30/11/2006 by ramps.

You don’t have one for a while and then they come like buses and today I will be doing another production release which will consume quite a bit of time as their schema changes so I need to switch traffic about so that there is no downtime.

I continue to read with interest the other trading blogs that are about.  My strategy  for next year is pretty much set although I need to do is put in black and white .  I am really looking forward to next year.  Either I will graduate  from apprentice  gambler to professional gambler  or  maybe I find out I don’t have what it takes.  I will be happy with either result as at least I know I gave it everything.

I have been fortunate to had some money to invest and try out systems.  It has been a bumpy ride but now at least for the short term I can honestly say that you can buy systems and make money from them.   I know I am in the minority on thinking this.  Every forum you goto people will tell that don’t be stupid why would somebody sell a winning system.   To a degree I don’t have the answer to that questions.  There is no excuse now for not being able to get the money on so why do people sell winning systems.  Maybe to protect themselve if the system fails maybe greed as it is an additional revenue stream.   I believe that if you have a sensible betting bank strategy you should be able to avoid disaster.   Never bet what you can not afford to lose and have modest expectations.  Keep the faith and care about yearly profits, not monthly or weekly.   Keep accurately daily accounts and the rest will look after itself.

Another dilema of course is should you concentrate on just one system larger stakes or diversify to several systems with smaller stakes.  For next year I am going for the latter option.   Yes, it means a little more investment in time for me but I also think it will level out the winning and losing months as I have choosen very different systems that concentrate on different angles.   Yes, they will be times when all the systems are not performing well but I am confident the length of overall losing runs will be shorter although I not banked on this so to speak.

If next year goes completely wrong all I will have lost is the money I have gained through gambling in the past 2 years.   I will have learnt a lot, made a lot of new friends and will be in a position to either start again or move on.  I will be able to make an informed decesion on this.

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29/11/2006 by ramps.

Well I finally finished the latest release at work which means things are a little calmer now.  Still a lot to get finished by the end of the year but confidence has been raised.   The gambling remains very much in and out.  2 systems are doing ok and one is not.   Everything is pretty much tracking to plan and confidence is sky high for the new year.

I have also nearly finished my betfair data analysis.  Hopefully at the weekendthis will be added this to my result pages so you be able to see how horse tracked post event and in-running.  I am hoping to launch a kinda of spotlight trading guide for initially one race a day to give you a flavour of how I my new system will work.  As in earlier post my angle is numbers rather than form or what I see happening in the race.   Essentially I will be posting trade as soon as the race goes in play based on previous stats.   Now as the exchanges mature I need to evolve my system else I get burnt badly by the sharks.

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28/11/2006 by ramps.

A really good day at work yesterday.  I Kept my head down and worked and worked and finally got close to finishing this security piece of work that I have been working on for the past week.  The end is in site and that pleases me a lot.

A good day on the gambling front courtesy of Brimardon.  December has been a good month for Birmardon for the past 3 years so I am hoping this year will be more the same but I am not relying on it.  It is the long run that counts in this game.

Unfortunately it looks like I won’t be qualifying for the search for a tipster as I have had 3 seconds in as many days and am beginning to think I am not getting rub of the green.  I need a decent winner today to stand a chance.

All in all things are looking good mainly because I am determined and remain focused on my goals.  I continue to read with interest the blogs of the gambler and the sports trader.  Although when I have some spare time between races at the weekend or watching the football in the evening I do trade I would like to do more but I want to take a slightly different slant to these pro’s.   For one I am not a professional trader and currently don’t have the time to be or skills to be.   My angle will be based on betfair stats matched against ratings on horse.   I am currently tweaking a few systems which will basically tell me to put the following values in the system and watch them green up.

The concepts are based on things I have observed whilst watching races on betfair.  I find it amazing how short horses go in running and how many times a horse staying on does the business over a horse that leads with a fence or two to go.   I am also surprised how horses shorten up after jumping one or two hurdles or fences in a race.  In ideal world I would find the time to write my own bot to place these bets but that is probably a few years off.  At first I will be the manual bot based on the stats generated from my database.   

In summary my angle is the numbers rather than using the skills of calculating value from past performance.   I don’t have the reactions to do this successful and I would get too emotional.  Following a laid out system is more my cup of tea.

