday I felt awful due to illness but today you can blame South West Trains, the security alert at Waterloo or C2H6O (aka alcohol). Mañana, mañana. Probably.

Up £90 today thanks largely to a winner on the Flat Combo

[mathare]

Let's get the main figures out the way and then I can set about analysing them...

BB stats for 30/09/2007
<table><tr><td width="100"></td><td align=center width="100"><b>A+</b></td><td align=center width="100"><b>Flat Combo</b></td><td align=center width="100"><b>NH Combo</b></td><td align=center width="100"><b>Bet-IE</b></td></tr><tr><td><b>Bets</b></td><td align=center>587</td><td align=center>870</td><td align=center>971</td><td align=center>78</td></tr><tr><td><b>Winners</b></td><td align=center>222</td><td align=center>326</td><td align=center>334</td><td align=center>63</td></tr><tr><td><b>SR</b></td><td align=center>37.82%</td><td align=center>37.47%</td><td align=center>34.40%</td><td align=center>80.77%</td></tr><tr><td><b>+/- BB</b></td><td align=center><font color="FF0000">-2.29</font></td><td align=center>123.44</td><td align=center>41.85</td><td align=center>4.36</td></tr><tr><td><b>Overlay</b></td><td align=center>0.58%</td><td align=center>10.31%</td><td align=center>13.20%</td><td align=center>.</td></tr></table><table><tr><td width="100"></td><td align=center width="100"><b>TJ Murphy</b></td><td align=center width="100"><b>AP McCoy</b></td><td align=center width="100"><b>Claiming Jockey</b></td><td align=center width="100"><b>First Timer</b></td><td align=center width="100"><b>Nine Or Less</b></td><td align=center width="100"><b>Trainer 3</b></td><td align=center width="100"><b>Stoute 80</b></td></tr><tr><td><b>Bets</b></td><td align=center>36</td><td align=center>41</td><td align=center>36</td><td align=center>65</td><td align=center>49</td><td align=center>112</td><td align=center>31</td></tr><tr><td><b>Winners</b></td><td align=center>3</td><td align=center>11</td><td align=center>13</td><td align=center>20</td><td align=center>20</td><td align=center>43</td><td align=center>8</td></tr><tr><td><b>SR</b></td><td align=center>8.33%</td><td align=center>26.83%</td><td align=center>36.11%</td><td align=center>30.77%</td><td align=center>40.82%</td><td align=center>38.39%</td><td align=center>25.81%</td></tr><tr><td><b>+/- BB</b></td><td align=center><font color="FF0000">-9.25</font></td><td align=center>12.39</td><td align=center><font color="FF0000">-2.90</font></td><td align=center><font color="FF0000">-2.20</font></td><td align=center><font color="FF0000">-6.08</font></td><td align=center>1.08</td><td align=center><font color="FF0000">-9.17</font></td></tr><tr><td><b>Overlay</b></td><td align=center>50.08%</td><td align=center>20.98%</td><td align=center>-8.81%</td><td align=center>-4.08%</td><td align=center>10.15%</td><td align=center>1.62%</td><td align=center>8.36%</td></tr></table><table><tr><td width="100"></td><td align=center width="100"><b>Lambourn Yuck</b></td><td align=center width="100"><b>SixPlus Loser</b></td><td align=center width="100"><b>Johnston Tracks</b></td><td align=center width="100"><b>Michael Stoute</b></td><td align=center width="100"><b>LTO3</b></td><td align=center width="100"><b>System Banker</b></td></tr><tr><td><b>Bets</b></td><td align=center>242</td><td align=center>73</td><td align=center>142</td><td align=center>69</td><td align=center>80</td><td align=center>229</td></tr><tr><td><b>Winners</b></td><td align=center>80</td><td align=center>20</td><td align=center>26</td><td align=center>20</td><td align=center>28</td><td align=center>95</td></tr><tr><td><b>SR</b></td><td align=center>33.06%</td><td align=center>27.40%</td><td align=center>18.31%</td><td align=center>28.99%</td><td align=center>35.00%</td><td align=center>41.48%</td></tr><tr><td><b>+/- BB</b></td><td align=center>6.15</td><td align=center><font color="FF0000">-15.31</font></td><td align=center>57.33</td><td align=center>49.38</td><td align=center>15.55</td><td align=center>65.05</td></tr><tr><td><b>Overlay</b></td><td align=center>11.97%</td><td align=center>8.00%</td><td align=center>27.38%</td><td align=center>23.79%</td><td align=center>7.83%</td><td align=center>7.38%</td></tr></table><table><tr><td width="100"></td><td align=center width="100"><b>Golden</b></td><td align=center width="100"><b>Max</b></td><td align=center width="100"><b>Pro2</b></td><td align=center width="100"><b>Lay'em</b></td><td align=center width="100"><b>NHPM</b></td><td align=center width="100"><b>Ladies</b></td><td align=center width="100"><b>CD</b></td></tr><tr><td><b>Bets</b></td><td align=center>743</td><td align=center>215</td><td align=center>425</td><td align=center>1156</td><td align=center>419</td><td align=center>39</td><td align=center>202</td></tr><tr><td><b>Winners</b></td><td align=center>602</td><td align=center>175</td><td align=center>374</td><td align=center>994</td><td align=center>359</td><td align=center>31</td><td align=center>172</td></tr><tr><td><b>SR</b></td><td align=center>81.02%</td><td align=center>81.40%</td><td align=center>88.00%</td><td align=center>85.99%</td><td align=center>85.68%</td><td align=center>79.49%</td><td align=center>85.15%</td></tr><tr><td><b>+/- BB</b></td><td align=center><font color="FF0000">-5.77</font></td><td align=center><font color="FF0000">-2.08</font></td><td align=center>8.08</td><td align=center>3.77</td><td align=center>6.99</td><td align=center><font color="FF0000">-0.80</font></td><td align=center>1.82</td></tr><tr><td><b>Overlay</b></td><td align=center>11.92%</td><td align=center>10.76%</td><td align=center>13.87%</td><td align=center>13.40%</td><td align=center>11.49%</td><td align=center>16.52%</td><td align=center>5.78%</td></tr></table>

