Tuesday 3 December 2013

At last! November review

Well Sporting Value is now in a position to announce a profit. Not just a monthly profit, and a good one at that, but the whole portfolio for this season has snuck into the black. Admittedly this is not taking into account the subscription costs but at this moment I will take it.


Rank Tipster Staked P/L ROI ROC
1 The Football Analyst 161 32.1 20% 32%
2 Skeeve 6 9 150% 11%
3 Football Investor 97.5 10.2 10% 10%
4 Summer of Football 14 1.9 14% 5%
5 Football Elite 33 1.7 5% 3%
6 Narrow Victories 26 -0.6 -2% -1%
7 Laurent Marty 23.5 -4.7 -20% -9%

The November table shows a big change, the two services that dragged the service down over the first three months are at the forefront of the profit this month. In fact Skeeve would have been even higher on the list if I had not chosen to skip a series of doubles as all the opponents had already been backed with TFA and FI.



Well I did jinx it and 6 odds points down the drain, although I was also uneasy about the differing tactics with playing a series of doubles with four teams in. I suppose it does point out one issue I have been having in placing so much money down on TFA and FI bets on the Thursday and sometimes looking for an excuse not to put more down. This has also rubbed off on Narrow Victories selections but I will save this discussion for another post.

This month has had a few other omissions, some more profitable, some not. With Football Elite I chose not to bet on Fulham to beat Manchester United (DNB) as I was backing United to win by 1/2 with Narrow Victories. I also had a bit of luck with Summer of Football as an email containing two losers was swallowed into my junk folder. One of these teams was also being opposed by FI so it really was a stroke of luck. In fact the Skeeve doubles I ignored also did not get through the filter first time so maybe all these events were linked!

Last month I wrote about how I was limiting my TFA selections to a maximum of 4 points. During the losing October period this saved me over £1300, this month (a winning one) has cost me around £400.

So November produced just over £4,000 in profit on turnover of around £32,000, both totals being the highest so far. This means that the whole portfolio is now £667.50 in the black on turnover of just over £88,000. This is less than 1% ROI, but given the start to the season I will take that. The overall standing now looks like this:


Rank Tipster Staked P/L ROI ROC
1 Summer of Football 70 15 21% 38%
2 Narrow Victories 95 7.35 8% 18%
3 Football Investor 208.5 8 4% 8%
4 Laurent Marty 37.5 3.15 8% 6%
5 Football Elite 61 0.1 0% 0%
6 Skeeve 72 -17.1 -24% -21%
7 The Football Analyst 436 -24.9 -6% -25%

Five of the seven services are now in profit and the two big offenders have cut their losses considerably. December has got off to a relatively good start with three (TFA, FI and FE) all backing Hull to beat Liverpool so hopefully the wind is in our sails now.

Sporting Value Confidence Rating (last months rating in brackets)

The Football Analyst – 3.5 (3.5)
An excellent month from Graeme's service even though his bread and butter product of aways were the least effective. Graeme and I have discussed the draw part of the portfolio and both of us were a little worried early on but they, along with double staking the home bets have formed a fine defence to the away variance.

Bets Stakes Returns Profit
Away 64 £6720 £7220 £500
Draw 11 £1520 £2491 £971
Home 26 £4640 £5740 £1100

Last month the service was looking precarious with over half the bank gone (75% if not for limiting the bet sizes) but we are now back to around a quarter down. 

Last rating time I mentioned that November was typically a good month for my particular TFA portfolio and it proved to be so, and I am pleased to say that December is also promising, if not as much as November but promising none-the-less. Of the seven on record, all have been profitable with 4 of the 7 producing enough profit to take the whole portfolio back into profit. The average profit is 41.8 points, although the last three years show just 15.7, but I would take that now.


Skeeve – 3 (2.5)
Much better with all selections (that I backed at least) winning. Skeeve's conservative approach seems to be paying dividends and again draws have played a big part in reducing the overall losses with this service. We are now one month away from the post January period which is historically the best time of year, so if we can just reduce the deficit a little before then, hopefully it will be all guns blazing.

Football Investor – 3.5 (3.5)
Good profit, good turnover, all ticking along nicely. Last month's bonanza with big priced Top Flight Euro bets dried up but I added Football Investor selections over 4.00 (if not in Combo/SZ) and these made up for it.

BetsStakesReturnsProfit
Combo30 £2,800.00 £2,949.60 £149.60
Euro6 £240.00-£240.00
FI13 £520.00 £916.00 £396.00
SZ52 £4,240.00 £4,751.20 £511.20

Service is now in profit overall so long may it continue.

