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.
You can read more about the service here.
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.