Eye of the Tiger Newbie Blog – 4th July

July 5, 2009 by Darren Hall
Filed under Eye of the Tiger Newbie Blog

No time to do anything so we ended June on a still very respectable £135.92 profit and I am really starting to get in the swing of this now.

Unfortunatley I now must take 3 weeks off so I hope I don’t miss too much, managed to squeeze a couple of offers in before I left so we have now completed Betdaq and Gamebookers too (see the spreadsheet for details of the bets) and grown the profit pot to £176.82 , wow!

I will be back and placing bets again from the 25th so let’s see if we can get a few more in break £200 in July!

Total Profit: £176.92

Tags: Blog, Eye of the Tiger Newbie Blog

Eye of the Tiger Newbie Blog – 28th June

June 29, 2009 by Darren Hall
Filed under Eye of the Tiger Newbie Blog

The Alex Buchanan Diary – 16/04/09

April 17, 2009 by Darren Hall
Filed under Alex Buchanan

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Not my usual blog this week, as I am having a much needed break in the sun, but here is something to mull over in the meantime………………………

So Who Exactly Is Bodo Glimt?

Actually, the question should be “who are they?”, as the European football experts amongst you will know that they are a Norwegian side who finished 4th in their league championship last season.

If you have spotted that in fact they are known as Bodo/Glimt with a slash, then perhaps you need to get out more, unless of course you’re Norwegian, in which case I might have expected you to spot my deliberate mistake.

For the uninitiated, Bodo is the name of the town they hail from, and Glimt is their nickname, so I suppose it would be similar to Bolton Wanderers being known as Bolton/Trotters. Can’t imagine that catching on, except maybe with opposing fans!?

Where is all this leading, I hear you ask? What does this have to do with betting strategies and the like, and when are we going to get to the point? Very soon, and an interesting experiment awaits you to, as you plot your path down the road to profit.

Football crazy as I am, since the tender age of about 7 or 8 back in the early 90’s (!), I know my Valencia’s from my Valenciennes and my Lazio’s from my Lyon’s – or do I? Despite keeping an interest in most of the top leagues in Europe, as well as almost all of the domestic divisions, do I really know enough to be potentially squandering my hard earned cash by gambling on them?

Well, probably not, but using the strategy I’ve adopted, I find myself betting on around 20 different leagues every week, often multiple times. Of those 20 leagues, as well as the associated cup competitions, I reckon I could call myself pretty much up to speed with what’s going on in 2 or maybe 3 of them. The English Premiership is hard to avoid on these shores and beyond, and it does provide some great football, and then there’s the SPL, which sadly does not, but for my sins and for emotional and historical reasons, I keep a close eye on as well.

Then we have The Championship in England, and Scottish Division 1, both of which I’m tuned onto most of the time. I probably watch on average, a couple of hours of La Liga football each week as well, so I like to think I’m on the ball with that also. But, in reality, I’m not really. Outside of the big two in Spain, who dominate the coverage in this country, I’m unlikely to know much about what is really happening. If a middle or lower half team had an injury crisis, or even sacked their manager, then I probably wouldn’t even pick up on it. If something similar happened in the Premiership or the SPL, then I’d be aware of it within hours.

So does this mean that I should restrict my betting interest to only the leagues which I know most about?

Many would argue, with some merit, that yes, you should only gamble on something you have a fairly in depth knowledge of. Would find it difficult to put up a strong argument against that theory, would you not? I probably would as well, except that in my experience, I’m not so sure it matters.

That’s why I think it might be interesting to see how other people got on, if they were to place their usual bets, whatever they may be, on matches in a league which they know nothing about.

As I’ve said, I gamble on over 20 competitions across Europe, and even more if you include the European close season, where you have to cast your net much further to find a match to bet on. Isn’t it great – the only true global sport living up to its reputation by serving up matches somewhere in the world every day of the year?!

So I do best in the leagues I know well, right? No. Ok, so surely I do worst in those leagues where I know absolutely nothing, and pick purely at random, based on the price ranges I use? Wrong again.

I could split my bets into three categories, in terms of how I choose them. The smallest category is based on my knowledge of the specific league and teams, and I choose purely using that supposed expertise within my pricing boundaries. I would say this includes 4 of my 20 leagues (including associated cup competitions also).

Then, bets in the middle category are selected with the help of recent statistics, looking at form, league positions etc, but without knowing much at all about injuries, suspensions or the like. This probably accounts for about 10 more of my normal weekly gambling areas.

