Owner: Punt.com A Professional Gambler's Blog URL:www.Punt.com Join Date: Sun, 20 May 2007 05:03:19 -0500 Rating:0 Site Description: A Blog written by a Professional Gambler. Read about the world of pro gambling, the psychology of gambling and what it takes to make it pay. Site statistics:Click here
Roger Federer's worries. 2007-05-20 11:21:00 I'm worried about Roger
. I think he's showing the first signs of losing his mental game. He'll need to get this right quickly, before the brain rot he's suffering from takes too much of a hold - See Mr. Coria for an example of that. I'm not saying Roger will suddenly disappear, but it's sad to see Roger suffering like this.
Mistimed shots. Lost Sets and Lost Matches. Dropped Service games and opponents that now see him as "beatable". Roger is worried about them all. I'm not a mind reader, but his body language really does tell a story this week. I don't think I've ever seen so much emotion from Roger. During yesterday's match with Carlos Moya, we had slumped shoulders, cries and shouts of anguish, fist pumping and even a smile! In the past we were lucky to get a half mumbled "come on".
There's a battle taking place in his head. He's trying to forget his worries and play whilst putting th
The professional gambling journey. 2007-05-19 20:08:57 Perhaps I should read my own blog a bit more often.. Maybe I should write on it a little more often too. It seems I've lost some sight of where I am going and what I'm trying to achieve.
It's been quiet at punt.com for a while, and that's because I've felt good about what I was doing. Yet somewhere in the background there was a change happening to the way I trade and a loss of awareness of what I'm doing (or not doing). It's not a coincidence that I've begun to lose. So fine is the line between winning and losing, that even small changes can make the difference. The change I've encountered in my game, is not small. Yet it crept up on me, because I've been having good results - there's good results from good trading, and there's good results from being lucky, these tend to dirty the picture somewhat.
There's many many technical issues. These are quite easy to rectify, I still know how to get them right and when to use Read more:professional
My own form. 2007-05-16 10:37:08 I've commented on Roger's, now mine.
It's been quiet here, and there's a good reason for that. It's been going well and I didn't want to "starting thinking" too much! Hence, fewer posts and no posts on the mental side of things for a while. Sorry readers, but I'm sure the traders out there can appreciate the reasons for my temporary disappearance.
So I'm posting today, you must have had a crap one yesterday ? Indeed I did :) Actually I've been treading water the last 2 weeks or so, with a blistering Monte Carlo master series. Yesterday was quite nasty though.
Patience was the culrpit, as usual. It's funny how these things can creep up on you. Barely noticeable increments of change are occuring all the time, only to be noticeable when you dump a load of money. As mentioned on my Federer post, once you start it's tough to stop. In fact, your best bet is just to sit back and watch for a while and le
Roger Federer's decline. 2007-05-16 10:23:00 One day, we knew this would begin to happen. All stars have their moment then fade eventually. Some quickly, others a more gradual tailing off. Some players experience a blip or a crisis of confidence in the middle of their careers and sometimes, they get out of it. Just what is going on with Roger
Federer? Are we witnessing the early demise of this tennis great, the much lauded - future "greatest ever player" ?
There can be no doubt right now, he's rattled and concerned at his form. One can only presume that his concerns don't rest solely on his physical play, but on how he has conducted himself on the court recently.
Being a big Fed fan, I watch a lot of his matches and there's certain signals you watch out for that let you know whether or not he's on his game or not. In the past, these were purely physical... mistimed backhands for example, a fairly regular occurance in most of Fed's matches and more of a signal that
Quiet times at punt.com and a few words on staying patient. 2007-04-22 19:43:26 The sun is shining outside, there's plenty of tennis to trade... and less time to spend writing new articles! Who wants to be indoors longer than's neccessary when the weather's like this.
Work wise, it's been a great week. The Montecarlo masters series has thrown up some brilliant bets, the first 3 1/2 days were pretty close to perfection for me, over 40% (or points if you like) added to the bank. Of course the inevitable happened, and the last 2 days I've dropped about 14% of that, which is ok, but frustrating. I got a little carried away - it's human nature, but as a professional, something I want to cut out.
The best thing to come out of all this is that my new approach is proving it's worth. I just need to have the patience to wait and execute it quickly when I need to - not exactly straight forward, but at least the ideas of what I need to do have become very clear in my head now. The clay court season and the rest of the year are look Read more:Quiet
, patient
This months results. 2007-04-10 23:26:23 I've taken a break from posting my P+Ls this month. Maybe I'll continue not posting them - it's been a good month!
