This period is going to throw up some really crazy weeks until the Soccer season ends in about 6 weeks. We now have every sport playing at the same time and the amount bet per week has almost doubled. Saturdays alone will have over $100,000 worth of bets. This week also saw the total bet for the year tick over the $3 million mark. It was a very scary 7 days as we had the usual midweek disaster with the Soccer followed by a $11,000 loss in the AFL which had me sitting on $58,000 profit. A massive draw down as just 4 days earlier I was sitting on $90,000. Luckily AFL made most of that loss back and performed in other areas. This week we also saw a lot of emotion expressed in emails from a few tipsters. The psychology behind gambling is a massive factor in betting and is what stops a lot of people from making a profit. I will try and talk more about this in the coming weeks.
Lets address the two emails I received this week from both Skeeve and Graeme at TFA. Another losing week for Skeeve as it is clear he is now chasing losses to try and end the season in profit. A $3,500 loss for the week. Skeeve pretty much promised that he would get me into profit before he kicked me off his service next year, as that is highly unlikely now does that mean I get a full refund (minus my bloggers discount)? What about the losses over all these years? do I get them refunded? Now off course I’m joking and fully understand the risks involved with following any tipster, but when a tipsters ego is so big he pretty much promises you will be in profit instead of saying that maybe they aren’t as good as they think they are then the losses you make with them hurt that little bit more. He then has the audacity to defend his poor form by saying that if we had just bet differently then we would have made massive profits.
But wait, how come I’m one of the most succesful services for the current season participating in Cassini’s friendly tipster league, with a +15 point profit at a 15% ROI? Does Cassini live in some sort of a parallel universe? This season, fortunately for him – yes, he does. The thing is that Cassini is recording my bets as one-point flate-stake singles (and ignoring the Skrill South parts of the doubles because of odds-recording issues). With so many half-won-half-lost double bets this season, it’s easy to understand what makes the difference.
This is classic Skeeve and has been the same story ever since I started following him. After losing a heap on midweek games, he decides to stop betting them, then certain type of AH bets, then certain leagues, all only after losing clients money. The big one for next season is that there will be no bets until December or January. What subscribers are going to end up with is a very small sample of bets and a massive amount of variance. They are either going to make a hell of a lot or lose even more. Skeeve picks is a perfect name for the service as Skeeve seems to pick and choose which strategy he will go with based on what amounts to very small sample sizes and runs that may mean nothing in the longterm.
Onto Graeme and his TFA email. TFA had another terrible midweek and I actually made a profit on Saturday, but was still down $5,100 for the week. This is by far the worst performance I have ever seen in a season by any tipster I have ever followed. The fact that I had so much faith in the TFA system that I made it the cornerstone of my portfolio just adds to the pain I have felt all season long. Saturday was salvaged by a big win on Ipswich and Graeme almost did not follow his own bets.
I said this on Twitter but I nearly didn’t back Ipswich on Saturday. That would have been the first bet I’ve missed in 4 seasons and ultimately, I suspect if I had missed that bet, I would have given up betting for the season and maybe forever.
I have been reading these sort of comments for a while from Graeme and they clearly show that he has never been through a bad run and has no idea how to deal with it. I’ve been there, done that and bought the shirt many times. When the guy you are paying to make you a profit has no faith in his own work then it makes it hard for anyone else to. The beauty of a maths based system is that it has no bearing on the feelings of the creator during the season. It will continue to spit out the same bets even if the creator feels happy, sad, mad, crap or any other emotion. What we do need Graeme to do is to take a look at the hard numbers and figure out using whatever tests he can where the issue is. Is it variance? Is the edge it found gone for good? How can it be improved? What was the likelihood of this seasons result? There are many questions that need to be asked and answered. The great thing is numbers don’t have emotions, maybe 88 feels like two fat ladies at times but for the most part this doesn’t affect the results. This run can only be a good thing for Graeme, unless he quits at his first bad experience. It will teach him many things which in the long run should make his models better and allow him to show more faith to his subscribers in the bad times. The question still remains if the system is just absolutely crap now, but one bad season can’t answer that. We can’t escape our emotions, but how we deal with them is totally in our control. What I would say to Graeme is to get over it and instead of worrying about things, spend that time looking into the issues and working on solutions.
