A belated welcome to 2018, we have been horrendously ill with flu or in my case man flu. I know there is a lot of it about at the moment and our New Years night was spent in bed watching Line of Duty, drinking Lemsip and going through boxes of Kleenex. The good lady has been a lot worse than me and is still now not right, reluctantly now being placed on antibiotics as hers has developed into sinusitis. I am almost back to being machine like of course.
The illness has jump started the weight loss, like a lot of people this time of year I am going to make a concerted effort to lose a bit of weight and get a bit fitter. The bones start to creek as I get out of bed and I want to break up the time at my desk with walks etc and change my routine. I am not a big drinker and eat healthily but I am sedentary for sure so I will be focusing on that. Why we wait foor Jan 1st to kick start these things I don’t know.
So a delayed start to the year and I am a bit behind on admin but will catch that up after the weekend so if awaiting anything it will be sorted by Tuesday next week, predominantly Portal agreements, a fair few have gone out but if your waiting I am going through them and yours is on the way, if nothing by close of business Tuesday please let me know, I have limited time left between now and the weekend to finish these off as I have to get ready for weekend football etc. I have a couple of meetings today and also my sister is over from Australia that I need to go and see before she goes back as she spent her Xmas up north with the in laws. The Portal is now closed to new members. Still a couple of existing members outstanding subs so if they read this, grateful if they could sort over the weekend.
The trading day in Birmingham has a couple of places open now as some attending have also cried off with illness etc if anyone wants to come along then please drop me a line ian@ftsincome.co.uk.
For those who attended London I have now made your process much simpler, I will change your Trading Days page early next week to reflect this and everything will be achievable in a few clicks. I will continue to strive to make this better I built the macro sheet myself and am pleased with it as I have found VBA really helpful in what I do and the way I work going forward and have always paid people to do it. I used my time laid up to see if I could do some of this myself and whilst I know it can be improved I am really pleased with it. It has got the potential game selection process no matter how many games on any particular day, to a matter of around 60 seconds and a few clicks of a mouse. I mention this as I know people shy away from progress and technologies they don’t understand. I was always a pen and paper man but Excel has certainly made my life easier and learning how it works is important so I know that the output reflects what I would find manually. It is important I think to embrace these things and rather than watch garbage on TV try and learn new skills.
The basis of this new macro sheet will be instrumental in the way forward for all my betting/trading as I can now add unlimited methods to the one sheet, it can then grab information from one of my 45 daily stats sheets and I can focus on teaching people how to use the information to bet and trade successfully. It was very apparent after the first trading day that alongside people being clueless with Excel the actual how to bet and what to bet were the biggest obstacles. People still want set “systems” that they can get up and bet and expect to last forever. Those days have disappeared as far as Betfair is concerned as the markets soon adjust to any edge you thought may last forever. You have to work to keep ahead of the game and my new set up I have worked hard on to keep me ahead and I am very excited about it. I imagine a natural progression from Excel myself to a web based application and more automation but one step at a time it is all heading exactly where I want it for the time being.
With this progress it means I can, when football resumes in earnest, through February and March make more videos for the FTS site in general, FDD members and FTS Ultimate members and introduce new sheets and methods to you much simpler. This will be the basis going forward for you guys to succeed. If you follow the videos and ditch the mindset of instant success I really think what we are doing will pay fruits for lots more of you. The videos I made for the trading day show how important video help is as you guys can constantly reference back.
There is still a lot of work to do on a daily basis to help people. For example one person questioned me about the Golf Guru results last year as he saw I mentioned 70 points profit. I asked a couple of members to conform my results and when I sent them to him his first reply was
“Thanks for sending me the results sheets as requested. Firstly I must say how beautifully these guys maintain records! I need to up my game there!”
I have always maintained it as an accumulation of a lot of elements to be successful as a punter and record keeping is right up there. I maintain over 60 databases daily, every single day, ill or not, away or not I cannot let them get behind. I then have to maintain from those all my own bet results, portal results, service results and I never miss a day. I now have more automation in that and am very grateful to people who have helped me, but I did it manually until that time. The automation has allowed me to scale up my operations this last few years.
If you make two new resolutions for 2018 please make it – 1. Keep better records and 2.in the next 7 days go over exactly what your betting and why and if something is lame ditch it and get a portfolio you believe in, you can stake properly, you dont miss bets from going into 2018.
That brings me onto the FTS awards. I wanted to make a more detailed post on this over the Christmas period again illness curtailed it but I will revisit some of the topic headings over the coming weeks.
