Deeper Betting Knowledge Part 1: A Guide to Using Monte Carlo Simulations To Evaluate Tipsters

In these quiet times for sport and betting, it’s an ideal time to look to develop our knowledge and skill sets and as part of that, in this new 2-part series I want to walk you through how to use Monte Carlo simulations to evaluate tipsters.

Much of this work has been ported over from other investment worlds and the outputs provided help us make more informed decisions on just which tipsters offer the best chance to make you a profit betting.

The full SBC Advanced Tipster Analytics Guide on Monte Carlo Simulations and the outputs for each tipster are available to full SBC members, yet in this 2-part article, I want to outline what they are and how exactly they can help when evaluating a tipster.

The good news is that you DO NOT need to understand any complicated mathematics to benefit from exploring these advanced outputs. Simply follow the easy to understand explanations we give and the context and scores we put the ratings in.

These advanced analytics are ideal if you are interested in topics like losing runs, risk, whether a tipster is lucky or skilful, comparison to other investment returns and volatility.

Over the course of this 2-part article as well as explaining the usage of Monte Carlo simulations behind the analytics, I will also be explaining the outputs they provide, which include:

  • Historical maximum drawdowns
  • 99th and 50th percentile drawdowns
  • 50% bankroll drawdowns
  • Likelihood of a losing year
  • Risk reward & Capital risk ratios
  • Dispersion factor
  • Sharpe ratio
  • P-values

If this all sounds complex – don’t worry it isn’t and please don’t stop reading!! You honestly don’t need a degree in maths to figure out how they can help you.

Instead let me guide you through each of them and explain what they are and how they can help you make better decisions for choosing the tipsters you follow.

Introducing Monte Carlo Simulations

When the SBC team reviews a tipster, the first port of call is to explore the live record of performance obtained to date. Usually this encompasses at least a couple of years data, if not more and often at least 1000 to 2000 past actual bets.

As useful as it is to explore this live actual record of performance, from an analysis perspective, the amount of data we have – even if 2000 bets is often insufficient to draw 100% concrete conclusions from.

This is where running Monte Carlo simulations for each tipster comes in as they replicate the profile of the service over many million data points.

So rather than calculate what might happen when analysing 1000 or 2000 live bets, we do so over say 90 million – a much more useful data set.

The results of each Monte Carlo simulation can help to answer key questions for any given tipster such as:

  • Is a betting record more likely to be based on luck or skill?
  • What kind of losing runs or drawdowns might you realistically expect?
  • How do their live results compare to their simulation results?
  • Have they benefited from some freak results and outliers that are unlikely to be replicated?
  • What size betting bank do you REALLY need?

Ultimately, all the outputs from these simulations helps to give us a greater understanding of the quality of any given tipster. Certainly, it is far more useful than just scrutinizing the live results only.

All SBC reviews now include the results from our Monte Carlo simulator outputs as standard, hence why I wanted to illustrate what they mean and how you can interpret them in this special 2 part article.

How These Simulations Work

Monte Carlo simulations have existed in several forms for around 90 years and have been used in many walks of life such as medicine, insurance, space, oil exploration, nuclear weapon experimentation and even for general election modelling!

The simulation is a mathematical technique which is used to understand the impact of risk and uncertainty.

The main principle is the application of randomness and volatility to test theories of probability.

They are absolutely ideal for evaluating historic betting patterns and to predict best and worst-case scenarios.

When we at the SBC take a tipster’s proofed selections and provide statistical analyses by, for instance, season, month, course, race type and odds banding, we augment this by taking several copies of the key data fields and then modelling these through a computer algorithm which generates ‘virtual seasons’ each of the mean number of bets.

Typically, this might create, say, 100,000 seasons which could produce in the region of 90 million bets!

The greater the number of simulations that are run, the more confident and positive one can be of the accuracy of the outcomes.

It often takes 5-6 hours to run these Monte Carlo simulations for each tipster and a fair bit of processing power to get there but the results are often well worth the wait!

12 Outputs to Rate Tipsters By

By running the Monte Carlo simulations against each tipster analysed and reviewed, we are able to produce detailed results that provide a number of very useful outputs – 12 in total.

Over this 2 point guide, I will provide a description of each output with our reasoning as to why they are useful analytical tools and their application, together with some worked examples from our recent investigations showing how you can use them to make better decisions.

1) Strike Rate

This first output is a simple one as the strike rate is simply the overall number of winners divided by the tips given, expressed as a percentage.

What To Look For: Whilst there is isn’t really a ‘good’ or ‘bad’ strike-rate, this output is important as those tipsters with a lower strike-rate often require more patience, yet bring higher rewards and vice versa.

2) Return on Investment (ROI)

Another standard output whereby the ROI indicates the actual profit as a percentage of total stakes. ROI is always useful as it puts profit into context.

What To Look For: The type of ROI you can make often varies based on the strike-rate and the type of sport the tipster specialises in.

It isn’t rare to see a top racing tipster hit 30% ROI+ (caveated by the issues of getting on) vs that from a football tipster, whereby anyone making 5% ROI+ is doing very well (caveated by the fact it’s often much easier to get your bets on).

Therefore, the ROI needs to be judged in context against the markets tackled and the profile of tipster.

3) Historical Maximum Drawdown

Moving onto the first of the more advanced outputs and it’s important to understand what a drawdown is as this is a term we use regularly.

A drawdown is quite simply the worst historical run that has ever taken place – the peak-to-trough decline in bankroll experienced over a period of bets.

What To Look For: A tipster service with a strong record will have a historical maximum drawdown that is easily absorbed by the betting bank suggested. It’s a useful output to examine as if you struggle with long losing runs, you want to avoid tipsters that suffer occasional large drawdowns.

4) 99th Percentile Drawdown

Building upon [3] above, what this output does is effectively list all of the seasonal drawdowns found in the simulations and then takes the 99th percentile figure. It is useful as should a drawdown exceed this 99% figure; it indicates there is a problem or change in the service to be aware of.

What To Look For: We like to see similarity between a tipster’s live record and the results from the Monte Carlo simulation. If a tipster suffers a drawdown that equals or goes beyond this 99% figure – it could suggest a problem.

Recent Examples: We recently analysed a long-term profitable racing system, which over 9 years’ worth of live results had suffered a heaviest drawdown of 109 points. The 99th percentile figure came out at 119 points – suggesting the live tipping history was very similar to the simulation results. A very good sign.

Compare this with our analysis on another racing tipster recently that didn’t attract a high SBC rating. Although their worst drawdown to date was 63 points, the simulations reveal that 139 points would be needed to accommodate the likely potential drop at the 99th percentile. Suggesting that followers of this tipster should prepare for a worse run than that which has been seen in live results.

Read Part 2

Click here to read part 2 of this article, where I cover 8 further outputs from the Monte Carlo simulations including:

  • 50th percentile drawdown
  • 50% bankroll drawdown
  • Likelihood of a losing year
  • Risk reward ratio
  • Capital risk ratio
  • Dispersion factor
  • Sharpe ratio
  • P-values

SBC Helping Inform Your Betting Over The Next Few Months

Whilst there isn’t a huge amount for us to bet on right now, we are using this quiet betting period to publish a series of quality reviews, articles and insightful guides to help deepen the expertise of SBC members.

Mindful of the fact that many of you are using this time without sport to improve your knowledge and understanding of the betting and tipster world, our role is to help fill that gap with informative, educational and quality content.

Tackling everything from helping develop and understand your betting risk profile, the psychology of a winner, Advanced Tipster Analytics and guides to betting on new sports, you can expect to read a lot as an SBC member over the next few months.

