Monday 30 April 2012

A strange old month.

Well, another month over. It's been a strange one, really. The first steps taken to change the fundamental strategy that underpins the portfolio means that April 2012 may be regarded as something of a marker in months and years to come. Having said that, it hasn't felt much like a momentous month. Turnover was down (staking just under £8k) as you would expect with placing fewer racing bets and some of the football tipsters treading warily as the season nears it's end. An roi of 10.4% achieved is solid enough without being spectacular, not that I'm complaining about that, you understand.

A big tip of the hat to Wayne at Northern Monkey for producing a fantastic +23pt profit month. It was also nice to see a solid few weeks from Football Elite. Nothing ground breaking or remarkable, but after the good run in March and with the antepost bets looking good for a decent pay out, a solid April should mean a decent season overall for Matt.

The introduction of Summer of Football to the portfolio has made life a little more interesting. In terms of turnover, I've staked more on this than any other individual service, but that's good. One of the reasons I was attracted to the service in the first place is that it will provide some churn during the quieter summer months. For a service with a 50%+ strike rate, it's been quite a volatile ride, not least over the weekend just gone. In fact, at one point it seems that the service's worse ever run of results was reached (on Saturday, I believe), before yesterday's phenomenal recovery that saw seven positive results from nine selections! Anyway, small profit on the month overall.

Part of my research these last couple of weeks has been around the Strike Zone away bets. I know Stewboss is looking at this himself and I'm looking forward to reading his findings over the summer, but at this stage I think I'll be following the away bets next season utilising the asian handicaps. I'm hoping there will be a couple more bets this season, as I want to back them (to small stakes), making sure I'm choosing the right handicap line, seeing whether the lines change through weight of money, etc. Of course I'll be recording these under May's results as you would expect.

I'm also trialling a new football service this month. I don't want to name it as yet, and things may not work out. I'm not checking performance; it has demonstrated a long term edge of 12%+. It's the practicalities I need to be satisfied by - odds movements, timings of bet release, etc. I'm putting all the things I've learnt from the SBC into practice here. Wish me luck! I'll report back on this at the end of May.

Finally in this rather bitty post...Skeeve left a comment on Friday's post with an email address (skeevepicks@gmail.com) should anyone want a copy of his end of season analysis that I was talking about. It really is worth a read, just to see how an experienced, highly successful tipster goes about trying to improve the service he offers. I know what I'd do, for the sake of a quick email.

By the way, I feel I should mention Skeeve and Graeme Dand (The Football Analyst) who between them have been incredibly helpful over the last few weeks. I don't think they've realised just what a help they've been in providing me with a clarity of purpose and ideas as to how I can achieve what I want to achieve. It's not been a case of sitting down and saying right, this is what I suggest. More a case of various emails being swopped (and Skeeve's Mail - a new element to his service that I've mentioned before) that have contained information that provided some real food for thought and new angles that I never knew existed. Fellas...thank you. I owe you one.

Right then, from tomorrow, I shall do my best to bow to the whims of the baying masses (well, the three or four of you anyway!) who have asked for more regular updates as to performance. It means a lot of posts will amount to not much more than a couple of sentences. For that, I'm sure most will be grateful.

Laters.

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