Pro punting - are you still making it pay?

Darkforcesofevil

depending on what you're doing, it doesn't make sense taking prices on here and paying a premium on top
when you can get better prices elsewhere

Whatever you end up doing, do not go in with large sums initially just because you have access to them.

If your previous 3 months is in negative then there is a reason for that and if you really want to pursue this road, start with tiny amounts and turn them into consistent profit, then build from there.

Ditto funkymonkey, start with a small bank and build it up.

When I started full time I lost money, but only after that experience did I realise I wasn't actually ready and had rushed in. It was a good learning experience though, maybe essential.

Went back to work for a year, then full time here again and have made far more than I would have in the real world over the last couple of years. Some of the winnings are buying me a 6 mnth old Nissan GTR R35 tomorrow (can't wait) so it can be done. I started with 200 quid in the betting bank and built it up to the stage where I can now withdraw money every week. I've never paid a penny in PC, but if that time ever comes I would have no qualms with it.

My advice fwiw would be to start with what you can afford and need as a usable amount for your methods, then go to your account and exclude from all games, casino etc. Then set a deposit limit on the account of £1 per month, if you need more you aren't ready. GL :)

Trevh is right there is no greater teacher than that of experience, applicable in any walk of life

When you are using your betting bank/s to fund your lifestyle there are a whole heap of added psychological pressures and I think ultimately we all have personality traits that are postive and negative, half the battle is finding yours that negatively impact your betting and ironing out the creases.

not easy

hey trevh, some good advice there, can you tell me if you use daily percentage targets or anything like that? ive recently been made redundant and want to try full time punting. ive been casual for 5 years or so but never really had any targets just havin a bet when i feel like it. any advice would be greatly appreciated, cheers

daily targets seem like such a sensible concept but are one of the worst things you can do

I know you didnt ask me but Im bored

darkforces: why do you think you can make it pay?

genuine question. if you have a convincing specific answer to that, you may have a shot. but if you haven't hit PC levels yet, it may be that you have some stuff worked out which is good but won't scale.

cheers judge, what would you recommend?

Hi sween, not much time to chat at mo srry, but no I dont use targets. I do keep accurate records of things that I do, though not half as much as I used to when learning the trade so to speak, and it does take some time to learn as does any job. My advice fwiw would be to concentrate on finding value, and reading up as much about value as poss, how important it is, how to find it etc. GL :)

% per day

its difficult to say Sween depends on a lot of factors, but the problem with daily targets bro imo is you have to take opportunities when they are presented you, if you have targets of £x/day you will inevitably end up down on the chase in markets you have no business being in, on the other side if you hit £x/day and turn off you PC you will be limiting your upside potential when there are multiple opportunities on one day, in a world where we are taught to think how much we will be paid per day per month it can be quite unnatural and difficult to accept the randomness of the payoff in markets

FOBT's have an edge of roughly 3% if you take a snapshot of one day and looked at the P&L for any random machgine you could not guarantee it would be in profit there's a good chance it wouldn't, at the end of £100k turnover however I would be very surprised if most machines were not in profit

And let's be brutally honest here Judge.
If anybody needs all this basic, common sense stuff explained to him, then it is absolutely certain he will neither now, nor likely ever, be or become a successful " pro " punter.
Daily targets are so ridiculous that they're not really worth discussing.
For sure average your overall results out on a daily basis, if it interests you to do so, but never bet to a daily target.

Frog is correct, I see a man and his redundancy money parting company. When anyone talks about daily or even monthly targets ignore everything else they have to say. You would be in a healthier position if you had a proven track record over x transactions but not enough bank to sustain a living just yet rather than the other way round.

I know what your saying FAFH but we all gotta start somewhere

Bit harsh from FAFH considering some of the drivel he's asked in the past :)

For anyone considering switching form FT work to punting for a living that regular daily/weekly income is always going to be a big barrier to overcome mentally whether they/we like it or not.

The frog is 100% correct.

Daily or monthly targets are ludicrous.

Thanks for the responses, always good to spark some debate in general betting. It's about the only part of the forum worth coming to these days.
FWIW ive been on BF 10+ years now and betting for 26 so Im not a total novice at money management. And im certainly not one for daily targets. You take value as and when it crops, not be restricted by targets.
hejik - would love to shop elsewhere but like many Im not welcome in the tuppenny high street shops.
viva el presidente! - very confident I will see a turnaround. I have good methods and I am now free of life distractions which hindered me recently (dont worry, the wife and kids are still alive!)

dfoe, it depends what you're betting on

Set a target can bring pressure to win daily/weekly etc which in turn brings pressure to have a bet when sometimes it is best not to.

If you are betting to make money rather than for fun then i would recommend that you keep detailed records of all your bets and identify which sports you are successful with. Also bet less the key is to not not lose money on silly bets, only bet when you think it a good proposition.

"very confident I will see a turnaround."

--------

this does not inspire confidence.

I'm not yet a pro punter, but would love to be soon.

I've been betting for about 10 years and learned a lot from Betfair, usually from mistakes. How else do you learn?

