Making A Million Betting Challenge Archives

Making A Million From Sports Betting Update August

It’s been a while since the last update, in fact it has been the longest time between updates since I started this blog. The last update was in April which marked month 85 in the “Making a Million Challenge”.

Which means we have May, June, July and August to catch up on.

There have been a few reasons for lack of updates:

Poor results in May and June
Took a break from betting over July and August
Other work took priority

For the first time since I started betting on what is almost a daily basis. I started to feel burnout and decided I needed a break from betting. Poor results were definitely a big part of that. This game is easy when you are crushing it week to week and making money.

The other side of variance is where it gets tough. Suddenly you are losing money for the 12th day in a row and seeing a previous months profit wiped out. Had these periods previously over the years and usually just grind through but this year felt I needed a solid break to do other things.

The last two months done a lot more hiking, running and been more physically active. Went away on holiday to Bulgaria (nice place) and stayed off the laptop completely.

A good exercise is to ask yourself every now and again, what would you change if you had “retirement money”?

Not being one for expensive cars, watches etc.

Thinking about it I would just spend more time with my kids and being active outdoors, which doesn’t require that much additional money. So that is what I did, spent a lot more time doing these things. Betting didn’t completely come to a stop over the last two months but I lowered my volume and only bet what I deemed obvious value.

Now all the big leagues are back in play and there are more opportunities, I’m ready to pick the volume up again. Looking to try and finish the year strong.

In today’s update I will go over the year as whole up until the start of September.

Value Betting Results

Let’s start off with value betting and have a look at results for the year so far.

In terms of recording my value betting, I changed this a few months back.

Previously I’d recorded each individual value bet. In order to save some time I then switched this to recording profit and loss by each platform. For example I would record the P/L from Betfair, Betdaq and Bet365 in 3 different entries. There may have been 26 bets however across all three sites.

Due to feeling a bit of burnt out with the grind of betting, this just cut down on some time recording results.

In 2024 a profit of £5096 had been made so far.

Interested in Value Betting? Click Here For My Best Value Betting Software List

Horse Racing System

Up next is the horse racing system I came up with at the end of last year. This tested really well and I had high hopes that this would crush this year. It is a system based around monitoring odds movement in the earlier markets and beating the Betfair SP.

I record the results for this system on a daily basis, rather then by each bet. Again this cuts down on a lot of data that needs recording. It’s had a half decent upswing in the last few weeks, despite things looking pretty poor after 100 days of betting. Stakes for this system range between £10 to £50 and total profit for the year is at £1099.

Horse Racing Odds Been a few times this year where I have felt like packing in this system. It consistently finds horses that beats the SP but there have been some periods where despite that it loses bet after bet. Will run it to the end of the year and make a decision.

Everything Else (Casino Offers, UFC, Value Collective, Tipster Bets)

Everything else includes the Value Collective which was a paid service I ran. This is currently free to previous subscribers but not open to new ones currently. This service is up 2.5 points for the year after a rough run of results in the last few months. UFC betting is included in the Value Collective but there are also additional bets I make that don’t get posted.

Casino Offers are those advised by Oddsmonkey which have a positive expectation. Then there are some free tipsters which I also follow and occasionally bet.

Everything else accounts for a loss of -£1644 this year so far.

I was surprised to see this accounts for my losses this year. Casino offers account for -£422 however the rest is in-play UFC betting and a few bets on free tipsters that I follow. Feel like it has been a weird year for UFC betting, had some judging changes and drug testing has changed. Perhaps its time to be more selective?

May/June/July/August

Overall Results

Below is a graph for the four months since the last update. As you can see it wasn’t pretty, for about a 60 day period there was the odd day where things went well. Only for future losses to wipe everything out and a decent 60 day downswing occurred. In the second half of the graph there were plenty of no bet days which is why the graph leveled out.

Last 4 Months P/L

Total Made In May/June/July/August 2024

Total = -£2049

Total Made In 2024

+£4551

Overall Profit Since The Challenge Began

+£188,213

Thoughts Going Forward

After a tough period I feel pretty refreshed and ready to grind again. The 2 month break has done me a world of good and I feel quite excited to start getting bets down again.

Have some new soft bookmaker accounts to use which is always a bonus and as always I will be looking to find some new edges. Soft bookmaker accounts open up a lot of different opportunities, such as tipsters and services. If you have any recommendations let me know.

Other then that it is time to return to grind and see how the year ends.

Thanks for reading!

Making A Million From Sports Betting April 2024

April marked month 85 in the “Making a Million Challenge”. The football season is coming to a close but with Euro 2024 not far away, there is still plenty to look forward to in the next few months.

Value Betting Results

It was a volatile month for the value betting strategy. Which was very up and down through out the month, all value bets this month were placed on the betting exchanges. However I did start to look at using this strategy again with soft bookmakers as there a few bookmakers left that I haven’t got round to using.

Betgoodwin
Bresbet
21Luckybet
Vickersbet

If anyone has comments on useful these are from a value betting perspective, let me know.

I have had a few emails regarding value betting on the exchanges and my approach is different to that of soft bookmakers. Unfortunately I can’t going into exact details without ruining my edge, however there are opportunities on the exchanges but that’s about all I can say.

Overall there were 181 bets and a profit of £866 was made.