Finally, there are the leagues where I have no knowledge at all, and I deliberately make sure that I avoid the temptation out find out about them as well. I choose randomly, using only my pricing structures as a guide. 6 of the 20 are chosen like this.

Obviously, my P&L is ever changing, but at the time of writing, the performance of these three categories is quite interesting.

Thankfully, all three are in profit, but the one which is doing best of all, with 52% of my profits at the moment is category 3, the random one. Next, on 42% is category 1, knowledge. Lagging badly, with only 6% of my profits, is category 2, form.

I don’t have nearly enough data to be able to clearly state that I should adopt or disregard any of these picking methods any more or less, but currently, it certainly appears that using form guides without any real background knowledge, isn’t working very well.

And, given that it is doing better than anything else, maybe I should just choose randomly across the board!

So why not have a go yourself, using small stakes obviously, and pick a league or two that you know nothing about, and compare the results with your normal footie bets. I would be really interested to know how you got on, so please post a message up if you can.

And, with the end of the domestic season not far off, and no major international championship this summer, you might be able to avoid those withdrawal symptoms that many of us have, by having a punt on our new friends Bodo!

Take a look at the Danish League Division 1, the second tier league (even I haven’t ventured that far yet on my gambling globetrot), and you’ll see a team called Skive!! Not making this up. They don’t sound like the hardest working team around, do they?! Probably worth a lay!

Speak to you again soon.

Tags: Blog, Trading

Bet72 Profits Diary – March 2009

April 6, 2009 by Darren Hall
Filed under March 09

3 Comments

This month is like one of those, “complete works of Shakespear in a minute” plays, I managed to corrupt the file I was working on over the month so rather than recreate it all (I am a lazy sod) here is March in a nutshell.

OK high hopes for March, Cheltenham et all, so let’s see what happened.

Right starter for tenner, I cashed out my free bet on the Carling Cup final from the latest Will Hill BOGOF offer for £6.38 profit.

Managed to get on a little more Pre-Cheltenham Ladbrokes 3/1+ offer for a very nice £66.76

Was really busy getting the site etc… ready pre Cheltenham so I didn’t do anything upto the festival, then it was off!

I did quite a bit of trading actually, which netted me £212.75 in profits, small fry to the pros but I was happy with that, I am still learning!

As for the offers well we picked up the following…..

Paddypower Cousin Vinny Offer = £28.56 x 2
William Hill Various BOGOF offers = £27.12 x2
Centrebet Gold Cup = £17.01
Ladbrokes 3/1+ offer = £302.21 What a great offer long may it continue (update it has not appeared since!!)
Paddy Power mobile offer = £17.76

So a grand total of £421.22 plus the trading cash, meant a very nice few afternoons work!

Finally got around to doing the financials offer VC (£250 refund) and Tradefair (free £75). Worked on a very easy strategy based on BUYing at VC and SELLing at 1/2 the value on Tradfair, with stop losses in place. Netted £182 profit from this using the GBP against the Euro market, I am no Robbie Burns (www.nakedtrader.co.uk) but for my first dabble into financials I was very happy. I cannot withdraw the free £75 from Tradefair for 3 months but will pay for a nice night out for me and Mrs B when it is available in June. I will have forgotten about it by then so it will seem like another bonus when it flashes up on my electronic calendar to withfdraw!

If anyone want to know anymore about the strategy do please drop me a line, info@bet72.com

Over at Ladbrokes we saw a free £10 offer for playing 3 Card Poker, usual Q64 strategy here for a very easy £9 profit.

Centrebet did a free Dubai racing offer which netted another £7.02 profit (x 2) and more BOGOF’s from Billy boy footy, darts and F1 added £6.82 profit for me and Mrs B respectively.

Coral had a virtual games offer for a free £10, well documented on bet72 and netted £7.37 for Mrs B and £7.52 for me

Not to be outdone Betair sent me a free offer for their Arcade games area. Make 10 bets on Deal or No Deal and get the 11th free (upto £20), used our regular DOND strategy here and made a very nice £26.13 on my account but lost £14.01 on Mrs B’s but still a net profit of £12.12 for less than 10 minutes clicking!

Profit/Loss – 1st – 31st March 2009 = +£767.17 – Total March 2009 = +£767.17 (plus £212.75 trading, so almost £1K)

Tags: Bet72 Profits Diary, Blog

The Alex Buchanan Diary – 06/04/09

April 6, 2009 by Darren Hall
Filed under Alex Buchanan

2 Comments

Domestic Effort Costs Plenty

It’s a job that was probably a year overdue. The missus would disagree, she would say that it was two years overdue, but no matter, my daughter and I decided that Wednesday would be a good day to take on the task of clearing out our garage. How fitting that it was April 1st!

