Sunday 27th February

16 days to Cheltenham. Every day I wake up and smile because I know it is one day closer to the greatest show on turf.

My wishes for today were that Man City could beat Fulham to seal my acca and £463 and Spencer Levin or Brian Gay could win the Mayakoba Classic to bank me over £400.

Neither happened. Although I did fortunately manage to accrue some money by the way in which neither happened. Man City went 1-0 up and were trading @ 1.3 on Betfair so I deposited £60 and laid for £200 making my book Man City + £363, any other +£163. Fulham equalised which really really pissed me off as I had made the trademark amazingly stupid error of already spending the other £200 in my head on antepost bets for Cheltenham.

The Carling Cup final also left me with a nasty taste in my mouth. Looking at Birmingham's 4-5-1 scrappers line up and Arsenal missing a few key creative players I didn't see goals and I got involved with some small correct score bets, £15 on 0-0 @ 14.0, £20 on 1-0 Arsenal @ 8.2 and £15 on the 1-1 draw @ 10.5. The freaky nature of the Birmingham winning goal to make it 2-1 after 87 minutes left me feeling very pissed off. I'm a centre back myself in the Monday night York College 6 a side league. What on earth Laurent Koscielny was doing there I have no idea. Its like he knew my bet and was purposefully ripping the piss out of me. Thats exactly what it felt like anyway. Cheers Laurent, you French prick, thats £157.50 I won't be seeing.

It was looking like being a pretty bad day. Then 26 year old Spencer Levin stepped upto the plate in dramatic fashion in the Mayakoba shooting a magnificent 6 under par 65 to earn himself a playoff with Jonathan Wagner. A quick wikipedia check to make sure he wasn't the son of the famous singer Wagner and I find out he is a very decent golfer. Levin is trading at 1.9 in the playoff so I lay for £225 @ 1.9 making my book Levin +£255, Wagner +£155 with my £70 tournament stake back in my account. Unfortunately, like the Man City game the worse of the 2 results came in.

Still a very decent weekend and at least I got the opportunities to lay/green up like a nit. Ended up like £700 in profit over the 2 days and quickly invested just over half that in 5 antepost Cheltenham wagers I had been keenly eyeing up. That cash never had any hope of hitting my bank account.

Might not be a post for a while, the sporting week looks shit, not even any European football! I'll have a few days off the punting and start getting what money I have together for my seasonal Cheltenham raid.

Saturday 26th Ferburary

Got up early and went to The Oak to watch the midday kick off, Swansea v Leeds with my 2 flatmates Shrewdie and Dave and another friend, Yorky. Shrewdie is nicknamed Shrewdie with some degree of irony because he is comfortably the least Shrewd human being on the planet. Most weekeneds he goes 0/4 on his accas, he has never won a golf bet despite having like 4 players every tournament, all his horses fall or are pulled up and as a result he is always struggling for spondoolies. Sometimes I worry about living with him because if it starts to rub off on me I am truly fucked. Yorky is called Yorky because he is in love with York City and when you go out with him in York everybody knows his name. He is Mr York.

Anyway, I'm a huge Leeds fan but I was very pessimistic about this one and weighed in with a £75 DBL on Swansea @ 10/11 & Bristol City @ 19/20, £40 on Swansea to score 3+ goals @ 4.8 and £50 on Dobbie to score anytime @ 12/5. I think Dobbie is a fantastic little finisher (and used to be a fantastic little house elf before he unfortunately met his maker) but was absolutely horrified to see sky sports put him in the midfield 3 in their 4-3-3 formation. After further research I found out that Dobbie now plays in the hole behind the 3 forwards, marvellous.

Dobbie hit the post after 20 minutes. It was a very rare occasion that I was happy I didn't win my bet because it meant my beloved Leeds didn't go behind. It is very strange betting against your own team, its something I often do because the bookies over estimate us because of our name but its strange wanting your bet to lose with all your heart and it just acting as scant consolation in the eventuality that your team fails. In the end we played a shocker and Swansea won 3-0. I won my 3+ bet netting £150ish profit and just needed Bristol City to beat Scunny at home to complete my double. Dobbie didn't even have a shot after hitting the post, seeming to relish his new midfield role spraying passes all over the pitch. That'll teach me.