As ever, membership comes with a full 30 or 90 day money back guarantee, so if you are looking to develop your betting skills, do consider a Smart Betting Club subscription.

Best regards

Peter Ling

Smart Betting Club Owner and Founder

Another free tipster report from the blogger up over 7k in 2019. Read about his remarkable betting journey…

Today I have another freebie to share with you – a 2nd special report from a blogger using tipsters to turn a profit from his betting.

The author in question is the tipster blogger, Making Punting Pay who in this special report explains how he made a £7,346.57 clear profit betting in 2019.

In this 17 page PDF, you can explore his journey to profit on a month-by-month basis, including the 6 tipsters he follows, the lessons learnt along the way and his advice to those looking to copy his approach when sport and betting return!

Download it now via either of the links below.

DOWNLOAD THIS FREE REPORT PDF

P.s. Make sure you also read the latest posts up at the Making Punting Pay blog on how he performed during Cheltenham 2020 – where he made £6,704.19 over the course of the 4 day festival!

Download Another Free Tipster Report…

If you missed our email last Monday, you might not have seen the other free report now also available for download.

This second report is from SBC writer, Rowan Day on the performance of the tipsters he follows and the profits he made with them during 2019.

Just as with Making Punting Pay, 2019 was another profitable year for Rowan….Providing yet more evidence were it needed that the top rated tipsters we recommend are well worth following.

DOWNLOAD ROWAN’S BET DIARY REPORT PDF

Read More Free From Both These Authors

Although there is very little to bet on currently, it is a great time to read up on some of the excellent material from both these authors on their betting journeys in greater detail.

First of all you can explore more from Making Punting Pay at his regularly updated blog, including his performance so far during 2020. I also recommend going through each week of his blog during 2019 for even more detail on the decisions he made, the challenges faced and overcame.

If you want to read more from Rowan, the author of the 2nd report, you can find posts on his betting progress dating back to 2015 at the free SBC Bet Diary page.

Best Regards

Peter Ling

Smart Betting Club Owner and Founder

 

 

How to earn ewallet cashback betting. Download our free guide and start adding extra to your bank

For those of you looking to build in extra profit and edge to your betting, then today I want to highlight how you can use e-wallets to earn cashback when depositing money into your betting accounts.

Whilst your betting income might fluctuate on a weekly and monthly basis, ewallet cashback ticks over whether you win or lose as its based on your staking and turnover.

By taking advantage of e-wallet cashback, those of you betting regularly can easily start to make an extra £100 to £200 per month by following a few simple steps.

Even if you already use an e-wallet with the likes of NetellerSkrill or ecoPayz – you can still earn cashback by following our advice.

So to help you understand more on how easy it is to earn e-wallet cashback, I have put together a simple 7-page guide for you to download on how you can take advantage of this. Click here to download

This free guide also outlines 3 different punters making between £100 and £560 per month simply by following this method and answers all the main questions you might have.


Download SBC’s Free E-Wallet Cashback Betting Guide
Link opens up a free PDF download


All told, it is really very simple to get started and by using this cashback method, you can enjoy a handy income boost each month.

Best Regards

Peter Ling

Smart Betting Club Owner and Founder

1 winner from 41 bets – Why you should follow this tipster

A Bookies Nightmare – that’s the theme of our latest Tipster Profit Report focusing exclusively on several very profitable Horse Racing Tipsters that continue to ride a wave of success.

Yet to balance it out today, and with this recent article on Value Betting firmly in my thoughts, I also wanted to outline a couple of reality checks on life following a racing tipster.

Not a reality check in the form of a worry these top rated experts don’t know their stuff. Because they do – the profits they make are real.

But a reality check in terms of what to expect when following a racing tipster

And the very strong reality that even the best betting experts suffer a losing run.

Because experience tells me that when a punter understands this – it becomes so much easier to follow tipsters and to avoid the one thing that catches most unwary punters out – quitting a tipster at exactly the wrong time.

Handling Losses A Rite of Passage For Any Tipster

One of the biggest warning signs I look for when observing a tipster is if they have never had a losing run of some kind.

In my experience, even the very best experts have losing months.

So if I see a racing tipster in business for 30 months, yet every single month has been profitable – well it sets alarm bells that all is not what it seems.

I wonder “Are these results legitimate?” and often when you dig deeper, they aren’t.

Simply because to go 30 months without making a loss in at least a few of them is unrealistic and unprobable.

It’s important to recognise that just because you pay to follow a tipster – this does not mean that they will not suffer occasional losing runs.

They will and its important to understand this.

Let me show you more with a couple of high-profile examples…

 

1 Winner In 37 Tips From This ‘Expert’

Firstly, lets use focus on ‘Tipster X’ – which is a very long-running racing service with a major edge.

This tipster has made 3669 points profit @ 12.4% ROI over more than 15,000 bets since 2014.

He knows how to make a profit betting and its been a ‘Hall of Fame’ rated service for several years now.

In our Racing Tipster Profit Report, we reported back on his latest progress since our last update, which saw 138 points profit made @ 26.89% ROI from 138 bets between May and August 2019.

A very nice profit indeed.

Yet, that isn’t the full story as within those 138 bets, there was plenty of ups and downs along the way.

Including a run from the 20th July of 38 bets and just 1 winner, during which this tipster lost 66.88 points.

That is a strike-rate of just 2.6%.

Fancy paying a tipster for that!?

Because had you joined on the 20th July or at some point during those 38 bets, you would have every right to question what took place.

Why was this top-rated tipster giving nothing but losers? After all, SBC rate him in their Hall of Fame and you have spent money to join him!

The reality is that this run of 38 losers was just randomness at play and as long as sticking firm, the rewards would flow as indeed they did.

Of the very next 83 bets advised since this run of losers, the service has made a 143.77 point profit.

Making back the 66.68 points lost and adding another 77.09 points profit on top!

This short-term run of losers was over and in some style and had you quit at the wrong time then you would be kicking yourself right now!

1 Winner in 41 From This 2nd ‘Expert’

To highlight how often this kind of thing happens, another highly rated expert we recommend – lets call him Tipster Y also had a similar bad run of form in August 2019.

During one period, he advised 41 bets and found just 1 winner, losing 22.24 points.

That is a strike-rate of just 2.5%.

Imagine paying for that kind of tipping advice!

Yet, despite this loss, over the 4 month period we covered between May and September, he actually made a total profit of 17.61 points @ 16% ROI from 199 bets.

And when you look back to the first 4 months of the year (Jan to April) he also made 41.04 points @ 53.78% ROI from 138 bets.

So the year is very nicely in profit despite this run of 1 winner from 41 at one point in time.

In total, 2019 sits up 58.65 points profit @ 31.36% ROI from 337 bets

Which once again goes to illustrate the need for patience, even with the best experts.

Have A High Odds / Low Strike-Rate Mentality

One thing both Tipster X and Tipster Y have is a focus on bigger price selections.

During their losing runs, the approximate average odds of a tip put forward by Tipster X was 11/1 and Tipster Y 17/2.

When you are backing at higher odds like this, your strike-rate will always be lower and there will be times when it gets really low as we saw with 1 in 38 and 1 in 41 above.

This is something I will be exploring in more detail in a forthcoming article on strike-rates and what to expect, but for now do be aware that the higher the strike-rate, the greater the likelihood of a losing run.

Whatever You Do – Don’t Quit At The Wrong Time!

I wanted to pen this article today not to scare you from using tipsters, but to just help provide some context on the reality of what to expect at times.