Interested in Value Betting? Click Here For My Best Value Betting Software List

Horse Racing System

The horse racing system picked up this month, a decent profit was made. This system can be used every day however it is a strategy that requires me to be at the computer at certain times in the day. Often work/family commitments take priority so there were quite a few no bet days.

In terms of staking I adjust my stake to win £100 per bet. Last month I mentioned that Copybet had allowed me to bet for about 6 months with decent limits.

About a day after I posted this blog last month my limits were cut. Which was frustrating but unfortunately that’s the game.

Overall the system won £586 this month, which I am pretty happy with. Not much to add other then that I will continue on and scale up the bet sizing in the next few months, providing results stay positive.

The Value Collective

The Value Collective is a Telegram group where I send out selections based on value bets available on the exchanges and mma/boxing selections. The focus is on the stronger selections which also have enough liquidity on the exchanges to share with members.

It was a very small losing month for the Value Collective in April with 0.57 points being lost. My personal staking is £150 a point for these selections.

Overall a loss of -£85 was made.

Overall the service is in profit to 24 points on 2% commission and 26.5 points on 0% commission accounts. Personally I am very happy with the overall results.

Generally the feedback has been positive. However they seem to be some people that think if you pay for a service it should win every month or make 200 points a year. Some people have very unrealistic expectations when it comes to sports betting.

If you are happy with a slow burner approach which will profit long term. Then it’s a good service to look at. The service costs £13.99, if you want to join you can do so here.

Here is a link to the most recent results page.

April Totals

Value Betting/Trading = £866

Horse Racing = £586

Value Collective = -£85

Casino Offers/Misc = £93

Total Made In April 2024

Total = +£1460

Overall Profit Since The Challenge Began

+£190,262

Thoughts Going Forward

Felt like a pretty comfortable month in April.

Moving towards lower volume style of betting suits me pretty well. There was period of time in my life where I wanted to be in front of the computer 24/7 and hit any type of edge that I could. However at this moment I am very happy to bet in the area’s I am most confident in and spend time working on things outside of betting.

Completely off topic but have been massively enjoying breath work recently. Started maybe a year or two ago with the simple Wim Hof method but lately been doing lots of different extended breath work sessions and it’s crazy the effect your breathing can have on your body. Seems like a very under utilized tool, that we never get taught about growing up

If you are someone that struggles to deal with stress or anxiety. Which sports betting can definitely be a source of. I’d recommend looking into it.

Moving forward I will be looking at using soft bookmakers again. Still have some friends and family members that I can work alongside. This could see profits improve in the second half of the year hopefully.

Overall thanks for reading, will be back next month!

Making A Million From Sports Betting March 2024

2024 started positively, but it has been a while since I strung a few strong months of profit together.

March marked the 84th consecutive month of betting for myself, let’s dig straight into the results.

Value Betting Results

The value betting strategy continued a strong start to produce some decent profits in March. In terms of staking I keep it simple and look to win £150 per bet, adjusting the stake for the odds. The only times I deviate from this is when I think there is a lot of value in a selection and then I increase my bet to win slightly more.

Most on my value betting is done on the exchanges and a couple small bookmakers I have left. Value betting on the exchanges is different from soft bookmakers in that I try to preempt market moves, by reading the market. This doesn’t work all the time but works enough to be profitable.

On soft bookmakers its simple a case of finding odds higher then exchange/Pinnacle.

Overall there were 214 bets and a profit of £1919 was made.

Interested in Value Betting? Click Here For My Best Value Betting Software List

FTS Systems

I stopped running my FTS systems in March, I did intend to see it out till the end of the season. However I really wanted to cut down on the amount of time I spend betting.

Many reading this will be familiar with the Pareto principle, where 80% of your results comes from 20% of your work.

I have felt for a while now that the most profitable strategies I use are those of that I have developed. Over the years I have tried a lot of tipsters/services etc and found them to be profitable, to a smaller extent. In terms of the contribution to overall profits.

Personally I feel that time would have been better focused on staking more on my own strategies and improving them. This is no knock on FTS, over the two years I have used it, it has been profitable even after accounting for fees.

Overall in the two years a profit of £1346 was made from FTS. Subscription for it has cost £998 in total. Including subscriptions £348 was made.

However with UK betting industry being what is it at the moment. Putting energy into things outside betting and focusing only on my strongest strategies has meant FTS has been put to the side for the foreseeable future.

Bets And Beers

Bets and Beers needed to rebound after a tough start to 2024 and a profitable month in March was had.

The LTD service made 24 points in March and the LTHTD (Lay the half time draw) lost -4.7 points.

Overall following the service to £10 stakes made £193.

Similar to FTS this will be the last month I will be following Bets and Beers. Again it is no knock on the service, in fact B&B is really easy to follow and historically very profitable. It’s a decision made on lowering the amount of time I spend on betting.

Horse Racing System

On to the horse racing system which has a had a rough start to 2024. This is a system I use on the betting exchanges mostly but when possible also back with bookmakers. Surprisingly Copybet have been pretty happy to let me bet smaller stakes for about 6 months now.

Props to them for that, don’t know how others have found them?

It requires me to be at the computer at certain hours of the day, so there are several days this month where I wasn’t able to bet

Overall the system lost -£19 this month and had been on a disappointing run. Writing this 7 days into April it is now showing signs of its early promise. Having rebounded from a heavy losing period.

This is how the system looks overall (Including early April results) staking £10- £20 per selection, it beats the Betfair SP consistently. Volume is high with multiple bets most days. Hopefully it can go on a decent run in the next few months

The Value Collective

If you are able to use 0% commission accounts a profit of 9.2 points would have been made. 2% commission accounts would have made 8.6 points.

