Deep apologies for the enforced break. Bloody Covid!
Yep, it’s not gone away, and to be honest, it hit me for a bigger six than any Tino Best would have hit if not trying to mind the windows! Fortunately, as I’m now effectively in a joint venture partnership with my lad, betting didn’t come to a standstill as it might have done previously. And in fact, looking at the bright side of things, it’s been an interesting exercise to get someone else’s thoughts and viewpoint gained from a practical perspective.
So I need to bring these pages up to date, and I thought that the best way to do this might be a series of posts, each of which will concentrate on a couple of the services/strategies used at a time, and including questions that have been raised and thoughts discussed between Joe and myself.
So we’ll start with the Bookie Bashing Early Pay Out Tracker and the Lucky 15 strategy adopted to utilise it.
Bookie Bashing Early Pay Out Tracker: Staked 8,100pts, +1,657.5pts, roi 20.46%, roc 110.5%
A very small drop in the P&L from the last update, and only a handful of Lucky 15s placed. In fact, no Lucky 15 bet has been struck for over a week now and there are a couple of reasons for this.
Firstly, with a lot of the domestic leagues currently on their summer break, there have been far fewer teams appear on the Tracker than is the case during the main football season. However, that is not to say the Tracker has been blank. It hasn’t, and it is still possible to get some bets down if you wanted to. Which leads us on to the second point.
Although it is possible to get maybe one or two Lucky 15s on each day, to do so, it is often necessary to include matches that are being played days ahead. In some correspondence I had with an SBC member a few weeks back, it was pointed out to me that the bookmakers aren’t particularly going to take kindly to this. In other words, placing high liability Lucky 15s that include teams upon whom a very early price is being taken might catch the attention of the Traders, and nobody wants to do that when it can be avoided.
The way I use the EP Tracker during the main football season is to first look to see what bets I can make using teams playing within the next 24 hours, and then the next 48. Generally speaking, I can get four or five Lucky 15s down each day without having to look at teams playing within 72 hours. Right now, it’s almost impossible.
So after discussion, we’ve decided to knock the EP Tracker on the head until the new football season starts in August. The account we use primarily for these bets is precious, not least when it comes to following a service such as Winner Odds, which is something I’ll talk about in a later post.
Weekly Golf Value
Bookie Bashing Golf Tracker/Weekly Golf Value: Staked 5,211pts, +414.13pts, roi 7.94%, roc 27.6%
Now let’s take a look at WGV.
Joe and I decided to slim down how we bet on the golf. As you may know if you are a regular reader, at the start of the year when I was limited to betting in cash and on the Exchanges only, I used the Tracker and bet win-only using the likes of Smarkets and Matchbook. When Joe opened new accounts we used the Bookie Bashing Golf Tracker to find our own bets and mixed them with WGV selections. For the past month or so, and essentially due to timing, we decided to simply back the WGV bets that come out on a Wednesday. Moving forward we will undoubtedly go back to using the Tracker to find our own players to back in each tournament, but right now it simply suits us to keep things as simple as possible.
This has coincided with something of a return to form for WGV which to official figures had until recently been in deficit for the year. However, three weeks of good each way place returns and then this Sunday a winner at 45/1 has pushed things back in the right direction and I believe as a result the official figures have just broken through into positive territory.
Our own personal ROI from what is now a mix of our own bets sourced from the Tracker and WGV picks is creeping up towards the 10% ROI mark, which is good to see.
It was also good to see us get some luck on Sunday too, when for all the world Cam Davis, our winner, looked unlikely to end up as another to go close and place rather than win (Seconditis has been a curse this year!) but with a bogey on the last from a rival, Davis was left on his own at the top of the leaderboard. Hallelujah!
Sadly this was the week when no other golfer in either of the PGA and DPWT tournaments placed, so the overall profit wasn’t that much greater than the previous week when we had four or five place but no win. But who’s complaining? Not us, that’s for sure.
I remember last year WGV struggled a little through the first half and then bagged a number of winners in the second half of 2023 to end up with another great year overall (23.8% ROI to official numbers) and so of course, we’re hoping for similar this year. Whether that happens or things go the other way, it matter not in the long term. The Golf Tracker/WGV is a winner. Patience and good bank management will always be rewarded.
In the next post we’ll look at what’s happened with the Lucky 15s sourced from the Bookie Bashing Racing Tracker, and from our Value Bets.
Until then…
