Pen, Paper, Sun and Plenty of Hoegaarden

Four Days of Sun and Hoegaarden

Well the weather has finally come good, so once again so I grabbed the opportunity to disappear down to the coast. I spent the first day cycling from Whitstable to Ramsgate and it was most enjoyable indeed.

After my usual afternoon siesta I ventured out for a few evening beers. Luckily I didn't stay out too late or get smashed as when I got back to my room I managed to snap the key off in the lock. Unfortunately it was 00:20 and the lady who owns the B&B is 84 years old! I had no choice but to ring the buzzer and to be honest her daughter wasn't particularly helpful. I did get put in a spare room but had to wait until about 12:00 the following day for the handyman to make an appearance and sort out the lock. So it ended up being a late start, once I had the chance to shower and get changed, but it probably gave my body some time to recover from Monday's effort.

So Tuesday afternoon was spent soaking up the rays (although it was a bit overcast) outside The Belgian Cafe and the evening saw me back in The Belgian after a sherbert outside The Oak. Once the Hoegaarden started flowing I felt compelled to put pen to paper. I have been reading a book entitled 'Mindstore' and it really got me thinking about how I'm living my life at the moment. I grabbed a pen from behind the bar and a couple of sheets of serviette paper and started to scribble a kind of mind map. The Hoegaarden was certainly doing it's magic and before I knew it I had a mass of scribblings combined of notes in circles, boxes, weird shapes, most of which were interconnected by lines snaking across my serviette paper. My final task of the night was to grab the crayons and start colouring!

The sun shone again on Wednesday so it was back to The Belgian for more Hoegaaarden, more reading and more scribbling. After a quick check of the weather forecast I decided to stay Thursday as well .... well why not eh? So in the evening I hit The Belgian, yep AGAIN, and was lucky enough to see a band called The Angelo Tristan Band and they were fucking brilliant. Fast forward a couple of hours and I'm left standing outside The Belgian and it's 02:30 and Mark the chef decides that it's time to have a bonfire on the beach. Now a couple of girls, Sue and Pauline, have tagged along (purely platonic you know) but Pauline is absolutely mangled and can hardly string two comprehensible words together. Mark finally gets a little fire going and gets a few beers from his boat. Before I realise it's nearly 06:00, but oh what a beatiful morning, sitting there watching the tide and the sun coming up in the morning sky. I decide that discretion is the better part of valour and head back to the B&B for a few hours kip.

So after getting my head down for a couple of hours and having a cooked breakfast I get showered and head back down to The Belgian to be greeted by a still very pissed Pauline and Mark who was beginning to wilt under the burden of staying up all night. At this stage I was feeling quite relieved that I'd had a break as another early morning reveller decided that he wanted a punch-up with Mark and threats and words were exchanged. Then, about an hour later this guy offends Sue (who is still hanging on in there) and she decides to throw the table halfway across the street, smashing all the plates and glasses and then wanders off down near the beach and 15 minutes later chins the bloke!! All I wanted was a quiet beer in the sun!!!

I ended up staying out until about 17:00 and listened to a banjo player and a local guitarist bang out a few tunes. I did plan to go out in the evening but I woke up at about 20:00 and decided that I was too fucked ... so went back to bed. So all in all it was a fantastic four days in the sun.



The Mindmap

Well I'd call it my version of a mind map type of diagram. The Mindstore book contains a list of areas that contribute to your 'wheel of life' and the idea is to have all of these areas in balance. The idea is to analyze each area and give yourself a mark out of 10 which relates to your current status.

The more I thought and the more that I scribbled I gradually became aware that practically all of these issues have some bearing on my effectiveness as a trader ... and that's why I decided to put my scribblings on this section of my Blog.

Now I also added my own 'spokes of the wheel' and ended-up with the following:

1. Family (3)

I was a bit shocked to only be able to rate myself as a 3. I easily identified negative factors and these included:

• poor relationship with my wife - when you have beem married for as long as we have then you need to make extra effort to keep that spark in your relationship. To be honest neither of us really try anymore and pretty much lead seperate lives. We do have a great time when we manage to get away togther, but other than that our relationship is pretty boring and sometimes quite stressful as we both want different things from life.

• poor relationship with my eldest son - to be blunt he can be a lazy fucker with no respect. This is especially annoying when he has so much potential.

