End of October Update

Thought it would be apt time to post my thoughts on my October performance since it is the end of October today and we all have the benefit of having an extra hour today.

My profit for October was £43.06, whilst this is a profit I can't help but feel a little disappointed that all my hard-work in respect to placing bets and analysing data as come to such a small profit. Truth be told I think I've suffered from the fact that I currentley have only one of my major systems running at present and therefore I've not had as many bets as I would have if they were all running. To be honest I can't wait till the new year when I'll have all my main system running at the peak of their powers. For the time being it's a case of the occassional horse racing bet whilst trying to make a profit from my football bets, which I'm finding increasingly hard. Especially since the majority of my bets are placed pre-match and before line-up announcements. I'd love to be involved more in-play on football matches but unfornately the television with Sky is downstairs and my computer upstairs, so therefore unless I watch some live streaming on the internet I'm unable to place in-play bets without running up and downstairs like a maniac. Today's late game was probably a prime example I'd laid Liverpool pre-kick off but they scored a late winner and my bet lost. Had I been able to bet in-play I could have traded out to an all green screen. On a sidenote what a result and performance from Newcastle to win 5-1 against Sunderland, bit of a horror show for the Mackems (had to get a halloween pun in there).

So moving onto November I expect it's going to be a very similiar month to October in the sense of number of bets and focus on football bets. Hopefully I'll be able to improve on the small profit I achieved this month, on the bright side at least I'm back in overall profit for the year now after a shocking September.

Premier League Review (Week 9)

Some sense of normality returned to this weekend some would say with all the "original" top four winning. But for me it was just as hectic and unpredictable as always. That being said I managed my first profitable week in four on the betting front. I've changed from my normal level stakes to more flexible stakes now, also decided under/over goals bets will be lower stakes from now on as these things are much harder to predict than actual outccomes and my record of these bets as been poor. My new staking plan is more flexible in the sense I give the selections a rating out of 1 to 10 based on how strong the selection is and the value on it, although I plan to rangebets between 3 and 5 out of 10 for the majority of the picks.

Next week's Premier League fixtures at a glance look really tough, think I'll have my work cut out this week. The league is ridiculously close this year although the obvious top teams appear to be breaking away with Chelsea, Arsenal, Man United & Man City making up the top four and I fully expect Tottenham, Liverpool,Everton and Aston Villa to make up the same top eight come the end of the season. But the remaining 12 clubs in the league are very evenly matched in my opinion, Blackpool would obviously be considered the weakest but even they've shown signs of being able to pick up wins against good Premier League side. Then there's a split I suppose you would say between teams who usually operate more defensive systems and rely on keeping games tight, I would class Stoke, Blackburn, Birmingham & Sunderland in this bracket whilst you've got the likes of Fulham, West Ham, Bolton, Wigan and West Brom who try and operate more offensively and enjoy possession of the football. I've left out Newcastle and Wolves, both teams like to mix up their style, although Wolves would be more likely to fall under the first whilst Newcastle could be considered under the second.

The difference in approach from the teams is very interesting to watch, and funnily enough the teams with British managers tend to have the tendency to operate with orer emphasis on defense. Some people call teams like Stoke and Blackburn because of their styles of play. But I say there's not only one way to play football, not every team can play like Barcelona or Arsenal. Part of the thing that makes the Premier League so interesting is the contrast in styles and the mixture of physical stregth and techincal skill. I've not really reviewed the weekend in much depth but I think an overall view of the Premier League serves as an interesting topic of thought.

Handicap Hurdle pick

Anybody who follows me on the Adrian Massey forum will know that I have a handicap hurdle system topic that I post up selections on. The forum appears to be down at present so I'm posting my selection for today up on here:

3:45 Ludlow - HALLING GIRL

Premier League Review

I've come to the conclusion that it is very difficult to make a profit betting on Premier League football taking outright prices pre-match. Yesterday's matches just about sums that up for me, in the Merseyside derby their was value to be had in backing over 2.5 goals in my opinion some would argue Liverpool were value considering the historic closeness of these games. Result 2-0 Everton, maybe the actual outcome wasn't that much of a suprise (I expected an Everton win) but the fact that game remained unders was a bit fornate, in my opinion the best bet in that game was overs but it was a losing one.

Probably an even bigger injustice was Man City's win over Blackpool, the people who backed Man City at around 1.66 (4/6 in old money) got very lucky in this game and in my opinion the right bet in this game would have been Blackpool on the handicap (think they where +1 on the asian handicap when I checked). So overall what I'm saying is that there's fine margains to deal with in football, a poor decision by the referee can change everything and you can make the correct bet but still lose. The value concept apparentley states that if you continue to find "value" in your selections then in the long-term you'll be profitable. At the minute I'm either not finding this "value" or I'm just becoming increasingly unlucky. If my performances doesn't improve by the new year I think I'll put my Premier League tipster career on hold.

