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 8^th 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.

That's more like it

After a rather poor start to the football season, it was great to have not just a good weekend, but a fantastic one. The Football Analyst and Football Investor led the way with both services gaining over £1000 each. FI’s profit makes it the third service now into profit, joining Summer of Football and Narrow Victories. SoF and Skeeve lost a little ground, and Skeeve is now at the lowest ROI rate of all, at -34%.

Clashes

Football Elite and Narrow Victories edged forwards this week, but I am getting slightly alarmed at the number of clashes between the two. FE had Norwich (+0.5) and I, as NV, had Chelsea to win by 1 or 2 goals. Matt also went for Everton against Manchester City as a Vulnerable Home Favourite, whereas I again preferred a narrow victory for City.

On Friday, I also had a clash with TFA choosing Accrington Stanley and FI went for Dagenham & Redbridge on a DNB basis. Having already placed the TFA bet, no bet was not an option, so I stuck to the directive and backed both. Obviously it was a relief that it was not a draw, the only losing option.

With regards to the clashes with FE and NV, I have to say I backed my judgement and, for the time being, this is working out well. Matt and I have played the same matches on 4 occasions (although this is the first time it has been a main selection), and so far the count is NV 3, FE 0 and both lose 1. Now I don’t think it will carry on this way, and imagine it will even out over time. I certainly would back my selections over VHFs but, each time, it will be a hard decision to keep taking on main selections.

Risk Aversion

Having given Graeme from TFA a 4 in my Confidence ratings, mainly for the work that he puts into his service, and particularly in creating my portfolio, I was rather surprised to find myself making adjustments. Now before anyone takes this as a criticism of TFA, it was mainly instigated from a piece of analysis that Graeme shared in his monthly review. He included a statistical analysis by a subscriber called Tage, which suggested lowering stakes to minimise risk.

One of the strengths of TFA is the large number of successful systems, I currently back 11 win only systems and 2 draw ones. Now this can result in stakes of 11 points on 1 bet. Out of a bank of 100, this is over 9% of the bankroll on one selection. Now I know the system was created with an incredibly large sample and is unlikely to bust the bank, but certainly the chance is much higher, especially if the bets have odds that are regularly over evens.

Tage suggested just selecting as bets those with 4 or less systems and ignoring those of 5 and over. While his research backed this up, it was with different systems to what I play, but I got me straight onto Excel. So I have decided to limit my stakes to a maximum of just four. Rather than ignoring those with 5 or more, I will just limit myself to 4 points (or 4 ½ points on aways) per bet.

I have already tested the effects on last year’s equivalent portfolio and it does bring down the ROC from 247% to 143%, but ROI is up to 20.4% from 16.3%. It brings the max draw down, although not significantly enough to change bank size but I think I will be more comfortable with the bet sizes.

In a way it answers all the slight concerns I had in my review. Not only does it reduce risk in the TFA portfolio, I feel it will also address the balance of the whole portfolio. In fact I turned over almost identical amounts on FI as TFA last week.

So how did it work out? Well to be honest when I placed the bets I imagined I was giving all those systems a great boost as they would all win handsomely and I would be regretting the additional £1000 that I could have won if I had more balls! In the end only one of the three won, costing me just £32 – (£280 saved on Plymouth and Blackburn and £312 ‘lost’ on Southend).

I imagine the next 11 point home bet could be nail biting, but I do feel this is an improvement, certainly for my psyche. Dani at Sportyy.com stated in one of his Tipster School articles that:

“Financial market investors are willing to win less if their portfolios risk is lower.  That is, they pay (opportunity cost) for taking a lower risk.”

I would like to think this is what I am doing, but I am open to constructive criticism!

The Week Ahead

The Interlull is on us again and while TFA, FI and Skeeve will continue playing in the lower leagues and SoF could have some angles in Brazil, it will certainly be a quiet time for me at Narrow Victories. I have considered looking into the International matches as I can see quite a few slim margins, but will probably use the time to add a few more top leagues to the blog. I have also come up with a better way of playing the bet through a form of a Venn-style Asian combination. More of that over on the sister site in the next couple of weeks.

August/September Summary

Lets be honest, September has not been a great month on the betting front, especially for someone who has returned to portfolio betting after a period doing the work myself. Given that I have made a profit of just over £800 in this two month period with Narrow Victories, it is a bit of a kick in the teeth to drop over three grand on pay services. Does this mean I am unhappy about the return to tipsters? Well no actually, the Narrow victories selections have got off to a strong start, but I don't have the confidence to raise the stakes yet as the sample size is not large enough to conclude this is not luck.

