April Gloom

I'm in one of those 'can't do anything right' runs at the moment. That's not actually totally accurate, but the bigger investments are all going wrong right now, while the smaller ones win at the usual rate. The bottom line is that having not had a losing month since April 2009, I am on course for another poor April, but plenty of days left to turn things around.

It's silly season in the NBA, with teams resting star players as I wrote about a few days ago, and early days in the MLB where only the San Francisco Giants remain undefeated, and only the Houston Astros remain winless. Tiger Woods is performing better than I thought he might in the Masters, (fav at 3.6) and Darren Barker has just won me a small amount at a massive 1.15 by beating Monsieur Affif Belghecham. Boxing is not one of my sports, but after trading at 1.01 early on, the market seemed to overreact with its subsequent drift.

A little old, but this article about the Betfair 'Front Room Five' in the Guardian amused me:

Maybe my irritation levels are at a caffeine-related high, but my big problem with the Betfair ads is that friends simply do not sit around on sofas talking like that in real life. People without friends might, when they call radio phone-in shows. One might even talk about football in this stilted fashion to make conversation with the newsagent; but if I know someone well enough to be invited into his front room and share his lovely sofa, and then he starts bending my ear about whether Manchester City have the strength in depth to make a late run for the top four, I start wondering whether it might not have been a better plan to stay at home and sort out my sock drawer.

The people behind the campaign say it underlines what ad men like to call the proposition; that Betfair is the closest thing in the industry to striking a bet with a mate. Up to a point, yes, but your mate is unlikely to ask for three different identification documents, proving address and credit-worthiness, and will probably also not try and interest you in his highly-addictive Casino Games, giving you the opportunity to take your gambling to what the Front Room Five would undoubtedly call the next level.