I carried on where I left off last weekend and took another financial and psychological kicking. Weirdly, it never bothered me too much, as I felt I did what I thought was right in terms of following the process. It’s just the dealing with the consequences of following that process, which typically means losing money. But, I know it’s for the best, and it gets me into a habit of doing things correctly even if it means I’m hit financially. From past experiences I know it’s better to take one step back instead of two. But I do have one big confession to tell you all about, and you’ll find this in the Arsenal vs Forest section. So, it’s time for me to come clean with what I thought went right, but more importantly, what I thought went wrong with my weekend trades…

Leicester vs Man City (Saturday)
I decided to opt for the scorelines 1-2, 0-2, and AOH. I thought that Man City would be too powerful for Leicester, even without Haaland in their line-up. When Man City went a goal up shortly after half-time, I did think they would then go on and score some more goals. Unfortunately this wasn’t the case. So as the game went on, I decided to limit my liability on the 0-1 scoreline until I got it down to 50p, leaving £4+ profit on the 0-2 scoreline. I remembered the previous Monday’s match and the lessons I learnt from that, and I decided that I would stay in the game and not cash out as I might have previously done. Although sure enough, the game ended 0-1 which meant a loss of 50p. I was quite happy as I limited my liabilities and recognised that if I stayed in the trade, that the reward far outweighed the risk.

Bournemouth vs Spurs (Saturday)
For this game I decided to go for the scorelines 0-1. 0-2, 1-2, 1-1, 3-0 and AOA. As you can see, these scorelines heavily favoured Spurs getting something positive out of the game. Unfortunately, because Bournemouth scored the first goal this immediately killed two of my trades – the 0-1 scoreline, and the 0-2 scoreline. If I had never covered the 3-0 scoreline (odds of 300-1), I could have been staring at a big loss. With the potential of another goal from Bournemouth killing the majority of the trades I had remaining, I decided that the sensible thing to do was to trade out and take the loss. And sure enough, not long after I traded out, Bournemouth scored a second goal. This reinforced to me that I had made the right decision, even if I didn’t think so at the time. Total loss of the trade: -£6.96.

Fulham vs Everton (Saturday)
For this game I bet outright on 1-1, 2-0, 2-1, and 1-2. I also hedged 0-0. With the game goalless, I left it until the 70th minute before doing anything. And because I never had 1-0 or 0-1 covered, I decided to cash out for a relatively small loss. As mentioned in a previous confession session, I always feel it’s best to trade out rather than hope against hope another goal is/is not scored. If you ever find yourself hoping against hope that there’s a goal/no goal, then you’re at the wrong end of a trade, and you just need to take the loss and get out of there. For this trade I posted another loss, this time for -£3.57.

Liverpool vs Leeds (Saturday)
For the Saturday night game I opted for the following scorelines: 2-0, 2-1, 1-2, AOH, and hedged 0-0. Due to a quick goal from Leeds, my 2-0 scoreline for Liverpool was wiped out, which meant I was looking at a red early doors. Then when Liverpool did manage to get an equaliser, and no more goals were forth coming, my AOH seemed a very distant shout. So I was looking at a big red despite having the scorelines 2-1 and 1-2 still in-play. Unfortunately, and as mentioned before, I decided to trade out and accept the loss rather than hope for a goal. Ideally, if I had the 1-1 scoreline hedged I would have been laughing, but hindsight is a wonderful thing. Instead I took the loss of -£7.47 and cried myself to sleep.

Arsenal vs Forest (Sunday)
After having a nightmare the day previous I was more determined than ever to try and make some decent profits for Sunday. For this game I again skewed my scorelines towards a narrow home win, but I did put some insurance scorelines down just in case Forest were to cause another upset as they did the week previous against Liverpool. The only problem being, is that I never really put enough money down on the AOH scoreline, and when Arsenal scored a very early goal I did feel as though I was a little bit exposed, having only the 2-0 and 2-1 scorelines in play. With this in mind I traded out for a -£2.48 loss.

But I didn’t leave it there. I felt with the losses experienced on the Saturday, that I needed a good profit to start the day. So what did I decide to do? I decided to stick £5 on the 2-0 scoreline when Arsenal went 2-0 ahead, with the understanding that I would trade out when it started showing a profit for this scoreline. But what actually happened was that Arsenal scored a very quick third goal and my £5 went straight down the grid. Do not pass ‘Go’. Do not collect £200. I’m glad I did it, and I’m glad I’m now telling you what happened, as hopefully now I will not do this again! And this is what the confession sessions should be about. It should be about me being honest with you guys and laying my cards on the table and admit my mistakes so I don’t have the inclination to do them again. And it’s to also hopefully stop you guys from making the same mistakes that I do. So with that big mistake, I pushed my loss for this trade from -£2.48 to -£7.48.

Man Utd vs West Ham (Sunday)
This trade turned out to be my best trade of the weekend. I opted for the 1-0 scoreline, as well as 2-0 and 1-1. 1-2 might have been in there too. Because it went 1-0 close to half time I thought I’d take some of the green off the 1-0 scoreline and reduce my liabilities elsewhere. My thinking was that there was another 45 minutes for another goal to be scored, and I thought it was more than likely to happen (wrongly) than it not. With it getting to the latter stages of the game and it was still 1-0, I could breath easy and not panic as I had the other scorelines covered should a goal have been scored. It ended up 1-0, giving me a nice profit of £10.96, which I was quite happy with, especially as the trade ran very smoothly and didn’t cause me any real bother. I just wish all trading was like this.

Confession
So I guess the biggest confession to you guys is me going in again on the Arsenal game to try and reduce my liabilities. You should never do this as there’s a very good chance that you will get caught out. But not only because of the financial hit that you’ll take, but also because it is bad practice. And when you get into bad practices it will catch up with you in the end. Yes, you’ll get away with it from time to time, but you will get hit big time at some point. So, in coming clean and confessing my sins I hope I won’t be inclined to do this again.

Another confession is the fact that I’m still not trusting my Bible (stats book) as much as I should. I did confess to this last week, but I’m still lacking on this front. If I use the Arsenal game again as an example, I had AOH hedged, which meant that if I didn’t meddle in any of my trades unnecessarily, then I should have come out of that trade with no loss or profit. Zero outcome. Instead I came out of it with a -£7.48 loss. It’s silly mistakes like this that I need to cut out.

So what went well? Looking at my P&L, not much! Haha! In all seriousness I’m quite fine with how I performed as I tended to follow a process and cut losing trades short. The Leicester/Man City game I was right to sit it out once I had my liabilities at an acceptable level. I was right to cut short the trades on the Bournemouth/Spurs game. The same can be said for the Fulham/Everton, Liverpool/Leeds, and Arsenal/Forest games. Yes, financially you could say I never made the right decisions, but as to following a process then I did. It’s not always about making money, it’s about making the right trading decision once you’ve weighed up the risks and rewards, and hopefully I’ll get better at doing this.

On a different front, I’m going to start posting my profit and losses in a separate post, so that if people don’t want to wade through my waffle at the beginning then they don’t need to. I’ll try and get around to doing that tonight.

Take it easy people. Good luck if you’re doing any trading through the week, and I’ll catch you later tonight, if not, I’ll see you all at Friday mass! Amen.