Yesterday I received an email I sent myself exactly 1 year ago. This is what it said.
You started betting 1 year ago. I would hope the first year profit is at least 50k.
I had some very basic goals and I pulled out a random number based on nothing but a haphazard guess. I thought $50,000 sounded about right as to what I should make over the year. I was hoping for much more when I wrote that, but would have been happy to reach that mark. As you can see from the title of this post, I made less then half of that. Was this last year a failure? based on a simple comparison of what I expected to make and what I did make, then yes, it wasn’t Fukushima terrible, more a mere Three mile Island. But was it really that terrible? I did make a profit, something that only 2% (I pulled that number from my arse) of people who gamble can say. I’ll break down each sport and model I bet on and where I think i went wrong and right. Get ready to be bored to death with numbers.
Lets start with the big picture. $3,092,685.37 bet. This isn’t 100% correct as it is a waste of time for me to track the amount the horse racing bot places, so I would add on another $200,000 to that total if you really want to be pedantic. That equates to $8,473 bet per day. That is a shitload to bet each day and it really never felt like I was betting that much. I’m happy with my bank sizes for the sports I am betting so that number is unlikely to go up for the next year, I have also trimmed down the number of models I am following so again, that number is likely to fall.
Now let’s look at profit. The main thing here is that I can at least say the word profit. I had an amazing start to the first year and only spent about 5 days throughout the entire year in loss. The first 5 months were just amazing, hitting $43,000 profit. The next two months had a few rough patches but continued the upward curve. I reached a high of $47,000 and thought the good times would never end. My thinking was, well half a year has given me this much, by the end of the year that should easily have doubled. My goal of making $250 a day was well on its way and nothing could stop it, the dream of waking up in a new location every week, placing my bets and then seeing the world was a mere 6 months away. Then the new year hit and it hit back hard, like a guy with car batterys for hands. Like Tyson said, everyone has a good plan until they get hit in the face, I’m sure i said it much more eloquently then him, apparently he was misquoted that day and said something like “I will smash your face in if you touch my pigeons”, but i digress. The Sportpunter tennis model had a bug in it which was throwing up erronous bets for the entire Australian open. This quickly wiped $20,000 and the dumb grin off my face. I had flown down to Melbourne to meet some of the other Sportpunter subscribers and we had a brilliant first day there, we watched maybe 5 games that day and every game we watched and had a bet on won. I went out that night thinking we were easily in profit for the day. But every other bet that day was a loser and the losses just kept piling up over the next few weeks. To his credit, Jonno let us know that the mistake was all his and fixed the bug. Then Febuary came and things started to pick up again. I thought I had made it through the roughest possible patch and once again it was happy days and smooth sailing. Little did I know that i was piloting the Titanic and just around the corner was one massive fucken iceburg called confidence and stupidity that was going to rip me a new one. With my new found confidence and apparently a boating license (go with the metaphor), I chugged (see what i did there) my way to what I assummed were collosal profits. I started following sports and models I had only just found, it seemed reasonable to me to bet on anything, I couldnt lose so what need did I have to do any type of research or even take a few minutes of time to think about potential consequences. I had a big massive ship (I’m so not compensating for anything, but if you must know I did have asthma as a child and things just don’t grow as big), and any tiny obsticales in the way would be obliterated by me. In less then a month I managed to loss a little over $25,000. I was down under $10,000 profit and felt like chucking it all in, I think in 1 week alone I lost $19,000, thats half an average persons wage for an entire year in 7 days. I knew at times the water would be choppy, but i honestly had no idea I could lose that much in such a short period of time. Varience can be a massive bitch, but when it turns to your side it is just amazing. After the $19,000 losing week, the next week was both unexpected and truely amazing. Nothing had changed in my betting, but everything just won. I went on to win around $24,000 for the week and all thoughts of quitting were thrown out the window. The next week only made me feel even better as I closed in on my old highest profit point. Once again I was at the front of my boat yelling out “I’m the king of the world”, or some other gay stuff like that. Let’s finish off the boating metaphor and the final 2 months. I hit another iceburg straight after and lost another massive amount, day after day, week after week, profits sank. I would be bailing out water and at times it looked like my frantic attempts to stay afloat were working, before another huge wave dumped itself and i was back losing again. The past 2 months go like this, 5 days of slow steady profit, then the weekend comes and all of that is lost, rinse and repeat. That’s where I find myself now, still bailing, but also trying to patch up the ship to make it seaworthy once again. Who knows what this next year will deliver, hopefully I can sail smoothly into an exotic port, disembark and start my travels with not a care in the world.
If you have made it this far then your a commited man, I didn’t even make it this far, I went and watched some footy. Let’s move onto the numbers then. I’m sure you only want to know what did well so you can use my stressful year to just further your profits, you jerk.
