A guest post by an FTS Member.
As a gambler I made all the mistakes typical gamblers make. I chased my losses, jumped from system to system when I had any sort of losing runs and I wasted hours of my life blaming other people. I would read Ian’s blogs and set my bank and then bail out after losing 50%. After all it was never my fault, it was the tipster, it was the ref, it was the overpaid footballers, it was the jockey, it was Ian’s fault and so on.
I must add at this point that when you have been doing things as long as I have you develop bad habits that are hard to get out of. The biggest of these is a fear of change. If I’m honest now, I have to admit that I was afraid to change my attitude because it was harder to accept that I was doing something wrong than blaming other people.
I have never been one to keep up with technology. Twitter, Facebook and other things like this are alien to me. And one look at Microsoft excel was enough to send shivers down my back. So how did I go from someone who had continuously lost to getting within the brink of having to pay premium charge in just a few short years? The short answer is the Odds Sheets.
Like most people when I first saw them I filed it in the “I don’t understand / too difficult” drawer. There it stayed until around just over 2 years ago. But after yet another unsuccessful attempt at having a go at another system which I signed up to online, I decided that enough is enough. I needed to change and I needed to go back to the very basics.
I decided that I was going to make it my mission to understand and use the odds sheets. I had read that other members like Kav were using it and were successful and so decided that I had to learn to use them.
You see one of my big problems was that I was never very good at trading in a game. I would get jittery half way through and trade out when I shouldn’t or stay in when I should cut my losses. So the idea of being able to place a bet and forget about it appealed to me.
This first thing I did was to get a basic understanding of excel so that it wasn’t so alien to me. I then set about trying to find my own systems from the odds sheet. It didn’t take very long before I stumbled across a pretty safe looking backing home team strategy. Once I had discovered that, it seemed so easy.
I was tentative at first but I asked Ian for his advice on bank and staking and he suggested I set myself a 50 points bank (£5,000 bank). My first bet was placed in February 2014 and within the first month I had lost 10 points – this was unprecedented for the system. I would be lying if I said I wasn’t close to packing in it all in and looking for another system to subscribe to but I made a decision that I would continue until my entire 50 points had gone. My system then went on an incredible run where I doubled my bank by the end of the season. This was the first time I had actually won!
Buoyed by my success I pressed on and spent the summer coming up with a few more systems and had a small portfolio which suited my mindset. I set my bank and a staking plan for them and decided by the end of it I’ll either have lost my bank or done something great. In total I had 5 systems, 3 back systems (including my backing home teams) and 2 lay systems, all of which were my own but purely from the odds sheet.
In my first full season I won close to £70K and added another 2 systems to my portfolio. Last season as my stakes grew I won over £120K and with my stakes at an average of £1,000 now I anticipate that I will be breaking through the £250K mark at some point.
Not every system has always won and I’ve had times where my bank has stood still or gone down, but the one thing that I never did was to change my attitude or path. I’m going to be betting my very first system that I came up with again this season as well – proof that you can come up with strategies that win every year.
They key to being successful from using the odds sheet is to take responsibility and try to use them beyond just a tipping service. You need to accept that you need to do some work yourself and once you begin to see how easy it is to find your own systems you won’t look back.
I should emphasise that I’m not a spreadsheet wizard, even now. I have a very basic knowledge of computers and have a very basic PC with just a couple of spreadsheets to record my results. So believe me when I say that if I can do it any FTS member can.
I honestly can’t believe how far I have come from that first bet that I placed. I have recently switched to being part time at work (as it is a job I love so didn’t want to quit) and spend my spare time doing the two things I love – fishing and golf.
I’ve already signed up to FTS Ultimate for this season and now I’m ready for the new season.
Good luck to you all.
19 Responses
well done mate
Awesome job mate, I can relate to some of what you’re saying (as I love computers lol) – I for one find it really motivating to hear about people sorting it out and making a go of it :¬)
All the best for the future – I hope I can get to where you’re at in the future too!
Very inspirational post – thank you. As an FTS Ultimate member, I hope to replicate your success in the years to come.
One question….what do you do and how will it affect you when you get in to the premium charge zone?
Thanks,
Nick
Great to hear of your success with this, I know it is possible but I spend hours and hours going over the database trying to find something that works. I come up with a few ideas but they are either too many bets or have long losing runs or something.
I think it would be great to have some kind of place for people to share their ideas and thoughts on systems from this very powerful tool. Somewhere we can take others ideas and play with them and tweak them for better and share the final results.
I just went through and found this:
August – March
Bundesliga
Primera League
BF Home 1.8 – 2.2
Diff -10 – +10
366 bets over 4 seasons
107.68 points when BACK AWAY.