Sometimes I like to take a break from things, change things up.. particularly potential distractions. Those of you I chat to on msn might have noticed I was absent most of this month too. It's good to refocus on the job, and after January's great start / dodgy finish, and Feb's month off, I needed to put in some quality hours. Specifically, I had some ideas whilst I was away that I wanted to test out. Not only that, but it was time to regain composure and step away from any grip my ego may or may not have had over my trading and posting on here. Time to get down to business in other words.
And the results
have spoken for themselves, since my return from my month off in Feb the Punt.com fund is up almost 50%. Great, but there's a long way to go this year, and I want to keep playing ''tight and right' (a new mantra is bor
Books written by tennis players that would never sell! 2007-04-04 12:48:16 Credit for this must go to "cyclingfan" from the Betfair forum.
Closing Out Matches Succesfully -- Paul-Henri Mathieu, foreword by Andreas Seppi
The Joy of Sunbathing -- Felix Mantilla
Respecting Your Colleagues -- Ivan Ljubicic
How To Maintain Your Self-Confidence -- James Blake, with contributions by Christophe Rochus
How To Gain An Early Lead -- David Nalbandian
How to Build On Early Success -- Tomas Berdych
Keeping Healthy And Fit -- Joachim Johansson, with a special women's section by Maria Sharapova
Earning Your Way To Success -- Donald Young
The Beauty of Tennis -- Gilles Simon
Keeping Focused On Your Game -- Dimitry Tursunov
Fullfilling Your Potential -- Marat Safin
Enjoying Early Retirement -- Willy Canas
Making A Formidable Impression -- Olivier Rochus
How To Win Tennis Matches -- Christophe Rochus
Finding Pleasure And Satisfaction In Your Work -- Gaston Gaudio
Conserving Your Energy -- Gael Monfils
Fashionable Hairstyles 2007 -- Juan Martin Del Po Read more:Books
, written
Markets mirror life. 2007-04-03 11:29:43 As a professional gambler / trader, I watch a lot of markets... for many hours. After a while you begin to see a pattern emerging. If not consciously, then subconsciously you are taking in action that has a strange sense of repitition to it.
Being a tennis trader, I often comment to friends about the story of a match, and how often we see a similar "story". The same goes for markets. But what is this story really? What are these patterns that give us a sense of deja vu?
When I began my trading career (a "career gambler" - I love it!), I read a book called "Reminiscenses of a Stock Operator" (link of left side of the site). I'll make a post specifically about the book in more detail another time, suffice to say this is an incredible book and I highly recommend it to anyone trading anything. But the point I want to make here is that it's set some 80+ years ago, yet all of the points it makes are still rele Read more:Markets
Opinion prison. 2007-03-27 15:02:03 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
Serena Williams loses weight. (you read it right) 2007-03-27 12:52:11 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.
Read more:Williams
, Serena Williams
Well done Roger Federer! 2007-05-20 09:47:23 Roger Federer ends Nadal's 81 match win streak, with an incredible display. Maybe he has me to thank, 1.38 a gift I thought on Nadal at the start, and for a while it looked like it was. Rafa took the first set 6-2, plenty of errors and frustration from Roger.
Something happened in the 2nd set however. Patience arrived in the form of a gently played backhand return of serve from Roger. It looked fairly innocuous, but as Rafa hit more and more serves to it, Roger built a solid rhythm from it, slowly gained confidence and built a platform from which to build a rally and get chances to unload progressively harder on his forehand. And what a forehand. As Peter Fleming commented, the forehand had been on vacation for 3 weeks, it was back and it was huge, particularly the off forehand.
Question marks arise about whether Rafael was tired, in my opinion he only looked tired at 4-0 down in the final set. Very few errors from Roger as he ran out Read more:Roger
Punt.com spring cleaning. 2007-05-25 06:34:00 Decided to have a tidy up of the site design, add a little colour to it, smarten it up. My intention for the blog was always to have the content as the main focus, hopefully this is still the case. It's a work in progress, fonts, banners and sidebar items are still undergoing changes.
Betfair's New Commission Rates. 2007-05-24 17:03:19 Yesterday Betfair
announced that it would be raising it's commission rates. For those that don't know, here's an explaination of their rate system.. This, predictably, hasn't gone down too well amongst the customers, myself included - nobody likes a price hike do they ?