MLB
A year and a bit and this model has been brilliant. I even bet Interleague last year which probabaly cost me an extra $10,000 profit. Total profit so far is $40,791.92 at 5.58% ROI. 5% is what I expected to make from everything I followed. I had always kept a close eye on the MLB model over the years and it had always done awesome, until about 3 years ago, and it went on a bad run for those two years, but that now looks like just a blip. I bet both H2H and totals and both are pretty close. H2H is $17,228.91 and Totals is $23,563.01. It has been the one standout over the entire year of betting.
AFL
The one model I thought would make me all my profit and at the end of last year it looked like it might just do that. The H2H and Line were at 23% and 17.3% ROI, an amazing return. This year has been the exact opposite, H2H is now -6.4% and Line betting is in profit but has come down to a more reasonable 6.2%. The big kick in the nuts is Totals betting, a new offering that backtested had a good history, but once put into the real world, it has cost me dearly. So far a loss of $11,726.50 at -12.9% ROI. I’ll continue on as I still believe the AFL model is pretty good. Total loss of all 3 models combined is $5,666.35 at -2.52% ROI
Soccer
I haven’t bet this in probabaly 3 months, if not longer. I stopped because most of the major leagues stopped. Also because it was the most time consuming of all models. I had bet H2H, and over and unders on probabaly 20 seperate leagues. When I finally stopped I was $5,680.37 in profit at 1.24% ROI. I think the model is good, but I’m not sure I am willing to put in the effort required to continue following it.
Tennis
Another Sportpunter model I had complete faith in, until that horrific Australian open. At one stage I was down a total of $20,000. I don’t know how but it has turned around and both mens and womens are in some pretty healthy profit. $7,793.92 and $6,661.46 for 2% ROI. I remember saying I would be happy if by the end of the year I broke even. It has been just great the last few months.
NRL
Crap, don’t know why I bet it, probabaly cause I watch the games and need to have something on. Down $7,014.57 but have lowered my bets now so they wont really have an impact on my bottom line. I guess i play this one more for fun then anything else.
NFL
I tried this for a week but there is no chance I’m going to get up at 4am every saturday to place these bets. Loss of $1,148.78
NHL
Had it’s ups and downs over the year, ended with a loss of $2,603.57. Will still probably give it another go next season
NBL
Another real dissapointment for me here. I thought this one would have made me a nice profit looking at the past years results. I was betting way too much and after a bad run I quit, only for things to turn around. I probabaly would off ended the year in profit if I continued betting. Will try again next season with a much reduced betsize. Total loss of $8,540.92 at -16.10%.
NBA
Started betting Line and totals but it became clear early on that only totals was worth following. The bets always seemed to beat the closing lines, and a nice profit was made. In total $2,480.92 was made at 1.63% ROI but that includes early losses from the line betting
College Basketball
Couldnt get anywhere near the right odds or lines, tried to stick it out for a few months, was terrible. Won’t be following it again. $4,557.77 lost at -16.9%
Kiwi
My cousin convinced me to follow a fellow subscriber to the sportpunter models who put up his nba tips on the forum, he had some good form over the last few years. After a nice start, it went terrible and I lost $5,026.69 at -5.4% ROI. No one to blame but myself on this one, I should never have followed it. I hope Kiwi goes well next season but I wont be following him, good luck mate.
Horse racing take 1
Paid for a new model from some guys who had the top rated model on racingproof. Was terrible, they refunded the money but still lost $2,918.70 before I pulled the pin.
Horse racing take 2
I have no idea how I stumbled across the 100k horse racing blog. But he looked to have an impressive record and I’m sure he is making profit for himself. He used to post his picks up daily and I followed for a few months. Bad idea. Lost $4,814.67. The worst thing was it ruined my weekends as I would be waiting for him to post before I went out for the day and would be constantly checking the webpage. Don’t miss that one bit.
Formbet
This is horse racing take 3. I found this service on betadvisor and it seemed to have a good track record. The swings can be massive each night, I’ve had multiple $6,000 losing nights but also a few $5,000 profit nights. I would say i have been following this service for 6 months now, Im up $13,337.76. All bets now are placed by a bot, so this is the perfect model for me.
Formbet Golf
Formbet also offered a golf service, silly me decided to follow it. $10,185.25 lost at -56.5% ROI. I did miss a bet which would have paid $6,000. So the loss wouldn’t be as big, but I don’t think golf is for me.
I think thats all of them. I’m too bored to post my lessons learn’t and where I can improve. I will leave that for next week. I will end with my graph. Nothing says fun like a good graph, so enjoy.
Click to enlarge