FTS Top Tipster 2018 – I have moved significantly away from external services having just a couple on site but without doubt the Golf Guru wins this award for 2017. Finding winners from field of 170 and prices up to 66/1 I find quite staggering and I could not do it. His golfers seem to be in the mix week in week out and make for entertaining Sundays. I cannot wait for his 2018 service to get going in the next few weeks
FTS Footballer of the Year – Harry Kane no contest – he is one of our own!
FTS Manager of the Year – Sean Dyche – I am a huge Sean Dyche fan. I think what he has done has been remarkable on peanuts money in this day and age. I have said before what he has to do to get above people like Southgate for the ultimate top job I really don’t know. If I was sat as him and saw they gave the job to Southgate I would be mightily pissed. Digressing I read a good story about Southgate. My son bought a friend a Ray Parlour autobiography for Christmas and I had a quick glance through before he wrapped it. He wrote a chapter about his time at Middlesboro and he played alongside Southgate and they were mates. Southgate was then made manager and on his first day goes into the changing room and says – paraphrasing “Look guys I know it will be difficult but from now I am not known as Gate or Gaz, you are to call me boss or gaffer” Parlour shouted out”what about Big Nose”. Obviously it was just a bit of humour but he never played for Middlesboro again – I told you Southgate is a plank.
FTS Moaning T**t of the Year – one outstanding contender – Jose Mourinho. the sooner he sods off out of football the better. Do we really have to tolerate him very week moaning “oh dear me I only spent £286 million this summer it is not enough”. The guys football is 10 years out of date that is why he could not turn it around when it stared going wrong at Chelsea. He never gives any other team credit and is totally classless. I cannot bear to watch him for one second and hope he wins nothing.
FTS Comeback of the Year(Potentially) – It had to be Tiger Woods. we all want him back right. I am not Tigers biggest fan and I am and always have been desperate for him to not beat Jack Nicklaus record of major wins – but we wnat him back don’t we. Other than the golf guru interest, golf needs some character and something injected into it now Mickleson seems on the wain. All super fit, nice guys but totally boring. they are like clones of each other. Would you really wnat to go for a drink with Luke Donald, Justin Rose and Adam Scott, you would be asleep in minutes. Hopefully this comeback sees Tiger in amongst it, the sport is better with him.
FTS Teams of the Year – Other sports – Womens England Cricket Team winning the 2017 World Cup deserves full recognition in a great final and I am, not a cricket man in any way. Football – it has to Man City just based on the last 4 months. I thought Pep would struggle in the Premier League but he is dominating it and making players I thought were average, Sterling, Delph into very good players indeed. The guy clearly has something
FTS Fans of the Year – Borussia Dortmund. If you ever get the chance to go to a Dortmund home game do it – 17 euros a ticket and an amazing experience. I shall talk about this in more detail in another blog post.
FTS Piss off with your Marketing Day in Day out Award – Loads of qualifiers but it has to be – Agora/Matt Houghton. This is a topic I am getting more involved with again. At the moment my main experience is other peoples case studies but these guys really are arrogant relentless arseholes. Not one day passes without an email and they all follow the same pattern straight out of the marketing textbook. They use random sums of money in every email “You could win £87, £99, even £428,000,007 day in day out”. They always quote loopholes – ” The loophole the bookies never knew about” complete and utter BS and then they repeat this for a cycle of 6 or 7 mails every day mostly 2 or 3 emails a day. If you don’t acknowledge it they have tracking software that alerts them so they can then insult you “I don’t understand you” , “what is wrong with you” as if you are some lunatic. it makes me sick and on top of everything it is garbage. racing services sent the night before when horse prices and ability to get on is zero for most people. The biggest experience was Datakings where an ex Betfair employee who is a trader mate of mine, caught them out and I saw the chat transcript. he told them it could not work to which he was (again I paraphrase) told he may know Betfair but they know how to sell betting systems – arrogant P*****, he was actually trying to help them not catch them out. I subsequently have had emails from a number of FTS members who got sucked in and this service ceased with no refunds nothing. They were told categorically it could not work. They sold it for around £300. Assume they got 200 subscribers and that is a low estimate, they banked 60k for something that would never work, everyone lost money and they just shut it down and carry on.
FTS Piss Poor Performance Award – The external service Bankbuilder struggled but is still going and did make £1000 in the first cycle, I am still optimistic. Late 2017 saw the launch of a service called FA Bankbuilder which someone has been reviewing for us amid great claims. This service backs very short prices and from what I see is absolute cabbage. I imagine it had a boatload of subscribers and advised a bank I believe to be £1000. Having nearly wiped that out in no time it then introduced a “wildcard top up” of £500 the likes of which I have never heard and that is nearly all gone as well. This is just in a few months after great fanfare and promises and backing tips at prices around 1.25/1.3. If you were in it I feel for you. The question for me is where is the edge anyone surely can get up and pick Man City to win home to Watford or the like but what about the price and the edge – where is it? The close runner up for this award was Moussa Sissoko.
