Timing is everything.

As tomorrow is the last day of the month, there seems little sense in my writing a weekly review tonight when I can produce a monthly review of the figures in a couple of days time. So instead today, I thought I'd jot down a few thoughts on Sportyy, the tennis service I joined for the first time at the beginning of June.

I have mentioned before that a deliberate strategy of mine was to increase my turnover and the diversification that my portfolio could provide over the summer months. This strategy has largely been a success, with services such as Service X, Summer Of Football and Form Lab Lite mitigating what would have otherwise been large losses in June and have contributed a significant chunk of the profit for July (barring an absolute disaster tomorrow!). Unfortunately, Sportyy has not, so far, matched the success these other new services have enjoyed.

Firstly, my figures for Sportyy since joining: Staked 63pts, -27.968pts, roi -44.39%.

Not great, eh? That drawdown represents just shy of 35% of my bank for the service.

A little perspective is needed, I think. Racing Proofing have been proofing Sportyy's results for over 700 bets and have recorded an roi of almost 15%. That's a decent longer term track record to say the least, and when we see this I think we can say that I have just happened to join the service at the wrong time.

It really has been a horrible recent run. For a service whose strike rate lies around the 50% mark, to go through a run of 16 consecutive losses is quite something. The trouble is, because I don't know the service very well, I've not yet seen it when it's performing strongly. I've not had the advantage of having my confidence in the service developed by good runs. I don't yet have a feel for how the tipster operates, so when after a really bad run I see bigger stakes going on a 0.71/1 shot, followed by a 0.55/1 bet, a part of me wonders if losses are being chased.

It's here that experience has such massive value to the gambler. A year or so ago, I would undoubtedly have been negatively influenced by this recent poor run. Now, I just think here is a service that has performed extremely well for a good period of time and over a decent sample of bets, that is going through a bad patch. As a tipster, you don't do that if you chase losses, and you don't do that if you don't know what you're doing.

So, when my initial subscription period is up in September, do I stick or twist. Well I haven't yet sat down to work out exactly what I'll be doing with the portfolio once summer has passed. But if it's twist, it won't be this poor run that makes up my mind. It will be aspects around the practicalities of following and portfolio balance that will be the deciding factors.

Weekend Betting

In contrast to the previous weekend, these last couple of days have essentially been an exercise in treading water. Highlights were seeing On The Oche's World Matchplay antepost bet landed (so 2/2 for the antepost selections), a nice winner yesterday for The Market Examiner (Majestic Mannanan - Carlisle - 5/1), and a good winner on Saturday for Northern Monkey (Unex El Greco - Newmarket - 9/4). Not such a good weekend for Form Lab Lite, and between them, the others ended up even.