Rick Return's

A little over two months ago, I received a request from a Rick Ford to add his blog to my blogroll, and I obliged. Some of you may remember the story - after a few winning bets in the 1.0x range, Rick hit the inevitable loser, and then deleted all his posts. It seemed very immature, but he's back already with a new request to link to a new blog. 

Would appreciate if you can add my new blog to your bloglist? I've already added you.

That's very kind of him, but his two readers a day (his Mum and Dad perhaps) are of little interest to me, and frankly the whole setup doesn't look too promising or interesting. The original blog linked to in the original September request which was wiped clean, now has a grand total of three posts with the most recent saying:

Comments at the time:

But of course, very little in the way of evidence to show how these profits are achieved. I shall add the blog if it shows promise of being of interest, but if you can't wait for ever, you can find the link in the comments on my last post.

At least the two months since Rick last posted have been kind to him, he's in a happier place (EuroDisney?) and returns a changed man, even if his spelling remains poor.

A quick intoduction, I'm 33 years old and I've on and off tried to make money from straight backing, laying, tipsters, systems, scalp & trend trading, arbitrage betting, attended courses, webinars, the list goes on........ . I probably failed with most these methods due to my personal circumstances/lifestyle and lack of discipline but now all that is behind me, I'm in a happier place and ready to challenge myself.

Then later, we read:

I had my daughter for the rest of the weekend but I managed to swing trade a few horses on saturday and dabble/scalp prices in the football markets on my mobile.

Sounds very disciplined to me. And later (still unable to spell or use apostrophes correctly - never a good sign):

I'm going to use all my previous experience and resources to start off and then go on my own learning curve as I experience the latest markets. A few P&L's and success stories on blogs have given me hope of acheiving success so in 2013 I'll set myself a personal challenge. If they can do it, why can't I?

 Why not indeed? Perhaps because he has absolutely no idea what is needed to be profitable.

I am going to try and specialise/trade in pre-race horse racing & greyhound markets and also pre-kick off on the football predominantly on Betfair but also Betdaq where possible.

Well good luck with that, free money on those niche markets I'm sure, but why bother with BETDAQ? The PC is unlikely to be a threat any time soon.

A reminder of the September post:

Rick Ford's Sports Betting and Trading Blog was recently added to the blog roll, and a little over a month ago, Rick started a 'challenge' with this post:

Another betting strategy I'm going to use for the season is back 1 in 20-25 selections (1.04-1.05) and compound the stakes from £100 until I acheive fair sum of money. I've attempted this on the blog before with moderate success so please refer to my posts earlier in the year to have a feel of what I'm trying to achieve.

What is certain with all these challenges is that sooner or later, it will end. While the probability of any single bet losing is small, it is not infinitesimally small, and so it is sooner, rather than later, that 'luck' runs out.

Assuming the 1.04 is a true price, the bet has a losing probability of 0.03846 - almost 4%. For 1.05 the chance of losing is 0.04762 , close to 5%, so there is a between 1 in 20 and 25. If we take a mid-point of 1.045 (0.043), the odds are against you getting to 17 wins. That Rick made it to 25 before losing on Bet 26 was actually quite good - as there was a 65% chance of failing at or before that point.

A bet at 1.04 might look a certainty, but it is far from it. Rick's opening post mentioned he has tried this strategy before "with moderate success". That's a very vague term, but I've yet to see any of these challenges have any real success. For that, you need to be finding value, and you need to have a sensible staking strategy. A strategy that doesn't allow for a losing run of one is fatally flawed.