Sunday, October 25, 2009

I don't owe Stoner a beer. Or a case. I owe him a beer truck.

As you may be aware, I do punt occasionally on the results of the MotoGP. And, more often than not I win out.

Today I had a good day. I had decided, on the way to the net parlour to actually work out my winnings (I only knew them, I thought, +/- $500, which you might have noticed is a fair margin of uncertainty), that I was going to tweet that "the only thing more absurd than the volume of my winnings is the consistency."

And the latter certainly is absurd. One sad night in Darwin I lost $450 on qualifying - since then, there has been one race and two race weekends, making five sessions all up, and I've come up positive in every one of them. No single win is really worthy of going to town over. Wagering is 'investment' after all, and what counts is long-term average returns. (Or, at least that's what I try to tell myself when I lose.) But having a run of five sessions in the black is impressive indeed, and well worthy of celebration!

The tweet isn't going to happen, however, because I didn't realise exactly what my position was... see with Betfair you can either match offered bets, or offer your own to match - a lot of uncertainty often hinges on the unmatched bets you have offered. So I am dropped in to check... - on four markets (winner w/o 'top four', podium, top 6 and overall win), I had four positive results! And on the major one - the overall win - I... well, lets not hark on about my richness, but I had more money behind Stoner than I realised (and at better odds!).

So, now that I have vented (it still doesn't feel real, and I still don't know how to celebrate), I will make a point. I've won, and done so surprisingly consistently, with a fair bit of luck, but even more with hard work. Or 'hard', I should say - really, it's easy to read timesheets.

Today I made about the most comprehensive readings of times of my punting history, and I think it is a good system - well worth repeating. For the sake of illustration, the notes I made thismorning:

FP1:
Stoner fastest partial
Rossi fastest early - first outing (tyre work)

Elias, Dovi good pace
(Capi, Kallio, Hayden okay)
Edwards, Verm not hot

FP2:
Stoner again fastest partial - possibly also best pace
Pedrosa no good runs
Rossi good pace (not as good as Stoner's)
Lorenzo okay late run

Edwards, Kallio (good part), de Pun, de Ang, Mel good pace
Elias, Dovi, Capi okay
Hayden, Verm poor
Esp improving

QP:
Stoner again good partial (3rd)
- can't guage pace (only did short runs) - but could be excellent (Qtime was really early)
Ros: 1.8
Lor: 2.3
Ped: 1.9

Dovi good part - pace? appears hot (long runs: 2.3/5/7)
Cap 2.5
El 2.8
H 2.9
dP 3.2
Ed? 2.4?/3.5
deA 2.8
Kal 2.4 ?? - superhot



Of course, the most decisive information was the times from the morning warmup - I didn't take notes on that because I bet in real time. But, if I had had more money with the bookies (as opposed to Betfair - an exchange), I might have made notes on that too. (Long story short - with bookies you don't make money on the frontrunners.)

So, rather than jest that you should give me your money to multiply, you should give it a go.

Go on!

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@JohnSBaxter
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