• taking family members for granted - to be honest I make very little attempt to enjoy time with my parents. My mum lives in the same street but my dad lives an hour and a half away. This is something where the blame lies totally on my shoulders.

Now as we all know having angst with members of your family can easily impact your trading. I've lost count of the number of times that I've been quite happily sitting at my desk only to get fucked right off by a family member either moaning, screaming, shouting, being a bell-end or just generally being a twat. They often have the ability to send me from a state of calm to a state of screaming and shouting. Even as I sit here now I've already had to tell my grandson a few times to use his 'little voice' as he is being a noisy little fucker!

Now I've worked from home for almost two years now and this generally means more interaction with family members and at times when I am under pressure, i.e. trying to concentrate and work. I've found that this constant erosion of my inner calm has made me very negative in my general daily interractions with family members and I have a few well used phrases which usually consist of:

'shut the fucking noise up I'm trying to work'

'did you all have a good time getting shit faced down the pub while I was sitting here working'

'is any other fucker going to clean/tidy/wash up etc'

'this is not a fucking hobby'

'fuck this I'm fucking off'


There are one or two other more personal areas that I'm not going to share on here, but I feel that they all need to be addressed in order to work my way up from that score of 3!

PS I do love my missus (she reads my Blog!) but fuck me she can be a right pain in the ass sometimes! 

Now on the plus side I do, like many people, have an absolutely fantastic family and with a little effort here and there I should easily be able to get my score up to a 9 and to be honest everyone should be at least an 8 shouldn't they?

2. Social (8) 

My social score was relatively high. I've found that with age comes more confidence in social environments and I'm pretty comfortable in most situations.

3. Personal Development (6)

My personal development goes in fits and starts. It's closely linked with time management, as poor time management leaves no time for effective personal development. I've also realised that my personal development is pretty much entirely focussed on learning how to trade more effectively.

4. Health (7) 

My health is a mixed bag. On the plus side I'm physically active, hit the gym nearly every morning and generally follow a good diet. On the negative side I was diagnosed with mild cardiomyopathy and occasional atrial flutter about 10 years ago. This sometimes causes me to feel like a bag of shite but generally it's no problem. My teeth are also fucked and to be honest if I could get a set of dentures on the NHS then I probably would!

Oh and I forgot about my mince pie (eye). I woke up one night and had like a blurry splodge of grey affecting my left eye. It turned out to be a retinal branch vein occlusion, which is basically a blockage and bleed in the eye. Luckily it didn't hurt or affect my central vision and gradually over the last 14 months it's improved and almost back to normal.

5. Attitude (5) 

I'd like to think that my attitude is more on the positive side of things but when I really think about it then I'm not so sure.

On those days were everything is going right then I can scream 'who's the Daddy!' and everything seems so easy. However, on some days I often allow even the slightest problem to manifest itself in my head which then puts me in a negative state of mind and this means that I often worry about the smallest things ... I am a worrier! This probably stems from childhood were most of us don't want to make mistakes or get into trouble. I suppose that some of us grow up and continue to worry, some achieve that right balance of being able to address the situation, and others just get about their lives and don't give a fuck.

6. Finances (6) 

I'm pretty good at managing my finances. However, I do worry a lot about money and the thought of going skint and having to go back to work is always floating about in my head. Therefore I do become very 'money centric' at times. I'm by no means tight fisted but I do like to keep a fairly close eye on my finances.

Unfortunately there is one thought that tends to creep into my head every now and then and it really fucks me off. It concerns a video I took down @ Ramsgate maybe three years ago when I was at the financial peak of my entire life. In the video I'm sitting in the Port & Anchor and casually mention how much money I have 'burning a hole in my pocket'. Unfortunately I have a LOT less these days and it does hurt to think back to when making a nice bit of cash each month was relatively easy. I have an ingrained thought that I'll never be happy until I get back to that sort of financial independance.

Strangely enough on my recent break I stayed in a B&B. Now the woman who owns this sprawling nine bedroom house also owned at least one other, yet despite this, during our chat she only ever chatted about money and how much she had to spend to maintain the buildings etc. Now this lady was in her 80's and is probably sitting on close to £1 million worth of property by the coast yet she was still constantly moaning about money. Makes you think doesn't it? I definitely don't want to be that sort of sour money obsessed person who misses out on all of the great 'free' things that life offers and I don't want to live my life in the past.

