Gulbis - Isner and some catching up

It's been a very busy week at work and I haven't had much time to trade or post updates on the blog. What I've been up to this week is two League One football matches Swindon - Wolves and Oldham - Rotherham, both of them gave a profit of €3 each. I backed the in form away teams monday evening and cashed out before lunch on tuesday with no drama.

Drama however on the Isner - Gulbis trade. I've been taking straight bets on Isner both v. Verdasco and Lu and been confident that the big serving US-HC loving Yank would be up for it and this has been 100% correct. He's been serving great, broken just once in three whole tennis matches. Verdasco, Lu and Davydenko aren't even poor returners but have managed to create among them just one break point (which Verdasco won). Gulbis on the other hand has been up and down as usual. Had a bad match v. Bautista-Agut, serving just above 50% and winning 62% of service points. This is poor because Gulbis is a big serving guy and can dominate rallies when he's on. On top of that he's not exactly great aganist the big servers because he can always throw in a bad service game in a mood swing and if you're playing Isner, Raonic, Karlovic or their likes that will most of the time equal a lost set.

With all of this in mind I became a little too confident and forgot that betting and trading are two separate things. Seeing Gulbis open at 1.80, a complete joke of a price IMO which I would never take. I had calculated the line for this match to be around evens with a slight lean towards Isner so obviously I placed a big lay bet for 1.80 on the Latvian, only to see odds fall down to 1.70 and even with some money traded in the high 60's. Which is absolute nonsense. Set to lose €18 unless the odds swung back 12 points I decided to lay again at a lower price and managed to get some juice matched at 1.69. This moved my breakeven point down to 1.76 from 1.80 and when odds started to move back up I sold off half my liability at 1.74. It's not uncommon for odds when odds move heavily in one direction and then start to move back that they go up to Fib. 32,8 (in this case around 1.74) and then turn back down again. This marked didn't and I could sell off the rest of my liability at 1.76.

I will leave a €3,5 red on Gulbis and €0 on Isner because I strongly believe he will win this tennis match. Usually I red out no matter what but when my own opinion so greatly differ from the market's I tend to value my own opinion higher. You win some, lose some and should I lose the extra Euro and a half then so be it.

Also I'd like to add the W.5 profit chart. Looking quite decent IMO. Every week has been positive total return of 11% in five weeks. Can't complain.