March Review - Part 1

Well a disappointing end to the month has capped off what can only be described as Mad March!! An awful start where total losses for the year hit £1,102 the day before Cheltenham followed by an amazing 4 days where I put on £1,266 followed by a topsy turvy end to the month ultimately leading to a decline on the month high and an end of month profit of £412. This puts me back into negative for the year - 3 months in to the year and I'm £109 down. I'll be honest it's left me a little bit deflated, despite things turning round this month, but I'll dust myself down and get on with it!! There's profit in there somewhere!

There's so many different stories behind the headline numbers -

* 2 services closing down - Each Way Value and Neural Bets - in the month (both having a negative effect on my account in March and in 2011) - I'd be £715 profit for the year without them (£762 profit for March). So assuming the losing runs had continued then April should be better...

* Poor management of my account and timing of getting bets on. Perfect example of this being Systematic Betting. Headline figure was +10points up but I've ended up just shy of 6 points down because I've not been getting the prices and placing a large number of bets on betfair for speed but therefore also suffering the commission erosion and losing out on any BOG. So that should've been £150 profit rather than £135 loss (points don't work out simply due to my change of staking...)

* Change of staking - at the wrong time for Systematic Betting but at the right time for Mr Gekko! +£70 for Mr Gekko and -£85 for Systematic Betting.

All and all if I'd done things differently then March could've been £900+ in profit. But such is life and I while I am a feeling a bit gloomy there's a lot to be positive about;

* Steve Lewis Hamilton back to winning ways - 17.5 point profit for March + a couple of personal bets profiting from his picks.

* Equine finished their season on a high - 11 points profit which was very welcome

* My first full month with Northern Monkey going well - 8 points profit.

* Mr Gekko continues in profit - my ONLY service to post a profit for each month in 2011.

So that's the rambling part of my review of the month - I'll do the stats bit tomorrow night.

Nothing much

Nothing much to report as we drift towards month end. Systematic Betting look like having a poor month by their standards.

Losses today balanced by a nice winner from Mr Gekko on the footie.

Month end reporting etc by end of the week.

Profitable

Back in profit for the year as a mixed bag of performance from tipsters still managed to push the numbers in the right direction.

Steve Lewis Hamilton had a good winner on Saturday with Easter Legend.

Roger Green into profit for the month after Mr Hooper winning at 12/1 on Thursday and then Counting House tipped at 12/1 winning at 22/1 on Friday. Astonishing drift in price and thank goodness I was with Paddy Power who paid me best odds guaranteed.

Football Elite continue their poor run with another loser at the weekend and The Nagman managed to end their 22 bet (37.5 point) losing streak with money on Nideeb on Saturday. While this service treads water sometimes I've never had a run like that!

Still pondering Equine Investments - got until Thursday to make my mind up - more than likely will subscribe as think it would be crazy not to - just need to make the numbers work.

Decisions Decisions...

It's been a slow week with not much happening and no profit being made - a slow decline from the success of Cheltenham week although Roger Green had a nice 12/1 winner today which balanced the losers from The Nagman and Steve Lewis Hamilton. Unless things go badly over the next week I should end March in profit for the month and if things go well I should get into profit for the year.... Fingers crossed!!

Equine Investments subs renewal is up with some proposed changes to how the service operates and a reduction in members. It's an expensive service but has made some spectacular profits over the years. I've been a member for two terms now - the first period was excellent, the second not good and looks like I actually made a loss over the period (even before taking the subs into -account). However 2010 as a whole was profitable - the official ROI was 19.34% - think mine was nearer 12% - the difference likely being the bets I missed during holidays and difficulty in getting odds advised due to the success of the service.

Going to do some number crunching over the weekend and make a decision as to whether renew. The most basic fact is that if I do continue I will need to increase my staking to make the service pay. Based on 2010 performance I'd need to up stakes to £30 per point to break even so realistically I'd need to be on at least £50-75 per point - problem with that being that as soon as you start winning £50-75 bets your accounts get restricted. While mine seem to!! Cutting other services will help free up funds but then this reduces benefits of diversification. So a decision needs to be made!

Back in the Red....

Well it didn't last long and a dismal day of results sent me back into the red for the year - here's my graph for the year. Certainly not great but much healthier than it was just over a week ago. Incredible.

An amazing turnaround - over the 4 days of Cheltenham I put on £1,266. Not all the bets that won were at Cheltenham so a pretty good week overall. I'll run a quick review of tipster performance over the 4 days later in the week as wanted to cover off a couple of changes in this post.

Over the last few days a couple of services that I subscribe to have stopped their services.

