Apr 20th – Apr 26th
WOW, where do I even start. I thought every bad thing that could happen in this game had happened and it was clear sailing from here with just a few stormy weeks. How wrong I was. I feel like I’ve been bent over and given a right royal shagging. So many things converged to make this the worst week of my betting life and add in my normal life hassles and I’m surprised I didn’t drink myself into a stupor yesterday at ANZAC day. I guess I’ll start with the total loss for the week. $19,354 lost in 7 days of betting. $11,000 of that was Formbets shocking run this week. I started the bot each night and went to bed, Each morning I would wake up and refresh my betfair balance and see between a 2 and 4k loss. The best day was a -400 loss. This would start my day off miserably and then things would only get worse. A major gripe of mine with tipsters is how quite they are during these periods, not posting results and hoping that by being quite people wont say anything, then if there is one winner they post about how they picked a 33/1. What about the 100 favourites you picked that lost? I am not blaming Formbet, it’s just a terrible run and I hope it can turn around, but my limit on all models has been to stop them at -$10,000 which formbet is now at. I have faith in the model and I’m sure (not as much as a few weeks ago mind you) that it will claw back these massive loses and return to profit soon. I realise they have a product to sell and its marketing 101 not to talk about your products faults, but I would have a lot more respect and understanding for a tipster that talks about terrible runs and shows that he is also feeling the pain with his subscribers.
In saying that, I should be only down $5,000 on all formbet for this week. But as with everything this week, I was dealt a major lesson from the gambling gods. The lesson was: Make sure your bets get matched. Formbet also advises on golf. The best prices are always on Betfair. I placed the 8 bets on the China open and then clicked submit. This was a day before the start of play. All bets but one got matched. I decided to leave it as it was next in line and should have been picked up. The next day before I thought the tournament was about to start I logged in to make sure it got matched. It wasn’t and because of daylight saving I was an hour overtime and the market had gone inplay. In Australia you cant bet on inplay markets online. I could off called but didn’t think it was worth the effort as it was such a long shot at $65. You can guess the rest of the story. The player (NICOLAS COLAERTS) went on to win by 4 shots, costing me a $6,500 profit. If that wasn’t bad enough, I also had $300 on Luke Donald at $11, who managed to lose in a playoff at the heritage classic. Lesson number 267: Make sure all bets are placed.
Now we add in general life issues. My girlfriend left for London at the start of the week and will be gone for a year as she follows her dream. Also I’m moving again which is always a massive hassle. Top that all with a severe dose of man flu and you can understand how I’m feeling. But these things are offset by the Easter and Anzac weekend. Easter was spent with my family which always results in lifting my spirits. During the copious amounts of beer yesterday with friends, I took a moment to think about what our current and past soldiers have done for us, and that really puts this week and this whole gambling thing into perspective. I really have no right to complain, but read on, because I will.
I’ll now list you the profitable models this week. NRL. List done. $89 profit.
AFL had a few heart breakers this week in the last 30 seconds of 2 games. A goal in each game cost both lines and a H2H bet. But the opposite happened in the first round so even though it hurts, these things seem to even out over time. Baseball had a bad H2H week. Jonno was away for the weekend and didn’t update the soccer, so only a few bets for another small loss. I’m sure the way things were going that it would have continued its poor end of season run. Tennis just can’t get it together and its really frustrating, ATP made a profit this week, but WTA went terrible. Losses also in NHL playoffs and the Golf mentioned earlier.
I’m really worried about this whole escapade now. Another week like this and I’m into negative for the first time ever. I know I bet large amounts, but never thought I could lose that much in 1 week. 300 days into this and I still have no idea if this is something that can be a long term thing. A few of you may say I need to cut back my bet amounts, but if I go for something i always go hard. If i was betting smaller then these ups and downs wouldn’t have such a big impact, but I would feel like I’m wasting my time as well. Right now I’m on the cusp of comfortable when it comes to these bets. Lets see what the next week brings. I’m positive now that after a year of betting I will be nowhere near my stated goals. Now i just ride out the next 65 days and see where they place me.
