Saturday 20 January 2024 - The Unbearable Drabness of The Perky Punter

Welcome to I, Punter, in which the author muses on life and recommends a weekly bet in reward for his reader’s patience.

Photo by Maria Bobrova on Unsplash

I’m afraid it’s been one of those weeks so straight to business. (Nothing dreadful, just the unbearable drabness of being me.)

Last weekend’s recommended double was a winner! I hope you were on and thank you Crewe (2-1) and Wrexham (2-0) for franking the form I had identified. Since the start of the blog I have “hypothetically” bet £440 and got back £573.70 for a profit of £133.70 after deduction of stake. It is possible to make a profit from betting; just don’t expect to get rich overnight - those that do are the ones most likely to get into trouble - and consider the endeavour a marathon rather than a sprint. Remember The Happy Hooker? I’m The Perky Punter.

This weekend I am tipping two away sides for my recommended win double: Derby County (8/11) who make the relatively short trip to Lincoln City (kick off three pm on Saturday) and Juventus (8/13) who are off to Lecce, wherever that is (Sunday at seven forty-five pm). Both selections are based on recent form. If League One had started ten games ago, Derby would be top on twenty-five points from a possible thirty whilst Lincoln would be seventeenth on ten points (and second from bottom on six points if the league had started six games ago). Based on the last ten games, Juve would be tied at the top of Serie A with Inter Milan on twenty-six points; Lecce, wherever that is, would be sixteenth on eight points.

My “hypothetical” £20 win double on Derby County and Juventus currently returns £55.80 with Sky Bet at combined odds of 1.79/1 for a profit of £35.80 after deduction of stake. You never know.

I hope to see you next time.

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Saturday 13 September 2025 - Off The Wall

At times this week, it has felt like I’ve been carrying the weight of the world on my shoulders. In desperation, I reached out on my socials for a bit of love and the late American singer, songwriter and dancer Michael Jackson got in touch. He suggested that I should straighten up my act and boogie down. I was in Tesco the next time things began to get on top of me, halfway through the weekly shop, but people just thought I was mental when I pushed my trolley to one side and started doing the Moonwalk down the biscuit aisle. With advice like that, no wonder they called him Wacko Jacko. It makes me wonder what other crazy stuff he got up to. Before I turn to matters of financial speculation, for this week’s AI slop I asked ChatGPT to give the moonwalking man a Notts County shirt and it found an unintentionally funny way of doing this, presumably for reasons of copyright. In addition to being "The Oldest (professional) Team" in the world, last Saturday’...

Saturday 20 September 2025 - More AI Slop

As part of the day job, I had to scan a photo that included Nottingham Castle into ChatGPT. Don't ask. If you are familiar with Nottingham Castle, you will agree it looks nothing like a castle. It's almost a case for Trading Standards. There was a proper castle on the site, with turrets and everything, but this was razed to the ground in 1651. The current building is a Stuart Restoration-era ducal mansion which has been disappointing visitors to the city since 1679. However, ChatGPT knows what a castle looks like, and, without prompting, did this to the photo. Amusing as this was, I just wanted the original photo, so I asked ChatGPT not to alter it in any way. I asked ChatGPT why it was doing this. "I am genuinely mortified," was the touching response. You know the world is screwed when you want to put your arm around an AI and tell it everything's going to be okay. *** On Tuesday, an e-mail informed me that a work colleague had died....

Saturday 27 September 2025 - Tomorrow's World

In last week's blog I made two mistakes. The first was saying that the Barnsley game kicked off at 3 pm. The second was thinking that Barnsley would actually win the Barnsley game. The Tykes’ trip to Blackpool was a lunchtime kick off and, unaware of this, I checked Sky Bet at 3.15 pm to see how they were winning by, only to discover my betting fate had already been sealed. The game was effectively a repeat of the West Brom dabacle from the weekend before, with Barnsley monopolising the game to no avail and Blackpool sneaking a goal late on. My other selection Gillingham won like the good team they are. It’s early days. The last two losing weekends could just be down to variance, but going forward it may pay to avoid betting on top versus bottom clashes where the bottom side is playing at home. Terrible teams seldom become great teams over the course of a season, but they do get better at defending and are more likely to park the bus in the hope of ...

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