Living in the sticks

Been away for the bank holiday weekend, hence the lack of activity on the blog.

Managed to get most of the bets on but I was visiting someone who lives in the sticks yesterday with no wifi so missed a few bets despite going to the top of a hill to get a flicker of a reception from Orange!! Betfair mobile on 1G doesn't work very well. LOL. It reaches a point where some days you just need to put the phone down and enjoy a wee break.

Anyhow doesn't look like I missed much. Working through the updates and likely will do my next post on Thursday with a review of August.

Only other thought is multi - tipped horses are doing my head in at the moment - The bells o peover being the latest villian today!! So much for these being gold - more like glue!!

Second-itis

Quick post - firstly thanks for all the comments over the last couple of days (mostly about SLH) and I'll respond as soon as I can.

Been a decent few days - mainly thanks to Systematic Betting - but a poor day overall today - amazingly 8 tips from Systematic - no winners but 5 seconds and 1 other place - the fine line between an awesome day and a stinker!! Couple of other 2nds / places from others as well which is highly frustrated but c'est la vie!

Equine and SLH certainly having a very poor month.

Figures Adjustment

My "Falling of a cliff" post should've said Steve Lewis Hamilton is down 13 points for me in August not 6.5 points. So even worse than posted!

The Fightback begins.....

...well here's hoping. Bumper day for Systematic Betting today so hopefully this is the turnaround time for the month. I managed a 13 point profit today - would've been better as slightly tainted by missing another winning bet cause of my own stupidity!! That's £210 lost because of missed bets. Very very frustrating.

Falling off a cliff....

Thought I'd pop this graph below onto the blog to show what's happened in the last few days...

Quite spectacular - so much so I double checked my figures to make sure the graph was actually right but the numbers paint a picture on their own;

August as a month down over £1500 so far. Last week took £1,040 off the scores.

So where has it gone wrong this month? Simple really - all tipsters bar Equine Turnover and Northern Monkey have performed abysmally. Diversification is all well and good but doesn't work when pretty everyone is doing badly;

Systematic Betting - the drop made worse by me moving to £20 a point of course. But down 46 points since 1 August on the prices I have managed to get on at. Not overly worried about this as things can turn round quickly but painful nonetheless.

Steve Lewis Hamilton - no winners this month so far and down 6.5 points. Typical SLH summer performance unfortunately.

Equine (Main) - minus 5 points. Turnover service is outperforming the main account this year on the stakes I follow which in itself is interesting.

Football Elite - poor start to the season with 4 losers out of 5 bets so far.

4PA - return to form seemed short lived and winnings earlier this month have turned into a 3 point loss.

It's a short term blip probably and this is a long term game but it's really disappointing to give back so much over such a short period.

I'd be interested to get any thoughts on why people think tipsters are performing so badly in August??

I've got a few posts to do in answer to peoples comments including info about bet banks / why i started etc so will try to get to answer some of these this week.

So - lets get back on the horse and earn some cash this week!!

A day to forget

Just on my way out for a good drink after what has been a truely awful day of punting. One runner still to go which won't make much difference and I have my head in my hands!!!

Bad results all round - but made worse by my own forgetfulness. Didn't put the system bet on from 4PA at 8/1 and it romped home and forgot to put a Bfsp tip from Systematic as I was out and about when it came through and betfair mobile doesn't support sp bets for some reason so figured I'd do it when I got home... You know the rest of the story and that was at least 90 quid gone. So £130 minimum winnings lost cause of stupidity and from what I can see these were the only 2 winning bets of the day!!!!!!

Sods law and the icing on a shit cake of a day.

Dust down and take stock tomorrow - meanwhile maybe tonights trip to the casino will be profitable...

The rot hasn't stopped

Another poor day today with only Systematic and Northern Monkey posting a profit - wasn't enough to cover losing bets from Steve Lewis Hamilton, Equine, 4pA and a shocker of a day from Market Examiner who lost 7 points today.

Particularly poor time of it from Market Examiner in August although as Sam's email said tonight still within strike rate parameters. To be fair I joined the service after a long period of putting profit on - invariably the worst time to join a service - and this losing spell statistically wasn't unlikely.

Results from the Ebor mixed with little action but 4PA producing 2 losers but Northern Monkey getting a 10/1 shot right and Systematic only bet at York coming in at 11/2.

So 12 losing days out of 17 in August now - will tomorrow be any different???

Who do I follow?

No posts for ages and then loads at once!! What's happening??

A quick update for those asking on who I follow and my staking;

Steve Lewis Hamilton - £25 per point (max 2 points per bet). Probably should be higher to match subs cost.

Equine Investments - 20% of recommended stakes. Definitely needs to be higher to match subs cost. A big dilemma.

Equine Turnover - 20% of recommended stakes.

Northern Monkey - £10 per point. Trialing this service this year so happy with staking. Easy to profit due to low subs.

Football Elite - £25 per point. Not sure whether to up stakes - last year put me off but long term profit is there.

4PA - £20 per point. Probably not enough.

Systematic Betting - £20 per point. Have slowly moved up from £5 to £20 per point during the period I've been a member. Ideally want to get more but need a large bank for this one!

Mr Gekko - £?? per point. Haven't decided yet on this one for this season.

Market Examiner - £5 per point. Am trialing this service as well so happy with staking. Low cost makes this viable.

