Tipping Vehicle

A few comments on my post yesterday - with Mr. Mark Iverson's probably the most disturbing! Curly mentioned that it didn't seem that long ago that I was at the 100,000 mark, which of course made me look back, and in fact it was March 2010 when I reached that milestone. So it took two years to reach 100,000 and 15 months for another 150,000. Under / Over on the 500,000 mark?

Andy took umbrage with me, although I did at least provoke to post for the first time in almost two months. He wrote:

I have been spurred on to add to my blog by a few factors. The biggest one is by Cassini at Green all Over and his extended post this morning celebrating his 250,000 hit. It is a big achievement to keep blogging to the extent that he has over the past three years but I take umbrage to his sweeping statement that bloggers who have not lasted the course are losing money. He may have the time to devote many hours to blogging but some of us make lifestyle changes that make it very difficult to continue.

I didn't actually mean the blogs with infrequent posts, but rather those that start and then suddenly disappear completely. Perhaps the author has dropped dead, but more likely they took some losses, and lost any enthusiasm for blooging about betting and losing.

There was also a question from G -

When you're identifying an in-running value trade/bet in a basketball match do you have a spreadsheet with what the price should be for a team at a certain time during a game?

E.g. Dallas are up by 5, 7 mins gone in the 3rd quarter (would you have on your 'sheet a price for this type of scenario and if a bigger price is available then you would play?) - is this how it's done?

Or have you honed your skills to such an extent that you can determine a value bet/trade almost auto-magically now?

At the risk of sounding arrogant, it really is now more of the latter. Usually, my strategy relies on taking advantage of people's greed by laying low, and then greening up when the realisation sets in that they have backed too low and the price rebounds.

There are too many variables in basketball for a spreadsheet to be of any use. The brain has to constantly factor in the score, time remaining, momentum, foul situation, possible injuries to 'star' players, which players are due a rest, which players have had rests, time-outs remaining, mood of the crowd to name but a few and there is nothing like watching games to learn what a price 'should' be. Spreadsheets are invaluable pre-game, but once a game is under-way, not so much. I'm sure many people have in-play spreadsheets for most of the football markets - enter the probability of a goal and adjust for time remaining, but I don't.

Back to basketball, and the example posed above, "Dallas are up by 5, 7 mins gone in the 3rd quarter". There is no correct price. Is Dirk Nowitzki in foul trouble? Has Jason Kidd just been carried off the court? Are Dallas playing Miami or the Cleveland Cavaliers? Did Dallas (or their opponents) play a triple-overtime game last night? Have Dallas let a 20 point lead slip to the current 5, or were they down by 20 at half-time? And then there are those occasional 'Blink' moments when my subconscious 'sees' that a price is wrong without necessarily understanding why. Your subconscious registers things that the conscious doesn't. I suspect it reads body language pretty well, but it's hard to prove that. As a recent example, to me, Miami had a defeated look about them in Game 6 of the NBA Finals and it just 'seemed' that it was Dallas's day.

Little football again today, but Ian Erskine made a comment yesterday

To be clear all my research is done pre-game and I do not watch games I trade on TV or follow them online as my view is you make panic decisions on what you are watching.

I'm of a similar mind on this. Mexico (v Honduras) looked too short last night at 1.37 and I layed £300. Had I been watching the game, I know I would have been tempted to get out after 45 minutes or possibly even earlier, but it was nice to wake up to a decent win. While I know the result was 0-0, I am blissfully unaware of how many shots hit woodwork, or penalties were saved. Tick-nicking doesn't work for me in football. I wonder how many Lay-the-Draw or Lay-the-0-0 got caught out on this game?

Finally, a gentle poke at one of the new blogs I mentioned yesterday - All Out To Win. In the "About me" section Roy writes:

Hello readers, it's been a few weeks since I was last here. As some readers know it was a turbulent time ending with me wiping out my entire bank of 10k. Since then I have taken a break from betting alltogether, I tend not to bet much anyway during that period of the season. Overall though I feel it has done me good. What struck and suprised me somewhat was the amount of positive response I have had from readers, as at one stage I was unsure wether anyone was reading! Quite a few people continued to follow a number of horses I bet on with some pleasing results, a few double figure odds landed. This has inspired me to kick start the blog again as I have a new bank of 5k along with a different staking system. The blog was not orginally intended as a tipping vehicle, but a number of people have asked for just that.

My question really is this - why would anyone with half a brain want to follow the tips of someone who recently "wiped out their entire bank of £10k"? Credit to Roy for his honesty, and maybe it was all down to the old staking system, but I suspect it's more that Roy doesn't have an edge. After starting on Sunday with a bank of 100 points, Roy's already burned through 18 points (£900) and maybe it's just me, but this seems very much like throwing your money away. Cue a 25/1 winner today, but even if one did come in, this looks like a quick way to the poor-house. The continued interest in horse-racing for serious betting continues to amaze me. If you are on the inside, then yes, I get it, but your average man in the street isn't, and I don't get it.