For context, if you haven’t read the previous Bet Diary post, go read it now and come back.
For those of you that have read Monday’s missive, well, what can I say? What a ridiculous, crazy, sometimes infuriating, often downright daft…game this is we play.
Since Saturday’s absolute disaster show, which basically lost all the profit made this year to date, come Tuesday night I was sitting on a profit high for 2025. And it was all down to just one bet.
On Monday I alluded to the fact that we are going to see some changes implemented in what I’m betting on and how, the result of changing work circumstances for myself and my son’s own situation. Not changes I want to make necessarily, but if any of you have read the Bet Diary for a length of time, you’ll know it reflects real life. That’s the point of it, to be honest. This is betting in the real world where things happen. I’m not a full time bettor. If I was, betting itself would be a bit easier. But I’m not, and so it isn’t.
I had intended this post to detail what those changes are, but that is going to have to wait, in light of that one bet on Tuesday afternoon that I want to concentrate this post on instead!
It’s fair to say that The Value Machine hadn’t quite produced the goods for me yet, in 2025. I use only the Exchanges for following this service, and my strategy to date has largely been to look to get my stakes into the market – if at least the minimum advised price is available – at some point in the last three minutes in the build up to the race. For any bets in any races that I know I’m not going to be sitting at my laptop during that timeframe, I’d just stick in my stake at Betfair SP, setting the minimum odds acceptable at the advised TVM price advised.
One fundamental change I’m making moving forward is that all TVM bets, I’ll be using Betfair SP for. It means that getting the bets on will take minimal time. I started doing that this week.
On Tuesday, a horse called SeanOG was tipped up in a small race at Catterick. The advised TVM price was 6.5.
Come Tuesday evening, I got back from the cricket coaching I do, logged into my Betfair account and immediately clocked that the balance had gone up. A lot.
First thought was what the hell has happened here?
What had happened was that SeanOG had won…at a Betfair SP of 26! I mean, when does that ever happen. How often does a horse drift like that, and then not run like it had only three good legs and had double cod and chips for lunch?
But no. This time, the Sporting Life site tells us that Sean OG “came clear before the last” and “stayed on strongly” to win by three and a half lengths.
There’s been a very small dip across Wednesday and Thursday, but from being (not quite) in despair on Saturday night to this on the Tuesday, and the impact that each day had had on the P&L…what we do is madness. Isn’t it?
Have a great weekend, folks.
Febuary 2025 (stakes normalised):
Bookie Bashing Tools: Staked 795.64pts, -278.32pts, ROI -34.9%, ROC -18.5%, Drawdown -278.32pts, 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 4,320pts, +611.62pts, ROI 14.1%, ROC 40.7%, 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 1,650pts, +30.85pts, ROI 1.8%, ROC 2%, Drawdown -80pts, Max DD -195.19pts
WinnerOdds Football: Staked 5,179pts, -58.14pts, ROI -1.1%, ROC -1.9%, Drawdown -317.24pts, Max DD -393.85pts
TOTAL: Staked 12,488.01pts, +101.46pts, ROI 0.8%, ROC 1.1%, Drawdown -99.2pts, Max DD -434.05pts