FTS Member of the Year – Paul Surridge?, Helge? , Mick McManus? All of you of course!
That concludes the awards as I say will return to some of these in more detail.
So it is onwards and upwards in 2018. I will do some posts on variance in football as the tide last year was very much to favour home sides and this year that has swung back and that is when people panic and stop etc but it comes back to no two seasons matter or are the same. I will be much the same refining my processes, utilising automation more this year and freeing up time to then make videos and help you guys push on. I am going to try of time permits to also post more tips, in-play advice on Twitter but in a trading session it is purely time as Twitter can be distracting.
Will Lattimore finished the year in good style the last few months and now is a good time to be in with Will, historically he does well in the run up to and through the Cheltenham Festival – www.willlattimoreracing.com
The Golf Guru will have details of his service for the year soon and that will this year include match bets and 2/3 ball bets daily through the tournament as well as in play bets in the main market. I can’t wait personally for that to get going around the end of January
I wish you all a fantastic 2018 I am looking forwards and I am sure the new videos, trading days and approaches will help a lot more of you over this year
7 Responses
Hi All
Good read and looking forward to the year.
Just thought i would make a comment on the training day in general – London
The weather was atrocious taking me over 4 Hours to get there from Bournemouth
in the snow- some of the driving was a farce !! – not mine !. Arrived late in a bad mood
thirsty and hungry etc. The laptop then decided to have an off day ( off all day ) but never
mind could always crib from the chap sitting next to me – unfortunately he struggles with
his laptop . Now had a bad headache and realized had forgotten a multiple of pills that
now have to take. Hey, lunch was good. You might think i am waffling but the point i would
like to make is that the videos are great. After all the above was easily able to use the software
and data sheets with no problems by following the videos !!!.
So all those attending Birmingham etc have no fear – videos are here.
Cheers
Alan
Happy New Year Ian, every one in my pub has been very poorly
Good to hear about the macros
You are one of the genuine ones for sure and a proper grafter
There will always be a cold one behind the bar for you Fella
Hoping you and yours have a healthy wealthy one
Moz
Was reading the gambling newsletters again and one bit in one of the articles: “Over time less bets will make you more money. JG taught me, the more bets you have the more losers you will have, the harder it is to win”. Remember reading in a previous article it was snowing and someone emailed you saying they needed to have a bet and did you have any greyhound services to bet on. Haha.
Will you be covering streamlining bets in next few weeks in an article in terms of the trading day portfolio. This is key in my view, you can give 100 people the methods that were given on the trading day but everyone will have different results. Some people will sit there all day placing pretty much every bet across the portfolio, some will place just a few bets, others will trade out across the whole portfolio prematurely, otherwise will trade out across the whole portolio, some will trade out a few methods and let others run, some will have bigger bets on one component of the portfolio, etc
The basic crux of it is very solid though- I personally only bet/trade 5 of the 6 methods as I am not a big fan of staggered backs of the over 0,5 first half goals. The laying half time scores wins a lot more over time- I’m a big fan of the half time score drip lay given as you are not exposing yourself hugely. When you get beat at most you lose around 1.5pts maybe a shade higher if the HT score odds are 5 on the button and when you win you win anything up to a point depending on how many lays get matched. Nice runs of green with the occasional loss but if you just bet those over time drip lay and pump stakes up over time you can win absolute fortunes just from the half time score lays. Incredible the power of betting with the value- when it turns blue doesn’t do anything but when the value is with you for laying it all of a sudden makes a massive difference in profitability.
The methods themselves are solid -most of the you are laying odds on or drip laying, etc. Some can trade out of – like over 2.5 back at HT and the under 3.5 lay you can reduce liabiltiy if say 3 goals go in with decent time left. Would be good to know how you approach it yourself in terms of streamlining bets on busy days – on a busy Saturday for example you have a load of 3pm KO’s, load of games in the championship as well and loads of games all over the place. Maybe you can just drip lay half time scores in that period and say under 3.5 lay and over 2.5 HT back and ignore any BTTS Yes lays in this period?
