It, of course, depends upon the size of your edge and your turnover.  If your method only generates one bet a week on average, you should expect it to increase by very much.  IF, on the other hand, you are good at working out what prices should be in-play, you could have multiple bets within the same event, in which case, your bank should increase substantially - several hundred, if not several thousands of percent over.

Today for example I have placed one bet so far.

Bank 1000
Brighton v Bournemouth Lay under 1.5 goals
35 @ 4.0
Liability 105

If I followed the recommended 1% rule my bet would be the following
3.33 @ 4.0
Liability 10

I am thinking about packing it in. I can identify with a heck of a lot that Will Hoffmann detailed in his article the other day, a heck of a lot.

A new year dawns maybe it is time to admit defeat, I can pick winners like most people, better in fact than lots but if the balance sheet doesn't reflect that fact,then it doesn't matter.

Ok thanks.

What you're talking about is nothing to do with value, or at least it isn't in the way you've described it.

Would you not risk 10% of your back to win 3% if the bet was that tomorrow was Friday?

Hi G Hall, just my 2 pence, but I don't think it is good to set targets - at least not concrete types of ones. Imagine this scenario - you have reached a daily target and are about to end it for the day, but another bet catches your eye - Chelsea are evens when you think they should be no bigger than 1.8 - are you going to leave this bet because you have reached the target? Good luck - winning on here is certainly not easy.

All opportunities are due to mistakes by other people, competition for them and liquidity.  You can have expectatuions based on previous experiences, but targets are worse than pointless.   

Slightly related, I recall a psychlogical study on taxi drivers in the US.  Most were idiots and set daily targets, which once reached, they would quit for the day.  When the weather was bad/raining business would be better and they would reach their target more quickly and clock off.  When the weather was good, business was harder to come by and they would end up working longer to reach their targets.  The few shrewder drivers mostly worked long hours when it was raining, and took the sunny days off.  Not only did they make more money from the same amount of hours worked, they also enjoyed nicer weather on their days off.

2.8 now. Are you happy with your 4.2 lay ?

These type of bets, as soon as they are placed, quickly become poor value. I would prefer to back first,then lay off gradually as the odds drop.

Tame the Tiger you have hit the nail on the head for me,although my bet obliged on Saturday if it didn't I am down over 3 points. I believe this is one of the biggest obstacles that I need to overcome.

Is there a way to calculate that Rigsby or is there a rule of thumb.

Thanks for sharing that pecker insightful as always.

You'd need to be at the front of the queue laying 1.02.  That means placing keep bets as soon as the market is added on here.  You'd need better software to scrape the market offerings than the entity that is doing that already.  And of course, have a good automated system to cancel the keep bets when they no longer became value.

Thanks for sharing that pecker insightful as always.

Your question in the first instance shows incredible naivety for a exchange punter.

I put it to you in simple lay mans terms, if a little ironic or witty, it was to make a stark point.

You will lose your bollox rapidly trying things you are clearly not equipped to attempt without a deep understanding of the game.

WHICH YOU AINT GOT MR HALL............HONESTLY............


I respect your desire to improve but you are not ready to bet on here without suffering losses repeatedly........

I have a lifetime of it and i know success is not showing a loss at the end of the year.

The next 2/3/4% can be very difficult to achieve year on year and that is the truth..

Pecker where or how would you suggest that I should start afresh in my quest,after all Mt Everest has been scaled, so maybe it's not impossible for me.

One swallow doesnt make a sperm bank either

Juts been reading a bit of this and there is definitely some interesting stuff on here. Like one of the early posters said, I was working and betting and gave up work because the betting had been more lucrative for about a year. That was nearly 20years ago though and value was a lot easier to find.

I have to 100% support the price is everything argument. Yes a winner is a winner, but nobody finds 100% winners so at some stage you have to accept that if your strike rate has to better than the average odds of your bets (as a %) or you will show a loss in the long term.
Over the years so many people have asked me what they should be on and it is very very rare I will tell them anything because people done understand the importance of odds. If I say horse A is worth doing @4/1 in betfred and they live next door to hills they are going to walk into hills and take 3/1. They will lose long term as my margins have never been bigger than a couple of %.