How does that compare to the end of August though? What we really want to see is how things have changed this month, so I have put together the following:

Monthly total (all betting): 545/993, +113.92BB (+£726.07)

A+: 4/14, -3.22BB (-£19.77)

Flat Combo: 75/210, +28.95BB (+£493.87)
NH Combo: 13/41, -4.10BB (-£28.41)

TJ Murphy: 0/4, -4.00BB (-£17.80)
AP McCoy: 0/0, N/A
Claiming Jockey: 1/2, -0.33BB (-£1.90)
First Timer: 2/9, -3.85BB (-£22.05)
Nine or Less: 0/2, -2.00BB (-£10.24)
Trainer 3: 5/10, +5.85BB (+£28.79)
Stoute 80: 2/2, +4.88BB (+£19.50)
Lambourn Yuck: 11/44, -14.23BB (-£35.42)
SixPlus Loser: 3/14, -5.25BB (-£21.56)
Johnston Tracks: 9/41, +20.76BB (+£124.18)
Michael Stoute: 5/13, +9.80BB (+£117.80)
LTO3: 11/23. +17.22BB (+£96.31)
System Banker: 45/117, +28.29BB (+£24.67)

Golden: 49/64, -3.27BB (-£66.96)
Max: 22/26, -0.37BB (-£8.55)
Pro2: 100/120, -1.26BB (-£53.69)
Lay'em: 104/120, -0.25BB (-£9.19)
NHPM: 18/20, +1.39BB (+£41.60)
Ladies: 5/5, +0.48BB (+£9.61)
CD: 32/36, +0.80BB (+£16.00)

Dutching: 6/8, -0.11BB (-£5.90)

Nowhere near as neat as the lovely HTML tables but it's good enough.

As you can see the majority of my profit, in cash terms at least, came from the Flat Combo bank which really took off during September. In fact the flat racing did me proud with the Mark Johnston, Michael Stoute and LTO3 systems all weighing in nicely. In fact if you just look at the Flat Combo plus those three systems you see a total cash profit greater than that achieved over all systems in September. So where did we lose that lovely money?

The Lambourn Yuck system struggled this month dropping over 14BB. OK, my BBs are small there so the cash hit isn't that significant but it still worth noting. There are no real big losers on the horses. The Golden lays suffered from a bad patch and the Pro2 lays took a bit of a bashing, with that being my biggest lay bank too. But it was mainly small ups and downs across the rest of the systems.

Overall the horses made me £647.48 in September.

What is most interesting though about September is how swingy it was. I had days where I'd win over £350 and days when I would lose over £350. All in all I had 14 winning days and 16 losing days. But then I had 5 of my top 10 worst ever days in terms of cash lost and 6 of my top 10 winning days in the same terms. Of course as my banks increase and the stakes increase accordingly I'd expect to have more of my best/worst days in cash terms in recent months. When calculated in BB only 1 of my top 10 winning days came in September (ranked 8th of 10) and I had none of my 10 worst days in September, which surprises me a bit.

Not really sure what else to say here really. I'm more than willing to answer any questions you may have though.

[mathare]

If anyone made a profit today them I am pleased to have contributed in no small way to that as I got :censored: annihilated! Today was my worst ever losing day beating the previous 'best' by over £100.