Betting professionally is never PROFIT, PROFIT, PROFIT – there will always be challenging times, yet with both the examples of Tipster X and Y above, you can be reassured that they know how to help you win as they have between them over 20 years of doing exactly that.

What I do want to encourage is the simple notion of having a longer-term and more patient mindset and to disabuse the idea that simply because you pay for tips, you will no longer have a bad run.

I do at times come across some punters unaware of this fact and they are likely the type who will have quit Tipster X or Tipster Y at some point during the losing runs I outlined above.

Which of course is exactly the worst thing you can do as significant profits were just around the corner.

Discover More With SBC

If you enjoyed this article and want to know more about the Smart Betting Club’s work reviewing and rating tipsters, you can read more on this at our Tipster Review Process section.

As that outlines, whether it be a horse racing, football, baseball, golf or tennis tipster under the review microscope – we leave no stone unturned in our quest to examine what is on offer and we focus very much on long-term profits.

Not just what a tipster made just last week or in August, but several years and often thousands of thousands of past bets.

Giving re-assurance that when we say a tipster is good, it really is.

If you like what you read – then you can join the Smart Betting Club at our lowest ever prices for 2019 and all with a money-back guarantee to boot.

Best Regards

Peter Ling

Smart Betting Club Founder

Punting Insight: James Bond, The Professional Gambler? Understanding Value Betting

On a semi-regular basis, I like to deviate slightly from my usual posts and share with you betting articles of interest – those that can help both challenge and educate us as punters.

With that in mind, I have a fascinating article to put to you today, one written by a relatively new tipster we have begun proofing here at the Smart Betting Club by the name of ‘Insider Gambles ‘ on the theory behind successful value betting.

Although a fairly long article, it raises some incredibly useful points that any aspiring punter really needs to understand such as randomness and betting when the odds are in your favour – i.e. value betting.

All of the professional gamblers and tipsters that I have come into contact with use this form of value betting to inform the wagers they place, so understanding it is critical to your ongoing success.

If and when you do have a few minutes spare, please do give it a read as I feel it is the type of article you want to bookmark and return to especially when your betting gets tough.

My thanks to to Mick from Insider Gambles for giving me permission to publish this article. We are actively proofing the ‘Insider Gambler’s’ advice with a view to a detailed SBC review in 2020.

James Bond The Professional Gambler?

What image comes into your mind when you hear ‘professional gambler’?

A James Bond type, suave and handsome, standing at a roulette wheel, martini in hand and a gorgeous blonde draped over his shoulder? He pushes forward a huge pile of chips onto a number, and watches with smug certainty as the ball falls into the right slot…..

This is all absolute nonsense of course.

For a start, James Bond’s favourite game was baccarat not roulette. Secondly, if you shake a martini you chip the ice and just get a watered down drink. Thirdly, neither James Bond nor anyone else in the history of human civilization (fictional or real) has ever been able to accurately predict where the ball will finish on a roulette wheel. A roulette wheel is an efficient random number generator, and the only way to beat it is by having the odds on your side.

So why do successful gamblers win?

How do some investors make loads of money, when most investors lose?

Every successful professional gambler/investor in history has something in common; they bet with an EDGE.

An EDGE is having the odds in your favour. Over time, if the odds are in your favour then you’ll win.

So the reality of professional gambling is somewhat less glamorous than the James Bond fantasy. A pro gambler is much more likely to be found reading a newspaper, or playing with numbers in a spreadsheet than standing in a casino, drinking and flirting with blondes.

The reality of professional gambling is mostly a little dull, and unfortunately there’s no way of explaining the basics that will be a roller-coaster ride of page-turning excitement.

But….if you master the basics it is possible for you to become filthy stinking rich through professional betting.

The Warren Buffett Approach

Just look at Warren Buffett. He leads a frugal, slightly eccentric life, with his head buried in a newspaper most of the time. But depending on what the US stock market has done in the last couple of days, he may very well be the richest man in the world as you read this.

And all Warren Buffett has done his whole life is practice ‘value investing’. He’s a professional gambler. He bets on the share prices of companies. Buys them for less than they’re worth. Sells them for more than they’re worth. That’s it. He understand randomness, he recognises value and he has developed investing methods to turn that value into an edge. You can do it too. Albeit likely on a smaller scale. But theoretically, once you understand how to find an edge there really is no limit to how much you can win.

So think of this article as studying for your O-Level (giving my age away) in professional investing.

Make yourself a cup of tea, settle down and be ready to make some notes. By the end of this article you’ll be ready to pass your exam, armed with the knowledge of how Tony Bloom, Phil Ivey and Warren Buffett made their millions.

Occasionally people manage to win without an EDGE. For example a lottery winner doesn’t have an EDGE. Neither does a guy who flukes a 6 horse accumulator bet. Or someone who buys a company’s shares on spec, just before their shares rocket in value.

Bookmakers, casinos, lottery operators and stock brokers all make a living by selling the dream; ‘it could be you!’. But it almost certainly won’t be. For every guy on the front page of a paper celebrating a £multi-million lottery win there are countless millions of losers. 99.999% of people who buy lottery tickets will make a loss in their lifetime on their lottery ticket investments.

The ratio of winners to losers is broadly similar when you look at people who invest with bookmakers, casinos and stock exchanges. There’s a reason lottery operators get you to tick a box to allow them to publicise you if you win. By displaying you with your winnings, they sell the dream of ‘it could be you’.

Same with big winners at the bookies. The ‘dream’ is what distracts their customers from the reality that the odds are consistently, and hugely against them. The truth that they are overwhelmingly unlikely to actually make a profit; that it ‘will’ be you. Their customers effectively pay a bookie/casino/lottery operator for providing them with a hobby. And a dream.

Professional investors are rare, and they are different. They are not seduced by the dream of a single big win. They take luck out of the equation, and turn the odds in THEIR favour. They get an EDGE.

But how do you get an EDGE?

The process of getting an edge is in 3 Steps;

Randomness – Value – Edge.

This article will explain what that means. How you get to the EDGE. It first involves explaining some theoretical concepts; RANDOMNESS and VALUE. But don’t worry, the payoff for learning the theory comes when you get to the EDGE.

To Be A Good Punter You Need To Understand ‘Randomness’

The first step to becoming a successful investor is to understand RANDOMNESS.

RANDOMNESS is a theoretical concept that you need to ‘get’ before you can move on. It’s invisible, but you have to know that it’s there, and how it works. Like a physicist has to believe in, and understand gravity, even though he can’t actually see it.

Understanding RANDOMNESS is the opposite of believing in fate. Events are not pre-ordained. Events are chaotic, random. Nothing happens ‘for a reason’. Things just happen because events that take place, no matter how small, have an effect on everything around it.

The influence of the laws of cause and effect are at play all around us, every second of every day. Everywhere in the universe. From the moment of the big bang. Anything that can happen, might happen. It will happen, if you wait long enough.

Everything that happens in the universe does so within a framework, the ‘laws’ of how the universe works. The rules of the game. Our best way of describing these laws is with;

  1. The standard model of particle physics
  2. Einstein’s general law of relativity

Essentially the force of gravity and the speed of light are fixed. Everything that happens in the universe conforms to these laws, but what actually happens within the framework that these create is random, chaotic.

There is loads of stuff in the universe, moving around, so it is interacting all the time with lots of other stuff. Even the tiniest event, the briefest collision between the most tiny and insignificant of these can set off a chain reaction that leads to a radically different outcome than would be observed if the tiny event hadn’t taken place.

Ok, enough already with the physics! What the hell has all this got to do with gambling? With sport, poker or the price of a company’s shares?

Everything.