Total loss for the week was $19,354.22
Baseball $244,083.01 $7,251.64 3.0%
Week profit/loss: -2154.85
Baseball Line $298,691.00 $23,607.56 7.9%
Week profit/loss: 463.19
AFL $36,020.00 $2,627.46 7.3%
Week profit/loss: -2161
AFL line $52,882.00 $15,517.15 29.3%
Week profit/loss: 396.55
AFL Totals $30,765.00 $5,297.00 17.2%
Week profit/loss: 281
Soccer H2H $157,546.00 $5,126.83 3.3%
Week profit/loss: 111.15
Over Soccer $95,159.00 $3,601.79 3.8%
Week profit/loss: -460
Under Soccer $203,493.00 $(1,913.25) -0.9%
Week profit/loss: 0
Tennis – ATP $235,540.00 $(4,999.24) -2.1%
Week profit/loss: 2326.02
WTA – Tennis $209,871.00 $(1,901.75) -0.9%
Week profit/loss: -4264.5
NRL $16,465.00 $(5,286.77) -32.1%
Week profit/loss: 87
NHL – Totals $169,435.00 $(2,603.57) -1.5%
Week profit/loss: -898.78
Golf $10,877.00 $(4,985.25) -45.8%
Week profit/loss: -1654
FB Elite $6,050.00 $(267.95) -4.4%
Week profit/loss: 0
Formbet $20,712.00 $(10,160.00) -49.1%
Week profit/loss: -11432
Stats
Total bet amount: $2,301,259.37
Profit/Loss: $11,753.80
POT: 0.5%
Bets Placed: 6,101
Won: 2,412
Lost: 3,463
Half Payout: 3
Refunded: 223
Winning %: 41.1%
Profit per day: 11,753.80 / 300= $39.18
Still ahead of the index fund and the bank account Steve, not much more to say, aside from taking the valuable psychological lesson out of the week. If you don’t feel terrible, then you have the makeup to make it in this game. Some people would panic and close the doors right now.
Variance is a tough beast to master.
A few things for you to think about;
After you hit 365 days, take a step back, evaluate and have a good think about the whole venture. It’s all well and good to show an accounting profit, but consider the opportunity cost of engaging in this venture for the last 365 days.
I would include the opportunity cost of setting the time aside you have for your betting as part of your comparison with the Index fund and Bank. At least you don’t have to lift a finger to earn your ROI% with those avenues of investment. Assume your time is worth $25 AUD per hour.
I’m not sure if you’ve factored in operating expenses into these listed profit figures either, but take into account subscription costs, and apportion such costs as internet, electricity, etc to determine your true return.
Once this is done, then it comes down to determining the utility of the whole venture as compared to other things you could have done in the last 365 days.
Does a financial gain of x over and above what you could have made doing something else with your time and money really worth it? How about the hard to quantify intangibles? Namely the stress (and the stress-induced cortisol released into the body by engaging in sustained high level risk). Trust me, I’ve had stress induced cold/flu from this type of investment too.
If you can evaluate the whole venture at this level of granularity, and can still give the investment venture a resounding ‘yes’, then only then would I move into your next 365 days.
Adam: as always, thanks for the backup and positive words.
Hi Brett,
Thanks for the comments. In a few early posts I do talk about the time I spend on placing bets. As i purely follow what I believe are proven tipsters, I spend no time on any analysis and just place the bets. A few of these systems have bots which takes no time to get set up. Everything else takes a maximum of an hour a day. Early on it was taking many more hours, but I have streamlined everything and an hour a day placing bets and listening to TED.com talks is a better way to spend my time then watching TV. The biggest time cost was watching the actual games I bet on. I did this for quite a while but discovered that there was no point being stressed over a single result, so for the most part I spend no time watching anything now. On weekends I might watch an AFL game, but that’s mostly because I enjoy watching it.
I am also a huge fan of index funds, low costs, better returns then managed funds and no hassles. What I want to show with that information is that even a low profit on turnover of 1% can return a nice profit. Too many tipsters are concerned with eking out the highest possible ROI they can. I stated from the start that I would be happy with between 2-5% POT each year.
I work for myself from home, so all costs are covered by my business. I help put with the sportpunter website and in return have access to his tips, which can be quite restrictive for some people. The only thing I pay for is Formbet, which is fairly cheap.
There are many extra things I could do with 365 hours a year. But my hope is for this to be a major income source in the coming years, over that time, things will get even more streamlined and automated, and if I can achieve what I hope to then it will free up even more free time in the future.
Stress wise I feel pretty good. My attachment to money isn’t really a massive issue for me. I am after all still in profit. But last night there was a nice comeback with a $13k profit. I felt about the same as I did the day before. 20k lost and 13k gained didn’t really affect my mood as much as hanging with friends or playing sport does. Unlike most of the people who start betting, I am lucky to have a strong financial footing, if this went to shit then I can just move on and continue what I’m doing currently.
Once the year is up, ill read through all my posts, do some calculations and really think about things. I believe I won’t up stakes or decrease them, but I may set some concrete goals for year 2.
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