Why We Bother? Part 1

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Why We Bother? Part 1

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11/08/2014

The dawn of the new FTS has seen a few of the nasty old cynics come out of the woodwork this last few days which having had a lull from it for a while got me going again.

Many people want FTS to continue and many people have found FTS a great help be it in tips they follow, avoiding marketers or a general improvement in their approach to betting.

I mentioned the other day that it is a majority of punters that system hop and this site is aimed at a very small minority. It took me a long time to realise that and adjust things to cater for those people. I had the ideal of shooting for the sky and changing the way the whole internet gambling world worked.

It was very stupid of me to think that I could do that because quite frankly most people who gamble whilst they would never admit it and would want to smack me in the mouth for saying it, are numpties.

The truth is very few and it is probably about 1% of people have any clue at all and that coincides with the 1% who win.

I will relay a story that is nothing to do with me directly but came to me after the World Cup.

Last year we opened VIP for the first time ever and one of the guys who joined the FTS VIP has set about really working at things on his own over the last 10 months or so. We have met up a few times, discussed approaches etc and he has devised methods of his own. His goal is to make a living gambling and thus free time up to do things he enjoys.

He asked me if I was doing any World Cup betting and I informed him I was not doing anything other than the blog for FTS and that was nothing official etc.

He asked if I would mind getting his World Cup bets by text as he had devised a couple of methods that he thought would be profitable.

It was no problem to me, gave me an interest to follow and see how he went about it.

He sent me every bet and when the tournament was over he sent me a summary which I have pasted below.

The strategies themselves are very interesting but for me the cream of the email is the information regarding the 3 other people who also received the bets. Now I know the author of this reads this blog and sure will answer any questions if any one wishes to post comments.

“Well; it’s all over for another 4 years and I for one already can’t wait for Russia 2018. It was a marvellous tournament and the best team won in my opinion. This was also the first World Cup that I ended up profiting in. From when I was old enough I have always had a few very small bets on the World Cup to make things more interesting. And needless to say that over the years I have lost more than I won.

However, this year was an exception. Having spend the last few years following your guidance and advice I decided that for this World Cup I would come up with a strategy and stick to it no matter what. No more personal opinion bets like “surely Costa Rica can’t beat Uruguay” or “Germany will beat Algeria”, and low and behold I had a decent return for the tournament.

I actually sent these bets to 3 other people as well and at the end of this will let you know how they got on.

The Strategies
For me football is extremely predictable even though we’ll get the odd shock result as you’ve said many times over the course of a 5-10 years everything levels out. The key is finding the “angle” which once you know what to look for isn’t difficult.

I already had a few ideas before I even started to research anything, but the first thing I did was get the match odds for the last couple of World Cups from Betfair. As you know, my portfolio mainly consists of fixed odds bets as I prefer to put bets on and not have to make decisions in-play, so once I had the match odds (which took a few hours to get) it was just a case of checking my ideas out.

Strategy 1 – Backing Underdogs
Ever since my first experience of a World Cup (Italia 90), the thing that has always stood out has been the underdogs that do well against the big boys. Cameroon beating Argentina in 1990, USA beating Colombia in 1994, Iran beating the USA in 98, Senegal beating France in 2002 and so on. So I was pretty confident that this strategy would be successful and having looked at odds from previous tournaments I settled on backing any team that was playing against a team with odds of 1.2 – 2.3. My research also told me that this should only be used in group matches.

34 matches qualified for bets with 7 wins.

Results = +6.44 pts (or £193 to my £30 stakes)

Strategy 2 – Laying Favourites
I obviously knew that the above strategy would only profit when the underdog won but there are instances of teams getting draws. So the other angle of this strategy was to lay the favourites. I love laying short price favourites as for a small liability you can make a decent return. So as well as backing the favourite I also layed any team with odds of 1.2 – 2.3. Again only used in group matches.

34 matches qualified for bets with 16 wins.

Results = +3.46 pts (or £173 to my £50 stakes)

Strategy 3 – Backing Low Price Draw
This was the only strategy that didn’t make a profit and to be honest it was a bit of an experiment. I’m not a huge fan of backing short prices but especially the draw as I think your strike rate has to be so high to make a decent return. However having said that, the last World Cup this strategy would have won 6.5pts. This involved backing draws with odds lower than 3.5.

19 matches qualified for bets with 3 wins.

Result = -9.49 (or -£189 to my £20 stakes)

Strategy 4 – Backing High Price Draw
This strategy was a perfect example of being patient and persistent with something and not quitting after a loosing run. After the first 13 qualified bets, there was only 1 win and I was -7.54 pts, however the next 13 bets produced 8 winners and +23 pts. So had I given up after the first half I would have been down rather the +15.5 pts overall. The criteria for this was backing draws with odds of 4.0 or over.

