Punt.com - A Blog About Gambling by a Professional Gambler.

Opinion prison.

Opinions (or "onions" as I like to call them) and gambling.  They go hand in hand don't they?  Most people (casual gamblers), bet only on opinions.  Without these, in their mind, there's no reason to have a bet.  Why bet on something that you don't have an opinion on?  Where's the fun in that?

Putting fun aside (personally work can be quite boring at times - unless I've just layed a 1.03 shot and they've lost the next 8 points in a row!), we're in this to make money.  Anyone serious about making money can't afford to dabble heavily in their opinions.  If you are a trader, you'll learn pretty early on that opinions can be a hinderance, but why?

It's pretty simple.  Opinions cloud your judgement.  But aren't opinions formed out of your judgements?  Sure, but the judgement never stops when you are trading.  There's always new information to digest.  If you form an opinion on early judgements then it's too easy to dismiss the rest of the info you are going to receive, if you even continue to pay attention.

An opinion can be like a pair of rose tinted spectacles.  Once you pick a pair up, you continually see only the good things and the good possibilities of one outcome, with potentially disasterous consequences.

You lose the ability to change your mind and to question yourself and the situation.  You're no longer at the cutting edge, you're miles behind it and way off the pace.

The best traders are aware of all that's going on around them.  Yes, they act quickly, boldly and on instincts, but it never stops there.  They can reverse their decision just as quickly, admit they were wrong, yet still continue to trsut their instincts.  Opinions don't allow any of this to happen.

When I'm trading, one of my goals is to try to stay impartial as much as possible.  I set out deliberately with the thought to relax and watch carefully.  I've learnt the danger of starting a match thinking, this person will win or they lost heavily last time I know it'll happen again.

The trader that is calm yet alert, without an opinion on things, is positioned best to act on instinct.  And this has to continue along the same lines once you have a trading position.  Have humility in your trading, know your "onions", and you won't go far wrong.

Serena Williams loses weight. (you read it right)

A real turn up for the books.  It's refreshing to see the weight chart seems to have peaked for now..  for a while it looked like it was one way traffic.  She looked good last night v Safarova, but the real match is next for her, a replay of the Aussie Open final - Sharapova.  She won that comfortably whilst looking like a tank (yet somehow moving like a gazelle).  She's trimmer this week and moving as well as ever - she looks hungry?  Still, for her to lose that weight, one has to presume she has some hunger back for tennis - perhaps winning the Australian provided the spark.  Sharapova will be out for revenge and it's going to be fascinating, personally I hope Serena kills her off again.  No one moves as well as Serena round a tennis court, and no one spits their dummy quite like Mar.. sorry, Yuri Sharapov.

Betfair taken to court.

A punter is taking Betfair to court because they didn't settle his bets fast enough!  He'd run out of funds in his account and needed the Grand National market settled quickly in order to back a horse he'd had his eye on.  You can see what happens next..  Market not settled - No money - Horse goes on to win at huge odds!  Of course, he says he was going to back it and we believe him.  And oh yeah, he could have deposited more money (takes 5 seconds to do) to put the bet on, but he didn't.   The full story is here.

Twitter!

Just added an interesting new feature to the blog, find it somewhere in my left column - position undecided yet.  Basically, it allows me to update the world on my activities as I do them and when I want to.  Whats the point then ?  To be honest I'm not entirely sure yet, I think it'll become obvious as I use it.  Initial thoughts are it allows me to update the blog much more often - posts on twitter are limited to the length of a text message... think nano blog entries.  It also lets people know I'm still alive..  some of the features of twitter allow you to link up to friends who can also display the group messages each is posting - If you join twitter I think each of our messages shows up in the box on the blog.  Handy for letting others know what I'm betting on and what they are up to and fun too.

I'm gonna send out some invites to those that have linked here, please let me know if you want to join up and definitely post up a "badge" to your own sites too.  We can get an impression what each others betting activities - amongst other things !  Twitter.com

Mortgages for gamblers.