The flat combo bets took a right old stuffing. 15 points staked and less than 2 returned which puts me down £430 on those alone. The systems took a hit too with one winner at 6/4 all I managed to get right there. It was mostly the low stakes systems in action today but I still managed to lose £20 there. And the lays lost me a small amount too, about £7 in all. I played poker ($0.50/$1 limit) for the first time in several weeks tonight and clawed back about a fiver but I am still down over £450 on the day.

It hurts! :cryer:Blac7:Blackl1 but then I guess :dung in this game

[Beaky]

Hi Mathare

I'm a newbie and have tried to post a couple of times but keep being told my posts are subject to moderation and that's as far as they seem to have got. I have both NH and Flat Quickfire so understand a bit of your excellent analysis above but the rest could be written in Zirgon for all I understand of it. Is there a simple explanation anywhere of the terms you use? I should add that I'm an experienced horse-racing person but new to W2W. Thanks.


Beaky

[Win2Win]

No posts on the moderation queue!! All are usually reviewed and allowed within an hour of posting, unless it is something like 3am!!

You're learning Mat....the more you make, the bigger the losses on the bad days. I had 41 bets yesterday, 3 winners, and nothing on the 3rd one :yikes: I usually have one day like that every 3 months or so, now for the correction in the next weeks :)

[mathare]

Is there a simple explanation anywhere of the terms you use? I should add that I'm an experienced horse-racing person but new to W2W. Thanks.To be honest Beaky, no. And I don't plan to do a simple explanation as I don't think I am using any terms that are not standard and understandable by the majority of punters, not just W2Wers. If you're struggling to understand any of this I suggest you read through from the start and then let me know what you're not following and I'll try and explain

[Win2Win]

Or use the SEARCH on here :)

[mathare]

I hate this game at times :(

The flat combo hits two short winners and significantly more losers to set the tone for the rest of the banks really. Had Composing done the business in the last race then the day's losses would have been more than bearable at around £50. Instead the horses cost me over £200 again today. The flat combo bank dropped £204.22 but on the plus side my overlay went up by nearly 0.3% overall, just today. The systems cost me around £30 cancelling out the wins from the lays, which only hit one small winner early on.

I multi-tabled $5+0.50 SnGs this evening on Bet365 and despite not opting for the turbo (or extreme turbo versions) they moved along at a fair old pace and were done within 40 minutes usually, often less. I played 5, usually having 2 running at once but they were staggered so one would be reaching the mid-late stages when I fired up the next one. I had a 6th, 7th, 2nd, 5th and 1st for a profit of $12.50 on the evening. I think I will try similar things at other times and see if I can't start to build a bankroll. Today's poker chat with Mug_OUFC and Vegy proved to me that I know what I am doing when it comes to this game so I ought to be putting into action and making it pay more. And multi-tabling stopped me getting bored and kept me focused on poker so that's something I will definitely do again with these. And the structure (which I wasn't keen on initially this evening) keeps them moving at a fair old lick so I can rattle through them quick enough to make it worth my while too.

If I can build up enough of a bankroll I will consider investing in some SnG software I have seen recommended. It helps train you in the latter stages and the pushbot approach although I didn't really get near enough the bubble in three of the tourneys this evening to make it worth having. That said, the structure meant I was still into pushbot territory in each case having around 8xBB max.

[mathare]

Me and horse racing are really going to fall out if it continues like this.

Maybe it's my brain forming patterns that don't really exist but it seems as though a lot more winners are coming from the middle of the markets over the past few days and many of the selections I am backing seem to be nearer the head of the market. That's just an impression I get and maybe that's not the case or perhaps the last few days are no different from normal really but my banks and state of mind have certainly suffered.

Yep, today is going to be another losing day and quite a hefty one at that. And that has sparked a mental review.

Am I using all the resources open to me?
No, not really. I have the Easy Trader Pro system but I'm not making much use of it. I don't have a lot of time during the day to trade with it but I should read through it all again and see what I can do with it on weekends and in the evenings. I should also play more poker and look to exploit more casino bonuses as they have been very profitable in the past. At the minute I have too many of my eggs in one basket with just the horses providing my gambling income and that is weighted too heavily towards the Flat Combo bank.

Are all my banks properly protected?
No, not really. I don't have enough bank barriers in place so I need to sort that out and update my spreadsheet functionality to handle barriers better. The barriers I do have in place need to be reviewed. Some need to be revised upwards I think. Perhaps I need to have them set as a rolling percentage of the bank's peak rather than a fixed figure. That's something to consider and review.

Times like this usually spark off a staking review too but in truth I am too busy to conduct one now. I need to make time available for that before buying The Staking Machine software to help me. I'd also like to improve the auto-charting facilities in my gambling records spreadsheets to help me review things faster.

