Steve Lewis Hamilton (SLH) Analysis

I've finally managed to getting round to completing my analysis of SLH results since I joined the service. This was on the back of feelings that the points waged didn't have an impact on the chances of winning (if you know what i mean). It's also part of some work I'm doing on my staking plans and where to go next with some of the tipsters.

First thing I've done with SLH results is a basic analysis on the number of bets and points and percentage winners / losers.

(see below for some caveats to the table)



As you can see the 2 point bets are the most common - which is good news as they are the most successful bets in terms of winners. 1 point bets are the least successful bets (as you would expect). 4 point bets 2nd most successful and 3 point 3rd most. Now I would expect the 4 point bets to be the best, 3 point next etc.

What that does do is strenghthen the arguement for moving to level stakes for SLH. I'm going to do two more things - (1) split the table into years and then (2) compare level stakes to points stakes and see where we end up! I'm also going to do some work on strike rate over time etc.

The time I've been with SLH has been incredibly successful and while strike rate in 2010 certainly looks like its been lower, I'm still in profit for 2010 and I can not fault the service over the long term - I know there are many doubters now out there - my recommendation would be - stick with it! (or maybe don't - then it would be easier to get bets on at recommended prices!!) ;-)

The information is taken from my personal spreadsheets and worth pointing out some caveats to the table;
1) I joined SLH in July 2008 so records only from then
2) My spreadsheet update work has at times been poor so some bets will be missing or inaccurately input and there are periods when I was on holiday that will also be excluded
3) Results only up to 19 March 2010
4) Overall therefore I'd suggest I'm about 95% accurate but still a good guide.

Cheltenham Day 4

On Thursday night my account was sitting at its lowest point I'd ever seen it for a single month... -£1,280 and I'll be honest with you it was feeling pretty painful all in all despite in the back of my mind i know this is a long term game and i've had losing periods before...

Thanks to a fantastic last day on the betting front I walked out the other end of Cheltenham with my account now sitting at -£48!! I know not in profit but much much better!!

Big winner of the day was Berties Dream at 50/1 in the 2.40 at Cheltenham which both Each Way Value and Double The Odds put up.

I'd decided to double my stakes on Each Way Value and what a day to do it!! Double The Odds purple patch continued and i manged to get 55 on Betfair!

Happy days...

It was a good day overall. I'd had a some side bets on Imperial Commander, Pigeon Island and Pause & Clause with the work syndicate I was in so was well chuffed...

Will be back as much as possible with updates etc over the next few days.

It's a funny old game!

Cheltenham Day 3 Update

Apologies there was no update last night - went out for a few beers!

Not celebrating winnings unfortunately...

So not looking too pretty now after a dismal day today - it's certainly been a tricky festival - scores on the doors for me are;

Day 1 +£411
Day 2 -£67
Day 3 -£498
Balance -£154

So running in negative and my fear of the big meet is materialising... but there's always tomorrow!! Who to pick in the big race!! Decisions decisions... It was Denman vs Kauto Star that got me really into this game. Ladbrokes had £100 free bet offer so I whacked £100 on Denman to win and the rest is history.... For value its got to be a pick outside the top 2. Maybe...

Found it a right struggle getting bets on all week though - I've been at work so relying on mobile betting - all the sites are quite slow due to volumes of punters. May take this week off next year...

On a brighter note the work syndicate is doing well and we're about £200 up so i'm sure we'll blow it all tomorrow....

Good luck for tomorrow!

Cheltenham Thoughts - Day 2

Day 1 picks weren't too bad. Lets say you bet 1 point on each horse to win then you'd be 7 points up on those picks!! Lets see where we are at the end of the 4 days....

Ok here are my picks for tomorrow.

1.30 - Massasoit

2.05 - Gonna go for Rite of Passage

2.40 - My picks would be Punchestowns and an e/w on Burton Port

3.20 - you'd imagine it would be between Master Minded, Twist Magic or Kalahari King. But I'm gonna go e/w on Golden Silver. Currently 50/1

4.00 - Like the look of Hampshire Express

4.40 - No idea but would probably go e/w on Open day

5.15 - Shot from the hip with an e/w on Dare me

Also got a wee syndicate going at work and we're up £190 on first day so all so fari so goodi!

Cheers

Cheltenham Day 1 Update

Well can't complain at all today and ended up on the day with £280 profit so happy with that.

Winners were;

SLH - 2 bets, 2 winners! Hopefully back to form. Steve sounded more confident on the phone so here's hoping that continues

Tipping Legends - huge amount of bets as expected but came out with a small profit so definitely an improvement over recent times.

Each Way Value - goes from strength to strength with a winner and a place today so very impressive!

Losers were;

Mathematician - two account bets - nothing doing at all.

