Plan of attack for next season

[A.M.P]

Well, don't know about the rest of you but I'm beginning to wind down my betting now in both volume and stakes as I start to monitor (worry about more like) my outrights closer.

I've learnt several painful lessons this season (such as don't always trust what is reported in the press regarding injuries and club's backroom situations) but on the whole match betting wise it's been a profitable education.

There are some things I will be doing diffently next season though.

If I have enough funds at the ready I'm going to hammer the outrights as soon as they come out next season. I could not believe the speed that favourites got cut across the board this season and this surely is a lucurative layable opportunity if you are able to judge market sentiment correctly.

Another thing I'm going to do that I should really be doing now is pricing up games. There's been many a great debate this season about individual punter's strategies and something I probably obsses about is staking. For me picking winners is easy - it's how much to have on a certain pick and having enough to make the losses profitable.

Following a recent discussion in GC I'm going to change my current "gut feel" method of staking to something a bit more scientific. Like pricing the game, seeing the books and staking according to the differences between my prices and the books.

Something I's aim to do aswell is to read every team's (available) match report from the leagues I punt in. This is a time issue. I currently read around the glaringly obvious picks forums and the like but how many times have you gone off reading into one fixture to find a few interesting snippets of information that leads you onto another different fixture?

I'm starting to see more Betfair action on the lower Non-leagues now (Conf south / North) and I'll be looking to exploit this in the new season too.

How about you guys? For the main it's a "It's not broke (yet) so I'm not gonna fcuk with it but everything can always be improved.

AMP

[CJ Mars]

Nice idea AMP

My resolutuions for next season are :

1). Opposite to you - No more outrights - it ties up funds for the year on the short prices and and I never make any money on my longshots ; this year I need Brenford to get promoted to avoid a big big outright loss and they are busily self destructing

2). Get more scientific about the Asian Handicaps. They are far better value than the outrights with wafer thin margins on the outrights ;

3). Pay more attention to WAS

4). Avoid the World Cup for betting purposes. I never do well. I have my outrights down already and I swear I am leaveing it at that.

5). I've done OK in running this year. But it has been seat of the trousers stuff at times. Going to try and get more organised about my in runnings. Have a few ideas knocking around for next year.

6). Be more suspicious of team news coming from team camps. Bet closer the off even if I lose a point of two just so I can confirm the team selection.

7). Stay away from leagues I know nothing about other than the bald stats. Theres enough in England and in my tennis betting to keep any sane man occupied

[A.M.P]

Originally Posted by CJ Mars

1). Opposite to you - No more outrights - it ties up funds for the year on the short prices

Yeah, I know what you mean regarding tying up money. My bank is say 50pts but I must turn that over twice a month or so. I just think there's a real gap there for making short term profits backing and laying the outright on Betfair.

I'm currently sweating on Blyth at 33/1 $10 E/w to get me out of a hole myself!

Oldham to be promoted $50 at 8/1 would be nice as well..!!!!

[mrmuzeman]

Following a recent discussion in GC I'm going to change my current "gut feel" method of staking to something a bit more scientific. Like pricing the game, seeing the books and staking according to the differences between my prices and the books.

Hi mate,

I know your not as much into the scientific thing in betting but I am and I thought id tell you how I work out my staking This could be quite long winded but youll bare with me hopefully.

As you probably know, every game I bet on I have priced up my own price for the team Im backing. How you do that is down to a whole bunch of things but its a must for me as its the only way I know im making a worthwhile bet. If my price is lower than the odds available ill bet.

So once ive got my prices what do I do with that? My stake size depends on the % value difference im getting between my price and the bookie price. Theres some maths you can use to work out your % value (presuming your good and correct at pricing up games of course, but youve gotta trust your own judgement - thats what its all about isnt it).

Say I can get odds of 5/4 but I believe the real chance is 1/1 (evens). Hmm ill explain this but I might mess it up as it could be confusing in writing! You get the stake amount it takes to win £10 profit from the bet, so in a 5/4 case this is £8 for a £10 profit. Then you apply that to your pricing of 1/1.

So you get those 2 theoretical bets of 1/1 and do 2 x £8 which = £16. 1/1 is 2 chances, 1 you will win, 1 you will lose in the long run. On one you will win £10 profit, on the other you will lose £8, for a net profit of £2. So now you know that for every £16 you stake on this bet you will theoretically make £2.

Divide the profit (2) by the stake (16) and you get 0.125 or 12.5%. This scenario is a 12.5% value bet. If youre pricing is correct for every £100 you bet you will make £12.50 in the long run, bet £1000 you will make £125 in the long run etc etc.

It works for any types of odds just the figures change obviously. On an Evens wager you actually price at 4/6 the value s 20%. (10 (4+6) theoretical bets of £10. 4 you lose £10, 6 times you win £10 for a net profit of £20 for every £100 staked.)

Im not aware if that all sounds like a lot of bollocks or not but it isnt. It is showing you how good the bet you are making actually is in relation to the price you give it. I work on the principle that the bigger the % value, the more I will bet. This makes perfect sense as you have more money riding on the better value bets. The more value the more you bet. I work on fixed profit betting personally, its the way I like to bet. My 'normal' bet is for a 5pt profit. So a 5/4 shot I would bet 4pts, a 2/1 shot 2.5pts etc. I consider a normal bet for me to be one I get 10% value on or below. If it gets to 15% value ill bet for a 7.5pt profit at least because its a better bet. If its a 20% value bet Ill always bet for a 10pt profit at least and so on.