As others have said, experience teaches you like nothing else. But the key to this in betting terms, as in life itself, is LEARNING from your mistakes.

In the past, I've gone from a bank of £6k back down to nought in a matter of a few months betting on football only. I found that the larger the bank, the more impulsive I became and the higher I staked on each bet. I;d recklessly back, say, a strong German team with £100 at odds-on, and seem them draw, without any pre-match research beyond looking at the league table. A very lazy approach and I paid the price.

I've also learned the hard way that football is often a minefield if you confine activity to the Match Odds market. Many faves get done at short prices and there are two many outside factors that regularly come into play...poor decisions by officials, ridiculous mistakes from players, bizarre substitutions, etc, over which you have no control. Football's refusal to follow the likes of cricket and golf in making full use of video technology and replays to clarify the big decisions is a constant pain for football punters. In recent years, I've had much more success betting in 5-day cricket Tests, where you can often get out of what looks a bad position and, at times, change your bet completely without any ill effect.

In football, I now find myself laying correct score more and more, especially in-running live TV games where you can react to the evidence of what you see in front of you. People says it's simply 'dodging bullets' but I'm keeping liabilities to managable levels and trying to steadily grow my bank rather than risk all to grow quickly.

You can also learn from others' experiences. A successful, old-time punter I know who dabbles in the gee-gees told me that he will often have only one bet a week. He has great patiennce (a necessary quality for long-term success) and will wait for the right horse at the best value price before entering the market. It's also true that the good bets tend to 'come to you', as opposed to going looking for them. It amazes me that as one football match ends, there are so many on the forum who can't wait to pile their hard-earned into the next game, regardless of who is playing.

Good luck all.

superb post

etchildofmine Joined: 26 Aug 07
Replies: 12098 19 Dec 12 19:52   


superb post

INCREDIBLE POST!

ken a post doesnt have to be all technical jargon and words of wisdom to make it entertaining

" Ill be betting at fairly big levels...... Or just as easily sink without trace judging by my last 3mths P/L."

Only stating the obvious, but if you can't make it pay using small amounts your not going to win with large amounts. Don't go in at big levels, start off small and build up. Have a strategy and discipline.  Create a criteria and stick with it.

"Obviously PC has driven a lot of big players away...."

This was a PR disaster.  It might only affect a small %.  But liquidity is down without the big players providing it.

FAFH, Olias, Castiron,

I don't agree about targets.

Having something to measure yourself against is massively useful. Some people might say they will make as much as they can, or as much as opportunities allow them etc. but a pro on here does have massive control over how their returns turn out. Clarifying the risk you are willing to take, and the returns you expect can show you retrospectively whether your ideas about how much you can make were accurate.

Let's say someone has a target to make £50k in 2013. That person will start thinking and planning how they can make that a reality (especially if their profit in 2012 was much lower). Apart from the fact that as pro gamblers we (may) have to work with an unusually wide range of possible outcomes, it's no different than forecasting profit for a business.

If people argue that having these kind of targets can lead to things like over staking, that is something the individual needs to work on anyway. You work with a range of outcomes. Lay evens shots when you make them 2.2, 100x per month, and you get a range of possible outcomes. Just because you make a bit more or a bit less than expected, doesn't mean you should go crazy with staking alterations. It takes a while to get a predictable outcome, it depends on the return characteristics. Some winners make money every week, some have losing years.

In my first 6 months on Betfair back in 2006, I made a small profit in a haphazard way (largely due to luck). At the end of 2006, I started working with a structured approach, forecasting what I should be making, quantifying my edge, cutting out stuff that wasn't based on anything substantial. Gradually I created a plan that I've been working on and expanding ever since.

There are all kind of things you can measure yourself against, not just profit, like:
number of bets
number of markets bet in
edge
turnover
hours spent
etc.

Work out if you would make a lot if you (are able to) increase any of the above. In my own case, I spent very little time on Betfair early on, and reasoned that as my profits were very small but very consistent, I could probably make a lot more spending more time on here. Then I thought I could make a lot more betting in more markets, and I got a computer with six screens. Then I got automated tools to make my betting more efficient etc. All massively more useful than just betting on my laptop and focusing only on making money right now.

and thats also a fantastic post, and for very different reasons to the one i mentioned above

Another fantastic post from sweetchildofmine

What would we do without him?

do you practice at being obnoxious or is it just second nature?

Do you practice just praising a post by someone else
hoping some people will think you think the same way?
What is the point?

whats up you not getting enough attention?

the posts i praised were two totally polar opposites, so how does this tally with me ''thinking the same way'' why do you have to over analyse everything? you really dont do yourself any favours

hth

the posts i praised were two totally polar opposites

...and you agreed with, and praised both. What does that tell
readers?

where did i say i agreed with them? i simply said great posts ffs

look im out of here, im not about to let you wreck yet another thread by having a totally pointless argument with you

TheInvestor2: While I take your point about equating betting to running a business and having a long-term strategy based on projected business, this can also be dangerous and too often lead to chasing losses. We've all been there . . . blown a lot of money on a bet that went wrong and immediately tried to recoup it all in a blizzard of reckless bets just to try and meet our original target for the day/week/month. It's hard to accept a loss, walk away and come back when the time is right with a clear mind, but that is what we all should do if we are ever going to make a success of 'this thing'.

sweet: Don't be deterred from having an opinion on here, nor rise to any bait that your well-intended thoughts and observations may provoke. Just ignore all sad idiots who have nothing worthwhile to say.