Summer of Football – 3.5 (3.5)
As mentioned previously, 2 points were saved in error, which turned a minuscule loss into a profit but them the breaks! The A League has got off to a reasonable start, which should take the place of the fading Brazilian offerings, of which Serie B was the best performer this month.


Bets Stakes Returns Profit
A League 4  £600.00  £712.50  £112.50
Ligue 2 5  £750.00  £675.00 -£75.00
Serie A 3  £450.00  £427.50 -£22.50
Serie B 2  £300.00  £570.00  £270.00


Football Elite – 3 (3)
Bar a disastrous weekend the one before last, this would have been a stellar month but in the end just under two points up. The Premier League has been the most profitable, mainly due to Newcastle's win over Chelsea (a great result for the portfolio overall with TFA and FI playing as well).

Bets Stakes Returns Profit
Bundesliga 2  £240.00 -£240.00
La Liga 5  £600.00  £372.00 -£228.00
Ligue 1 8  £960.00  £932.40 -£27.60
Prem League 9  £1,080.00  £1,662.00  £582.00
Serie A 9  £1,080.00  £1,200.00  £120.00

Bundesliga and LA Liga let the side down a little but nothing drastic, in fact December started with a Hannover win at home so hopefully that is a good sign!



Narrow Victories – 3 (3)
Another break-even month, although as an Arsenal fan, Ramsey's goal in added time against Cardiff was still celebrated even though that would have put me in the black for November. I must admit when Wenger brought on Flamini and Monreal to seal the 1-0 win with 10 mins to go, I thought it was safe but c'est la vie, as Mathieu would say. I started playing the Champions League this month, to mixed results although an overall profit.

Bets Stakes Returns Profit
Bundesliga 4 400 491 91
Champ 5 500 610 110
La Liga 3 300 413 113
Ligue 1 1 100 206 106
Portugal 1 100 0 -100
Premier 6 600 213 -387
Russia 1 100 0 -100
Serie A 4 400 408 8
Turkey 1 100 204 104

No one League has produced the goods but the Premier League did let me down this month. Certainly Saturday's results of Everton winning 4-0 and Arsenal 3-0 away buck most trends (similar to Genk's 3-0 win in Belgium), but more on that on the sister site later.


Laurent Marty – 3 (3)
Not a great month and beginning to see the prices disappear quicker, so might not be the only one noticing an uptick in his numbers. Officially should be just a 2 point loss but Saturday's match at Brive was tipped at under 35.5 and the price went in a flash and I ended up on under 34.5. I am sure you can guess the final points tally. Frustrating.

Other services
I have mentioned that I was trialling two other services, namely Football Form Labs Daily Reports and Keith Elliot's Golf service. I have decided to drop the golf after my initial months subscription, mainly as I wanted to play this as a place only system which my calculations showed were the profitable part. Unfortunately the bookies don't let you get close enough to the EW price equivalent (in the month I was backing I was averaging 85-90% of that price) and taking this into account the edge is much less. I will go into more detail in another post and share the analysis I performed.

FFL is still alive although I am not enjoying following a service that does not announce when it's tips go up. In fact I have often forgotten to check which does not do it justice. Also I am not convinced if there is an edge beyond certain angles and even those do not have the sample size to be sure. As I constantly use the data side of the service I will not be cancelling but I need a bit more convincing to add it to the portfolio on a full time basis.

I have also considered Skeeve offshoot, Croatian Football Bets, but unlike its creator's service, bets pop up out of the blue and the prices contract very fast. If I am at desk/computer at time I have tried to play but if driving etc, by the time I get to it the price is usually well gone. If Skeeve can get some of that professionalism into the service and maintain set times for bets (or 15/30 mins warning like Betadvisor do), I think this could work alongside the Skeeve product, especially as his turnover is down at present.

Bookie Update
Account closures:
None this month
Serious Restrictions:
Betway (down to pennies)
Tote - been a bigger player with all the away bets on TFA and FI but now restricted to about £150 win. Can still put a little on with Betfred so together am getting close to what I want, but can't see it last much longer.
Paddy Power - Limited to around about a £100 win
BetInternet - Tried to place about £150 at 1.16 as part of my Venn style Asian handicaps with NV but limited to I think £46! At 1.16 I ask you!
Unibet - Have been using there draw part of their European Handicaps to play NV via dutching the 1 and 2 goal starts. £50 bets are being restricted to around £33.
These two explain why, regardless of how successful it becomes, Narrow Victories could never be a tipping service!