[A.M.P]

Thanks Muze .

I've been running those calculations through my head this past week to get from percentages a team have to winning to odds to value and I think I'm ready to trial it for a few matchdays near the end of the season. Yours was the approach / discussion I was refering to so thanks for taking the time to illustrate it.

AMP

[mrmuzeman]

Nice one mate, although it will probably need a whole season of back testing to make it reliable in actual fact. I think ill publish my yield at the end of the season on here to see what it comes out as.

Btw I priced Billericay at 5/6 tonight and I got Evens so thats a 5pt bet and I priced Whitby 8/11 and got Evens so thats a 7.5pt bet tomorrow so there it is in action

The thing I havent worked totally out yet and Ill have to think about this in the summer, is how much should your staking increase regarding the % value. Is a 15% value bet worth twice as big a stake as a 10% bet? Or is 20% value worth twice as much as a 10% value bet? Or maybe a 20% value bet is so good it deserves triple the stake etc etc

[A.M.P]

Might be a frequency of distribution issue that.

For example is it possible to infer that most of your bets are at 10% vakue?

If from your records you work out the number of 20% occurances can you then assign a frequency and a stake?

[mrmuzeman]

Yeah from my pricings I give around 10% is the vastly common bet but I regularly get bets above that and up to 20%. Theres almost always 1 bet a week higher than the 10% but its rare you get a bet above the 20% mark. As I said ill look into it after the seasons finished and work out a definitive staking plan for next season which will be good fun cos im a geek like that!

[A.M.P]

No worries. I'm trying to break a 50pt profit barrier for the last six weeks (not fcuking likely looking at tonights results btw) this week and then I'm going to do an excel breakdown myself.

[A.M.P]

Been thinking of this topic off and on for the last few days.

I think's it's helped me calrify my own approach to punting and with a little tweaking using some of the concepts Muze discusses I think I could be happy with my staking next season.

For me I want to get a mix of probablitly to win / value in the odds.

By now everyone is probably aware of the much quoted "If I gave you 2-1 for a coin flip how much would you bet?" scenario whereby the bet can only be made once and must be made with a very large portion of your bank.

So, for me following on from this my gambling concept differs slightly from this precept:

"My stake size depends on the % value difference im getting between my price and the bookie price."

Now, the perecntage unit is an importnat point. It may just be a phscological issue with me (and I suspect it is) but lets say my bank is 50 pts and my maximum bet is 15 pts.

I price two games up,

Tits @ 1.8
Ass @ 3.0

The bookmakers open up Tits @ 2.0 and Ass at 4.0. Would it be correct to assume that you'd have more stake on Ass Muze as this provides a variance of 8%, as opposed to Tits which offers a 5.6% variance?

In thinking about this assumption in order for it to be successful I think you'd need to find 3 other bets of equal or higher probability. I suppose that this is easy enough but the frequency might not be high (i.e. 6 bets per season) and your bank may have diminished by this time due to a few loosers. In short if you have a stand alone bank and are mixing the variance percentages you are gambling on you may not have enough to cover the loosers.

Also there's the amount of time you're actually taken to turn over your inital investment. For example a few winners is able to provide a 30 to 40 pt cushion on your maximum weekly bets and this amount is able to be invested in other areas (shares / outright bets / odds arbitrage, etc,etc). Also for me confidence comes into betting and sometimes I ignore matches when my bank is low as I've just plain bottled it.

I guess the point I'm making is that I first try to identify games that I believe have a probability of >50% and then look to see what the bookies are offering.

I believe that this is quite common sub concious thing. It's easy to scan the coupon and look for evens / odds againsts and then to think if it's better than a 50/50. In non-league punting in particular the speed of punting after the prices have been published is not to be discounted.

For example, Leek were 6/5 when they came out on Sunday at Bet365 against Burscough. Unfortunately I was in the middle of doing something else and had not yet read that Leek had recently made some shrewd aqusitions to their squad. Within a 24 hour period the game is now priced at 5/6 I think.

Again, I suppose the time issue with implementing a system based on percentages could be improved with a spreadsheet but I still think this still take awhile if you took the same time over every game (or maybe you use a bit of "gut feel", selectively price a dozen and see what the prices are?).

Apologies if this seems a bit rambling in places as I'm half thinking in type. I'm fairly certain of the way I want to go now.

With Paddy Power joining the non-league game now (I think the number of online books covering these matches have doubled this season from 3 to 6 or so) then they'll be more chances I'm sure to catch them with their pants down.

If anybody has any comments that I coulod do with considering / factoring it I'd love to hear them.

AMP

[Winrew]

Get more scientific about the Asian Handicaps. They are far better value than the outrights with wafer thin margins on the outrights

Anyone got any info on this sort of betting ?
Ive heard it mentioned often but never really looked into it , is there a certain bookie to use ? is it easy to understand ?

Any help appreciated ......

[Danq]

Winrew IMO this is a good way to bet as your chances of winning are greater due to the smaller overrounds the bookies bet to 105% as against 113% on fixed odds , the reason being the outcome is a win or a loss no draw involved due to the handicap on the game, for me I like to bet on the lower Scottish leagues unfortunatley the bookies are not really interested in these leagues but 365 and Betdaq do price them.
If you go to www. Premierbet.com look at the help section, there is a bit that explains Asians very well, they are also good for Asian Handicap betting, others good Ladbrokes Betfair Betdaq 365 , hope this helps.