Up and running!

Going forwards I hope to write up what I’m planning to bet on in advance as much as possible and perhaps maybe even in real time sometimes. However, the first bet of the challenge was placed last night. The obvious contenders for the day were games involving Man Utd v Hull and Napoli v Spezia. However both teams were heavily odds on and as such the over 0.5 market would take a long time to come down to our level. The EFL Checkatrade trophy was also in progress but was a largely unknown territory for me in terms of working out if players had been rested or not. Plus, betting markets for these games seem to be minimal and in some cases not even available. In search of an alternative I landed on the French League Cup game between Ligue 2 outfit Sochaux and Monaco.

Whilst knowing little of Sochaux’s team, Monaco had put out a decent side. Valare Germain and Guido Carrillo both started up front. Whilst top scorer Falcao was on the bench, I saw this as some extra insurance – the tie needed to be settled tonight, and he would probably be involved at some point if Monaco needed a goal. Odds were not too ridiculous, kicking off at 1/16 for over 0.5 goals. This would drop to 1/10 fairly soon. Sure enough after 12 minutes, the odds hit and the tenner went on.

In what I hope is a good omen, we didn’t have to wait long at all for the deadlock to be broken. Yet it was Sochaux who went ahead on just 16 minutes. Our challenge was up and running within 4 minutes and we had made a £1 profit!

I was soon cursing myself for imposing a one bet a day rule on myself as the Man Utd game remained goalless long enough for 0.5 goal odds to tumble right down to 1/6. However, a lack of patience has been my downfall in this challenge before and I comforted myself with that fact as Juan Mata scored shortly after.

The main thing is that we are up and running and now have a pot of £11!