Taking a look at the new pricing structure, it would appear on average that most people are 6-8% worse off. Personally I'm probably between 3 and 5%, having worked my way over the 100,000 commission points fairly regularly, they've been fairly lenient at this far end of the scale compared to the majority of the core user base.
I had a lengthy call with my premium account manager earlier today about the increases. He was in a fairly stressed mood, they are all run off their feet replying to and calling customers about the increase. There was some interesting stuff to come out of the call.
The main reason he called was due to a post I made about the customer service needing to improv Read more:Commission
, Rates
David Beckham 6/4 NOT to play entire England v Brazil match. 2007-05-28 10:53:41 At the risk of sounding too much like the Kicking Bets blog, I thought this was a great bet. William Hill had this price this afternoon, I'm not sure how long it had been there, but it got taken down swiftly after I had £800 on, hardly a large exposure for them, being the big company that they are.
This is the first bet I've had with a bookmaker outside of Betfair for a long time. I used to place a lot of bets with various companies until one by one they began cutting down the amount I was allowed to bet and sometimes asking me to stop betting altogether. I've been very lucky to get this bet on. I did want much more on that this, but it was all they were willing to lay. I would be very surprised if Beckham
wasn't subbed at some point.. Either way, I'm going to this match, so it'll be fun cheering for Becks to be taken off. Decent odds for a fun punt.
Read more:David
, entire
, England
, Brazil
, David Beckham
Wet start to French Open. 2007-05-27 15:02:46 I hate rain at tennis tournaments. Luckily though, I had the family round this morning so I wouldn't have been able to trade anyway... So it was most welcome earlier on. Grand Slam tournaments are always cause for excitement and expectation in these parts. 2 weeks of unlimited trading and punting opportunities, with lots of liquidity in the markets and plenty of new tennis punters fancying their chances.
This years French
is going to be all about setting up another Fed / Nadal final, it's the match everyone wants to see. In the women's there's interest to see if Serena can continue a run at the Grand Slam, she's by no means a favourite and a slow start in her first match today might suggest she will struggle. It offered up my first trade of the tournament however, with a back of Serena as the market paniced with her a set down. Thankfully she got into gear and took the next two easily enough.
I'm not a big outright winner fan. I rarely
Andy Roddick and Men's Fitness, photoshop shocker. 2007-05-27 14:45:47 For a while now I've felt Roddick
was looking trimmer on court. I can't remember where it was when I first noticed it, but in my opinion he's looked leaner than he has for a while. ...But not quite this lean! Just how small does his head look compared to his chest and arms ?! 'Andy... suck your stomach right in.. and tilt your head back a bit, we'll edit out the double chin and enlarge the rest...' You can find the full article here.
Read more:shocker
, Andy Roddick
Get disgusted for fast results. 2007-05-31 17:57:25 I've been doing some thinking about my performance this week and relating it back through my 5+ years of trading. Specifically about the way I relate to risk, how I deal with taking the risks and the way this has changed during this period. This may well turn into a very random ramble, but a few things have occured to me and I just wanted to get them onto the blog, hopefully it will be of some interest, if only to myself.
Let's start with this week. I got off to a great start, my first match I racked up a fairly nice win by anyone's standards. It was the perfect match and the perfect start to the French Open fortnight. But since that moment until yesterday lunchtime things took a downward turn, I jumped into positions without thought, my mind was scrambled with the myriad of options available to me and I quite literally lumped on anything that vaguely resembled a tennis player with a good price and an easy to remember name. Note here that I was a Read more:results
French Open trading update. 2007-05-31 10:48:18 It's been a strange week for me so far. A lot of losses, some good wins but overall I'm roughly level. It's been stop / start with both the weather and my P/L, tough to get a rhythm going and tough to read the play. My trading and my brain have been in a bit of a muddle because of this I've been struggling to get things in order.
One part of this is down to the sheer number of matches going on. I'm a fairly experienced trader these days, but I still get into a mess when there's so many matches to look at. It's a case of being distracted too much... I might just be able to trade 2 matches at the same time.. but 3 or 4 is too many and I end up taking a position and not managing it correctly. Which is actually what's going wrong when I'm trading one match at a time anyway.
