Hello Square One

Daily P/L: £244.32
Monthly P/L: £65.37
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It's always harder to write about a loss - especially a maximum loss. A defeat of this size is always possible with Twenty20 cricket and today I caught the end of it.
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On the positive side, things can turn around very quickly so I can't pass full judgement until the end of the month but there's no doubt that the result I manage from tomorrow's match between will Surrey and Hampshire will determine my approach - will I be maximising profits or focusing on damage limitation?
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Nottinghamshire v Lancashire
On paper these were two strong sides. Both had cracking batting line-ups so my noted par score of 160 was gettable and so it proved. Lancashire opened at around 1.80 favourites but even though they started well they never really got going and neither did I. I was confident that their batters would eventually step up but as they gave their wickets away I ended up getting on the wrong side of numerous flip-flop situations. In the end they were fortunate to reach 163 but at this stage I still thought they had a better chance than the 2.30 given to them by the market. In my eyes it was more like even money so my view was to wait until Nottinghamshire made a good start before looking for opportunities during the Lancashire fightback. Unfortunately for me, Patel made sure this didn't happen as he hit a great knock to rattle up 84 from just 57 balls. I still think the odds were wrong during the last 10 overs but there were no reverses this time and the home team won comfortably with 3 balls to spare. All in all this left me with a hole of £242.96 in my account.

Oops - nearly forgot to mention that the South Africa v New Zealand rugby match didn't go my way either. The first half was very uneventful (that's bad for me) so I made a very small loss of £1.36..
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