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