Seeing is believing.

None of my racing tipsters have enjoyed a good week.  The football system I follow drew a blank.  And yet the portfolio as a whole generated a really strong profit thanks entirely to the Pinpoint Golf service.

Two superb winners last weekend at 50/1 and 100/1 meant that I was left congratulating myself on my decision to finally bite the betting bullet and follow a golf tipster this year.  It had taken some soul searching and something of a leap into the psychological unknown to do so.

I don’t like losing runs you see.  And yes, I know they’re part of the game, but there are losing runs and there are losing runs.  The sort of drawdowns you’re likely to experience following a golf tipster can frequently be long, drawn out affairs.  They can really test your punting mettle, placing bets week in and week out at long prices, knowing that it can be a very long time between drinks at the well of profit.

Faith takes time to develop

This is why I have, until this year, shied away from adding a golf betting service to my portfolio.  But then I thought I should man-up.  Golf would provide the portfolio with important diversity and if continuing it’s level of performance, Pinpoint Golf would generate strong profits.

The thing is though, no matter how much you tell yourself that something is so, it’s not until you live through and experience the good times as well as bad that you develop some faith in the tipster you’re following.  This is a lesson well worth remembering when you’re setting out.  Sure, you can read about losing runs and the best way of dealing with them.  You can try to convince yourself that the tipster you have recently joined has been through losing runs before and the one you’re currently experiencing is nothing out of the ordinary, but it’s not until you’ve come out the other side and have bagged some really good profit do you truly start to believe in a service.  The trick of course, is to keep doing what you need to be doing until that happens.

The golf brings home the bacon

So what about this week’s betting?

It’s been a strange old week, truth be told.  Six of the eight services proved unprofitable to follow, and yet it’s been a week that generated bank growth of 3.88%!

The profit all came from Pinpoint Golf, which had a fantastic weekend.  It’s the first time I’ve really had a massive win on the golf.  I’ve tried to mentally prepare myself for following a golf tipster, drumming into my subconscious and conscious that drawdowns can grow deeper and deeper over a long period of time but then we should see them relieved by the occasional very big win.  Trouble is, like with anything to do with betting I find, you can tell yourself this until you’re blue in the face, it’s not until you’ve experienced it that you truly accept that this is the way of things.

So it came as both a thrill and a relief when I discovered that Chris Williams (who is completely unknown to me!) won on the European Seniors Tour at odds of 50/1 carrying a relatively hefty stake.  When this was followed up by Marc Leishman winning on the PGA Tour at 100/1, albeit carrying a much smaller stake, I was in clover.

Enjoyable stuff, this golf betting lark. 🙂

As far as the racing goes, we’re currently in the midst of the “twilight zone”.  Cheltenham is done and dusted, and Aintree is on the horizon, so none of the really decent National Hunt horses are racing.  The flat horses are waiting for the start of the new turf season next week, so there really is pretty uninspiring stuff being served up at present.  Certainly the tipsters are finding it heavy going (the ones I follow, anyway).  Racing Service A only issued bets on Saturday, and Racing Service B and Northern Monkey have both suffered poor weeks.  No-one has excelled.

Chasemaster: Staked 6pts, -3pts.

Jason James: Staked 27pts, -0.8pts.

Morning Value Service LITE: Staked 13pts, -3.917pts.

Northern Monkey: Staked 13.5pts, -5.21pts.

Racing Service A: Staked 0.875pts, +0.25pts.

Racing Service B: Staked 18.5pts, -14.1pts.

Pinpoint Golf: Staked 38.75pts, +114.85pts.

Football Service 1: Staked 3pts, -3pts.

Week’s Betting: ROI 36.2%, ROC 3.88%.