Scorchio!

Now.. I bet you thought that title related to the hot weather at the moment - I chose a good week to holiday in the UK!

But really I was referring to Equine Turnover form - a 20/1 winner on Thurs and 16/1 winner today! Struggled with odds today though and best I could get was 10/1 rather than 16/1 quoted - more to do with a short delay in getting on for me but I noticed SP was 4/1 so cracking value bet!

A brief post really also to say I've published, read and commented on all recent comments - thanks for input. Worth reading comments if you don't already.

Still on hols - betting been easy to get on in the main although my laptop is now playing up. Visiting family tomorrow so may struggle to get bets on - maybe not a bad thing considering this weeks days of the week topic!

What a difference a day makes - part 2

Thanks for all the comments from last nights post - good to generate a bit of debate. Certainly food for thought and what to do on Saturday!

Profitable today thanks in the main to Northern Monkey who got us a 12/1 winner and a 9/1 place - perfect timing for my new staking! Systematic ticked up another notch today with a small profit but a loser from Equine Turnover.

As I mentioned I thought I'd look at Systematic Betting daily and here are 2011 figures;

Monday +£1,439

Tuesday +£1,156

Wednesday +£621

Thursday -£1,349

Friday +£452

Saturday +£22

Sunday -£532

So slightly different profile to the portfolio and the early part of the week is much more profitable than the latter half. Thursday is a shocker, and Sunday is poor, whereas there is a scrape of a profit on Saturday. (quick addition - my numbers for systematic aren't reconciling but they are only a few quid out so doesn't impact the overall point)

Interesting figures. Sunday racing quality is generally poor so our argument that competitive racing makes it difficult doesn't stack up with that.

Anyway more food for thought. Comments / thoughts welcome.

Couple of additional points tonight;

* I've signed up to the Piecost Private Service - this is the type of service I want to follow going forward - based on systems rather than opinion. This statement may seem at odds with me signing up for another 3 months with Northern Monkey but Waynes service is profitable so why give it up? Additionally good "opinion" services - SLH, Equine Turnover are worth keeping going while I shift from other services to ratings / system services as well as look at other potential angles (i.e. trading / my own systems).

* I'm about to head off on holiday for 10 days, which will involve a bit of a tour round the UK visiting friends and family. The iphone and laptop are coming with me so plan to be betting but the blog posting may be slightly more erratic.

Good luck!

What a difference a day makes

Not much progress today - well none at all really - as my staking change on Northern Monkey and Steve Lewis Hamilton has yet to work in my favour.

Following my post the other day on how Saturdays weren't really working out that well on the betting front I thought I'd add up each day and see where it ended up - and here are the results;

Monday +£818

Tuesday +£1,463

Wednesday +£666

Thursday -£1,228

Friday +£1,599

Saturday -£1,159

Sunday +£270

So - what does this tell me? Take Thursday and Saturdays off? Who knows! I have seen and heard as well as spoken to people who always say you should never bet on a Saturday as it's too tough to call. God knows what the problem is on Thursday though although it looks like Systematic Betting contributes to the majority of the loss on this day for some bizarre reason.

I'll look at Systematic and all individual services over each day out of interest more than anything. Not sure we can draw any conclusions. Thoughts welcome.

Why do I do this - part 2

For part 1 refer back to my post through the links on the right hand side.

So after reading the Observer articles I spent the best part of the next 3 months debating as to whether I should take the plunge!! I finally signed up to The Mathematician, choosing that over Steve Lewis Hamilton or Sport4Profit simply because I thought the subs were more manageable.

The service ticked along nicely and I made a small profit but the account bets were few and far between and I was hooked that this could potentially be a good way to make money. I decided to join SLH to try to ramp up the potential profit - I joined bang on the right time as Steve hit a massive long purple patch.

About the same time as joining SLH I had a brief email conversation with Greg Gordon to ask about how I got decent proofing of other tipsters - and Greg introduced me to the Secret Betting Club and I was amazed that all this was going on and I'd known nothing about it!! I immediately joined and anticipated the monthly newsletters with as much anticipation as I had waiting for my weekly Record Mirror magazine when i was a kid.