To be fair, if you needed anything that wasn’t within reaching distance from the threshold, a strong pair of boots and a long rope were almost a necessity, and I was the only remaining family member daft enough to ever enter.

We started reasonably early, especially when you consider that a teenager was involved, and I was thinking that we might just get finished in time for the first race at Exeter, but alas no. By the time it had reached 4 o’clock, I had written off the day in terms of betting, and frankly I was too tired to care.

A warm bath and well-earned square meal later, I sat down to review the days events and see what I missed, out of interest and the need to keep my stats up to date. What I discovered almost had me rubbing my eyes in disbelief, that of all days, this is the one I choose to have off.

Four favourites went off at odds-on on Wednesday afternoon, and guess how many won? NONE! Not one. Is there a doctor in the house?! If you’ve read my previous blogs, you’ll have gathered that one of my cornerstone strategies involves laying odds-on favourites, and in the time since I started, I have never witnessed a day when 4 from 4 all lose.

Indeed, even looking through many months worth of statistics from before I even begun, I haven’t found a day like this. Sure, 4 odds-on losers in a day has happened periodically, but always accompanied by some odds-on winners. Nurse!

So how much did my messy garage cost me? I would guess, around £1500 on the day, and because I operate a loss recovery system, that figure could easily double as I seek to recoup existing liabilities from prior to Wednesday.

As it happened, I missed a couple from the latter part of Tuesdays card as well, as I had other business to attend to, and as you would expect, Thursday proved that there ain’t no justice at all, by producing just one odds-on loser and five winners.

It’s not too often that my composure evaporates, but watching Sayif come from a seemingly hopeless position to nod home on the line at Leicester at the top of the shop odds-on price that I lay, 1.91, resulted in a few random objects being hurled forcibly across my office in a major fit of pique.

Not the way to behave, as I was promptly reminded by my missus, but what does she……! No, perhaps not! AAAARGHH!!

I’m over it now, honestly I am. But, if anyone feels qualified to assist with therapeutic or psychological help, please don’t hesitate.

Being positive, I have no doubt that my system will recover from this, as it has done numerous times now, and it is exactly the sort of test that it must be able to come through to prove itself long term.

And, having rolled out my basic laying strategy to other price groups recently, I am delighted with the way that has gone so far. Very promising.

A quiet week last week on the football front, with the internationals, but by Friday normal service was returning, with 10 positions in matches across Europe, which returned an overall profit. And relax!

I’ve changed the day I submit my blog to a Monday, so this one takes in two weekends, the first of which didn’t produce much in the way of “Longest Minute” drama. 90th minute goals for Berwick Rangers and Ross County evened themselves out in terms of impact on my profits, and that was about it for the weekend previous.

This weekend though, was as dramatic as the last one was uneventful! Look no further than first Liverpool, and then Manchester United pulling 3 points out the fire in stoppage time. Not as costly as my afternoon in the garage, but hefty blows all the same. Actually, the last gasp goals worked in my favour in 3 matches, and against me only in the two big Premiership matches, but my staking system dictated that the losses outweighed the gains quite significantly on this occasion.

It’s typical of the top sides to pull out late winners, as demonstrated by the two Reds, but in Italy it went the other way with Juventus conceding a 90th minute equaliser to lowly Chievo, and Napoli did the same at Sampdoria, to make it a golden few minutes for me, Italian style.

Across Europe on Saturday night, La Liga produced quite a finish in the Betis v Numancia game which also turned out nice. Didn’t look like it though, when the away side had a man sent off, and conceded a penalty in the 89th minute, which Betis scored to go 3-2 up. Amazingly, the visitors managed an equaliser almost immediately, and there was still time for Betis to be reduced to nine men with their second sending off.

For those of you interested in spread betting, the bookings make up in this game was 165! Other than that, nothing much happened!

Oh, not too bad a finish in the Cardiff v Swansea derby either! Naturally, I had a financial interest in that as well, but as I had laid Cardiff, the late drama never really threatened my position.

I could waffle on much more, but that’s enough for this week. Before I go though, I should mention the Grand National, and hearty congratulations to anyone who picked out Mon Mone, even each way. Well done!

I didn’t, but I did make a little by laying the favourite, as per usual. Old habits die hard!