Because games of sport, hands of cards and the economies of the world all work in the same way as the universe, fundamentally. There are rules. And there is randomness. That’s all.

Take a football match. The rules are fixed. There will be 22 players, a referee, a rectangular field and 2 sets of goals. The referee will blow his whistle and the players will start to play.

What happens over the next 90+ minutes on that rectangle is random.

There is a discernible and predictable pattern to the randomness for sure. We can know that it’s likely that the better players will play better. The team with more of the better players is more likely to win. The number of goals scored is most likely to be between 2 and 4. Etcetera.

We can know these things, these ‘likelihoods’, by observation and research, considering data on previous similar occurrences, i.e. other football matches, especially those involving these teams and these players.

But what we can’t do is predict EXACTLY what will happen.

From the moment the referee blows his whistle to start the match there are a virtually infinite number of possibilities of how the game might play out. Every decision a player makes, every spin and deflection of the ball, every instruction given by the coach, each breath of wind, every noise from the crowd that the players hear, every decision by the officials….they all come together to create a narrative, a story on a timeline across the 90 minutes that describes exactly what happened. And if you played the match a trillion times, the story would never be exactly the same twice.

This is because every variable is multiplied by every other variable to come up with the total number of possible storylines.

In the infinite number of storylines a % of them will result in the score ending nil-nil. A different % will be 1-nil, 2-nil, 3-1 etc. A much smaller % will result in the score ending 8-4. If it’s possible that it can happen, it will happen, even if it’s a tiny % of the time.

Every possible outcome will be included in the % distribution of different scorelines that result from our infinite number of storylines. We can look to this distribution to observe the implications of the rules of the game, the framework within which it operates.

None of the storylines will end up yielding a score of 5,000-nil. The rules of the game are that you play for 90 minutes (plus a bit more) and that after a goal the ball gets placed back on the centre spot. The clock continues to run while the ball is returned to the middle. So there isn’t enough time for a team to score 5,000 goals in a football match. That possibility exceeds the framework of the game established by the rules, so it will never happen. Nothing will ever travel faster than the speed of light.

In our infinite number of football match storylines the upper end of the total number of goals scored might by something like 60. Incredibly, mind-bendingly rare though such a match might be – it is possible that one match could yield 60 goals. And if it’s possible that it could happen, then it will happen. Eventually.

Nothing will ever travel faster than the speed of light. That is one of our laws of the universe. Things can and will travel at any speed up to and including the speed of light, but nothing over that.

Value Betting Is No Guarantee ‘Something Will Happen’ (Or A Bet Will 100% WIN)

So what are the practical implications for a professional gambler of understanding this RANDOMNESS theory?

First, you understand that fundamentally predictions are useless. It is impossible to predict exactly what will happen because the number of actual possible storylines is infinite.

But it is possible to guess at the pattern of likelihoods in advance. That is the best we can do, and it what we must do.

We know that, within the framework, all the things that are possible will occur a certain % of times. The job of the professional gambler is to discern the pattern in the RANDOMNESS.

To say ‘how likely’ something is to happen. Not to say what ‘will happen’.

Where the subject involves animate objects, like the players, officials, fans, pitch and weather of a football match then the pattern in the RANDOMNESS cannot be projected precisely. It involves an element of guesswork. Observation, such as watching previous matches involving the teams, or analysis by looking at a league table can make the guesswork more accurate than a guess plucked from thin air. Modelling the relative strengths of the teams and the players using sophisticated analysis, and then feeding that into an engine which works out a distribution of possible scorelines can get you pretty close to projecting the % distribution within the infinite storylines. But it’s still guesswork, even when it’s very informed guesswork using a computer model.

But where the subject involves an inanimate object such as a roulette wheel or a drum of lottery balls then we can be can be absolutely precise in discerning the patterns in the RANDOMNESS. So long as the roulette wheel (let’s use a European wheel here with a single 0) is well made, and working properly then the % distribution of the ball falling into each slot will be 2.7% over an infinite number of spins of the wheel.

It will be 2.7% in slot 0, and exactly the same % in slots 8, 13, 28, 31….. The % distribution of the ball falling into a slot numbered 57 will be 0%. The framework of a roulette wheel is defined by the rules of how many slots it has. Our wheel has 37 slots, so the number of times a ball will fall in a slot other than one of these 37 is the same number of times our football match will have with 61 goals. And the same as the number of times an object will move faster than the speed of light. Zero.

When two boxers get in a ring the better fighter will normally win. But the rules of the ring dictate that either fighter could win. So there doesn’t have to be a ‘reason’ why Buster Douglas knocked out Mike Tyson. Randomness means that it was inevitable that it would happen at some point, if you iterated that fight over many times. It just happened to be that night.

When a roulette wheel spins it is randomness that governs which slot it falls into.

There is no memory to the wheel, no number is ‘due’ to come up just because it hasn’t come out for ages. In 1913 in the Monte Carlo Casino the ball in a roulette wheel landed in a black slot 26 times in a row. The odds of that happening were over 67 million to 1. So while it was surprising to the onlookers (and ruinous to the ‘red backers’!) the sequence was actually no more surprising than any of the other 67 million possible storylines that the 26 spins could have produced.

So the point of learning the theory of randomness is to realise that predictions are useless to a professional gambler, because they are impossible.

It is impossible to see into the future. It is one of the immutable laws of nature. Part of the framework.

We need to understand that our job is to discern the patterns in the randomness. To say how likely something is to happen. Not to say what we think will happen.

Once we understand this principle we can move on to VALUE.

Value Betting – The Odds In Your Favour

VALUE mean finding investment opportunities where the odds are in your favour.

VALUE is backing something with a 50% chance of happening at odds of 11 to 10.

If anything can happen. And we can’t know what is going to happen. How can we profit from betting on something that is going to take place in the future?

The answer is that all you need is to be armed with an idea of how likely something is to happen. And then, to know that the chance of it happening is greater than the odds you get when you make your investment.

It’s all about the odds.

An investment is risking something in the hope of a profitable return. The profit you make when you win, divided by the amount you risked are the odds.

So if you bet £100 on a horse, and it wins, and you get £400 back then your profit was £300. 300 over 100 is 3 over 1. Your odds were 3 to 1.

On this occasion the horse won. But how likely was it to win? If we ran the race a million times, on how many occasions would our horse win? What is the pattern in the distribution of the randomness? Lets say out of a million races our horse wins 200k times. The pattern in the randomness is that our horse’s true chance of winning the race is 800k over 200k. Or 8 over 2, which is 4 over 1. 4/1 are the horse’s true odds.

If we bet a million times on our horse at 3/1 we would lose money. We would get back £800k having staked £1m. Our loss would be £200k. 200k is 20% of 1m. 3/1 is ‘bad value’ for that horse, to the tune of 20%.

But if we could get 5/1 about the horse the sums become £1.2m return on our £1m stake. The horse becomes Value, at 20%.

When I say the ‘horse’ becomes value, I don’t really mean the horse. I mean the odds of 5/1 are value. Where odds of 3/1 are not. The horse is, effectively, irrelevant. What matters is the odds that you get, not the horse itself. Every horse, no matter how slow has a chance of winning any race that it lines up for. Those are the rules. That is the framework that we are operating in.

So if a horse is so slow that it will only win 1% of the time then its true odds are 99/1. If you can bet on that horse, slowcoach that it is, at odds of 100/1 or better then it’s a Value bet.

What happens in the race on any single occasion doesn’t make the bet a bad bet. Single results don’t prove whether something was value or not, whether it was a good bet to make or a bad bet.

The truth of value investing only reveals itself over time.