And really thats where portfolio betting kicked off for me.

2008 and 2009 were both very good years. Things haven't gone so well for me since then - last year was a tough old slog and this year hasn't been much better. I've made plenty of mistakes, been burnt by following some poor performing tipsters; I chopped and changed too much over time while not really having the right balance across the portfolio but am beginning to pull together a plan as to how I take this forward to try to run it like a proper business which will make me a respectable 2nd income each year. I'm not looking for much. £20 a day profit would give me £7,300 a year tax free income. You'd need to earn £10k plus to get that from a taxed income.

There's been more than once that I've thought about jacking it in, but I've enjoyed it - Steve Lewis Hamilton's 33/1 shot the day before Cheltenham 2009 being the memorable highlight - it was the 1st day of my honeymoon and I slipped the bet in and the resulting profit paid for the week!! Tremendous.

More to follow.

Weekly Update

Ok - back to business - here's the weekly update;

Overall - surprisingly a good week - with a £167 profit on the week. I had expected a loss so a pleasant surprise. 4 winning days and 3 losing days - the saturday shocker causing serious damage. So progress in the right direction - but still a long way off the peak of the year.

A good week for - Systematic Betting - putting on £365 on the week. Thanks in the main due to a bumper £440 on Friday. Pretty volatile service sometimes but to be expected due to the volume of bets. Difficult to get prices on a lot as well - especially as I don't have a Stan James or Sky bet account due to closures.

A bad week for - both Mr Gekko Bets and 4PA continue to perform appallingly. 4pA having another wipe out this weekend and MGB ratings failing to do the business. Question is, are these services broken?

Other news - Northern Monkey subs up and am going to continue with the service. 6 profitable months this year. Am going to remove my "trial" staking and double up to £20 per point. Watch the service plunge.... Have moved to pure level stakes with SLH - i.e. £25 e/w or £50 win no matter what the points recommended are. Lets see how that goes as well.

Here's to a good week!

Integrity

Thanks for those of you who have commented on my post last night re SLH. I do believe that the feedback received was constructive and I take some of the points mentioned (especially re telephone line etc).

I have to admit that I was beginning to feel that my blog was becoming a vehicle for one or more person(s) who had a grudge against SLH and it was beginning to wear me down. While admittedly the service hasn't progressed over the summer, it certainly has been a decent year so far. I'm on £25 - £50 stakes and I've made £1.6k gross profit. Not bad!

I want to post every comment that i get as I want the blog to be an open forum for debate, thoughts, advice and general chat. However I do believe the integrity of the blog is being damaged by constant remarks over the perceived quality of this particular service - I think perhaps I've been naive in publishing and responding to some of the comments. From what JP mentions in his comment some of these are nothing new.

Anyway to cut a long story short - I'm drawing a line under this and we move forward from today! Lets hoping the betting does the same!

Another Saturday Shocker

It's reaching the point where i begin to dread Saturday betting. If I'd sat out Saturdays all year I would be £1.1k better off which is quite an unbelievable statistic.

Not one of the services I follow could manage a profit today and £417 was knocked off the account - despite a huge number of bets being placed. It does make me wonder if Saturdays are just too hard even for the pro's.

The damage wasn't too bad overall as a bumper day from Systematic Betting on Friday with £440 made in one day cushioned the awfulness of today.

------

Loads of comments have come in recently regarding Steve Lewis Hamilton service - the service does seem to attract a lot of attention and a huge amount of negativity, especially when there are losers. I am happy with the comments coming in and am keen to debate the merits of any service but I am surprised at the overwhelming issues some people have with the service. Equine Investments Main Account hasn't had a great couple of months but no one comes in and moans about that. So if anyone can answer why Steve Lewis Hamilton attracts such criticism I'd be interested to hear.

I have no interest in promoting or publicising a service - I just pass on the facts and sometimes get annoyed / frustrated / happy with each and every service - but if you look at the SLH private service for this year - I'm 65 points up and well in profit (even taking into account the subs) - so if everyone has followed for the same period then they must be doing well so not sure why there is so much criticism. Anyhow look forward to hearing your thoughts.

