Week 18 …  A Tough week

Summary and Master Class  Betting tips and Strategies

Here’s where I discuss the week in brief and expand on issues that may have come up during the week that may help with your betting skills and strategies.

A tough week with a small loss of just over 10 points. It’s not exciting at losing anytime but on reflection I felt this was actually a pretty good result.

What!!??? I hear you say. How can a loss be a good result?

Fair comment but here’s my reasons.

The FOUR biggest bets of the week all lost! That’s rare as you’ll know from past results. A disaster really.  A near max 40 points win on Alpha Tauri, 30 Pts ew Act of Diplomacy, and 15 pts ew on Prohibition and Wajaha. Those 4 horses alone accounted for a staggering 160 points loss!

160 Points is Huge and virtually impossible to win in a week. It’s good going for a month! Most people don’t even win that in a year! So we had a serious mountain to climb. To end up just 10 points in the red meant we’d clawed back 150 points from our every day bread and butter betting. That is impressive.

If just one of the each way bets had got into the frame we’d be at least another 20 points to the good. But they didn’t and we did well to hold it to a minor financial scratch when it could have been worse. In any case to be absolutely fair I called one winning bet void  which would have made an 18 point profit.(Soliel Fix) although I know several clients did manage to get on in time.

Master Class

Ok so what is the lesson?

Racing as we know is a volatile, up and down business. That’s one of the reasons so few people stay the trip and end up being Successful Professional Gamblers. They just can’t stomach the roller coaster ride. As soon as they get behind they give up. Or worse, get behind, then double up and double up to try and get out of trouble. That’s the quick road to the poor house and why I do not advocate any type of retrieval staking plans. They’re for amateurs not Professionals.

Giving up when losing means you’ll definitely lose. But at least it means you don’t lose more. But sadly it means you won’t ever end up being a winner! It’s a tough call but a lot better than the second option …

Doubling up, “steaming” or “chasing” losses by increasing bets may get you out of trouble. But it’s more likely to mean you dig a bigger hole!

When I first started betting when I suffered a big loss my temptation was to bet bigger to get level. I soon learned! (painfully! after once losing 7 consecutive £5,000 betting banks)

The correct strategy (assuming your selections/system or information is basically profitable) is to carry on the same, with a modified stake in relation to your betting bank. My variation on this is to continue betting, making the same (hopefully optimum) decisions and trust in the quality of your selections to carry you through the swings. And I do scale back my bets a little.

Why do I scale back if I’m backing the same good quality horses?

The reason is that no matter how good you are, how experienced, we all feel some pain from losing. It’s very hard to inoculate yourself against it. And when you’re feeling emotional pain or distraction it’s almost impossible to make perfect decisions. Try solving a serious problem that needs thinking about while you’re having an argument with your partner. Impossible!

I was chatting to one of our Senior Traders earlier in the week and he used to be an Air Force Pilot. As you know they go through an immense training program, costing over £1,000,000 per pilot. It’s a huge investment.

Obviously to fly a jet at supersonic speeds in all kinds of difficult conditions you need to have an incredible level of skill! But I suspect that part of the training is also mental, related to the ability to perform under stress. So that not only can these pilots fly brilliantly under normal circumstances … but they can still fly brilliantly when stuff is going wrong.

As Professionals we’re never going to have or be able to afford that level or quality of training. But that doesn’t mean we can’t improve and become the best Professional Gamblers possible. So that when stuff goes wrong we still make good percentage calls, not silly dangerous “chasing” ones.

Every day there are opportunities to do the right things, think the right thoughts and practise the best strategies till it becomes ingrained in your personality and it becomes second nature to make the right move even when your emotions are screaming for you to do something else. The more we practise the better we’ll become. Just as a top pilot learns to trust his instruments even though his head is telling him something different (not because there’s anything working with his head but he knows the percentage call is that the instruments are correct and the “head” is making a mistake, possibly due to the limitations of human biology or perception)

So when I have bad luck or bad losses I scale back. Because I know that even though I believe the next bet is a great one … I now know that a tiny bit of my subconscious may be egging me on to “get level” and affecting my judgment. I do truly believe I’m pretty consistent in my betting and mostly resist the urge to steam. But because the cost of getting it wrong is so painful (ie you’re out of the game!) I add just a bit of caution.