Thought I'd make a breif post on these subjects seeing as I've been remortgaging this week.  The topic regularly comes up on various forums - "Is it possible to get a mortgage for a professional gambler?"  Yes it is.  Though as you'd imagine it's not as easy as it would be for those people with 'normal' jobs.

I'm not an expert of the ins and outs of various providers and what they want, but I do know a few things you can do to make it more straight forward.  The simplest way is to bank consistantly well with a bank for an extended period of time.  This means your account shows a good amount of money coming into your account on a regular basis.  There are banks out there that will provide you a mortgage purely on the activity record of your account with them.  Barclays (in the UK) have been good for me in this respect.

The second thing you could do is get a joint mortgage with your partner - who hopefully has a proper job!

If you make most of your money via a betting exchange, you can usually have them produce records of your accounts for proof of your track record, this might not be acceptable by the mortgage company, but it's an another piece of proof of your income.

It helps when you see a mortgage advisor to describe the mathematical aspect of the job, compare it to day trading the stock market (if you are a betting exchange trader).

Remortgaging this week has been fairly painless.  What was strange though, was the bank's unwillingness to give me a quote for contents insurnace - because I was a gambler!?  So a mortgage of £xxx,xxx is ok, but insurance of my belongings isn't ???  If anyone can figure it out, let me know !

Doctor's orders.

Been a strange week.  Not much written on the blog, apologies for that..  Ill health and things to deal with away from the computer have taken over to some degree, leaving time only for work, perhaps this is how it should be at times.  On weeks like this is seems best to update the blog once or twice a week rather than every day..

Off topic I know, but you know you are getting old when the Doctor's you see are younger than you are.  Even more frustrating is when they give you advice against what you personally believe is correct, leaving you the dilema of whether or not to trust them.  I decided I would follow their advice, and thankfully they seem to be right, but I'm still not 100% yet.

Another example of getting old, is when the sports stars you admire all seem to suddenly be much younger than you are, Rafa Nadal, Andy Murray etc.  They're all almost a decade younger than me !  It's just not right !

Work this week has been a mixed bag, but thankfully I've come out on the right side of things in the end.  It's been a week of easing back into it, working on keeping the right sort of thoughts rotating in my head and trying to get into a good mode of trading.  I find it's fairly critical I start off well in this regard, I don't mind losing as long as I was thinking well.

My largest win of the week coming on the Murray v Davydenko match, I worked a great position and was able to give Andy time in the 2nd set to take it with a very large but safe position in tact.  Had he lost the 2nd set, I could have squared off for minimal damage.  In the past I might have squared up at the end of the 1st set, but the prices were so big on Murray that in the long run I would have been really paying for it.  Murray was value to back at that point and very poor value to lay, I didnt want to add to my position there though.  I knew if Davy threatened in the 2nd set the value on Murray would be huge as everyone would try to get out of their Murray positions - this would be the time to add to my position.  It worked well.

Largest loss of the week was Vaidisova v Kuznetsova.  I was a little under prepared for the inconsistancies of these two ladies.  Vaid began like a train, Kuz moving like a tank with the turning circle of a heavy truck, warning beeps came on when she was in reverse. 

There comes a point though in each Vaidisova match when a look comes across her face of pure youthful inexperienced anxiety.  Usually when she is pushing to keep momentum and take a lead further, eg. early 2nd set having taken the first.  It's a flash point for her.  In the next 2/3 points she either makes the important forehand (and therefore hurdles the anxiety flashpoint), or a crippling run of unforced error forehands will commence.  Once that begins, it's tough to get out of her system and it was pretty much game over.  It's tough to trade though, because she tries hard to play well again and sometimes shows glimpses of getting rid of the problems.  Add in that she was clearly the better player without these problems and it becomes a tricky thing to deal with. 

And I didn't deal particularly well.  Too much action being taken on and not enough steering clear.  I need to be big enough to take my first loss and then wait for the next very obvious opportunity.  An opportunity where the entry point, loss cut point and profit taking time is clear from the start.  Efforts to make back my red screen are futile if I leave the confines of my trading plan behind.