There’s a paradox that gamblers have to get their head around. The difference between short term and long term. The only thing matters is winning overall, in the long term.

But winning on any one single occasion barely matters at all.

Value investing is a war waged though a series of many, many battles. Winning or losing any single battle does not really matter. Looking back on all the battles, from a position of triumph having prevailed in the war, the fuss that you made about the loss of any single battle will seem ridiculous.

Value investing is nothing to do with trying to win every battle. The only thing that matters is having the odds on your side consistently as you fight the battles, so that as a the results of a great number of battle becomes known your superiority becomes apparent.

Even great football teams lose some games. The best poker players regularly lose loads of hands. The best investors buy shares in companies who go bust. The best golfers make bogies. Champion jockeys lose far more races than they win. Short term losses are ultimately irrelevant. All that matters is long term overall victory.

So this is the concept of value; investing with the odds in your favour.

There is a neat, simple mantra for any professional investor to adhere to; Decisions Not Results.

If you keep making the right decisions, keep betting with the odds in your favour, keep finding Value then as long as you stay in the game for the long term you will end up a winner.

/////////////ARTICLE ENDS///////////////

I hope you enjoyed this article – if you have any feedback on it, please do share your thoughts with me via email – pete@smartbettingclub.com

Peter Ling

Smart Betting Club Editor

Should you bet to win or each way at Betfair SP? A new spin on this age-old question

Monday saw the release of the latest SBC review and the first in our series on profitable betting exchange tipsters as we honed in on the racing guru showing a fine profit at both Betfair SP and bookmaker prices.

Yet as profitable as this service is, one of the dilemmas our review threw up was the old query of – should you back a horse to win or each way?

Its a question as old as betting on racing itself as punters weigh up whether to go for broke and the big win OR to play it safe and get a payout of some kind should the horse finish 2nd, 3rd or 4th.

What is new is understanding which approach you should take when betting at Betfair SP as the each way market on the exchange is split into two – you bet into the win market and the place market separately.

Posing the updated question…

If betting at Betfair SP, should you back a horse to win or in both the win/place markets?

Allow me to help explain how we approached this dilemma in this new review…

Win only betting returns the highest points profit

Without question, the most profitable angle to follow this particular racing tipster from a points profit basis is to bet on each horse to win outright.

To outline this, below you can see the performance if backing win only at Betfair SP (after commission is deducted):

Betfair SP win only: 827 bets, 430.44 points profit @ 14.25% ROI

And then comparing that with mixing up win and place bets as directly advised by the tipster himself:

Betfair SP win/win & place mix: 827 bets, 290.68 points profit @ 9.63% ROI

On the face of it, this looks an open and shut case. Back all the tips to win and leave it at that.

Yet when we dig a little deeper, things turn out a little differently…

Next step – analysing the worst ‘drawdowns’

What the above doesn’t take into account as that bane of all punters everywhere – losing runs and specifically from our point of view, working out the worst drawdown from peak to trough.

Explained another way, a drawdown is an understanding of what the worst possible run you might suffer actually is….Should you be extremely unlucky and choose to follow this tipster on the very day they start their worst losing run.

Such drawdown figures are essential to understand because just as we always ask a tipster ‘what can i make?’ – we also need to ask ‘what can i lose?‘ should the worst happen.

Without hindsight its impossible to know when a bad run will actually hit – all it can really do is prepare you and make sure you have a bankroll to cover the worst eventuality. And if you think that losing runs don’t happen to us all, even professional punters when betting, well, think again…!

Here then are the worst drawdowns for both the win and win/place method:

Betfair SP win only worst drawdown: 154 points

Betfair SP win/win & place mix worst drawdown: 132 points

If these seem large, don’t be worried as the losses during each of these drawdowns were more then recouped simply with patience and time. No tipster, no matter how good they are is ever invincible and ALL go through drawdowns and losing runs at some time.


The method with the biggest ‘bank growth’

With the above ‘drawdown’ figures alongside the results of our in-house montecarlo simulator (which repeats the profile of each tipster several thousand times), we are then able to come up with an advised betting bank figure for each method.

This betting bank is designed to absorb drawdowns – thus ensuring you never go bust!

For the win only betting approach, we naturally need larger betting banks to cover larger possible drawdowns than the win/place method. And from this information, we can gauge exactly how much betting bank growth (or Return on Capital) we can make per method.

Here is how the 2 approaches stack up from a bank growth perspective:

Betfair SP win only: 142.04% Growth

Betfair SP win/win & place mix: 145.34% Growth

From this we can clearly see that its actually betting in both the win and place markets (effectively each way bets) which produces the most betting bank growth in this scenario. It’s only an extra 3.30% growth but every little counts.

This is because you need a much smaller betting bank if following win & place then if following win only.

And it is this higher bank growth figure you should focus on – not simply always just ‘points profit’.

Individual tipster analysis required

Although in this example, the greatest bank growth came by betting in both the win/place markets rather than win only, this is not always the case.

Such analysis needs to be performed on a tipster by tipster basis as each strategy is different and you need to understand them fully to really maximise your returns.

As ever – putting the profits made by any tipster into context is key – especially when it comes to betting banks

Which is why we pen these detailed reviews to help you maximise the revenue you can make by following any given tipster. We also perform the above analysis on all tipsters reviewed as standard.

If you would like to know more about the Betfair SP tipster featured in this example, you can access our detailed review the instant you join the Smart Betting Club.

You can sign-up today at our lowest prices ever – from just £27.99 + VAT per quarter, which provides you with the ENTIRE Smart Betting Club service including all our SBC Magazine, Tipster Profit Reports, Best Tipster Guides, Pro Betting Guides & more.

It’s our best ever SBC membership deal and with our amazing money back guarantee offer you have everything to gain and nothing to lose.

Best Regards

Peter Ling

Smart Betting Club Owner and Founder

Subscribe NOW to the Smart Betting Club.

Pete_HeadShot_SMall

What’s better – The number of winners you back or how much you win?

Today, I want to share with you a fascinating article recently published by a friend of mine from the betting world – Matthew Walton, who raises some very important points that all aspiring profitable punters need to be aware of

Matthew delves into the battle between strike-rate and profit and the real-life mental challenges that occur when using tipsters, especially those that select bets at big odds and to low strike-rates.

Like Matthew, I have seen far too many punters quit a good tipster all too early because they suffered more losers then they could handle. Despite the fact that when a bet did win, it won big.

There is no shame in falling foul of this especially when you consider the pain of a losing bet is twice the joy we get from backing a winner.

It’s a psychological test – all of which makes it vitally important that as punters we absorb as much information as possible from experts like Matthew. After all, he knows what it takes to win long-term, which is of course what matters most.

So, without further delay – over to Matthew…

What’s better, strike rate or profit?

Which is more important… the number of winners or how much you win?

This is something which I have thought about, spoken about, and written about A LOT!

Because over the many, many years I have worked in this business, some of the most common questions I get asked by new members or, more often, punters who are considering becoming new members, are along the lines of…

What’s the strike rate of your best racing tipster?

And

How much profit did your best football tipster make last week/month?”

Don’t get me wrong, both are sensible questions. And both are well worth asking of me, or any other service you care to take an interest in joining. Because you need to know if Service X has the kind of strike rate you’re comfortable with, or whether Service Y will actually make money from soccer betting.

You need to know these things.

And they’re questions that I would ask myself when doing my due diligence on any new football tipster, or horseracing expert, who tugs my coat and tells me they’re the next big thing when it comes to making money at football, or beating the bookies at racing.

They are fundamental to whether you (a) join and/or (b) stay with a service.

