Sunday 24 February 2008

A quick update

I've had a bit of a break from my research today as i've had quite a lot of preparation to do ready for the week ahead at work. I did manage to trade a couple of football matches and made a nice profit of £4.05 which isn't bad considering I was using stakes of £5.00.

Before I sign off for the night I just want to say thanks to everyone whose taken the time to comment on my blog, it's really nice to have some support on my journey.

Best of luck with your betting!

Daily profit: +£4.05
Total profit: +£45.75

System 2 0 / total +£1.19

PMS 0 / total +£13.32

Saturday 23 February 2008

Research and yet more research

Most of my time over the past few evenings has been taken over by research for my place system, so there hasn't been much time for betting as most of my time has been spent collecting data. Thinking about it logically, part of me does question the reliability of turning over consistent profits when betting on horse racing as there are so many possible outcomes in each race. However, the data i'm collecting does look profitable so far, and hopefully the correct staking plan will increase its potential...but that's another project for another day.

As well as research I spent some time today trading on a few football matches and this has brought me a profit of £4.53. There wasn't much scope to use the Pocket Money System today, although I am pleased with the results i''ve had with it so far and plan to increase my stakes for this system once i've doubled my betting bank.

Hope you're enjoying the weekend - happy betting!

Daily profit: +£4.53
Total profit: +£41.70

System 2 0 / total +£1.19

PMS 0 / total +£13.32

Wednesday 20 February 2008

It's oh so quiet...

I haven't been placing many bets over the past few days, hence the reason for the quiet blog. Most of my spare time has been spent collecting and collating results for my place system and it's been a very slow process, however things are slowly starting to take shape and I now have some ideas for what I need to be looking for with my place selections. Obviously I need to collect lots more data...at least a years worth, if not 2, so it's going to be a slow process. But it's a learning process and hopefully an insightful one.

With regards to placing bets, it's been fairly quiet, i've had a few losers and winners but it's left me in profit of 97p. I have got another horse running later this evening so i'll update that either later on or tomorrow morning. Aswell as this i've tried my hand at trading on a football match and am currently showing profit for each outcome - how much depends on who wins, but i'll be sure to update this once the match is over. Just to clarify this is nothing to do with system 2 so i'll add it to my normal total. As for system 2, I just haven't had the time for it over the past week or so, but i'll pick it up as and when the time is right.

Hope your betting is prosperous!

EDIT: Just a quick update of this evening's results - my first trading venture brought me a profit of £1.83 and my place system brought me a further profit of £1.11, so i'm pleased with tonight's endeavours.

Daily profit: +£3.91
Total profit: +£37.17

System 2 0 / total +£1.19

PMS 0 / total +£13.32

Saturday 16 February 2008

Positively positive

Well i'm pleased to say that i've finally managed to update my results on the day they relate to. I spent some time today continuing with my research on 'place' stats and have come up with some selection criteria that seems initially positive. It's far too early to start planning for my retirement, but from previous data it seems to have a 70% strike rate. I trialled this today with level stakes and won 4 out of 6 races, so it's a start. This brought me a total profit of £1.09 today.

The Pocket Money System has done well today bringing in a profit of £7.45. So in a week the system has paid for itself and more. Although I am usually at work during the week so would not be able to operate the system as I have done this week, i'll definately continue to use it on the weekends and hopefully increase my stakes as my bank grows.

Well that's all for today, i'm visiting relatives tomorrow so doubt that there will be anything to update tomorrow evening. Happy betting!

Daily profit: +£1.03
Total profit: +£33.26

System 2 0 / total +£1.19

PMS +£7.45 / total +£13.32

Friday's results...

Well I think it's fair to say that i've completely lost track of the whole blogging thing during my week off...back to work on Monday and hopefully the routine will help me stay on track of things. Here's a very quick summary of Friday's results...the place system ended on a loss of £2.50 but the PMS is still bringing in a profit - 73p to be exact - not bad for the small stakes i'm currently using.

Daily profit: -£2.50
Total profit: +£32.23

System 2 0 / total +£1.19

PMS +£0.73 / total +£5.87

Friday 15 February 2008

Thursday's results...