Auto-stress!

Was out this morning so when I got back in I thought I'd run the Systematic autobet system to run the bets for me in the afternoon to save a bit of time! Well in terms of placing bets it certainly did but I spent most of the afternoon checking betfair to see if the bet was placed and also checking prices and whether I was going to get a decent price. Made for a stressful afternoon and not very enjoyable.

That was my fault and no criticism of the system. Think it will be useful when I am away for the day and struggle to get my bets on but not when i am available to put them on at the time they are tipped. This in the main because of lower prices just before the off which is going to reduce the ROI significantly.. and not because of my neurotic behaviour of checking all the time!!

Decent couple of days on Monday and Tuesday followed by a losing day today with SLH and Systematic going awry.

Finally got a winner out of Equine Main yesterday although the price I got was way off the headline price but that was partly because of the delay in me getting the bet on. Great couple of days for Equine Turnover - the younger brother of the Main account but significantly outperforming his older brother this year and a double bonus of it being much much easier getting the prices on. Certainly makes me think for subs renewals.

Am going to look at upgrading my spreadsheets following the new ones on offer from SBC Advanced - haven't had a chance to review as yet but will look at over the weekend.

Weekly Update

Finally up to date with my spreadsheets (well not today) but doesn't make for happy reading and thought I'd show last weeks performance

Overall - £264 loss on the week. An excellent start to the week again - putting on £351 on Monday and Tuesday  and then having 5 losing days in a row. Puts the year on £2,432, taking subs into account that turns into a £1,487 loss. Mmm - not good. I originally climbed up to the £2.4k on 24 June - so three months later and I'm back in that position. 

A good week for... Northern Monkey - £96 on for the week even with my £10 per point stakes. Excellent performance. Also Football Elite - back on form with 3 winners out of 4 and £121 profit. Lets hope these good runs continue,

A bad week for... Equine Main Account - dropping £120 and another disappointing week. 

Other news... First time I've had 5 Systematic Betting losing days in a row - frustrating after an excellent start to the week. I also should've had a proper break over the weekend and would've been £530 better off over the four days by having a break. A lesson learnt? 

Looking forward... To nothing really - continues to be a hard and unappealing slog! Although am going to see if I have time to trial my Systematic staking on getting on at 1 min before the off using the autobet system and see how that feels and what the price differential is between getting on quick and the off.

Expensive Weekend!

And I'm not just referring to the €7 bottles of beer in Spain!

Not had a chance to tot things up since I last updated on Tuesday - a huge number of bets over the last few days and while it was easy to get the bets on while I was away, thanks to high speed wifi where I was staying and new cheaper data plan from Orange. There was little point in doing so as from what I can tell the portfolio made very little progress and I suspect there's been a few more steps backwards despite the volume.

I've replied to comments and hopefully will be able to provide an update over the next few days.

Auto - success!

Systematic Betting have introduced a new automatic betting tool for placing bets on betfair and I used it for the first time today - seemed to have a magical effect on the horse running as we had 7 winners out of 9 who started giving me a £329 profit on the day.

It's a good tool, but places bets just before the start so long term ROI will be lower than early prices - but still profitable with a good rate of return. It'll be useful for when I'm short of time - as is the case on many days these days - as I can add the file and leave it to run on the computer. Definitely also worth using to minimise bookie bets and I may use it when I start to increase my stakes. So really pleased with this addition to the service at no extra cost!

Not much happening elsewhere, couple of small losing bets from Northern Monkey which would be especially frustrating when Secret Millionaire who Wayne has followed won and we weren't on!

As I mentioned earlier in the week I'm away on a short break from Thursday to Sunday so with a nice 5am start on Thursday this will probably be my last post until Sunday / Monday night. I aiming to bet over the coming days but if there is no wifi access where I'm heading, the cost of using 3G is so extortionate I may not get a chance.