E.g.  Back horse 1 at 7.0 and leave lay in system at 5.0. Back horse B at 6.6 and leave lay in system for 3.0.  Lay both horses 1 and 2 at 2.0 for same stake.

More details on this when I have tweaked so that I have a very high strike ratio.

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27/11/2006 by ramps.

Another busy weekend comes to an end and it is back to bump and grind of work.   It is going to be another busy and hard working week.  Unless this week is a particular good week then it will be a losing month in November mainly due to me breaking my own rules on that lay.   Importantly though have a decent betting bank in the schemes of things it should not make that much difference.

I have spent some of the weekend making money for my friends. 

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24/11/2006 by ramps.

Yesterday was a wake up call to remind not to get too cavalier.   After a good profit in October and Novemver starting to finish strongly I went in yesterday’s racing full of confidence.   I laid Blythe Knight in the first and backed Little Rocker.  Made a lovely profit.   

All was going well until 2.35 Uttoxeter.   Now I had Heez a dreamer done as a lay between 6/4 to 2/1.  When I checked the price just before the off it had drifted to 7/2.   The correct cause of action would have  been to leave the selection along as the price was more than double what I really wanted.   Thinking I was clever this is what I did.   I laid Heez a dreamer for 5 points at 7/2 and laid L’antartique for 2.5 points.   Heez a dreamers beat L’antarique by a short head and I knew my money was done pretty early.

The options that I could have taken were:-

1) Leave the lay alone because the price was wrong.
2) Lay both horses in running at 2.00.

At the end of day I made a genuiene mistake and aviodable mistake.  I even knew that I was taking a gamble when I did it.  Was having a bad day at work so thought I it was worth it.   Stupid stupid little idot that is what I was.  I let emotion dictate what I did rather than do what I knew to be correct and that was to leave the lay alone.   The price was wrong and McCoy was due a winner.  Already lost on 2  fancies horses he was going to soggy Uttoxeter and not coming home without a winner.

The beautiful thing is it is another day today, the month has nearly ended and it soon be a new month and then a new year.  I am confident I won’t make the same mistake again.

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23/11/2006 by ramps.

I am sure a lot of did well yesterday as most horses and favourites ran too form.  I had 6 main bets yesterday and they all either placed or won.   Short prices mind but the shorter priced horses are winning currently.  Things will change rapidly but happy to repair the account for November.   I am now only 14.2 points down for November and considering one system had 15 losers in a row I am happy with that.

The ashes has started and although Flintoff has bowled well he is not fully fit and Ponting is just a run machine.  The important thing is to see England keep fighting and then when we bat see our batsman go on and get big scores.

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22/11/2006 by ramps.

http://www.fightingforkatie.co.uk/  There is a great raffle and one of the prizes is 4 Cheltenham Gold Cup tickets so I thought it might interest some of you.

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22/11/2006 by ramps.

Back to winning ways yesterday and hopefully this will lead to a strong finish to November albeit there is a danger that the weather will interfere.   Today’s short list is 2.10 Chepstow, 3.20 Chepstow, 12.25 Wetherby, 2.00 Wetherby and 3.10 Wetherby.  Sod’s law will dictate none of these will be bets now.  Yesterday looked not that promising but prices meant I could get involved.   I must admit keeping the balance and keeping my feet on the ground is quite difficult currently.

I am throwing myself in to my job at work to distract me from the betting "investing".   I believe I have a big enough reason to succeed and I think the last 2 years have been the education I need to succeed.  Now all I need do is keep the faith so to speak.   Follow the systems and remain patient.  I will be producing a comprehensive list of strategies to cope with various situations.

e.g. What do I do if I can not get the price I want?  Will be running queries to see whether waiting, taking SP, trading to get the price , betting sightly more or maybe just taking the hit is the correct action.  On the converse what if I can beat the price should I bet less?

I want to have a statistical base answer to every dilemma that I have faced in the last 2 years.  To be honest it does not happen often but I want to eradicate every possible dilemma or potential emotional distress.