With target earnings of around £2000 per month, I would have to either majorly increase my staking on NV or up the number of games that are covered. While there is no doubt there are many other leagues that this system can be put to use, the data is not as readily available. Actually while I am writing this I am thinking, that is the way to create an edge, but beside the point. To make two grand a month I reckon on turnover of over £20k month, probably more due to the quieter summer months. For August and September I have turned over £28,450, which given that TFA didn't start until September is about right. Unfortunately the expected 10% return was a 9% loss overall so I suppose I am taking a positive that at least the turnover is on target.

As a point of comparison Narrow Victories had a turnover of just short of £5000, meaning I would need either a ROI of 40%, unlikely in the long run, or an increase in bank size by a factor of four (or I suppose decreasing the point bank size by a factor of four - a ten point bank, no thank you!).

So, happy to be diversified, just need more from the paid services!

Rank	Tipster	Staked (pts)	P/L	ROI	ROC
1	SoF	39	13.4	34%	34%
2	Narrow Victories	48	8.1	17%	20%
3	FI	16	-8.26	-52%	-8.26%
4	FE	11	-4.9	-45%	-9.80%
5	Skeeve	48	-17.4	-36%	-22%
6	TFA	145	-35.3	-24%	-44%

I first published the table last week, and not surprisingly, the order is still the same. Summer of Football is still leading the way, and TFA still sits at the bottom. I have decided to rank by ROC as this is the way I rank services when I am looking at subscribing. As well as being a poor month (two months in this case), it has also been a poor week with all 5 paid services dropping points. TFA and FI took a large hit on their away selections, although I was saved by both portfolios double staking home bets, which on the whole did much better.

Skeeve lost all four double points bet, while SoF and FE lost a couple of points between them. On the plus side my own selections, NV, produced the goods with 8 out of 13 winning bets and over 4 points of profit.

The next part I am feeling slightly uneasy about. Obviously the best way to judge a tipster is by their results but that is never the be all and end all. Certainly looking at the table above, it would be a hard sell for 4 out of the 5 paid services! Over the last 2 or 3 years I have followed countless tipsters in all sports and while these five are by no means the most profitable for me, they are the ones that I have most confidence in, are most compatible with and can still get the money on with. So with no further ado, I want to introduce the monthly Sporting Value Confidence Ratings.

Sporting Value Confidence Ratings (out of 5)

Summer of Football - 3.5
James  had the misfortune of blowing his bank back in July and has obviously had a rethink on how his service selects bets. I had a long email discussion with him when this happened and was really impressed with his analysis of the situation and how he was going to take it forward. Since then, as the results above show he has been on quite a run.

I already think of this as a lesson for Narrow Victories, as he has kept the selections down to what he believes are the pure value ones. He also reintroduced some draw bets, which we also talked about as being profitable for him before. Whenever I try to expand my selections to new areas I think of SoF and try to stick to core areas.

This was a losing week but already get the feeling he has learned from it. In his email after 3 French Ligue 2 bets disappointed he commented:

"I'm a bit annoyed to have taken all 3 bets on. It was probably the first time I dropped our cautious approach but I hoped the AH would protect us sufficiently but it only saved us on one game."

In terms of compatibility, SoF is a very easy service to follow, bets usually arrive at a regular, if somewhat early time, and due to quoting Bet365, one can usually beat the price. I'll be honest and say I have had more confidence in the service, certainly in the first two thirds of 2012, when the results were consistently great, but really feel James is back on track.

I know a lot of people dropped out when the bank was blown, and I suppose I was in the fortunate position of not being a subscriber for all of that, but SoF is certainly still in profit for me having made considerably more the year before than the bank itself.

 Narrow Victories - 3
This is my own bets that are still going very well. As I mentioned in the early days of Sporting Value, I dropped portfolio investing to go it alone, and while this didn't work out for me, one area of my punting was very successful. Narrow Victories is the product of that: backing favourites to win by 1 or 2 goals.

During my 'individual' period, they had an ROI of about 20% and so far this season, they are rolling on at about 17%. Obviously sample size is still small, but growing and I do like a lot of elements of the bets. Firstly the stats seem to back the logic and secondly there is an element of going against the crowd as most punters will be expecting these teams to be winning by bigger margins.

The strapline to the site says they are a sort of anti-Asian Handicap, in the way that I struggled to win on backing -0.75 and -1 bets as the data was not showing that a lot of sides were consistently beating the handicaps and winning by considerable margins.

By my calculations there are between 10 and 20 bets a week to be had, which certainly by the end of this season should give me a fair sample size to judge it as a selection process.

Football Investor - 3.5
Not the best start but very early days for Stewboss this season. Have really appreciated his help in setting up my portfolio. I did have one slight gripe in that notification of bets was via Twitter rather than email but have now set up a twitter alert on my phone which is just as effective. Unfortunately FI and TFA bets due seem to arrive during kids bedtime so not always there on the dot, but prices seem to be there or thereabouts.