So you may have noticed that after those thumping 4 losing bets I did NOT start doubling up or wildly increasing stakes as I might have done when I was an amateur. I just chipped away bet by bet, bit by bit and slowly we eased back towards breakeven without any serious risk. My biggest bet was 12 points and that was on a very rare odds-on chance. Had we been flying on the week I might have had 20 Points.

Yes I know if I’d bet bigger we’d have ended up with a handsome profit on the week. But there would have been a risk of making things a lot worse. My job is to let you know how I bet so you can copy if you wish. It may not be the best strategy but I feel it’s safer. I know we’re going to bet plenty of winners so why worry about trying to bet them this week? I’ve seen too many people go skint and by trying to get level by the end of racing if they start having a bad day. Good days and bad days will come. It’s the bad days you have to be careful of. Good days look after themselves!

Ok now a brief note about the week!

Monday: no bets

Tuesday:

A so-so day but the Prescott horse Reclamation was disappointing. Nora Mae was a good winner but we lost 15% of our winnings due to a withdrawn horse.

Wednesday:

Should have been so good! 4 bets 3 won or placed but the biggest by far, Act of Diplomacy bombed. I was told afterwards it suffered a minor injury but it was a major blow to our bank. 60 points down the hole. That was awful!

Thursday:

Blimey! If Tuesday was cruel Wednesday was a disaster and enough to knock most average punters out of the game.

Alpha Tauri (too bad to be true )and Prohibition (non trier in my view) wiped out 70 points. I was starting to feel like a bank that was about to be nationalised! I did start wondering if the ground was a lot worse than being reported and decided to scale back for protection.

The Kyllachy Kid did restore some losses but as we were losing so much it was scaled back bet of 12 points for caution. He won easily and showed how unlucky we were in week 16 when we bet him each way at 7/1 to win 126 points and got caught on the line!

Friday:

We started making some headway with a fantastic 6/1 winner in Buccellati although it was only a small 5pts ew rather than a more normal 8 or 10 pt bet because I was still trading cautiously.

Saturday:

A day of gambles, near misses and a great finish!

Yaddree finished 5th in the Cambridgeshire and so was a winning bet for clients who’d bet him with the firms offering 5 places (they really all should in a race as hard as this!) To be fair I’ve logged it as a loser though as you may not have bet with those bookies.

Silver Adonis (11/1 down to 7/1)and Ellemajue (14/1 down to 7/1 ) were good gambles just failing to get placed. Either one in the frame would have made the week profitable though Silver Adonis doesn’t look good enough. Keep an eye on Ellamajue.

Total Gallery was a great 9/2 winner and my confidence was starting to return so I passed on several late bets from the track. Packers Hill 5/1, Soleil Fix at 3/1 and Dance the Star at 2/1 all won though I’ve called the Soliel Fix bet void because it went out so close to the off. However one delighted client called me to say he’d got on so at least he ended up in profit on the week. Well done Chris! The race lasted 5 minutes 12 seconds so several clients also got on in running.

These late bets can be very late and are really only for the Full Time Traders on my Professional Traders Service as I know it can be annoying if you get a bet late and can’t get on and end up missing a good winner. But I thought you might like a “taster”, an  insight into how profitable they can be. Not all days will be that good though! I will be offering a Saturday only version of the Professional Service for Clients who work during the week, more details later.

Incidentally it was pointed out to me that I said PACKERS HILL was in the 4m at Redcar when it fact the race was 4.10. Please excuse these typos but I am rushing to text it to you as fast as I can and there may be some slight errors and it’s usually obvious it’s the race about to go off. For example if I get the racecard number wrong just go with the name of the horse. For the record the text was sent at 4.08 and the race was off at 4.11pm

Sunday:

Soldier of Fortune ran ok, was placed but because he dead heated for 3rd it was a small loser instead of a slight winner. No real damage done.

The loss on the week was a minor £10.63p to £1 pp stakes so there’s no profit share and the tenner loss will be carried forward to next week.

Speak Soon

Bob

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