Lennon, Marmite and Heathcote

These new years come around fast as you get older. 2019 is the twelfth year of this blog, and although my posts were down in number last year, the hits keep coming. I mentioned in the last post of 2018 that I'd be taking a break, although it wasn't as relaxing as I'd hoped.

My work trip to New York ended with my return coinciding with the night of the reported drone activity at Gatwick, resulting in my flight being diverted to the northern wasteland of Liverpool and its John Lennon Airport. Hard to 'imagine'. I arrived at Gatwick by bus about 18 hours later than scheduled, and my bags finally caught up with me two days after that. 

In the preceding few days, my stubborn Mum fired all the carers provided to her after fracturing her hip in a fall. One had put bone china into the microwave, one committed the heinous crime of making marmalade instead of Marmite on toast, and a third was too tall, although there may have been more to that story.

Having unilaterally declared her independence, she then proceeded to fall three more times in the space of five days, before one of my sisters took control and moved both of my parents into a care home. One of my nieces found her on the floor after fall number three, and her claim to have "suddenly felt tired and decided to lay down" was not the most convincing cover story.

While not happy at first, she does now seem to be resigned to the fact that after 63 years, her days at the home her father bought her as a wedding present may well be numbered. It's all rather sad really.

So to betting, and December was a great month for the NHL system which started the month with a loss but which is now on a winning streak of ten:

In the NBA, the West v East Road Dogs system also had a profitable December: 

The Beast continues to be profitable and at least one person is taking advantage. At last season's 215.5 entry point, the system has an ROI of 6.8% while at higher entry points, the ROI is as high as 12%.

The NFL Regular season wrapped up with the Small Road Dogs in profit again for the 11th time in 13 seasons, and the Division system also adding to the profits:

The NFL's Wild Card weekend sees the Unders as the value bet, with an ROI since the current play-off format was introduced of 14.4%, and over the last six seasons of 38.3%. Be careful though, as the sample size is small.

Twitter has been interesting so far this year, as I found myself dragged into a debate on the topic of whether it is possible to win long-term on UK horse-racing given that insiders are ever present. I actually have to work today, but a full blog post on the topic will surely be along soon.

In the meantime, my old friend Mark Iverson raised the name of Adam Heathcote yesterday:

Adam was a relatively short lived Betfair character who after months of publishing unverified and highly unlikely profits - coincidentally from UK horse racing - started a subscription service which, by all accounts, was a complete and utter disaster.

After raking in a supposed £360k in two years, why Adam would have needed the income from a subscription service, or more importantly, was willing to give away the secret to his self-proclaimed success, and thus his edge, were two questions that didn't seem to trouble his subscribers. And of course there's always the question of why anyone with a Golden Goose would be telling the world about it. As @Lordlard wrote today:

Folk quietly making a living aren’t going to be shouting on Twitter about it. It’s at odds with the skill set required.

As the 'nice blog post' about Adam Heathcote mentioned above said:

It is quite staggering how quickly he was able to scale up.

Indeed it was. 

I wrote a couple of posts on this topic back in 2009, one of which I noticed has recently been quite popular. 

Some commenters did share my concerns, and one comment supportive of Adam included this all-time favourite line (typos included):

Your the type of bloke that would marry a Thai bride, sport a little beard and wear crocs.

The second post from a few days later is here with several people complaining about the quality of the service.

There's also another more recent post which touches upon Peter Webb's tie-in with Adam, and indeed Webb's transparency, which may interest some readers.