Right now I need a confidence boost. I haven't faced a big losing month for a couple of years now (although January this year wasn't great) and I am starting to lose the faith a bit.

I'll update again with daily figures at the end of racing...

[Win2Win]

rolling percentage of the bank's peak

That's how I use them.

Now had 14 losing NH meeting out of 17. I think this has something to do with the stop/start the authorities have had this Summer NH racing, less than last year, and more spread out. Not good for form lines, and although this time of year can be a difficult period, this make 4 months this year thanks to our wonderful weather.

[mathare]

That's how I use them.Do you have a default percentage that you use for most banks or does it vary significantly from bank to bank?

[Mavrick]

I know how you are feeling mat. Some of the systems I am running should have a strike rate around 40 percent, but are currently running at below 30 percent. I have just had the worst month of my betting career. I have ditched several systems as they now seem to be over bet and I can not see them recovering. On the other hand as one avenue closes the other opens.

[Win2Win]

It does tend to go with the SR, but to really, really, really,really, really,really, really,really, really,really, really,really, really,really, really,really, really,really, really,really, really,really, really,really, really,really, really,really, really,really, really,really, really,really, really,really, really,really, really,really, really,really, really,really, really,really, really, simplify it.....add 20% onto the SR and use that :)

[mathare]

It does tend to go with the SR, but to really, really, really,really, really,really, really,really, really,really, really,really, really,really, really,really, really,really, really,really, really,really, really,really, really,really, really,really, really,really, really,really, really,really, really,really, really,really, really,really, really,really, really,really, really,really, really, simplify it.....add 20% onto the SR and use that :)That sounds too complicated for me :mad:

[mathare]

Today is a new entry at number two in the top ten worst losing days for me meaning both my worst days have now come in October 2007 and we're only 5 days in :yikes: This was another one costing me over £400 and tomorrow I need to spend the morning making sure I have sufficient protection in place for the rest of the month or I could end up getting badly burned this month.

But for now I will watch QI and try and forget about the four-legged lossmakers.

[Win2Win]

For every one highest peak in profits, you'll have 2-3 highest peaks in losses as well. Enjoy!!! :yikes: All part of the fun :doh

[Vic]

Just to make you feel better Mat - took 2 days in Oct to wipe out Sept profit, and of my last 55 points placed on the NH I've had 1 point win:yikes: and my average strike rate on the NH is 38% even after this crap summer.:geek

[mathare]

Just to make you feel better Mat - took 2 days in Oct to wipe out Sept profit, and of my last 55 points placed on the NH I've had 1 point win:yikes: and my average strike rate on the NH is 38% even after this crap summer.:geekOuch! Sorry to hear that Vic.

And ain't it typical that the day I put bank barriers in place on the Flat Combo is the day that a 15/2 winner romps home :headbange

[Win2Win]

I have a NH 44% SR for the last 20 years currently on 24% :doh last 6 months.

I got 9.8 on the 15/2, but had most wiped out by the losers.

[mathare]

I spent most of the day redesigning and reprogramming my spreadsheet so my stats are a little out of kilter at the mo so I am doing some of this manually.

The Flat Combo bank rose around £27 but under a bank barrier. All the NH Combo bets lost to drop that bank around £20. The systems were poor too and cost me £65 today. The lays hit a couple of winners but made me around £12.50. Not a great day though so that's down around....£72.32 today apparently.

I have massively overhauled the way I calculate and store the stats for each system so tomorrow I will execute part two of the plan and revise the way bank barriers are calculated and handled throughout the spreadsheet. I held off the barrier on the NH combo bank today as I figured the bank has been lower than this before and the bank peak is artificially high given the current NH betting climate. I may revise this decision tomorrow and put the barrier in place.

At the back of my mind is the impact these barriers are having on my turnover, potential profit and Betdaq points balance. But at least I know my commission with them is capped till the end of the year so this is not a major concern for me. But it is strange that already I have written off October in my mind as a bad losing month, probably £1000+, so now it is just damage limitation.

[mathare]

Just about got everything in place in the re-jigged spreadsheet now and built protection in all over the place.

Nowt on the flat today but the barriers on the NH Combo saved me the losses there (around £15). The systems did OK with one winner and two losers on the System Banker and a winner on the Claiming Jockeys. All three lays lost to round out a quiet day on the horses really. I won one of the three £5 SnGs I played on Ladbrokes this afternoon after nearly bubbling and coming back with some truly awesome play to take down the win.

