Not wanting to turn this into a daily health update but I’ve had a shocker through the night. Barely slept. Pain in my legs was unbearable. My legs were almost paralysed when I went to bed last night but struggled up the stairs taking baby steps. As soon as I was in bed, started getting shooting pains up my legs and it just got worse thru the night. First time I’ve suffered any pain since I left hospital but it was impossible to sleep. Painkillers did nothing. Ended up doing tomorrow’s racing as I just could not sleep.🤷‍♂️

TFA Betting Thread 3 - My learnings from the last 14 years of betting/trading.

I’ve been looking forward to this thread. 👍 Apologies for me spamming anyone’s timeline who isn’t interested in this or betting, just ignore it. 😬 Hopefully it’s an entertaining read but more importantly, I really hope some of the things I discuss can help people improve their betting or at the very least, reflect on what they do and ensure they are on the right path.

Here I am then, my 14th session of Chemo, 7 weeks after my last session. I said to Denise last night I can’t believe it has only been 7 weeks. Also shown how my portocath looks, healed very well and used for the first time today. 👍 It honestly feels like it’s been 3 or 4 months. Since my last Chemo, I’ve spent about 20% of the time in hospital, spent about 70% of the time on my back and the other 10% has probably been spent on the loo!

TFA Betting Thread 2 - My 14 months experience of being a subscription racing tipster

I’ll start by saying I don’t really know where this thread ends up or the purpose of the thread. I think it’s probably going to be an entertaining read and as I always try to do, I’ll try to throw in some educational pieces of info where I can.

TFA Betting Thread 1 - Placepots

Before I get into the nitty gritty of answering this topic, I want to take a trip down memory lane. Placepots were something I learned from my Dad. My Granda was pretty old school when it came to betting and Placepots were not his cup of tea. I remember getting into Placepots aged 8 or 9 as it was at this time my friend next door (Scott and a few years later his younger brother Barry to a lesser degree) started getting interested in racing.

I’ve completed the first of the 8 betting threads I wanted to write, the first one being about Placepots. As I said after the voting for the running order, surprised this won the vote as it’s a very dry topic and there is a lot of online material about Placepots easily accessible I received a few DMs explaining why people voted for this and this has helped shape the thread. I’ve written the thread as an educational piece for people with no knowledge of Placepots or a very limited knowledge.

No racing today. Slept for about 13hrs straight, body is really struggling at the moment. Suspect this round of Chemo has probably pushed me over the limit combined with everything going on at the end of last week. Struggling to walk and getting a lot of pain in feet and fingers. Generally just feel absolute rubbish to add to it and struggling to keep my eyes open. Trying my best but I actually feel like I’m dying. I know I’m not (hope not yet anyway 🥴) but this is tough. At least I slept all night, probably my best night’s sleep in donks!

Wednesday 18th March, 1998. I'm 16 years old and in my 4th year at high school. My favourite bets at the time were Placepots at big meetings as with the large fields, it was not unusual for the dividend to pay 4 figures, so doing a perm for 10p or 20p, you still got a nice return My standard level of stake back then was around £3-£5 a bet although my Granda would often go 'halvies' with me on the bets which he liked. Hence, he'd pay for it and take half of the profits!

My 13th round of Chemo today. Was close to not going ahead as my bloods were not good (platelet levels too low) but after a discussion this morning with the Oncologist and the nurses, they have agreed to let me go ahead today. 💪 Rather than scare you with another picture of my mugshot at Chemo, here’s a couple of photos to remind me and all of us why I’m doing this and why I need to be here for as long as I possibly can. 🥰 This is from New Years Day.

This is a thread on this topic as suggested by @colinhord. To be fair, it was the only suggestion I received (🤣) but I do like this one as allows me to discuss aspects of my form reading that will hopefully give people some food for thought and I’ve tried to make it educational. It also gives me a chance to highlight some things which I think are overplayed when it comes to form reading, so you can see both sides of form reading from my perspective. 👍

I’ve finished my thread on the two topics @colinhord mentioned last night. 10 factors which I think are underplayed in the market and can lead to horses shortening and 5 factors which can lead to horses being put in too short or being over-bet and likely to drift. Wrote most of it between about 2am-4am this morning as I was struggling to sleep with my Chemo pump on. Finished it this afternoon when I had to lie flat for an hour or so to help my Chemo pump work better as was going too slow.

