What a truly dreadful month November has been. I'm so glad it's over, even though months are an artificial human construct and affect nothing in terms of horse racing results. The horses don't care if it's 30th November or 1st December; they don't even know what the difference is. Professional gambling is one long continuous set of results really but I have chosen to break mine down into months to make things slightly easier to review.
Anyway. A really poor month in the end but that's not at all how it started. Things were on fire for the first week or so but after that the profits just slipped away with barely a bright spot in the rest of the month. And the tale of the month was repeated on several individual days - the profits would build over the first few races then slip away and I'd end in the red. It wasn't even as though it was one or two systems/services that were underperforming, it seems like most of my portfolio was struggling to get going. It's really hard to actually put my finger on what went wrong this month, it's more of case of little going right really.
Watch List
There had been nothing on my Watch List and I can't decide if that's still going to be the case after this review. There's one system I am thinking of dropping but can't really make my mind up. That usually makes it a candidate for the Watch List but this particular system hibernates for the winter so will have no selections now till May so there's no real point putting it on the Watch List.
It's the Mark Johnston system from the Flat Quickfire ebook, in case you're wondering. Capable of throwing up some excellent winners but this year the returns have been disappointing. Three winning months and five losing months for a slight overall loss. July and August were good, right enough, but since then it's been a string of losses including a loss of over 14pts this month, and that's with me deliberately understaking some of the outsiders I didn't think stood much of a chance. Had I stuck to the staking plan my losses would be larger.
So what do I do? Cut November off and only bet May to October? That's possible but I'd need to check the breakdown of profits from previous years too. Ultimately the system is profitable but my bank is around half of the record high (achieved 1st August 2009) and this year it has barely looked like getting back up there or anywhere near it. I need to properly review the stats for this system over the years but there's a good chance it won't survive a spring clean next year.
Breakdown
The portfolio breakdown for November looks like this:
Good (profitable)
W2W (4 systems, +15.50pts)
LTO3 +0.84pts
Double Top +5.10pts
NH Media +2.09pts
Ladies Lays +7.47pts
Non-W2W (13 systems, +602.34pts)
NailedOn AW +49.70pts
A List +2.27pts
Progeny +7.07pts
HSR +0.13pts
Northern Monkey +2.65pts
Easy Money Lays +5.82pts
NailedOn Lays +12.96pts
Prem Simplex +60.04pts
SPL Simplex +212.24pts
Serie A Simplex +232.40
Away Form Portfolio +4.25pts
Rateform Portfolio +11.04pts
Bet Bank Alerts +1.78pts*
Bad (unprofitable)
W2W (4 systems, -44.83pts)
Johnston Track -14.10pts
Lay'em -25.53pts
Info Rated -3.75pts
NHPM -1.45pts
Non-W2W (15 systems, -171.44pts)
Classic Lays -12.00pts
Premier Lays -10.18pts
FBD -0.95pts
Football Elite -2.86pts
FE Shortlist -1.48pts
Home Form Portfolio -12.33pts
Draw Form Portfolio -4.75pts
Under Form Portfolio -1.00pts
Over Form Portfolio -2.25pts
HDA Streaks Portfolio -14.09pts
Game Form Portfolio -4.90pts
The Insider -2.00pts
Linebacker -0.18pts
Limit Poker (cash) -96.10pts
No Limit Hold'em Tourneys -6.36pts
*Bet Bank Alerts has one outstanding bet for tonight's football but it's way more convenient for me to do these figures now
NB. Systems and services are listed here simply to provide a full monthly record of my betting activities and their mention should not be construed as a recommendation of said system/service. The results given are mine and mine alone and do not form part of the official results for any service.
In points terms this looks a reasonable month with a profit of around 400pts but many of those points have come from the Simplex systems that use a small pounds-per-point value. The bigger banks such as the Johnston Tracks, Lay'em, Classic Lays and Premier Lays have all massively underperformed resulting in an end of month loss.
It's not just the horses that have been the problem though, many of my football systems have let the side down too. Double-figure losses on the Home Form and HDA Streaks portfolios, for example. Football Elite had a rare losing month too, although totally in line with how I expect the service to perform if you see what I mean as I don't expect profits every month and I know there will be money to be made later down the line. But with other banks doing poorly I had hoped services such as A List, Northern Monkey and Football Elite could help minimise the damage with some nice profits of their own but these services also had rough patches this month. In the end it just wasn't to be and I have to chalk this month up as a poor one and move on.
My performance on the poker front has fairly mirrored the rest of my gambling activities too. Cahs games were going poorly and I soon began to realise I wasn't cut out for cash any more, certainly not limit cash games at least. I was thinking in terms of no limit hands rather than drawing pot odds and what have you. So I switched to playing full ring SnGs and was doing alright, then had a bad run before finally picking it back up again. It was at that stage that I decided against the sensible thing, i.e. playing more SnGs and decided that what I should really do is polish my heads-up game so started playing heads-up SnGs instead. Guess what - results were excellent initially but soon took a downward turn. Story of my month really but I shall persevere and hopefully turn things around as it is a form of the game I do enjoy playing. I'm still trying to find my feet somewhat though, trying to find that point at which I need to reign in the aggression and when it's good to be firing a second and maybe third barrel on the bluff.
All in all not an easy month, a real rollercoaster and that's not been helped by my health issues. I have spent a large part of the month pretty wiped out - abdominal pain, really rundown feeling, headaches, unable to regulate my temperature, terrible nasal congestion, racing pulse and so on - and what's more I expect to feel pretty much like this for another six weeks or so as these are the side effects of the drugs my doctor has put me on. Joy! I'm not that bothered about Christmas normally but I'd rather not spend it feeling utterly dreadful but I may not have any choice in the matter this year it seems. Oh well. And being ill has really put me off my game too. I feel sluggish at the poker tables and on the exchanges. It's stupid but it's almost as though feeling ill means the horses I have laid win more often. When I am feeling 100% my mental attitude is good and I am in the zone but I am so far out of the zone at present that it's hard to 'work' each day. And as I say, I have around 6 weeks more of this to look forward to.
Still, onwards and upwards.