1) Each Way Value - this service was run by the team over at Secret Betting Club (SBC) I've been a member for a few years and this service was highly profitable until recently. There's been a poor run for a while - but this was to be expected for 11/1+ odds bets. The reason the service has closed is that the Adrian Massey rating website has closed down and this rating service was one of the factors that fed into the system. The Adrian Massey site was an amazing resource and sad to see it go but Adrian ran the site for nothing - just looking for charitable donations and he's clearly had enough! Who can blame him! Disappointing to see Each Way Value go but the team are going to refund remaining subs (although I think mine were up at the end of March anyway!)

2) Neural Bets - this service kicked off in January, partly run by Mark who runs the Systematic Betting service. Very early on things looked promising but have rapidly gone down hill and never really recovered since then. In the long run the losses made would be recoverable if back testing was anything to go by but the guys have decided to close the service and FULLY refund subs - which is a very generous gesture. They are going to continue to send tips out for the remainder of 2011 for free and I'm going to track these bets to see if things turn around. I won't bet on them at the moment.

So two losing services going + some subs refunds puts me in a better place. Looking back I'd be £825 better off in 2011 if I hadn't bet on their tips. The subs refund will compensate for some of that loss.

With Equine just about closing the doors on their season thats me with 3 less services to follow going forward. I'm not going to subscribe to new services in their absence as I want to cut back the time I'm betting as my full time job is going to be racking up the pressure over the next few months and I want to be a bit more focused on what services to follow.

A bit of a ramble today but hope it makes sense.

In Profit...

Well just a quick update to let you know a very successful 4 days at Cheltenham and a continued winning run over the last few days has put me £50 in profit for the year.... not bad for 21 March!!

Amazing how quickly things can change - a week ago I was over £1,000 down on the year!!

Been an interesting few days what with Cheltenham, two of my services closing and one proposing changes...

Will post full Cheltenham update and more info over next few days.

Cheltenham - Day 4

4 days in a row!!

Another great day at Cheltenham on Friday with pretty much all tipsters delivering some kind of profit! Haven't had time to tot up the final figures today but think there was about £400 up to day so great festival. What was all my moaning about...

Anyway back to reality on Saturday - hopefully we won't return to the daily grind and the wins will keep coming!

Cheltenham - Day 3

Third winning day in a row and the picture looks a bit rosier.

Good day at Cheltenham for Roger Green and The Nagman with a good few places / winners to fill the coffers. Not so good for 4PA who's had a stinker but I had some money on Junior which was a basic system bet so took some sting out of the tail. I've been watching the racing when I get home and night and fair enjoyed it - much more fun when there's some winners coming in of course.

Winners away from Cheltenham too from Equine Investments and The Nagman so it's been a good few days and every £1 of profit helps. £146 up on the day.

Can we make it 4 in a row.... Good luck for the Gold Cup!

Cheltenham - Day 2

Another good day on the betting front - but the major profit came away from Cheltenham where the irish did the business today.

Steve Lewis Hamilton and Equine Investments providing the majority of the profit today. SLH had 3 bets today but the one away from the main event was the one that delivered - with a 1/2pt e/w 20/1 winner in the shape of Kercabellec at Huntingdon. Tremendous result. Equine Investments is finishing the a/w season strongly which is very pleasing as its been a bit of troublesome season. So these two results guaranteed a profit on the day.

In terms of Cheltenham - 4PA and The Nagman are having a stinker, Roger Green got some profit today - certainly hasn't had much luck either today or yesterday with Oscar Wells stumbling at the last when still in with a shout and the 15 lengths between front and back with The Rainbow Hunter yesterday.

Each Way Value continues to perform poorly and only other news of note is that Mr Gekko is going to start sending out his football bets on Thursday now.

Anyway Day 3 tomorrow and hoping we can continue the profitable track!

In profit now for March now which is great and put on £141 today so happy with that.

Until tomorrow...

Cheltenham - Day 1

After a complete wipeout on Monday, we started the Cheltenham festival with a tremendous day, that want for a couple of places would have been an awesome day. The profit delivered almost completely by Steve Lewis Hamilton who had two winners in Hurricane Fly and Captain Chris which I combined into an e/w double to add another £260+ to my winnings.

Poor start for The Nagman, Northern Monkey, 4PA and Roger Green, however if things had gone slightly differently then they all would've done well - Roger Green particularly unlucky today with Spirit Son and Maljimar who I thought were both going to win!! But that's a 5 point double and max win out of a Yankee knacked though too.

Equine Investments kept the AW attention with a nice 8/1 mention winner.

So bumper first day, will it continue.....

Roger Green Racing Review - Part 2

I was feeling quite upbeat when writing my last post but a dismal weekend of results makes me really wonder what's going on. Things were going well from October to mid January and I thought finally I'd got the right mix of tipsters and the right balance in my portfolio but we're now just about in Cheltenham week and over £1000 down on the year. Thankfully I have the right betting bank in place but it's still very very frustrating. Now I tell myself continually this is a long term game and it is but I'd like to see some progress.