Well you can blame Valentine's day for yesterday's lack of results, as Mr 20k took me out for a meal last night and I got back very late and feeling a little worse for wear. The day was quite busy as far as the place system goes, I picked out 3 selections, 2 of which won. Unfortunately, it was only after placing the losing bet that I realised it shouldn't have even qualified as it was a 7 horse race meaning that betfair only pay out for the 1st and 2nd places - I tend not to go for these type of races as they seem to be much less predictable. I was a bit cross as my mistake, when combined with my 2 winning bets, resulted in a loss of £1.24 for the place system for the day.

However, I did have a bit of a lightbulb moment earlier on in the day when I realised there was a way I could tweak the 'Pocket Money System' to make it more profitable. This tweak only applies when a certain set of circumstances arise, but it does help make the PMS much more profitable. Obviously I can't explain what the tweak is here as I don't want to reveal too much about the PMS and be accused of giving away someone else's intellectual property, however, if you have the system and would like to know more about the tweak then feel free to email me and I will be more than happy to clarify.

EDIT: After testing I have found that the tweak isn't as profitable as I first thought...i've still found a way to squeeze a bit more profit from the PMS, but miscalculated my initial profit.

Anyway, here are yesterday's results and i'll hopefully update today's later.

Best of luck with your betting!

Daily profit: -£1.24
Total profit: +£34.73

System 2 0 / total +£1.19

PMS +£2.24 / total +£5.14

Thursday 14 February 2008

Once again...

Here are yesterday's results. My place system brought in 2 winners and one loser bringing me a profit of 86p. I've just had a quick look through the results and so far i've had 14 place bets 10 of which have been winners, so i'm feeling positive. I'm currently increasing my next stake by £1.00 after a loser and this seems to recoup most of my previous loss and sometimes makes me further profit. So i'll keep on with this modified system and see how it goes.

Whilst talking about systems I just want to congratulate Brian on his Wilkinson System, which i've just read has broken through the 12k mark in under 150 days! You can keep up with his progress on www.betstobefair.co.uk of by clicking 'Life of Brian' on my bloglist. Great work Brian - keep it up!

Best of luck with your betting today!

Daily profit: +£0.86
Total profit: +£35.97

System 2 0 / total +£1.19

PMS +£0.39 / total +£3.29

Wednesday 13 February 2008

Yesterday's results

Apologies for the delay in posting, i'm currently on a weeks holiday and the lack of routine seems to make it much harder to keep on top of the blog. I had another profitable day yesterday with my place system bringing in £1.25 and the 'Pocket Money System' (which i'm actually quite reluctant to post about but it's making a profit so it would seem a shame to drop it) brought me a profit of £1.90. Although these are only small amounts in comparison to some of the more expert gambler's out there, i'm happy because as long as I can prove to myself I can make small profits then it means I can do the same thing, once i've built up my bank, and net some larger profits.

Just to refer briefly back to my previous post, I posted a link to www.allwhois.com a site which enables you to do a bit of research on owner of a domain names. At the moment I have found that this site tends to give an error message when I do a search, so an equivalent site you may wish to use is www.whois.sc.

Have a profitable day's betting!

Daily profit: +£1.25
Total profit: +£35.11

System 2 0 / total +£1.19

PMS +£1.90 / total +£2.90

Monday 11 February 2008

bettingdetective.com or is that bettingdetective.ommm?

Well after reading Maggie's response to my previous post which claimed possible links between Andy Minalto and the 'Betting Detective' I decided to do some research. For some reason I couldn't access any information on http://www.allwhois.com/ but thankfully Mr 20k came to my assistance and managed to pull up the details...and heres what came up:

Domain name: BETTINGDETECTIVE.COM
Administrative Contact:
Minalto, Andis info@minalto.com
12 XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
XXXXXXXXXXXX Kildare
IE

Hmmmm, does that name sound familiar? Thanks for the tip off Maggie! But the one thing that really confuses me is that the 'Pocket Money System' actually seems to work, so why do this? In my opinion it doesn't seem right to be reviewing your own systems without making it clear that you are doing so. I'll definately make sure I do more research on 'reviewers' in the future!

Best of luck with your betting.

