Sunday 1 July 2012

June review

I want to keep June's performance review as top line as possible, simply because my own results are not really representative of the service's themselves due to my missing a week of it when on holiday. To give just one example, my personal WRT figures are considerably worse than the "actual" figures the service attained as I know for a fact I missed a 14/1 winner.

So, please forgive me for my general vagueness, although I will give my actual total figures at the end.

Basically, the month has been a nightmare for my betting on horses (The Market Examiner aside, whose efforts are all the more admirable bearing in mind the shocking weather over the month that must have made life difficult for racing tipsters), but acceptably decent on football.

With the exception of The Market Examiner, it's been a month to forget on the nags. The roi figures for Northern Monkey, On The Nose and Winning Racing Tips were all very similar (in fact within 2% of each other), and were all very clearly in negative territory.

The football has been promising. My main aim of increasing turnover during the quiet months has been achieved, although the poor performance of the racing services has meant that a loss has been accrued despite this. However, the overall loss would have been much worse than the actual £244.72 that was accrued had I not diversified as I did. This in itself I think, is a triumph for the diversified portfolio approach to gambling.

None of the football services have had storming months, but together they negated 70% of the racing losses.

The actual figures for the month state that £9,694 was staked, and a loss of £244.72 suffered, an roi of -2.52%.

Half way through 2012 and it has to be said it has been a very tough year so far. This has been the first losing month, but January was a break even month and there has not yet been a month which has produced a profit of over £1,000, which is disappointing. After the cost of subscriptions has been deducted, the profit stands at a shade over £2k and at an roi of just 4.15%. Tough going.

These periods of slow growth have been endured previously though, and in the past have been followed by spurts of growth. The lessons from history that I have taken is that an roi of 4.15% can be seen as being decent once given the context provided by future performance. In other words, if the second half of 2012 brings in good profits, the relatively stale 4.15% growth over the first half of 2012 is considered as the portfolio doing it's job, ie. avoiding large scale losses when things aren't going well.

Of course, there are no guarantees of strong profits being made between now and the end of the year. That's why to my mind, serious gambling is so testing mentally - you just never know how things are going to progress.

As far as moving forward on the blog is concerned, I do need to make a slight alteration to the way I record the results. As I mentioned yesterday, I am beginning to use BetButler more. This has been forced on me by the continued closing of bookmaker accounts. The BOG accounts I have still available are those with BetInternet, BetFred (amazingly!), Paddy Power (restricted), Corbett Sports (restricted), and Hills. I've been completely closed by Boylesports (of course), Sportingbet (of course), Skybet (of course), Ladbrokes (shame), Bet365 (shame), Stan James (pfft!) and can only get minimal amounts on at Corals, Bodog, 888/Bluesq and Totesport. The trouble is, BetButler don't seem to necessarily update accounts on the day of placing the bet, especially those bets that run in the evening. I can't just report on what I think the returns might be because commission needs to be deducted and to be quite frank, I can't be bothered to work it out every night. So what I'm going to do is give a general run down on what happened during the day, and then give weekly figures.

The other thing to note is that I have joined (yet) another football service to provide that important turnover during the summer months. The problem is though, is that prices are sensitive, and the tipster involved doesn't actually want any extra publicity. The service is closed now anyway to new members, so in the circumstances I'm simply going to call it Service X. Please don't ask what it is, because I've given my word that it shall remain private. I don't wish to be all mysterious but I have to respect the wishes of the gentleman kind enough to let me have first option when a place opened up. The only reason I'm mentioning it at all is that obviously it is going to impact on my bottom line figures that I'll be reporting, one way or the other.

So, there we have it.

Best of luck for July, chaps!



4 comments:

  1. I'm also looking to diversify my meager betting portfolio also. At the moment I'm only following a few footy tipsters and On the Oche. I guess its time to stump up for a SBC membership for some more decent footy tipsters.

    Since I'm from Canada the time difference makes it tough to follow any horse racing tipsters. That, along with the fact that I'm also facing the same issues as you are with bookmakers limiting/closing accounts.

    My Ladbrokes account got ruined by the RVP top gs antepost bet from Football Elite. One cool thing I've noticed during Euro2012 is that my limits have been reset to normal at Gamebookers and most likely Partybets since they have moved over to the bwin betting platform. Quite handy imo since bwin odds are rather decent. We'll see how long this lasts though.

    -CanadianAnom

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  2. First off I have been reading your blogs for over a year and thank you for providing an entertaining and often amusing read.
    I make my living betting on uk horseracing and have done for 20 years. My income needs are fairly modest and I have secured profits in excess of my needs every year. I bet exclusively on the exchanges and avoid charges by operating more than one account.
    The reason I am commenting today is because it seems to me that a lot of the SBC members have bought into being able to make long term profits by paying for an "experts" tips.Its unlikely that anyone using a portfolio in a less organised way than yourself will improve on the figures you report to achieve. I dont know what the people at SBc tell you with regards to service performances,losing sequences ect but for any racing service not to be in profit by the end of June suggests incompetence. If any of the services you or anyone else subscribes to cannot turn a profit after say 100 bets they have demonstrated a very real weakness in their methodology.Forget variance after 100 bets there is no excuse.I expect you will believe 100 bets is simple too few a number to judge but unless the service is tipping min odds of 33/1 100 bets is plenty.
    I tried to tell the guy who blogged "my betting life" to ditch all the racing sevices except systematic. A simple analysis of ML's advices will enable to reproduce his future bets better still invest in a system builder and create your own systems.
    Tipsters used to be thought of as con artists then the clever people got involved marketing themselves as hard working and trustworthy. If these service providers are so hard working how come they cant find a way to beat simple racing systems that continue to outperform them year after year.
    Why would anyone offer their edge for sale , its not because they cant get on and if it were where does that leave the subscribers , ultimately in the same position. Most of the services have such a tiny edge that they struggle to show a profit to ind sp. 90% of my bets are in the live market just before the off when all the info has been factored in. almost 100% of service providers' bets are at early odds so its no suprise that bookies close the accounts of punters taking the best of it .
    Im not as eloquent as yourself but I hope I've manged to get my point across.

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  3. Hey CanadaAnon...don't start complaining about time differences! There's got to be some pay off for the climate, fresh air, no economic crisis, etc, etc. :)

    Rowan

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  4. Hi Anon,

    First of all, thankyou for taking the time and trouble to post in such detail. Much appreciated.

    You raise some interesting points of discussion. I'm not sure we have the same outlook on a couple of things but I can see you raise some very valid points, and I do agree with the fundamental points you make.

    I'll discuss more in the blog proper, if that's ok?

    Cheers again for posting.

    Rowan

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