You win some, you lose some

One of those up and down weeks which kept swinging to and fro on the betting front. Started off on a poor note as I was still recovering from being bedridden all last Friday and perhaps being starved of action for 24 hours, flung myself into a few bets without really researching them too well, which usually only results in one outcome, empty pockets for a while!!
Certainly taking 1/2 for Shelbourne Aston in the second round heat of the John Casey Open didnt do the coffers any good and as the dog was baulked and could only stay on into fourth place, I also lost the 5/2 outright market bet too unless there are two withdrawals come Saturday's semi finals (in which case he would take his place as one of the reserves).
The other ante post market bets at much bigger prices (Jimmy Doodlebeag and The Other Achill) both actually won their heats but went unbacked at decent odds, they still have their work cut out in the semis though as only two qualify from the three heats which is a bit cut-throat in a high quality event like this.
In Sky's Tuesday night action, as I half expected Romeo Maldini confirmed his recent lacklustre displays in finishing out of the money in the Prestige Stakes, the way he ran the last three times seemed to imply he wasn't handling the track at Hall Green too well but he had won well there prior to this event so it was all rather puzzling. Also my small stakes outsider failed to make the top three so all the outright market money drew a blank in this one.
It wasnt all doom and gloom however and on the supporting card I managed to back a couple of winners Capel Wilson and Swift Jade both at 6/4. The latter looked a bit of a rogue in that she swept up to the leaders at a hundred miles an hour (OK a slight exaggeration!) a couple of bends from home but then seemed quite content to run alongside the other prominent dog so in the end it was a headbob on the line, though luckily it went in my favour.
As I speak I've since backed three winners and a runner up since then with Gorteen Dancer (2/1), Midway Skipper (4/6) and Birchwood Sylv (3/1) obliging and Vatican Skye being rather unlucky in scrimmaging before a strong finishing second at 2/1.
Looking at the ice hockey I've still maintained an upward trend though it has only been a gradual success rate this week, I probably staked too much on one of the unsuccessful doubles I had which set me back a bit but have managed six out of nine winners overall, though all of them at odds on admittedly. In fact was up until 3am last night watching some of the online streams though not sure it was worthwhile in the end as I fnished £25 up for the night!!
As for the Masters snooker the two match bets were landed as Ding beat Murphy at odds against with a 6-4 win for the Chinese plus Ali Carter as expected had little trouble in disposing of Peter Ebdon which now means the h2h for that particular matchup is 7-0 to the man from Tiptree.
Have followed up with a smaller bet on him to beat his nemesis Ronnie O Sullivan tonight, who he trails 10-0 in h2h. Admittedly it looks a tall order in front of the Rocket's very own partisan crowd, but so impressive was Carter in the last round the 15/8 for this match looked too tempting, plus Ronnie is playing with a new cue in this event which may be a slight inconvenience to the great man (not sure if it would be that markedly different in all honesty given the cuemaking technology at hand nowadays).
Ding unfortunately bowed out of my outright portfolio with a 6-4 defeat to John Higgins last night in a high quality encounter, certainly there was lots of encouragement to be had in defeat for him and John probably played to his most consistent standard for a couple of years in that match so disgrace there.
Our own snooker team won our re-arranged match 3-2 in midweek so we go outright fourth in the local league (in the end we were two players short through illness and unavailability and we brought in a couple of decent reserves anyway). I actually whitewashed my opponent for the first time I can recall in all my matches over many years but we did get some bad news that we had narrowly missed out on qualification for the semi finals of the cup competition despite all three teams in our group winning one game each.
The Clough Revolution hopefully continues apace tomorrow afternoon when Derby entertain Queens Park Rangers at Pride Park, given the likely atmosphere around his first actual match in the boxseat I think the wave of euphoria might carry them through to another victory and I've taken the 2.48 available on the Daq for the Rams (minus commission).
Thats all for now, onwards and upwards
Rick