There are one or two other personal money related issues that happened in the past and often wind me up when I think of them, but hey, that's all done and dusted so it's time to forget about all of that shit, learn from it and soldier on!

Finally, one thing that is driving me on at the moment is the fact that I have missed many opportunites over the last few years to make really good money. I don't want to look back in a few years time and realise that I never had the bollocks to grasp the nettle. However, once again on the flip side I have always seemed to land on my feet. Opportunities have always come along just at the time when I needed them, and for this I am grateful.

7. Career (7)

Well if trading is my career then I'm going OK at the moment and there is also untold potential.

8. Perception (4) 

My perception of events, and maybe more importantly my reaction, plays a big role in shaping my outlook on life.

Now there I was sitting in The Belgian Cafe, chilling out in the corner, drinking my Hoegaarden and scribbling these notes when I noticed something. Every now and then I would glance up at the growing crowd of late night drinkers and occasionally I'd spot someone who, for whatever reason, was starting to piss me off. Maybe it was someone chatting shite in a loud voice or just someone that I perceived to be a bell-end. I then realised that I do this quite often and it will often put me in a temporary aggressive mental, not physical, state of mind.

Now strangely, on the flip side of the coin, I can often get drawn-in by fucking idiots and sit there quite happily having a chat. It's a bit confusing thinking about it, but I suppose it all comes down to how I have built my pre-conceptions of certain types of people and events and my response is automatic and hard-wired. My missus does always say that I'm the worst judge of character that she knows!

9. Time Management (6) 

My time management is pretty good but I have noticed recently that I'm spending way too much time on unproductive tasks.


10. Commitment -


11. Environment -


12. Lifestyle (5) - I suppose that my lifestyle is another mixed bag. I feel that I live quite comfortably but maybe this area is the culmination of all of the above factors maybe? What's the goal? ... to live comfortably in a chilled state?


Goals -

Stress -

Old age -

Feelings of sadness and getting pissed-off = depression = always worrying

TBC ........



18/07

+£131.39. Managed to get straight back into the swing of things and was probably heading for a £200+ day but had a bit of a hiccup halfway through the day and had to settle for just over £130.

I'm going to smash it tomorrow and I'll be looking for at least a monkey to cover my recent holiday expenses.


19/07

We have 55 races scheduled for today so it's just a case of trying to average a tenner a race, although there will probably be quite a few overlaps.

12:28 I'll try and do the rolling update again today. I'm currently practicing a few new guitar chords in between updating today's horse notes and I'm up to the 19:00 @ Lingfield so I should be able to get them all done in time for the first race which is the 13:35 @ Newbury ...

14:38 started quite well, then missed a cracking opportunity and then gave some back .... ho hum ...

15:18 AAGGGHHH!!! trading on a Saturday just does my fucking head in!! ....

16:32 ... just had a touch that's taken me up to +£370 ... now's the time to play nice and steadily ...

18:56 creeping ever so slowly to that elusive monkey but it doesn't help that there are no pics from Lingfield ...

19:17 just over +£420 but the pics from Lingfield are broken, so that only leaves 4 more races from Haydock ...

+£451.56. So I ended up having a cracker today which helped pay for my 4 day break ...

Now I just need to make sure that I keep the ball rolling ...


20/07


+£92.45. Absolute pants racing today but I suppose that is the norm for Sundays. I was on the ball in one race and pretty much made my day's profit from backing one in the place market over the jumps by keeping my eye closely on what was going on behind the leaders.

21/07

+£82.91. Unspectacular effort ...

22/07

+£225.43. This was a day where I won £200+ in one race and felt more fucked off than you could ever believe! That was THE race at Ballinrobe where someone's in-running bot presumably malfunctioned and it was help yourself to as much free money as you could get. However, me being me I was sitting there thinking 'there must be somthing wrong here'. Instead of smashing the absolute bollox out of it I pensively traded a few clicks and greened at £200 and then sat on my hands worrying that I might make a balls-up and end-up doing my bank. Well the truth is that I really should have got £5k+ .... and to be quite honest a lot lot more.

It's usually the case of  'if it looks too good to be true then it probably is'. Well this time it really was free money and there must be a few out there in BF land who have raped a lovely stash of cash into their accounts.



26/07

+£228.22. I got caught with my pants down in the 19:15 @ Salisbury and had to take one for the team! Apart from that it was a nice first day back after a few days back down the coast.