I won't say I feel confident for the rest of the month but I feel better now I have protected my banks somewhat. In fact I feel so much better that I am going to take the rest of the evening off and watch Snakes On A Plane :)

[mathare]

It's been a good day - and I've not said that much so far this month :laugh

It started brightly with a meeting with my mortgage adviser who has sorted us out with a new deal that I think is really going to make a difference to us. Hopefully our plan to pay it off within 10 years is still a reality if we are sensible about it. We've gone for an offset tracker with the Woolwich if anyone cares.

This was followed by a decent afternoon on the horses. My internet connection at work was running really slowly so I didn't get chance to check my lays in the 2.20 were matched and as it happens the ones on Jilly Why were and the ones on Bond Playboy weren't despite the fact I was offering 7.0 on each and they both went off at 6/1. But when Bond Playboy wins and Jilly Why doesn't I'll take that. The poor internet connection means some of this luck on the 2.20 was offset when I ended up backing Danehillsundance twice as the form wasn't submitting properly but I will only count one of those bets against the system bank and absorb the loss of the other one in a separate fund. I managed to get 10.0 on the Mark Johnston winner which came in at 15/2 too so I am pretty pleased with that one.

The Flat Combo bank took a bit of a battering and dropped £80 today but as that is currently operating under a barrier that loss was virtual rather than actual so while I don't like to see banks slip downwards I'd rather not have my cash following them when they do it. The other systems netted me just under £85 with the 6+ Loser selection (which lost) operating under a bank barrier to protect me from that one too. There was the Danehillsundance mistake I mentioned earlier which cost me £8 but the lays produced a clean sweep thanks to missing Bond Playboy to net me just over £30. Add all that up and you get a profit of a touch over £100 today and that makes me very happy given the current state of affairs. :)

I also got an e-mail from Bet365 to say they have switched networks and have now joined the iPoker network that already includes other sites I hold acounts with such as Titan Poker and Victor Chandler. That means they have switched software from Microgaming to Playtech too. It also means I have had to come up with a new nickname for my Bet365 poker account as this is now my third alias on that network. I thought for a few minutes and couldn't come up with much. I hate thinking of new usernames which is why I am mathare virtually everywhere. But on Bet365 if you come across someone called 'terrorwrist' do stop by and say hello because that's my new Bet365 poker alias.

In other news: I have continued to work on my spreadsheet and now have the LLR, LWR, t-value and ROI figures for each system/method. I had these before for each system within a given calendar year but not the overall figures due to the way my spreadsheet is designed and coded. But I figured this sort of info may come in useful so I have added that in. I also now record the high and low points of each and every bank along with the date that this mark was achieved so I can monitor these things. I will start building these things into my monthly reviews and analyses. When I have my spreadsheet fully barrier-compliant and got all the code written I will do an update on what protection I have added to which banks. Maybe it will help some of the less experienced and help them protect themselves also.

[Win2Win]

'terrorwrist' - Nothing to do with self inflicted violent masturbation I hope :ooo

[mathare]

'terrorwrist' - Nothing to do with self inflicted violent masturbation I hope :oooNothing at all.

[Win2Win]

Nothing at all.

Now if Cameron had answered that way, it would mean YES :thumbs

[mathare]

Bless those bank barriers :thumbs

The Flat Combo (still operating under a bank barrier) took another hit today going down £75 but at least that money wasn't physically lost. Certainly looks like the wave I was riding a few weeks back has died off on the flat though. The systems lost me £35 (mainly due to two losing Mark Johnston selections and a losing Michael Stoute runner) but the System Banker hit a new record high. And a clean sweep on the lays sees half the systems loss wiped out. I have been playing with trading on and off at points today and made a small profit when I have been doing it properly and lost £2 when I clicked the wrong button on Bet-IE :splapme. But I am trialling some new software for trading and have spent a lot of this evening running through the copious number of demo videos. I'll see how I get on with it and then maybe reveal what the application is...

[tophatter]

ive got a few days figures to catch up on. Have to make me a cup of tea and get cracking.

[mathare]

One of the problems with using bank barriers is I don't have an accurate record of the odds I could have taken on the horses operating under a barrier. For all bets, whether a bank barrier is active or not, I record the odds available as though I were taking the bet and obviously if there is no active barrier I then go ahead and place the bet. This means later on I can check back with the bookie/exchange and check the price it was settled at against the price I took/requested and also against SP. When I haven't actually placed the bet but just recorded it in my spreadsheet I am not able to check the effect of non-runners on the prices so accurately so I am reduced to a little guesswork at times. If anything this means I am likely to overestimate the prices my 'bets' are settled at as I may miss some reductions.

