March Summary

Overall March was a good month. My football bets showed a healthy profit with the 'going-live' of my football laying system. I initially noticed an edge back in the summer, but because the games were an obscure mixture of Scandinavian games, Austrian, Under-20 World Cup matches, MLS, pre-season friendlies and others, I didn't pay too much heed to it.

Earlier this year I came across the original spreadsheet (I'm a nerd - I record everything) and decided to monitor English and Scottish fixtures for a while. As of 31st March, 274 games had been tracked and the pattern I'd noticed in the summer was again evident. Although this is still a work in progress, the current selection criteria would have resulted in 95 winning lays from 116 selections.

Like many others, I read the story of Maria and her laying system with much interest, and although there are some sceptics around, I have no reason to doubt that her discipline and selections combined to make her a nice sum of money. Inspired by the story, I decided to start with a bank of £1,000 and attempt to replicate her success. The big difference between her system and mine is that with only three outcomes possible, the odds I am laying will seldom exceed 4.0. The longest I have layed so far was 3.8. Therefore, her formula for calculating the bank percentage to risk each time is redundant, and I am laying to a fixed 1%. However, I may tinker with this in the future and adopt the idea of having different percentages for different bands of prices. For now I am keeping it simple.

Also, for ease of calculating winnings, I am assuming a 5% commission deduction, although my discount rate is currently 16%. Therefore my actual profits will be slightly higher than those reported.

At the end of March, the system had 18 wins from 21 selections, and the bank stood at £1,052.01 laying each selection to lose £10.62.