Oops - nearly forgot today's updates:

Daily profit: +£1.63
Total profit: +£33.86

System 2 daily 0 / total +£1.19

PMS daily +£0.70 / total +£1.00

Sunday 10 February 2008

A busy weekend

Well it's been a busy weekend so apologies for my lack of posts. Today has been a gardening day and i've been starting some seeds off in preparation for spring - potatoes, broad beans, chilli's and garlic are currently on the go with lots more to prepare in March. Now on with the challenge, it's been a funny weekend really with a losing place bet yesterday which I then managed to recoup with a winning bet. As for system 2, I started with a losing bet yesterday (due to been interrupted mid-process as I had to pick my car up from the garage), this left me £6.00 down, I gradually managed to recover this, only to have lost it again. So it's been a bit of a mixed bag.

Yesterday, whilst researching place betting and trying to work on some strategies, I stumbled upon a forum which lead to the 'Betting Detective' website. The 'Betting Detective' basically trials systems and then either approves them of exposes them as a scam/failure. From what I can see there are no affiliate links and the 'Betting Detective' himself claims that he has nothing to gain from the site. If anyone is looking for some inspiration or wants to try their hand at something new then you might want to check out the site http://www.bettingdetective.com/ - just click on the 'betting system reviews' link at the bottom of the intro page to see the systems he's trialled - you don't need to enter your email details to have access to these. I was quite impressed by the review of the 'Pocket Money System' and for the price (just £4.99) have decided to give it a go. I've got to admit I was very impressed with what received and it seems that unless you deviate from the plan you wont lose money - you can keep tabs of my progress with this at the bottom of the page (entitled PMS...no pun intended).

I'm aware that I may seem to be deviating away from my original intentions when starting this blog, I am gradually changing and adapting my betting system as well as adding some new ones along the way. But the hurdles I encountered in the first month and the challenges I had to face have made me realise that what I really want is something that is relatively low risk. Looking back on my goals at the start of this challenge, well to be frank it was all about the money - making as much as I could in a small time span - now I feel I would be much more content with something that would increase my bank by 1% and had less of the highs followed by crushing lows...i'm not prepared to allow this to begin to impact on my emotions, it has to be strictly business. Of course it has to be enjoyable too, afterall I may spend a year and turn-over no profit...then what would I have gained if I hadn't enjoyed what I was doing. As for the enjoyment factor, this comes from researching new ideas and learning new things. I've really enjoyed looking through various forums this weekend whilst trying to educate myself on place betting strategies, there's so much out there to learn i'm sure it will never become boring. I enjoy updating this blog too, it helps me to keep track of where I am with my betting endeavours aswell as keeping me focussed on where I want to be.

Anyway, enough rambling fr the evening. Be prosperous in your betting!

Weekend profit: +£0.73
Total profit: +£32.23

System 2 weekend -£5.92 / total +£1.19

PMS: +£0.30

Saturday 9 February 2008

Friday's update

I fell asleep last night while watching tv so I thought i'd quickly update yesterday's results this morning to help keep things in order. I had 4 winning place bets yesterday giving me a profit of £2.00, which i'm happy with. There was nothing worth betting on with system 2 so I left well alone. I'm really happy with the progress my new system has made this week as it did, as claimed, double my initial investment. What I plan to do this week is separate my profits from this system (£7.11), plus my initial £5.00 investment (£12.11 in total) into 2 groups - half of which i'll bet with and the other half will act as a reserve in case things go wrong. So i'll be starting with £6.00 this week and hopefully this will have doubled by the end of the the week.

As for today's action, there are a couple of place bets i'm considering and also a few matches that have come up for system 2. Hopefully i'll stay awake tonight and will update my results later.

Best of luck with your betting!

Daily profit: +£2.00
Total profit: +£31.50

System 2 total: + £7.11

Wednesday 6 February 2008

Some slight changes

Over the past few weeks i've been looking at some horse racing stats regarding the performance of favourites. One thing i've noticed is that whilst favourites win around 30% of their races, they are placed in around 60% of their races. So i'm considering changing my focus slightly from winning favourites to placed favourites. I need to research this more but have some ideas what to look for, for example any hurdle/jump races are out, as are 7 horse races as they only pay out for 1st and 2nd place on betfair. But interestingly, if a race has 8 runners and one drops out before the race betfair urrently still pay out on 3 places, so any of these races would be considered. My plan would also include using fixed stakes and I would not try to recoup any losses - as due to the small place payouts (usually 1.5 or less) doing this could easily destroy my bank. These are all just sketchy thoughts, but i'm happy to give this a go for a short while and see if it's profitable, if not then i'll revert to the original plan with a bit of extra knowledge to take with me on my journey.