And you should ask yourself the question right now, if you haven’t already… which would you prefer? Or rather, which order would you put them in.

Stupid question, it’s obvious…

Profit, right?

We all bet to make money, primarily. And the more we make, the better.

So if it’s a case of sacrificing a few percentage points in terms of strike rate, in order to generate a bigger overall return… it’s a no-brainer. You should take the cash every time.

Well, you say that. But I know from experience there’s a flipside to this argument.

Take these two notional services… Service 1 has a 10% strike rate but returns a 40% Return on Investment (ROI), whereas Service 2 has a 40% strike rate but returns a 10% ROI.

I know from working in this business for more years than I care to remember, the majority of punters would actually stick with Service 2 longer than Service 1.

What?? That’s absolute rubbish!“… I hear you cry.

Not so.

Whilst most backers would like to win more money (and I agree with that, who wouldn’t), crucially the manner in which that profit is made also must be to their liking.

And as such, low strike rates, which sap confidence (from some, not all), which clean out betting banks (only of those who don’t budget properly, or stake erratically), and test the patience to breaking point (yes, of the less savvy punters)… these low hit rates cause many to throw in the towel, and often far too quickly.

Which means even though a bigger payday is waiting for them, somewhere down the line, they’re simply not able, or are not prepared, to wait for it to arrive.

Believe you me, I have seen this time, after time, after time.

Take one top golf tipster that I work with, which the guys at SBC recommend… a proven profit-maker that has made 500+ points profit to level stakes in 5 years (Yes! He has generated an average profit of around 100 point per year to level stakes).

I’ve seen this service ditched because it didn’t deliver “certain members” enough winners in a short space of time – in other words, the strike rate was too low. As a result it is kicked into the long grass because a member has grown impatient, spent up their insufficient funds, or simply lost confidence (in what has already been proven to be a long-term profit maker).

But the point is, the average price of these golf bets is around 80/1.

You’ll never get a high hit rate backing golfers at 80/1. Never.

But you will make a long-term profit if you back enough of them when they are assessed to be over-priced (which is exactly what the Golf Insider does).

This service has an ROI in excess of 20%… but the low strike rate is seen (incorrectly, I argue until I’m blue in the face) as a negative, when it shouldn’t be. Not if you get your staking correct and your mindset right.

You can’t handle the truth!

Of course, when someone joins one of the tipsters I work with, they do so with the goal of making money from horseracing or to win big at golf betting… I offer them some initial advice on the importance of a betting bank, and a sensible staking plan, and a degree of level-headedness when it comes to results… and they all nod their heads in agreement.

But throw in the curve ball of a few losers…

Even though they are to be expected with the service they’ve joined (or any other betting service for that matter)…

And it’s panic stations! Needlessly.

As I often say in the office, mis-quoting Tom Cruise in the film A Few Good Men

You can’t handle the strike rate!

And this is something which actually ends up hurting the member themselves in the long run. Because they’re the ones who head for the exit, when if they’d stayed longer, the winners (and profits) would have fallen into their lap.

But strike rates aren’t everything

I totally agree.

I’ve seen services, and this is often the case with football betting syndicates, or laying services on the horses, where the strike rate is higher than, say, a standard horseracing operation or a golf betting cartel… but the ROI is half, a third, maybe even a quarter of the amount on offer with those other services.

And when you factor in costs, it means you either (a) have to stake big, big amounts to make any money or (b) you stake within your own comfort zone and end up with a membership that breaks even, or makes just a few points profit after months of subscribing.

Unless this is a service offering exceptional betting bank growth or Return on Capital – something that only occurs with a few very high volume tipsters, then the above outcomes are not what you want from your betting.

Because you want to show a healthy profit for your efforts… we all do.

And if you get too hung up on the number of winners you’re going to back with a service, or how many bets there were in its longest losing run, or what’s the biggest drawdown of funds it has endured… all to the detriment of the “elephant in the room” (i.e. how much profit a service makes)… then you could easily miss out on a nice little profit-generator.

I think of an example like the Scottish Football Tipster I work with which has a strike rate of close on 46%. This means members can lump on the bets safe in the knowledge that almost every other bet will be a winner… great!

But the flipside is the ROI on this service is nearer the 15% mark. That’s less than the my golf expert.

However, members tend to stick with the Scottish Football Tipster longer. Why? Because it simply provides then with more winners (also, let me add, it’s because a 15% ROI betting on football is a truly exceptional level of performance. Better than you’ll find anywhere else on any other soccer service).

So reverting back to the original question, would you prefer a high strike rate or bigger profits? As sadly you rarely get both!

Is it all down to your risk profile?

Most likely. It all boils down to what kind of punter you are, how prepared you are to accept a few losers, how much “bottle” you have when funds appear to be ebbing away, and whether you can keep faith in a proven service when it’s not necessarily firing on all cylinders.

From my perspective, and as stated above, you might get a service that has a low strike rate and low profits (we’ve all seen those, right?) but you will never see a service which has a high hit rate and a good level of profit. Certainly in terms of ROI anyway. They are as rare as hen’s teeth, unicorns and rocking horse poo.

So what I try to look for are services which deliver the best of both. Ok, a lower strike rate than some… but still a higher profitability than others. Or maybe a shade more winners, traded for a scrap less return.

And that sweet spot should provide you, the prospective member, with the best of both worlds. Enough winners (relative to the average price) to keep you happy, but enough profit to make sure the service – whether it be golf, horseracing, football or greyhounds – more than pays its way.

OPINION: You have every right to expect the service you’re joining to make as much profit as possible. But do not make the mistake of falling for the horseracing service, or football syndicate, that boasts the highest figure… because the way it generates that return (e.g. backing big-priced bets with a low strike rate) might not sit well with your own personal way of betting. But by the same token, if a service freely advertises that it only tips long-shots (but does make money doing this) then make sure you give it due time and opportunity to deliver. Because backing at an average price of 80/1 doesn’t produce the same strike rate as backing at 6/4… sad, but true!!

Get The Professional Betting Fundamentals

My thanks to go to Matthew for granting me permission to share this article with you all and I hope you found it as useful as I did.

As Matthew alludes to – much of the battle to become a winning punter takes place in the mind and a greater understanding of the challenges we face when betting, can help us dramatically improve our bottom-line profit and loss figures.

All of which is why we provide all new Smart Betting Club members with access to our Pro Betting Fundamentals – featuring 2 key reports to help you think and act like a professional, profitable punter.

Whether it be the tools and expertise to get your betting setup professionally OR the mindset you need to be a winning punter, these guides will help you every step of the way.

Subscribe NOW to the Smart Betting Club.

Peter Ling
Smart Betting Club Editor

Pete_HeadShot_SMall

Lessons we can learn from legendary winning gambler, Bill Benter

In today’s article I want to share a couple of betting articles I feel are of note and details on a recommended tipping service bang in form.

First of all, I wanted to share a link to this long but fascinating article on Bill Benter, titled ‘The Gambler Who Cracked The Horse Racing Code‘, as published by Bloomberg Businessweek.

Sharing his story for the first time ever, in this article you can get the full scoop on just why Bill is such a legend in betting circles, his ups and downs and just how he made his betting pay in the end.

Despite the headline behind this story being about the man ‘who cracked the horse racing code’ – through the article it’s clear how it wasn’t all plain sailing for Bill and his approach finally bore fruit after several years of trial and error.

His winning strategy was like almost all others, one based on ‘value betting‘ whereby he was able to successfully identify bets with a higher chance of winning then the odds available. Here is how the article explained it:

“[Bill had] A private system of odds that was slightly more accurate than the public odds. To simplify, imagine that the gambling public can bet on a given horse at a payout of 4 to 1. Benter’s model might show that the horse is more likely to win than those odds suggest—say, a chance of one in three. That means Benter can put less at risk and get the same return; a seemingly small edge can turn into a big profit.