I mention that this evening because of Emma Jean Lad, a Flat Combo selection. When I would have placed the bet around 6pm I could have got matched at 6.8, or at least left an order that I was confident would get taken. I note from the results that there was a 5p Rule 4 reduction on this race but I don't know what the Betdaq reduction factor was on this bet so I have estimated it to be the same, 5%. That makes the price I would have got 6.46 - not bad on an 11/4 winner! But the barrier is active on the Flat Combo bank so I didn't actually back the horse so I didn't actually win the bet. And if my settlement prices for the paper-traded bets are too large then my winnings will be too great and I will come out from behind the barrier too soon. But that is just a risk I have to accept I guess.

Barriers mean I also have to update and redesign my betting spreadsheets to differentiate between cash amounts won/lost per day and the increase/decrease in my banks over the same period as they may not be the same when barriers are in use. But I'll get round to that another day, when I can be bothered.

So today's outcome. The Flat Combo paper-traded up a tad over £180. The NH Combo lost around £8 but that was also paper-traded. Tony McCoy booted home some nice winners to put the systems up over £44. The lays won around £24 and I made a small loss trading leaving me up around £64 for the day. I'll take that.

I have been mulling over some changes to Auto-Sys today too. I have some quite exciting ideas in the pipeline. Well, I think they are exciting anyway :laugh. If I can implement them as I would like then it will open up all sorts of new markets for Auto-Sys, which would be very nice. But this is all a way down the road really. I don't expect to have anything new to market before January 2008.

[Win2Win]

One of the problems with using bank barriers is I don't have an accurate record of the odds I could have taken on the horses operating under a barrier. For all bets, whether a bank barrier is active or not, I record the odds available as though I were taking the bet and obviously if there is no active barrier I then go ahead and place the bet. This means later on I can check back with the bookie/exchange and check the price it was settled at against the price I took/requested and also against SP. When I haven't actually placed the bet but just recorded it in my spreadsheet I am not able to check the effect of non-runners on the prices so accurately so I am reduced to a little guesswork at times. If anything this means I am likely to overestimate the prices my 'bets' are settled at as I may miss some reductions.

Easy to solve that bit, work out your total overbet %, and add that to SP. :) All averages out over time then.

[mathare]

Easy to solve that bit, work out your total overbet %, and add that to SP. :) All averages out over time then.Aye, I guess I could do it that way. Hmm. Didn't think of that. Yeah, that might work nicely actually. Cheers boss.

[mathare]

The Flat Combo hit one winner from four selections to record a small bank drop of £17. The NH Combo bank rose by a similar amount though to cancel out that loss. Both banks are still operating under bank barriers though.

But that cancellation of profit from one system by losses from another sets the tone for the rest of this blog entry. The Systems had a good day with an 8/1 winner on the Mark Johnston system, plus a couple of losers and a Lambourn Yuck loser. I missed the System Banker selections but still ended the day up nearly £70 on these. Unfortunately the lays came along with some winners to cancel out that profit. I had two winning horses, one of which appeared on three systems, to make a total loss of £75 on the lays. I traded my way to a small profit of just under a fiver which meant I ended the day almost exactly where I had started it.

[MattR]

which meant I ended the day almost exactly where I had started it.

In bed :D

[Win2Win]

Be nice if I had a winner that was on 3 systems!! I missed £500 of winners yesterday piddling about with my computer. Could have bought a new one for that........

[mathare]

In bed :DThat was my plan for today as I am 'working' from home but I fired up the PC to do Auto-Sys this morning and since then it's been a non-stop flurry of e-mails from work for me to deal with :(

[mathare]

A double entry, as it were.

I cut short my gambling on Friday, missing the evening meeting as I was out from about 5pm at a dinner-dance at Twickenham rugby stadium. I could have put my bets for that meeting on before I went out but I wasn't particularly comfortable about doing that so I skipped the meeting completely.

The barriered Flat Combo bank broke even with one winner and one loser on Friday. The NH Combo slipped back around £13 with three losers. I had a nice winner on the Lambourn Yuck system but little else to shout about when it came to Friday's system bets. They finished down just under £30 on the day. The lays had a bit of a statistical correction, also dropping around £30. But while working off part of another Paddy Power casino bonus I made around £16 from video poker. I also traded my way to a £4 profit (big money, woohoo) to leave me less than £40 down on the day.

Saturday was a slighty different story. I woke up feeling fine but that soon changed. It wasn't so much a hangover that kicked in really, it felt more like a visit from death itself. Maybe I shouldn't have gambled in such circumstances but as I almost robotic when it comes to punting on the horses now I figured I'd be OK. Hmmm.

