17th February - Total profits £752.

When I trade I try not to leave a market unless it's green, now this is fine but I do know that in some cases I know it's going to happen due to circumstances - usually goals and in football I accept it and move on whereas the difficulties I have had trading tennis is somewhat down to this attitude. If you have gambled you know the problem, you think you're right, you know you're right but the evidence is showing you are wrong and it's this denial of being able to be wrong that stops you accepting that you are wrong and it's usually a loss or even worse a big loss due to chasing the loss that occurs. Yesterday Kousin it as I call her started trading at something like 1.12/1.14 and I know she is the biggest screw up waiting to happen - before she can win she has to beat herself and then her opponents, in that order. She went 3-0 up in the first set, went on to lose first set, won the second set 6-3 and lost the last 6-0. I didnt bet on her because I was afraid of being wrong - I mean how wrong could I have been at laying her at 1.12 or 1.08 etc... I would lose but not a lot but the description of my mental state stops me from doing these bets with small stakes of £42 or £21. Today I backed Safina at low odds but did so on the basis that she always comes back and she did come back and I got it back to evens. Now my mind said put a fiver on at 2.0, so I did, I went on further to back her at 2.7 3.35 etc... I was in denial state and lost a total of £10. I got the tenner back when I joined the Serena Williams and she was leading 3-0 with a break of serve and her odds were something like 1.25 - I had the confidence to back her and then take the profit when she broke in the 3rd set.

Dementieva v Bammer and Clement v Safin (Safina's brother for those who didnt know) were the other tennis matches I traded on, I made only £1.20ish from the two matches and I know I did the right thing as both the favourites were broken in the first sets, both had broken or got the break back but it just looked that I would be trading to prove a point and the point was that I thought both of them would break through easily, one did, one didnt and I was happy to just move on. I have to start accepting the losses in tennis and get over this I cant be wrong attitude.

Horse racing - If you know Maria and her horse racing laying systems etc... then google to see what she's up to now. I backed the horse she predicted in the win market and the place market and watched it live - the race was for three miles and the horse was a front runner and kept clattering or running through the hurdles and most of the time it was red screens, however when I saw a profit of £11.42 and £3.48 on the two markets I hedged out and I will be investigating her tips further in the future. I had £10 back bets on both markets.

Finally the football - a choice of Kidderminster or Luton matches were available but they were at the same time I was having dinner - so with my mouth full, I watched a very early goal in the Luton match and Cambridge two nil up in the other. By the time I got around to trading, the Luton match was 1-1. I started trading and all was going smoothly, closed down the half time market when the odds were getting low and I had an open back bet on the draw at 2.78 and with just a minute left of the first half, a Brighton player got sent off - I could have greened up for around £8 just before it suspended but I had no intention of greening up as the market would have gone down quite a lot at half time - buggers - the market settled on 2.78 when it re-opened and all that patience was for nothing - I eventually traded out for about £5 at half time but it could have been so much better. Now with a team player down, the market felt that Luton (bottom of the 4th division) would go on and beat their higher 10 man opponents - not a view I concurred with as I witnessed a good defence defending, the market was trading at around 4 ticks per minute and when the big hitter comes in with his predictable £5k back at five tick intervals then it was an easy back at one point lower than what he had come in with, get filled up and then wait for the 5 point drop to trade out again. I made a penny shy of £45.

Results:

£62.14 - 5.52%