Friday 1 November 2013

October Summary

I am starting the long drive back to Blighty this afternoon so will have to keep this relatively brief - all the kids stuff to pack and house to tidy etc. Another losing month but not on the same scale, three services producing a profit, although one of those, Laurent Marty, did so from a very small sample. Two services pretty much broke even and two repeated their poor first month. The turnover for the month was £27k, down £1k from September, although that included August in it as well, with an overall loss of just over £800.

October
Rank
Tipster
Staked (pts)
P/L
ROI
ROC
1
Laurent Marty
14
7.8
55%
15%
2
Football Elite
17
3.3
20%
7%
3
Football Investor
95
6.1
6%
6%
4
Narrow Victories
21
-0.2
-1%
0%
5
Summer of Football
17
-0.3
-2%
-1%
6
Skeeve
18
-8.7
-48%
-9%
7
The Football Analyst
130
-21.7
-17%
-22%

Overall, Summer of Football maintains its lead from Narrow Victories, and bar the introduction of Laurent Marty, all the places remain the same. Probably the most worrying number is the ROC for TFA, with over 50% of the bank gone, but more of that in the Confidence Ratings. Total turnover is now £55k with nearly £3.4k lost at a -6% ROI, or about 8% of the bank in total

Overall
Rank
Tipster
Staked (pts)
P/L
ROI
ROC
1
Summer of Football
56
13.1
23%
26%
2
Narrow Victories
69
7.9
12%
16%
3
Laurent Marty
14
7.8
55%
15%
4
Football Investor
111
-2.2
-2%
-2%
5
Football Elite
28
-1.6
-6%
-3%
6
Skeeve
66
-26.1
-40%
-26%
7
The Football Analyst
275
-57
-21%
-57%



Sporting Value Confidence Rating (last months rating in brackets)

Laurent Marty – 3 (n/a)
Pretty well covered in the last blog post, a very strong start, but just a start.

Football Elite – 3 (3)
A profitable month, but not quite enough to push the service into profit overall. Hannover, I feel they are Matt’s standard bearer, twice failed to win at home although France seem to be leading the way this season.
Still happy to take on Vulnerable Home Favourites with Narrow Victories, while Football League bets (not official bets) have got off to an impressive start.

Football Investor – 3.5 (3.5)
Great start to the month and strong finish, terrible middle, although nearly all the profit can be put down to three big priced European matches in the last week: Reims at 6.92, Almeria at 8.04 and Getafe at 7.34. FI is also now fitting the remit of providing turnover to match TFA, although quite a lot of correlation in selections, especially in League 1 and 2. So far really pleased with the addition of 0.5pt bets on Top Flight Euro selections, over 4.00 and looking into whether it is worth adding Football Investor selections that are also over 4.00.    

Narrow Victories – 3 (3)
Break-even month summed up by the last week, 5 out of 6 at the weekend and 1 out of 4 midweek. Not often that you see a side score 3 and still lose by more than 1 or 2 goals, thanks Real Madrid. Still susceptible to amateurish moments, especially when I succumb to narratives such as Atletico Madrid being big scorers after losing a bet 4-0, and then realise they are still winning by 1-2 goals, and only place a bet in the match they win 5-0! That said I did back them last night away at Granada, and they got the job done.
Turnover was down this month, which I put down to the International break and the Champions League taking up a lot of the elite league’s time. Both these events could well be NV territories, but still in watching brief mode.

Summer of Football – 3.5 (3.5)
A poor start to the month was rectified to produce a solid, if a little flat break-even month. No problems with getting the bets on or the prices.

Skeeve – 2.5 (2.5)
Another poor month, especially in terms of ROI. ROC lower as it seems Skeeve is cutting bets to get through to the magical second half of the season. He had suggested that the service could become a January to May only service, admittedly at a lower price, and while this is obviously where the profit is, it slims the service down even more and relies on an incredible ROI to win the day.

While there has been a suggestion of holding fire until January I will continue to follow the bets that are recommended, although not with the greatest confidence for the next couple of months.

The Football Analyst – 3.5 (4)
The only downgrade this month, but faith is certainly not lost. Graeme made an incredible start to the month and the deficit of September was halved but October did not keep giving.

I mentioned in an earlier blog piece that I was cutting back my stakings on multiple selections to a maximum of 4 and this really helped the bottom line. My obvious fear was that it would slow down the recovery as the strongest selections would win with less money on them, but the opposite is true as I have saved over £1300 this month. If the full amounts had been bet, my bank would be close to 75% gone, and this week’s £2200 staked would be the full bank in play.