Football Elite - 3
This is a tricky one for me because I love most things about this service, particularly the leagues he plays in, his analysis (when given), set times for bet delivery and am really enjoying the Weekend Punting Pack. While I find I agree with nearly all of his selections, at the moment they are just not coming in. There is obviously disquiet around (Daily25 and Green All Over), but I am still giving Matt the benefit of the doubt. His email communications at the start of the season were full of vigour and optimism, giving the impression of someone fighting for their reputation and career.

I am undecided on how to play the Vulnerable Home Favourites as the matches it throws up closely mirror my Narrow Victories selections, so watching brief. He is also about to introduce Football League bets which could be interesting, but again, watching brief.

Skeeve - 2.5
Very slow start to the season, which seems to be mirroring last season. Can the second half rescue him again? I must admit to slight worries, mainly because it has always been a service I have ummed and aahed over nearly every time I have subscribed. Skeeve is the most expensive service I subscribe to and in the past it has driven me to uncomfortable levels of staking to justify it. This is no longer an issue but I still have reservations.

I know the headline figures are fantastic, and given I have subscribed I have to believe he can repeat these numbers, but the service is now so slimmed down the ROI has to be quite spectacular to give the ROC I am expecting (certainly of other services). I know away asians are his most profitable area, but his expertise in all things Conference, I wonder if there are more opportunities available to him.

The Football Analyst - 4
Given Graeme's service has dumped 44% of its bank in roughly 3 weeks, I am still very confident in his offerings. I suppose this is a reflection of the incredible amount of work that goes into TFA. I must admit I did subscribe last year but, foolishly, tried to go it myself by designing my own way of playing his different systems. I am sure that I would still have given up following tipsters last year if I had allowed Graeme to create one of his tailored products but I probably would have thought about it for much longer if I had.

Am I convinced by the tailored portfolio, not completely. Graeme has already shared his doubts about the draw selections, especially when clashing with other - usually - away selections. I am also a bit nervous with the 11 point home bets, which each are 9% of the bank.

I am also concerned that while the bank size is well balanced in the portfolio, its turnover so far is considerably higher than the others - at present, it is 41%, almost double its proportion of overall betting bank. But I am confident it is a well crafted and thought out portfolio that is backed up with sufficient data for me to be looking forward in good heart.

I mentioned at the start that I was slightly uneasy giving out these ratings, it is probably the last vestiges of being an ex-Maths teacher. Writing reports, and at the same time reporting on myself, almost Ofsted style, were never my favourite parts of the job. I suppose these scales are arbitrary, unless qualified. From my point of view, 4.5+ would be indicating that I should be upping stakes/bank size and 2 or less would imply start to think about dropping it.

At present no one is in either region, and neither should they be at the start of a season, so lets hope we see some more 4s over time.

Portfolio musings

The triggers for calling it a day back in October last year were many, but top of the list was the endless restrictions and the effort it was taking to get bets on. Horse racing was particularly bad, and more niche services, but it was a big hit on Skeeve and Summer of Football that was the icing on the cake.

Thinking back on that time my portfolio was in total flux and the effort in getting bets on with multiple bookie were not only placing a strain on me, but on the record keeping. Every task became much more complex. As more services became unplayable the portfolio became unbalanced and a lot of time was spent looking for replacements. I can't remember where I read it but one of the most time consuming parts of following a portfolio of tipsters is the constant desire to find the next best thing.

I have tried this season to stick to what I have, but the most addictive part of this portfolio investing does seem to be this desire to add to it. I think that the unbalanced feel due to TFA's high turnover has had this effect, much to my chagrin.

I am already a subscriber to Football Form Labs Black, replacing lite with black when the offer was on, as it is a great help in researching Narrow Victories. With their, all over my twitter feed, promotions in the last few months I have found myself drawn back into their daily reports. When I first followed as part of FFL SBC Lite, I did not enjoy it. There is no announcement of timing and being a lite product the price has often gone as it went to main subscribers first. I know it is probably their most profitable area, but I do not like ante-post betting and there is a lot of it on their daily reports.

So what has pulled me back? Well they seem to have a strong record on O/U goals bets and Asian Handicaps, 2 areas where I struggled. Am I going to add it to my portfolio, I don't know. At present I am following at £50 a pop just to see if I can get the prices and actually remember to check when bets are up.

Just as a bit of self-advertising, yesterday I published the second post on Narrow Victories, highlighting potential plays in Serie A, to go with last weeks analysis of the Premier League. Not sure why I am advertising as no intention of going public as a tipster. These types of bets have very little chance of working as a tip due to the dutching nature, but it keeps me honest and builds up a bank of research for me to refer to.

I hope that other portfolios haven't gone as badly as this in September, but I am sure things are about to head in an upward direction. Good Luck.