Holiday update

I'm off on holiday for 10 days so won't be betting. While betting will contribute to spending money for this hol it'd be fair to say my roi across the portfolio has been dismal. The last two days at goodwood have been abysmal. My fear of special festivals is fully justified.

7 months into the year and virtually zero return for a significant effort and outlay isn't good. To be fair alot of it is of my own doing. An imbalanced portfolio and sticking with dead wood for too long is my doing. My two key services are underperforming: equine investments and Slh. I still have faith in them but certainly not helping. Tipping legends have been a disaster and I should've dropped them about three months ago. As the commentor on the last post says Roger green 100pts profit in July and I'm still in the red!!

So, what now? No bets on hol. I need a break and an overhaul on my return. Will post more when I am back.

Been a long time

Sorry not be posting much over recent weeks. Am still betting and still it feels like wading through treacle at the moment.

Will update in more detail over the coming weeks.

More Changes

Just thought I'd drop a quick post to say I've made a couple more changes to my portfolio over the last couple of days;

1) I've signed up to The Daily Bargain from CD-Systems (Steve Jones) so looking forward to this - certainly looks profitable and not very time intensive.

2) Decided to stop on Double The Odds - was going to wait and see how things progressed to end of July (although i'm subscribed to the end of the year) but think it's time for me to throw in the towel. No profit last year and not heading in the right direction this year despite Berties Dream coming in at 50/1 earlier in the year!! Spent £800 over the 2 years in subs and time to bite the bullet and stop and focus my bets and time on better turnover services. Suspect that a couple of big winners could come out and turn things round quickly but the problem is that i'm not wanting to wait and I think 15 months is a long enough time.

More changes to come for sure.

Good day at Ascot today with 3 winners and a couple of places. Onwards and upwards!!

May Update

Here's stats for May - best month of the year so far thanks mainly to Steve Lewis Hamilton but wasn't as good as I'd hoped with a poor show from Equine Investments and another dreadful month from Double The Odds.

Pleased with the start from The Nagman - and I missed one winner with them so could've been better. 4PA back in form.

Short run attempt from me to make Packed Pockets pay but I gave up pretty quickly as the odds were cut so quickly it was virtually impossible for me to get on at recommended prices.



Remember points profits are what I've achieved and may differ from official stats from the tipsters + my spreadsheet isn't perfect so could be a few other anomolies in the figures.

Taking subs into account thats a decent month in terms of profit - in the region of £700 which would be a decent supplemental monthly income for someone like me who also works full time! Reality is I'm still down on the year by over £300 and really shouldn't be expecting to wait until almost the half year to make a profit.

A couple of changes...

Thought I'd just post a note to say I've made a couple of changes to my portfolio;

1) I've stopped subscribing to the Mathematician. Not too difficult a decision from a financial perspective in the end as without going into the nitty gritty of the emails it's unlikely i'm going to make a profit with the service going forward. Even with account bets its difficult to see a profit despite some near misses recently and i haven't really made a profit on this service for well over a year. From an emotional point of view its a big step change as the Mathematician was the first tipster I signed up to about 4 years ago following the review from Progambler and it was Mathematician that got me started on this game. I think it marks a step change in my approach - this is a business and i need to make a profit. Probably sounds daft to seasoned hard headed punters but for me its a big change. One in the right direction as well. Thanks to Guy for all the good times!!

2) Signed up to Roger Greens Royal Ascot special so looking forward to that. Roger is the old other half of Tipping Legends for those who don't know. Back into the horse tipping business on his own. more to follow on this!

It's been a while...

At the beginning of May i was quite downhearted about this whole business. Things hadn't been going well and i was seriously questioning my strategy.

I'd started reviewing my tipsters and deciding which to go forward with. Unfortunately work commitments have got in the way and I've not had a chance to do anything more with it other than keep putting the bets on and catching up with my recording of all the bets

Which has been a good thing as May was really a good month. SLH back on form big time and I felt even more comfortable with my exposure to SLH by capping at 2pt bets. This reduced my profit for the service in May but certainly reduced my risk so happy with that. Also worth mentioning Tipping Legends who've had a 2nd good month in a row. I was ready to throw in the towel with TL at the beginning of the month but the following paragraph in an email from JC helped me keep the faith for longer - the stats from some back testing of what JC is good at... am hoping that keeping the faith is the right decision to make...

Adding the very simple & logical filter...

435 bets, 27.8% were profitable, profit of 439 pts & a ROI of 75.6%!!! ( The ROI at SP was 40%!) Even Saturdays produced an ROI of 28.9%

Will provide a lot more detail over the coming few days to keep you updated with whats going on.

Service Review

As I mentioned I was going to spend some time over the last few days having a think about what i was going to do with the services that I subscribe to following what can only be described as an awful year so far.

I spent some time thinking about the article that appeared in a recent secret betting club betting portfolio magazine by "Mr Gekko" and comparing that to where I am with services that I subscribe to and my personal experience with them.

I rated them in my spreadsheets Red, Amber and Green - you can tell I've been a project manager in my time!! My thoughts are below;

Steve Lewis Hamilton
It would be fair the last 2/3 months have not been good for SLH. With a few successful side bets I've managed to make SLH work over a longer period where other people have struggled I believe. I confident that things will turn around and my subscription is due to end in Jan 2011 and I will continue to bet with my current staking plan. Clearly there's always a chance to review if results fail to move again but at the moment, despite the set up and structure and lack of transparency I am happy with SLH and the service has been wildly successful for me since i signed up in the middle of 2008.

Status: Green
View: Retain subscription

Equine Investments
I'm into my 2nd year of subscribing with Equine - the first year in terms of ROI was spectacular. Reviewing my bets and staking following some of that Mr Gekko information it was particularly clear that for an expected 10% ROI I was staking well below the average bet level.

This is because Equine Investments is an expensive service. Justifiably so - my ROI for 2009/10 was 49%. This is below official figures but I have limited access sometimes and prices do move. I accept that as the reward is greater than the limitations.

So I need to up my staking to make my minimum criteria which is 3x the monthly cost. To do this I have increased my 1 point stake to £30.

Status: Amber (not because of quality of service but because of my betting structure)
View: Retain subscription

More later...