Dithering - a cause of opportunities missed....

After the relative success of the early game I had an up and down trading session today - punctuated by successes and failures, but the general trend was upward...and I finished the day with a healthy £82.47 profit. But I missed a big opportunity - and it goes back to the premise that sometimes you've got to dig deeper into the hole that you're in to get out of it!

I had set up a trade on the Getafe v Real Madrid match, the idea being to back Real winning scores whilst at the same time laying them in match odds. Ideally there should also have been some cover on there being 4.5 or more goals. By being greedy, and waiting to go in-play before trying to get any O4.5 cover I ended up with a £75 potential red after just 10 minutes as Real took a 2 goal lead. Fearing the worst I decided to get out of the match with what I could, and redded up for an overall loss of approximately £30 across the match odds and correct score markets. Needless to say the relentless pace of the opening few minutes abated, and at 75 minutes the score was 1-3 - annoyingly one of the scores I'd earlier backed! Anyway, I'm sitting there with roughly £20 red on CS and £10 red on Match odds and I started pondering ways in which I might reduce that red. Real were 1.02 to lay in match odds - so that seemed a no-brainer as a goal with anything less than seconds left from Getafe would enable a profit so I did that. At that point I could have backed 2-3 for about 16's  and 3-3 for about 100 - but of course muggins was worried about the Any Unquoted - then at about 2.4 and not really worth touching. The image below shows the 3-3 market and I've highlighted the period of time that I'm talking about...

You're probably wondering why the 3-3 price crashed! Well, two reasons! One, a red card to Real Madrid and 2) Getafe scored a f*****g goal! So - if I'd put £3 on 2-3 and £2 on 3-3 I'd have increased my overall red position from about £31 to about £35 - big deal! But, because my eye was on the bigger team and the threat posed by 1-4 I dithered - playing about with the 'What If?' on Betfair - trying to save a few coppers...I KNEW backing 2-3 and 3-3 were both sensible trading moves but inertia got the better of me. I was able to reduce my overall red by backing Madrid at 2-3 but of course they went on to win anyway. I haven't worked out what my position could have been - I don't really want to dwell any more on it ... but it would have given me a three figure profit for the day, that's for sure!

So there we are - if you know something is the right trading move to make - do it and live with the consequences if you are wrong. Believe me I would have much preferred to have lost an extra fiver than  to be sitting here stewing over such a penny pinching balls up!