Saturday was an absolute disaster. Do you ever have one of those days when absolutely nothing goes the right way? And it doesn’t have to be limited to your betting.
I enjoyed a week away last year down on the South Devon coast, but after a drive home on Friday lasting over six and a half hours due to weather, accidents, and usual Friday afternoon chaos on the M6, I was feeling almost like I was jet lagged when I woke up on Saturday morning. And the day went downhill from there.
It was an interesting experience. I like to feel that through experience, I handle losing runs fairly well. I’m pretty sanguine about them nowadays. To be honest, it’s when you go through the weeks of grind without making any progress that I find more taxing psychologically, even if I am fully aware it’s all part of the game. But come Saturday evening, I was feeling pretty down about it all.
Let’s start a summary of the last week though with the exceptionally good, and that has been eSoccer Edge. Its form has been outstanding, and when I tell you that for just this month to date, it’s generated bank growth for me of 34.5%! Every day of the last week has generated a profit. Not a huge amount each day, but it’s amazing how quickly a regular, small but solid profit adds up. There’s no doubt it’s currently on a hot streak, with my ROI for February standing at 13.3%, which is way above long term expectation. So the pace will have to slow, but when I remember that spell last month that saw a pretty sharp drawdown as a consequence of an abrupt change in the dynamics of the markets, to see where I’m at now with it is very impressive.
Now let’s turn to the disastrous.
WinnerOdds Football had a nightmare on Saturday for me. Sitting on a very healthy profit for the year on Friday night, by Saturday night all that profit, and some, had gone. And you know what, that came as a bit of a blow. Not so much the amount of money lost. More the fact that five weeks of striking plenty of bets and steadily accumulating profit, and suddenly all that work had been undone. Five weeks profit, disappearing in just one day.
Look, the drawdown is nothing out of expectation. It’s just that normally, it happens over a longer stretch of time and I feel that would be easier to compartmentalize. It’s all part of what we do. In fact, back in the summer, there was a slightly larger drawdown that I suffered, but that occurred over seven weeks. I didn’t have any problem at all dealing with that. I knew that the losses would be regained, and I know this time that they will be regained. But when you lose five weeks work in the space of 12 hours? Yeah, not great.
That brings us to The Value Machine. Now here is a service I retain total faith in (as I do WinnerOdds!), but which just isn’t quite working for me at the moment. January should have ended in a small profit for me, but due to a mistake at my end, didn’t. This month, and a pattern of losses – almost getting back to break even – losses again, has set in. All natural. All part of what to expect. But the pattern of 17 consecutive losers, culminating with 6/6 losing on Saturday to go with the situation with WinnerOdds, again I found it tough to deal with.
Now here’s the bit that’s really stupid. Everything felt like it was going wrong. I watched Arsenal put in the worst performance I’ve seen them produce for what must be about three years! My Fantasy Football Team – riding high with a strong ranking – crashed and burned. Players I brought in did nothing or worse, the players I’d taken out were scoring goals for fun. I know, this really isn’t important and nothing I would ever get down about…I’m just pointing out that Saturday really was “one of those days”. To round it all off, I had a speeding ticket come through the post! I’m usually pretty careful about driving within the speed limit, but I got caught doing 80 on the M5 last week. I had seen a camera flash – just hadn’t thought it was me, because there was another car coming up to overtake me on the outside lane. 🙁
And herein lies a salutary lesson. Whereas when I was new to betting, I would have done my version of going “on tilt” after Saturday’s performance, which would have meant either not continuing to follow WO/TVM, or maybe drastically reducing my stake size. Now, knowing what is important, when I got to my laptop on Sunday I just carried on putting on the bets as they came through as normal. Just grind, is what I told myself.
Sunday?
77% of the losses on Saturday were made back. Yup, after all that drama, the betting weekend ended up being no worse than mediocre. Nothing particularly dramatic at all. If the overall loss had been split between the two days, I’d likely not have even mentioned anything in this post at all.
The Value Machine had winners in all four races in which I had bets, WinnerOdds Football generated 63 points of profit, three placed golfers meant a small profit there for the week, and eSoccer Edge had a strong day.
What was all the fuss about?
Look. Overall, the year as it stands is underperforming for me. But not to any level that can’t be expected. Fundamentally things are sound, and it is just a case of grinding away and knowing that the profit will follow. Put it this way. By far my bigger worry moving forward is the ability to keep accounts open – as always – than whether or not I’m going to actually make any money. Was it ever thus?
However, and this is something I hinted at before I went away last week, I do need to change some things. Yesterday was my first “proper” day in a new business, and it’s going to take a lot of my time, as any new venture does. At the same time, my son who I rely on considerably, needs to come away from betting and concentrate on what he needs to do, for the next few months at least.
I’ll explain what these changes are in my next post. But for now, rest assured that WinnerOdds Football and The Value Machine are central to my plans moving forward.
Here are the figures:
Febuary 2025 (stakes normalised):
Bookie Bashing Tools: Staked 770.82pts, -253.5pts, ROI -32.8%, ROC -16.9%, Drawdown -253.5pts, Max DD -312.94pts
Bookie Bashing Golf Tracker/WGV: Staked 428pts, -115.3pts, ROI -26.9%, ROC -7.6%, Drawdown -115.3pts, Max DD -136.3pts
eSoccer Edge: Staked 3,885pts, +518.6pts, ROI 13.3%, ROC 34.5%, Drawdown -0pts, Max DD -97.12pts
Sys Analyst: Staked 61.5pts, -61.5pts, ROI -100%, ROC -4.1%, Drawdown -61.5pts, Max DD -61.5pts
The Value Machine: Staked 1,470pts, -159.39pts, ROI -10.8%, ROC -10.6%, Drawdown -159.39pts, Max DD -195.19pts
WinnerOdds Football: Staked 4,935pts, +12.71pts, ROI 0.25%, ROC 0.4%, Drawdown -246.39pts, Max DD -393.85pts
TOTAL: Staked 11,654pts, -56.13pts, ROI -0.48%, ROC -0.62%, Drawdown -99.93pts, Max DD -434.05pts
