System 7-22 Review

In many ways, I suspect this system review is the most important of them all since it’s the system most subscribers follow. Many have 7/22 as part of their portfolio of systems and many who only follow a single system have chosen to follow system 7/22 in isolation.  I do hope though the previous reviews have shown that TFA is about so much more than just lumping on the very best bets. I’ll obviously summarise the reviews at the end and I’m planning on producing a simple table which tabulates all of the key information for subscribers but hopefully people are starting to see other ways of playing the bets and importantly, they understand that there are many systems which can be used to generate a profit for those following.

Anyway, here’s system 7-22.

System 7-22

I really need to start with comparing the single systems with the combined system.

Last Season

System 7 – 293 bets, 4.9% ROI

System 22 – 245 bets, 8.2% ROI

System 7-22 – 131 bets, 24.9% ROI

This Season

System 7 – 200 bets, 11.4% ROI

System 22 – 133 bets, 15.6% ROI

System 7-22 – 70 bets, 27.7% ROI

So much going on with the underlying systems 7 and 22 here, it’s difficult to fully appreciate what’s happening with system 7-22. A quick recap. System 7 and 22 were both tightened up significantly after a poor season last season.  I say poor but 4.9% and 8.2% isn’t a disaster but anyway, I tweaked things last Summer to try to improve the performance on each system this season.  As I’ve commented on before, any tweaks I make to the single systems ignore any impact on the combined systems. I don’t even look at the combined systems when considering tweaks. In my opinion, if you improve the single system or the base ratings, you improve the combined systems in the long-run. Simple as that really.

This season therefore, we’ve witnessed the expected improvement in 7 and 22 as the systems eliminated some of the poorer bets that appeared during the first season. The impact on system 7-22 is an ROI in line with last season (slightly better though) but a reduction in the number of bets.

Last season, I commented that I thought 131 bets was about as low as you wanted to go for any system over a season and now, we’re down at 70 bets. I personally think 70 bets in a season is NOT enough. It’s only my opinion though and I’ve shared it with others recently and they’ve said they don’t mind only having 70 bets a season, in the belief that they are following the best bets only that my systems generate.

I guess I understand this point of view and historically, over 6 seasons now, system 7-22 has achieved ROI’s by season of 44.7%, 34.8%, 30.8%, 26.1%, 24.9% and 27.7%.

It’s easy to bang on about variance possibly hitting this system at some point and the system possibly going a full season without any profit (which is my worry deep down) but so far, it hasn’t happened in 6 seasons. I don’t place a great weight of importance on the backtested results for any system that hasn’t recreated the same level of profits in a live environment but 7-22 is one of the systems has created the same level of profits since going live.  Hence, I have no concerns with looking at the results of 6 seasons instead of the last 2 seasons.

A 33% ROI from 737 bets spread across 6 seasons is probably as good as I’ve seen for any betting system I know of and therefore, I sort of understand why people have become so attached to system 7-22.

Should we just mortgage the house and invest everything we own in system 7-22? Well, in my opinion, no. A quick look at the P&L graph and you can see that there have been a couple of spells where nothing was made across 50 bets or so a few times and therefore, with only 70 bets a season now possibly, we’d be struggling to eat if the system hits a flat spot.

The other thing I should mention is the graph of the AH returns. It’s quite funny but the biggest drawdown on this system is using AH0.25 is only 7pts. Assuming we can use a bank of 15pts, this system makes an average of 19pts a season using AH0.25! Last season was the poorest season by far (less draws and more losses when the teams weren’t winning) and the profit was 7.5pts. Hence, a ROC of 50% during a poor season!

Being honest, the results are so good on this system, you can do anything you want and you will make a good profit I suspect!

Looking at the performance by league, it’s the first system I’ve reviewed so far that hasn’t made a loss on League Two Away bets last season. Another stunning statistic and when you think how few winners system 7 and 22 found in this league, combining the systems managed to turn a bad loss on each system into a profit!

5 Premiership bets this season, 4 winners and an ROI of 200%! 10.4pts profit from 5 games isn’t bad I guess.

Only 5 winning months from 8 this season but added to the 7 from 9 last season, its 12 from 17 which isn’t a disaster. The system struggles from the low number of bets in many months.

The ROIs on both Homes and Aways is stunning on this system and I laugh when I see them. A 36.9% ROI last season on Homes was followed up with an ROI of 28.9% this season. The 6 season average is 39.3%, so it was a poorer season this season than usually!

Aways had 22.2% last season and 27.1% this season. Amazing really.

I think the ability of this system to pick out the VERY best bets can be seen by two simple examples. 4 Home bets in League One, 4 winners. 4 Premiership Away bets, 4 winners. Of course, this is small samples and it won’t happen every season like this but it shows what this system is all about. Any bet that appears on system 7-22 is a good bet.

Last season then, I suggested a betting bank of 40pts which was very prudent and based on a drawdown of 16pts. The max drawdown remains 16pts and I’d think a bank of 30pts would be enough going forward on this system, given the edge shown and the lower number of bets.

The profit this season was 19.4pts, so a ROC of 48.5% based on last season’s bank.  I know people played banks of 20pts-30pts this season and the max drawdown was less than 5pts I think, so they didn’t exactly put their bank under pressure at any point.

The other thing I’ve touched on before on this system is that you can play 2pts on Homes without increasing the drawdown or risk. The edge on the Homes is large even though the odds are short and therefore, by doubling the stakes on Homes, you don’t actually need a higher bank and it increases your ROI. Many adopted this idea this season and it worked well. 

The Homes have a strike rate of 70.8% last season, 65.2% this season and 69.6% over 6 seasons. Hence, combined with the fact Aways have a strike rate of 44% and Aways make up 75% of the bets on this system, you can see quickly that Aways give the system the variance.

One thing I’ve touched on before is maybe playing AH on Aways, a slightly higher stake on Homes and I suspect you can get a much better ROC as it will reduce your bank considerably. I’ll be looking at this during the Summer as I’ve mentioned previously.

Going forward then, a betting bank of 30pts, 75 bets and a target ROI of 15%. This gives a conservative ROC target of 37.5%. Doesn’t look great at first glance but very easy to increase this without increasing the underlying risk following this system.