Overall, it's been a week of learning that quality over quantity is the way forward (again).  To adhere to a very clear plan and be disciplined to place my bets in the same way every single time.  Consistancy in this approach will be a big weapon against the opposition over the long run.  In a game where it's all too easy to lose sight of your plan, it makes sense to use this against the opposition.  If it's easy for me to do it, then others must have the same problem...

Deleted temporary brain files.

Took my first tentative steps back into the job yesterday after over 5 weeks off.  It's good to take a break now and then, but this was by far the longest I've ever taken, usually it's a case of 2/3 weeks.  It felt good.  I didn't miss it while I was away which is pleasing, and I felt very fresh with a renewed perspective on things yesterday evening.  That said, I'm suffering from a fairly bad cold / infection at the moment so I'm not 100%.

With 9 1/2 months of the year remaining, realistically 8 1/2 of tennis to trade it's important I set my stall out now to trade them all well.  I've always felt that this was a game about performance and not results.  Performance takes care of the rest, at the end of the year you can see how well you performed.

One of the great things about taking a break is you are giving your internal computer time to mull over things and come up with suggestions and ideas, unconsciously.  It's a bit like defraging your hard-drive, set it off and leave it running in the background, after a while - stuff seems to be easier to comprehend and the way forward a bit clearer.

The other effect is a sort of emptying of the cache.  What was remaining in the cache before the break from the heat of battle, has all been processed through and with a bit of luck - learnt from.  When you re-enter the arena, suddenly a lot of space is available for faster learning, processing and memory.  And this is what happened last night. 

I always bet a little smaller when I return from a break.  There's no reason to rush back in..  I'm clearly going to be a bit rusty and the previous months form is missing from my experience.  Besides I've always believed that you can learn almost all of the same things from smaller stakes as you can from playing at full steam.

I traded 2 matches last night for a small loss.  But the result of the evening is me coming away feeling good about my trading plan, with one critical element firmly in focus for me.

Do nothing, until the time is right for action.

Inaction is perhaps the gamblers most powerful weapon.  In January I wasn't employing it enough towards the end.  In fact, I probably wasn't employing it at all!  When you consider I should be doing nothing for a high % of the time, it displays a serious weakness.  Only when everything lines up should I take some action. 

For me, it's about cultivating the right circumstances to make this easily and consistently achievable.  Make it a habit, and make it something I don't even think about.  Inner "peace" as my mate "samurai" from the betfair forum might say.  It's easy to see this is not merely a change in strategy, it's a mental state that exists whilst I'm trading.  More than that, this is made easier if it exists in the other areas of my life as well - switching it on and off is very difficult I find.

Jetlag sucks!

I'm still suffering.  Apologies for the lack of posts these last few days..  I've been up at stupid hours and seem to have cought a cold courtesy of 24 hours continous plane air conditioning.  The decorators are in this week too, a nice combo of paint and dust really helps the throat.

Still, there's not much for me personally to bet on this week, the action begins again on Saturday witht he first Masters series tennis of the year from Indian Wells.  Very much looking forward to that, I want to work on a few things that had crept in towards the end of Jan and try to eliminate them as much as possible.  I'll also need to ease myself back into it a bit, so smaller stakes to begin with - I've missed a month's action and that's quite important form wise... A review of the action I've missed will be important.

Most importantly, I want to reach a comfortable staking size and maintain this through the year now.  One of my biggest errors is always betting too big in the wrong situation.  It's been my curse over the last year or so - not that I haven't done well, I just would have done much better had I not over staked originally, and certainly emotionally I would have been on much more of an even keel.

Hoping to feel better soon and to stop waking up at 5am... when I do, there'll be more activity over here.  If anyone has some good tips on sorting jet-lag out, please feel free to help me out!

Back from my travels.

Just a short post to say I have returned from my travels of the last month, thanks to those that took the time to comment even though I havent always been about to reply, replies to be added over the next day or two, maybe Monday - dependant on jet lag.  30 hours of travel time clocked up to get home takes it's toll, the Islands of New Zealand and Fiji are stunning!  Hope everyone has had a profitable month!

#4

"Do not seek the truth,

only cease to cherish opinions."

- Zen saying.