Mistakes and annoyance

[LeTiss]

Yes, good point Mr White - I suppose the losses tend to stick in the throat, so they are harder to swallow than a mistake that results in a winner.

There's an elemnt of kidology there - when a mistake results in a lucky winner, it's easy to convince yourself that you're heading in the right direction

Also, if you've made the awful mistake of going in play with, say a £500 stake - if the market moves where you want, you may just bail out for a scratch trade, or a marginal profit, but when it goes the wrong way, you lose £500! Ouch!

[ruthlessimon]

Angels15's comment raises an interesting point. Why do so many so called mistakes result in a loss? If it's a genuine mistake then they'd surely balance out

Whether it's worse than loosing the spread every-time is an interesting dilemma

Be interesting to calc: 100 random trades (i.e. mistakes), consistently held to a defined exit (i.e. SP or a straight punt), vs. a guaranteed 1 tick loss everytime.

Problem is, I reckon most conventional errors, for me (forget bad edge errors for the mo ) are staking related (cos BA can't calc it inhouse ), & those types of errors are never consistent. Hence why I've always gone for the guaranteed 1 tick loss

[ANGELS15]

Angels15's comment raises an interesting point. Why do so many so called mistakes result in a loss? If it's a genuine mistake then they'd surely balance out, but I guess the ones that lost are more memorable. The other 'mistakes' like going in-play unplanned only get thought of as mistakes when it doesn't work out well, otherwise they're remembered as good decisions.

The category of mistake I sometimes fall foul of it what I call 'heavy finger'. My mouse pointer will be over a button, I relax for a while maybe a little sleepy and.... CLICK. My hand has relaxed too to the point where the weight of my finger has overcome the resistance of the mouse button and I'm suddenly involved.

I also occasionally make literally a 'fat finger' mistake usually entailing clicking the wrong stake button on the betfair mobile app or laying instead of backing. On one occasion I had about £2k in the account and wanted to back a an outsider for £50 prior to a race intending to place some lay bets to keep in running. I placed the bet then went to place the lay bets only to realise I only had £50 in the account! I had laid for £50! There was a huge jump to the best lay offer I was frantically trying to work out what to do with the race about to go off when to my relief the horse was withdrawn at the start. However there have been times when I've touched the wrong stake button and there's been no way back resulting in a heavy loss. These are of course extremely rare incidents.

[LeTiss]

I made a mistake last night, which I have made in the past.

I employ differing tactics on differing markets, with regards to whether I 'Offset with greening' or not - sometimes I will use the fill or kill, obviously having the offset triggered only when my first bet is being matched. Whereas, sometimes I'll not use the fill or kill, and just offset both bets together.

I toggle through these different tactics that I have saved, and occasionally I forget to change it from a previous bet. I did this last night on I'm a Celebrity. Silly mistake, cost me £12 to 'red up' - just a lack of concentration

[stueytrader]

Glad to hear it's not just me then, we share the pain at times!

[Derek27]

Made a daft mistake this afternoon, trading 20 minutes after I've got out of bed is never a good idea. Should have checked my emails, done some admin, given my brain time to warm up. Regret not saving the chart of the horse that rocketed to the moon but I'm sure I wouldn't have been on the wrong end of it if I was fully awake.

[stueytrader]

Had to bring up my old thread here again, after a market I traded yesterday.

Was looking at laying a specific selection both pre race and inplay (it was fairly short so quite fancied too).

I had a decent enough lay in pre race, but planned to add during inplay based on my judgements of events. It pulled a bit hard early over the chase race, decent length of race too. Then I laid a bit more when the jock started whacking away early again as it drifted out wide round a bend - all good for sure! I was laying, but the price actually went shorter - madness, give me the money.

Only when they were getting into slightly later part of the race - I'm looking at the wrong selection (pink colours, but the one I'm laying is the one in front, not the one dropping back). Oh well I think, I planned for it to weaken late in any case - not a chance of course.

Not a massive disaster or mistake, but I'd added about 80% to my original lay and of course lost it - due to looking at the wrong damn animal during the race - the stupid thing was, the one I was actually laying was a grey, so stood out a mile...or should have done!