This year I also followed Neural and EW Value who both stopped tipping, Roger Green Racing who wasn't cutting the mustard and The Nagman who I felt was going nowhere.

I'll get subs figures and post these some point soon.

Awful August

Well after painting the happy clappy picture of July, August is proving to be a bit of a stinker of a month with a draw down of £809 since 2 August - which means that I'm 21% down from my peak in just 14 days which is quite astonishing.

Clearly I've once again increased my stake for Systematic at the wrong time - a lesson learned I suppose as 26 points down on the month at £20 a point accounts for a lot of the drawdown. Unfortunately neither Steve Lewis Hamilton or Equine Investments have performed particularly well this month and I was lucky enough to completely miss Steve's call today at 4.30pm as he'd put down another 2 point loser.

It should just be a blip in the long march upwards but so far it's been a pretty hefty correction.

August 2010 was a dreadful month so I'm not holding out much hope for the rest of the month and my big meet nerves are jangling again as the Ebor festival starts tomorrow.... The weather forecast looks ok tomorrow but with some big fields it all adds up to.....

Will things change?

July Update - Part 2

Here's the YTD graph to end of July;

So to end of July a pleasing picture and a sharp upward line from May onwards. In the back of my mind I'm looking at a pretty awful August shaping up and I suppose an adjustment was inevitable.

Where does leave each service points wise YTD - see table below;

Not surprising to see Systematic and Steve Lewis Hamilton top of the pile. Also points-wise Northern Monkey performing well relative to other services.

No real changes into August other than I've upped my stake for Systematic Betting to £20 per point. Not the right time to do it as I've dropped 23 points on Systematic in August!! I should warn other Systematic subscribers every time I up my stakes!! Same happened with the move from £10 - £15.

Does mean that Systematic dominates the portfolio and will influence strongly performance for remainder of year.

Broadly ok with how things are going across the portfolio though and no plans for radical change.

July Update - Part 1

A rather belated update from July which is long overdue. Apologies for the delay - if I don't update on a daily basis it becomes somewhat of a chore to do.

Here's the table;

A cracking month overall with the third £1k + month in a row making the horrendous start to the year feel like a distant memory. If every month could produce £1k a month or more then it would certainly be a great way to earn a 2nd income.

July didn't come without its challenges - bookie restrictions on William Hill were a bit gutting and Stan James closing my account appears to have been inevitable. It's made me shift more to betfair - but liquidity on there seems to be drying up and I've seen plenty evidence that the premium charge is destroying the business. More on that another time.

Additionally you'll see that 4PA had a shocker of a month with a 21 point loss (this even with following a 40/1 basic system bet that wasn't on the main account!!). Luckily diversification does the job and the loss was more than compensated by other tipsters.

You can see Systematic remains the star performer - 73 points made is not far off the 90 headline rate and in the range I'm aiming for. Solid performances from SLH, Equine Main and Equine Turnover. My worry with Equine remains the odds availability and my level of staking is too low to deliver significant profit above the subscription. I can't change this at the moment and need to think about what to do.

So overall an excellent month and long may it continue (although August is proving extremely tricky again).

Will update tomorrow on daily peformance and YTD figures.

PS - thanks for all the comments over the last few days - will respond tomorrow to you all. Many thanks.

Steve Lewis Hamilton - Staking

One of the things I'd been keen to do for SLH staking was to see if switching to level stakes would improve return as my gut feel has been that it would. I've completed a quick analysis of the last few months to see the results - outcome is quite interesting.

Here's the table;

What this tells me is that following level stakes produces a better ROI overall and a better profit figure - certainly seems like you get more bang for your buck.

A couple of words of warning - my current staking doesn't match SLH's recommended staking as I stopped betting above 2 points after my last review as I didn't think there was value in it. Have to say there haven't been many 3 or 4 point bets this year so not sure it makes a big difference. Also remember these are based on my stats and price I get so may be off official figures.

Not sure what I will do but certainly food for thought!

Hope it helps you with your betting!

Commenting and posting

Thanks to everyone who has commented over the last week. I've neglected the blog a bit over the last few weeks. Appreciate that if you're an 'avid' reader then you want updates and info I've promised.

Whole point of me doing the blog was to give you my thoughts and feelings of how things are going with updates of progress and the occasional service review.

Dead keen for that to continue (and it will) and some times there will be gaps in updates as I've got a day job, travel alot for that and a 3 month old at home so please bear with me if there's delays in updates.

Great to get all the feedback so keep commenting! Full update including July review and SLH level staking analysis posted late on Thursday.

Cheers all.

July Update - Steve Lewis Hamilton

I know a couple of people were keen to find out SLH performance in July before considering joining - and someone had mentioned an 8 point profit for the month.

Well for July I had just a whisker under a 4 point profit. 17 bets with 25.5 points staked giving a excellent ROI of 15.56%. Definitely missed out on a few points as I missed the best prices available so 8 is quite possible and if a 3 pointer came in then I've lost points there - annoyingly i think King in Waiting was a 3 point bet so that was probably the 4 points I missed.

Could've been a bumper month if Lost in the moment had come in at 16/1. I watched the race on replay - so unlucky.

YTD looking good - my figures giving me a 67.75 point profit - this produces a mighty ROI of 40%. No other tipster can match that as far as I'm aware.

Someone else mentioned the staking - definitely something I'm about to look into - level amount vs. points.

Hope that helps.