Changing TFA bet size
With over $56,000 lost in less then 2 months following TFA and no confidence in the model, it’s time to lower the bets to stay in the game for as long as possible. I hate doing this as I have pretty much conceded that at best this season will be breakeven, Hell, if it does reach breakeven I’ll streak down my street. It will off course be very likely that as of this week the whole thing turns around and it goes on the greatest run it ever has.
But I have to be realistic and another bad week means the entire bank will be gone. I want to still be around in the new year in the hopes we have the same sort of return as last season.
The old bets were $600 on Homes and $350 on Aways. This will change to $500 Homes and $250 Aways.
It’s going to hurt either way. If it continues to suck I will lose money and still not really be that happy knowing I would have lost even more and if it goes onto win I will be pissed that I could have made so much more.
What have other TFA members done? I know of one who has already stopped.
Clearly you have all been betting with way too high stakes on this very volatile service if your bank are almost broke after less than 2 months.
But isn’t it way too early to write the season off completely? I mean its 2 weeks since Greame wrote a blog about how the service was now close to break even after a good weekend and some customers were even in the black http://the-football-analyst.blogspot.dk/2013/10/a-punters-perspective-on-tfa-season-so.html
Then you have 2 bad weeks and you cant see how you will get any better than break even this season? But if you have 2 good weeks you could already be back to break even next month. Just saying.
Its still early season so it could easily turn around and be a very profitable season once again.
Hi Michael,
it was never volatile till this season. But yes, the stakes were too high, but were based on historical drawdowns and profits.
When Graeme wrote that I was nowhere near breakeven.
3 great weeks would get me back even, but 1 or 2 bad ones and the bank is gone, that’s why the bets are being lowered.
That’s also why I said breakeven is the best I can hope for, with these limited stakes, even if the turnaround is amazing, I would be lucky to make the $56,000 back. I try to err on the lower side when measuring these things.
The portfolio I was following was meant to return 190k in its worse season, my goal was less then half of that, but I never thought about a start like this.
Maybe we have the turnaround these next few weeks and it’s back to racking in the money, and that would be great, but I need some sort of bank preservation also.
Definitely you have some very highly correlated bets. Surely you need to make your footy Portfolio more varied?
Yep, I only bet the English league and the 2 big models usually offer up the same bets. I will be looking to diversify in the coming months.
Extrapolating expected performance from past performance is never such a great idea; you should leave some margin for error. I think your decision to reduce bet sizes is correct.
I don’t think TFA will keep doing so badly though; it has to be bad luck because it’s not possible to do that badly without terrible luck (If it was, just fading all his bets would produce the kind of ROI that is considered impossible).
Let’s hope so. It has been an amazingly bad run.