There's been a lot of momentum changes in the matches so far. It's been tricky getting used to 5 set matches instead of 3, there's a lot of conserving of en Read more:French
French Open Quarter Finals 2007-06-05 03:18:14 The French
Open Quarter finals begin today with some mouthwatering clashes, including the eagerly anticipated match between Serena Williams and Justine Henin. This is a replay of the 2003 semi final in which the French Open crowd gave Williams perhaps their harshest treatment in recent years - they love a good booing... this is of course when they can be bothered to turn up to watch their Grand Slam - empty seats a-plenty at Roland Garros for the early matches, it seems a case of Food over French Open..
Ana Ivanovic is up first (in the empty stadium) against Svetlana Kuznetsova. Ivanovic is on something of a roll at the moment. It appears a lot of the shots she normally hits long of the baseline are somehow dropping in, and that's dangerous - cos she hit's that ball rather hard. 2.76 is her price for this match, might turn out to be value. No bet yet though, she's inexperienced at this stage of Grand Slams, Kuznetsova isn't, and can I honestly b
Sizing up your opponents. 2007-06-04 17:12:21 There's a tendency among traders and gamblers to just see the prices and the volumes. It's something I sometimes get caught up in. We're all on an endless lookout for value prices, but what about the people behind the prices we're looking at. Who are they ? And why are they offering that price ? How often do we actually acknowledge their existence on another computer somewhere, betting against us, or with us...
These are very valid questions, ones you can't afford to ignore. We all know there's a variety of different types of punters and levels of skill. On a more basic level, there are winners and losers. Putting it slightly obviously, you want to be betting against losers (and with the winners)!
Whether you are a trader or gambler, there's a series of questions you ask yourself about each situation before you come to a decision about a bet or trade. Among these questions should be, why has this person made this bet or off Read more:Sizing
Nadal wins the French Open. 2007-06-10 11:39:59 Rafael Nadal
took the French
Open, beating Roger Federer in 4 disappointing sets. Neither player playing at their best, it was Roger that played the worse of the two, clocking up an incredible 60 unforced errors compared to Nadal's 28 - Roger had no chance to win giving his opponent this many points. A match that was so eagerly anticipated was stunted by player nerves, Nadal conquered his, Roger never did get rid of his fully.
There were the predictable great points and flashes of brilliance, but these were few and far between. The market for this was understandibly expecting the flow of unforced errors from Roger to slow, and for a while they did. In taking the 2nd set, the market looked poised to go all in on Roger, but it wasn't to be and the poor play returned.
As often is the case, Break Point stats tell a story. In the first set Roger was unbelievably 0/10 ! Nadal... 2/2. Roger finished the match 1/17, Nadal 4/10.
Expect the unexpected. 2007-06-16 07:34:33 There comes a time, inevitably, when you get on a bad run. Mistakes are made and occasionally you are plain unlucky, or so it would seem. Either way, it's in the face of a bad run of results (and the losses that come with it) that you need to remain positive in the way you view markets.
It's easy to get down, particularly when there's a serious amount of money involved. You can dwell on it too much. Dwelling leads to a need to make back that lost money, but it also leads to confusion and fear of losing more money. It's the later we're looking at in this entry.
Fear can do funny things to a trader. It masks sensible thought patterns. It clutters your head with conflicting messages about market activity, distorting your views. You second guess everything and suddenly your trading plan is being questioned or even worse, forgotten about.
It's quite incredible the difference between a confident trader and one who is racked with fear.& Read more:Expect
Foolish zen. 2007-06-20 11:26:21 A long time ago I subscribed to Fool.co.uk's daily news letter. I don't normally read them much these days, they arrive in my inbox and I just delete, but one came by the other day that I thought had some good words in it. Those that have read here for a while will know my liking for all things zen, especially relating to trading. This article by them - Zen and the art of portfolio maintenance, has some points relevant for investors and traders / gamblers alike. Namely, seeing doing nothing as doing something - in other words don't over-trade.
It's not a long article, but is worth a quick glance.. Quote: "It's a busy, fast-moving world. Sometimes, you feel the need to be dynamic, to keep pace with life; in short, to do something. As far as investments are concerned, this is a fundamental mistake many of us make regularly...."
Read more:Foolish
Wimbledon 2007 2007-06-27 01:46:22 It's here! Wimbledon
is by far the most fun tournament of the year for me. It's close to home, it happens during the daytime, it's on terrestrial tv and interactive and the green of the grass is most refreshing.
