Tuesday, 8th January

Hi folks, I realise it's been a while since I posted - I've had a good bit of work on and some family stuff to do so I had a little break from racing and trading.

Just one bet for me today, it's on the favourites strategy. Here's Timeform's comment:

2.30 Leicester - Pine Creek
Had some useful form to his name at up to 1¾m on Flat in France for Andre Fabre, and really caught the eye on hurdling debut when third at Folkestone last month. Open to significant progress.

He's about 11/10 at the moment. That favourites strategy is going well and I'm tempted to get stuck in but I'll hold off a bit until I have at least 100 bets under the belt. At the moment, I've 28 winners from 56 bets which is a strike rate of exactly 50% and the profit to Betfair SP, assuming commission is the maximum 5%, is 16.37pts.

You can see from the chart that they took off like a rocket at quickly hit 15pts profit after about 20 bets or so (the left hand vertical line is the profit in points and the horizontal line with all the numbers is the number of bets).   I then hit a 'range' as you might say in trading, where I was up and down but going nowhere really. It's picked up a bit and is just a point off the bank's all time high of 17.37pts but this is why I love plotting my bets on a graph - you can really see the full picture.

What you want ideally is a nice (relatively) smooth upward rise rather than zig-zagging all around and while the direction of the slant is right at the moment, I'll be very interested to see how the next 50 bets go and that's why I'll hold off on the big bucks just yet. If you haven't every plotted your betting progress on a chart, try it. It really gives a clear view of how consistent you are.

I know some people that have shown a profit on a certain strategy but if you plotted it on a graph, you might realise it was all down to one or two lucky big ones or perhaps it's down to some loss chasing. As a financial trader, graphs have become second nature to me and I sometimes wonder how I done without them in horseracing betting when analysing my records a few years ago.



As regards fitness and all that lark, I went for run this morning - it was my first run in a while so it was great to get that out of the way as such as I had put it off a little bit. It was a bit tougher than normal but I feel great and am set up for the day. It's amazing how a simple run and a shower afterwards can leave you feeling brilliant and refreshed. 

Kinda glad all the Christmas madness is over to be honest and I think I'll take it somewhat easy until March as I want to have a nice few bob for Cheltenham. I've taken a few days off work which is great (as everyone is only going back!) and I'm going to spend the day working on my book, trying out some S&P trading and also trying out an automated Betfair trading strategy I'm working on.

Enjoy the day,

Wayne