26 matches qualified for bets with 9 wins.

Result = +15.49 pts (or £309 to my £20 stakes)

So in total I’m almost 16 pts up for the tournament which with my stakes equals £485 (to a bank of £500). At to that my other bets on tournament winners which I traded out on, and I’m about £650 in the green. Not life changing but not bad for a few minutes work each morning.

As I mentioned earlier, I sent these bets to 3 other people (besides you Ian) and advised on stakes using mine as a guide (i.e. if they have a bank of £250 half my stakes etc). This is what happened:

Person A – After the FIRST match (yes the FIRST match!!!) of Brazil v Croatia which there were bets for backing Croatia, Laying Brazil and backing draw, I received a text that I didn’t know what I was doing and that he couldn’t believe he had put these bets on knowing full well Brazil would win. He didn’t continue.

Person B – Decided to pick and choose what he put on based on what he thought would happen (i.e. Netherlands won’t beat Spain, Costa Rica won’t beat Uruguay etc). And even after seeing these bets win he refused to put bets on and started to try and cover his losses on “sure winners”. I think he gave up after Costa Rica beat Italy.

Person C – Followed for a few days and then began to pick and choose matches and start to trade out of bets, needless to say that he gave up after the first week too.

The funny thing is that I would have been one of these 3 people a few years ago. “

Now I personally love Person A, as I deal with about 300 of them a week. Complete and utter clueless people.

 

I have been mauled on the forum at time and emails about long term thinking etc, it is simple if you are going to give up every time you have a loser, then get your email on all the marketing lists and do your brains continually on all the wonder products, as that is the only way it is going.

The above reminds me of an email spat I was involved in last year when we started with Will Lattimore. Just one of the emails is below.

“After looking at the results for the past six weeks I have decided not to proceed with Will Lattamore. He has had 18 losing days in May (64%) and is 11 points down. Too many of his selections were unfit, unsuited by the ground, unsuited by the distance or just not good enough.”

So Will is no good because in 1 month he had 18 losing days and lost a whopping 11 points and obviously this author is a complete authority on racing.

He then went on in another email

 

“I really do despair of racing tipsters. In my view it is impossible to win backing horses but I get bombarded by 20 emails every week with the latest wonder systems. If I am approached unsolicited and invest time and money in giving these services a chance I have every right to express my disappointment when they cost me money. I try not to send knee jerk emails but I record and analyse all my bets and watch a great deal of racing and know when a horse has been unlucky in running or just not good enough.”

So it is IMPOSSIBLE to win. Amazing some of us seem to do quite nicely.

Just last week someone who had joined Will only recently

“Please cancel my subscription to Will Lattimore, 3 days no winners I see this another fabricated dud product”

Dud and fabricated, I just referred him to follow along using Wills site to look at results going forward and the 7 consecutive months of profit subscribers have enjoyed.

The bottom line is they just now really wind me up to the point I am like an enraged Gordon Ramsay when one of his Hell’s Kitchen competitors delivers raw chicken to the pass. I want to get hold of them and give them a good shake.

Part of my job here is to protect our tipsters such as Will from people like this as he would just get pissed off and jack it in and the decent people lose a great tipster and an income source.

You need so many skills and attributes in this game. My VIP World Cup star has them, but he is a very small minority. I made a firm decision that trying to help that minority is well worth it.

Betting is my life and will continue to be and if I can help others along the way, then I will and the cynics can go give their head a shake. Of course it is a roller coaster at times and I will cover more of that in Part 2 this week.

 

 

 

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4 Responses

  1. Hi Ian,

    An excellent must read Blog, well at least for those serious about making money from betting.
    We read so much negative stuff it is heartening to read success. Well done the World Cup guy
    and Alistair.

    I met Will at Taunto last year and had a long chat. I liked is quiet unassuming manner and the
    fact he spoke in detail how he goes about race reading.

    From January 2014 to 11th August Taking away my starting Betting Bank, so starting £0.00 my BB is now
    @ £4,652.67. I used compounding end of each month with 1 point = £5. 1 point now =£25. To me that
    is an excellent return and can only get better.

    I am a cautious bettor and I hate being outside my comfort zone, so setting the correct staking is important
    so I can handle any LLR. All this I have taken on board from Ian. I have my own little system I devised a while back,
    it too as LLR several of 9 & one of 10 but in less than 4 months I have increased my dedicated BB by 500% and with
    compounding will again only get better.

    I do believe, like Alistair, I have, after 7 years, served my apprenticeship.

    Duke

    1. Herb I have no idea what you mean mate? Soccer picks come as part of FTS membership, other sports not a clue what you mean we do the services at top of the home page. Sorry mate

      Ian

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