Misconception!

The reason for the lack of updates on here is simply because I’ve been busy working away on the boring stuff in the background such as getting my spreadsheets all set up for the start of next season. It’s amazing to think the SPL starts next Saturday as the Summer appears to have flown by.

I only really looked at the fixture list tonight as someone mentioned in the SBC forum last night that I hadn’t said when the first bets were going to be. I’ve had a look at the fixture lists tonight and as usual, it will vary by league.

Premiership – 1^st October

Championship – 17^th September

League One – 10^th September

League Two – 10^th September

Bsq Prem – 3^rd September

SPL – 10^th September

I’m sure the above is subject to change and if they move any games around, it might have a small impact I guess.

It has been an interesting week or so in the SBC forum with a lot of discussion around these systems. Rowan touched on this on his blog last night but I think there is a misconception that you need to follow hundreds, if not thousands of bets to be successful following these system bets next season. I personally don’t believe this is the case.

I only really have one season’s experience of following the bets myself, so I’m not in much better shape than anyone else who decides to follow the bets next season. However, one thing I learnt from last season is that even by having a lot more bets, it doesn’t necessarily guarantee you a smoother journey throughout the season.

Below shows the graph of just following system 8-22 compared to following all of the systems from last season. As you can see, did following 2,600 more bets actually give any smoother return? I’d say no, probably not!

Obviously, the overall graph is just made up of lots of little graphs for each system and it isn’t too surprising that system 8-22 looks a lot like the overall portfolio. 8-22 includes all bets that must appear on every system, so it is going to be a good proxy for the performance of the portfolio of systems as a whole.

I followed a lot of bets last season and considering the additional workload it brought me, I don’t think it was really worth it. I should have followed a small sample of systems that represent the portfolio as a whole.

Next season, I also have all my other new systems to monitor and I’ll need to play these with smaller stakes myself. I’m not very good when it comes to paper trading and I really need to be playing small stakes to keep me interested in updating all my results and doing all the analysis as well as all the work to find the bets each week.

One thing that has struck me this week is the misconception that what I’ve built here is quite difficult to follow. I honestly believe that if people just ignore the rest of the systems and concentrate on a system/group of systems that they want to follow, then these systems are the easiest thing in the world to follow. All I’m showing is 20 different systems really but I’m not saying anyone should follow all 20 systems!

Anyway, that’s a quick update on things. We’re still 6 weeks away from the first bets, so the blog will get much more interesting from then I think!