I'm also feeling a little under the weather at the minute. Another poosible negative of being a full-time gambler, even when you are feeling a bit ill you still have to go about your daily routine whereas if your in normal work you can just call in sick. Then again as long as it's not serious illness (i've only got a bout of man flu I think) you should be able to work perfect fine from home with all the neccessary items to make you better, chicken soup, ice cream, paracetamol and throat lozenges usually does the trick for me.

Weekend football

My picks for the weekend Premier League are as follows:

Fulham v Tottenham
Fulham (+0) @ 2.12 (Pinnacle) high confidence
Fulham remain unbeaten this season with one win and six draws to their name. In their latest game away at West Ham I thought they acquitted themselves well especially since they have been poor travellers in the past and were missing a lot of their striking options. Fulham’s strength lies in their home record at Craven Cottage (last season’s record: W11, D3, L5) and they’ve continued that so far this season with draws against Everton & Man United and victory over Wolves.

Tottenham come into this game on the back of a 2-1 home win over Aston Villa. However their away form this season has been mixed with one win, one draw and one defeat. Tottenham still have a big injury list with plenty of players out and that must be a major worry coming into this game especially with their big European game in Milan on Wednesday, it would be understandable to presume that players not at full fitness may miss out of this game in hope of playing on Wednesday.

I really like the look of Fulham in this game. Fulham have a strong home record and have yet to be beaten this season against a Spurs side that may have half an eye on their Champions League interests, happy to take the Fulham (+0) here.

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Man United v West Brom
Under 3.25 goals @ 1.84 (SBObet) medium
Man United by their usual high standards have hit something of a sticky patch in recent weeks with just one win in their last four. Man United were somewhat disappointing in their last game away at Sunderland and very rarely threatened to score. With Rooney seemingly still out of form the pressure falls heavily on the likes of Berbatov and Nani to provide the goals.

West Brom have undoubtedly made a very impressive start to their Premier League campaign which was identified remarkably in their win against Arsenal at the Emirates. They come to Old Trafford hoping to do something similar; however I think they’ll find it more difficult against Man United who generally are a very sound defensive unit. West Brom also look likely to be without Odemwingie and Thomas who were their star performers at the Emirates.

On balance it’s difficult to see past a Man United win here, although I expect West Brom to make it tough for Man United. Their defence has improved rapidly since their opening game defeat at Chelsea and they operate a 4-1-4-1 formation which can be difficult to break down. Therefore I’m happy to take under 3.25 goals in this game because I feel West Brom will struggle to score against a Man Untied team that don’t tend to concede many goals at Old Trafford and because Man United haven’t looked as lethal in front of goal recently.

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Newcastle v Wigan
Under 2.5 goals @ 1.85 (188bet) medium
Wigan (+0.5) @ 2.06 (Ladbrokes) small
Newcastle have had a mixed start to the season with impressive wins against Aston Villa and Everton but home defeats to both Stoke and Blackpool. I thought Newcastle played okay in their last match against Man City and it took a moment of inspiration from Adam Johnson for City to break through a very resilient Newcastle backline in the second half in that game. Newcastle will probably look back at both the Stoke and Blackpool games and say we had the chances to win those games we just weren’t clinical enough in front of goal.

Bar the win against Tottenham at White Hart Lane Wigan haven’t really played brilliantly so far this season. Draws against Birmingham and Sunderland could go down as decent results and performances but by no means spectacular. They won their most recent game against Wolves 2-0, but they did play against ten men for the large majority of the game and despite all their possession it took a free-kick to break the deadlock.
For me this game should be low-scoring, Wigan have played only two away games so far this season which have ended 0-1 and 0-0. Martinez favours playing five across midfield in a 4-5-1 formation which both Tottenham and Birmingham have failed to breakdown this season.

Whilst Newcastle do usually play an attacking game they also have effectively five across midfield when defending (Nolan drops back from his supporting striker role). Only one of Newcastle three home games as gone unders but because of the way Wigan set-up I think under2.5 goals is a good option here. I’m also inclined to have a small bet on the Wigan (+0.5) as a feel the price is too big especially if you consider Wigan are unbeaten away from home and Newcastle have lost their last two home games.

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Hopefully it will be a profitable weekend on the football bets. Had a few nice winners this week in my horse racing bets which makes my figures look a little better, currentley in profit for October at the mid-point of the month.

End of the week update

Decided to post a little end of the week update. But my main reason for posting is to say I'm taking some time off from Betfair, I've withdrawn a £100 from my account and left in just the £20 which I will use for small bets but only on rare occassions. I don't consider myself skilled or disciplined enough to trade on Betfair daily. I've mentioned it before but I've not got much going on at all betting wise, the occassional horse racing selections and football tips. Although finding the football not so successful so far this year I think I definitely prefer horse racing betting as for me at least it's proven to be the most profitable. Football is a very difficult game to try and predict largely because there's usually only a small difference in terms of goals between the teams and finding value can be difficult especially on the well-known leagues. Plus the majority of times I'm betting around the evens mark meaning a strike rate of 50% needs to be attained whereas Horse Racing system tend to have higher average odds but require a much lower strike rate. However I'm going to continue with my PL picks and review my results and situation in the new year.