So why the faith, you may ask? Well negatives first, this is the first time my portfolio has lost two months in a row, and these two months would be two of the worst 3 on record. But 17 months out of the 64 (26%) on record have produced a profit of over 50 points, 41% had over 40 points and 50% over 30. All the Novembers on record are profitable with an average return of over 58 points. Admittedly this is with full 11 point staking when necessary, but I think this policy of restricting has already paid its way.

As a way of comparison, September 2011 was the previous worst on record, and averages 35 points profit for the month, while October has 2 losing months and an average of 34 points made.

Of course there is a chance that the ratings have lost their edge, but for now I am carrying on, almost all-in, but not quite!

Other options

I have mentioned that I am trialling two other services, Football Form Labs and Keith Elliott Golf. As I have not decided which way I am going to play them I am not including them in the official portfolio so far. To be honest the small profit on FFL is cancelling out the small loss on KE so far, so not much to report.

Right I need to get on my way, and find convenient stops on the way back to England to place all the Friday and Saturday bets. Good luck all this weekend.


Tuesday 29 October 2013

Europe acting like the Middle East


I was reminded of the famous letter to the Financial Times about the sitation in the Middle East, when going through all the European selections from various tipsters (including my own selections):

Sir, Iran is backing Assad. Gulf states are against Assad!
Assad is against Muslim Brotherhood.

Muslim Brotherhood and Obama are against General Sisi.
But Gulf states are pro-Sisi! Which means they are against Muslim Brotherhood!

Iran is pro-Hamas, but Hamas is backing Muslim Brotherhood!

Obama is backing Muslim Brotherhood, yet Hamas is against the U.S.!

Gulf states are pro-U.S. But Turkey is with Gulf states against Assad; yet Turkey is pro-Muslim Brotherhood against General Sisi. And General Sisi is being backed by the Gulf states!

Welcome to the Middle East and have a nice day.

KN Al-Sabah,
London EC4, U.K.

I have previously mentioned that my Narrow Victories selections were clashing with Matt of Football Elite’s Vulnerable Home Favourites. This is not that much of a surprise as we are both looking for a level of underperformance from a favourite. Well this week, there were clashes all over the place.

Best to leave me out of the equation first, but the big clash was over the Levante – Espanol fixture where both FE and The Football Analyst were for the home favourite and Football Investor was taking them on. I am glad to say the most productive result won through here with Levante cruising to victory.

The other clashes were for Narrow Victories and I am ashamed to say I bowed down to the pressure this week! Both FI and FE were backing Reims to get something against Marseille, but Marseille are one of my strong NV mainstays with an unrivalled tight home record last season. I am usually OK taking on a VHF selection but combined with a Top Flight Euro from Stewboss, that was too much. And a good job too as Reims won 3-2, despite a Marseille comeback from 2-1 down in the last few minutes.

FI also had Osasuna to beat Seville, who are, again, an incredible NV side. In hindsight I should have looked into this more as the £40 stake on Osasuna should not have put me off a £100 bet for NV, and it was only taking on one tipster (although a main selection rather than a trial add-on)!

On a more positive note, there was quite a strong correlation of opinion among TFA, FE and FI this week. If you had backed all the selections that had at least 2 nominations (well 2 exactly, there were no all 3 choices), you would have backed 6 teams and won 5 of the bets. A profit of 9.24 points at an ROI of 154%!

Welcome to portfolio investing and have a nice day.

This weekend has been a very productive one, which was a relief after the last couple of rounds. I won’t go into too much detail of the previous weeks as we are nearly at month end and I will write a summary then.

What I will say is that this was the first weekend when all football tipsters made a profit at the same time. FE made the least with a £12 return and FI topped the pile at £488. NV and Summer of Football both made over £400 as well. Overall a profit of £1343 was achieved at 22% ROI.

This was particularly pleasing because at 4.35 on Saturday it looked like TFA and FI were about to drop a grand each and finally a few late goals went their (and my) way!

This blog has been a little quiet over the last fortnight, predominately as I was making a few tentative changes to my portfolio. No, no-one has been chucked out yet but there have been two tentative additions, to go with the continuing trial of Football Form Labs.

Rowan, over at TPI, mentioned that he was finding it relatively easy to get on at Pinnacle with his rugby bets. Rather than try GT Tips again, like Rowan, I have restarted my BetAdvisor subscription for Laurent Marty.