27/07

+£80.30. It seemed like a strange old day today with only 3 meetings (at least they were all RUK). I was surprised when I looked at my P&L to see that I only traded in 7 races.

28/07

+£146.47. I had another one of those days where absolutely nothing happened during the afternoon and then when the evening racing started I managed to nick a few quid. It's strange how that happens sometimes?

29/07

+£349.55. I started the day with a good £100+ result in the first but I could have in fact easily greened-up for £400, but once again in the heat of the moment I didn't manage my position very well and didn't have enough exit points lined-up. It's really annoying when you take a look at the ladder after the race and see just how easy it would have been to taken a very easy £350+ instead of just £100+ .... to be honest it was £250+ lost instead of £100 gained!

I then knuckled down, nibbled away, got a good result in the 3 runner chase and did OK on the day.


 
30/07

Fuck me it's warming up a bit!

Yep Summer has finally arrived and it's fucking lovely!

It's smashing into the 70's but not quite quite the 120+ degrees that it reaches in Death Valley ... fuck me now that is Scorchio!!

I was sorely tempted to hit the coast again this week as the sun was out and the temperatures were around the 22-23 mark, so ideal for cycling and re-hydrating with copious mounts of chilled lager. However I decided to stay at home and try and win some cash and maybe wait for mid-July.

Now my garden has always resembled a dumping ground, so I decided to hire some Romanian labour to clear it all down. The advantage of living in Newham is that you can find 30 or 40 guys hanging around outside the local Wickes every morning looking for work. So I popped down there, did a bit of bartering and paid 3 guys £90, in total, to clear my garden. Now these boys didn't mess around as Derek Thomson would say and had the job done by 13:00. I threw in few cans of Fanta, Fosters and something to eat but had to draw the line when one of the guys offerd me £200 for my car as he needed somewhere to sleep at night!



01/07

+£102.71. Monday today and I didn't seem to be going anywhere fast. I kept checking the weather forecast and really fancied going to the coast for Wed-Fri but realised that it would probably be better to stay at home and actually win some money before I spunked more on beer. I nibbled away and somehow managed to get up to 3 figure territory, so it wasn't too bad.

  
02/07

+£153.36. I spent the morning fucking about in the garden and going back and forward to the local tip. I had my positive and happy head on to greet the new month and I was bubbling with positivity and enthusiasm .... that's until I bumped into the jobsworth prick at the tip. I only had last years council tax bill and the guy wouldn't let me in without this years copy ... what a jobsworth dustman prickhead! So I had to come all the way home again with an overheating car full of shite and then rummage around in mountains of paperwork while the Romanians were plowing through my garden like a human combine harvester. That is what happens when you give a fucking dustman control of a barrier ... he thinks he's someone important! For a brief second I wanted to smash the fuck out of the silly little prick .. but then my positivity and calmness surged through my body and I decided that it wasn't worth the while.

I was fucking knackered by the time racing started and nothing much was happening early doors. My horse notes then came to the rescue as I had a good marker for Hot Spice at Catterick and he duly bolted up and added some sheckles to the coffers.

PS If anyone reading this works for Shanks East London I'd just like to say thanks for your help you lazy bunch of thick cunts.



03/07

+£345.52. I was up at the crack this morning as it was fucking beautiful. In between the tedious task of updating my horse notes I continued cleaning my garden, drank tea and sat in the sun.

I won almost £100 in the second race of the day and never looked back. I traded well but still missed one or 2 cracking opportunities by a gnats cock. I'll up the stakes tomorrow as there's no reason why I shouldn't be hitting this kind of figure every day during the summer months when there is plenty of racing.

The time spent keeping my horse notes up to date and watching the replays really paid dividends today and gives me a bit of enthusiasm. I've still got quite a few recordings to watch but hopefully I'll crack on tomorrow and hopefully highlight a few more potential good trades.



04/07

+£207.87. My good form continued today and once again the information compiled in my horse notes really helped.

I've recently noticed three areas in which my trading has improved. These are:

1. Having more information to hand with regards to the common running styles of each selection, i'e. my horse notes.
    
2. Refraining from chasing a price if my first attempts fail to get matched. It's SO easy to try and hit a price, miss it, chase it and then find that you get matched at several points above or below (depending on whether you are laying or backing) the original price. At this point the value has usually disappeared and you can find yourself in a deep hole.
    