Other thing as well in the newsletters which is massive is betting to win instead of betting not to lose. This is massive in my view, like you say there was one guy who backed Man Utd at evens at home to beat Arsenal for £200 and believed in the bet before kick off. But he ended up winning £80 instead of £200 because he was a “pussy” to put it plainly. He bet not to lose rather than betting to win. He was so scared of losing £200 that he made a cock up of the whole thing.
Much like Mourinho who is a pussy as well who is scared of losing in the big away games- he doesn’t play to win he plays not to lose which is the mentality of pussies in my view. Someone should just give Mourinho a billion to spend so he won’t have any excuses anymore. When you place a bet you have to accept the consequences but when you bet not to lose the fear of what can be lost cripples you and you are bound to lose. When you are fearless and bet to win and believe in what you are doing the universe just bends to your will and you will win. He who dares wins as they say. Fortune favours the brave.
Gambling is the best game in the world in my view- no other game do you experience just big highs and crushing lows on a consistent basis. It makes a real man out of you. Only gamblers know the feeling of winning a big bet and the self relief you get immediately after, there is no other feeling that comes close. When you have to experience pain as well and come through it to reach the promised land it means a lot more because you have seen all the dark days that have come before and lived through it all. Like the iceberg that slowly rises up as you have put it before, people see that you have won 3 million from gambling but do not see the bulk that lies underneath the tip of the iceberg and all the work it took to reach this level.
Only when you have to suffer and learn a lot do you know what you are made of, if you win all the time without any pain at all it means nothing because you don’t appreciate it. Real men are made from overcoming adversity in my view and finding the strength to fight back from impossible positions. The universe belongs to fearless people who don’t know the meaning of the words “giving up” and throw caution to the wind on a regular basis.
I lost 5 grand last weekend most of it from man city drawing with palace but I won 4.5k the week before- as you say in one of your videos which is bang on “I’ve had huge losses at times but I keep plugging away because I believe in what I do and I don’t think this is losing but matey down the road is winning I’m going to go off and try that….” This belief in what you are doing is huge in this game to keep pushing forward through all the ups and the downs. The whole objective of gambling is not about days or weeks it is about winning large amount of money over sustained period of time. I think of it as driving along hitting the occasional speed bump now and again, some speed bumps will hit you harder than others but if you keep pushing on and driving forward you will arrive at the final destination without a problem
I found this to be very true – was a quote in Rich Dad Poor Dad:
“Failure inspires winners. And failure defeats losers. It is the biggest secret of winners. It’s the secret that losers do not know. The greatest secret of winners is that failure inspires winning; thus, they’re not afraid of losing,… Winning means being unafraid to lose. People like Fran Tarkenton are not afraid of losing, because they know who they are. They hate losing so they know that losing will only inspire them to become better. There is a big difference between hating losing and being afraid to lose. Most people are so afraid of losing money that they lose. They do broke over a duplex. Financially they play life too safe and too small. They buy big houses and big cars but not big investments. The main reason that over 90% of the American public struggles financially is because they play not to lose. They don’t play to win”.
Stay alive for another 10 years at least mate, I want to win 2 million from this game before I leave this earth!
Well how about that. We agree with each other on a number of the years award winners.
Who says I always see things differently to you then lol.
Tipster/Service of the year – Absolutely hands down – Golf Guru. He makes my Sunday most weeks with someone nearly always in contention at the very least for the place money. More than that though, great profits each year.
Footballer of the year – Its a no contest of course. Harry Kane
Manager of the year – We agree again Sean Dyche has been a little below peoples radars for a little while now. Really sets his teams up well. However unlike you I wouldnt wish the England job on him. Its a career wrecker of a job.
Moaner of the Year – Part agree. I make it a dead heat with Mourinho and Wenger. As you know I was a Mourinho fan based on his trophies record, but he’s even getting on my t*ts now.
And of course, FTS Member of the year. Absolutely agree there, lol. Although this coming year I want to be nominated for FTS Golfer of the year if we finally have this game.
See you at the Cambridge trading day very soon mate.
Paul
Good post Ian. I christened Mourinho “The Tiresome One” during his first stint at Chelsea. Those journos who laughed at his pathetic jokes at Chelsea press conferences made me sick. Not one asked a difficult question of Mourinho, ever. They should read “All the President’s Men” to find out what real journalism is.
Southgate is just a yes man for the FA, a safe pair of hands. I still resent him for making money from Pizza Hut ads after his useless penalty in the 96 Euros. Dyche would a far more progressive appointment but his time will come I’m sure.
Hi Ian, Does the education part i.e. videos come into for both the RTS Racing & RTS RAP? What plans for 2018 do you have for those?
Yes James will be some racing focus as Cheltenham approaches