I was lucky enough to go and watch the first days play, my second time to Wimbledon. Apart from the rain it was great. We had centre court and ground passes, though I have to say if you ever get the chance it's well worth getting a ground pass on it's own, or a court 2 ticket. You are extremely close to the players, sometimes on both sides of you (stood between courts).
Not too many thoughts on play so far, I have one play on the outrights and that was entered into a couple of weeks ago. I have Henin at 3.7 on average, I began backing her at 3.9 and kept doing so. The major obstacle in her way is Serena Williams, who she meets in the Quarter finals if they both make it that far. I was able to watch Serena on Monday, she loo
Tennis lookalikes. 2007-06-30 11:29:00 Rain at wimbledon. It's boring. So, some tennis lookalikes to pass the time, some are a bit of a stretch, but work with me...
Novak Djokovic & Screech Powers of Saved by the Bell.
Justine Henin & Champion Jockey Tony McCoy.
Roger Federer & Golfer Johan Edfors.
Shahar Peer & Bagpuss.
Ana Ivanovic & Bad Guy "Jaws" from Moonraker.
Read more:Tennis
Over-staking, the route to fear and over-trading. 2007-06-28 16:20:29 I want to expand on something I posted in my chart patterns entry where I mentioned that I got too heavily involved on Roddick at short odds. Firstly let me say that I don't have a problem getting on something that's short odds, if it represents a good bet / position, then I'm going to take it regardless (though I do drawn the line at backing at 03 or less usually - it's needless effort for little reward). What I did in the Roddick match however, has made a dangerous mental trap much clearer to me, and this weeks trading has been much more fruitful because of this.
I had the realisation that had I not overstaked on Roddick at those odds I would not have felt the urge to mess around with the position later on - cutting my loss, then beginning to trading at a higher frequency without much thought to make back the loss.
This might seem pretty obvious, but the actual nature of the problem has really hit home for me this week. Over-stake past your threshold and you o Read more:route
Wimbledon Update 2007-07-07 07:42:00 A quiet week on Punt.com - I've been busy! Making money for a change, these last 3 weeks have seen me make back all (and more) that I had lost in the previous 6/7 weeks which is a real confidence builder for the rest of the year.
The big thing for me have been my findings as posted in the over staking entry (2 below this). Trading to a size where I'm ok to lose, no anxiety and buzz. There's also been a couple of max bet situations that have arisen, namely Serena's match v Hantuchova where she cramped and then it rained. I took a view that she would be fine after the rain and pretty much ran this hrough. Over 7000 commission points were gained from this win alone.
The rain has affected things massively this year. From a trading point of view, the flow of matches has been interupted, it's meant virtually restarting the match each time. Running positions has been a bit risky. It's a real shame as well that many top quality matches ha Read more:Wimbledon
, Update
Back from a well deserved break. 2007-07-15 14:12:40 First post since arriving back from my week away, which was much needed / deserved and enjoyed. I missed the Men's Wimbledon final and the Women's mostly too as I went out on that Saturday afternoon, Venus and Roger winning as expected.
It's always a little strange taking a break immediately after 2/3 months of solid work - mostly 6 days a week, sometimes 7. I've been placing large bets for all that time and to not have a bet or even look at the internet for that time is very strange. It felt like I was missing something for the first 2/3 days at least, but as relaxtion mode kicked in, I began to enjoy not doing it. Now that I'm back I have an odd mix of feelings... I'd definitely like to be back in the sunshine and not working again, but I'm also fresh and ready to get into the hard court season.
I also have that nagging feeling (having spent 7 days with some great people all with 'normal' lives and jobs) that I'm a bit of an outsider and perhaps I
Blog downtime and Las Vegas. 2007-07-26 03:39:36 Apologies to those of you that may have tried to visit the blog recently and found it unavailable, there was a power outage at Typepad HQ, so everyone using their platform suffered. Hopefully that's all sorted now..
I've not been betting much over the last 2 weeks, taking that holiday has changed my gear somewhat, so I've been relaxing away from the computer a bit, getting addicted to facebook and getting a haircut.
Which leads me to an interesting chat I had with my barber who is going to Las Vegas
on his holiday. He knows what I do, so my visit was full of questions about gambling and casinos. I've always known that professional gamblers and the general public have very difffering ideas on gambling, but it was a very interesting conversation that highlighted them all pretty much..
Questions about the best tactics on Roulette !? Which games he can win on, whether I would play Slot machines !
Now, I know there are people out there convinced they c
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