Speak to you next week, I’m just off to walk around my garage for a bit, and see if the gambling fairy has left me some compensation!

Tags: Blog, Trading

The Alex Buchanan Diary – 28/03/09

March 28, 2009 by Darren Hall
Filed under Alex Buchanan

3 Comments

The Longest Minute

Occasionally it’s the 45th, but it’s almost always the 90th minute which is comfortably, or uncomfortably, the longest minute in football. On average, it lasts for about 3 minutes more than any normal minute should, so 4 in total, and sometimes in the event of a long stoppage, it can be a good few more than that.
So, it’s not surprising that the fateful 90th minute can often have such an impact on your gambling success on any given day. Last gasp equalisers or winning goals can cause your potential winnings to vanish from before your very eyes, or indeed turn a hopeless case into a gold mine.

When you place as many trades as I do, it is unusual for “The Longest Minute” not to provide some late drama to affect my weekly P&L. Thankfully, I’m long enough in the tooth now, not to have to watch the late scores coming in while peering through my fingers, or worse still, hiding behind the sofa, but there is generally enough at stake to keep the adrenalin pumping swiftly enough! To use a well-worn football cliché, “these things tend to even themselves out over the season!”

Any Bury supporters reading this, (well, anything’s possible!), will know exactly what I mean, as each of their last two matches have produced last minute equalisers, one for and one against. And, in keeping with tradition, I had a financial interest in both games, and in these instances, both fell the right way – not always the case!

Saturdays Chester equaliser in the last minute of normal time at Gigg Lane, didn’t make me rich, but it was just pipped as my best priced football lay of the week at 1.49, by the 1.45 lays or Rangers v Hearts (oh, what joy!), and Torquay against Grays. These would have been joined by Forfar Athletic being held by Elgin City on Tuesday, at around 1.48, but schoolboy error time, I must have forgot to click the “confirm” button on Betdaq. More than a little annoying, but along came Annan Athletic on Wednesday, at 1.78, who duly conceded a late equaliser against Albion Rovers to give me the £125 lay result I had missed out on just the night before.

Back to Bury though, and on Tuesday night it was their turn to enjoy the fruits of the 90th minute, when they grabbed an equaliser at Rotherham, 1 minute into stoppage time. “Get in!” I thought, no offence to Rotherham fans! That was worth quite a bit more than the £40 I bagged from the weekend game, and it capped a cracking night, with all of my large liability lays landing. Happy days!

I’ll probably make “The Longest Minute” a weekly feature, as never a week goes by without last gasp squeaky bum moments!

Just before I move on, here’s one from earlier in the month. As I updated my live score webpage hoping for a late goal in a French Ligue 2 match between Angers (no, I hadn’t heard of them either until recently), and Lens with Angers leading 1-0, I was pleased to see that there was one, except it had gone the wrong way, and it was now 2-0. With my lay seemingly sunk, I powered down and headed via the fridge to join the missus for some primetime crime drama on the telly.

Imagine my surprise when I checked my account in the morning to discover a positive figure next to Angers v Lens, and on further investigation it transpired that Lens had scored not once, but twice in the longest minute to salvage an unlikely draw! The words sings, lady and fat sprung to mind, as well as another “get in!”

On the horsey front, my main odds-on strategy has passed another stress-test this week, adding to my confidence in the system long term. Not counting anything yet though, apart from rising profits, which hopefully will continue.

Shortest priced lay this week came on Thursday, when Nordwind failed at 1.29 (SP 1/4), in the first race at Hereford, and closely followed about 20 minutes later by 1.82 shot (SP 8/11), Jeremiah finishing completely out of the frame at Southwell. Happy days again!

On the downside, I’ve missed out on 3 more odds-on losers on Thursday, as I was not around to place the trades – you can’t realistically catch every single race, and I’ve learnt to my cost that it’s best to forget about it if you are otherwise engaged. I’ll probably tell you more about that some other time.

I’ll leave you again with my Handy Household hint of the week – make sure that you “confirm” your bets!! (Note to self)

Speak to you again soon.

Tags: Blog, Trading

The Alex Buchanan Diary – 21/03/09

March 21, 2009 by Darren Hall
Filed under Alex Buchanan

2 Comments

Follow friend of bet72, Alex, as he guides you through some of his proven betting and trading strategies…..

21st March 2009

Hello, Alex here.

I’ve been testing a number of betting and trading strategies since August 2008, with a view to finding one or more systems which prove consistently successful month on month.