Laurent has been a Secret Betting Club hall of famer, was highlighted in Joseph Buchdahl’s ‘How to find a Black Cat in a coal hole’ as one of two tipsters with a proven edge. He also made quite a lot of profit for me up until I stopped last October. At that time LM was probably at the top of his tipping game and the subscription charges were well over £100 per month. I was finding it impossible to get bets on in any amount at or near the price or points spread.

Since then things have cooled a little after a poor run and the fees have come down, indicating to me less people are following him. In the last couple of months his results look like they are returning to a profitable level and it was time to unpause my subscription.

So far, the results have been spectacular, 13 bets, £1350 staked, and a profit of £798 at 59% ROI. Obviously this can’t continue but there has only been one selection I have turned down due to not being able to get the odds and that was my fault as I was walking the walls of Carcassonne castle with my kids when the tip came through!

Given the price of subscription, results need to be very strong, but I have until the 8th of March to decide if it can be a permanent member of the portfolio.

The other new addition is again a former member of the portfolio but I intend to find out if I can play it in a different way. I used to follow Keith Elliott’s Golf service and had some fantastic wins but overall the figures were not convincing once you processed the data and worked out bank sizes etc.

What particularly hurt the P/L statistics were the big wins as they usually triggered a family led spending spree, and these returns were needed to make the books balance. Interestingly, big horse wins did not have the same effect, maybe because they did not involve 4 days of following, usually culminating in a tense Sunday night drama, that everyone picked up on.

Being a member of SBC, Keith Elliott was almost a guilty secret of mine, due to the fact that there was no external proofing and they did not publish their results. My link to the service was through Keith’s Golf Form books, which were published many years ago and were a great insight to sports betting in general.

I knew this service has amazing wins but also long barren runs and due to the number of bets and different style bets my account keeping were never the most analysable. So when Matthew Walton, who runs Keith’s service put his other one up for proofing with SBC (issue 84), I thought it was time to look again.

I emailed them and they sent me full results for the last 4 years and I got to work.  Firstly I looked at their straight, as advised results, then win only (as most bets are EW) and then place only.

Given the headlines are garnered through big priced winners it was quite a shock to see that the bulk of the profits were from the place part of the bets. The obvious solution is to just play the place part of the bet, but prices are harder to obtain. I will trial to see how close I get to the quarter odds part of the EW bet and keep you updated with my progress.

Finally, the family and I are on half-term holiday at moment just outside Girona in Spain. While the weather was lovely when we arrived I get the feeling we are at the tail end of the great storms as now windy and a bit cooler. But it is still lovely and crowd-free and the kids are just about still swimming in the pool, so I can get some peace and write this!

Rather than just sharing my circumstances I thought I would detail my betting experience while abroad. Taking the ferry from Portsmouth to St Malo overnight was an interesting experience and probably the first time in a long time that I was without data for a considerable time. Fortunately I did not have any bets to follow on that Wednesday night, bar the start of two golf tournaments in Asia. It was actually quite nice not to be surgically attached to the iPhone just In case something came through.

France is mostly betting friendly, although Betfair only works on the BetMate app, not the Betfair app or website. The other way round is a VPN, which is also very handy for watching SkyGo and iPlayer when you have Wifi. In terms of data on the go I have taken up Orange’s £3 a day for 100MB, which so far has covered all non-Wifi eventualities.

Spain is a different story with Betfair, William Hill, Sporting Bet, Betfred and many others not working, and for some reason a VPN doesn’t help either. Fortunately Bet365 and Pinnacle still work so if I am out I can still usually get some type of bet on quickly.

Here I have had to resort to logging into my computer at home via Logmein and placing the bets this way. It is a bit more fiddly but does the trick. I was a tad worried that the big storm would shut down the electricity/broadband at home and I wouldn’t have access, but that didn’t happen and it is still up and running. If it had gone down, like it did in summer when I think the cat feeder thought she was being helpful and turned off the power, I would have hired a VPS for the month to carry on.

The Week ahead

Should be a relatively quiet week with only a few TFA/FI selections and a couple of NV ones as well. Following on from earlier FI has put up big outsider bets on a couple of my tentative selections, so I will leave those alone. I do fancy Barca, Juve and Real Madrid to win by 1 or 2 goal margins so have backed those already.

In terms of Narrow Victories, I intend to update this week with a French Ligue 1 profile, so keep your eyes peeled for that and obviously the end of month summary soon for all the members of this portfolio.