Diary of a Football Fanatic!

Hello and welcome,

The concept of value gets so over-complicated in gambling circles. Too many times I've seen people make it out to be some mystical concept that will take years to grasp. I'm writing to tell you all that that's all tosh as far as I'm concerned. I'm writng to set the record straight... to set it straight once and for all.

Value can be defined as any bet where the odds suggest a lower liklihood of something occuring, than the actual chance of the event occuring. I recommend you read that sentence again.

To convert a bookmakers odds into a figure that represents the probability the odds offer, we perform the following calculation - 1 / Bookie Odds.

So for example, if a bookmaker offers odds of 5.00 we can divide 1 by 5 to work out the probability of the event occuring in relation to the bookmaker's odds. In this case, we'd get the answer .20, which is the same as 20%.

If the bookmaker offered odds of 3.00, it would represent a probability of .333 or 33.3%.

If the bookmaker offered odds of 1.36, it would represent a probability of .735 or 73.5%.

If we toss a coin, we know there is a 50% liklihood of the coin landing on heads and 50% chance of the coin landing on tails. This means the correct odds for a coin landing on either side should be 2.00 ( 1 divided by 2 is .50 or 50%). Most of the time, bookies offer odds that represent a higher chance of a bet winning, than it actually should be. For example, instead of offering odds of 2.00, the bookies will normally offer odds of 1.95. This is, generally, how they make their money in the long run. These odds represent a probability of 51.3%. This is above the actually probability that odds should reflect, hence you would lose money if you continued to bet at these odds.

However, sometimes bookies get the odds wrong. Instead offering odds of 2.00 or lower, they could offer odds of 2.05. Odds of 2.05, suggest a 48.8% chance of the coin landing on heads or tails and, because this is less than the true odds of 50.0%, we would definately make money, in the long run, if we continued to make bets at those odds. These are value bets.

Now a coin toss can be quantified. We know there are two possible outcomes and we know they are both as likely to occur as each other. For this reason, it's impossible to profit from games like roulette, in the long run. The casinos know how often an event will happen and they offer odds that will guarantee the casino will win the the long run.

Sporting events can't be quantified. No one knows, for sure, how often West Ham will beat Chesterfield ( although judging from last night, it would appear not often). We can only guess. If we can learn to spot the times when bookmakers get the odds wrong and back them, we will surely make a profit in the long run.

The hard part is having accurate predictions. You have to know your sport, you have to do your homework and preferably, you should have statistics to help quantify the event as much as possible. This is what I did for an hour, last week when picking the bets for the 'Bookie Buster' system and it paid dividends. The other weeks I barely spent 5 minutes and they both lost.

Unfortunately, it's not a skill that can be learned overnight. Very rarely do people show a natural aptitude to pick winners with ease. However, you will slowly get better over time if you keep plugging away.

If you leave this blog post with anything, let it be this. Do not make a bet unless you are sure the odds are higher than they should be.

Have a good one,

Josh.

P.S. If there are any of you who are convinced you can find value bets on a consistent basis, please get in touch. I have a question for you.

Hello and welcome!

In this post I've decided to list ten important principles we all need to remember if we are to make money from gambling. Sometimes its good just to recap the essentials that combine to create success.

In no particular order they are...

• Use a betting bank and seperate your betting bank from everything else. It's crucial to succeeding in betting
• Don't make a bet for the sake of it.
• Never bet with money you can't afford to lose.
•  If by the end of the year, you've only earned 3% profit, don't get down. You've outperformed 95% of punters out there, earned more than you would if your money was in a bank and had some fun in the process.
• Chasing losses is unprofessional and can only lead to catastrophe. Don't do it.
• Make sure you are finding value bets. That's the only way you can ever make a long-term profit.
• Measure your profits in years (as opposed to days).
• Keep written records of every bet you take.
• GBO. Get The Best Odds. If you don't, you're stealing money from yourself and giving it  to the bookie.
• Don't gamble 'under the influence'. The consequences can be devastating to your finances.

I hope you enjoyed them.

Have a good one,

Josh.

Hello and welcome!

Around ten days ago, I started a series of posts on simple measures all bettors could take to maximise their gambling potential. The first post was about the importance of record keeping. If you missed it, you can visit the post by clicking here.

