Stephen left a comment under yesterday's post that touched upon a part of the thought process I went through when considering the reintroduction of Football Investor to the portfolio. With plans to expand the selection of The Football Analyst systems utilised in Season 2013/14, would following Football Investor bets not lead to a fair amount of correlation in the teams being backed each week?
I think it is fair to say that yes, there will be some correlation, but I don't see this as being a problem in any way at all. First of all, when looking at the portfolio as a whole, it is set up pretty nicely in terms of minimising correlation. It is inevitable that there will be some, but thus far, very little. Some correlation between the two football ratings services should represent only a very small part of the overall portfolio turnover. Secondly - and this is a more significant point - both Graeme (TFA) and Stewboss (FI) have identified and exploited the potential of the teams that are picked out by two or more of their own respective systems. I'll let you draw your own conclusions, but you can probably see what I'm thinking.
In the interests of transparency, I declare now though that I have already reached the stage of placing 99% of my football/sports bets with one of Pinnacle, 12bet, 188bet and SBO. I can get the odd bet on with Coral, Hills, and Bwin, but the days of me trawling through a host of bookies seeking the stand out price are long gone, I'm afraid. The knock on effect of this lack of choice in terms of where I can strike my football bets is that I am highly unlikely to be able to match the officially recorded ROI figures of the football services I follow. Again though, I am unconcerned. Let's remember that the point of the exercise in following more TFA systems and adding FI to the mix is to increase betting turnover and ROC, the new altar at which I worship.
I don't want anyone to be under the misconception that if and when the results recorded on this blog are running at lower levels of roi than those officially recorded by the services involved is due to those services being unfair or unrealistic in the way they record their performance. Let's face it, this is an accusation that can be levelled at some of the less scrupulous operators with some justification. There is an interesting debate around this subject in the SBC forum presently. It's noticeable that the main protagonists in that debate are the tipsters who, in my experience, operate the fairest policies towards the odds that they use to record their official results.
This is a subject I intend to discuss further in here. Not the content of the SBC forum debate, as that would be unfair. More the approach I take to trying to secure the best odds possible for each of the bets I place. Generally speaking, this involves no more than striking the bets as soon as I can after they hit my inbox, but there are one or two other points that are worth exploring.
More on this tomorrow.
Monday 8th April
Another losing day yesterday, although only mildly so. It would be nice to post a winning day sooner rather than later though, just so we can say that the recent rot has possibly been stopped.
No joy for On The Nose (0/1), Football Investor (Strike Zone) (0/1), or Football Investor (Combo) (0/1).
The one Winning Racing Tips bet finished second, providing a tiny profit (took me three bookmakers to get the bet on though, which isn't good!).
On The Nose: Staked 0.5pts, -0.5pts.
Winning Racing Tips: Staked 0.8pts, +0.033pts.
Football Investor (Strike Zone): Staked 1pt, -1pt.
Football Investor (Combo): Staked 1pt, -1pt.
Can you not just bet with betfair or betdaq?
ReplyDeleteHi AL.
DeleteI could for most football/sports bets although 95% of the time I get a better price at one of the Asian bookmakers who haven't imposed any limits and in the case of Pinnacle and SBO are not going to at my relatively modest staking levels.
It's not quite that easy with horse racing, simply because many of the bets are each way (solely each way in the case of Winning Racing Tips) and the price on the place part of the bet on Betfair usually lacks value. Certainly I'm beginning to use Betfair more now for any win-only racing bets, particularly at the longer odds range of the price scale.
Cheers,
Rowan
Hi Rowan
ReplyDeleteI'm not surprised you're taking a break from blogging and am astounded that somebody so prolific can always find something to talk about!
One thing I would suggest is that if services are declaring prices from books like Bet365 and Ladbrokes .. then they aren't even going to match their declared results themselves.
Best price is best price but it means little if you can only stick £3 on it and I don't think it's entirely fair to use those prices in their service results.
I note on your last post before your break that you were asking for suggestions and a very useful thing to know from a guy that follows so many services would be exactly what kind of prices are available to place advised bets with half decent books as opposed to just advised prices.
In other words, (and I know you're a bright fella so probably don't need to explain this), but it may be good to monitor just how many advised bets are actually advised at obtainable prices.
With regards your each way betting, High Street and certainly on-course books offer a bust place book and cover it on the win in most cases from what I can gather. Which is why the margins on the horses haven't come down anything like the margins in other sports.
That all may be about to change for the worse if this push for standardised terms is successful, particularly if it's 1/4 the odds as it would make more sense for books to go win only than be forced to offer win books at 150%+ every race. If that happened, obviously Betfair would be the only place to be and having read that you're streamlining your portfolio over the next couple of months the outcome of those talks may be something that you'd like to keep an eye on.
Good luck mate