I made my money by selling too soon. I never lost money by turning a profit.

Hi,

i had a small punt on betfair today. It was the match AEK-Kerkyra for the Cup and odds at Betfair were around 1.14-1.16 before the whistle. Prices moved up and down as regular and asian handicap lines jumped from -1.75 to 2 with low 1.5 odds then as always when the match was to commence the price returned to a high -2 line with 2.05 - 2.10 odds.

My initial bet was a lay at 1.16 for 2000 euros with the wish to clean out with profit around 1.25 - 1.30 prices. As always i got a little excited and i let the bet running to get a little higher profit...
Below i have pasted the image of the bets. Odds and prices aren't important... The important is...



That i've left my bet open till 45th min of the game... And what happened then? A penalty... I have placed my bet 17:31 to create the sure win and seconds after a penalty was awarded to AEK.

The funny think is that AEK missed the penalty:)

Have a nice evening...

ps. which was the luckiest part?

On the greenboard (Sunday)

Hello,

as i wrote yesterday the programme is extremely difficult. Many hot favorites tonight with Real to be the king of all. The question to this game is : "How Real escaped with a win last weekend against Villareal?". Casillas made the performance of his life on this game , certainly Mallorca ain't Villareal though i have my doubts.



OFI Crete also with a lot of money on the books. A team that forgot what a win means on its stadium for months. I have a feeling that Atletico will return to wins tonight though i've seen them against Barca and their performance was far from good.

All in all few selections to choose from and certainly those above seem a bit dangerous to worth the risk.

On the greenboard (Saturday)

Hello,

it's a difficult day. Leagues still not fully running , South America is quiet and in general small number of possible selections. The main reason is that for another time weather plays an important role limiting the menu , letting out of the game our British partner.



Kuweit - Iraq. After the disappearance of Sadam's regime those two neighbors came closer. Iraq with two losses is out though a draw helps both. The odds on draw look ok even on live.

Ayr. We fancied the chances of Ayr for +1/2 asian still not worthy to take a bet in a league with slim knowledge.

Villareal. Local derby , the +1/2 seems also good on stats. On the other side Sena and Nihat out for the visitors. On the bag , still not decided if worths to place money on it...

With Sevilla in Copa Del Rey

Hi,

today i have a feeling on Sevilla Over 3.5 goals. It's a Copa Del Rey match and Lotina's Deportivo is certainly a team able to make damage on the counters. My selection goes to a small bet early on over 3.5 goals with the intention of laying later on the match if lucky to lock some profit...

Back later...

23:53 - One coffee at Costa Coffee cost me around 100 euros...

I was out for a coffee and i forgot totally the bet i had on Over 3.5 goals. When i came back was around 70th min of the game and hopefully Bravo at 80 scored so i secured some profit. Tiny though comparing to a forty min and 2-0 scoreline...

Just the petrol for next week... as Matt quotes somewhere on his excellent blog: "I made my money by selling too soon. I never lost money by turning a profit."

Goodnight

Killing time with Darts

Hello ,

it was quiet in the night so i decided to kill my time with small stakes on Darts in the PDC World Championship on the final of Taylor against Barneveld. Those matches are really joy to watch. The atmosphere is excellent and the matches usually have a lot of fun with commentators old Brit style to give a special aura into something that usually is considered boring. Though, when you do watch the masters on any sport from football to chess or darts its always a pleasure and time passes happily.

My first intention was to trade the scores of 7-0 , 7-1 and 7-2 but Taylor was amazing cleaning up his opponent.






Taylor was very strong on the start of the match but also Barneveld lost some crucial darts on the endings of the legs so he was already 3-0 and 4-1 down. Then it was one way for Taylor.







I'm not a darts enthusiast but i have noticed some key points on games i watched recently. For those who don't know Taylor is the world top player ever. He have won the World Championship a dozen of times. Barneveld is the 2nd best but i've seen him struggling in this tournament so i thought he doesn't stand big chances winning this one.

There is something i call Taylor effect. If Taylor wins 2-0 , 3-0 then most of the players get frustrated and those matches turn into clean sheets or 1 friendly loss of Taylor for the opponent. This is just a view from recent matches i've watched with Taylor.