I'm with sweetchild.

If his praise encourages the posters (and others) to make further quality contributions to the forum then that is a good thing.

I don't come on the forum much these days as there is a lot of drivel.  Occassionally there's a decent thread like this one thats worth reading.  Lets try not to denegerate it into a p1ssing contest please.

Carry on.

For the discussion at hand :-

I recently had a 9 month stint working near full-time as an "apprentice" pro-punter.  I didn't consider myself a pro because I wasn't able to sustain a full-time wage better than my previous mainstream career occupation and I did a lot of unprofessional things during that time.

I did learn a lot of things and eventually took up an opportunity for employment within the betting industry where I thought I could learn more, and I expect to have another full-time punting stint in the not too distant future.

Once I'd worked out the plan for my "apprenticeship" I set a 12 month profit target (which, incidentally, I have almost hit) and I keep pretty good records.  I bet with Betfair plus spread my activity across many bookies whom I can often get better prices and/or volume.  Because of this I was doing weekly account reconciliations and profit/loss calculations, but I found that even something as innocuous as that started to impact on my judgements.  I had a long run of winning weeks, but in a bid to avert a losing week I found myself scaling back bets or trying to cover a mid-week loss when I got behind.

I started reconciling accounts less frequently, but also found that a lean couple of months over the winter (3 months of negligible profit) began playing on my mind and I decided to make a change.

Once I returned to mainstream employment I found I had less time to analyse results and have been focusing nearly solely on my "process" of research, analysis, strategy development, bet execution etc, and let the results take care of themselves.  I also had less pressure to earn myself a full-time wage equivalent and my bet selection has improved.  As a result my original 12 month profit target is back on track (even though I'm not full-time punting any more).

In summary (from my experience) setting targets of any kind, or even an over-focus on results can be counter-productive, but it's hard to avoid if you're legitimately weighing up whether to become/remain a full time pro-punter or work mainstream.

investor makes some good points. short term (eg daily) targets are obviously ridiculous. but longer term, targets are useful and arguably necessary.

eg, if you make a loss on one particular day, so what? if your rolling p/l is still negative after a week, slightly less so what? if it's down after a month... well okay, maybe something needs thinking about. if you're down after a year and you're not seriously examining why with a view to making changes, I would say something's almost certainly wrong with your approach.

all of that can be translated to a "fuzzy target": how long (in terms of time, individual bets or markets) am I willing to keep doing what I'm doing before I treat the results as indicative of the soundness of the method?

The only thing at that needs concentrating on is prices,
betting only when you have value. If you bet only when
feel sure you have that, you must win. There are other things,
like holding your nerve when results are going against you, as
long you have faith in your methods. That's it.

Superb Post,Kevin would be so proud.

Who can earn £100 per working hour excluding commision a.s.o.?

Say £10 instead?

Perhaps the odious nortons wouuld offer some words
of wisdom, but I don't think it will happen, being
as it took him nearly a full day to come up with
his snidy 7 word comment. Gone back under his stone
methinks.

Talk about that, this is a little bit off topic, but I just
fell in sleep for 20 minutes and it felt like I had been
sleeping for about 1 hour and 30 minutes. I don't think I
have experienced that before.

20 mins is the best short period of time to take a nap for.  Otherwise a nap should be 2ish hours... anywhere in between and you will wake up groggy...

If you find yourself in front of a Greek football match then the best time for a nap is at least 90 minutes.

Nauseous KEN, there is absolutely no reason to offer any words of wisdom...you have obviously got the game by the short and curlies,pity there are not more live games for you to utilise your vast knowledge.

Thanks for that nort.

Can you hear that ?






I think it's the sounds of another good thread being murdered.

If you're planning on coming up with a betting system, keep in mind the figure of 105, which I call my productivity rate. If the average odds of your wins multiplied by your win rate is over 105, chances are you have a system that will eventually make you money. For example, if your average winning odds are 2.20 and your strike rate is 50%, that's 2.2 x 50 = 110 so it's a profitable system.

I test my systems over hundreds of bets and model different scenarios with average odds, strike rate and average number of bets per day. This enables me, over time, to see how profitable a system might be and, importantly, how likely it might be to bust out.

I'm testing out a system at the moment with a productivity rate of 111. My model tells me that until I reach a certain level of bank and then cap my stakes at a fixed amount, it will bust out, on average, 2 times first. The system isn't flawed, it's just that there's always the 'black swan' - a catastrophic run of bets out there ready to ruin your day. That's just a mathematical inevitibility.

Again, I would also stress the importance of starting small. The minimum stake here is £2 - make full use of it and don't bet more than 2% of your available betting bank at a time, at least not until you can accurately model the effect higher percentages are likely to have on your bank.