Well, well, well. What a weekend. I feel as though I’ve took a bit of a beating on the old trading front this weekend, financially and mentally. I’ll take you through my trades and come clean with what I thought I could have done better, and what I thought I did well. Although I feel as though it’s more the former than the latter.

Forest vs Liverpool (Saturday)
First trade of the weekend and I never got off to a good start. At all. I heavily traded on scorelines that were in Liverpool’s favour. This was despite me mentioning in my Friday Night Mass post that possibly laying Liverpool was the trade to take. Looking back, it was certainly the less riskier trade. Because of the scorelines undertaken, when Forest scored I found myself in a rather large red position. But I decided to compose myself, see what affect the Liverpool substitutions would have on the game, and give it 10 minutes for the match to breath. After I gave it 10 minutes, and seeing the noticeable lack of any threat from Liverpool, I decided to accept the red and take the loss. This was for a total of -£7.03.

Man City vs Brighton (Saturday)
After the disappointment of my first trade, I had to mentally get back in the zone and try to not to let the loss negatively affect me. I revisited my Bible (stats book), and backed 2-0, 2-1, and AOH. This game was a lot easier to trade, and it wasn’t long after City scored their second goal that I decided to trade out for a nice profit of £7.73.

Southampton vs Arsenal (Sunday)
Again, I lent heavily on the favourites – Arsenal. I opted for the scorlines 0-2, 1-2, and a small amount on 1-1. Arsenal seemed to come out of the blocks flying, and they scored very early in the game. Because of the high octane nature of Arsenal’s start, and the fact that the goal came so early, I decided to trade out. This was mainly because if Arsenal scored a second goal so early in the game I would have been looking at a big fat loss, with me unable to rely on any other scorelines that had another Arsenal goal covered. With this in mind, I traded out for a loss of -£2.53.

Spurs vs Newcastle (Sunday)
For this game I had an absolute nightmare. The actual scorelines I decided to trade differed from what I mentioned were good picks in my Sunday Sermon. I decided to opt for 2-0, 2-1, 1-0, and I hedged 1-1 and AOH. This was despite me mentioning about hedging the 1-2 scoreline in my Sunday Sermon. My issues started when I didn’t manage to trade out of the 2-0 scoreline before Newcastle scored their first goal. I did manage to trade out of the 1-0 scoreline, but I didn’t manage to trade out of the 2-0 scoreline, so I took a bit hit because of this. I was then caught short for the 1-1 scoreline when Newcastle scored the second goal. I was expecting Spurs to hit back and equalise promptly, but the second goal was scored by Newcastle, and it meant the 1-1 scoreline was also dead in the water. My only hope was the AOH scoreline. And that didn’t happen. Jesus Christ managed to feed the 5 thousand with 5 loaves and 2 fish, but I’ll be f**ked if he could get Spurs to win that game 4-2. I came out of the trade with a total loss of -£18.39.

Confession
So, what have I learnt? I’ve learnt that I need to trust in my stats work more often. It’s no good me telling my flock one thing, if I then go and do something else. Yes, sometimes the choice of optimal scorelines can change from when I post my initial selections to when the team sheet is released, especially if some big-name stars are missing/come back from injury early, but it’s not often they change much. So I need to start believing what I’m preaching. If I did, I probably would have taken the less riskier option of laying Liverpool, which would have meant a profit rather than a loss. I’d also probably wouldn’t have experienced my biggest loss of this season in the Spurs vs Newcastle game, as I would have hedged the 1-2 scoreline. Yes, it’s all very well saying this with hindsight, but it’s only when you sit down and review your trades that you do think there were better options on the table. And this is where I find this blog will help me, and one of the main reasons why I’m doing this. Yes I’m down financially and mentally, and it is hard to take, but I’ll be taking these lessons learnt to help me become a better sports trader.

Onto what I did well. I’m happy with trading out of the Forest vs Liverpool game when I did, rather than hoping Liverpool would drag the game back to 1-2. It was hard to take the loss, but taking losses is necessary to do if I’m going to make it in this game. I’m also happy with accepting the loss for the Southampton vs Arsenal game. Yes I could have stayed in, but the way things were going, trading out was the wise option. I might have made a tiny profit if I did stay in the trades, but the risk of a big loss meant the right choice was made, which was to trade out.

Overall
Here’s a picture of all my weekend trades, including a trade I did on Thursday for a nominal amount of 26p that wasn’t really worth mentioning on this blog. You might also notice some small horse racing profit in this screenshot. This is something I’m looking at delving into a bit more once I have a lot more confidence to trade decent stakes, and I will be mentioning this within this blog:

So this weekend I saw a loss of -£19.96 (I’ll include the 26p from the Leicester vs Leeds game in my running total for completeness). This has given my overall earnings of £29.27 a bit of a blow. My overall total profit on this journey now stands at £9.31. Green is green, so I’m going to take heart from this. Hopefully this week I’ll get back on track and get back to winning ways. Right, I’m off to say 10 Hail Mary’s for my penance. I’ll probably trade the West Ham vs Bournemouth game tonight, so I may have something to post later on. Good luck if you’re trading this too my betting brethren. Amen.