Geez I’ve been a right bastard this week. We have two crying Tipsters and I’ve probably just made them shed some more tears. But really, if I paid money for a managed fund in the stock market and my advisers started sending me emails saying things like I have been reading in the past week I would tell them the same thing. Grow some balls and get back to work.
Ok, so those soccer systems made a loss, lets look at the others. FB Elite lost 6 from 7 and the 7th was a lucky 90th minute goal. $3,360 lost this week and back to break even. Combo Football Investor turned the recent poor run around with $2,670 profit and ClubGOWI added $2,100.
We also had another win in the Golf and for the first time ever I am in profit. I’m glad I persevered with Bryan and now hope for a few more wins to start making some real profit. $4,830 profit.
Onto Sportpunter models. I have stopped NBA and should have done so sooner. Every season is the same, nice profits until the end of December and then a big downturn. Silly me for following it longer then I should have. NHL on the other hand has turned around big time since the start of the year. $4,080 profit this week. We ended the NBL regular season with a small profit of $300. Only a few more games until we wrap up the greatest season long return I have ever experienced. It has really saved my bacon this year. The amazing thing is that it’s record may not last more then a few months as both the NRL and Super15 models are doing even better early on. The Union added an incredible $6,570 this week and the League added $4,010. They are at ROI’s of 78% and 69.4% respectively. The ATP made a $700 loss and AFL lost $600.
That’s it for another roller-coaster of a week. It ended pretty well and with a massive midweek of Soccer starting tonight and a full round of AFL this week, there’s every chance I will be sitting on $50,000 or $100,000 by this time next week. Lets hope it is the latter.
Total profit for the week was $8,989.23
Stats Year 4
Total bet amount: $3,018,681.34
Profit/Loss: $82,709.87
POT: 2.74%
Bets Placed: 5,237
Won: 1901
Lost: 3068
Half Payout: 26
Refunded: 242
Winning %: 38.3%
Total profit per day: $270,231.96 / 1364 = $198.11
Total Turnover: $12,768,510.87
Total ROI: 2.12%
ATP – SP $360,351.00 $5,821.30 1.6%
week profit/loss: -696.79
AFL H2H – SP $39,005.00 $8,318.75 21.3%
week profit/loss: -365
AFL Line – SP $235,006.00 $38,825.89 16.5%
week profit/loss: -239.28
Rugby SP $19,473.00 $15,183.82 78.0%
week profit/loss: 6570.50
NRL SP $11,448.00 $7,946.50 69.4%
week profit/loss: 4010.17
FB Elite $213,000.00 $1,279.00 0.6%
week profit/loss: -3360
Skeeve $110,098.00 $(9,755.70) -8.9%
week profit/loss: -3504
Combo FI $122,715.00 $15,002.38 12.2%
week profit/loss: 2670
TFA $561,876.00 $(52,707.08) -9.38%
week profit/loss: -5,120
ClubGowi $207,822.00 $7,843.30 3.8%
week profit/loss: 2095.50
NP Win $22,129.34 $269.16 1.2%
week profit/loss: 4830.50
NHL Totals $265,923.00 $7,559.36 2.8%
week profit/loss: 4079.93
NBL Totals $99,607.00 $29,619.64 29.7%
week profit/loss: -1543
NBL Line $100,362.00 $23,909.83 23.8%
week profit/loss: 1829.70
NBA Totals $146,687.00 $1,465.67 1.0%
week profit/loss: 0
NBA H2H $92,790.00 $4,930.38 5.3%
week profit/loss: 0