3. I'm finding that I'm bailing out much more quickly when I spot that the market is not reacting how I envisaged. For example you may lay something early and you're quite happy that it will drift, but it doesn't. Sometimes it's easy to hang on a bit too long and then find that the drift isn't going to happen and once again you're in deep hole. It's a fine line as there is that point in a race where your selection is either going to get smashed into in a  blink of an eye or drift like a barge equally quickly. If you are VERY confident that you have things right then at this point you can go well into the green very quickly, but the opposite is also true.

05/07

+£69.53. Updating these horse notes is a right fucking pain in the arse! I've also lost count of the number of times that I'm updating my notes (all in uppercase) and then switch to something like my blog, type a thousand words without looking at the screen and then look up and it's all in uppercase ... AGGGGHHHH!!

Anyway it's currently 10:06 on a Saturday morning and I've almost updated every race and blimey there's a shitload of racing and horses running today. On a day like today I always think that it should be easy to nick £5 - £10 per race and that would produce a tidy amount at the end of the day ... but as we all know it's not that easy!

I'm continually looking at various weather forecasts as I'm desperate to hit the coast again for some more cycling, drinking, eating and general relaxation. I've even though about the possibility of cycling from Brighton along the coast to Ramsgate. It's a fucking long journey though and with a few beers thrown in along the way I'm not so sure that I could make it? I suppose that if I split it into a two day journey then 50 miles per day should be achievable? So perhaps a day in Brighton and a few beers with green fingered Steve followed by an evening cycle along the coast to maybe Lydd at around 60 miles and then onto Ramsgate the following day at around 55 miles?

The weather for early next week doesn't look too handy but it's supposed to be picking-up from Friday so I need to get my thinking cap on and decide how I'm going to combine my trading, drinking, eating and cycling.

I missed out on three blinding days this week where the temperature was in the twenties, but as mentioned previously it's always a toss-up between working and holidaying. In hindsight I obviously made the right choice as I've had a few good days. So instead of spunking my cash on beer I've been able to add a few quid to the bank. The difference between staying and going probably meant that I'm sitting on an extra £1000 in my bank as it probably costs about £100 a day for me to go away when you factor in petrol, B&B costs, munch and Hoegaarden @ £5.20 per pint. It's still a bit of a shock when I pick up the mornings tab at The Belgian Cafe and it's £30+ and that's without breakfast or lunch! So hopefully I can continue in this form and add a few more quid before my next excursion(s).

So it's now 10:35 and I want to be a greedy fucker today and win even more and get to that stage where I'm taking £500+ per day.
 

...17:24 and today has been a bit of a struggle. I'm hoping that things improve this evening!

... well things did gradually improve and I clawed back my defecit and ended the day in front, which looked unlikely after my £120+ loss in one of the early races. Once again the daytime and evening meetings seemed like chalk and cheese. During the day it was like trying to run in quicksand and I felt as though I was just an observer, but then gradually the markets seemed to change.

I was SO close to getting a huge result in one of the early evening races. I spotted a great opportunity and even called my son over to 'watch a professional in action' (I was giving it a bit of large!) and at the off my £120 entry bet was only partly taken (I was 1 tick away from getting it fully matched) and literally 5 seconds later the price had moved about 50 ticks in my favour ... it really was a very close one!

Anyway, it's a day off on Sunday. It would have been my brother's 50th birthday on July the fourth so I'm off to the cemetery and then I'm going to see a few family members that I haven't seen for quite a while. Paul was the complete opposite of me in terms of gambling as he was quite fearless. We would often go to Hackney dog track back in the day and he would either go skint or come out with a few hundred quid in his pocket! I do miss those days of giving it the 'oi oi oi ... keep pulling' as your dog stretched into an unassailable lead. God knows what damage he would have done on Betfair!


07/07

+£99.24. I fell back into the old trap of fucking about again today! I stayed up quite late last night and that really threw my usual schedule out of the window today. I woke up late and then instead of cracking-on with my horse notes I chose instead to fuck about with my car ... again! I hate car maintenance, and instead of concentrating on winning some cash to pay someone else to do the dirty work I spent all morning looking for car oil, oil filters and transmission fluid. For some reason I became obsessed in my search and by the time that the first race was about to start I was nowhere near ready. I just felt like I couldn't be bothered with the racing and that I'd take any sort of profit. Fortunately my notes highlighted a cracking opportunity late on in Ireland which got me up to almost £100. In fact in hindsight I really should have gone in heavy on that one as I really fancied it as a cracking trade.

