January Review

I am just going to review from when I restarted this blog rather than the whole of January because that was when I formalised records properly.

January Totals

Win Form Pro: -£200
Morning Value Service: -£753.75
Racing Consultants: £0
Price Power: -£1295
The Racing Professionals AW Service: £505
BTTS and Win: -£617.50
Banker Bets: £193
Isiris MYC: £38
Bettingbias (horse racing and golf): £663.50 
Steve Lewis Hamilton: -£650
Tim Russell Private Service: -£1018
Value Seeker: £824.25
Dark Horses: £279
Value Football Bets: -£820

JANUARY TOTAL: -£2851.50

So obviously the first thing to recognise is that it has been a very disappointing start since I recommenced this blog.

It is slightly mitigated by the fact that I was well in profit for the earlier part of January, so things aren't quite as bad as they seem above. But we can't get away from the fact that it's been a dismal couple of weeks.

The big question is: should I change anything?

There is always a tendency when you encounter a severe downturn like this to lose faith and abandon things. In fact I think that's what most gamblers do and is one of the main reasons why 98% of people lose at this game. They keep switching around systems and strategies as soon as they hit a losing run so are basically just running up losses again and again.

You have to recognise that gambling is a long-term strategy and you are not going to win all the time - there will be losing runs.

The key point to evaluate is whether any of the services have lost their edge or value.

You could take the Morning Value Service, for instance, and say it has had a bad month and before that had only been bumping along for the last few months.

But then you have to remember that it has made over £120,000 to £50 stakes over the last 3 years so one bad month does not a bad service make. It is far too early to tell whether they have lost their edge - the downturn is well within the statistical margin of error. If it continued this way for another 3 or 4 months, then you could seriously question its viability. But for moment I am happy to continue with it.

The same could be said for the Price Power. You could look at the results above and be tempted to throw in the towel. But then you consider they had winners at 66/1, 33/1, two at 25/1 and a host in the 10-20/1 range before that in January. And they came within a whisker of landing a 120/1 winner. Overall they were still nearly 25 points up in January, so I am not prepared to ditch them just yet, despite the disappointing run over the last couple of weeks.

Tim Russell had also built up over £700 profit prior to his recent downturn, so I will stick with him too.

However, I have thought about things very carefully and decided to take action on some of the services in my portfolio.

Before I get onto those though, I want to elucidate my main criteria for selecting services and this will perhaps give a better rationale for the changes I intend to make:

In short, services I select must:

1. Have an established track record over a number of years demonstrating a clear edge over the market - the longer the track record the better;
2. This record must be proofed by a reliable source;
3. They must be clearly profitable at Betfair SP. This does not mean that just because you can't get the advised prices of a service, it is not worth following - just that BSP must still return a good profit.
4. No loss recovery staking systems! It must be profitable at level stakes or it is not actually a successful betting strategy - it is purely the staking system that is producing the profits. And eventually a disastrous losing run will be hit - that is a statistical certainty. 

The above four are essential. Without these, basically you should not be following a service because you are just chancing your arm. And you must be able to use Betfair because any system that works well will eventually have you bookie accounts closed or limited - that is a guarantee. And then if you can't work things at Betfair you are basically finished.

I then have some criteria that whilst not essential, are important and give a service extra weighting:

1. A high strike rate. This will make a massive difference to the size of bank you use and therefore your stakes and crucially, how quickly you can build your bank.
2. High volume. This allows your bank to grow much more quickly.
3. A good ROI - whilst not as important as the above two, the higher the ROI over a long period, the larger the edge over the bookies/market.

On the basis of this, I am making the following changes:

BTTS & Win:

This fails on two counts - firstly, it is not profitable at Betfair. This is because Betfair do not offer this market on the majority of matches! So you have no option but to use a bookie. And sadly most of the bets are with one or two bookies, meaning that the better the service does, the more likely account closures become. Then you are restricted to using odds below the advised prices and missing the value. 

The other aspect that troubles me about this service is the bank required. The recent revision of the previous 50 point bank to 100 means that growing this bank is likely to take a long time. Perhaps you could double it once a season, but for me coupled with the above, this just knocks the service out and means I will be dropping it. 

I should end by saying I still think this is a good service and has made profit for me. But in the long term I can't see it being practical for me and account closures seem just a matter of time.

Steve Lewis Hamilton

I have been with Steve's tipping service a long time and respect his expertise but am beginning to question its profitability. It seems to have struggled lately and has a very low frequency of bets - just 3.7 per week on average. 

Looking at the results over the last seven years, he has made 650 points profit, which is no mean feet. However, with average stakes of 1.8 units per bet, that works out at just over 50 points a year to 1 point level stakes. With a considerable bank size needed, I just can't see this one really ever making a huge profit for me. 100 points a year at £50 is £5,000 - a nice profit but not life changing and with the high subscription costs added in just doesn't worth continuing with for me.

Value Football Bets

I probably never should have become involved with this one in the first place as it breaks one of my cardinal rules - its track record is far too short being just a couple of months. Although I have a lot of respect for Kevin Laverick, I think this should be a trial service with much reduced stakes rather than a full blown part of my portfolio. 

The big recent losses illustrate that this is a work in progress and in some ways I am kicking myself for following the hype rather than trialing it for a sustained period or waiting a couple of years for established results.

Conclusion

So there you have it. Perhaps fairly drastic action taken with three services removed, but I think if I am honest they never should have been part of my portfolio in the first place. 

I have to be clear in my mind about what I am looking for: established long-term services with the ability to rapidly and consistently grow a betting bank. 

Another small change I am making is to start backing Price Power each way rather than win only and reduce the stakes accordingly. They advise each way so that's what I should be doing, plus it will ease the pain of the losing runs. 

So, hopefully February will be a better month with these changes made and we can back on the road to success...