Last thought.. if I could win £329 a day then that would be a cool £120k a year!! Nice work... LoL

Fair Play to Mr Gekko

Fair play to Mr Gekko for his email today to members - apologising for the weekend results and offering to continue the service for free until further notice for existing members. I don't know whether this is a knee jerk reaction but it does feel that the ratings have been underperforming for a while now (last period of last season and now the start of this season). The question is - is this a blip or a flaw in the ratings? If it's a blip then we ride it out, if its a flaw then its better to know now. I think analysis from last season suggests that the ratings are fundamentally sound so its a blip.

Unfortunately I can't compare to last year as my results records are poor but I seem to recall a poor start to last season.

I also want to direct you back to the comments on my "Boyle-ing" post - great comment from Banaz which is worth a read. Many thanks for posting.

Really do appreciate all the comments everyone adds to the blog - makes it's a much much better read for me and I hope everyone else reading it.

Not a lot much else to say today other than a small profit made on the day of £28 - thanks to Systematic Betting - unfortunately another loser from Equine Investments - Little Black Book - which seemed to be appearing on nearly every tipsters radar... (I'm still not buying Mr Gekko's multi bet success ROI!!)

If i made £28 a day every day I'd be happy - that'd be £10k+ a year. Maybe that should be my target????

Reflection / Weekly Update

Have been reflecting on my post last night and how things have been going in general and I suppose it's fair to say I'm probably most annoyed with myself for a number of reasons - not being aware of total subs and the impact on my net profit for one. 

I'd asked Mark from the Trading Horses blog how I would get into trading as I consider other ways of making money out of this business. Mark mentioned there were three key things - patience, discipline and overcoming the disposition effect. These are certainly relevant to my betting portfolio as well. Certainly need the first two - definitely lacking and do sometimes bury my head in the sand. Overcoming the disposition effect - or cutting my losses rather than dragging poor performing services on forever - is also key.

As I mentioned yesterday I'm not going to rush into anything though and will play things out over next few months. 

Anyway thought I'd give a weekly update to see how things are progressing.

Overall - £94 profit on the week. An excellent start to the week - putting on just shy of £600 up to and including Wednesday and then falling back the rest of the week.

A good week for... Steve Lewis Hamilton - £341 on for the week with two good winners. Wrestled back most of August's loss now which is good to see - with the NH season just round the corner hopefully we'll see some more scores on the door. 

A bad week for... Mr Gekko Bets - 1 winner out of 12 on Saturday - dreadful start to the season. 

Other news... Equine Main Account continues to disappoint with £67 loss on the week. 

Looking forward... this week I'm away abroad for a few days Thursday - Sunday so will struggle to get bets on but will aim to keep going I think. 

FFS

And the title of the post isn't because I've just spilt a bowl of peanuts over the floor while watching MOTD...

It kind of sums up how I'm feeling at the moment about this whole game. Today wasn't a particularly bad day - cracking 8/1 winner from Steve Lewis Hamilton in the St Ledger (why only 1 point though!!!) and decent show from Equine Turnover (again!) and 4PA (thank goodness!) but three things have annoyed me over the last couple of days;

1) Mr Gekko Bets - stinker of a day today - 12 bets average price 6/5 and only 1 winner!!! Now I know it's just the start of the season but it's been a bloody awful start which continues an awful finish to last season. It would've been a lot worse if I followed aways at 1 point. But the story is we're 10 points down after the 2nd week of the saving and that's already a lot to make up at these prices. Pumped today into the loser bracket. I do have 6 weeks free - needs to be a serious turnaround if I continue subs.

2) Failure to get on at prices recommended by Systematic. No criticism of the service but a spot check of September shows that my lack of price success has already made a difference of £200 already in the figures. It was a difference of £530 last month and you know how that impacted my figures. Not sure how to tackle this one but it's immensely frustrating.

3) Most importantly I did a tally of subs vs. profit this year last night and taking YTD subs into account rather than being in profit I'm down £1200 on the year. I thought I was breaking even but clearly not!! Really was a bit of hammer blow this one.

So where do I go from here??? I'm seriously beginning to wonder if following a portfolio of services is the way forward. Interesting comment on the blog on last post made me think as well.

