Monday 14 February 2011

Consideration


A winning weekend for Football Elite with both selections winning. Real Sociedad beat Osasuna at 2.2 and Valenciennes beat Brest at 2.1. After a torrid year to date, I'm sure these winners were very welcome for Matt. This weekend, I have added a couple of new blogs to the blog roll (and removed some dead ones) and one of the new ones is The Portfolio Investor which seems to have taken over in part from JP's old blog in that he uses a number of services for his bets, but I like that he adds a little commentary rather than simply list the P&L totals. He wrote a post called You gotta have faith in which he talks about Football Elite and what the best approach is during a bad run. Well worth a read.

My three strong draws produced two winners, and the ROI on these for 2011 is currently 25.53% with 7 winners from 19 picks (36.84%).

Rugby wasn't so good this weekend. England were too short to back, Scotland lost, while France were a winner but an overall loss for the weekend. And a small loss overall on the Super League opening weekend.

DA Points (I guess he doesn't think Darren is the best of names) won the golf at Pebble Beach to give me a small late night profit on the lay-the-leader after three rounds strategy, and that was about it for the weekend. A profitable week, which should have been better, but did I get the Total Charges up to the 20% level with the losers? That remains to be seen.

I seem to have mentioned the Utah Jazz a lot lately, and happened upon this piece about their former star Karl Malone:

Sportswriters who covered the National Basketball Association in the late 1980s and 1990s like to tell a story about Karl Malone, the great forward for the Utah Jazz. It seems that one day in the baggage-claim area of the Salt Lake City airport, a woman was trying to lift her bags from the carousel and, seeing Malone, who was there to pick up his brother from an arriving flight, mistook him for a skycap.

She asked him to carry her bags to her car.

Malone was a wealthy and world-famous athlete at the time. He could so easily have hurt the woman's feelings, rebuked her. But what did he do?

According to longtime Salt Lake Tribune sports reporter Steve Luhm, who covered the incident at the time and who confirmed it to me last week, Malone carried the woman's bags all the way to her car. Only when she reached for her purse to give him a tip did he in a friendly manner introduce himself and decline the offer.
I love hearing stories like this. A couple of friends of mine once found themselves dining in a restaurant in California along with John Travolta and Kelly Preston. Just the four of them in there, late at night, and the Hollywood stars invited my friends over to join them. Whatever you may think of their religious views (completely nuts), it's nice to know that they are decent, friendly, human beings. Other superstars do not have such a favourable reputation - with many NBA stars renowned for tipping badly for example.

As for DeMarcus Cousins, who allegedly took a swing at Sacramento Kings team-mate Donte Green for not passing him the ball in the last few seconds of their Saturday night game (they lost by two), this writer for one wouldn't miss him if he never played in the NBA again. Fifth overall draft pick he may have been, but he has a lot of growing up to do.

1 comment:

Joe said...

On the theme of growing up, do u think there is a prime age, within which traders blossom ? Or, ageing is actually a benefit, as what we lose in reaction time, we gain in maturity and balance ?

I am now 50, and still trade in-runing, where the ability to press a key quickly, is still needed . I can still compete, thou, sure, kids with playstation honed reflexes, shud be faster.

I think oldies are less likely to go on tilt - thou, obviously, we all still do.

I have seen a lot of kids, do their bankroll - but by the same criteria, have also won, more than thir share, due to a less caring attitude to risk.

Do u have any tights re the best age, for a trader ?

Mike