Thank you everyone for sticking with me!

It's been a while since my last post - I've been on holiday, returned really chilled out and full of good intentions! Holidays are a time for relaxation and reflection, for re-charging the batteries and re-focusing the mind. I came back fully intending to give up smoking, start a proper exercise regime and keep my blog bang up to date. You can probably deduce how successful the other two 'resolutions' were by the fact that this is my first blog post since before I went away - and I've been back for 9 days!

Quite a few people have asked me whether I had quit the blog and I must admit to being quite surprised by how many people were asking me to carry on, saying they enjoyed reading it! My attack of 'couldn't-be-bothered-itis' suddenly made me feel a bit...guilty! So, a big thanks to all who've stuck with the old blog - hopefully I'll keep it more up to date now I've recovered from writer's cramp!

The picture below shows where I am to date - helped massively by last night's trades - detailed below:

On the back of my most profitable single trading session (bar the fortuitous Man U lay a few weeks ago)  last night when I made £248 I was cajoled and bullied into posting again! So, Razor, Lamb, Dak and co - you know who you are - I've brought the blog up to date!

Last night was sensational in all respects - I couldn't have planned it any better! My old favourite the 1-1, 1-2 and 2-1 has now been dubbed the 'Scatter Gun' and was employed to devastating effect in the AC v Real tie - a perfect game for that strategy - enhanced significantly by a back of 2-2 at 18.5 pre-match! How valuable was that last minute goal for the Special One? Quite a lot, I suspect, but for me it turned a £25 green across all scores into a £80 odd green! The stakes? The princely sum of £15!

I had looked at laying Arsenal, but to my mind laying a quality side like them at 3.4 pre-match, even with a weakened team, seemed a tad.... dangerous! I was, however, more than happy to lay them after Walcott scored that great breakaway goal! Green by half time, although I did re-invest some of that by laying Shaktar at 1.17 in the dying minutes as Arsenal sought the elusive equaliser, thus diminishing my profit a bit.

A similar story in France, Auxerre going 1-0 up at home to Ajax. Razor (trading football chat stalwart) suggested the game was all Ajax so I laid Auxerre and was able to green up when the Dutch team equalised. I was being greedy, waiting for the draw odds to slip below 1.4 when Auxerre re-took the lead, so the sensible lay of the draw eluded me in that game but still a healthy profit!

Then we come to Chelsea - my team! I've a Blue since the 1970 FA Cup final - which I watched with my late uncle - a lifelong Blue - the heady times of Peter Bonnetti, Ron 'Chopper' Harris and Peter Osgood - those were the days! Any way, after a dire goalless first half, during which Spartak threatened more than Chelsea I laid 0-0 at 7.2 for £10 and put 2 quid on Any Unquoted at 8.9. I also laid Any Unquoted on the Correct Score 2 market at 1.07 for £100 - a liability of £7! I don't know what Mr Ancelotti said, or in which language he said it, but after the half-time team talk Chelsea ran out 4-1 winners ... paydirt!

I'll do a little write-up with my thoughts on the trading possibilities offered by Any Unquoted if people are interested? It's a score I dabble with quite frequently in lots of different ways and is an interesting phenomenon.

Holiday

The family and I are off to sunny Devon for a week's relaxation and enjoyment of the English countryside. I am leaving the lappy at home.

No trading.

No blogging.

But hopefully refreshed when I come back and will pick the mantle up again..

Sometimes looks can be deceiving...

The Goias v Penarol game resulted in a small profit of £8 after commission, which from a £100 total stake is not that brilliant!

Watching the match on Betfair TV it was extremely quick paced and Goias were all over their opponents in the opening exchanges. In fact to me, as an 'innocent' observer, that is I know next to nothing about either team, it could easily have been an embarrassing whitewash. The ball was in the net after fifteen or so minutes but was adjudged to have been offside, but such was the dominance of the home team that I was wondering how to play it.

My instinct was to take the by then reasonable green on 0-0. This is always a risky thing to do... it would have left me over £80 exposed had it remained 0-0, with the only possible escape route being to take the green on 0-1 and 1-0 at about 70 minutes - but still a considerable loss if I'd taken that option. As I was dithering the matter was settled for me when Goias scored to make it 1-0.

At that point I only had £50 of my stake covered on the U3.5 market, and I was so convinced there was going to be a goal rush that I felt I had little option but to cover the other fifty in its entirety as soon as the u3.5 market settled. I therefore ended up laying at 1.58.

I didn't have to do anything else - despite all the early warnings the game ended 1-0! Absolutely bloody typical!

HOW YOU CAN SOMETIMES GET CHEAP INSURANCE!

Normally if I do this kind of Correct Score trade I would have done something completely different, which normally pays off in the event of an early goal. This move takes advantage of what might be considered market over-reaction to a goal.

Having laid the value of half my total CS stakes in the U3.5 market, and then an early goal is scored, I would normally have greened up on U3.5. Green up insurance? Why? In the case of this match my U3.5 insurance to the time just before the goal had cost me about £15. The goal caused u3.5 to spin out from 1.28 or so to 1.7. Remember I've got all scores up to 1-2 and 2-1 covered on CS - so by greening up on the goal I am leaving my entire stake on CS exposed (minus the green on the goals market) but there would need to be another three goals for me to be in serious trouble. But, if the game settles down reasonably quickly with little or no sign of another goal, the odds on U3.5 tumble back quite rapidly. By dripping small lays back into that market it is sometimes possible to end up with either completely free, or substantially discounted insurance on your main trade.