I have filtered out the less successful ones, and now I am concentrating on two similar strategies in horse racing and football, both of which have been producing exciting results for a few months.

As I work on these, tweaking them as I go, I thought it might be an idea to share some of the highlights and lowlights of my trading week, as my turnover on the betting exchanges is nudging towards 5 figures every week. Naturally, within that lot, there are some pearlers and some howlers!

Hopefully, as my strategies are based on a loss recovery system, even the sad, mildly embarrassing trades are soon engulfed in a deluge of profit!

Let’s start with a couple of recent positions which find themselves right at the top of the dross pile.

While Liverpool’s 5-0 aggregate trouncing of Real Madrid could rightly stake a claim for the performance of the last 16 stage of the Champions League, I think the 12-1 annihilation of Sporting Lisbon by Bayern Munich might just take the prize. To win a tie by such a margin at this stage of a competition of this standard, is almost unprecedented, and guess what? Not content with laying Bayern in the away leg, which they won 5-0, I then decided to compound the blunder, by laying them again in the home leg, partly on the basis that the Portuguese had some pride to restore, and the Germans would field a reserve side. Final score, Germans – full strength side, Portuguese, reserve side who downed tools early doors. 7-1!

So, if you are ever looking for football tips, European or otherwise, go somewhere else! Thankfully, my strategies don’t rely on a judgement call in most cases, but more of that in future weeks.

In a vain attempt to restore my already tarnished reputation, in the last 10 days or so, I have successfully laid AZ Alkmaar, Bayer Leverkusen, Aachen, Lens, Ajax, Marseille, Peterhead and Burton Albion, all at prices of no more than 1.62, or 8/13 in old money. How many of them were judgement calls? One maybe, two at most.

The shortest price lay among that little lot was 1.4, but I can trump that with a spectacular odds-on horse racing lay from Tuesday of this week.

Fresh from his sensational week at Cheltenham, Paul Nicholls sent his novice hurdler Conflictofinterest to Kempton, where it was expected to open its account with ease, hence the SP of 1/10. Now it may or may not surprise you to know that only around 3 in every 5 odds-on favourites actually win, but unsurprisingly, when they are as short as this, they almost always win. Not this time though, as it was beaten in a close finish by a 16/1 shot, aptly called Nothing’s Easy. The fact that the Nicholls horse actually got round, but still didn’t win, makes it all the more surprising, as generally the reason for a failure of such a short priced favourite in a jumps race, is some sort of mishap at an obstacle.

Anyway, laid at 1.12, it duly obliged.

On the subject of Cheltenham, what a great week of racing that was. Clearly, my objective with my gambling strategies is to make a profit, and I’m confident that I will continue to make genuinely good money from these, but like most of you reading this I’m sure, I love sport, and the drama and excitement it provides. You might have to wait a while to find something as exceptional as Tony McCoy somehow steering Wichita Lineman to success in the William Hill Trophy on the opening day of the festival.

My missus is currently recovering from an operation, so I thought it might be an idea to perk her up a bit by sticking some money in an account, and asking her to pick some horses from the big races. So, last of the big spenders, I stuck £20 in my William Hill account, and being faithful to my philosophy of never risking more than 10% of my bank in any one trade, I set about placing bets of no more than £2 to begin with.

I wasn’t sure how interested or excited she would be by this new pastime, but as McCoy drove Wichita from seemingly nowhere, to win in the final dramatic strides, the sight of the cat running for cover from the strange yelps and animations of my good lady, and the general air of euphoria that had filled our living room, I knew I had bagged a winner!

The horse looked so out of contention, that it had traded in-running at 59.0, so a few unfortunate folks will have done their pieces there, but Mrs B didn’t give a hoot about that, as she celebrated her 6/1 success. I was almost as pleased as I would have been, had it been a £500 lay success – well, maybe not quite.

Just proves though, that strategies, theories, trades or whatever else are all stimulating in their own way, but there is nothing to beat the sheer theatre of the sport itself.

Incidentally, with no help from me and probably just as well, the missus ended the week with 5 winners, 6 placers, and a profit of £34!! Just as well I reckon, as I would no doubt have suffered a verbal lashing for suggesting it in the first place, if the gamble hadn’t come off!

Anyway, I hope you’ve enjoyed this opening gambit, and I look forward to hearing any feedback you might wish to post.

I’ll leave you with No 1 in my Handy Household Hints list – NEVER gamble with money you can’t afford to lose.

Toodle pip.

Tags: Blog, Trading