A pretty decent month overall from these selections, my profit to £150 a point is around £1350. I say around because I use both 0% and 2% accounts depending on the bet.

Overall the service is in profit by 23 points to a 2% commission account since it started.

March Totals

Value Betting/Trading – £1919

Bets and Beers – £193

Horse Racing – -£19

Value Collective- £1350

Casino/Misc – £177

Total Made In March 2024

Total = +£3620

Overall Profit Since The Challenge Began

+£188,802

Thoughts Going Forward

Strong month of results and I enjoyed the extra time away from betting. I still enjoy sports betting and its had a profound positive effect on my life. It’s taught me a lot about variance, patience and the ability to try and analyze situations better. A lot of those skills are transferable and can be applied to fitness, business etc.

If you can gamify different aspects of your life it makes it much easier. For me, making sports betting simply a game of beating the closing odds made it much easier. Other aspects of life are the same if you build your understanding of the rules.

Dropping services/tipsters outside my own strategies could make this blog a lot less appealing. As I don’t give away exactly what I do with my own strategies and it isn’t replicable by just reading this blog. Where as something like bets and beers was entirely replicable.

This is the 84th month of consecutive betting, pretty much on a daily basis. Perhaps it is just a little bit of burn out on my part. However come September I may feel different and start adding services/tipsters back in.

Hope you had a profitable March, will be back at the end of April with results.

Making A Million From Sports Betting Jan and Feb 2024 Results

2023 wasn’t the strongest year for me in betting terms. Although it was profitable with a total of £15,330 being made. It was the worst year since I started betting seriously.

In total over the last 6 months of the 2023 a small profit of £537 was made. It was the first time I have really ever felt like I was wasting my time. When I first started this, I used mostly matched betting and arbitrage which is easy money, without being arrogant (These strategies are an easy way to make money but obviously limitations etc put a stop to it.)

As time went on I started to add casino offers, value betting, followed tipsters and developed some of my own methods. I always expected more variance but I still continued to win pretty much every month. Up until last year when losing month which were previously very rare, became much more frequent.

So 2024 marked a nice fresh start. My hope was that this patch was just a run of tough variance and that winning months would become the norm again.

Let’s take a look at results from January and February to see if that happened.

Value Betting Results

Value betting went about as well as it could have to start the year.

These bets are taken mostly on the exchanges, with a couple of small bookmaker accounts I have left and occasionally in shops. (Although I am now barred from the local Betfred). This year I have been slightly more selective with value bets, trying to leave out the ones that I think are marginal. In previous years I have always been about hammering volume and taking any edges even if they are small.

In total there were 149 bets and a total profit of £3570 was made.

My staking is very simple I look to win around £150 per bet, adjusting the stake size for odds.

FTS Systems

FTS is a service that provides historical data and models to help you profit from the football betting markets. Currently I am running 10 systems using FTS which are mixture are strategies.

In total a profit of £237 has been made from the FTS systems this year. I won’t go into too much detail about systems as everyone that joins FTS will use a different approach. So my results/systems are not really applicable to what others may be doing.

Bets And Beers

Bets and Beers has had a rough start to 2024 and I had had couple of message s about it which I will address here. I follow the lay the draw part of the service and ay the half time draw.

The LTD draw service lost £580 (58 points) in Jan/Feb.

HTLTD lost £90 (9 points) to £10 stakes in Jan/Feb.

Not the best start for the service however to put it into perspective. Last year the LTD strategy won 218 points £2180 to £10 stakes and the HTLTD won 74 points (£740 to £10 stakes).

The long term LTD graph going back to 2021 is very solid and when your laying at average odds of 7.78 you have to expect the losing runs to be pretty rough. However your bank should be set up to sustain these periods.

Here is the long term results sheet for Bets and Beers

Will Bets and Beers be profitable in 2024?

There is no guarantee, but nothing suggests to me that this isn’t just a tough period. I think often people join services after a good period and then are shocked when a drawdown happens. This is the reality of sports betting its not always sunshine and rainbows.

Horse Racing System

One of the bright points of last year was developing a horse racing system. This was working very well and making consistent profits.

However recently results have seen it fall off a cliff. Not really sure why, I tracked the odds I was backing at, in comparison to the Betfair SP. They are consistently higher.

The system is based on sound logic. So it all goes back to our old friend variance again. Overall the system is still in profit by about £400 however had previously been up to a high of £1200.

I run the system on small stakes £5 to £20 (depending on odds). Will give it another few months and decided whether to bin it or keep it.

A total of -£302 was lost on horse racing.

Casino Offers

I have done five high risk casino offers this year. Doesn’t seem to be a huge amount of stuff to do anymore, but I do get a few decent reload offers from time to time.

Unfortunately I lost every single of these.

A loss of -£500 was made from casino offers.

MMA

Jan and Feb saw a loss of -£817 for mixed martial arts and some in-play bets. Not a huge amount of volume here and MMA stakes are £200 a point so not overly concerned. Last year was strong and I still think I have a good edge in the markets.

The Value Collective

The Value Collective is a Telegram group where I send out selections based on value bets on the exchanges and mma/boxing selections. The focus is on the stronger selections which also have enough liquidity on the exchanges to share.

