Well Dodged!!!
Well then! How's about that for ducking a bullet?!
That would have been a very nasty losing trade. Just goes to show that these reasons for avoiding a trade are not just as important as finding winning ones, they are MORE important. A 70 year old stock market veteran trader once said much the same thing to me along the lines of...
'Any idiot can find a winning trade. Even an ape can pick the future right half the time, when it can only go two ways. The secret to being successful is being able to avoid all but the very best, strongest, most secure trades. Turning down a borderline trade is probably the hardest thing any trader has to do, and it's the one thing which separates the pro sports traders from the rest.'
I will never forget the lessons I learned from him many years ago now. He spoke about how he only became successful when he consistently managed to switch off all his emotions and look at something in plain black and white, like a calculator looks at the numbers you punch in.
There is no place for feelings are hopes. I felt sure Molde would win that game. Even the stats suggested strongly that they would. But the risk v reward balance wasn't there, and this is precisely why every single part of the trading decision making process is as crucial as any other. In this case it saved me a full losing trade, or possibly worse, as after the dog scored, I don't know what the odds did but they could have dropped below the planned stop loss level, which is the nastiest kind of loss when you lay the draw, something I cover in almost painful detail in my lay the draw ebook.
Shortly after I posted the message about this game, I thought about it a bit more and realised there were as many arguments, perhaps even more, to suggest the right move was to back rather than lay the draw.
In effect, when you find strong reasons not to lay the draw, you're almost acknowledging that backing it might be the better trade, IF you HAD to trade (which of course we don't ever feel we have to trade).
I could have backed the draw at 4 near enough, just before HT. Just a 15 minute slot after HT without any goals (or that dog goal would have been a cracker) would have seen some healthy green in the bank.
It was actually a method I used a lot once upon a time, a method which I will explain fully at some point as it is viable (and could make a good addition to my Betfair ebooks), I just don't do it as much any more because I don't sit all day every day in front of livescore reports, but for those who do, it could be a very useful weapon in the arsenal, no pun intended 😀