High Volume & Patience

Now having an edge is one thing – making it pay on a regular basis is another as Bill knew he had to churn through enough bets on a daily basis to eliminate randomness as “The impact of bad luck can be diminished by betting thousands and thousands of times”

His ability therefore to back hundreds, if not thousands of bets in Hong Kong every day ensured this regular profit.

Now as fascinating and inspiring as Bill’s story undoubtedly is, it does raise the question as to exactly how we as punters can apply it to our own betting. Whilst none of us are likely to have the time or ability to place hundreds of bets every day as he did, there are some clear qualities that stand out, including that of patience.

His patience came more in the form of the time it took to build his profitable model in the first place, yet he clearly knew that betting for profit was about the long haul and not the short-term when it came to results.

And that ties into another article I wanted to highlight for you on the theme of patience and why its so important, especially as I feel that it is a lack of this quality which holds so many punters back with their betting. Click here to read it.

Like it or not – patience is fundamental whatever way you are attempting to make money – be it the stock market, bitcoin or anything else for that matter.

Punters without patience and those making knee-jerk decisions based on short-term form are ultimately those that only lose out – and that is something I wanted to help tackle and address through this article.

Don’t Go Overboard on Short-Term Form

The problems with a lack of patience jumped out at me again when I was putting the finishing touches to a new tipster review to be released on Sunday to SBC members.

Although this service has an exceptional record having made 400.4 points profit @ 17.76% ROI from 844 bets, it like any service does suffer from losing periods from time to time.

And any tipster who claims to never lose or suffer losing runs is telling you what you want to hear – not what is true.

To highlight this, allow me to showcase what happened if following during 2019, where if you had started on the 1st January 2019, come the end of August 2019, you would have been better off to the tune of 276.52 points @ 35.33% ROI from 285 bets advised. Each month returned a profit.

As you can imagine at that time such form ensured this was a very popular service, yet as night follows day, a losing run was due and in September and October the service lost a combined 67.79 points.

Anyone who was a member during these 2 months might well have wondered what all the fuss is about – and indeed the service in question did receive a few emails querying this point during this period.

Yet, ultimately, If you were to judge the service on just September and October alone and the 103 bets advised during this period, you would be selling yourself short.

Which is exactly why Bill’s method was based on betting high volume to eliminate bad luck or bad runs of form just like this.

With November and December back in profit with a further 38.68 points made, over the full year in 2019 the service actually made a 247.71 point profit @ 19.42% ROI from 453 bets. Very similar to the long-term ROI figure achieved of 17.76%

If this tipster interests you, then I would be happy to share details on it – drop me an email and I will send on information.

Guided By The Goal of Long-Term Profits

Whether it be the tipsters we review in each SBC Magazine, our Tipster Profit Reports or the Free Tipsters available to all SBC members, the fundamentals of being patient when betting ring true:

No-one can ever guarantee a profit over a small sequence of bets.

Bill Benter knew this – which is why he churned through so many bets everyday. He knew that taking 4/1 about a 3/1 chance would make him a profit long-term. It might take 20, 30, 50 even 100+ bets for this to come through over short-term patterns, but judged on significant data-sets, the edge would materialise.

And it is this point that guides us in our work exploring and recommending tipsters here at SBC.

Long-term profits are what matter and the ability to understand losses and place them in context is equally important. In fact, I would say its not just important, but absolutely crucial to anyone who wants to bet seriously for profit.

I hope you find this email useful and the various articles and links of note. If so, you might like to consider a Smart Betting Club membership and see how we can help you, like thousands of others before you improve your betting.

Until then, be lucky!

Peter Ling
Smart Betting Club Editor

If you have any questions on this article or a Smart Betting Club membership in general, you can contact me directly via pete@smartbettingclub.com. I respond to all emails as quickly as I can!

Why This Is The Biggest Mistake Many Punters Make

I want to follow up my 5-step article last week on getting started betting with tipsters, with more advice today on what I believe to be the biggest mistake many punters make when using tipsters:

A Lack Of Patience

I know for many the idea of needing patience when it comes to tipsters is a dirty word. After all you are paying a tipster to back winners, so if they keep tipping up losers, you should get rid of them.

Right?

Wrong!

The problem with that attitude is that it doesn’t take into account the laws of making money across all forms of investment AND the need for realistic expectations based on the type of tipster you are dealing with.

As whether we like it or not, when trying to bet profitably, it is a marathon not a sprint and it’s only the patient amongst us who benefit in the end.

If that sounds unpalatable to you, then fair enough – you are probably not suited to the cut and thrust of following tipsters to profit. Not everyone is.

Yet if you are determined to make your betting pay and are keen to see how we can help you do this, just as we have done for DaveMichaelBilly and many others, please read on.

High Risk: High Reward

The first thing to understand is that betting for profit is in so many ways, very, very similar to any other form of investment.

Whether you are buying, shares, gold, houses or bitcoin – the principles are exactly the same as betting, including the concept of High-Risk, High-Reward.

This simply states that the greater return you are looking for, the greater the risk you will have to take to make it.

Bitcoin is a classic example of a very high risk investment – as it went from $1,000 on January 1st 2017 to $17,000 by the end of 2017, before since dropping all the way back down again and up to its current price of around $4,500.

Anyone investing in bitcoin over the past 2 years would have needed nerves of steel as you were taking a huge risk. You might have made 17X your investment, yet could easily have lost that – all depending on when you stuck your cash in.

See Also – The Stock Market

Although usually less extreme in its ups and downs, the stock market also teaches us about the balance between risk and reward and the need for patience to reap the benefits.

To give a good example of this, I invested last year in specific stock market fund, which I researched in-depth prior to sticking my money in. This made it clear that this was a medium-to-high risk fund, which whilst likely to make great returns over a 5 or 10 year period, would be very up and down on a monthly and sometimes yearly basis.

And oh how that has rung true in reality – as you can see from the table below, which lists the % increase or decrease after each month so far.

This table reveals how after starting off reasonably OK in June, July and August – a really bad run between September and December saw it down 6.6% in total.

Come 2019 and following a good start to the year, I am now up that 3.63% figure, which whilst below the long-term expectation, is still a profit nevertheless. To get the full rewards, I am just going to have to be patient.

DONT PANIC!

Once again, when it comes to the stock market, an understanding of what you are investing in really does help you make the right decisions with your money.

Had I panicked and quit the investment fund at the end of 2018 when I had lost 6.6% of my bank – that clearly would have been the incorrect decision. I would have missed out on the 10.23% it has made since then in the first quarter of 2019. I wasn’t to know when this fund would rebound, yet I knew it would if I simply bided my time.

Yet, whilst many of us will understand this when it comes to the stock market, not enough people apply this logic to the tipping world.

I see it all too often – people join a tipster after 1 good month and then leave after 1 bad month. Not giving them enough time for the investment to be rewarded.

A Classic Tipster Example

A good example of the need to be patient with tipsters comes in the form of one very highly rated tipster, who sits in our ‘Hall of Fame’. He is a proven expert and his record of over 1600 points profit at 17.6% ROI dating back to 2013 highlights him as a tipster that knows his tipping onions.

Yet if you are going to follow him in, then you have to be patient, due to the fact he backs long shot horses at an average price of just under 11/1.

At these odds it’s to be expected that you will experience the occasional losing run and over the 65 months he has been actively tipping, 20 of them have made a loss – a strike rate of 69% winning months to losing months.

