Haven't got a clue!

It's really weird how some days you can form a reasonably solid opinion about events yet other days feel completely clueless. This is quite separate to getting it right or not, but just about having that opinion in the first place. I felt pretty sure about most matches last week, I got some right, some not, but at least I had a feel for them. Yet I've felt quite hapless since Monday, a sort of a numb feeling when looking at the lists of matches. Perhaps it's because last week a lot of the matches were streamed so we could see how the players were doing whereas this week so far it's just the scoreboard. Also it's still 1r with matches between the lower ranked players and qualifiers. Whatever the reason I've not been betting at all. It's reminiscent of the first week of Melbourne when I felt a similar numbness.

The results haven't been that unusual, however, the favs have been trotting up. Didn't write down the sp's on Tues, but on Weds 14/16 favs won, only Kanepi a short odds loser. The layers fared a bit better last night, with only 9/16 favs winning, a few short odds casualties - Safarova, Hradecka, Petkovic, Oudin, Shvedova.

Mind you, it's not just the tennis I've been feeling numb about, it's other sports as well. So I seem to have watched a lot of sport over the last few days without betting on any of it! Updates when I get some "feel" back.

Markets galore

Some will remember not so long ago how it was a struggle to get Betfair to put up some tennis markets. Going back a few years, I recall one notorious incident where Pova was playing Hingis in Tokyo on Hingis's return, it was live on Eurosport in the early hours and Betfair stolidly refused to add a market. Live on Eurosport, a high profile match and no market! So it's very droll to see them putting up markets for qualifiers now, though as I type midday Tuesday there still isn't a winner's market nor any first round match markets even though the draw has been out for some time!

The qualies pretty much seemed to run to form though I was done by Larcher de Brito taking out Kookie. Kookie had looked in good nick in Monterrey and de Brito hasn't come close to fulfilling the hype yet, so expected a Kookie win there. I was happy running a largish position as late as I could as Kookie often gets it done in 3, and I knew I had a big green coming from Arantxa Rus, who was the main bet of the night. Couldn't be bothered to stay up for the late matches.

I was going to insert a youtube of Larcher de Brito but her noise really is too much to bear!

Earlier I'd backed the draw Wigan vs Pool and held on a bit too long for a Pool equaliser that never came.
More qualies tonight and two CL matches.

Reverse Tilt?

Quite a chaotic weekend.

Going "on tilt", also known as chasing losses, is a well-known phenomenon among bettors, to be avoided at all costs. I'm not too prone to that, in fact any losses tend to make me stop and probably reduce stakes. But I am prone to what you might call a reverse tilt, upping the stakes when I have a win or three. This isn't quite as undesirable, as you're betting with profits, but it can lead to the also well-known boom and bust cycle whereby the initial bank will be increased dramatically only to be lost back again in short order.

Why do I mention this? Because I went on a bit of a reverse tilt over the weekend. But thankfully I've not lost it all back, nor have I any intention of so doing. Following the nice win on Dani on Friday, I was quite convinced Dani would come back and beat Cib, and similarly that Pav would do that to Dani once she loosened up in the final, and piled in on both. Most of the profits have been withdrawn and it's back to the usual stakes for tonight.

The chaos mentioned at the beginning was inflicted in the form of a nasty virus deposited on my PC from a justin.tv site. There I was idly watching a Davis Cup match when whammo! Popups everywhere. I've got so much anti-this and that on the PC that sometimes I think it grinds to a halt because of all the protection, but somehow this thing got through. So spent most of Sunday fixing that. Thankfully managed to get most things going again for the Final in Monterrey though I missed the rain-delayed semi and had to hedge out over the phone.

Other than the tennis, had a few bets on cricket and footie, not very successfully on the footie! And the bizarre run on the NHL continues - very odd, as I know nothing about the sport, merely have a look at the form on Covers.com.
Indian Wells qualies tonight - should be entertaining!