A total of 120 bets were sent out over Jan and Feb. A total profit of 4.19 points for 0% commission accounts was made and 2.54 points for 2% commission accounts.

Not amazing numbers, not a disaster either.

The service is aimed at people that can take a longer term view of their betting and aren’t effected by short terms variance.

Jan/Feb Totals

Value Betting/Trading – £3570

FTS – £237

Bets and Beers – -£670

Horse Racing – -£302

Casino Offers – -£500

MMA/Inplay – -£817

Total Made In Jan/Feb 2024

+£1520

Overall Profit Since The Challenge Began

+£185,182

Thoughts Going Forward

Would have been nice to come out of the gates with a big profit to start 2024 but happy to see at least a positive start. Still feels like a battle of attrition at the moment, build up some momentum and then get wiped out on a bad weekend. Slowly however there seems to be some progress and a big upswing can happen at any point.

It only takes one or two really good months to make a year. In 2022 there was a two month period where £15k profit was made, which nearly equals last year’s total. Having spoken to sports bettors that have done much bettor then me and won 7 figures. Rough years can happen even to the best bettors (which I am not).

I have no plan on changing anything at the moment, will run things as they are until the end of the football season and then look at potentially changing things.

Thanks for reading, see you next month.

Useful Links

Value Betting Guide

Matched Betting Guide

Value Collective

Making A Million From Sports Betting 2023 Year In Review

Alright that is another year dusted off in the Making a Million challenge.

Heading into 2023 I was coming off my most profitable year of betting so far, with 2022 showing a profit of £39,845. Going back to last years review I set myself a challenge of pushing towards £50k profit in 2023.

Let’s see if that happened!

Making A Million

Value Betting Results

Last year value betting was the strongest part of the portfolio generating a profit of £33,942.

Value Betting 2023

This year whilst it was still profitable results were quite different and there was a lot more volatility throughout the year.

After a total of 3168 bets a profit of £8027 was made from value betting.

Let’s take a look at last years graph for comparison.

Value Betting 2022

About 2000 less bets this year but my approach was exactly the same. Look to beat the closing line consistently with various methods, stakes were also the same as last year.

The difference I think pretty much comes down to variance and perhaps the markets that I am betting in have changed slightly. Last year I did note that I felt I was running over expectation and this year I think things evened out and I ran below what was expected.

Won’t be changing this strategy because it is still profitable, hopefully will get a better run of things this year.

You Can Learn More About Value Betting Here.

MMA

I was pretty surprised when I looked at the graph for 2023 because I performed way better betting mixed martial arts then I thought I did. However all the profit came in the first half of the year which you will see is a recurring theme throughout this post

In total I made 111 bets and a total profit of £5555 was made. Most of the bets were made on the exchanges but I also bet some in Betfred shops and also in shop terminals. Betfred did ban me from shops late on the year so looks like I will be mainly exchange betting this year and on the terminals in other shops.

FTS Systems

FTS is a service that provides historical data and models to help you profit from the football betting markets. My results for this service include the end of the 2022/2023 season and beginning of the 2023 season.

Currently I am running 10 systems using FTS and the total profit for the year is £176, in 2022 a profit of £1235 was made. So again similar to value betting there has been a drop in profit this year. Stakes have remained the same although they are different for each strategy.

Not much to say here will crack on till the end of 2023/2024 season and see where we end up.

Bets And Beers

Next up is Bets And Beers which is a lay the draw service with several years of profit behind it. Let’s look at my results follow the lay the half time draw method and first half goal method.

Bets and Beers

Pretty rough to go from £3500 in profit to finishing the year at £378 in total profit. Overall though it was completely I added the first half goal method which is strongly correlated to laying the first half draw. Staking £50 on each selection and hit a drawdown period which basically what the losses would have been.

Should add though that the Bets and Beers service itself which uses other methods then the two I used above. Performed excellently and made a profit for the year of over 400 points.

Football Trading Club

The Football Trading Club was a service that I had looked at for a while and after a successful review period I added it in the second half of the year and decided to follow the home values system.

Football Trading Club

Like a lot of things in the second half of the year. It went pear shaped as soon I as started putting real money down. This coincided with drawdowns across the board in October so I pulled the plug on it.

A total of -£1015 was lost after 134 selections.

Should mention much like Bets and Beers, the service had profitable year and my results are a small sample using only one strategy.

Horse Racing System

One of the few bright lights of the second half of 2023 was developing a winning horse racing system. Going through an unfamiliar drawdown lasting months I pulled my finger out at started looking at other potential edges. Found a horse racing strategy I thought would work and after testing followed it to £10 stakes.

This system made £710 profit after a total of 843 bets.

Horse Racing System

Quite excited to see where this system goes, theses results are from prices at 11.00 mainly from the exchanges but used a few smaller bookmakers. System is also profitable at BSP to a lesser extent.

Everything Else

Everything includes casino offers, free tipsters and any bets/trades that I don’t record on an individual spreadsheet but do go down on my daily profit and loss.

A profit of £1499 was made.

2023 Totals

Value Betting/Trading – £8027

MMA Betting – £5555

FTS – £176

Bets and Beers – £378

Football Trading Club – -£1015

Horse Racing – £710

Misc/Everything Else – £1499

Total Made In 2023

+£15,330

Overall Profit Since The Challenge Began

+£183,662

2023 Monthly

Thoughts Going Forward

Disappointing to go from my best year of betting to worst year back to back. However one of the positives was that during the drawdown and six month breakeven period, I didn’t tilt once. No silly bets, chasing or broken laptops, I was frustrated but ultimately believe that everything I was doing is +EV and in the long term will win.

