25/05/2009

Seriously, seriously, seriously annoyed. Made a right mess of all three darts matches tonight, doing stupid things too, no complaints with players or luck or anything, just me being useless. The most annoying thing is it was a good day up until the darts started.

Nothing annoys me more than being on a player or team, switching half way through, and then the first one you fancied wins. I cant explain how annoying that is. That happened in the first game, Wade v Barney - fancied Wade but Barney kept sticking in there and just laid wade at higher odds than I backed to have zero on Barney, he looked like winning too but for Wade to come back. Then second game, got on Taylor at around 1.8 or so and then laid King at 1.3, I honestly thought King was going to bottle it, or at least Taylor to go through a few gears but he wasnt good enough and fair played to King. In the final after King beating Wade twice in the earlier weeks, with him being over 2/1 to beat Wade again, I had to back King, it was over pretty quickly though with Wade going 5-0 up. As I said, no complaints with how each of them played or bad luck, it was my fault and my fault only.

The only small thing to come out of it is it does focus your mind not to be an eejet again. Its hard to stop and think in running, in a fast moving game with the odds flying about this way and that. Its easy to not think what youre doing. Sometimes its best to leave bets run until the end, thats against my nature though because naturally I look to play in running nearly all the time. I think its important to decide what to do before having the bet, wether to go in running to lay off or reduce loss, or just leave it run. I didnt have a 100% plan what to do in my head tonight and I paid for it. It'll be a long time before it happens again though.

On a better note, the cricket went well, first day of the English 20/20 season and I was delighted with how it went, managed to be €140 all green during the first innings. Looking forward to the England game tomorrow, reckon who gets to bat first will have a big effect on who wins, or at least West Indies might even look like coming close to winning a game.

Cricket: EUR134.35 | Darts: -EUR341.12 | Horse Racing: -EUR9.60 | Tennis: EUR5.29 Total P&L: -EUR211.08

I know I've had worse losing days on the challenge, but it really is all about how you lose and today was poor, very poor. Its easy to make excuses and blame stuff but theres a way of doing things and just feel I let myself down tonight, just stupidity - I hate stupidity. But anyway no need to be depressed about it, its not the end of the world and it'll be forgotten about in an hour or so, and onwards to tomorrow with no darts.