Example systems using AH betting

One of the things that a few people have asked me for this Summer is more details around AH betting and how it can be used on systems.  Clearly, I’ve spent a while looking at it on system 7-22 and I’ve shown lots of various staking options for that system.  Although I’ve said I won’t be looking at my own portfolio until I’ve helped everyone else out with their portfolio this Summer, I’ve obviously got some of my own ideas from last season and I’ve played about with various things over the Summer already when I've had time.

In this post, what I’ll do is show an example for a UK system I followed last season and a Euro system that I’ll probably use next season. It’s only a small tweak on something I did last season anyway, so I’m comfortable with it already but it may give some of you reading some more ideas about your own portfolio for next season.  I should add that I'll probably end up following fewer systems than last season even though there are twice as many systems live this season. I'll just play higher stakes on fewer bets to achieve the same target £ return I'm aiming for. More of my time will be tied up with the ratings this season, so I'll need to adjust my betting portfolio to account for this reduced time.

Before I describe the UK system, here’s the results summary:

As you can see, it looks OK and I used a very aggressive 18pts bank last season, so it generated me a ROC of 110% on this single system.  My max drawdown last season was only 9pts, so my betting bank wasn’t far off.  As you’ll see, the max drawdown on the system is 13.6pts but that was actually a combination of two seasons, but in a single season, it’s only 12pts if I remember correctly. I used 1.5 times this as my bank last season on this system, so 18pts.

That’s something that I’ve discussed before on the blog before.  When it comes to my personal betting strategy, I’m much more aggressive with betting banks than I’d suggest to anyone else.  Quite simply, do as I say and not as I do or at the very least, if you do as I do, know the risks involved in doing so!

So, what is this fantastic system then with this amazing ROC?  Well, it’s simply system 7-21 with a twist.

I simply staked according to the AH line where I was most comfortable with based on the odds. How did I come up with this? Well, I guessed and took a punt!

I played all Home bets at 2.75 or less outright and all other bets at 2.75+ with AH0.  For Aways, I played AH0 on all teams less than 3.50, AH0.25 on all teams less than 4.00 and AH0.50 on any team greater than 4.00. On this system, I didn’t play any additional stake on Homes at all last season (should have done!)

There wasn’t any great thought that went into this staking plan though. That’s the point I want to keep making on the blog at the moment. Although we can use historical data to underpin our assumptions and inform our decision making, this is NOT a science.  You don’t need to have a staking plan down to 6 decimal points to make money from following these systems. Nope, good old fashioned gut feeling can get you a helluva long way, combined with a little knowledge around how the systems work.

So, based on what I’ve learnt from the first two seasons with the UK systems, what am I going to do with the Euro systems? Well, I’ll be applying the very same sort of idea with the Euro systems.

Here are the results for the first Euro system I played with:

That’s not a bad looking P&L graph or drawdown graph is it? 

This is simply system E2-E7 with the same staking plan applied to it as I used on system 7-21 last season.  Is it an optimal staking plan?  Not got a clue but I look at the P&L, I look at the drawdown graph and I think to myself, I’ll use a 20pt bank and we’ll see what happens.

Based on the historical data, if the systems can get within 50% of the historical results, I’ll make a ROC of 50%+ on this system. My own target for any system is that I should be looking to make a ROC of 50%+ and therefore, I’m happy to go with this system next season as one of the systems in my portfolio.

Now, people will be looking at this and thinking how does this compare to 1pt outright on Homes/Aways, is it an optimal staking plan he’s using, is it the best Euro system he’s using, has he looked at every system, how long did he look at this and so on.

Well, the answer to all of this is that I spent about 10 mins deciding on my strategy for this system after looking at the high level results of all systems, pulled together the results with this staking plan, had one look at it and thought yeah, that system will be in my portfolio next season.

I’m not trying to play down the fact that we should be basing our portfolio decisions on what has happened in the past but as long as you have some sort of understanding of the systems, I believe you should be able to come up with a way to follow a portfolio of systems that suits your individual requirements.  Yeah, you can ask me to pull together a summary like I’ve done above but don’t rely on me to tell you what to do. You decide what to do and just get me to check that you’re not doing anything daft!

Anyway, I hope this gives people some further food for thought.  I feel like I’m giving you all this info and saying we could do X, Y and Z but then saying no, let’s just take a punt and follow whatever we want but at the end of the day, this is called gambling for a reason.  No matter how much work we do, we can’t guarantee anything.  Don’t get bogged down into thinking someone who’s an Excel whizz has a massive advantage over everyone else following these systems. I don’t believe this is true myself.