Or to put it another way – in an average year you can expect to have approximately 3 to 4 losing months

Although the 8-9 winning months will completely outweigh these losses, if you jump ship after a losing one, you are short-changing yourself. Yet this is exactly what some punters are doing and have done during the past year – making the same mistake over and over again.

Why Are They Jumping Ship From This Tipster?

The reason they are jumping ship too soon becomes easier to understand when we analyse the monthly breakdown of his performance over the past 12 months.

Should you have joined on March 1st 2018, then come the end of May 2018, you would be sitting on a 58.4 point loss from 202 bets.

How many of you would have quit then? I dare say quite a few.

If you had done so, then you would have missed out on the 208.3 points made in June and July, which would have left you up 149.9 points overall.

As this table indicates, there are peaks and troughs across the year but taken as a 12 month snapshot, this tipster did return a fine profit.

His 12 month ROI of 10.90% is a little below his expected 17% ROI, although in the 4 months prior to March 2018, he did make another 177 points @ 30.14% ROI, which again illustrates the value in patience.

Eyes On The Long-Term Prize!

I hope this article has helped to shed some light on how to approach betting from a profitable point of view and the need for patience when following tipsters.

I would love to be able to say to you – “I can guarantee you will win month-in, month-out”. Yet that is not true and I won’t sell you a lie.

There are plenty of people out there saying exactly this and usually its trying to flog some get-rich-quick-scheme.

The Smart Betting Club is different as we are geared towards helping you make a sustainable profit betting. We are not interested in helping you make a quick buck, but instead giving you the expertise, information and resource to make it pay year-in, year-out.

This includes things like helping educate you on not just who the best tipsters are but the setting up of betting banks, the best bookmakers or exchanges to use and so on.

I like to think that this long-term approach is why we have been around since 2006, over which time we have helped hundreds, if not thousands of punters make their betting a success. You can read some real-life examples here.

If you are interested in following in their footsteps, I invite you to consider a Smart Betting Club membership, which is currently available from as little as just £2.15 per week.

All of which comes with an iron-clad money back guarantee – enabling you to join with the full confidence you have everything to gain and nothing to lose!

Subscribe NOW to the Smart Betting Club


Best Regards,

Peter Ling
Smart Betting Club Editor

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If you have any questions on this article or a Smart Betting Club membership in general, you can contact me directly via pete@smartbettingclub.com. I respond to all emails as quickly as I can!

Interview With The Punter Making Five-Figure Profits With Tipsters
For even more inspiration and advice on how to make a profit using tipsters, then be sure to read this interview with SBC member on how he runs a successful tipster portfolio – one that now makes him a five figure profit each year. You can read all about Dave’s approach in this revealing interview now available on the Smart Betting Club Blog

More pro-punter advice: betting banks, setup guidance & the winning difference they can make

In my blog post last week, I spoke about the importance of patience, emotional detachment from your bets and a long-term vision and today I want to expand further on this with more professional punting advice.

In particular I want to talk about another term many punters run away from, namely that of ‘betting banks’

Whether you are backing your tips, running a system or following a tipster – a betting bank is absolutely imperative.

A good betting bank will allow you to keep track of your performance, stake sensibly, avoid going broke and ultimately to maximise your profits . As the example I share later on where a simple £10 stake has made £1334.08 over the past 12 months will testify

Experience tells me that many punters avoid betting banks either through ignorance or through a lack of understand as to how they work.

Yet, I am here to tell you that betting banks are very simple indeed and to show you how they work…

A different betting bank for each tipster

First off, I always recommend you have a separate betting bank for each tipster you follow.

This is because each tipster has a different staking plan, different strike-rate and requires its own individual approach.

For example – if you had a tipster with a 10% strike-rate, a 50 point betting bank would be far too small. As this excellent don’t go broke table outlines, at a 10% strike-rate, you would have a 25% chance of hitting 51 losers on the bounce over a sequence of 600 to 650 bets. 51 losers on the bounce would break a 50 point betting bank.

Yet if you had a tipster with a 30% strike-rate, there is a less than 1% chance of a losing run 28 tips strong over the same period. So, at very worst, you might only lose 28 points of your 50 point betting bank. Not ideal but covered by your betting bank.

Real-life example

To explain more, allow me to outline how the betting bank works for the tipster I focused on last week from the latest SBC Tipster Profit Report, which has made a ROI of 49.2% over the past 12 months.

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We recommend a 100 points betting bank for this service based on our extensive modelling on the profile of bets they supply.

To briefly outline why it’s 100 points – we took into account their biggest drawdown since conception in 2009 and viewed what might have happened in the absolute worst context. That is if you joined on the exact day the worst run started.

The chart below outlines these worst runs over time, which as you can see has peaked at around 46 points, whilst also has broken the 40 point loss barrier on 3 other occasions over the years.

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As we know this service has a strike-rate of 16%, using the don’t go broke table again, we can also see there is a:

  • 75% chance of 24 losers on the bounce every 600-650 bets
  • 50% chance of 29 losers on the bounce every 600-650 bets
  • 25% chance of 34 losers on the bounce every 600-650 bets
  • Less than 1% chance of 53 losers on the bounce every 600-650 bets

This data certainly seems to ring true with several runs dropping between 20 and 30 points on top of a few in excess of 40 points. We haven’t yet hit the 53 point drawdown yet, although that always remains a statistical possibility and we would be foolish to ignore it.

Adding in extra cushion should the worst happen!

Despite the fact the worst runs seem to be peaking out at 46 points historically and 53 points theoretically, our approach here at SBC is to add in extra cushion to your betting bank beyond this to cater for the worst case scenario.

The reality is that if you had just a 60 point betting bank, most punters would have given up once they lost half or more of it during a bad run.

On paper you might think you could stand such a run but experience tells us quite the opposite rings true.

I see it all the time unfortunately – punters giving up the ghost on a good tipster or method simply because they had an inadequate betting bank.

All of which is why our policy here at SBC is to add in extra cushion and to recommend a 100 points betting bank for this service.

Yes – you might not ever need the full 100 points (let’s hope not) but when the runs of 30 or 40 points happen – as they always will – then you are covered.

The power of betting banks

The other major advantage of a betting bank is that it is very easy to see how much money you could make following a tipster using them.

Taking our example tipster, for whom we recommend a 100 point bank – with a starting pot of £1000 and staking £10 per bet, you would have made a £1,334.88 profit after the tipsters cost has been deducted.

At £5000 this grows even further to £7,493.28 profit after tipster costs. All over the past 12 months.

See what I mean here…

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And because this is a tipster that has a fantastic track record historically, you could have made even more dating back 7 years with him.

That £1000 starting pot would have made £4,103.16 after fees and £5000 will have returned a £26,247.96 profit.

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Not bad for a simple 1 bet a day strategy and even one that has had losing runs as big as 45 points during this 7 year period.

Betting Bank Advice Across Every Tipster

For each tipster we review and recommend here at SBC, we provide betting bank suggestions for you to use.

This helps to provide you with peace of mind that we have analysed their historical and theoretical data in depth and put together an optimised betting bank that will cover all bases.

And as our policy of ensuring you lose no more than around 50% of your bank during the absolute worst runs will attest – this is not a risky strategy either. Plenty of cushion has been factored in.

If you are after more help with your betting, you might like to consider a Smart Betting Club membership, which comes complete with a 90-day money back guarantee and is discounted by as much as £45 for 2018.

Subscribe NOW to the Smart Betting Club

See you on the inside

Best Regards,

Peter Ling
Smart Betting Club Editor

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