4PA - unlucky indeed!

Punter Profits - two more losers.

Not a bad day at all - hopefully day 2 will be as good!

Cheltenham Thoughts

Well I've been sucked in and done some basic analysis of the racing tomorrow and applied some science to it and here are my picks for racing tomorrow. Please don't bet on them but just for info really;

1.30: I would go for either Get Me Out Of Here or Menorah.

2.05: No idea but suspect it's between Captain Cee Bee, Sizing Europe and Somersby. Probably stating the obvious there.

2.40: If you forced me to pick one it would be Bensalem

3.20: I'm going for Solwhit

4.00: Garde Champetre is the favourite but I'd pick Monkerhoiston

4.40: A couple of e/w bets for me would be between Amber Brook, Aura About You or Sway.


Not sure I could ever be a tipster as I could never decide on a final pick as you can see!!

Mad March

Just totted up my figures pre Cheltenham kicking off tomorrow and wasn't pleasant reading.

Losses have topped £1000 so far this month and we're on the 15th!!

Only Each Way Value from the Secret Betting Club guys is showing a profit for the month. Means that I'm in negative territory for 2010 now.

Only caveat to that is that Double The Odds I've still to tot up (usually wait to end of month to do that) and they've had a storming March so clearly things will be a lot better than they currently show.

Good luck for the rest of the week! Here's to a big one!!

Lean Times - Not always though!

Certainly not been the greatest few weeks on the horses and in the lead up to Cheltenham it would be better to have had a good war chest ready and waiting to fund the battle with the bookies!!

Inevitably there's going to be a lot of bets on next week and as I mentioned in my last update, the big meets never really get me going. Sometimes it feels like there are too many bets flying about, too many horses in each race with a stake in and it all makes it feel very daunting and nerve racking!! I don't recall Cheltenham being that profitable for me last season and I remember a huge amount of betting being done. Unfortunately my records over that period aren't that up to date. Had a quick scan through JP's blog and while the Cheltenham week was profitable for him that was largely due to Leau De Nil winning for SLH at 50/1 or 33/1 which wasn't even a Cheltenham bet!! And actually Cheltenham turned out to be a heavy loss. I thought SLH was going to do the same on Saturday with a 40/1 shot but it was to no avail!!

Well I'm staying in a positive frame of mind and hoping things turnaround. Thought I'd give you some of my betting highlights over the last wee while for me - these are the things that remind me of why I started this and why it's all about the long term;

SLH - 31/01/09 - Amoro Mio / Thetwincamdrift - (2pt e/w dbl) - I mistakenly doubled the bet (lord knows how) and came out smiling - made just shy of £2k on that bet and the two accompanying singles!!

SLH - 09/03/09 - Leau De Nil - (1pt e/w) - put the bet on what was the 2nd day of my honeymoon - made £1250 - paid for the holiday there and then!

SLH - 30/10/09 - Tarvini / Dawn Ride (personal dbl) - put the dbl on following the SLH single tips and totted up £2k on the day!!

Equine - July 09 - racked up the best part of £2k in one month as the winners kept on coming!!

Equine - 22/08/09 - Bertoliver / Fanjura (dbl) - was rushing to a football match in London and almost forgot to put this one on. Glad I didn't as it made me £700.

You can see these highlights have come from SLH and Equine - definitely the best performing tipsters I've signed up to. I know SLH is having a lengthy lean time but he'll come back for sure and we'll see these profits again!!

It's all about keeping the faith!!

February Update

Well I'm back from my travels and it's been a tough week getting the bets on. Most days it would've been better that I hadn't bothered but it's been a ticking over kind of week.

I've managed to finalise my February figures and these are below.

Overall not really a very good month and while we've eked out a profit, taking off subscriptions (which I will do at the end of the quarter) it will be a losing month.

Mention has to go out to Equine Investments again for another great month. Superb profit over the period of the subscription and will be missed as they pack their bags for a break at the end of the week until the new season starts. Also worth mentioning Football Elite - going from strength to strength and good to see The Mathematician finding some decent form again.

February last year was a dire month with a loss of over £300 for me so an improvement at least!!

For 2010 in total that's me with £888 in the bank (before subs) so a pretty slow start to the year. It's not been a great 2010 for Tipping Legends, Double The Odds and Punter Profits but as always it's about the long term!!

Let's see what Cheltenham brings. Although I don't really look forward to the big meets as they never seem to produce a profit for me. Think sometimes people feel there's too much pressure to put tips out. Maybe this time will be different and I'll be singing and dancing by the end of next week...





Remember the point to note;

The profit / points are based on the odds I got, not the odds quoted. This could be either because the odds weren't available, I don't have accounts with particular bookies, I have been restricted on particular bookies or because I was slow in getting the bet on. The work I do means that i can't always get to place bets immediately and I have to live with that.

