Friday, 11 May 2012

Don't be fooled....

One thing that has been mentioned to me a few times in passing recently is the fact that when I discuss my results or show results on the blog, I do myself (and the systems!) a massive disservice by including the returns of systems that no one follows which have lower returns. I then quote the overall returns and therefore, I am depressing the results of the systems people follow a little.

I sort of understand what people mean but at the end of the day, I don’t really want people to read what I say about the systems and think they’ve made a 10% return this season across thousands of bets. Well, I do want readers to think about this but I also want people to think about the next step….what would I have made following these systems this season or what have others made following these systems this season?

As discussed lots of times on the blog now, The Secret Betting Club report back to their members based on the results of the 6 combined systems only.  I think this gives an honest assessment of the service and the returns available but I know that if you follow less than these 6 systems, you can create a higher ROI and if you follow more than these 6 systems, you won’t achieve this level of ROI.  At the end of the day though, I’m not overly fussed what external parties think about my returns as the people following the service over the past two seasons or following through the blog know the levels of returns that can be achieved and have been achieved to date. 

I think one thing I should probably get away from is discussing the established systems and the new systems. I’ve touched on this before but the established systems are made up of 5 single systems and 6 combined systems. 

Here’s the proofed results to date for each set of established systems:


As you can see, the combined systems which the SBC report on have an ROI of 15.2% over nearly 2,000 bets and the single systems have an ROI of 7.1% over 3,455 bets.

Clearly, both sets of returns are very good but why would people be drawn to following any of the single systems when they could be following the combined systems?

Well, at an overall level, it’s clear that unless you want a lower ROI and less profits, you’d not follow any of the single systems. However, I know for a fact that there are pockets of bets in the single systems that are better than the bets produced by the combined systems.  I mentioned one such pocket last week on the blog!

Therefore, some people do follow some bets on systems 6,7,8,21 or 22 and therefore, that’s why I tend to always include these results in any analysis.  In addition, you can never have enough bets for analysis, so I always get drawn towards using more data.

If this blog was an advertising tool for my service, I would have stopped publishing the single systems a long time ago and only concentrated on the combined systems since these are the systems that people generally follow. However, I’ve never used this blog as a pure advertising tool and therefore, I’m happy for people to see the returns of my ratings on the single systems and how these then develop into higher returns on the combined systems.

The same is true for the new systems. Although I think 31-33 have had a poor season, when you look at the results of combining 21 or 6 with 31 or 32, then it isn’t all bad. Returns of 8% or 9% across a decent sample of bets have been created.  My intention was never for 31 to become a system comparable to system 7/22 or 8/22.  I wanted to develop a rating algorithm based on maximising AH0 returns rather than outright returns and see what it looks like.

Yes, I’m disappointed in a 3%-4% return on system 31 this season (less so the 10% on system 32) but this was an experiment.  Next season, I’m going to have another set of DNB ratings which I’ll cross refer with 31-33 and I’m sure we’ll see a combined set of systems that produce good results. Yeah, they might not be as good as 6-21 to 8-22 but then again, apart from Skeeve (No 1 tipster in the market IMO) and a few other niche services, who can create these sort of returns on a large sample of football picks?

I think at times, people can get lost in the returns of my systems. Comments are thrown around like “I’ve only made 12% ROI this season” or “I’m disappointed with a 60% ROC when others have 100%+” but jeez, I’d hate to think what the reaction would be if the systems broke even this season!

As the title suggests, look beyond the returns I quote and don’t be fooled into thinking the returns are only X% or Y%.

Lastly, be careful too when I do analysis by league, odds, team etc. as it depends on what data I’m choosing to analyse. I did a piece of analysis the other day on different leagues and it raised a few questions in emails from current subscribers about the fact people were seeing better returns in these leagues over the last two seasons. Of course, that analysis was on all established systems and as you know, the single systems are only half the ROI of the combined systems, so you are going to achieve better results if you are following the combined systems only!

Here’s the results by league over the last two seasons, based on the combined systems only (my proofed results):


The results are still poor for League Two (not too surprised!) but when you look at the other leagues, the returns look a helluva lot better than they did before!

There are so many layers to these systems, I appreciate that it isn’t easy to understand the results as one day I’m showing combined systems, the next day established systems and the following day the new systems. However, once you understand the systems and how they work, it will all fall into place I’m sure if anyone decides to sign up for next season. The current subscribers know the systems as well as me now even though they only follow a handful of them I’m sure!

Weekend bets will be up at 6pm tonight.

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