Book a free holiday now!

If, like me, your trading has been taking a well-earned break due to the abandonment of so many horse racing meetings, then you might want to consider booking a Betfair holiday to prevent your commission discount from reducing.

When you book a Betfair holiday (penultimate option on "My Account" page) then you don't get the 15% deduction on Sunday. HOWEVER, you also don't get credited for any points for the week either so you need to make sure the 15% deduction is more than any points you have accrued this week.

The other consideration is that you only get 4 "holidays" per year, so if you are lucky enough to swan off on "real" holidays to the Caribbean regularly then you'll have to weigh up the pro's and con's. Chance would be a fine thing!

I've been taking the opportunity to have the whole week off, rather than trying to scrape something from 1 or 2 meetings a day. I don't really like such days as the long gaps between races stops me getting into a rhythm and sometimes leads me to increase my risk by trying to milk every tick from every trade - sometimes ending in disaster!

Yesterday I started to get worried about how much trading I'll be able to complete this month as the latest forecasts are for the cold spell to continue for up to 2 weeks. Once the cold weather lifts, I expect it could take a while for the racecourses to thaw out too. Hey ho!

As a consequence I've been looking at other markets. I looked at the in-play "leg" markets for the World Darts last night and wished I hadn't! The markets are so thin that I got royally screwed. I might lick my wounds and have another pop tonight with a different approach.

Also, on Sunday afternoon the Masters Snooker tournament breaks-off. The frame-betting markets do have a higher volume than the leg-betting for darts (not surprising really) but the spreads can still be very wide. Played the right way though this does present some good opportunities.

Good luck and may the sun shine soon!