The Flat Combo dropped another £155 with the NH Combo dumping a further £15. But at least they are under barriers so I wasn't £170 down. The Systems did their best to help me towards that figure though. I missed the System Banker winner while waiting for the previous System Banker result to come through so I am now on a 9-horse losing streak with those. The only winner I did hit was Nez Rouge on the Trainer 3 system so I ended up just over £70 down on the Systems. The lays continued their corrections also, a loss of just over £40 coming from those. Most annoyingly both Golden lays went in and that bank is really teetering on the edge. Perhaps fixed liability wasn't the best way to go with those but I don't have the time to really get to grips with The Staking Machine so I keep putting off my staking reviews. I traded my way to a profit of a couple of quid and unlocked that Paddy Power bonus to put me down somewhere between £95 and £100 on the day.

This hasn't been a great month - I can't wait till it's over.

[marky72]

mathare are you not doing jfp anymore as there were 2 winners yesterday

[mathare]

mathare are you not doing jfp anymore as there were 2 winners yesterdayRunning for Profit is in my Flat Combo bank with Jumping for Profit in the NH Combo bank. Always been that way.

[Win2Win]

I ended up nicely in profit yesterday, despite jockeys best efforts to cock it up!!! :rolleyes: Although if I hadn't hit Presenting Express for 10.5, I'd have made a small loss on the day.

Sunday City ::swear

Lays are going so well....almost worth backing them :splapme

[Kraun]

I ended up nicely in profit yesterday

Is it true, Keith? Or you just kiddin'?))

[Win2Win]

:doh I said I was, and why. It relied on one horses result out of about 40 bets.

[Kraun]

:doh I said I was, and why. It relied on one horses result out of about 40 bets.

By the way, could you tell me which system gave Presenting copper as a qualifier. I bet all your back systems, but I didn't bet it yesterday.

[Win2Win]

I don't give ALL my info out you know. It would take hours to put it online. 300+ win systems, then lays, dutch bets, trades, etc.....

[mathare]

Blimey! It's been a long while since I updated this hasn't it? I have had good reasons for not keeping this up to date though, not least the fact that I had to overhaul parts of my betting spreadsheet to account properly for bank barriers and to distinguish between my gross profit/loss (the amount my banks have changed by) and my net profit/loss (the amount of real cash I have won/lost, i.e. including only real bets not those paper traded under a bank barrier). That's all done now and looks correct so I can once more give you the results of my betting.

Sunday 14th October
Lost £19.64 (net)
Won £17.95 (gross)
The flat combo bank rose nearly £40; the systems dropped around £20 and the lays broke even, almost to the penny. Not much else to report really.

Monday 15th October
Won £79.17 (net)
Won £139.13 (gross)
A lot of bets on the flat combo bank with enough winners to put the bak up around £70. Very few system bets but a nice Michael Stoute winner helped boost the profits on the systems to over £70. The 6+ Loser system had a paper traded loser to knock a bit off the gross profit though. The lays made a small profit of around £7. I rather enjoyed that Monday, it was a pleasant day.

Tuesday 16th October
Lost £39.65 (net)
Lost £94.09 (gross)
After two days of doing much better in terms of gross than net it had to be that this day would show a reversal and prove why I put bank barriers in place. The A+ bet lost but that is a pretty small stake compared to some of my other bets. The flat combo bank had a quiet day but still dipped just over £50. The NH combo bank was also in action and profited slightly, increasing by around £1. Three Mark Johnston losers ensured the systems would struggle and indeed they did with a net loss of around £45. It was a quiet laying day but the few lays I struck all lost to take the edge of the other losses a little, putting about £10 back in to the coffers.

Wednesday 17th October
Lost £28.82 (net)
Lost £54.04 (gross)
Only 1 flat combo bet - it lost. Ditto the A+ bet. Two winners from 8 on the NH combo wasn't enough to see a profit there and the bank slipped back around £8. A mixed say on the systems saw them slip back just over £9 and a couple of winners on the lays pushed them back £15 in total.

Thursday 18th October
Won £3.12 (net)
Won £1.52 (gross)
A complete nothing day. The flat combo bank dropped over £30; the NH combo bank went up by £30. The systems dropped nearly £30 but a clean sweep on the lays saw the systems loss wiped out with a small profit left over.

Friday 19th October
Lost £4.92 (net)
Won £39.70 (gross)
The A+ lost. The flat combo recovered to the tune of £60 with the NH combo only taking away a tenner of that from the daily total. The systems had another mixed day with the Michael Stoute loser contributing most to the losses of around £25. The lays added nearly £20 to the day's total but it was another nothing day really.

Saturday 20th October to Tuesday 23rd October
No betting as I was away on a field trip with work, looking at rocks around the Dorset/Devon coastline and getting very drunk. It doesn't sound very exciting but I really enjoyed it. Sad, eh?