I got further involved in the 3pm footy placing a £40 acca on Norwich @8/5 at Barnsley, Wolves @10/11 at home to Blackpool, Bristol City again @ 10/11 and Man City on Sunday at home to Fulham @ 8/15. Got home in time to watch the big race of the day, The Racing Post Chase in which I had got involved heavily in with £50 on Mostly Bob @ 12/1, £40 on Bakbenscher @ 10/1, £10 on Free World @ 48/1 and £30 worth of exactas. Mostly Bob fell at the third, Bakbenscher fell at the 12th and Free World plodded along and was eventually pulled up. Not exactly a race to remember, losing £130, not really a sum I can afford to lose on a single race. Luckily the next race at Kempton contained my biggest fancy of the day Sir De Grugy who should love the soft ground. I got involved with £50 @ 3/1. The horse jumped each hurdle like a stag, no danger and won going away. I got some strange looks from the flats opposite when I was jumping up and down in front of my tv (which happens to be near the window) shouting "GO ON DE GRUGY" at the top of my voice.

All my football teams won resulting in a £205 profit on my double and a £463 nest egg coming in tomorrow if Man City can just beat Fulham at home. Surely won't be a problem. To cap the day off with an absolute bang, all 4 of my golfers made it through to the semi finals of the match play securing me £181 profit in any eventuality. Even Levin and Gay had decent rounds in Mayakoba both remaining well in contention, 2 and 3 off the lead respectively. Important day tomorrow.

Friday 25th February

The kind of days I enjoy the most, no losing bets.

I got a tip through in the afternoon from a shrewd Irish friend who is heavily involved in the greyhound scene. He told me to back Trap 6 in the 2.37 at Swindon, so that is exactly what I did, to the tune of £30 @ 7/2. That won and then I received another tip, this time in the horse racing, from a shrewd friend from Sheffield. It was in a maiden and the horse was 9/4 2nd favourite. So I had £40 on and it won aswell. Easy game sometimes, just make contacts and then follow insider info and profit to the tune £195.

I also had a £20 cross sports Trixie, Bubba Watson in the golf @6/5, Ben Crane in the golf @4/5 and Notts County to beat Charlton at home @11/8. I won't exactly say that in getting 2/3 I was unlucky not be winning my monkey, Miguel Angel Jimenez turned up on super hot form to beat Crane by about 8 holes!!! No Complaints. Banked about a pony profit on that to end the day a £220 winner.

What I'm proudest about today was my ability to trade my Match Play market in the golf into a very nice situation whilst drinking copious amounts of Kronenburg and Southern Comfort. I laid some Kuchar, Mahan and Donald low in play and backed Bubba Watson and Kaymer quite high in play and after a bit of tinkering afterwards I have ended up having the first 4 favs in the market all on my side with 8 left at just above Even money:

None of them clash in the quarters and I will feel pretty sick if I'm not collecting £180 and something on Sunday night. The four best players by a stretch I reckon.

In the other golf tournament I'm involved in, Gay and Levin again only got average scores in the 2nd round and lie @ -5 and -7 with the leader on -11. Again, they both remain about the same price I backed them at.

Saturday tomorrow, good racing, full football schedule, golf quarters and semis, incredible.

Thursday 24th February

Had quite a lot of bets today. I always like Thursdays around this time of the year, you've got the Europa league footy, the Premier League darts and decent golf tourns every week. It might even be my new 2nd favourite day of the week now Sundays without American Football are shite. Maybe I should start going to church on the sabbath, I haven't been for like 14 years. I could go every week till the start of the new NFL season and rack up some major karma points. God could be great for me but he will struggle to ever be as great as Mike Carlson.

I started with another £50 golf TBL buoyed on by my success the previous day. All 8/13 shots and truly great players Mcdowell, Mickelson and Cink. Cink quickly fucked that up by going 3 down thru 5 so I reloaded with a £50 DBL on Mickelson and Kaymer @ 8/13 and 4/6 (GMac was already winning so couldn't include him). Then Rickie Fowler, my hero from yesterday started to tear Big Phil a new one so I saw no option but than to have a desperation muggy £100 single on Kaymer @ 4/6 to beat flu ridden Justin Rose, a safe bet if ever I saw one.

I also placed a £50 DBL on the footy on PSV to beat Lillie @ 10/11 and Braga to beat Lech Poznan @ 7/10. Lillie were likely to rest all their best players with Lyon in the league coming up at the weekend and I was confident Braga could outclass Poznan.