Having looked at tomorrow’s NH racing (it’s rubbish), my next bets will be Boxing Day.I’m going to be at a bit of a loose end over next few days.I never sleep well with my Chemo pump (usually do form study during the night) & I need to stay still for large parts of the next 48hrs I’m interested in any ideas anyone has for a thread or two. Quite enjoy knocking out a decent thread or two when on Chemo and not done any for a while. Ideally it should be educational (people should get something from it) or at the very least something interesting!

An early Christmas present for me today as I start my 12th round of Chemo. Original plan was to have a break over Christmas but my next scan is the 6th of January, so going to squeeze in two additional rounds of Chemo. Next Chemo is 4th-6th January. Before I get on with my update (will be a short one), just wanted to wish all of you reading this a Merry Christmas and best wishes for 2022.

Right, this is going to be another long thread (yippee I hear you say 😬) but it is going to be focussed on trading/betting and for those here for cancer updates, you can ignore this thread unless you want to learn a bit more about how I trade on Betfair! 😜 The premise of the thread is actually a question Brian asked on my background thread where he has asked for my thoughts on pre-race trading/scalping after watching some videos and reading some blogs. I’ll deal with this first before getting into the guts of the thread.

I should probably apologise for spamming everyone’s Twitter feed last night! Not sure if it was the 3 days of Chemo infusions or the steroids but I was clearly flying high last night! 🤣 Knocked out about a 60 tweet thread in a short space of time. ‘chemo’d oot ma nut’ I suspect. We were up to midnight as it’s Sofia’s 7th birthday today and we wanted to make a balloon decoration. Quite proud of our efforts but Denise takes all the credit really, I wasn’t much use apart from blowing up some balloons! Looks decent enough. Sure she’ll like it! 👌

I’ll start by saying this is not a cancer thread but it is a long thread! I appreciate I have a real mix of followers these days, people from the racing/betting world who were following me pre my diagnosis and others from the same circle who have joined after seeing my diagnosis I also have friends, family and work colleagues following for updates on my cancer (I’ve been directing people here as saves me writing numerous whatsapps and text updates) and therefore, this thread can probably be ignored by them although it may be an interesting read!

So, the year is flying in and we’re now 1/6 of the way through 2021. Not been a great few days for the sport I love but there has been enough written on Twitter the last few days and I don’t wish to add to this. Purpose of this thread is to discuss my usual monthly review. For any new readers, I’ve been reviewing my monthly betting/trading on Twitter for the racing since I started out in Jan 2018. I’m now into my 4th year of doing this.

First monthly review of the year and although the month turned out OK, it was definitely a month of two halves. The first 2 weeks were really poor and I really struggled to get anything going at all. Not sure what it was but whatever it was felt more mental than anything. January has always been a tough month for me the last 3 years I’ve been doing this and I think part of it is the reset of the P&L and starting again so to speak. Sounds silly and nothing changes apart from me knowing it’s a new year but for whatever reason, I find it a struggle.

I thought I’d seen most things over the last 2.5 years but July proved a bit of a difficult month to fathom if I’m honest. Without getting into the numbers, the high level summary would be something along the lines of..... First half of the month (first 14 days) saw me hit 14 straight days of profit. Was a follow on from June in terms of the way they were getting backed but unlike June, I couldn’t get many to win. No real harm though. Highlight was the punt on Tangled on the 4th which did win!

A bit late but finally updated my results for December which closes off my second year betting on the racing again. A series of posts will follow which look at December but more importantly, which summarise my full year. Clearly been a good year for me overall but moving solely to Betfair exchange in Q4 last year has had a real impact in terms of what I do and I’ll need to reevaluate my ambitions for 2020 if I stick with my current method of betting/trading. Will touch on this at the end.

Going to do a review of September and October so far. Going through a rough spell, so taking a few days break from reading form and as usual, I’m hoping updating my results clears my head. Feel like it’s been a tough start to October. 🤢 As always, timing is everything and having started giving bets to people to follow from the start of this month when I’ve been placing the bets myself, a little frustrating for me and others following that the month has started poorly.