Moving The Goalposts

With a couple of big anniversaries coming up later this month, I took a look back at March 2008 when I started this blog on the eve of my 51st birthday. Those of you with an aptitude for numbers, which is hopefully all of you, will realise that this means I am now on the verge of 65, an age which used to mean being an "old age pensioner" and it's little comfort that I technically still have another year before achieving that milestone in life.

I've mentioned retirement more than once in this blog, and in fact 14 years ago, back in March 2008 when I set up this blog I wrote in my profile:

I am at that age where I can start thinking about retirement and anything I make from trading sports will bring that day forward.

"Bringing that day forward" hasn't yet happened, although since I never specified a date I was looking to bring forward, maybe there's still a chance I can claim to have achieved this goal. Of course, what happens in life is that the goalposts keep moving.

While we may think that when we achieve a certain net worth, we will retire, maybe travel for a while and live happily ever after, the reality is that if we are fortunate enough to hit that number, we realise it's not the finishing line we thought it was, and we set our sights on a new one.

Personal circumstances are defined by Collins as "the conditions of your life, especially the amount of money that you have" and as the term suggests, they are not the same for everyone. For myself, I'm fortunate in that I can now stop working anytime I choose, but for now I'm in good health and being paid silly money for the amount of work I do, and with travel placed on hold for the past two years I'm quite happy to carry on "working".

I am, however, well aware of the saying that "life is what happens when you're busy making plans" - and no, it wasn't John Lennon who originally came up with that insightful quote, dating back as it does to at least 1957 which I might add, was a vintage year. 

A couple of years ago I did mention the subject of possible retirement to a former boss, who remarked that I shouldn't retire FROM something, but TO something. That was good advice, and with a pandemic arriving shortly after that conversation, I'm glad I held off on pulling that trigger since travel would have been seriously restricted. 

Before I get to the betting updates, a couple of observations about that first blog post almost 14 years ago. The first is that my very first comment was from the inspirational Graeme Dand who wrote:

I have no idea whether this Tiger guy won or lost, or indeed whether Graeme ever did spend more time on golf, but a Tiger Woods finished the Masters that year as runner-up to Trevor Immelman. When I first started tracking my sports investing in 2006, Golf was actually my top sport that first year but by the time I started the blog, MLB and NBA had taken over.

As many of you know, Graeme is currently dealing with more important issues than sports betting, and I encourage you to follow him on Twitter even if you don't care about horse-racing as much as Graeme does, which is a lot. 

It was looking like the MLB season might be shortened this year but the dispute between players and owners was resolved last week with a full 162 game season in tact, albeit starting a week later than originally scheduled. 

Unfortunately with the Killer Sports MLB page currently not working, my participation may be somewhat limited, but if you are playing, note that the National League will be adopting the Designated Hitter rule, extra innings will no longer start with a runner on second, and doubleheader games will be the full nine innings.   

After a few days away travelling for work, I thought I'd wait for this weekend's EPL games to complete before updating the numbers, and as I cautioned back in January, finding Draws in March is historically very tough, and this season appears to be following the same pattern with March nothing short of a disaster!  

If you took heed and lowered your stakes, well done. If you lowered them to zero, well done indeed. It was a fortuitous time to have a work trip. Why is the first quarter of a year so bad? Logically it does make sense that with teams playing each other for a second time, the market should be more efficient, but the consistent drop off over 22 years is still surprising. 

In European competition, in Second Leg matches where the Home team has more than a one goal lead from the First Leg the value historically is on the Away team, and neither Liverpool (v Internazionale) or Manchester City (v Sporting) won their Second Leg matches from this position last week, although City were able to Draw. 

There is also an edge on the Away team when the First Leg was a Draw, (10.25% ROI from 219 matches), but Bayern Munich were 1.19 to beat Salzburg and the edge isn't there on matches with a hot favourite.