Finally, I got involved on the darts with a small stakes £30 DBL on Barney DNB to beat Lewis @ 6/4 and Wade DNB to beat Whitlock @ EVS. PSV comfortably beat a 2nd strength Lillie side 3-1 and I trotted off to play indoor tennis like I do every Thursday night. Managed to win all 3 sets of my doubles match for St Chads Mens A team with the first set finishing a rather epic 11-9 in the tiebreak.

I nervously exited to my car to check on all the results and my first port of call was my futbol24 app. Braga won 2-0! Get in!!! That double returned around a bottle and next on the agena was the darts results. First I saw that Barney beat Lewis 8-6! So all I needed for a return was Wade to have avoided defeat against Whitlock. Surely, the Aussie has been in stinking form recently. But no, he hadn't, he lost 8-5 despite going 5-4 up. Fuck off James Wade and you Helen Chamberlain you slag.

At least the golf scores were going my way with my outright bets Kuchar and Mahan poised to go through and Kaymer 1 up. They all got the job done and I've also added Luke Donald to my outright book with £25 on him @ 12.0. The draw has opened up nicely for him. My book doesn't look in that great shape with 16 left tbh. +£405 Mahan, +£404 Kuchar, +£210 Donald, -£80 field. I make field a strong favourite.

I also got involved in the Mayakoba Classic Golf weighing in with £40 on Brian Gay @ 14.5 and £30 on Spencer Levin @ 16/1. They shot -2 and -3 respectively in the first round which has just finished, the leader is on -5 and both remain at around the same price.

I guess I scratched a profit on the day but re-invested all winnings on the 2 golf tournaments.

Wednesday 23rd February

My ultimate target is to turn the fairly paltry sum I have in the bank at the moment into a workable punting roll, something in the £20,000 department. Looking at my betfair history for the last couple of years my best sport has been football by miles, done okay at horse racing but would've won a lot more if I stuck to the big meetings and gave up the midweek boredom punting and also done okayish at golf and darts. I have done my fucking nuts in on non Grand-Slam tennis. I've got to stick to just the grand slams in tennis and big meetings at horse racing. In The Slams I have a pretty good record of correctly identifying not only the winner but both the finalists. Perhaps I should just fuck off the tennis match betting altogether.

This will be a diary of my erratic but hopefully successful gambling. Not a tipping service coz my posts will be written after the event with the exception of golf outright/antepost bets. I don't like giving tips out anyway, what good can possibly come of it to me? If my selections lose then people will give me shit and if they win people will harass me for my knowledge again in the future. I should probably just always tip people the favourite as they always seem to be happy to back the most likely outcome no matter what the price.

Today I started by placing my Match Play golf punts. All on Betfair: £15 Mahan @42, £15 Kuchar @46, £10 Kim @95 and £10 Overton @130. Think Overton is a bit overpriced given his heroic Ryder Cup singles exploits and strong match play record. I also got involved in a £50 singles treble on Kaymer to beat Noh @4/7, Mahan to beat O'Hair @8/13 and Rickie Fowler to beat Peter Hanson @8/11. Overton soon raced into a 3up lead over 3 and I was already celebrating gleefully in my flatmates face (he backed Els outright @ 55s).

I settled down to watch the golf all evening and placed another £50 wager, classy Marseille to beat over-achieving this season in terms of results against performances Man Utd @ 13/5. They huffed puffed and attacked all game but couldn't find a way past Nemanja Vidic and his friends and it finished a rather predictable and unsatisfying 0-0. It was clearly going to be 0-0 from about 20 minutes in but didn't bother getting involved in running.

My 2 shortest golfers on the outright Mahan and Kuchar marched through to the 2nd round whilst Overton made it easy for Big Easy by surrendering 5 bogeys in a row and soon made his exit to the delight of my flatmate. Kim was shit aswell.

Mahan and Kaymer pissed it for my treble and Fowler showed his class by getting over the line by 1 in an exciting match against Hanson to bank me £201. Unfortunately my returns waited enticingly in my Paddy Power account and I realised the clay court ATP tennis was starting in Mexico and quickly broke my new rules in a heartbeat and got £100 on Almagro -5.5 games against the awful Filippo Volandri @4/7. Fortunately, or maybe unfortunately in the long term Almagro quickly raced away to a 6-2 6-2 win to cap off a decent if quiet day with a profit of around one fiddy.