I just delayed posting until now so I could get the final figures in for the month.
September has been a particularly underwhelming month, and several issues have arisen that frankly, have been a little tiresome to deal with. I’ve recognised the problems, because I’ve been through these situations before. More to the point, I knew they would arrive again, and have therefore had plenty of time to think ahead.
In a nutshell, the time has arrived again to start to look towards betting predominantly in shops and on the exchanges.
Look at the Staked figures for David’s Daily and SharpBetting Football, the two services to emerge from September with real credit. Those decimal points tell us something. That getting on bets online has become increasingly difficult. Those decimals reflect restricted stakes, and to be honest the stakes I was using weren’t huge.
The other news is that sadly, the drawdown The Value Machine Exchange Profit has experienced for me, has over the weekend reached the size of bank allocated to it. I wrote about this last week, and it’s sad. There is a service from a thoroughbred team designed to work on the exchanges, which is what I need.
One other aspect to my betting that changed in the last couple of weeks, and soon became clear that I would have to react to, is that my lad resumed his Uni studies. I know this sounds a bit strange when we’re talking about students, but that has meant that time is not all of a sudden, his greatest resource and whereas some betting could be done, not with the consistency that is required.
So, changes are coming for October.
I’ll go through these in my next post, but my betting now has to be designed largely around work, and being able to get to bookmaker shops. I’m fortunate in that I have a number of BetFreds, William Hills and Ladbrokes all within a very short drive. I’ve been here before, and I’ve been able to make it work.
Where will I still be able to use online bookmakers?
Well, the two firms I use predominantly for golf betting via Weekly Golf Value are, surprisingly, still viable. One of those firms has completely closed my ability to bet on football and tennis, but golf so far – touch wood – remains unfettered. I say that, but with the Ryder Cup taking place last week, I’ve not actually tried to place a golfing bet for a couple of weeks. Perhaps I’ll get a nasty shock later today, we’ll see.
So for the moment, it’s going to be shops and exchanges. But, there may be options. There are some soft books that I need to explore, and there are other avenues to explore and I fully intend to. But for now, this is the direction I need to head in, as much due to personal circumstances as anything else.
I guess that’s one of the things about this column. It does reflect real life. I’m not a professional gambler who can designate all my time to betting. It does need to fit around personal circumstance, which is, I’m guessing, the case for almost everyone.
Below are the figures for September. Not much to say, really, other than bring on October. What I should add for context is that for the year to date, we’re sitting on overall bank growth of almost 60%. That’s not at all shabby, and we’ll see what the last quarter of 2025 brings.
September 2025 (stakes normalised)…
Bookie Bashing Golf Tracker/WGV: Staked 664pts, -93pts, ROI -14%, ROC -6.53%
BB Tracker Each Way Golf Doubles: Staked 304pts, -186.79pts, ROI -61.44%, ROC -9.33%.
David’s Daily: Staked 1,430.16pts, +359.6pts, ROI 25.14%, ROC 35.96%
The Value Machine Exchange Profit: Staked 960pts, -294.65pts, ROI -30.69%, ROC -23.57%
Tilt The Odds: Staked 629.6pts, -174.844pts, ROI -18.8%, ROC -11.65%.
SharpBetting Football Model: Staked 6,311.64pts, +399.44pts, ROI 6.32%, ROC 26.62%.
WinnerOdds Tennis: Staked 7,219pts, -276.09pts, ROI -3.82%, ROC -13.8%.
TOTAL: Staked 17,518.4pts, -266.33pts, ROI -1.52%, ROC -3.8%