I'll be back on schedule and also back on my diet/training regime tomorrow so hopefully everything will fall back into place and I can start building on the good results from last week.




08/07

+£191.53. Caan recently mentioned on his blog that it's good to have a goal or target that you are working towards. When I started this blog my goal was to win enough cash to buy a house on the coast. Unfortunately circumstances changed and it's taken me a while to alter my style of trading. However, I now feel that I'm in a position to set an achievable target that gives me something to keep me motivated. Now my car is getting a tad old, struggles every year to get through the MOT emission test and has recently started overheating when under load (see above). So I'm going to need a new one. Now I fancy a Hilux but I'm probably looking at £10k at least ... so the target is to win £10k by the end of September! 

Today was a good start and it was nice steady trading without any major hiccups.

09/07

+£9.67. Wednesday is the day that Betfair rape your previous day's profits from your account and stick it in their pocket! It's also the day where I dropped a bollock in the 16:20 at Lingfield. I was obviously a bit pissed-off at the time and it does make you think 'what if I lose another £150 in the next race?', but I realised straight away that losses like this are part of the game. I kept calm and carried on and actually managed to finish just in front on the day, so I was quite happy.

10/07

+£130.45. I decided to have another curry day today so a few of my notes for today's runners were incomplete as I didn't go through the cards this morning. I didn't do too bad though and managed to scrape into three figure territory ... almost enough for a wheel and a tyre for my new car!

I've started to go in for multiple clicks on some races (I'm currently on £60 or £150 a click at the moment) and I feel that it's only a matter of time before I hit a stonking trade and get a few hundred English in one race, although there's also the chance of getting caught with my pants down and doing a few hundred quid. He who dares Rodney, he who dares!

The good old English weather has started to drag its heels and I'm still waiting for a solid few days of uninterrupted sunshine down on the coast.

Next week looks to be warm but also showery! It's the middle of July ... fuck off rain!!



11/07

+£322.38. I had one of those days today where everything seemed to fall into place and making cash was relatively easy. Unfortunately these sort of days don't come along that often! The good thing is that there is easily the potential to win anywhere between £500 - £1000 per day the way that I am playing at the moment as there is usually plenty available in the markets at the times that I normally enter and exit my positions. If I continue to gradually increase my stakes then there is no reason why I shouldn't be up to that sort of level in next to no time.

As mentioned previously now is the time to strike while we still have plenty of racing!!



12/07

+£107.47. I thought that I'd do something a bit different today and keep an update going through the day. This is how it all went ...


12:58: Well it's Saturday again so I really need to get my game plan sorted before the racing starts. My previous Saturday results have been +£70, +£202, +£122.90 and +£100.44 .... errrm in fact they haven't been too bad recently (I was quite surprised when I just took a quick look back at my results). Maybe it's just that I'm not making the most of Saturdays in terms of the amount of racing?

My normal approach doesn't seem to work as well and I think that this is due to the stronger in-running markets, due to it being so busy. In fact there are a zillion races today, most of them with quite large fields. So with 55 races between now and 21:15 you only need to average a few quid profit per race to make a handsome wage. Therefore I'll be playing a steady and patient game and only diving in when the opportunities arise.

13:03: Apparently the weather is set to be a mixture of heat and showers over the next few weeks so I may take the opportunity to get back down to the coast on Monday as it looks as though we might have 2 or 3 days of uninterrupted sunshine? I'm thinking that if I could win £300+ again today (cue motivational picture) then I'll definitely go ....

13:37 and I just won £8 in the first race and although it's not an earth shattering amount it really does boost the confidence when you start with a winning trade ...

13:58 a quick in and out on Demora in the 13:55 but missed the tasty 2.0+ for a place close home when in a clear fourth place! It looks as though I'm going to need a bionic eye today at Ascot as it seems like they have their last furlong camera on the fucking moon! It's like watching racing ants with microscopic jockeys on board ...

14:32 nicking a few pennies here and there but most importantly playing it cagey and patiently ...

15:27 agghh the Saturday struggle has begun and the patience has already started to wear thin ...