In 2024 my focus will mainly be on my own betting/trading, at the start of 2023 I believed I had basically cracked it and didn’t really look to improve. The first six months went how I thought it would, however the last six months were a wake up call. The game always evolves and I need to be constantly evolving with it to continue to profit, tweaking existing edges and finding new ones.

Not going to set any monetary goals as 2023 proved that a lot of that is out of my hands and variance can run strongly either way. However what I can do is work harder then last year, analyze my betting more thoroughly and keeping developing as a sports bettor.

In terms of services I will be following Bets And Beers this year. Pre match ltd and ltd at half time, along with FTS.

Other then that I will keep an eye out for promising services that work on the exchanges. However the main focus will be my own stuff, as really that’s where I am most confident and when things go wrong its easier to analyze/improve my own betting as I understand why I placed every single bet.

The Value Collective

At the end of last year I started a Telegram group and started sending out some of my strongest selections that were backable on the exchanges. The feedback from the group was positive and the results have also been profitable.

At the start of this year I set this up as a paid service via Kofi.

These selections are a mixture of pre match and live football selections, UFC and occasionally other sports. All backable on the exchanges

Value Collective

Results so far so a profit of 16.51 points after 102 bets.

Someone staking £10 a point would be up £165, a £100 point bettor would be up £1650.

You Can View Results Here

The current return on investment from these selections is 11.3% when including 2% commission.

If you are interested in the service it costs £13.99 a month and runs via Telegram.

Click Here To Join The Value Collective.

That wraps everything up, hopefully you had a profitable 2023 and I will be back at the start of Feb 2024 with a reports on how this year started.

Making A Million From Sports Betting October 2023 Results

October brought month 79 in the “Making a Million Challenge.”

Results haven’t been great the last few months,

July – +£1062

August – +£48

September – -£1318

So I was hoping for strong month to turn things around, Let’s see if that happened.

Value Betting And Trading

This month I really put more focus and analysis on value betting. Last year this was a huge earner and the results haven’t been replicated this year.

Value betting comes in two forms, one is just picking off slowing moving odds with soft bookmakers and occasionally exchanges. The second way is reading market movement and preempting the big moves across the board. When all bookmakers move their odds one way.

Below is an example, I bet Cambodia at 1.99 and its closing odds were 1.59.

Beating the closing line is a great indicator of long term profit. By reading the market I can beat the closing line around roughly 65% of the time.

It terms of beating the closing line. This month went really well and I felt like I uncovered a few new angles. In terms of results, beating the closing line didn’t mean shit.

Overall a loss of -£801 was made from 328 bets.

Click Here For My Recommended Value Betting Software With A Two Week Free Trial.

FTS Systems

October was a terrible month for the FTS systems that I run with a total loss of –£1459 being made after 104 bets.

Not a huge amount to say really, it was just a really bad month. didn’t matter if the system was lay the draw, back the draw, back home teams, unders/overs etc. Sometimes in this game you are going to lose and you can accept it or bitch about it (I will accept it in this section then bitch about it later)

Bets And Beers Telegram Group

Bets and Beers had a strong month in October.

I follow the lay the half time draw method and this performed really well in the last weekend. However given how rough this month was going I took the last weekend off betting. Also I had been capping my lays at odd of 3.5

Which is not something I would usually do however I felt I need to reassess things and wanted a break from results.

I made £60 in profit in October.

Link To Bets and Beers

Everything Else

In October there were quite a few other strategies that I followed. These were very low volume so I will group them all together.

Casino Offers
Football Bet Data
MMA Betting
Football Trading Club

Football trading club was low volume due to the international break. My overall results being poor had me stop following the home value system and double chance. Long term the football trading club is very profitable but at the moment I want to focus on my own strategies to turn things around.

Hit a few profitable casino winners and MMA betting was profitable this to lessen some of the damage in other area’s

A profit of £326 was made from this section.

October 2023 Total

Bets and Beers – £60

Value Betting/Trading – -£801

FTS – -£1459

Other – £326

Total Made In October

-£1874

Overall Profit Since The Challenge Began

£181,011

Thoughts Going Forward

The curse of the new house continues, I thought it was cute when my wife suggested my record losing month was due to “feng shui” or “new spirits” in the house.

To follow up last months record losing month with an even bigger losing month in October though hit pretty hard. It stopped being funny and at times I was asking myself ” Am I f***** cursed, what is going on?”

Teams chucking away 2 goal leads, smashing the closing line and seeing my team get a red card after 10 minutes etc. It did seem endless and it is the most frustrating period of betting career. However I know that bad runs can happen, especially when you are mostly straight betting. Trading you can reduce variance but my approach is 95% value betting.

After spending around 90% of my bankroll to move house, I have been staking fairly aggressively with a smaller bankroll and been burnt. Historically losing months have been very rare and there has never been two in a row before. So in that sense I don’t think was a terrible idea.

I lean that these last couple of months are a “black swan” and that it is just a patch of really bad variance.

Changes

On the flip side though I also have to consider that it isn’t just bad variance and my approach needs adjusting.

“The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

This is the tough thing about betting, you can do the right things and still end up losing. When it comes to my value betting/trading I could look at the closing line and assess whether it was good or bad. Following other services this can be a little trickier.

