Day 2 – Todays Diary

0934 – Woke up, followed by the standard snooze for an extra few minutes (x2)

0952 – After all the usual morning stuff I settled down to a nice big breakfast baguette with a cup of tea which is incidentally how I like to spend most my mornings!

1015 – I took a stroll to the shop to pick up todays paper, mainly just to read through the racing headlines – I had meant to watch the morning line but I got up too late and forgot to record it.

1155 – scanned though the cards online reading the various verdicts and a quick scan through patternform.co.uk – looking for some in play front-runners, not usually my style but with it being the festival it’s something I had thought about doing yesterday.

1215 – viewed some of yesterdays recordings to see where could improve today, I only recorded a few as I prefer optimum power from my machine although their didn’t seem to be a lot to take on board other than I had been playing rather defensive and it had worked out well.

1244 – time for a break, everything put aside with time to relax, the calm before the storm! Being prepared in this game is half the battle, if you’re not prepared or influenced by anything on the outside it can be costly. I had a nice little lunch just to make sure I wasn’t going to be hungry throughout the days events.

1315 – kick off! First race came with little event really, didn’t quite go my way but wasn’t a big issue. I watched the runner I selected to back to lay in play without putting my money to it (Cole Harden) the pre race price being 70 I watched it hit as low as 20 although wasn’t bothered as it’s something I was more interested in than putting my cash on the line.

14.05 – Went pretty well working into things before ramping up the stakes in the final 5 minutes or so, the end result was good – I’d played it right and kept on top of things – all that said at the end I was a little ‘buzzed up’ mainly due to being outside my usual staking/comfort zone. A bit of a shame, but I did this several times today – was watching Channel 4 close to the off (8 second delay) and got caught in play for a small stake meaning I lost about a tenner’s profit but still…. screenshot below!

 

1430 – I had a little breather being fully aware I was a little buzzed up after the previous which seemed to work well, result being in the 1440 I managed another fair profit of £59.30 – stopped a minute or so early to make a quick call as someone had been trying to contact me.

1445 – bad news – it seems of late a lot of my personal life has been problematic with it over-spilling into my trading! It really does suck when you let this happen and I wish I had left my phone in the other room as it turned out to be news of the kind that is bad and not helpful for your mind or focus although it actually had little to no impact on anything in the end. It was my own fault really as I should have ignored it…. anyway it was just in time for the biggest race of the day.

1520 – disaster strikes but then again it was always pretty predictable after what had happened/been playing on my mind. See below:

 

Now at points there was something I could have done about that although I wasn’t thinking straight – that’s a total of all my trades put through that race before you think it was all in one go! The fill rate on that runner for the majority of that race did seem one-sided which made it a little infuriating constantly having to scratch bets. What can I say… it shouldn’t have happened and is something I need to work on more and more lately making sure these silly mistakes and outside influences don’t overspill into my work.

1610 – I’d become a little wound up and infuriated at my own foolishness and should have stopped, but I didn’t. And so I made more mistakes… none anywhere near as bad as that above although I didn’t manage to shake it too well with the end result today being a bit of a waste of time. But these things happen and its important to remain positive, if you don’t they’ll get the better of you. Needless to say today it may have but tomorrow and Friday it certainly wont!!

 

The festival markets are crazy at times when a £30,000 bet gets dropped in the market their isn’t a huge amount you can do about it, playing safe is the key I think as I did yesterday – tomorrow for that reason I think im going to have to approach it more like that instead of pushing for £1,000+ days. In the end it’s far better for your own confidence just to plug away ‘safely’ or as close to as you can! With such liquidity on offer its highly advisable to approach the markets with the attitude to scalp as it’s far easier to get fairly sized stakes through for one tick at a time.

Tomorrow sees Big Bucks feature in the World Hurdle, hopefully we can all make some off the back of that!!

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