Making a million

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.

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!

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

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.

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.

You can read more about the service here.

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.

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!

August was the month I had been waiting for.

Everything seemed to go right, I was on the right side of variance for casino offers and my own trading/betting went well.

At times this year I had questioned whether I should look at putting my time into other things.

This month though validated that if you have profitable methods and solid staking. Then so long as you put in the volume, the results will come eventually.

Matched Betting – Sports Offers, Arbitrage, Value Betting

I did my usual matched betting, arbing and value betting with soft books and continued betting in the Asian markets.

Betting in the Asian markets has gone well the only annoying part is actually funding the account. This is due to fees using an ewallet and then fee’s that the broker I use has added to depositing and withdrawing.

However given there is no commission on bets, very tight margins and often superior odds then Betfair (after commission.)

It is still worth while, it just means that I have to avoid moving money in and out of the account to often. 

I will look at putting up a review of the broker that I use soon.

As I know betting in the Asian markets is something a lot of people are interested in. But much like myself have been or are still wary of using brokers.

I made a total of 377 bets in August.

A total profit of £1049 was made.

(This month I managed to negotiate a free one month trial of Rebelbetting’s value betting software. So if this interests you, use the link below. This software usually costs £61 a month.)

Services Used

RebelBetting Value Betting Software (Readers Of This Blog Can Get A Free Month Trial If You Click Here)

Subscription Cost – £61 a month (Monthly)

Oddsmonkey (Click Here For The Review)

Subscription Cost – £12.50 a month (Annual Subscription)

Advantage Play – Casino Offers

I had an interesting email this month. From someone that had lost money doing casino offers. They wrote that I fabricate my casino results and I actually work for bookmakers and casinos. Apparently all of the strategies are bulls*** and you will lose money doing any of them.

So yeah obviously that’s not true (no bookmaker affiliate is advising matched betting or arbitrage for example) and I think that most people that read this blog understand variance and advantage gambling in general.

But because of that exchange I have thought it wouldn’t hurt to add some more screenshots of doing offers this month and a video.

Just to show that I am actively doing casino offers and although you can lose money short term. In the long term there is still a massive edge doing these.

The video below is where I hit 20 free spins with a 10x multiplier doing £2 spins on Halloween Fortune.

I was pretty excited when this hit and thought that it could have lead to one of my biggest casino wins ever. If the casino gods decided to favour me.

You can see the result below.

So despite the casino gods not handing out a mega win on Halloween Fortune. I still ran very well on casino offers this month and a decent profit was made overall.

Last month I lost over £1000 pounds doing casino offers, so it was a good feeling to have a month where it flipped the other way.

In August I completed 157 offers.

A total profit of £2439 was made. 

(Another deal I have for readers of this blog is a half price month with Bonus Accumulator. This is the service I use to highlight and exploit profitable casino offers. The link below will take you to my review of Bonus Accumulator. This will give you more information about the service and also give you the first month for half price.)

Service Used

Bonus Accumulator (Click Here For The Review)

Subscription Cost – £12.50 a month  (Annual Subscription)

Sports Betting Results

Sports betting went well this month.

The biggest individual bet that I had was on Marlon Vera to beat Sean O,Malley in a UFC bout.

Again fortune favoured me this month as O’Malley’s leg gave out early in the fight (Due to a leg kick) and he folded pretty quickly after that.

This month I made a total of 20 bets.

A profit of £810 was made.

Below are the majority of bets made in August.

Trading

Trading also went well this month.

Not a huge amount of volume but I did some pre event trading on the UFC this month. Alongside a little bit of pre match football trading.

I ended up hedging the above for a profit across all outcomes just before the fight.

A total of £126 was made from trading.

Thoughts Going Forward

August was a really good month overall in terms of profit made. I am always mulling over adding new tipsters or services and I am still tracking results for a few that look promising.

However at the moment and with my venture into the Asian betting markets. I am happy to keep doing what I’m doing and reassess things in a few months time.

This month I put out a new video on Youtube which you can view below.

Youtube is something that I have not really focused on, I made a few videos just out of interest really to see how they would do.

But despite not really doing that much with the channel, it has grown organically. So in the future, I want to be more consistent with content output. Put videos out on a weekly basis and see where it goes.

My plan would be to also branch out of just creating content related to the sports betting markets but also talk about creating other income sources (this blog for example.) Then using these revenue streams to work towards financial independence and earlier retirement.

If any of that interests you, you can subscribe to the channel in the link below.

Smart Sports Trader Youtube Channel

Let me know in the comments how you get on in August.

Results

Matched Betting – Sports Offers

£1049

Advantage Play – Casino Offers

£2439

Trading

£126

Sports Betting

£810

Total Made In August

£4424

Overall Profit Since The Challenge Began

£90,945

Remaining Target

£909,065