In case you missed my tweet in the middle of last week – I did it! I managed to get my total losses under the £400 mark. In my last blog post I was looking to reduce my total losses for the season to less than £500. But because I had such a good set of mid-week trades, I decided to move this target to total losses of less than £400. It’s not a great achievement, but in a season where I was almost £900 down at one point, I’m taking these small victories. The profit for Week 29 was £154, which was my second highest profit of the season. This could have been a lot, lot more, and I’ll touch on this later in the post. In the meantime, here is how that £154 profit was achieved (ignore the boxing amount, I had a little dabble on the big fight (Fury vs Osyk) at the weekend):

Spurs vs City
The first trade of the week was the Spurs vs City game. The major thing with this game, is that I wasn’t at my laptop to monitor what was happening in-play until the second half of the game. I think this is a good thing for me. The less I see of what is going on in the match the better. And after what happened in the last round of Premier League fixtures this is something that I’m hoping to be doing in the future (more on this later).

I thought the odds were good for the City win before kick-off, so I placed my ‘City to win until the end of the season’ trade. I kept an eye on how this game was progressing by only looking at the score, and not actually watching the game. I think if I was watching the game I might have traded out, especially if I saw the 1-on-1 chance that Son had. Once I saw Man City going 0-2 up, I could relax a little and leave the trade to come to it’s natural conclusion.

Regarding my Correct Score selections for this match, I chose 0-1, 0-2, and AOA. I traded out my initial stake on the 0-1 scoreline shortly after Man City scored, which meant more green on the 0-2 and AOA trades, and a reduced liability on all the other scorelines. I also thought that there would be more goals in the game, so once it went to 0-2, I was a very happy chap. With the game entering it’s final minutes, and without cover on the 0-3 and 1-2 scorelines, I decided to reduce my liability to zero. This also meant reduced profit on the 0-2 trade. Typically I would let my trades ride out, but because I wanted a good end to the season I decided to go with the sensible approach. All in all a great set of trades for this particular match for some much needed profit.

The last round of Premier League games of the season identified three matches for me to trade. These were Man City vs West Ham, Liverpool vs Wolves, and Arsenal vs Everton. Because I had a really good set of trades mid-week (Spurs vs Man City game), my target of total losses for the season had moved from -£500 to -£400. And after the midweek trades, my total losses for the season stood at -£408. So I only needed to profit by more than £8 to break through the revised target of -£400. Looking back, I think this is where my problems first set in.

By setting a target, I would say I abandoned what I had been doing for most of the season. Typically, I would select my correct scores and leave them to run. For the three matches I selected, I did not do this. My mind was too focused on making more than £8 profit. When Liverpool went 2-0 up at half time, and against 10 men, I decided to trade out of my 2-0 scoreline as I thought they would score more goals with 45 minutes still left to play. When City went 3-1 up around the 60th minute, I decided to trade out of the 3-1 scoreline a bit later on, as any more goals and I was looking at a loss. When the Arsenal vs Everton match was at 1-1, and I didn’t think they would score another goal as there weren’t many minutes left, I decided to trade out of the 2-1 scoreline too. So, what do you notice about all these scorelines I traded out of? Yes, that’s right. They ALL came in!!! So, instead of the £28 I made, I could have made over £295!!!! Yes, £295!!!! This would have been an amazing end to the season, and would have meant a total loss of just over £100. But because I was too focused on making over £8 I lost view of the bigger picture.

This was a massive lesson to me. One of the many lessons that I’ve learnt over the course of this season in particular. I will cover the three biggest lessons I’ve learnt over the season in some blogs posts I’ll be making over the next few weeks. Hopefully these lessons will be valuable to you, and you’ll learn from MY mistakes rather than YOUR mistakes. This is partly the reason I set up this blog, so that others can read about my trading journey and they can hopefully learn from my mistakes and successes.

Anyway, here’s how the £154 profit for Week 29 measured up against my other trading weeks:

As mentioned previously, the £154 profit for week 29 was my second highest weekly profit made. It was another profitable week, and my 6th profitable week in the last 7 weeks. So a very strong end to the season, in which has been a generally poor season. Here’s a line chart of my profit and losses for the season:

The end of the chart shows promising signs of my progress, but I have spent the season operating at a loss, barring the first week. I may trade the FA Cup match, so there may be further profit (or loss) to be added to this graph, but I’ll check the odds first before deciding anything. If I don’t trade the FA Cup match, my total season losses will stand at -£380. This isn’t good, but it’s not something I’m disheartened by. I know exactly where I’ve gone wrong, and next season my goal is to get back to winning ways.

I hope you’ve all had a better trading/betting season than I have. I’ve got big plans for next season. I hoping to open up to other football leagues and markets, and I’m even looking at automation which I may cover in my blog posts throughout the Summer. Automation would help me massively, both mentally and the amount of time it would save me. So if you want to see how I’m doing with that then please keep your eyes open for my tweets and blog posts.

Well, that’s it for now. I hope you’ve enjoyed my open and honest trading journey throughout the 2023-24 season, and no doubt I’ll catch you over the Summer. Failing that, I’ll see you for the 2024-25 season, which can’t come soon enough for me! Good luck if you’re trading the Euro’s. If you’re taking a break from it all, I can’t blame you – sit back and recharge those batteries. And may the Lord be with you…as ever always!