I decided towards the end of the month to tighten things up. Bets and Beers and the football trading club I will put on hold until the new year. Look at where my bankroll is and then likely follow them with small stakes.

FTS I have a dedicated bank, which I will continue with until the end of season.

My value betting I actually think has improved this month. This downswing made me look at what I was doing and where I can make improvements. Which I have done.

What I can also do to reduce variance is trade out some liability on some of the bigger markets. Which when the market goes in my favour basically creates a larger value bet and can lower variance. Given that I can beat the closing line more often then I don’t, this is a profitable strategy.

This was something that I did much more of last year and due to over confidence/laziness haven’t done as much this year. Now I don’t think this is the only reason for the big differences in profit, up until the end of March last year I still had some of the big soft bookmakers left. However it could definitely help smooth over these run months and future potential losing months.

Hopefully November and December can see a positive end to 2023 and I hope your betting in October went better then mine.

See you next month!

Making A Million From Sports Betting September 2023 Results

September brought month 78 in the making a million challenge!

After a breaking even in August and a below par year so far, I was really hoping to kick things into gear in September.

Did that happen?

Let’s take a look!

Value Betting And Trading

Really up and down month for value betting. Getting above £1k profit at one point then into the red before climbing back above 1k. Eventually hitting a string of losers to end the month with a small profit.

Value bets are mainly based on reading the market and looking to beat the closing line. The occasional value bet is made with remaining soft bookmakers.

Overall a profit of £437 was made after 250 selections.

Click Here For My Recommended Value Betting Software With A Two Week Free Trial.

MMA Betting

Low volume for MMA betting with a total of 9 bets being made.

A profit of £184 was made from betting on MMA.

Only bet I didn’t really like this month was Yanis Ghemmouri. Which I jumped on without proper research not realizing that he was fighting a weight class above his usual weight. As soon as I saw him in the cage with William Gomis I knew it wasn’t going to be a good night.

Rookie mistake that I shouldn’t be making after so many years betting MMA.

Bets And Beers Telegram Group

Bet and Beers had a great month in September making just under 54 points profit. 57 of those points were made from full time lay the draw results.

Given that I follow lay the half time draw and was following the first half goal strategy my results were different.

It’s been a rough few months for the half time LTD and FHG methods. The drawdown has been about –£3000 with the timing of adding FHG to the overall portfolio not being the best.

Following Bets and Beers has been profitable this year with the total profit being £500.This profit is made to £50 stakes however so it is around 10 points up overall.

If I had followed every Bets and Beers strategy I would be up 217 points. Dropping my stakes to £10 to account for the larger lay odds would have seen me being significantly better off.

By only following the system which suits the odds I like to lay at (around 3.0 max) it’s cost me. However two months ago this obviously looked very differently with my results hitting +£4000.

Going to continue just following the HTLTD until the end of the year. Look at where my bankroll is and reassess things then.

In September a loss of -£1066 was made.

Link To Bets and Beers

FTS Systems

FTS started off profitable in August with a profit of £407 being made.

In September however things swung the other way and a loss of -£690 was made from 11 systems. Not a huge amount to write about here. Going through the staking for 11 systems would take too long however they are based on the FTS software which uses historical results and various models/from to find profitable trends.

Football Trading Club

Football Trading Club is a service that I reviewed recently and historically has been very strong. However to carry on the recurring theme it had a tough month.

I follow the home win selections and home double chance selections pre match. Also I take the occasional in-play bet when I am around at the computer and they come through.

Pretty frustrating month with one or two partially matched bets going on to win and every in-play bet I made losing. Again it just seemed to be the run of things in September. Overall the Football Trading Club is showing consistent profit long term and I won’t be changing anything.

Overall a loss of -£366 was made.

Read My Football Trading Club Review Here

Everything Else

So there is quite a bit more that I followed in September. These strategies tend to be much lower volume then everything else. Combining them makes more sense then going through each one individually.

Casino Offers
Football Bet Data
My Trading/Betting

A profit of £183 was made here.

September 2023 Total

Bets and Beers – -£1066

Value Betting/Trading – £437

MMA Betting – £184

FTS – -£690

Football Trading Club – £-366

Misc – £183

Total Made In September

-£1318

Overall Profit Since The Challenge Began

£182,885

Thoughts Going Forward

Month 78 marked a record losing month.

I will admit it stung a little bit and its the longest period I have been without making a profit (3 months) since the challenge began. After last year which was a record winning year (Just under £40k profit) it looks very likely that this year will be the lowest yearly total since I started.

Variance has been a big part as it always is.

In both last years record profit and this years likely record low profit. My approach in both years has largely been the same.

My wife believes that since moving house the feng shui is off in my work area. Which is why the last 3 months haven’t been great. I laughed this off but writing this 5 days into October and I’m already sitting at around -£1k.

Feng Shui? Voodoo? Gypy Curse? Possibly.

My value bets are still consistently beating the closing line, so in theory these results have to turn eventually. It is tempting to make changes when things aren’t going right but I will wait until the end of the year before doing anything.

Hopefully you had a better September the I did, see you next month for the next update.

Making A Million From Sports Betting July And August 2023 Results

Month 76 and 77 have passed in the making a million challenge.

My intention was to put out up post last month but with summer holidays, kids, work etc. I simply forgot.

July was a fairly quiet month with only the summer leagues and the womens world cup to bet on. Which meant that it was a pretty low volume month.