I posted last year that I wasn't a fan of the big meetings and then suffered a particularly awful set of results at Goodwood which justified my fear, and as I mentioned last week Cheltenham last year wasn't particularly profitable apart from one winning bet. Cheltenham 2011 is certainly a make or break time for some of the tipsters on my portfolio and I will make some decisions after this coming week as to how to take things forward. Anyway here's hoping that it's a profitable festival. It's an amazing four days and I remember watching last years Gold Cup over and over again as it was such an incredible race. Good luck to everyone.

Talking of reviewing tipsters, I've completed some more of my review of Roger Green Racing and I've brought the figures bang up to date. Unfortunately it was a poor few days and a wipe out on Saturday again although a tad unlucky with losing by a short head on Friday and a 4 point 7/1 shot coming 2nd on Saturday.

Just a reminder that this is period from 10 December 2010 and 12 March 2011. The majority of prices are the price I get when placing the bet - it's generally not that difficult to get the price quoted and my prices worked out at 99% of recommended price.

Firstly, here's an updated table from part 1;

Points	Number	Points	Profit	ROI
1 Point	2.00	2.00	2.86	143.00%
2 Point	92.00	184.00	-16.49	-8.96%
3 Point	11.00	33.00	-17.00	-51.52%
4 Point	28.00	112.00	-17.21	-15.37%
5 Point	6.00	30.00	58.56	195.20%
Total	139.00	361.00	10.72	2.97%

So a disappointing few days has knocked the ROI down to 2.97%.

The next table shows the monthly figures;

Month	Number	Points	Ave Points	Profit	ROI
December	30	70	2.33	-0.71	-1.01%
January	38	93	2.45	-27.14	-29.18%
February	48	135	2.81	62.66	46.41%
March	23	63	2.74	-24.09	-38.24%
Total	139	361		10.72	2.97%

So not a great period of results but it is only 139 bets and another decent run will turn things around quite quickly. Certainly a service where you need to accept there will be long losing runs and the numbers behind the numbers above do show that without the 5 point 12/1 winner the ROI for our timeframe would be -17.21%

There's no doubt that Cheltenham is important for Roger Green Racing and a good festival essential. I'll do a third update showing average odds of winners etc and see if that helps us dissect the service further. Anyway hopefully that's useful for you.

Just something to note - Equine Investments finishes up for the season on the 19th so I'll do a review of that service after then.

I'll aim to give daily updates during Cheltenham but work commitments might prevent me from doing that!

Better Bets

As the antepost bets flood in for Cheltenham - 15 plus so far and knowing next week will be crazy from a betting point of view it really was imperative to get some scores on the door. Thankfully Equine Investments, Systematic Betting and The Nagman came up with the goods - with Wednesday and Thursday both being good profitable days. Lets hope it continues into the weekend....

Its amazing the difference a couple of days makes and while I'm still in negative for March it won't take much to turn things around - a lot of the services in a negative position for the month are only 1 or 2 bets away from profit. Only disappointment is Steve Lewis Hamilton who hasn't rewarded my re-subscription with a winner yet but again not much required to turn March into profit.

I've not had an opportunity to continue my Roger Green Racing work but will get to it over the weekend.

Anyway a quick stat round up;

2011 Winning days: 23,

2011 Losing days: 33.

Best day of the week - Wednesday £355,

worst day of the week - Tuesday -£313.

Most won on a day: £229 on 26/02

Most lost on a day: -£240 on 25/01

And a year to date graph;

Roger Green Racing Review - Part 1

Things go from bad to worse on a day to day basis - I'm down to a new low of -£826 for the year as I posted the sixth losing day in a row today following a blank from Mr Gekko; Systematic Betting having a four day losing streak (I mention this only as it is highly unusual!!) and nothing much else going right. I also mention these two as I've just tweaked my staking on Mr Gekko and Systematic to increase weighting of my portfolio (up to £35 per point for Mr Gekko - from £25 - and up to £15 per point for Systematic - from £10). My timing and luck is pathetic!

My last post on Sunday made me think about my comment on Roger Green Racing being 96.44 points down for me since the turn of the year. This excluded bets I missed while I was on holiday. So I wanted to review the service to make sure it was still worth following. So I'm in the process of completing this and will post this review in sections over the coming days. Today I wanted to cover off points and profit made. I've covered all bets 10 December 2010 - 08 March 2011.

The table below shows results split by points.