As a further example, imagine Man City are playing Leeds. City are gonna win obviously. But if somebody offered you 1000/1 for the draw you would throw a few quid on..... you know that is a silly price.... it is way way too big. It's value

Dismiss instantly any ideas of `one a day`, or any other such ridiculously random and arbitrary impositions or requirements; utterly pointless, you must take the opportunities as and when they come, however rare or often that is. For example, I`ve been playing some of the long-term US Politics markets where, in one of them I`ve had over 1500 plays, in another only about 40; in one, I think I`ve found enough value to play, on average, three times a day, in the other, one play every two weeks. Plays must be based solely on value, NOT the calendar.

Been meaning to reply to this post for ages, never could quite be bothered, knowing it would involve a lot of writing! Just been reading the `Star Sports interviews` thread on `Horse Racing`, and ended up replying with most of the same points I would have made in posting on this thread, so please forgive the indulgence of re-posting it.


When discussing winning punters, why is there always the general assumption that they`re backing horses, whether it`s with inside info, form studying or just old fashioned hard work? No no no, we`ve all tried that and found it too hard, even impossible for most of us. After realising that, a lot of us will have then tried the next most obvious sport, football, only to find that impossible, too! Some persevere, hoping to find the magic solution, but most never will, for one simple reason; the markets are just too efficient. Sure, we can all find examples of markets getting things wrong, but any mistakes tend to be relatively minor, short-lasting, not wrong enough, often enough, to be worth talking about.

So, what`s the answer??? Well, it`s fairly obvious; you find and specialise in, an area where the markets are highly inefficient! `There`s no such thing` you might say, but you`d be wrong, as I discovered 19 years ago, when my girlfriend was watching this new-fangled programme called `Big Brother` Wasn`t my type of thing, but she had it on every night so I ended up vaguely watching it, and when I saw the bookies were offering 5/1 for a contestant, (Helen, the blondie Welsh hairdresser, for anyone who remembers her), to be nominated for eviction, I felt I knew enough to know that price was ridiculous, should have been odds-on, so I had my first dabble at Specials (X Factor, I`m A Celebrity, Eurovision etc) betting. Sure enough, she was nominated, and so began a 19-year winning stretch with, (so far!!!), not one losing year. NOT because I`m particularly clever, but purely because the markets are so stupid!

Why? Well it`s because each individual series is a one-off, there`s no `form` to really guide the market; whereas the horses, football etc can all be computer-analysed to the nth degree, going over 100 years of form, producing what are, at least in the long term, efficient markets, which is the one thing that makes winning so hard! So, with no form to go on, betting on Specials is much more about instinct, and how well you can interpret the likely views of voters, which is so much easier than studying years-worth of form books; all you have to do is watch a bit of telly and, if in doubt, ask the wife/girlfriend, as women tend to vote much more than men, women choose the winners.

People tend to laugh when I tell them about betting on `Specials`, perhaps seeing it as not quite `macho`; that mocking stops immediately, though, when I mention 19 years of winning at it, and they quickly try and work out how much they`ve lost in those 19 years.

So, what`s the point of this long, seemingly unrelated post? Well, if there`s one thing wrong with betting on Specials, it`s that the liquidity isn`t always great; the more people discover how easy it is to win at, the more liquidity there will be, the more fun to be had, so I`m forever trying to get people to at least have a look into it, maybe see how easy it is, and then come play with us in our unlit little corner of the betting world. On that list to the left, just above `General Betting`, there`s the `Specials` forum; if you read enough threads, you`ll see there`s a hardcore of about 20 regular posters, and it`s 1.01 that every single one of them are long term winners, as you could prove by reading enough of the threads, because they`re an extremely friendly bunch, very helpful, and who tend to let their positions be known BEFORE the result!
Anyway, rather than expect you to believe me about how easy Specials is, two of those forumites have done these Star Sports interviews;

https://www.starsportsbet.co.uk/bettingpeople-daniel-hughes/

https://www.starsportsbet.co.uk/interview-steve-starkey/