Overall a profit of £962 was made.

August saw the return of a big leagues and an expectation on my part to finish the year strong.

Let’s dig into it!

Value Betting And Trading

It was a strong month for value betting and nice to have the return of the bigger football leagues. Which provides more opportunity. The lower English leagues tend to be good sources and the advantage of being able to get down at local Betfred shops is also a positive.

Overall a profit of £2503 was made after 270 selections.

If you want learn more about value betting I recently put up a video going through how to get started!

Watch this video on YouTube

MMA Betting

Bit of a nothing month when it came to mixed martial arts.

In previous updates I could fit in every single bet to show you from Bettin.gs but since the update I can only give you a snap shot.

After 13 bets a profit of £169 was made.

On a side note the updated bettin.gs is excellent and if you are looking for a free way to track your bet, I recommend it.

Bets And Beers Telegram Group

Bets and Beers has been one of the most consistent services that I have ever followed. Very few losing months and and my graph pretty much only moved one way.

Until this month.

August also saw the addition of selections in the first half goal market. Which I decided to follow by placing a bet at odds of 1.5 and looking to get it matched in-play. This basically doubled my liability on each game.

It proved to be a bad timing to double my stakes.

A loss of -£1550 was made after 140 bets.

Despite a bad run I won’t be changing anything. Historically results are strong, drawdowns have happened in the past and following the system long term has made money.

FTS Systems

August saw the return of the major football leagues which also meant the return of FTS.

This season I am running 10 systems.

After a successful 2022-203 season, I wanted to increase the amount of volume as my stakes are roughly the same as last year. Having recently bought a house, I’m not in the position to increase stakes so volume is the other way to look at increasing profits.

A profit of £407 was made.

My Trading/Betting

My personal trading/betting was something of a car crash this month.

Not a lot of volume but lost fairly consistently this month. I do like to take on an away team that’s leading by 2 goals and it just didn’t come off this month. Most of the damage came backing Gent when they were 11 against 10 versus Servette at home. Even though the odds were short, I thought they offered value.

They ended up blowing a lead and getting eliminated in extra time.

A total of -£550 was lost from 21 trades.

Everything Else

So there is quite a bit more that I followed in August. Which in future I will start to separate, however being slightly short of time I will put them together as they tend to be much lower volume then everything else.

Football Trading Club
Casino Offers
Football Bet Data
Free tips (Matchbook, Asian Connect etc)

Football trading club is a service I have been tracking for a while and started to back their home value selections in August alongside a few of their in-play alerts. Only managed 2 casino offers in August which both lost.

I run one system on football bet data which threw up a couple of losing selections. Selections will increase for this system as the season goes on and more data is collected. Judging by my end of month total the selections that I followed from free tipsters also lost this month.

A total of -£931 was made from this section.

August 2023 Total

Bets and Beers – -£1550

Value Betting/Trading – £2503

MMA Betting – £169

My Trading/Betting Football – –£550

Misc – -£931

Total – £48

Total Made In July and August

£1110

Overall Profit Since The Challenge Began

£184,203

Thoughts Going Forward

Got to admit that I found August really frustrating.

After making just under £40k profit last year, there was an expectancy on my part to hit a similar figure this year. Which just hasn’t happened.

Despite maintaining similar stakes and using the same strategies the results just haven’t been as good. I do think that last year I ran on the positive side of variance and perhaps this year is balancing things out. August started really strong with £2500 profit made in the first 10 days and then to see a final figure of £48 did piss me off.

At the end of the day though bitching and whining doesn’t help. Sometimes it just requires some patience, as long as your approach is good.

There are things I can improve.

Following the likes of matchbook insights and Asian Connect tipster for example without tracking them properly is silly on my part. The analysis always seems very good but I probably should not be staking them the same as I do with proven strategies.

Ultimately there a lot of things I should be grateful for. Having good health, decent relationships with family/friends, security, a house over my head. Feeling pissed off about not winning enough money from sports betting seems petty and kind of dickish.

So apologies for being petty and kind of a dick in this blog post.

Anyway thanks for reading, hope your betting/trading is going well, will be back next month!

Making A Million From Sports Betting June 2023

June marks month 75 in the “Making a Million Challenge.”

It was a month that I expected to be fairly quiet in terms of volume. Whilst there wasn’t as much to bet on this month, the betting gods smiled and in terms of profit it ended up being one of the strongest months this year.

Making A Million

Value Betting And Trading

Good month for value betting with selections popping up for international football, golf and even a few F1 bets.

Not a huge amount of bets with 87 being recorded but profit made this month was solid.

After 87 bets a profit of £1454 was made.

Not Familiar With Matched Betting Or Value Betting ?

Read Our Guides Below

Matched Betting Guide

Value Betting Guide

MMA Betting

Under dogs seem to be having a better year in 2023 when it comes to UFC betting. Which is usually where I find most value in these markets. After a small losing year in 2022 (-£442), 2023 has seen an overall profit of £2354.

MMA betting June

In June there were 16 bets and a profit of £1944 was made.

Bets And Beers Telegram Group

Bets and Beers is a service that provides selection for lay the draw.

The service provides multiple approaches however I just use the lay the half time draw strategy. Staking £50 per selection.

In June a profit of £334 was made.

Bets and beers

Everything Else

There was no FTS Ultimate selections this month due to the major football leagues not running. Outside of the above selections, I also bet a few free tipsters selections and in-play bets.