16:04 just took £60+ out of Gregorian in the place market as I spotted him coming through into third place late on in the 15:50 @ Newmarket ...

17:03 well I'm nowhere near the £300 mark as yet ... but there's still plenty of time left ...

17:57 right that is the afternoon racing done and dusted and I think that I'm about +£70. If memory serves me right I've fared a bit better in the evening racing on previous Saturdays so maybe I can nick a bit more out of this evenings two remaining cards, both on RUK so I might have a chance. The weather forecast currently looks like this ...

 

19:40 dare I say it but the evening racing seems a bit easier and I've crept up to about +£160. Now is the time to keep the concentration levels high and just aim to scrape a few more quid out of the remaining races ...

20:40 I fucking hate jockeys. They're either really intelligent crafty cheating fuckers or just plain thick as shite midgets or skinny lanky twats ...

21:18 well the wheels fell off late on in the evening and I just about kept myself in a three figure profit. There's always tomorrow I suppose ....

13/07

+£89.89. I was stumbling about on Facebook last week and came across the Hoegaarden entry and then the Hoegaarden website. They were running a competition to win a Hoegaarden glass so I had a crack and hey presto ...

I think that it is still running if you want to have a crack at winning a glass.

Strangely enough though I had already ordered six pint glasses and a beer runner from a UK site! I'll take a couple down to The Belgian Cafe next time I visit as some fucker(s) gradually nicked all of their Hoegaarden glasses last year and Andy hasn't bothered to replace them! 


OK it currently looks as though Mon-Wed are going to be fair days down on the coast, so as long as I do fairly OK today I'll probably go early in the morning, partake of a very early Hoegaarden outside The Belgian Cafe (and I'm talking 07:15 here!), hop on the 08:05 train to Whitstable and then cycle/drink (via The Rose Inn @ Herne Bay which opens at 09:00) my way back to Ramsgate (then via The Minnis @ Minnis Bay which opens at 10:00 ... oh yes indeedy!). In fact the usual scenario is that if I do OK today then I have some cash to spend, and if I have a nightmare then I'm so fucked off then I go and get pissed anyway!

It seems as though there is going to be a mix of sun and maybe a couple of showers on Tue-Wed so the bike can go back in the car and I'll just sit out under a canopy and get wrecked. I sometimes cycle in the other direction and go to Deal but unfortunately there is a distinct lack of pubs along the way, well especially ones that open at 09:00! Anyway, that's my sort of 3 day break!!

Today's cards don't look too inspiring with four ATR meetings but I have a sneaky suspicion that I might be able to nick a few quid at Sligo as the markets, especially on a Sunday, are as weak as what my piss will be come Tuesday afternoon, and that is usually where I can get in and out quite quickly.

13:30 I'll do another rolling update again today ... 

14:05 great start in the first race gets me £30+. So now it's slowly slowly and nick a few quid here and there if possible ...

14:45 overlapping races GRRRRRR!!!!! ...

15:13 chipping away but not helped by the race clashes which are effectively making today a wankbag of a Sunday. I haven't even seen an Irish race as yet ...

16:56 in the home straight on an unspectacular day. T-shirts in the wash, suncream at the ready so just a steady finish and maybe a few more beer tokens in the wallet ...


I was thinking about trading last night as I hit the sack (yep sad I know) and I realised that my analysis and implementation of my trades has gradually improved over the last few months, but funnily enough most of this improvement has been down to a few simple steps. I mentioned three key areas back on 04/07 and these are having more relevant information with regards to each horses usual running style, refraining from chasing a price and bailing out much more quickly.

Now as I was drifting off I realised that there are more key areas which need to be controlled and mastered. The main one is he ability to realise when to play the market instead of trading your own opinion. By this I mean that sometimes you will see an entry point but also notice that the price is NOT currently moving in your favour. In fact this just occurred in a hurdle race where the early leader drifted like a barge in-running despite leading over the first two hurdles and jumping nicely. Now sometimes it's just SO easy to think 'everyone else has got his wrong and the price will soon crash back down'. However, unless you are 100% confident that you really are right then it's always best just to sit on the fence and just watch what transpires. You'll find that in most cases the masses are correct and your initial opinion ws a wrong'un. There's nothing worse than entering the market against the flow and then just watching the flow continue in one direction and you wave goodbye to your money. Now this is not always the case, but unless you have a cast iron opinion then I find that it's best to sit on your hands.