It was the Royal Ascot meeting last week, the Flat’s answer to the National Hunt’s (far superior, to my mind) Cheltenham Festival. For some reason, I’ve never had a memorable Ascot meeting in terms of my punting whilst every year at Cheltenham seems to end in a fine profit. Perhaps that’s why I much prefer the latter.
Anyway, about half way through the week I was one grumpy old sod. I’d had a couple of winners but nothing special, and with the past six weeks’ betting performance making me believe that what I am experiencing currently fits so beautifully well into the Catholic definition of ‘Purgatory’, I was not a happy chappy.
It doesn’t happen that often, but when a negative mindset takes hold, it’s suddenly very easy to be hypercritical of your tipsters. You start to question how someone can have a “strong angle” within a ridiculously hot 30+ runner 7 furlong handicap, why a tipster seems to be frittering away points on bets that don’t seem to fall within his area of specialism, or how can anyone really see value in a price they’re advising. I don’t need to tell you it’s all psychological, do I?
That it is all in the mind was proven last week on Friday and Saturday. The first three days of Royal Ascot had been difficult and frustrating, and I was asking all those questions I’ve listed in the paragraph above, but not in such polite language. I felt I was putting these bets on in stupidly competitive races because I was stupid, unable to back my own judgment and not strong enough to tell myself that these tipsters didn’t know what they were doing and that I was throwing good money after bad. And then Bet Alchemist knocked in a 20/1 winner and all was well in the world again. Literally, just like that, my confidence was renewed and suddenly there was purpose again to what I was doing.
Fickle? Yup, absolutely. Normal? Yeah, I reckon. It’s ok to be grumpy sometimes. We might like to try to be robotic when it comes to betting, but occasionally, you have to accept you’re human. And if from time to time that’s a grumpy human…well that’s ok too.
Portfolio performance for June, to Sunday 23rd
Another losing week, although not by much. After a loss in May though, and now in the red for June too, this is proving to be a testing spell. As noted above, Bet Alchemist found a lovely winner and generally fared well through the Royal meeting, and MVS (Lite) enjoyed a decent week too. Which is not something that could be said for Northern Monkey who really isn’t enjoying himself at the moment.
‘Main’ portfolio: ROI -1.5%, ROC -0.61%.
‘Broxchange’ portfolio (Football Lay Profits, Futunver, Golf Insider): ROI 3.53%, ROC 0.18%
Individual Service Performance
Bet Alchemist: Staked 37pts, +14.212pts.
Racing Service 1: Staked 58pts, +37.675pts.
Football Lay Profits: n/a
Football Service 1: n/a
Golf Insider: Staked 49.8pts, +1.762pts.
MVS: Staked 41pts, +9.26pts.
Northern Monkey: Staked 59.625pts, -29.228pts.
Football Service 2: Staked 24.5pts, -1.51pts.
Racing Service 2: n/a
Racing Service 3: Staked 71.75pts, -18.888pts.