By the end of December I will have a complete strategy for 2007 and this will not change.  The strategy will income a set of spreadsheets so that I can actively monitor the systems that I will be running.  I will have a strategy to manage what will be a very complex betting bank situation.   I will have a total bank that is 2.5 times the maximum bank for any system.  The problem could be though that 3 systems at the same time need to utilise the whole bank.  This could potentially be disastrous.  I am pretty sure that I will be using a fixed unit stake rather than continually adjusting the bank as I believe this will lead to betting errors.

For the focus is on selecting and verifying which systems I will use.  This is a complex process as I need to ensure that the systems compliment each other and that they do not increase the amount of time I need to spend per day.   I am pretty happy with my progress and along there are lots and lots of profitable systems that I won’t be able to use there are a select few that I believe will work.

2007 will be the year that determines whether I take the step up from apprentice to professional.   The success will be measured on one simple fact.  If I make more money investing in horses that my full time then I think most people would agree I would have made the grade.   If I don’t make the grade in 2007 then I need to make sure I make it 2008.

The important thing is I have built my betting bank up sufficiently over the last few years that I can afford to loose big style and still bounce back.  I am not saying losing >80% of my bank would be easy but I think I have the steal and confidence to stick with it.

As I said in earlier post I won’t be trying out new things next year as the focus is on profit.   To maintain the discipline I will change my focus to real estate projects.  The betting will just be systematic.   Yes, I will continue to monitor the numerous systems I have so that I have the database to create more.

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21/11/2006 by ramps.

Katie Newell is a 15 year old teenager who enjoys life, but sadly for Katie she has suffered much pain and endured a long struggle. Katie suffers from Neurofibromatosis, NF1 for short. Nf1 is a hereditary disease and can affect sufferers either mildly or severely. Unfortunately for Katie the condition is very severe. Katie has massive plexiform tumours throughout her body from head to waist entwining her heart, trachea, lungs, pancreas and spinal cord.

Katie has already had several operations one of which was in Boston, USA.  Doctors said Katie would not see her 5th Birthday but the Boston Children’s Hospital threw Katie a lifeline by decompressing her completely flattened spinal cord and rebuilding her badly deformed spine with titanium rods which fuse the base of her spine to the bottom of her skull. The surgery gave Katie a new lease of life.

Sadly for Katie the tumours are once more jeopardizing her life.  Just over a year ago, Doctors diagnosed Katie’s condition as terminal again, predicting 18-24 months before the tumors stop her vital organs from functioning.  A scan revealed her tumors were so big they had completely squashed one lung with the remaining lung being compromised by the tumor attacking it from above and below, leaving Katie with only 30% function in her remaining lung.

Surgery does not seem to be an option as the tumors are attached to hundreds of little nerves making removal of the tumors impossible without total paralysis.

Through our ongoing research into finding any medical development that may be able to help Katie ..

We have found, on the internet, a clinical trial that is going on in Indiana USA.  A Doctor there has established that the tumors are made up of lots of different cells, these cells communicate with one another telling each other to grow.  He has discovered that a drug called Gleevec, that is usually used in leukemia patients, has stopped the growth of the tumours and, so far, show positive signs in shrinking them.  This is in the early stages of the trial but it is Katie’s lifeline. The medical team in the UK who look after Katie have agreed that it is something that we have to try.

www.nfcure.org/index.html

The trial is to start on 29th November.  We are raising money to fund the trial, although the actual drug is free the use of hospital facilities is not & being in America it is very expensive (MRI scans $4000-5000, blood tests & doctor consultations etc)

If there is any way you can help we would be very grateful. Katie is a very special little girl who never complains about her illness and her wish is to work with animals when she gets older; we just hope we can fulfill that wish.

Details on fun raising events will be added later.  I will personally donating some of my betting bank to such a worthy cause.

Thank you for you help

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21/11/2006 by ramps.

The ashes are nearly here and England injury worries continue with Ian Bell struggling for fitness before the first test.   Work was manic yesterday but at least the day flew by.  Started work at about 6.30am and finished at 5.30pm.  Got lots of stuff achieved which is unusal.   I have already run through the cars for today’s racing and the races with high strike ratio’s again have short forecast prices.  There maybe an angle in 3.10 Kempton but I think it is going to a very tight day.   November to date has been a very disappointing month and has firmly put the pressure on December to yield a strong finish to the year.

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