Now this is all easy in hindsight but lets say I followed SLH, Equine Turnover, Northern Monkey and Systematic only. These are the services that I think the subs match the performance and low and behold I'd be £5k + in gross profit for the year which would be a healthy £2.6k net profit for the year. Doesn't sound like a lot but I'm not actually looking for much a year - just a few hundred quid extra a month in my pocket would be good.

There is the added problem in so much as you continue to follow tipsters who are successful your card is marked by the bookies which makes it exceptionally difficult to continue and get the best you possibly can.

There's a couple of things i'm probably going to do over the next 3 - 6 months;

1) Reduce the number of services I follow to 4 or 5.
2) Look at some of the ratings software out there and use some of that.

I'd also like to get into a bit of trading but that's a pipe dream to be honest.

My advice to anyone who is getting into this game - it certainly isn't the get rich quick world so many people think it is.

Boyle-ing!

Mmm... a poor Friday with all services posting a loss. 


Equine - 2 losers out of 2
Equine Turnover - 1 loser and 3 x double losers.
4PA - 1 loser out of 1
Systematic - 10 losers out of 12!


And I missed Northern Monkey's bet - but it lost so no harm done!


Ouch. 


My post title comes from the following email received from Boylesports;


As you are aware, Boylesports.com provides extra value for its customers through regular promotional offers such as Cashback Specials, Best Price Guaranteed and Free Bets.After a review of your account we have decided that it will no longer benefit from these and other gestures classified as ‘special offers’. 



Well it could be worse and they could've closed my account but another knock for the betting portfolio. And people really can bet £250 on bets and not get their accounts closed?? Max I've ever bet with Boyle is £20!!

Ticking Over

Things are ticking over ok again and we ticked back over the £3,000 mark for the year yesterday before dropping back after a losing day today.

Nothing much to report other than 4PA's poor form continues which is a growing concern. Since the peak of 25 June when basic system bet Tominator came in (which wasn't an account bet!) the service has dropped 27 points for me. It doesn't sound a lot but adds up to £545 drawdown for me. Hopefully the wind will change and things will improve but at the moment it doesn't feel like we're going anywhere.

Systematic Betting have posted August headline results up of +9 points which is no surprise but hard for me when I posted -18 points so a big difference in results - simply for missed bets and failure to get on at recommended price. Will need to work harder re this - my lack of Stan James account doesn't help.

Here's a quick analysis of my points vs. Systematic each month this year;

Jan: 42 (me) / 45 (sb)
Feb: 6 / 28 (includes a holiday)
Mar: -9 / 10
Apr: -34 / -26
May: 70 / 69
Jun: 6 / 10
Jul: 73 / 90
Aug: -18 / 9

No real complaints but would like to get closer to headline.

Why do I do this? - Part 1

A while ago someone asked a number of questions as to why I do all this and how I get started. This is my attempt to respond. I'll answer the questions in a series of posts rather than in one long rambling post!

When did your interest in betting begin? 
I've always been interested in betting (well for as long as I can remember of my adult life) but absolutely hated losing money. I was a classic part time punter - maybe going to the races once or twice a year, having a few pints and betting a fiver a race as well as £2 here and there on the football and a bit more on accumulators in the betting shops. Also on occasion you would find me down the local casino betting on roulette with my 25p chips!

I remember being hugely excited when I opened my first internet account with blue square, putting a couple of accas on and seeing potential winnings popping up!!

To be fair sports betting hadn't been on my radar at all as a way to make serious money back then - I was, however, keen to supplement my main income to give me a chance to enjoy a few finer things in life rather than endlessly breaking even month in month out. I'd signed up to a lot of free money making websites and would get bombarded by endless "get rich quick" ideas (scams??) that looked awesome but in the end (thankfully) my cautious nature told me that these were generally too good to be true. Additionally I started selling stuff on e-bay but there's a limit to how much you can buy and sell to make a profit on there unless you have a huge amount of time to devote to it and I ended up buying tonnes of 12" dance records instead!!

Eventually my interest in sports betting was pricked when one of these emails advertised a service called Football Betting Data / Sports Statistician (forgive me if the names are wrong). Looked quite interesting and the cost was minimal - £97 or something for the year. I got the emails through etc and made a small amount of money through the service - but with the Sports Stats service you had to do some work and analysis and I wasn't for that - I wanted to make money without a lot of effort clearly.