For the record i was extremelly lucky as well as Taylor have made his best ever appearance on a final with an average of 110 which is something unreal if we consider that best possible score for three throughs of darts is 180. Anyway those are technical stuff not really important.





As you can see on the cards. My initial intention was to trade the scores and i did had the chances to trade them all for sure profit. I had the chance to trade 7-0 that i bought initially @ 28 with odds around 8-10 but also i had the chances to trade 7-1 score with odds of 8 , 4 , 2 and even 1.5 - 1.15!!!

But my punter's nature came through so i just left those bets running.

The question is if that was the right decision. I really don't know. Judging on the result , yes it was. But is really necessary when you have a bet running on 21 odds to let it run when odds are 1.15 , 1.2 or even 2?

Warren Buffet said once "There seems to be some perverse human characteristic that likes to make easy things difficult." and it seems that sometimes (even if the stakes are small) we really do let the bet running for no reason at all just to make something easy , really difficult...

Have a nice evening...

ps. Two posts in two days are simply too much:)

Stock vs Betting

Stocks Vs Betting

A usual question from numerous members of EBI-GROUP is the one that concerns stock markets and the possibility of putting some profits from gambling to stocks being considered as more “safe” investment.

The same question I had some years ago. I will just say my story and my experience from stock markets and in general what I believe is a safe investment and what it’s not.

My story and my experience from stock markets begin about a decade back. In 1999 the Greek stock market was the daily activity of a Greek aged 15 to 200… Even dead man have been resurrected and put money on companies trading rice to companies trading thin , thick or clean air. Everything on the market was then gold; all those companies have been huge opportunities for the great analysts that appeared on the market then. Then I was lucky, living in UK and having my mind on different stuff but also being on a strict budget of a University student, the possibility of buying stocks was null and I never took the risk. The end of the story was a stock market near to 7000 units that in less than a year was close to 1500 and most people lost their money.

Then , around 2005 and being happy that I was lucky not to be there and having some spare money to put into an investment I bought some shares. The first time, a guy considered specialist and inside the market (and dirt) advised a company. I put some thousands euro on this company and it looked very promising. Stocks on greens , and when I was near to go out I found out that company ceased operation and all the stocks worth less than toilet paper. I said that I was unlucky and I thought of a different approach. It was to buy companies considered serious. Banks, heavy industries, the biggest IT Company in the market. Then recession started and all my stocks also went down. Being “lucky” for the second time i decided just to play with small money but still small money are also money.

As you may understand. I’m a loser from stock markets. In general I have always been a loser and never made money from the considered “safe” investments. On the contrary the safer investment for me was and is betting.

You may say that I was dumb, I was idiot and really the same I say for myself being so idiot to buy shares using “insider info” or just my feelings.

My experience says that betting and stock market have some differences. The stock market is based on data that we have no idea about and we can’t even think about what may happen tomorrow in a company considered great on papers. Last year the price of the largest Greek bank was 22-24 Billion Euros today it’s 6.5 Billion. Last year Citibank was priced to 250 Billion, now the price is ten times less. What happened in 12 months and those giants became wharfs? It was that a World War happened? A plague? Or they just decided to give the real picture of their economics to the press? I believe it’s the latter. And if Citi have just done this, Greek National Bank published profits of around a billion in the last 9 months. Why the price lost 75% since last year? When somebody bought the stocks last years the profits of the Bank were same or even less than those today. What happened? A company makes more money and the price loses 75% in a year… the reality is that we don’t know… Stock markets have their own rules, their own aesthetics and at the end of the day, their own code of conduct. Also , accounts are relatively easy to be cooked in a way that we can’t be able to know the exact and true image of a company on the share market.
You are going to say that football is also the same. Yes it may be dirty , it may have hundreds of different variables that decide a match but at the end of the day what you see is what you get. And in reality in most of the cases you may find the good information yourself on a football game. Concerning a listed company only few now the real image of a company.
So my opinion is the following:

“Why if we make a good profit from betting we must change to other forms of investment that we have no idea about?”

Have a nice weekend…