Wednesday 24th October
Won £159.39 (net)
Won £111.35 (gross)
A very good day to come back to after a little rest. The A+ won, and a nicely priced Michael Stoute winner provided the bulk of the profits to sit alongside the lays, which chipped in with a £30 clean sheet. The flat combo and NH combo banks took around £45 off the gross profit between them, with the flat combo doing most of the damage

Thursday 25th October
Lost £24.89 (net)
Won £23.36 (gross)
Another day where the bank barriers reversed the day's overall result. The A+ won well, and at 9/1 too! The systems were quiet and combined to a total loss of less than a fiver. Things went badly on the lays though with coming up for £65 lost to 6 winners, 3 of which were the same horse. It didn't sound like a Heavenly Chorus to me! As I'm sure you can work out from the difference between the gross and net the combo banks had a good day. In fact the flat went up £45 with the NH up another couple.

Friday 26th October
Lost £54.78 (net)
Lost £44.20 (gross)
Very little happening on the systems, breaking even or near enough anyway. The damage was done almost entirely by the lays with another six winning bets. The Golden lays bank is hanging by a thread now. Flat combo up £20, NH combo down around a tenner.

Saturday 27th October
Lost £140.93 (net)
Lost £154.50
BANG! That was the sound of my Golden lays bank busting.
At least the A+ won though, even if it was odds-on. Nice to see that bank growing again. The flat combo dipped another £30; the NH combo climbed around £18 to offset it somewhat. Michael Stoute and Mark Johnston struggled to find winners so I also struggled, dropping £67 in total on the systems. And the poor run on the lays continued with seven winners and a loss of nearly £80.

The big question for me is what I do about the golden lays. At various times they have been very successful for me but also costly at other times. Has my staking experiment failed? Are they best done to fixed stake? I need to sit and do a proper review of the bets but with my holiday coming up and a frantic time at work I know I don't have the time at the minute and won't have for a while. So I am left with two choices:
a) paper trade the bets and see how they fgo
b) forget them and come back to them in the future if the review shows a suitable staking plan.

I am tempted to go for the second option to make things simpler for now but I may yet change my mind.

Anyway, we're now up to date and it's a relief :)

[mathare]

Further updates to my spreadsheet have been made resulting in the fact that I can now only compute my daily figures for dates in the past. This is by design, rather than an accidental result of my tinkering with the copious amounts of macro code. I figured it didn't make much sense to compute the daily figures for a given date before it was over as I could conceivably place more bets after computing the figures and then have to do them all again. I used to calculate my daily stats at the end of the horse racing each day, but then I would go bonus hustling in the internet casinos or play a bit of poker and thus throw my daily figures out of line with my actual standings for the day. Hence the change. So from now on this gamblog will always be a historical record of how things have gone in previous days rather than how things went today, if that makes sense.

This evening I have also added code to work out my ten best and ten worst days in terms of +/- BB, net profit/loss and gross profit/loss. It's kinda scary to see how good September was with 5 of my ten best days (in terms of net profit) coming in that month but also how lousy this month has been with 3 of my ten worst days coming this month. And to be fair 4 of my top ten losing days also came in September so it wasn't all roses by any means. That's gambling though.

One change I have yet to make to my spreadsheet code is to rewrite the code that creates the HTML stats tables I said I would output at the end of each month. Now I have added some new stats I need to update the HTML output code to handle them. I hope to have chance to do that, and to look back over the month as a whole, in the next few days, before I go away for a fortnight. But no promises on that front.

Sunday 28th October
Lost £25.45 (net)
Won £13.80 (gross)
I put all my bets on at lunchtime and went out to watch the NFL game at Wembley. As a result I missed getting some matched and got lousy prices on others, plus I missed a few System Banker selections. But the long and short of it is the A+ lost, the NH Combo bank climbed nearly £40 (but is still paper-trading), the other Systems lost a total of a little under a fiver and the lays cost me around £15 with one winner at Towcester appearing on two systems. But most certainly not a day to worry about. A small overall loss and on we go. Next!

Monday 29th October
Lost £3.51 (net)
Won £24.33 (gross)
As you can see from the net figure this was a true nothing day. The Flat Combo continued its recovery (good!) with a gain of over £30 but I didn't hit a single winner on the other systems and dropped over £20 there mainly due to two losing Mark Johnston bets. It was a quiet day on the laying front with only 8 bets matched but they all lost to balance out almost all of the systems losses.

Tuesday 30th October
Lost £3.23 (net)
Lost £252.19 (gross)
Thank :censored: for bank barriers eh? The Flat Combo's recent renaissance ended in style with some decent stakes going on losing bets to strip the bank of over £250. Impressive for just seven horses really. Mark Johnston apologised for his recent poor performances with a 7/1 winner so the Systems had a good day with profits on those totalling over £50. Unfortunately the lays decided to counter that good fortune and weighed in with losses of around £55 as winner after winner hit home. Still, I broke even on the day and that's not bad really.