Sports Trading Diary Entry 8 230312

Sports Trading Diary Entry 8 230312

Daily update of my sports trading progress.

I started sports trading (mainly football matches) on Bet Fair at the beginning of February 2012.

Follow my progress in my daily (almost!) updated sports trading diary entries.

Firstly though, I missed out on a fabulous offer for new sports traders to get a free £25 bet – the first time they start sports trading on Bet Fair. So to make sure you don’t miss out on this wonderful offer;

Claim a risk free £25 free bet at Bet Fair, click Bet Fair £25 bet. Make sure when you join the site, that you use or see the code HU4XE6MTR in the relevant voucher area to get your risk free £25 bet.

If HU4XE6MTR doesn’t show in the relevant box when you are filling in the joining page, you might not get your £25 free bet and that would be a shame to miss eh?

It’s been a couple of days since I updated the Sports Trading Diary, although I made a post to this section and gave you access to my Sports Trading Log, which is a spread sheet that you can download and then adjust to meet your needs; to record details of each individual football or sports trade that you get involved in, add notes, etc.

I have also continued to update daily the in-play football coupon, which you can cut and paste the day’s fixtures from into the Sports Trading Log directly – I do this on a daily basis and have the football fixtures in a format that fits the Sports Trading Log perfectly, so it seems a shame for me to waste the time taken to do this and not post it up on here for everyone to use eh?

Anyway, financially I seem to have been treading water since my last post. I think I signed off with £190.31 on Tuesday and today I have £192.56. So a small profit of £2.35 – although I have had a couple of days worth of fun trading in-between, I don’t seem to have much to show for it!

I would have had even less, had I not been extremely lucky with a trade early this morning… I work from home and sometimes the work I do requires me to work odd hours and pull all nighters when the work load is high. Last night / early hours of this morning was one such example of this and as I was working, I was also trading on the football matches being played in South America.

I have a ‘thing’ about the style of play in South America. Football seems to be played at pace and with huge skill in the countries below the equator on the Americas. I particulary have a soft spot for some reason for a team in Mexico called Club de Fútbol Jaguares de Chiapas or The Jaguars in English.

This team has been pretty lucky for me this last few weeks and I seem to have developed a soft spot for them and have been following their games and progress in the Mexican Premier Division… Ahem! I also think it’s funny that they’re sponsored currently by Sol and are the first football team to replace their names on their shirts with their Twitter nicknames!

Anyway, last night (early hours of this morning) I was beavering away on a project and had the live football scores on in the background with an audible alert set, so I would be notified of any goals in any of the matches being played.

The whistle sound alerted me to a player being sent off and I switched screens to see that The Jaguars had had a player sent off in their game against Pachuca CF in the first two minutes of the match. I switched over to BetFair to see if this match was being played ‘live’ in the BetFair live video feed, and sure enough it was; so I reduced the size of the video feed screen so I could have it overlaying the computer screen I was currently working on on my laptop and watch the match whilst I worked.

Now as I said, I have a soft spot for The Jaguars and ten or so minutes after they had a player sent off, they scored a goal. I decided to have a punt on them… Naughty, naughty I know.

Then bugger me ten minutes later they only went and scored a second goal, so I doubled up my initial bet and ended up backing them with £20 to win, expecting to lay it off and trade out once the market settled down for a nice profit.

Anyway, the law of sod comes in to play and for some reason BetFair goes down and I can’t trade out because the dreaded ‘SUSPENDED’ sign appears.

I then start to sweat (and swear) a bit, as I’ve backed a team with ten players, against another team at a similar position in the league who’ve still got 11 players… Of course the law of sod plays out fully and Pachuca CF go on to score a goal late in the first half. So it’s now 2:1 with The Jaguars winning but with ten men and the suspended sign still displaying.

It gets to half time and still no sign of the suspended marker coming off, so I go out to the kitchen for a cup of tea and a smoke to try and relax. When I come back (after longer than expected, but the suspended sign had been on for most of the first half and I’d resigned myself to having to see the match out without being able to trade out) I find that the second half has started and Pachuca CF are going for it big time and still no sign of the Suspended sign coming off.

The Suspended sign finally comes off and I’m trying to trade out, but of course the world and his wife is also trying to trade out as well; then Pachuca CF score an equalizer… Bloody sods law!

What happens next is the most amazing game of football that I’ve had the privilege of watch for a very long time. It would appear that both teams decide that they can win the match and go hell to leather playing attacking end to end football. The Jaguars with ten men against Pachuca CF with eleven. The Jaguars coming very close to taking the lead again but missing a couple of real sitters.

I resign myself to not being able to trade out. The lay figure would give me about 30p and I might as well gamble the 30p as I’ve already lost the lion’s share of my twenty quid. Then at 81 minutes in and with me resigned to losing my £20 The Jaguars take the lead again with a superb goal… The odds stay the same for ages and for some reason I find that I’ve backed them again with another tenner!

I then have a nerve racking few minutes whilst Pachuca CF and the fourth official who gives an extra 4 minutes of added time attempt to conspire against me (and The Jaguars) and equalize again.

Thankfully the gods of BetFair are on my side and The Jaguars manage to see out the rest of the match and give me a nice £23 profit on top of the whole experience.

Would I repeat it again? My head says no, and had it not been for the Suspended sign appearing for some unknown reason I wouldn’t have gone through it the first time. But then again I’d have missed out on the £23 odd profit.

Repeat after me the mantra ‘Trade, Not Gamble. 5% or 5 minutes maximum’

That’s it for this Football Trading Diary update – check the image in the middle of the post for proof of what I’ve written. It’ll enlarge to full size if you click it…

Sports Trading Diary Entry 8 230312