What I like about tennis is how demarcated the event is. Each set is like a mini-match and what has gone before doesn't necessarily have any bearing on what is happening in the current set.
After the scrappy first set, it was possible to see Murray getting up a head of steam and so it was easy enough to jump on him at that point. When he won the third set, while they were still in their seats, I could see him almost sighing with relief, and I thought he would "relax" somewhat after psyching himself up. So laid him immediately.
When he started to lose that set, I then greened-up and watched the rest of the match as just a spectator. It was a cracking match with so many twists and turns, and I was still watching the odds even though I was out at that point, and some of the swings were just crazy.
So what is the meaning behind my title today? Well, you know me, after having a successful dabble on the tennis, I thought I'd do some mild experiment on the GGs. I use Betangel for my betting and, although it's just about the most expensive API on the market, I'm very comfortable with it now and can't seem to get on with any of the others.
Anyway, as some of you may know who also use this tool, Betangel comes with lots of excellent little add-on utilities for various sports. There is Tennis Trader, which allows you to predict the odds after the next point (helpful today), there is Soccer Mystic to show the odds movements on Match Odds, Correct Score and Over/Under markets - and then there is Racing Trader, which provides a graphical view (much like a horse race itself) of each horse's odds, with horses moving closer to the finish line the shorter their odds become (see picture below).
So there I was, trying out Racing Trader for the very first time. I wanted to view the horse race on Betfair video at the same time but, to enable you to do that, you have to place a bet on the event. Even though I knew there was a considerable time delay with BF video on the horses (at least five seconds and maybe more) I thought I would stick £2 on any horse just so that I could watch the race and see how it correlated to the Racing Trader output.
The one-click tab on Betangel was showing me the default stake was set to £2.00, so when the race started, I clicked on a horse and sat back to watch how it all panned out. Then I saw a £200 liability on all the horses except the one I'd chosen. Whoops, the default stake was indeed £2, but I had failed to click in the little tick box to accept that, and so instead had placed a bet on this unknown horse at my usual football trading stake of £200.
AAaaah! What was worse was that I immediately saw the odds for my chosen horse drifting up into outer space. Fuck-a-duck, what on earth was I doing?
At this point I had a £40 red in the space of a few seconds. I forlornly shoved in a close order for the same odds as I'd backed at, and then sat back and watched my horse on the Racing Trader graphical display moving backwards. It then made a short recovery before drifting off at warp factor 9.
I was shaking my head in disbelief at my stupidity. I had been so happy with my tennis trading and then blown my own brains out in ten seconds flat by not making a basic check. With all hope lost, I slowly looked back at the Betangel one-click screen to view the full confirmation of my madness - but then was mightily surprised to see a zero liability!
What had happened? Well, by some miracle of fortune, during the very brief spell of recovery that my GG had made, my lay order had amazingly been filled. According to the Racing Traders interface, the recovery didn't get back far enough to hit my initial odds, but obviously they did.
Well, what a truly lucky escape. I can't tell you how relieved I am. If I accept a bet and that bet goes on to lose, then of course I'm annoyed, but accept it as part of the risk that I have knowingly undertaken at that point. This was different though. This was a pure mistake, plain and simple, and if I had lost £200 because of it, I would have been down about that for the rest of the day.
So, all-in-all, I've had the Gods smiling on me today. A good trading session on the tennis, and then a reprieve on the horses when there seemed to be absolutely no way of one occurring.
Perhaps I should start calling myself Lucky Jim from now?
Tennis: £46.84 | Tote: | Total P&L: £46.84
Tennis Showing 1 - 2 of 2 markets
Market Start time Settled date Profit/loss (£)
Tennis / Mens Tournament : Winner 29-Jan-12 08:30 27-Jan-12 13:38 2.45
Tennis / Djokovic v A Murray : Match Odds 27-Jan-12 08:30 27-Jan-12 13:37 44.39
BTW, the other £2 here is from my Winners market dutch. This didn't work at all. When Tsonga lost, I greened-up the remaining two parts of the bet for, as you can see, £2.45, but lost $13 overall on this market.
I should be back posting again tonight after the Spurs game against Watford.
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