New year, same spreadsheet. I've written every bet down since I started taking this seriously, and this month I've tidied the whole thing up so it's one book, one set of rules, and a running total I can't argue with.
The reason is simple. Memory is a liar. Ask any punter how his year went and he'll tell you about the 7/1 shot that got him out of trouble at Kempton. He won't tell you about the eleven short ones that didn't. I'm the same, which is why I don't trust myself with it.
So the book does the remembering. Every bet goes in with the date, the course, the horse, the price I got and what it returned after commission. Not what I meant to have on, what I had on. If I talked myself out of a bet at the last minute, it doesn't go in, however it ran (that one still stings).
The other thing I've done is settle the bank. Forty points, and a point is whatever you decide it is. For me a point is £100, so the bank is £4,000, and that's money that sits in the Betfair account and nowhere else. It doesn't pay for anything. It isn't topped up when it's low. If it ever got to nothing I'd stop, and that's the whole reason for having one.
Why forty. Because the worst run I've had in the last few years was about ten points, and I want the bank to take four of those in a row before it worries me. A bank you can lose in a bad fortnight isn't a bank, it's a stake.
Stakes come out of the same book. A win bet is a point. A place bet is a quarter, or a half if I'm keen. Nothing is ever doubled up to get back what Saturday took. That rule has cost me money on days I was right, and saved me far more on the days I wasn't.
I'll put the figures up here from time to time, good months and bad. The bad ones are the useful ones. If you'd rather have the book kept for you, that's what members get, one page a morning.
Lee
PS: if you keep your own book, write the losers in the same ink as the winners. It's the only way it stays honest.
Update, 13 January 2025. A year on, the first year of the book is written up here. 687 bets, 54 points. The bank is now forty five.
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More from the notebook: Points, not pounds · Royal Ascot, the week I watch