Points	Number	Points	Profit	ROI
1 Point	2.00	2.00	2.86	143.00%
2 Point	89.00	178.00	-12.37	-6.95%
3 Point	10.00	30.00	-14.00	-46.67%
4 Point	26.00	104.00	-9.21	-8.86%
5 Point	6.00	30.00	58.56	195.20%
Total	133.00	344.00	25.84	7.51%

Quite interesting table in so much overall ROI is a respectable 7.51% although short of SBC "Hall Of Fame" standard. Especially interesting to see that the 5 point bets are the ones to follow which means that Roger is getting his 5 point staking right but I have to say it was a real surprise to see the profit pretty much all in the 5 point range. I'll split this by month and show a couple of other tables over the next few days.

I've been a member of Roger Green Racing since June last year but unfortunately my record keeping hasn't been consistent enough until December so really is a short period of bets but paints a picture.

If you're interested you may want to know in the two weeks I was away Roger Green put on a truly incredible 109.8 points (£549 for me!) but since I've been back I've lost 30.96 points. Think luck is against me!!

The rot hasn't stopped

A dismal weekend with winners few and far between with only Systematic betting posting a profit of any note over the three days. Think the quality of racing was poor over the weekend as people gear up to Cheltenham - still doesn't make things any better for me and I'm almost into the 10th week of the year and £661 from breaking even (before considering any subscriptions).

So having a quick review of where we are with each of the services;

Steve Lewis Hamilton - poor start in January but showing signs of a turnaround - hopefully not a false dawn. 5.29 points down.

Equine Investments - finishes up for the season on the 19th March and been poor overall. Both Jan and Feb in loss for me, small profit so far in March. -12.67pts.

Roger Green - missed some winners this year both in Jan and Feb and therefore the bulk of any profit that this service has made. That said you have to wait a long time for these winners to come along. I'm sitting at an astonishing -96.44pts for the year.

The Nagman - Good year so far with 26.59pts up. Feels like a good service but sometimes there's a lot of treading water but not critiscising as the profit comes slowly but surely.

Each Way Value. Had a winning bet as the first bet of the year but nothing much happened at all since then as this service continues to move sideways but 10.76 points down for the year which based on the min odds requirement of 11/1 for this service isn't too bad.

Football Elite. Dreadful January. Picked up some points in February when I was away but not much since I've been back and down 11.07 points on the year. Disappointing for me.

4PA - While I question some of the odds posted this is a profitable service which has a fantastic ROI. No complaints. 6.66 points up for the year

Systematic Betting. Tremendous - consistent service delivering result after result. If only all services were like this!! 57.76 points up for the year already!

Mr Gekko Football. Doing well despite some periods of frustration and 2nd best performing service - 16.37pts up for the year

Neural. Disappointing start to this service - willing to give it a chance though as it's run by the same people as Systematic - well there's a link. Have switched to £5 a bet while a review this service.

So a lot of services and diversification is supposed to compensate for one or two bad runs but it's not working for me at the moment. Could well be that the weighting on my services is wrong but I think the reality is that when 7 out of 11 are in a significant negative position that it's difficult to make a profit even if you had weighting spot on. End of March after Cheltenham is likely to be a time to make some decisions.

February Update

A decent start to March with success (almost) across the board so good to see. With Cheltenham round the corner it's good to get some scores on the board. Although Cheltenham was a success last year for me, it was in the main due to one winner - Berties Dream at 50/1 which Each Way Value and Double The Odds both tipping it. I earned a bit extra on the bet as I'd inadvertently put extra on the horse. The £1,000+ I won on that horse still didn't secure me a profit for March and that was largely down to Cheltenham.

As I've mentioned before I've never been a fan of the big meets - generally because too many tips for the same race means that often you've got money on about 4/5 horses in the same race which makes it hard to make any money!! I've been inundated with offers for tipsters for Cheltenham but I think I'm going to stick to what I've got and not add any for this meet although I was tempted to go with a short offer Double the Odds were punting having had a look at their Cheltenham record. Tipping Legends are also back but I got burnt so badly last year it's not for me. Lets watch them have a record month based on that statement!!

Anyhow - getting side tracked. February looked like this (remember I missed about 2 weeks of bets due to holidays).

Service	Feb	Points
SLH	£140.71	2.81
SLH Mentions	-£23.73	-5.93
Equine Investments	-£13.84	-0.55
Equine (Mentions)	£30.17	7.54
Roger Green	-£235.71	-47.14
The Nagman	-£45.91	-9.18
EW Value	-£131.25	-6.56
Northern Monkey	-£7.72	-1.54
Football Elite	£47.88	1.92
4PA	£275.68	13.78
Personal Bets / Others	£15.29	0.00
Systematic Betting	£72.52	7.25
Mr Gekko	£9.09	0.36
Neural	-£147.97	-14.80
	-£14.79

Looks are deceiving so I'm not going to comment any more on February other than to say would've like to get a profit and would've for the full month so happy with things.

So feels like things have stabilised and seem to be turning round so lets hope the curve keeps heading in the right direction