These bets produced a loss of –£637 this month.

June 2023 Total

Bets and Beers – £334

Value Betting/Trading – £1454

MMA Betting – £1944

Misc – -£637

June PL

Total Made In June

£3095

Overall Profit Since The Challenge Began

£183,193

Thoughts Going Forward

June was a better month then I expected. Some months you can put in a tonne of volume and work only to see a negative or break even figure at the end of it. Then other times you you do the bare minimum and the profit comes easily.

That’s the weird thing about betting, time spend working doesn’t always equate to making more money or even making money at all. It can be very frustrating and why a big part of this game is patience.

Got the house move done in June which meant the betting bankroll took a big hit. One of my initial goals was always to buy a house with money made from betting and now I’ve been fortunate enough to do that. My next goal is to bet more aggressively, scale things up and make some money that could lead to early retirement.

Now is a good time to prepare for the new football season. Football alongside MMA is really what I want to focus on going forward.

Having bet Tennis, Horses, Golf and numerous other sports over the years. I realized the sports I am most comfortable and confident in beating over the long term are the sports that I really understand. When it comes to betting larger amounts of money understanding the edge I have and reasoning for the bets makes it easier to handle the losing swings that inevitably come.

In comparison to following tipsters who bet in sports I don’t have a great understanding of. Where at times losing runs hit and you are asking “What the f*** is going on?”

FTS, Bets and Beers and FTC will be the services I will be using to take on the 2023/2024 football season. Thanks for reading, good luck with your own betting and I’ll be back next month with an update.

Making A Million From Sports Betting May 2023

May brings month 74 in the “Making A Million Challenge.”

It was pretty poor month overall with a very small profit of £216 being made. To mix things up a bit and keep it interesting.

I will break down my results for the whole of 2023 so far.

Value Betting And Trading

First off we have value betting.

Value betting is placing bets with the aim to beat the closing line. Previously this was done mostly with bookmakers however now it is mainly on exchanges.

Alongside the occasional shop bet.

Looking at the graph you can that approaching close to 900 bets this strategy wasn’t in profit. The next couple of hundred bets it had a sharp rise in profit and then has been a bit up and down for the rest of the year.

Last year this was the most profitable strategy but this year its underperformed slightly. I think its just a case of putting in as much volume as possible. There is no real reason for it underperforming other then variance.

This year a profit of £4215 has been made after 1527 bets.

Not Familiar With Matched Betting Or Value Betting ?

Read Our Guides Below

Matched Betting Guide

Value Betting Guide

MMA Betting

Moving on to mixed martial arts betting, which has been pretty decent this year so far.

After 37 bets a profit of £1396 has been made.

Not a lot to add really. Don’t put a huge amount of volume through the MMA market, tend to try to pick what I think are the best spots.

Previously I had been sending out bets on Discord for free but haven’t the last couple of months. Mainly just due to not remembering and I don’t use Discord for anything myself, it’s just ben forgotten in the background for a while. Might set something up on telegram as I am pretty active there with other betting services.

Bets And Beers Telegram Group

Bets and Beers is a service that provides selection for lay the draw.

The service provides multiple approaches however I just use the lay the half time draw strategy. Staking £50 per selection, the first 70 selections were £20 stakes as I was still testing the service at this point.

Bets and Beers has run pretty well this year as you can see. Hitting £3500 profit for the year at one point before running in to a few losers in the last 150 bets or so.

A profit of £2890 has been made from 400 bets.

FTS Ultimate

For FTS I run 4 season long betting systems. These are set and forget systems which are placed pre match. All of the systems are run on Betfair.

Let’s break down the results for 2023.

System 1 (Lay Draw), Stakes – £50 lay bet, Results = £901 (97 bets)

System 2 (Form based system) £50 to £100 lay bets, Results = – £1600 (185 bets)

System 3 (Poisson) £120 back bets, Results = £1875 (92 bets)

System 4 (Underdog System) £10 to £30 back bets, Results = -£329 (27 bets)

Total – £847

Everything Else

There are a few other strategies I use that are lower volume so I will just group them together.

This is casino offers, in-play trading and free tipster bets that I might place. All of these get added to my overall daily total but I am not always meticulous in recording them down.

It accounts for a profit of £2418.

2023 Total (Up until June 2023)

FTS – £847

Bets and Beers – £2890

Value Betting/Trading – £4215

MMA Betting – £1396

Misc – £2669

Total Made In 2023 so far

£12,017

Overall Profit Since The Challenge Began

£180,098

Thoughts Going Forward

At this stage last year profits were double what they are currently in 2023. Which is a little disappointing as we always want to see progression. However with betting sometimes it requires some patience.

Strategies are very similar to last year with a couple of additions. Staking roughly around the same amount of money, so I think the difference is largely down to variance. I ran extremely well in the first 5 months of 2022 whilst in 2023 there have been a few slim months.

The season for all the big leagues has ended now and its a good time to look at finding new edges for the coming season.

I have been dabbling with football bet data for a couple of weeks which looks interesting and is something I will use for next season. Football Trading Club is another service I have been following for a few month, results have been very good and they provide selections for the summer leagues.

Profiting from the horse racing markets is something I want to get back to doing. Now it is quiet with football I am going to test out a few tipsters/services and might even get back to trading it if I can find the time.

If anyone has any recommendations, pop them in the comments.

Thanks as always for reading!