Sunday Sunday!

I'm struggling with titles for each posting so that's the first thing that came into my head.

Certainly a tough week in terms of the account with pretty much nil return on all fronts!

Saturday was dismal although gutted in the 3.10 at Newbury when Big Fella Thanks came in and the two horse tipped by 4PA finishing 2nd and 3rd instead of 1st and 2nd as we would've wanted!! Big Fella Thanks only being in the race to educate him to jump at speed!! Oh well - c'est la vie!

Better week next week for sure!! I'm on the road which makes it exceedingly hard to get bets on and updates (if any) will be brief!

Oh and thanks for the comments - good to know people are reading my ramblings!

Not good, not good! But not all bad...

Another poor day today although it wasn't all doom and gloom.

SLH has certainly taken a bit of pasting this week - the margins are so tight it's amazing - so 4pt loss today from Aim for the Stars in the 4.30 at Ludlow. Horse finished 4th - I haven't watched the race but 2 lengths behind 3rd and that's a £140 hit. Yesterday - the biggest of the 3 bets, 3pts on Wiesenfurst in the 3.10 at Folkestone - came 2nd by a short head!! £105 down!

But hey ho - the short term is the short term and in this business it's all about the long term. Feels like a slog sometimes but that is the way it is.

Nice win from Each Way Qualifiers today - I asked for 12 on betfair and it was matched before start for Mafeking in the 6.20 at Wolverhampton. Certainly a great service now - renewal up on the 11th March and I will certainly re-subscribe - the existing member price is a tremendous deal for the return.

Double the Odds have certainly found some form as well - couple of good price winners in the last few days; Escortman coming in the 2pm at Kempton on Saturday at an SP of 29 on betfair and Inga Bird delivering yesterday so taking some of the pain away from the losses. Hope this is DTO turning the corner!

So I'm going to start looking at the positives now. One thing that I think is my issue is that my account is too heavily weighted to certain tipsters. There is a good reason for that - in so much that success justifies it. However when there's a few bets from SLH, for example, that don't go well, the winners from the other services don't make up the difference. That's certainly not the right way to do it.

Need to manage my portfolio better basically.

Mulling over pulling out of the TL golf service. Think I'm not enjoying golf betting that much. Forgot to put the bets on last night for this week and I keep doing that. Maybe the long term wait for results in golf is not for me. I like a bit of ticking over!! Although to be fair to them we've had a couple of places in the last couple of weeks so again hopefully things turning round there too.


I keep on promising to do some analysis on SLH - to get a view on 4pointers, and maybe see if it's just as good to play to level stakes. I will get round to it - but time is not something I have a huge amount of at the moment.

I'm away with work all week next week so that's challenging in itself getting the bets on is an extra challenge!!

This will probably be my last update in a few days, because of that but also because it's my wedding anniversary this weekend and we're away!! (will still be betting of course)....

Well that was a fair old ramble.

Hope the weekend is good to everyone!!

Cheers

Shockaroonie!

Shocking start to the month of march. I've dropped best part of £400 in three days. Early days in the month obviously but starting this way doesn't help!

Will update properly tomorrow.

January Update... Finally...

And it here it is.... In the end wasn't as good as i thought once I went through betfair stats! Tipping Legends Golf was in there as were a few Football Elite bets which hadn't been too successful over that period.

Nonetheless a decent profit for the first month of the year considering racing was wiped out for the first half of Jan and I didn't start betting again until 13 Jan following my hols.

Couple of points to note;

(1) The profit / points are based on the odds I got, not the odds quoted. This could be either because the odds weren't available, I don't have accounts with particular bookies, I have been restricted on particular bookies or because I was slow in getting the bet on. The work I do means that i can't always get to place bets immediately.
(2) There is a chance I've missed a few bets as I was so far behind in collating but hopefully the majority is there.

Interesting that in Jan 2009 I made £1,880 profit, 95% of which was generated by SLH. At that point I had subscribed only to a couple of services.

In Jan 2010, £690 profit with SLH standing out again, Equine Investments and also Each Way Pays delivering the goods.

What this does show is that diversification isn't doing me any good at the moment. If I stuck with who i see as my two key tipsters (SLH and Equine) I'd have made over £500 more. Food for thought....

January Update... Finally... well almost

Managed to almost finalise my January figures... at the beginning of March!! A wee bit behind but I've nearly caught up with February so won't be too long after.

Will provide a bit more detail as soon as I can - but made in region of £900 so not too bad - SLH and Equine providing the bulk of the profit.

More to follow - sorry not be on as much recently - things have been a little crazy!