Anyway here's my overview page which I use to keep track of all the money I have in my various bookmakers accounts as well as my overall year profit. Still working at a loss for the year after September's disaster but the real damage as occured in my Betfair account which is a large reason behind my decision to take time away from it.

Bye, bye laying system hello trading time

On the back of the really poor performance last month and the equal poor start to this month I've decided to ditch my laying system for the time being, need to inspect why such a massive downturn as occured over such a short period of time after it appeared to be working perfectly fine for the previous four months.

In the meantime I've only got £100 left in my betfair account left to play with after the losses incurred by my laying system. I've decided i'm going to opt for trying my hand at trading, hopefully discplined and successful trading. But I haven't been to successful in the past at trading but this time I'm going to focus soley on football matches. I'd like to try and average 1% per day in profit based on bank size at the beginning of the day, although I don't plan to trade every day. All my trades are going to be in-play mainly across the match odds and over/under goals markets. I had a decent start tonight by locking in a decent profit on the Israel v Croatia after Croatia went 1-0, they've actually gone on to score another before half-time. Therefore at half-time my biggest green looks the most likely, I'll of course keep you updated on how my betfair trades are going as well as all my other bets. Although it's all a bit quite this weekend with the international football.

A successful trade by me!

The magic of the Johnson's Paint Trophy

Doesn't have the same ring to it does it? But the Johnson's Paint Trophy definitley provided a wonderful, magical game of football tonight in the form of Sheffield Wednesday Vs Chesterfield. Probably made all the more sweet by the fact that I profited well from this game, firstly on my original over 2.5 goals bet and secondly a much bigger win on the match odds market. These are the sort of games that all traders out there love, one like tonight's which keeps changing in outcome from draw to away win to draw and back to away win again. Thankfully I managed to be on the right end of all the swings tonight and got the feeling of what it's like to be a successful trader (don't get that feeling very often I must say).

But the night very much belongs to football, as it was a very entertaining game that ended in dramatic penalty shoot-out which ended with Chesterfield's goalkeeper missing their 11th spot kick and seeing Sheff Wed progess through to the next round.

Europe win the Ryder Cup!

Got to love the Ryder Cup, undoubtley one of the best sporting events around. I myself managed to get back in to watch the final stages on television. Pure sporting drama as the USA forced it down to the final game with McDowell thankfully holding out and meaning Europe win the Ryder Cup!

Ole! Ole! Ole!

Back to my betting adventure and I thought it would be a good time to display a graph of my horse racing laying system which went totally off the rails in September, although my aggressive staking plan is probably partly to blame for the downfall, but I'm now operating with a more conservative staking plan due to uncertainty, the system seems to have steadied itself over the last week or hopefully the upward trend which I witnessed from May up until August will return. Graph show cumulative P/L over the number of selections.

Click to enlarge

September Review and lots of rain!

Just a fairly brief September update from me, in truth there's not much to say apart from that it's been a terrible, terrible month in terms of betting performance. My laying system is down over £900 for the month and a few of my other horse racing systems are down for the month combine that with a few lapses in discipline and you get a rather painful loss of over £4k for the month, wiping out all my profit for the year so far. In part I've only got myself to blame my lapses in discipline and using a much bigger % of my bank on Betfair on bets than I should be has been the primarily reasons for this, possibly born out of frustration by the way my systems have been performing. Glad to say I haven't been placing any silly bets or attempting trades with big % of my bank since a few Sunday's ago where I lost big after three goals in the space of five minutes in a Serie A. The full damage (not for the fainted-hearted) in exact figures is shown in my P/L sidebar.

Obviously a big set-back but I like to take everything a month at a time my aim now is to make a profit for October. A lot of my horse racing system don't run during for October because I find it is very tricky to find good horse racing systems for this period of the year. Therefore my main focus at the minute is football, both my own bets (which have been average so far this season) and other football tipsters I follow. There's two new bets up on my blogabet for today's Premier League games by the way.

Finally the subject of weather, it can be crucial in decision-making for your bets. For horse racing I suspect everyone knows the significance of changes in ground, heavy ground can make races a lot more unpredictable and can making betting a bit of lottery. I also recall a Brazilian football game I bet on last year I think it was, there was a complete downpour of rain and the pitch was barely playable as the ball kept stopping in puddles, they continued though and I managed a nice trade on under 2.5 goals on that game which dropped by around 0.50 in the space of the first fifteen minutes due to the state of the weather and pitch. I also mention rain because it annoys me highly, was looking forward to watching the conclusion on the Ryder Cup today but it appears another downpour of rain has meant that the Singles won't be played till tommorrow (at which time I'll be stuck in some University lecture).