My interest in trying to make more serious money out of it was sparked in 2006 when I stumbled across the series of Greg Gordon's (of progambler fame) articles that appeared in The Observer. You can find the concluding article here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2006/jun/04/observercashsection.theobserver1

More to follow in future posts.

That's more like it...

...thankfully!

A good day today and a nice £300 profit made thanks to Steve Lewis Hamilton and Systematic who were the only active tipsters today.

Good to see a winning day from Steve who has had a poor run of late and nice to see some of the seconds from Systematic coming in as winners with 4 winners from 10 bets. Missed some of the best prices as I was on the road and used betfair mobile to get on when I could. 

Been reading a lot of different blogs etc over the last few days and has given me food for thought as to how I can squeeze more profit out of this business. More to come... probably. 

Frustrating

Saturday was a very frustrating day - Bated Breath looked like it'd won it to me only to be stung by the stewards in the photo - I think a dead heat would've been the best call but hey ho such is life - it turned a bumper day to a losing day - with both systematic and 4PA tipping it would've been a nice £300+ profit.

Too many places elsewhere so we continue to tick over with no massive harm done. Hopefully these 2nds / 3rds will click into 1sts and I'll start raking the cash in again!!

Only other point to note was that Mr Gekko Football Bets kicked off the season this weekend. Not a great start with 2 losers and 1 winner producing a negative return. Decided based on last years stats I'm going to play £35 for home bets and £25 for away bets. Definitely an argument for playing the draw no bet market as well. Haven't decided on that one yet though.

Here's to a good week - although I note the weather forecast is tricky all week so could be a struggle.

August Update - Part 2

Before I start just wanted to say farewell from the blogosphere to The Portfolio Investor who's hanging up his typewriter! Unfortunate but understandable - it does take time to type up thoughts etc. Was a good blog and I will miss reading it.

Anyway back to business - here's the ytd graph until end of August -












Really does show the devastating impact of such a poor month on profits. So we go into September £1200 off the peak of 1 August of £3.7k. Some recovering towards the end of the month as you can see but nowhere near enough. I'm all for diversification but it always seems to be the way that if one tipster is performing badly then they all perform badly. Maybe I don't diversify enough!! There is definitely some overlap - with a number of duplicate tips day in day out - and mostly they don't seem to deliver but August is just one month in 12 and I move into September with high hopes!

Looking at the year as a whole there's been 4 losing months and 4 winning months and when you add subscription costs I've barely made a profit. Looking at subs in detail over the next few days but wanted to give a quick summary of whether I think I'm in net profit or not with a service - a simple yes or no will suffice for now with limited comments;

Steve Lewis Hamilton - Yes
Equine Investments - No - mainly due to my low staking
Equine Turnover - Yes
Northern Monkey - Yes
Football Elite - No
4PA - No
Systematic Betting - Yes (just - low staking and bad increased staking has caused this)
Mr Gekko - No
Market Examiner - No.

It's a slog - there's no denying it. I have an idea of what to do in terms of change but need to mull it over and see how things go in the next month or so.

August Update - Part 1

Well the August review makes pretty grim reading with poor results pretty much all round with a couple of notable exceptions.

Note that I missed a few bets over the month so my results will not match any official figures.

This set of results means I post a loss of £1,057 for August which isn't great but is better than it was 2/3rds through the month when I was down £1,500!!

Only positives were Equine Turnover and Northern Monkey. Hats off to Northern Monkey who are my most consistent performer of the year - 6 winning months in a row. No other tipster can now match that on my list with Steve Lewis Hamilton posting a heavy loss in August.

Equine Main disappointing for August and it looks like Equine Turnover is outperforming the main service. Maybe not in cash terms but in ROI most definitely. Interesting in itself.

Certainly joined Market Examiner at a bad time and got my £20 stake wrong for Systematic Betting but suspect that with getting right prices I'd have been close to breaking even with systematic in August. Will be interested to see how my loss of 18 points matches the headline figure.

Will updater further tomorrow.