A long reply to a fairly simple question.....

There was a good question on my last post asked by Malcolm from the My Betting Life blog. http://mybettinglife.blogspot.com/

This may be a stupid question but do you bet on all the tips that come out of the systems? The only reason I ask is there's so many how do you do it and where?

Firstly, it’s not a stupid question. Far from it. I’m sure there are a lot of people reading this blog who wonder what the hell I do with the bets each week. I’ve discussed it before on the blog but here’s a quick update for any new readers like yourself Malcolm.

In summary, no one in the world could follow all 20 of my systems. Well, you could do it if you wanted to I guess but at the end of the day, you’d need a massive betting bank and when you consider some teams appear once and other teams appear 20 times, it would seem a bit mad to be staking some of the teams that are only picked once. At the end of the day, your P&L will be dictated by the teams that appear 10+ times I suspect if you followed every bet!

Anyway, in a word, no, I’m not following all of the bets and neither is anyone else. Each system I post is simply a system that produces bets. Nothing more, nothing less. I personally like to think of my systems as a group of tipsters as I’ve said before on the blog. I effectively manage the group of tipsters but at the end of the day, I’m not picking the bets, so I’m not going to be held responsible for the performance of some of the tipsters. Like I did at the end of last season, I might drop or add new tipsters to the group but at the end of the day, it is simply a group of tipsters.

I’m guessing there are a lot of football punters who read my blog and therefore, they are getting access to free systems. How good these systems are is debatable but as I’ve said before, my intention when I started this blog was never to find the 100 best football systems on the planet. No, my intention was to find one of the best football systems on the planet. If I knew which system was best, I wouldn’t worry about the other 19 systems but given I only started this project in January 2010, it’s going to take a bit of time to get to the stage where I’m completely happy with a system and can believe in it 100%.

So, what I do is track the performance of all the tipsters in the group and report back on the blog. Hence, I give out all the bets and show all the results but importantly, I’m not backing every single team that appears on every system. That would be like following 20 football tipsters in a betting portfolio. Not only that, some of the tipsters have 25+ bets some weekends! That would be a lot of work…..

Everyone who’s following the systems is following their own portfolio of tipsters or their own single tipster. Malcolm specifically asked about me and what I’m doing. I’ve covered this before on the blog but I’m following 2 portfolios this season. The first portfolio is made up of the 6 combined systems from last season and the second portfolio is a selection of 5 new systems from this season.

Portfolio one is simply the combined systems 6-21,6-22,7-21,7-22,8-21 and 8-22. These systems are effectively my proofed results at the Secret Betting Club and some of the SBC members following the systems this season are most likely following this portfolio. Due to the fact that I’m pretty risk averse when it comes to betting, I’m following any away teams at greater than 3.5 (5/2) by covering the draw. Hence, I’m using DNB on these teams. At the same time though, I’m playing double stakes on the Home bets.

Portfolio two is systems 32, 6-32, 6-21-31,STOY and STOZ. I started the season off with system 33 but quickly realised there weren’t as much bets as I expected, so I switched to system 32. I play DNB on all aways and 1pt on all Home wins.

So far this season, it has been a rollercoaster with a substantial loss on both portfolios in September followed by a substantial profit on both portfolios in October. Both portfolios are in profit but running below the 10% ROI though that I’m looking for. Still, with so many bets and such a high level of turnover, a circa. 5% ROI isn’t a disaster after the rollercoaster season so far.

As for putting the bets on, I only use new bookmaking accounts I opened up at the start of 2010 for this purpose. I have about 20 accounts these days I use and I have never placed anything other than a football bet on these accounts. So far, I’ve lost my Eurobet, Coral, Skybet, 888, Bsq, Bwin accounts completely and I’m restricted on about 6 others. Nowadays, 40% of my bets go through Pinnacle with the remainder through Lad, WH, B365, SJ and a few others. I have pseudo accounts in my wife’s name for special occasions when I want a large stake on a standout price at a place I’m restricted but that isn’t too often.

I haven’t utilised any of the Asian bookmakers yet and I don’t use Betfair as I can’t get the liquidity I require on most games at the prices I require.

I’m sure the time will come when I can’t get the stakes on at the prices I require but so far, I’m doing OK. I will of course use the more obscure Asian bookmakers if need be although I don’t quite trust all of these yet deep down, hence my reluctance to use them so far!

One thing that is often misunderstood about this blog and my systems is how easy it is to follow the systems. I honestly believe these systems are the easiest thing in the world to follow but at times across at the SBC forum, I get the impression people get lost when they see so many bets appearing on so many systems!

Simply, all you have to do is choose a system or group of systems that you would like to follow and follow them. Ignore the fact that there are another 150 bets appearing on other systems. These don’t matter!

Some of the most common portfolios this season that I know people are following this season are:

Systems 6-21,6-22,7-21.7-22.8-21.8-22
Systems 7-21,7-22,8-21.8-22
System 7-22
System 7-22, System 32, System STOZ
System 7-22, System 6-32, System STOY

Of course, I know a few people who are playing DNB on Aways with different stakes on Home/Away bets and so on. At the end of the day, you can play any sort of portfolio you want.

How do my systems compare with others in the tipster market? Not really for me to answer as people can compare my results with others as I showed the proofed results for all my systems on here:

http://the-football-analyst.blogspot.com/2011/10/monthly-review-october.html

What I would say is that System 7-22 is the system I’ve steered people towards this season (and I steered people towards system 8 and system 8-22 last season) and I know that this system is likely to be my best system. After 11 months of bets (over a season and 2 months), it has an ROI of 25.6%. Hot on its heels, system 8-22 has an ROI of 24.3%.

Clearly, it’s too early to read too much into these returns as you’d need to see more than 11 months of bets on a system but I think these systems have the potential to be as good as anything else in the market. They are very selective, highlight only the best bets and can be followed with a great deal of confidence. Obviously, they don’t have many proofed bets behind them as they are so selective but the other systems give the systems the credibility they deserve by showing a profit is made over a large number of bets.

The SBC are tracking the results of the 6 combined systems as an indication of the profitability of my systems and as of today, after 1,296 bets, there is a profit of 186.7pts and an ROI of 14.4%. I think this is a fair indication of my systems’ performance to date although it is by no means the best way to show my results. If you ignore systems 6-21 and 6-22 in this portfolio, you’d be looking at 666 bets, a profit of 122.8pts and an ROI of 18.4%. Of course, you could bring in all the other single systems that are proofed from last season as well as the combined systems and the return drops 8.1% from 3,551 bets!

Anyway, I think that answers you question Malcolm and a little bit more! ;)