As an aside, i'm happy that I wasn't following my backing favourites to win system tonight as it would have resulted in another losing day. My attempt at backing favourites to place brought me 1 winner and 2 losers (one of which was just a 7 horse - 2 to be placed - race which I backed by not paying attention). This brought me a loss of £3.00.

Also a quick system 2 update - today it has made me £1.71 bringing my total profit to £7.11 - more than double my original investment.

Best of luck with your betting!

Daily profit: -£3.00
Total profit: +£29.50

System 2 daily: +£1.71 / total: +£7.11

Monday 4 February 2008

A very brief update

There's no evening racing cards tonight, but System 2 has brought in a profit tonight so I just wanted to quickly update my blog so that my records are up to date. There's not much else to say tonight, and i'll refrain from waffling as I feel quite tired - why is it that on the day's you do the least you feel the most tired?

Hope you're all having a successful day.

Daily profit: 0
Total profit: +£32.50

System 2 daily: +£1.20 / total +£5.40

Sunday 3 February 2008

A mixed bag

Today was the second day of testing my new staking plan and i'm pleased that it was as my first 6 horses failed to provide me with a winner. This left me £25.00 down, and i'm sure that if i'd been using my previous staking plan the figure would have been more like £40.00. I'm a bit disappointed with today's results but it's actually the first time since i've been using this system that the British and Irish tracks have failed to provide me with a winner, so i'm hopeful.

As for system 2, it's been a winning day and has left me £2.35 in profit - a total of £4.20 so far. As I mentioned in my previous post, the person who devised the system claimed that it could double your betting bank in a week, and as i'm using a bank of £5.00 to trial this system, my initial investment has nearly doubled already. Exciting stuff, but it's early days and only time will tell if it's got potential.

Best of luck with your betting ventures.

Daily profit: -£25.00
Total profit: +£32.50

System 2 daily: +£2.35 / total: +£4.20

Saturday 2 February 2008

Wee Buns

It was the first day of trialling my new staking plan today and so far things seem positive. I was onto my 4th race and I was only down by just over £10.00 - with my previous staking plan I would have been down by well over £20.00. The odds today were generally higher than usual meaning that I didn't have to stake as much, so I have to take that into account, but generally it's been a good start. Wee Buns (great name!) won his race resulting in a profit of £3.00.

I'm also going to take the opportunity to use this blog to track another system. It's a system that I have briefly used before, but I gave up after the first loss, and personally I feel that I gave up on it too soon. The maker of this system claims that it can double your bank on a weekly basis, a bold claim, but i'm willing to put it to the test. Just to clarify, i'm using just £5.00 to start this venture so in theory my balance for the system should be up to £10.00 by next Saturday. I plan to trial this system for 1 month and if it's profitable and not too time consuming then i'll keep it, if not i'll bin it. In order to keep this trial separate from my main system i'll refer to it as system 2 and keep a separate log of profits/losses.

Happy betting!

Daily profit: +£3.00
Total profit: +£57.50

System 2 daily: +£1.85 / total: +£1.85

Friday 1 February 2008

A plan for February

Initially it wasn't looking like a good start to the month as it took me 5 bets to find my winner, although a mix up whilst placing my bets resulted in me making more profit than I intended. Ironically, it was mainly the second favourites that won (there's one for you Zappi). I've been thinking a lot lately about ways to preserve my bank and make losing runs less risky, and today whilst watching my horses losing, I had a flash of inspiration. Currently I aim to increase my betting bank by 5% per day, however it only takes about 6 losing runs - sometimes less - to wipe out half of my back, and using those calculations, it probably will only take 8 losing runs to wipe it out completely. However, i'm contemplating using a staking plan based on odds. I haven't fully thought this out yet so i'm not sure if it would work but I thought as a basic starting point if the decimal odds start with a 2 I aim to win £2.00, a 3 £3.00 etc. I would contine to increase my stakes to cover my losses as before. As I say it's only an outline, but it's something I may trial for the month to help me build up my bank and possibly reduce losses. If anyone has any thoughts on this please let me know.

Well that's it for today. I'm going to sign off and watch Derren Brown's 'The System' a supposed "guaranteed" system for winning the horses...i'm not convinced but it's got me intrigued.

Happy betting and good luck!

Daily profit: +£10.00
Total profit: +£54.50