Last post for a while

Lost a bit of enthusiasm for the challenge for a few reasons. Firstly, comparing between Betfair, bet Butler and Pinnacle for every bet was getting a bit tedious and I’d already kind of decided I was going to continue on Betfair only. Then I had a couple of trades go against me. Basically, I thought about entering the market, but didn’t and missed the opportunity, to then enter the market having missed the boat and find myself with nowhere to go. I always try and get my trades done early on in matches as they can be very one-sided late on and it can leave you with nowhere to go but on this occasion I was frustrated having not entered in the first place and like I said I missed the boat.

Ironically, the betting started to do very well indeed. One of the football tipsters ‘Bet Monkey’ on my Tipster Table site has an incredible profit after 50 bets and I have been getting on his tips. These along with tips from other profitable tipsters had me ruing the fact that I had lost a bit trading when you have to put in so much more time.

Another frustrating thing was that for some reason the tennis markets weren’t appearing on Bet Butler and I wasn’t finding near the best price on a number of occasions. Like I said I’d already kind of decided to return to Betfair only again so I withdrew my money from there and decided that I would continue with the challenge once again using Betfair only. Betfair get a lot of criticism what with the outages etc but you really can’t beat them for the interface and ease of placing a bet, not to mention the superb bet history that you can export to excel.

Making so many bets and trades has become a bit exhausting if I’m honest and even though I made a small profit I don’t think doing this from £200 is worth my time. I also run TipsterTable.com and am trying to get BettingTools.co.uk off the ground too and finding enough time and energy around this and a full time job was too much! I think I will enjoy my betting a bit more when it’s done a bit more leisurely to be honest.

Just a quick note about the staking… Level stakes betting was fine and it was nice not having to think about how much to bet or enter the market with but it felt a bit silly after losing several ‘value’ bets at big prices to then stick £5 on a 1.2 shot they I thought was value. I recently read on another site about someone who stakes to win the same amount each time. I actually really like this idea as it kind of incorporates the best of level stakes and Kelly.  Effectively you are still staking sensibly to return a realistic percentage of your funds but you are taking into account the actual likely chances, given the odds. This is definitely something I’m going to take on board with my own betting.

I might not blog again on here for a while. I really want to put more time into BettingTools.co.uk and TipsterTable.com so you can catch me on either of these if you are interested.

Best Odds with Bet Butler

As you can see from this challenge the only betting accounts I really use now are Betfair, Pinnacle and Betdaq. I know how important it is to get the best odds but managing 20+ Bookmakers accounts is too difficult, I’ve tried. So I’m pretty excited to have registered an account with Bet Butler. They are a bookmaker with a twist.

Well they're not really a bookmaker at all and more of a broker who finds you the best price from a selection of more than 60 Bookmakers. They allow you to get these prices using one Bet Butler account. This is so much better than constantly transferring money from one Bookmaker to the next and trying to keep track of all your P/L’s.

They will take a commission of 3% on winning bets but if the odds with Bet Butler are a fair bit higher than on your regular bookmakers (in my case Betfair, Pinnacle and Betdaq) then it’s still worth your while betting with them.

I see Bet Butler as yet another betting tool I can use to help me maximise my profit on my challenge and I’d recommend having one. They also offer you a risk free £25 bet when you sign up. So if your first bet losses (minimum of £10) they’ll credit you with a free bet to the same amount up to £25. Perfect for the Grand National!

Betdaq 0% commission!

I among many others have been longing for more liquidity on Betdaq mainly because commission is cheaper than Betfair but also because a monopoly on anything is no good and more competition for Betfair will only improve things all round  for us punters.  Whilst liquidity is creeping up gradually we need more and so now is the perfect chance to get on Betdaq and help as they are removing commission charges for the Grand National.

We all like a bet on the best horse race of the year, so do yourself a favour and place your bet with Betdaq. You’ll get great odds as well as having no commission to pay and you’ll be helping improve the competition between the betting exchanges.

If you‘re stuck on what to bet on, I can recommend SunnyHillBoy. Why I here you ask. Well because I picked it out of a hat for the sweepstake at work! What better reason do you need than that?

Another week another profit!

Although I don’t know the exact amount of bets I made this week it was definitely less than the first and I only traded 2 tennis matches too. One being the WTA Miami Final between Serena and Sharapova. I sent in a few lays of Sharapova around the 1.2/1.3 mark after being a break up in the final set. Sharapova was looking good but that price was a bit low in my opinion especially considering that was the first set Sharapova had taken off Williams for 6 meetings. There was a good chance of Williams mounting some kind of comeback and the market always reacts in a big way to even the slightest of hopes. The early break also came courtesy of Williams struggling with the sun, something Sharapova was going to find difficult when they switched ends too.

The comeback began almost immediately and from then on it was pretty much one-way traffic. If anything I got out too early and leveled my profit but I have learnt it’s much better not to be greedy with WTA trading as you never quite know what will happen next. Traded one more tennis match last night for a decent level profit that again went my way almost as soon as I entered the market. I must be on a lucky streak. Here are the updated screen shots followed by summary:

Starting Bank £200 (£100 Betfair, £50 Pinnacle, £50 Betdaq)

Current Bank

Betfair: £184.13

Pinnacle: £42.97

Betdaq: £50.70

Total: £277.81

So the bank is £277.81 now and I have hit the required 25% increase already and thus have recalculated my 2% for bets and 10% for trading. This is a lot earlier than I expected to be honest. I’m now at the second rung of the bank building ladder below and not too far away from the third either. I have no doubt that this rate won’t continue but even if I can grow at half this rate in future I’ll be happy. 

Bank	2%	10%
200.00	4	20
250.00	5	25
312.50	6	31
390.63	8	39
488.28	10	49
610.35	12	61
762.94	15	76
953.67	19	95
1192.09	24	119
1490.12	30	149
1862.65	37	186
2328.31	47	233
2910.38	58	291
3637.98	73	364
4547.47	91	455

 

Three things I learnt from this week:

1)      Try not to forget to put bets on! I was sure I had put a bet on that was sent to me from one of my tipster sources. Turns out I hadn’t and it duly won L

2)      Never filter bets from tipsters. I don’t normally do this but I really didn’t like the look of one particular bet form a very reputable source. It started winning early on much to my surprise and although I got on in-play and still made a fair bit of profit, I would have made almost double had I kept the faith.

3)      Still not convinced by the liquidity on Betdaq so I’m moving the £50 out of there and giving the new Bet Butler service a go. Sometimes the best odds are with other bookies and even paying 3% commission to get these odds would work out more profitable. Not only that but Bet Butler don’t reveal who you are to the bookies so they can’t limit you based on past performance and so I’m going to add this to my weaponry. If it’s no good I’ll move this cash into Pinnacle Sports to add to what’s already there. Might do a review on Bet Butler too so look out for that.