Re. the title…I know. Shoot me now. It works better if you read it with a strong Glaswegian accent, “Aye, I’ll ha’ summae that, wee man!”
Let’s move on. Quickly…
I refuse for this Monday Bet Diary slot to become a repetitive ode to my son’s good fortune when it comes to his golf betting, but it’s becoming difficult to ignore his exploits. Regular readers will know that he is using the Bookie Bashing Golf Tracker to come up with his bets for the week, looking to cover somewhere around 15-20% of the field in terms of win probability. So far, his “strategy” is working exceptionally well Yesterday saw Joe triumph again, with Sami Valimaki winning a play-off to claim victory and by doing so land odds of 70/1 (do you get the title now?).
Happily, I had also split my total stake, with half going on each way with Joe’s bookmaker, and half on the usual win-only bet on Smarkets, where I got odds of 90.0 on the triumphant Finn, so happy days!
It wasn’t exactly unlikely that Joe identified Valimaki on the Tracker whilst the golfer was also tipped up by WGV – he consulted the Tracker on early Wednesday afternoon, roughly around the same time I know that Tom at Bookie Bashing is deciding which golfers will make the WGV roster for the week. In fact, of the eight golfers put up by WGV, Joe had already backed six of them prior to my getting the WGV email through.
Anyway, Joe’s figures using the Golf Tracker now read:
4 winners from 13 tournaments, 13 more bets producing an each way return, and an ROI of 47.29%. All that from 165 bets, so roughly 12-13 golfers backed per tournament.
I can’t help but think these are the figures of someone running very hot, and we all know that variance can kick someone hard, right in the nadgers to bring them back crashing down to earth. I guess we’ll see on that one.
Away from Joe’s golfing success, and the few days off I took last week to refresh the batteries have been welcome. You don’t realise how relentless this game can be until you step off the treadmill for a bit. This isn’t any call for sympathy – I make a decent second income doing something I really enjoy doing – but working a full day, nipping out to the bookies at lunchtime to get a couple of Lucky 15s down, then often taking two hours in the evening doing the wider bookmaking rounds, placing more bets, picking up returns etc, then doing the admin, it can take it out of you. And all that’s before you think about walking the dog, shopping, cooking, etc. My wife works ridiculously long hours too, so it’s not fair to just dump all of that on her. I’m just glad that my kids are now grown up!
The point I’m making is that now more than ever, I feel that in terms of workload, the shift to predominantly using cash in bookmakers a lot more has made it heavier than ever. And yet, I’m enjoying my betting now more than I ever have! Perhaps it’s because there’s more human interaction; keeping on the right side of the cashiers, taking five minutes to chat to one or two of the regulars, and yesterday, even getting rid of an awkward bugger from a shop who was making life really difficult for the cashier when she was clearly not the one in the wrong! I drew myself up to my full 6’1”, silently prayed he wouldn’t hit me, and tried to sound calm and not the sh*t-scared I was when suggesting the best thing he could do was to bugger right off. Thankfully, he did what I suggested. Wish my missus would, even if just now and then…
I didn’t stop betting last week, but with it being half term I was able to spend some proper time with my wife. We went into Manchester, found a place that does unbelievably good pizza, a small tapas place to die for, and a couple of out of the way pubs that you could very easily spend all day in. It was a nice routine – I’d do the rounds and get my bets down in the morning whilst she did whatever work teachers do during the “holidays”, and then out for lunch and a drink. We both said we’d not drink too much, but then got the train in, which kinda tells you what our plans really were.
So, here I am. Refreshed and raring to go, some new ideas, and thoughts re how things will look for my betting in 2024. More on all of that in good time, but it’s fair to say that next year I need to make things a little bit easier for myself, and really work on having a lifestyle that involves a lot of work, but also a lot of play. Life’s too short for anything else.
All results brought up to speed on Wednesday.