Longest losing streak was 15 (twice) and 14 (once). Made a reasonable return each season (dont care about seasons I know) but would have increased bank 3 times on 50% for 50% using a 50 point base. Never really going below 10 points into the bank at any one time.
Maybe this is a few too many bets? Maybe someone can tweak this and make it better, ie. less bets for similar returns.
This is pretty much the first one I have found that is close enough to be used. I would love to know your Home based backing system 🙂 – I have tried and tried to find something based on this. Hence the sharing ideas thought.
Maybe it could be a closed FB group for Ultimate users only who wish to share or just read others thoughts?
All the best to you for this season, hope I can emulate your successes.
Nick
Difference -10 – +10 was Away difference – missed that point off.
Been hammering the database again after reading this post a few times 🙂 – still struggling to find a good Back Home system. Any pointers to get me started?
Sorry fella, understandably he doesn’t want to go into anything about the system.
No worries 🙂 – I understand that. Still think it would be nice for a place where people can share thoughts and ideas on the database as it is quite overwhelming and can take hours of trying and playing. Even when you find something you then question if it is just ‘luck’ or if there is something in the criteria you selected.
Very powerful tool though.
Hi Nick, me and Ian have discussed having somewhere like this so leave it with us and we’ll look into it.
Terrific, motivating post – premium charge here I come!
Thank you whoever you are. I expect that my story will be the same as yours by next year and I’ll be writing a guest post too!
Fantastic effort mate
Can I just ask about your banks please?
You had 5k using one system and double that to 10k. You then had 5 systems. did you split the 10k over the 5 systems or have 5k for each one to get up to 70k profit for the year?
Also did you adjust stakes at any time or 1pt was £100 all through the season then adjust at the end of the season?
Hope this season goes just as well for you (and hopefully me as well:))
Good luck
Dave
Think This is a good question, And would like to know the answers ?!!
Hi Dave, he said he split the £10K across the 5 but it wasn’t simply £2K each (i.e. one was £4K etc) but total £10K. And yes he had a basic staking plan (i.e. X% increase in bank X% increase in stakes etc). We will cover all of this for Ultimate & Enhanced members for the new season.
Much appreciated Kav. Looking forward to reading about bank setup/bank increase/pts allocated etc. Is it coming out before the season kicks off next weekend. I want to be set and ready before a ball is kicked if possible.
Cheers mate
Dave
Hi Dave, yes everything will be uploaded in your member’s areas this week. Look out for emails during the week.
Well, done Andy – and inspiring stuff as well.
I’m sure many people who’ve tried to make money from gambling will recognise what you have said in the opening paragraphs of your post, as well as in what you said about the odds sheets. They mystified me as well at first, more than likely because I was also clueless on Excel and I was largely looking at the blue/red divide in the difference column.
I really wasn’t looking at anything more than that, which I now realise was the wrong way to use the odds sheets, as ultimately nothing is that simplistic. As a result, I never really reaped any reward from them, as I simply didn’t understand the uses they could be put to. I didn’t have access to the full database last year so I started building my own. I’m not sure why I did that, given what I’ve just said above, but probably I was hoping to be able to just spot patterns and links between the various numbers (although I realised that was flimsy reasoning). But I convinced myself there was something somewhere to be found and if I could just find what it was then the corner would be turned.
It was only when (prompted by the initial FTS odds sheet videos) I realised that a simple understanding of Excel was the key to unlocking the odds sheets – only then did I fully realise what a powerful resource they really are. I didn’t bet according to my own database last year, as I only wanted to build a full season’s worth of outcomes and then apply some basic Excel filtering to it and see what stemmed from that. It might not be a ‘retirement’ plan as yet, but I found a simple home back system and a LTD system that I will use as a foundation for this coming season. With access to the full FTS database this year I’ll be able to check things out more comprehensively and hopefully come up with a few more systems that suit my time and financial resources. My aim is to work three or four systems this season and aim to build a portfolio of perhaps ten over the next three-five years, now that I have a better understanding – helped greatly by Ian’s further videos – of the power of this tool.
I think it’s important that people involved in gambling (of any description) don’t feel they have to try and cover everything straight away, or even ‘everything’ at all. It really has to be about finding a few things that suit your time available, your temperament and what you want as an outcome from it. Then, by being patient and learning and refining as you go along, you’ll eventually find you have something that is sustainable over the long-term. Think of it as an apprenticeship leading to a skill for life.
The best advice I ever got from a successful speculator (FX) was to ‘follow what worked’ (honestly, it really was that simple). The odds sheets, with a little patience and experimentation, will show you what works. He also advised that ‘a dripping tap will eventually fill a bath’ – assuming the plug’s in, of course, by which he meant staking and bank management.
Anyway, well done and good luck to everyone for the coming season.
Great Post, thanks for sharing
Good read that, well done on what you have achieved.