The point I'm going to address in this post will be concise and to the point. No waffle today.

You're driving in your car when you realise it's low on petrol (can you work out where I'm going with this?). The good news is that there are a couple of petrol stations just down the road, opposite each other. 'We Sell Petrol' are charging one pence less per litre than 'Land of Fuel'. Which station do you decide to go to?

I know I'd go to 'We Sell Petrol'. Firstly, I'd save money with them. Secondly, I'm the type who'd try to reward someone going the extra mile to give me a cheaper price. Okay, so you're only saving one pence a litre, but over the course of a year that might amount to £50. In my opinion, this attitude is essential to maximum betting success, too.

If one bookie is offering odds of 5.0 for a horse named Tottenham Are The Best and another is offering 5.50 for the same horse, you're practically cheating yourself out of money if you take the first price. If you put a £100 bet on the horse and it won (let's face it, with a name like that it may as well be a dead cert), you'd have thrown away £50 by going with the first bookie. And that's the point of today's post.

Always go to the bookie offering the best price. It's easy to assume that Betfair will have the best price on an event, nowadays, but in many cases you'd be better off with bookies. This is especially true when you deduct the betfair commission that 99% of us fail to do.

It might take you a while to register accounts with several bookies, but in the long run it will be worth it. I'm currently looking at bookie promotions and in the near future I'll be posting several recommendations, leaving you all with zero excuse. Keep an eye open for for that as some of the promotions are fantastic.

I've got a lot planned to write in this blog soon. This includes my number one tip for learning to beat the bookie on a consistent basis. It makes so much sense, most of you will probably be wondering why you hadn't thought of it yourselves. You might want to keep an eye open for that, too.

Have a good one,

Josh.

Hello and welcome!

After yesterday's off-topic post, it's back to gambling matters.

For us to make money on the side from this game, we need to make changes from former habits. Unfortunately, it's not now as it was before. The days when you could back hole-in-ones for a PGA tour at 100/1 are over. Bookmakers are growing ever the wiser and each year value becomes harder to find as Ladbrokes, Coral and co. develop their expertise in all betting markets. To compensate for this us gamblers have to pay more attention to detail in an attempt to compensate for the bookmakers' ever increasing edge. There are several measures we can all take. Some of you may be practicing some of these methods already, others of you may have heard these methods previously and, for some, these may be fresh concepts. Over the coming weeks I'll be discussing each method individually. The first installment starts today.

I can't stress enough how important record keeping is. Detailed information of previous bets can be invaluable when you have a good number to reflect on.

Primarily, record keeping will reveal the facts. Are you making a profit? What's your return on investment? How much are you losing?

You may be a punter who specialises with horses. If you use a particular system, you can analyse past results and find you are losing money in certain situations. It may be that you back unfancied horses and find your bets are unprofitable when the ground is firm, probably because favourites tend to perform worse of soft ground. Even if you don't have a system and use 'method' selections, record keeping could show you that you're particularly good at picking winners in class 1 or class 2 races and you may decide to raise your stakes in those races. Conversely, you may notice you're particularly bad at picking winners at Epsom, so bad you'd be better off stopping when races are at that track (or paper testing, to see if the poor form lasts, anyway). If you're particularly clever and your selections have been very unprofitable, you could even use this information to lay your selections.

In short, record keeping is critical to maximise profits. It will point out your weak areas and highlight your stong points. It is this information that will help earn you more money or, at the very least, save you from losing as much of your hard-earned as you otherwise would. Yes, it will takea little time and effort, but the benefits can be monumental. Furthermore, with Microsoft Excel, it's never been easier to keep records and let the computer do all the difficult maths for you. There really is no excuse.

Below I've made 10 suggestions on possible details we can include in record keeping spreadsheets. Hopefully, they help to get you started if you haven't already...

1 - Date

2 - Bookmaker name

3 - Bookmaker odds

4 - Average odds

5 - Subject (the horse, football team, golfer, ect. you are betting on)

6 - Backing or Laying

7 - ROI

8 - Profit/Loss

9 - Commission (if necessary - should vbe deducted from profits, too)

10 - Betting Stake Amount

Have a good one,

Josh.